Memphis Streets 3: Revenge

Chapter 39- Alice

Arzell smells bad.

I keep telling myself that I need to clean up what came out of his dead body and drag him out to one of the freshly dug graves I have prepared by the big oak tree, but so far I keep putting it off. Maybe it's because it feels like a form of punishment to deny him his final resting place.

Maybe I'll leave Maybelline to rot in the basement, too, once she croaks. I know she has to be begging God by now for me to just put a bullet through her head. So far, I do just enough to keep her alive. I'll never get over losing my baby or his daddy. . . .

It had been almost five years since I'd left Terrell at Maybelline's to run to the store and there hadn't been a day that passed that I didn't contemplate going back, but I had a list as long as my arm on why that shit was a bad idea. Every year on his birthday I sent him a birthday card to let him know that I was thinking about him. It was probably stupid. It wasn't like Terrell could read.

"Just go and visit him," Dribbles said in between shoving handfuls of catfish into her mouth.

It was one of those rare days when we'd hustled a few extra dollars to put some actual food in our bellies. "You know that you want to. I'm sure that your sister will let you see him."

"Not without giving me a hard time or . . ." Dribbles frowned and licked her fingers.

"Or what?" I shrugged. "I don't know. You don't know Maybelline. She got this whole holier than thou thing down pat. I'm surprised that no one has nailed her to a cross already."

"Hell, there's one of those in every family," Dribbles laughed. "All I'm saying is it's clear that you want to see Terrell so . . . go see him."

I grabbed my cola and wished that it had something stronger in it so I could handle this conversation. "You scared she's gonna pack Terrell's things and make you take him with you?"

"No," I lied. "And even if she did, it's not like I couldn't take care of him. I mean . . . it would be a little adjustment, but I could do it. If I had to." Dribbles nodded and let me bump my gums.

She wasn't buying a word I was saying. When I finished, she had one response: "Go." Two days after Terrell's fifth birthday I knocked on Maybelline's doors.

After I did, I was suddenly hit with the feeling that I was making a terrible mistake. I turned to jet off the porch when the front door was opened.

"What can I do you for?" I whipped back around at the rough baritone voice and was taken aback by the thuggishly fine, bold, chocolate brother filling up the door.

To make things worse, he was bare-chested with a tapestry of tats, a gold rope chain and wore jeans that sagged off his hips. Vice Disciple Isaac Goodson was a mean muthafucka by the way of Chicago—at least that was the word on the streets. When he rolled into town and opened his own auto shop off Airways, bitches streamed in and out of that place tryna lock his fine ass down. I had heard that Maybelline had been the lucky bitch to drag him down to the courthouse but until that moment I hadn't realize just how lucky she was.

"Are you going to stand here with your mouth open all day or are you going to tell me what you want?" Licking my dry lips, I straightened my clothes and hand-ironed my hair.

"Is . . . is Maybelline and Terrell in?"

"Nah. She took lil man down South to visit family." Isaac propped his weight against the door frame and took his time checking me over.