Memphis Streets 4: Skeletons

Chapter 23- Momma Peaches

Diesel Carver came into the world a murderer.

The way he clawed out his mother's insides in the prison hospital set tongues wagging for years afterwards. Don't get it twisted—not too many people mourned his momma's passing. Rumor was that Zaire killed her momma the same way, and then took out her daddy and uncle with a doublebarrel shotgun after they doped her up and ran a train on her on her thirteenth birthday.

By fourteen, she was a full-blown coke addict and hit the corners and became superstar in Atlanta's infamous red-light district. There, she met and fell in love with her favorite john, my brother, Ty Carver.

The Carver family is a large one. I done said before, my momma spit us out like her pussy was on an assembly line.

Majority of us were sent to Nana Maybelle to raise, but Momma kept a few close to her. Ty's father, Titus, was one of them—until he came of age and then headed down to Atlanta because it was supposed to be the next black mecca. The city's promises turned to shit. The results were the same as they were here in Memphis: more niggas in concrete plantations than the good ol' boys ever had picking cotton.

Ty, Alice's fraternal twin, died in a hail of bullets from the Atlanta Police Department during a routine traffic stop. With her nigga and her main coke connect murked, Zaire turned tricks for drugs instead of money.

When her looks went to hell, and her pregnant pussy wasn't putting her on like it used to, she robbed and stole—which led to someone being killed: an undercover cop. If Diesel hadn't killed his momma, those Georgia boys would have.

To make shit even more fucked up, the state sent Zaire's murderous baby to Ty's wife, Daniella, to raise. She didn't want the child, at first, but I did play a part in convincing her to do the right thing. Hell, I was raising Terrell at the time and the system had way too many little black boys that no one wanted.

I even took Terrell down south every year for his birthday so he could establish a relationship with all his cousins in that neck of the woods. Diesel was about eight when I suspected that something was a little . . . off.

Don't get it twisted. Whenever I came around, Diesel always said and did the right things, but it always struck me as being a well-rehearsed act. But like my Nana Maybelle always said, you can't out-slick a can of oil.

I watched him closer, knowing that sooner or later, his perfectly constructed mask would crack. One day, Daniella called, begging me to take Diesel off of her hands. The scandal was that a lot of the neighborhood pets were going missing. People suspected and then pointed fingers at Diesel.

Turned out they were right. Neighbors reported to the police that their garage stunk up the whole neighborhood. When they opened it up, they found more than fifty cats and dogs in there—not only with their necks twisted, but each with their heads scalped and their organs gutted out. T

he whole thing frightened Daniella and I had to race to Atlanta to calm her down....

It was April of '94. The heat and humidity in Atlanta was unbearable and to top things off it was college spring break and the annual Freaknik with the historically black colleges was in full swing.

Loud rap and hip-hop music boomed from every car speaker while barely legal college girls lost their minds and most of their clothes in the city streets. Terrell watched the whole scene with wide eyes and a sagging jaw even though we were baking in the car during the drive from the airport, which should've taken twenty minutes instead of three hours.

When we reached Daniella's place, she met us at the door with a glum face. "I can't do this. The little bastard has to go."

"All right. All right. Calm down, chile." I pushed my way through the screen door, my arms loaded with suitcases.