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“Girl, stop complaining and come on!”
They laughed and continued walking. Karen barely realized that she still had the journal in her hands.
Darius “D-Roc” Rollins stood in the finished basement of the home he’d purchased for his grandmother, not really listening to the chatter that was going on around him. He still couldn’t believe that his younger cousin—his only cousin, who had been just like a little brother to him—was dead.
He had dispensed with his normal entourage for the funeral and was thinking about taking a break from his boys for a little longer. He just needed a change. He needed a break from everything that had kept him away from his family for years.
And the way he was feeling about the loss of his cousin, he really didn’t want a large group of people just hanging around him following his every move. The group mentality had lost its appeal. Most of his core entourage were his homeboys anyway, so they took the respite as a chance to visit with their own families.
He looked around the room. The newly finished room had state-of-the-art electronics, a minitheater, wall-to-wall cream carpet, plush rust-colored sofas and light olive-green paint on the walls. The large mahogany sofa tables, end tables and table and chairs off in the corner tied the entire room together. It was actually his first time seeing the room since it had been remodeled. He was glad that he had surprised his grandmother by paying for it and hiring someone to make sure no detail was left to chance. The large space was now a family recreation room that was perfect for entertaining large groups. He’d had it remodeled a year ago for his grandmother’s birthday, thinking it would keep his cousin home more. He had no idea then that they would be standing in the same room mourning the loss of the boy.
How could you account for an eighteen-year-old college student with his entire life in front of him being gunned down in a neighborhood that he no longer lived in but couldn’t seem to stay away from? How did a person come to grips with the fact that no matter how much money he sent home to get his family out of the hood and keep his cousin out of the streets, the streets still managed to claim his cousin?
He looked around at all the faces standing around the basement, eating the food he’d had catered for the repast. The sad thing was that most of the people there probably couldn’t care less about Frankie. Most of them were only there to get a glimpse of “D-Roc.” Some had even asked for autographs and some had snapped pictures with their cell phones.
Pathetic. He didn’t regret his celebrity by any means. But he did regret the way people behaved because of it.
“It’s good to have you home, son.” His grandmother came and stood by him.
The tall, bronze-complexioned woman with her salt-and-pepper hair curled softly around her face looked older than she ever had. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot, and he could tell she’d been crying again. It broke his heart to see her so torn apart. She’d raised him after his mother was murdered, and when her youngest daughter had gotten pregnant as a teenager, she’d essentially taken on raising that child, too—Frankie. Burying Frankie probably felt as bad to her as when she’d buried Darius’s mother.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come home more often. Maybe if I had—”
“Don’t you go blaming yourself, Darius! Wasn’t nothing you could do to keep Frankie out of them streets. Lord knows we tried. He just wouldn’t listen. He wouldn’t have listened to you either.”
“How you know that, Mama? He might have. He looked up to Darius.” His aunt Janice was only six years older than him. She’d had Frankie when she was eighteen. She was also tall with a bronze complexion and looked like a younger version of his grandmother. She wore an expensive weave with jet-black hair hanging well down her back. Despite her tears and sorrow at the moment, she was still in her typical perpetually angry state of being.
Unfortunately, this time she had a right to be angry with him.
Darius knew he should have done more to make sure his cousin stayed away from dangerous situations. It took more than buying a nice big house in New Hyde Park and moving the family to the safer Nassau County suburb. It took more than footing the bill for private school and guaranteeing a full ride to college.
Neither he nor Frankie had ever had a father figure—just Grandma and Janice. What Frankie needed—hell, what the little thug who had shot and killed Frankie probably needed, for that matter—was someone there who understood what it meant to be a young man in the hood, someone willing to be there and talk to him and talk him out of foolishness.
All the money in the world didn’t make up for time. It was funny how it took tragedy to bring some lessons home. For the first time in his life, he knew more than ever that nothing beat time. The death of his cousin brought that lesson home with enough poignancy to last several lifetimes.
His chest felt heavy. So much pressure was building up; it felt as if it was going to cave in and all of his insides would be exposed. Something had to give, and he had to let it out or he knew he might just explode.
He tightened up, holding it in. He couldn’t break down. He had to be a rock for his grandmother and aunt. He let out a stuttered breath and then another.
Frankie was dead.
It was his fault, even if he hadn’t held the gun. He needed to own up to that and not cry over it like a little boy.
Man up!
That’s what he needed to do. At thirty years old, he was the man of his family. He needed to start doing more than throw his money around to prove it. He loosened his tie. The central air was blasting, but he still felt closed in wearing the suit and tie he’d worn to the funeral.
“You’re right, Janice. I should have been here for Frankie. He needed me, and I failed him.”
“I’m glad you know it! Too bad it’s too late.” Janice glared at him before cutting her eyes.
“Janice, stop that! This child is grieving just like we are. It’s not fair for us to put this all on him. It’s not fair, and it’s not right. He did all he could for Frankie. We all did.” Grandma’s voice cracked, and she started sobbing again.
Darius wrapped his arms around her and held her as she cried. He held her together and tried to keep everything he felt inside from tumbling out.
He could just see someone with a fancy cell phone or digital camera shooting a video of him breaking down. And he could just see the video showing up on YouTube if he gave in to what he was feeling and cried—if he let the pain take over.
The tenuous street cred he had as a so-called positive rapper-turned-Hollywood-movie-star would be gone if someone caught him slipping and he ended up bawling like a little baby on the Internet.
He shook his head and frowned.
Street cred.
That’s the reason Frankie was dead. He hadn’t wanted to leave the hood behind. He’d wanted to show that he was still down. There had to be a way to be down and not end up in the ground. Hell, he didn’t want to forget where he came from any more than his cousin had. He’d given back financially to lots of good causes and charities in the hood.
He threw money at the hood, the same way he’d thrown money at his cousin.
“Can’t talk now, Frankie, I’m on set about to shoot a scene. I’ll call you later. Hope you like the new wheels.”
“Gotta hit the studio, man. Tell your moms and Grandma I said hi. I’ll try and call y’all this weekend.”
He wasn’t even going to think about all the times he’d let calls from his cousin go straight to voice mail because he was busy with a sexy model or Hollywood starlet. He had dropped the ball, and his cousin had paid the price.
“I’m going to stick around for a little while. I’m between films, and I can put off the studio for a min—”
“Oh, don’t stick around now! We don’t need you now! Go back to Hollywood. Go back to your busy life!” Janice choked out in an angry hiss. “Frankie needed you. You couldn’t make time for him….” Her voice trailed off and she bit back angry tears.
He wasn’t mad at his aunt. She needed someone to blame. Hell, even he blamed himself. So why should he expect any different from her?
“I’m thinking about devoting some time down in the old neighborhood, some time in East New York. There are a couple of youth centers. I could spend some time… I could try and honor Frankie’s memory.”
He had to do something.
“Oh, son, you don’t need to be down there. It’s dangerous. Anything could happen. You should just go on back to your life where it’s safe.” The worried expression on his grandmother’s face tugged at his heart.
He knew the last thing she needed to worry about was the possibility of burying yet another child.
“You don’t have to worry about me, Grandma. I’ll be fine.” He wanted to say that he wouldn’t be involved with the kinds of things that his cousin had been involved in. But he knew that would have set his aunt off unnecessarily.
At the end of the day, it didn’t matter what Frankie had been involved in. Darius had failed him.
“The old neighborhood? Why would you want to be down there? No one wants you down there. Go back to Hollywood, Darius! I can’t believe you’re going to use my child’s death as a part of some bullshit publicity stunt!” The ugliness of his aunt’s voice and the distrusting glare in her eyes shook him to his core.
When had it gotten this bad? When did his own family actually forget who he really was? The fact that his aunt could even accuse him of such a thing let him know that he had really dropped the ball where they were concerned.
“That’s not what I’m doing, Jan… You should know that. In spite of everything… You should know…” He shook his head. The basement was starting to close in on him and that sinking about-to-cave-in feeling in his chest had him thinking if he didn’t get out of there soon he really would end up broken down and sobbing on the floor. He took a deep breath. He needed air, so he walked away from them.
“Son, don’t go. Don’t let Janice upset you like this. We know you, son. We know you! We love you.” His grandmother’s voice trailed off as he walked up the stairs.
Even though he knew he could never make things right for his cousin, the tragic loss demanded that he try, demanded that he do something.
Chapter 2
Two weeks after helping Amina clean out the attic, the woman Karen thought of as her “other mother” moved to Myrtle Beach. Karen had gone out to dinner with Amina the other night and said her tearful goodbye. Even though it felt like her connection to her deceased best friend was gone, she still had the youth center to hold on to.
It was Monday, and Karen walked up to the Shemar Sunyetta Youth Center with the same sense of optimism she started each week with. Her building was two stories of prime Brooklyn real estate—two stories of space, opportunity and possibility.
No matter how things had gone the week before, she started each day of the week with a continued steadfast belief in the change she could evoke in people’s lives. Her mother had always called it her stubborn streak. But Karen thought of it as sheer determination.
She was determined to make a difference all day, every day.
As Karen lifted the gate at the entrance to the youth center, Dicey “Divine” Stamps walked up and lifted the gate to her storefront palm-reading spot, Divine Intuition. It was right next door to Karen’s youth center. Ever since the quirky woman opened up the store a year ago, she had been trying to get Karen to come in for a reading.
Karen always said no. While she might have embraced a sort of eclectic style when it came to hair and clothing, she was really traditional when it came to certain things. She didn’t do the woo-woo stuff! Period.
“My offer to read you still stands. I’ll give you half off my normal rates.” Dicey hefted up her gate with a smile. The tall, almost Amazon-like woman had deep, dark skin and wore her long curly hair in thick goddess braids. The braids were wrapped around her head and had an almost crownlike appearance. She always wore African-print goddess gowns. Today she had on a short-sleeved long dress made of mud cloth.
“Girl, you know I don’t believe in all of that.” For some reason, she thought about the journal that she had taken from Amina’s house and how she had felt so compelled to take it with her. She hadn’t picked up the journal since she took it, so she had no idea why it popped into her head at that moment.
“Don’t you want to know?” Dicey said in a way that almost made Karen think she knew what was going on in Karen’s head.
Confusion crossed her face as she looked at Dicey.
Dicey chuckled as if she were amused with herself. “Don’t you want to know what’s in your future, dear one?”
Karen laughed. “I already know what’s in my future, lots of irritated teens if I don’t get in here and get things ready. The summer is a busy time of year for a youth center.”
“I’m seeing love in your near future. Don’t you want to come and find out when you’re going to meet your soul mate?”
Karen stopped laughing then and stared at Dicey really hard. She thought about the journal again and the story Amina had told her about Karla and Daniel. She shook her head, both to clear it and to say no.
“All right then, but my offer stands whenever you stop being afraid and you’re ready to embrace your destiny, dear one.” Dicey offered a melodious laugh before heading into her shop.
Karen unlocked the door to the center and went about her day.
“If you can’t follow the rules then you won’t be able to come here again.” A familiar sadness began to creep into Karen’s heart as she kept her stern frown focused on Clarence.
She had pulled him into her back office after she caught him trying to sell a marijuana blunt to one of the other young men. She went back and forth in her mind about the right thing to do and decided against calling the police. She hoped she wouldn’t regret that decision.
The boy was only fifteen, and already she sensed it might be too late for him. But she didn’t think being sent back to juvenile detention would have helped him either. She knew that she might have been able to reach him eventually. But if he was bringing drugs into her center, then there was really nothing she could do. She couldn’t condone that.
No way.
She leaned back a little in her rolling office chair. The high-end office chair was one of the items in her office that she had spent a little extra money on. The rest of the furnishings were low-end Office Max cherry-stained plywood. But at least everything matched and looked professional. Her office was the only space in the center that she had cut back on when it came to furniture. She really invested all of her money and her time in making the center a nice, welcoming space for the youth, a space where they could come and get away from the lures of the street.
Allowing Clarence to remain at the center would jeopardize everything she was trying to accomplish. And more than just Clarence’s future was at stake. So many young people needed the space that the center offered. Still, anytime she had to sacrifice one for the whole it hurt. She really wanted to save them all.
“That’s cool. Whatever, yo, whatever.” Clarence shrugged his shoulders and twisted his face in a harsh manner.
The bravado he put up didn’t fool Karen at all. She knew that he cared more than he let on. And if she could give him another chance she would have. But he had a long way to go before he stopped letting the wrong folks influence him.
“I’ll tell your parole officer that it just didn’t work out here. But I’m sure he’ll be able to find another place for you.”
“That’s jacked up, Ms. Williams. You pretend like you care and that you want to give us a chance. But then you just throw us out ’cause we mess up. I said I didn’t mean to—”
“You didn’t mean to get caught. That’s all.” Karen ran her hands through her locs.
Was she being too hard on Clarence? Could she allow him to stick around? She thought about the other young people at the center—the ones Clarence had tried to sell drugs to.
No. No, he had to go.
“Whatever, Ms. Williams. You just like everybody else. You ain’t really trying to give a brother a chance. You just talkin’, you don’t mean that shit you be saying.”
“That’s not true, Clarence! You have to take some responsibility here. That’s the problem. You’re not taking responsibility. You just want to blame others.”
Clarence pushed his chair back harshly and leaped out of his seat, knocking the cherry-stained wooden chair he’d been sitting on to the ground. “This place was wack anyway. I got better stuff to do with my time than waste it here.”
“Clarence, don’t leave mad. Let’s talk about the other options available to you. I can’t let you continue to hang out here. But there are—”
“Man, fuck this! I’m out.” Clarence went bursting out the door.
Torn between following him and hoping that his leaving would help things remain on an even keel, Karen took a deep breath and placed her head on her desk instead. She wondered if she had done him any favors by just barring him from the center and not calling the cops. She told herself it was just weed. But she wondered if calling the cops on him would have ensured that he didn’t move on to other drugs in the future.
As she mentally went over the reasons yet again why Clarence had to go, the phone on her desk rang, jolting her.
She picked up the phone and paused before answering.
“Shemar Sunyetta Youth Center, Karen Williams speaking.” Dragging a halfway pleasant greeting out was easier than making her voice sound like she meant it, so she settled for brevity.
“Hello, Ms. Williams. My name is Cullen Stamps, and I represent Darius Rollins. He’s a rapper. You might have heard of him?”
“Yes, I’ve heard of D-Roc.” Twirling her locs with a pencil, she waited for some sort of explanation.
Who in the world hadn’t heard of hip-hop’s golden boy turned Hollywood movie star? A person would have to live under a rock not to have heard of D-Roc, especially a person in the East New York section of Brooklyn. He was the boy from the hood who had made it out and done good.
“Yes, well. He is interested in devoting some time to your center as a way of giving back. You might have heard that his young cousin was just murdered and—”
Cutting people off was rude, but she didn’t have the patience to let him go on.
“Don’t tell me… He wants to spend a few hours here as a part of some publicity stunt, right? My goodness, what celebrities won’t do for a little bit of attention. Is he really trying to turn his cousin’s death into some kind of image or marketing opportunity? Sheesh.” She clicked her tongue in disgust.
Not that her center couldn’t use a little free publicity, but she was really protective of the kids, and allowing a celebrity—no matter how fine that celebrity was—to use them wasn’t going to happen on her watch.
“Ms. Williams, I know that you are probably overworked, and we certainly appreciate the good work you’re doing with the youth. That’s why Mr. Rollins is determined to volunteer at your center. He has researched several, and he likes what you’ve done in such a short period of time with so few resources. He intends to volunteer a large amount of time while he is between films. He’s even holding off getting right back in the studio for his much-anticipated third album. Against my better judgment, I might add. To be frank, Ms. Williams, you really could stand to gain a lot from his presence at your little center. The publicity would work both ways. He’d put you on the radar, and you might just get more donations for your little cause.”
Each time the man said the word little in reference to her center—her life’s work—her skin crawled. If this was the type of person D-Roc had representing him then she didn’t want any part of him.
“Tell Mr. Rollins thanks, but no, thanks. My little center can get along just fine.”
Something about the manager’s slimy voice made her skin crawl. She didn’t like Cullen Stamps. And no amount of free publicity was worth dealing with the smarmy man. D-Roc clearly surrounded himself with questionable people. And that was all the more reason not to be lulled by a shot at some free publicity.
“Well, now. Ms. Williams—”
“Well, now, what? I’m not interested in helping Mr. Rollins enhance his so-called positive image by letting him waltz through my center and these kids’ lives for his own grandstanding. Goodbye!”
It felt so good to hang up the phone in his face. But as soon as she did it she realized that she might have done so in haste. Free publicity might mean more donations. She really could have used the publicity, because in these economic times the grants weren’t coming in as frequently as they used to.
D-Roc personified the words media darling. Not since Will Smith had a rapper been able to totally enrapture the American public. He certainly was loved, and he might have brought some of that love to her center. But if he hired slime like Stamps, it probably wasn’t worth it. She was right to turn Stamps down.
She was trying to instill values in the youth, not slick Hollywood images and media-induced frenzies. And there was something about the snarky sound of Stamps’s voice that rubbed her the wrong way. After the run-in with Clarence, she just wanted to be able to tear into someone. Stamps just picked the wrong time to call and plead D-Roc’s case.
The rest of the day went on pretty much uneventfully, and Karen couldn’t help but feel glad. Usually running a center and doing “hood work,” as she liked to call her activism in the community, made for more drama-filled days than she desired. But most days, when she could look at the kids and know that she was keeping them off the streets and exposing them to things and ideas that would help them stay off the street, she knew that it was all worth it.
After her very small group of staff and volunteers left and she got the last kid away from a computer and out the door, Karen went over to lock the door so that no one else could come in while she worked on some more grant applications for a little while. Before she could lock the door, it came bursting open, pushing her back. She looked up to tell whoever it was that the center was closed for the day.
Depending on who had so rudely barged in, her tone might have been pleasant or it might have been filled with attitude; she reserved the verdict until she got a good glimpse.
Looking at the muscled form and devil-may-care smirk that crossed a deliciously chocolate-brown face, she realized that she suddenly couldn’t decide. Standing in front of her, in a pair of jeans, polo shirt, expensive sneakers and a fitted New York Yankees cap, was the most gorgeous man she had ever seen.
Stunned, she could not find her words.
D-Roc apparently wasn’t one to give up easily.
Darius Rollins came into the youth center all set to pull every trick in his playbook in order to make this Karen Williams person allow him to volunteer at her youth center. The thought of just finding another youth center in which to volunteer never even crossed his mind. He’d researched the few youth centers around his old neighborhood, and he liked this one. Even though he hadn’t known Shemar Sunyetta personally, he felt that the fact the center was named for the murdered rapper was a sign of some sort.
He honestly didn’t know why he bothered paying Cullen. The man couldn’t get him a volunteer gig! He could only surmise that if it wasn’t something Cullen could make a commission off of, then he wasn’t pressed to work as hard.
Cullen had said that the woman running the center was a bitch, and she wasn’t trying to be helpful at all. Darius just figured Cullen lacked finesse. Darius knew he had to go down to the center and work his magic on the woman. Cullen had said that the woman was probably some uptight, ugly prude with an attitude who hated men. Darius didn’t care what she was or how she looked. He’d have her eating out of his hands in no time, and he’d be able to finally do something to honor his cousin’s memory.