Kenney: Still Waters Part 2

Chapter 53

After Rodney, nobody fucked with me. And I mean nobody. Nobody even wanted to be on the clock on my watch. Even Chauncey's disrespectful ass backed off me after that. They said that Rico didn't even do his own men. And they were right. As long as he continued to have a use for them, he didn't. With the exception of Tony, he kept his friends and his enemies all right there around him where he could see them, and you never knew which one you were to him. It was like a game to him, watching people squirm.

I didn't have time for that shit. And it became more obvious the older I got. My patience was wearing thin. I snapped quicker. And harder. I was cracking under the pressure, but only Jazz and Charity could tell. Everyone else just thought I was crazy. And I might have been a little bit of that, too, by that time.

People started calling me Scarface. To my face. But I let them do it. Because I needed them to be more afraid of me than they were of Rico. I needed the youngins to have my back when it came time for me to do my thing. I knew my uncles would never turn on Rico. But the youngins...they would go with whoever they thought would come out on top.

Nobody fucked with me on the street, but the in-house drama continued. Jazz told me about six months after we got rid of buck wild ass Rodney that she was pregnant again. And she didn't want Rico to know.

Again.

"Oh, and happy birthday nephew." She smiled at me and rubbed my scar like I was her favorite kid in the whole world.

Tha fuck? The offhand birthday wish didn't matter. I was pretty sure that it would be my last birthday, anyway.

But what did matter, was now I had that going on, too. So now every time Rico hit Jazz, I just knew that he was going to kill the baby. And she was still on that not fighting back shit. So you know what that meant. I had to step in every damn time and fight his ass for her. Rico was strong as a bull, too. He dropped my ass plenty of times. I only dropped him once. That day I walked in on him with Angel.

But the more we fought in the house, the more he would build me up out in the streets. Rico became visible again. And accessible. He walked around making sure that everyone was showing me respect. The Prince. His son. If they had a problem with it, they could come to him.

I was fucked. And I knew it.

My time was running out.

All the way out.

One day I was sitting on the couch holding Angel, watching Rico and Jazz do their pre-fight dance that they always did before they started throwing down. Getting all in each other's way and shit, making irritating ass side comments to each other. Then for no reason at all Jazz decided to tell Rico about the baby.

I wasn't even in the mood for this shit. I looked down at Angel, who was already looking up at me like what did she just say? Even the baby knew these two fools didn't have good sense. I picked Angel up and walked over toward Jazz, thinking maybe I could calm both they ass down before things got out of control. But as soon as I walked up next to her, Rico reached back and punched Jazz right in the stomach.

Hard.

It was so quick, it took a minute to register that he had just punched my pregnant aunt in her stomach. Then things started going...hazy. That's the only way I can describe it. Like the sound went out, and I wasn't really seeing either one of them. I put the baby down and was about to go for Rico's throat, but all of a sudden Jazz just started gushing blood. Her whole pants turned red. Just that quick.

And then she just...went down.

And everything came back into focus.

Rico spit on her. "That's not my fucking baby." Then he looked at me like he was waiting for me to come at him, so we could throw down, but I was too busy trying to see about my aunt to even acknowledge the fact that he was still standing there.

After I didn't even look his way, he just stepped over her and kept walking. Like she was a body and it was on me to clean it up. I couldn't even move or breathe. Jazz wasn't moving, either, and I thought, for the second time in my life, that Rico had just killed my favorite aunt.

"Jazz." I put my arms around her and tried to get her to sit up. Angel started screaming. There was too damn much going on. I went into autopilot.

I don't remember how I got Jazz to the hospital, or when mama and Charity came to pick the baby up, but I know both of those things happened. I don't really remember anything else that happened until Jazz finally opened her eyes and looked at me.

"Do you remember what happened?" I leaned forward in the chair that I was sitting in. I had it pulled up real close next to her hospital bed. I guess I had been sitting there for a while because my legs were falling asleep. I pushed the chair back and stood up. I put my hands on the bedrail and leaned in toward her. "Jazz. Do you remember what happened?"

"Yes." A tear dropped out of her eye. And then another and another. All of a sudden they just started pouring and she couldn't stop them.

I went over and closed the door to the room. "Jazz," I walked back over to the bed and stood next to her, taking her hand. "Let's just get the fuck out of here. Fuck this shit, Jazz. Let's just get the fuck out."

"Watch your mouth," she whispered, and she was dead serious. Out of all the shit we had going on right then, she was worried about how the fuck I was talking.

"Jazz, we have to go. Now."

"Where's Angel?"

"With mama."

Jazz's eyes bugged and she tried to sit up, but it was too painful. I put my hand on her shoulder and tried to get her to lay back down.

"...and Charity, Jazz. She's fine."

I can't describe the look on her face, like she had this feeling that the baby wasn't fine, but she had to take my word for it. I was telling her the truth, though. The baby was fine. I left her with Charity all the time. Jazz must have thought that Angel stayed out on the corners with me all night.

"Jazz," I leaned down and whispered in her ear, like Rico was close by and could hear me. Because with him, you never knew. Everybody was on his payroll. Everybody. "Rico put me on the list, Jazz. He's gonna kill me." It was the first chance that I had to talk to her alone in a long time. "He almost killed you. We have to get out of here."

Jazz just shook her head and went back to sleep.

I stayed in the hospital with her a day or two longer, and every time she woke up, I tried to tell her that it was time to go. But she would just look at me like stop talking, and then would fall back asleep.

Every single time.

Finally, I got tired of trying to talk some sense into her and went to mama's to check on my baby.