Wrath White - Yaccub's Curse

“Damn, dog! You ain’t have to smack me in my goddamned neck!”

“Now who’s cryin’ like a little bitch?”

“I should take my damned VCR back for that shit.”

“You ain’t takin’ shit back. Now lift the TV so I can slip the VCR underneath it and stop being a little pussy before you get fucked,” Huey growled

“That’s right. You play pussy you get fucked!” Warlock co-signed, laughing his ass off.

Drew’s eyes misted over like he was about to cry as he looked around at us. He never knew when we were serious and when we were playin’ and he hated when we ganged up on him.

“Lift that shit, dog!” Huey yelled again and Drew obediently picked up the little TV.

We had planned to have a martial arts movie marathon and Drew’s mom had loaned us the VCR for the day as well as the money for the videos of course. Sometimes I think she’d have offered us some pussy to get Drew out from under her skirt for a few hours.

I was sitting on the porch railing praying the weather-beaten, termite-eaten thing wouldn’t collapse under my weight and send me tumbling down into that nest of weeds between the house and the street that we occasionally called a garden when in optimistic moods. It creaked and groaned every time I laughed and I thought I heard faint cracking and popping sounds, but everything just seemed to strike me as funny that day. There were Tasty Cake wrappers all over the porch and Huey was doing his best not to flip out about it though he had already mentioned the mess twice in five minutes. For such a sinister little thug he was almost prissy when it came to keeping things neat.

You could tell we were all from the same neighborhood at a glance. We all wore baggy shorts that hung down to our knees. Our boxer shorts stuck out the top as the shorts sagged well below our waistlines just barely covering our asses. We wore Nike, Adidas, or Reebok sneakers with matching tank-tops or t-shirts that were as oversized as our shorts. We all had baseball caps or sun visors spun backwards on our heads and of course we all wore dark sunglasses. Fat Greg was the only one wearing pants. That brother wouldn’t be caught dead in shorts; not with those overstuffed sausage-shaped legs of his.

Jerome and Tyron had started capping on each other’s moms evidently oblivious to the fact that they both shared the same mother. I laughed so hard that I could feel the decrepit railing struggling to hold me.

“Your mom’s so fat she had sex with two guys at the same time and they never even saw each other!”

“Your mom’s so dirty that she eats dinner with no panties on to keep the flies off her food.”

“Your mom’s so black that if you close your eyes you can see her better!”

“Your mom’s pussy spits tobacco!”

“Your mom’s pussy has whooping cough!”

Those brothas were crazy! I laughed so hard I dropped a forty of O.E. I had been hiding under my shirt. See, we all drank Colt 45 around the way and to drink another brand was almost treason, but I liked the way it tasted. The bottle hit the floor and exploded, sending shards of glass shrapnel spiraling across the rotting porch and beer pouring off into the garden like a miniature waterfall. I nearly fell off the railing I was laughing so hard. I felt the wood splinter with a loud crack and I jumped from it as Huey cast an angry glance in my direction.

“Man, clean that fucking beer up before my Mom comes out here and whoops all our asses!”

I went into Huey’s house to get a broom and dustpan and Mrs. Turner shook her head when I came back in and dumped the shattered forty into the trashcan.

“Ya’ll better not be making a mess out there. And I better not smell no weed out there either. Ya’ll shouldn’t even be drinkin’!”

“Uh…we ain’t drinkin’. I mean…not really. Just a little beer.”

“Boy, get your lyin’ ass out my kitchen ’fore I slap you right upside your head!”

I held in my laugh as I ran back out onto the porch.

“Your moms is a trip, dog.”

“Why? Did she say something about us drinkin’?”

“Dog, she ain’t even trippin’ off that. She just said we better not be smokin’ no weed out here.”

“She probably smells this nigga.” Huey grumbled staring at Warlock.

“Man, fuck you,” Warlock hissed.

The pizza man showed up just as Huey and Drew finally got the VCR set up. Greg handed the man a twenty and retrieved the extra-large pizza. The delivery boy turned around and started to walk off and Greg’s face contorted into a rictus of exaggerated outrage.

“Ay, dog! Da fuck is you goin’ with my change?”

“That’s my tip.”

“Nigga, I ain’t say shit about givin you no tip!”

“I know you ain’t gonna have me come all the way up here and not give a brotha no tip?”

“Dog, don’t be tryin’a play me like no sucker! What I look like some kind of fool to you?”

“Man, I ain’t tryin’a play you. I’m just tryin’ to get paid like everybody else.”

Greg was the type of brother who thought everyone was trying to get over on him and laughing at him behind his back. His self-esteem was so low that he even thought the retarded kids at school looked down on him. I guess it had something do with being overweight. He was all attitude and appetite. Greg wasn’t just large and solid like Tank. Tank could run a five minute mile even with all his bulk. Greg started breathing hard lifting his fat ass off the couch. He was all out of proportion. Short, with a huge stomach, plump stubby legs, arms that hung with cellulite like an old woman’s, and big saggy man-breasts. He had cause to be defensive. Me, Tank, Warlock, and the twins, rose up and stood behind Greg, anticipating a fight.

“Fuck that tip shit, nigga! Ya’ll muthafuckas wouldn’t even give me that free soda ya’ll advertised—talking about I had to order over twenty dollars worth of shit and this is only $17.50. Now you tryin’ to vic my change! You must be sick, fool!”

“Give that nigga his change before you get your ass fucked up.” Warlock growled. He was twenty years old by then, anorexicly skinny, and five inches shy of six feet. The delivery boy on the other hand was probably closer to twenty-five, well over six feet and swollen up like a heavyweight boxer. But one look at Warlock’s gold and you knew the man was a player. The pizza man looked Warlock up and down searching for a weapon then decided that he didn’t want to take any chances with a porchful of niggas in a strange neighborhood. For all he knew we could have been a gang or something with a house full of artillery.

“Man, here’s your damned two-fifty! You cheap-ass muthafucka! A brotha can’t even make a damned livin’!”

“Not off my money you can’t, muthafucka!”

“Ya’ll shut tha fuck up! The damned movie’s on!”

“Fuck you! Yella ass nigga!” Warlock joked, but he sat down to watch the film.

We started dividing up the pizza and in no time at all the box was nearly empty.

“Damn, niggas! I paid for the shit and all I get is one slice?”

Tank was standing there with the box in his hand, one slice still left inside, chomping down on another slice held in his huge meaty paw.

“Here, fool! Stop crying and take another slice!”

“Two whole slices? Thanks.” Greg frowned.

“Ay, if you don’t want it I’ll eat the muthufucka.”

“Fuck that shit!”

“Well all right then. Shut da fuck up and eat.”

The credits rolled and all conversation died to a whisper. It was a Run Run Shaw classic, The Five Deadly Venoms . Huey began giving us a blow-by-blow rundown of the action as it unfolded.

“See this big muthafucka right here? His name is Toad and he does this iron shirt technique that makes him impervious to weapons. Spears and swords just bounce right off of him. That’s a bad motherfucka right there.”