Between Brothers Read online

  As Pastors Welby and Davis joined the table, O. J. saw the flash of light from Batiste’s smile and felt assured his remarks had hit home. Every time he was onstage, he came out a winner.

  “Ah, gentlemen,” Batiste greeted the ministers. “Have you met young Rev. Peters from Light of Tabernacle? He and I have been discussing ways in which we clergy can help raise some support for de Ellis Community Center. Why don’t you tell dem some of the reasons we need to help save dis institution?”

  Nearly an hour and two mountainous plates later, O. J. felt the heavy hand of Tony Powers, the assistant director of the Highland University Gospel Choir, on his shoulder. “Sorry to interrupt you, gentlemen,” Powers said, “but I have to get back to campus. O. J., you about ready to go?”

  His ears grating slightly at Tony’s loud, raspy baritone, O. J. thanked the ministers again for their advice and support regarding Ellis Center. “I’ll be giving Pastor Grier a full report on the service, I’m sure he’ll be in touch with each of you shortly.”

  Batiste saluted him with a plastic cup of Kool-Aid. “O. J., don’t be a stranger, son. Perhaps we can have you back to bless us with a word in de near future.”

  “That would be my honor, sir. God be with all you brothers. Have a blessed week!” O. J. hopped from his seat and followed Powers toward the back exit of the fellowship hall. As Powers wound his tall, athletic frame through the gradually emptying building, he drew one glance after another from the young ladies—an attractive range of teenagers, college students, and young adults—lining the back wall.

  They were near the door when they were accosted by Michelle, the young woman O. J. had scoped out in the buffet line. She placed her hands on her slender hips and tapped her left foot impatiently. “So are you going to call me, or do I have to call you?”

  O. J. met her green eyes, admiring her high-yellow complexion, short haircut, and healthy, Coke-bottle-shaped figure. He did some quick math. She’d said she was a member of her church’s youth choir, right? He hoped she was over eighteen. He’d have to confirm that before they went out. He knew he needed God’s grace, but even grace would get him only so far if he ever committed statutory.

  Reaching into the pocket of his jacket, he whipped out a business card. “All my numbers are there: home, church, and pager. Will you write your number on the back of another card for me?”

  Grabbing the card without removing her eyes from him, Michelle began writing her information. “By the way,” she said, turning slowly toward Tony, “several of my friends were wondering if you’re seeing anybody. Your choir’s performance caused quite a stir up in here.”

  “Well, it sounds like the interest is in something other than my choir, so I’ll have to decline respectfully.” Despite Powers’s pious response, O. J. sensed that his friend could not resist the curiosity caused by a longing to return to his old ways. “Uh, just for my four-one-one,” Powers said sheepishly, “could you point out which friends asked about me?” Michelle discreetly pointed to a tall, well-built ebony beauty with a face plastered with makeup, a short and sweet tan-faced honey with prodigious cleavage, and a mocha-colored waif whose exquisite outfit and hairstyle failed to mask her youth. Powers sighed, seemingly reminding himself of his loyalties. “Tell them I’m spoken for, but very flattered.”

  O. J. climbed into the passenger seat of Powers’s well-worn Honda Accord and looked at his friend. Indignation was all over his face. “Tony, you wanna tell me how you passed up all that good stuff just now? Brother, I could take the tall one off your hands!”

  Powers exhaled and let out a good belly laugh. “Peters, don’t you ever get enough, boy? The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, you know! You keep givin’ your stuff away to every woman, he bound to take it eventually!”

  Leaning forward in his seat as Powers exited the parking lot, O. J. refused to let the statement stand. “You got your nerve, fool. You bug the juice out of me, tryin’ to act high and mighty. How many members of that gospel choir have you slept with? Hmm?”

  Powers arched his eyebrows in pain, his eyes focused on the road ahead. O. J. already knew the answer to that question. The first year Tony had been in the choir, he had attempted to stay the straight and narrow, until he had slipped into bed with a fellow choir member. The pressure of two years of abstinence had been released with the force of a Mack truck, and the boy had been unable to stem his desire ever since. He had carried on three carnal relationships with choir members over the last three years and in his lowest times had even bragged about the encounters to O. J. Now it was clear Powers regretted having admitted his vices to his old friend.

  “O. J., if you wanna play Drudge up the Past with saints,” he said, “you’d never take advice from any of ’em. We all live in glass houses where sin is concerned. I ain’t trying to judge you, I’m just suggesting you modify your lifestyle, brother. Trust me, I know how much more peaceful life can be when you have just one woman, a godly woman, in your life.”

  “A godly woman that you shackin’ up with.”

  Powers frowned. “I never said Stacy and I were perfect, now, did I? But at least we’re faithful to each other, we ain’t spreadin’ ourselves all over the campus and the city, like a lot of the other choir members, or you.”

  As they rolled past the freshly blooming trees of Gallaudet University’s campus, O. J. bristled at the implication. “You don’t know a thing about who I spread myself to, Tony, so don’t even play that.” O. J. knew he was a player, but he believed in discretion. He never knew when he might need the help of a pastor who expected ministers to actually live what they preached where sex was concerned.

  Obviously upset, Powers pressed the argument. “You don’t know what I know, O. J. How about this? I know whose baby Keesa Bishop is carrying!”

  For a moment O. J. lost his sense of reality, his head swimming as the phrase echoed repeatedly. What in the Lord God’s name was Powers talking about? Keesa had said something about an “urgent situation” in her latest message on his machine, but he’d blown her off. Certainly she had moved on to someone new in recent weeks. Some other poor sap was the father, if she was really pregnant in the first place. Certainly he wasn’t the father. Was he? Shaken to his core and filled with a smoldering anger, O. J. grew silent, fixing his eyes on the road as Powers neared his house.

  Apparently sensing he had crossed a line, Powers attempted a peace offering as he pulled up to the curb. “Brother, if what I’ve heard is untrue, I apologize for throwing it in your face. I ain’t mentioned it to anyone else. If it is true, well, God help you. You need anything, let me know.”

  Already intent on calling Keesa, O. J. slid out of the Accord without a word, slamming the door with enough force to send it to the shop. As Powers revved up his Accord and wheeled off, O. J. turned his key in the lock of the front door, curses cascading from his lips. This was not happening. He felt like a character in a bad soap opera. It was time to deal with Keesa.

  She was not going to jack up his career.

  CHAPTER 10

  . . . . . . . . . . . .

  WHIPPED

  Upstairs in his room, Terence slid off his Washington Redskins windbreaker and opened his closet door. Overhead hung a Nerf basketball hoop, sagging low after years of avid use. On the front of the door was a door-length poster of Michael Jordan in action. Terence wondered what his boys would say when they realized Lisa was here.

  Although he had tried his best to treat her cold as ice while they had made the rounds of the dormitories for Larry, her luminous smile and soothing voice had won him over, and he had ended up accompanying her to dinner at the Georgia Avenue Cafe just off campus. By the time they’d finished their meal, it had almost been dark, and she had created some lie about the shuttle bus to her off-campus dorm being out of service, meaning he should walk her home or back to his house. A willing fool, he had seen through her ruse and played right along, figuring Brandon or Larry might be able to give her a ride home later.

 
; He watched her circle his room before landing on his raggedy twin bed. He and Lisa had come so far. In high school they had been the Couple Most Likely to Succeed. Like most of their peers, they had come from humble means, but both had worked hard to graduate at the top of their class. They had actually battled down to the last week for the salutatorian title; she had won by a hair. He had been a starting forward on the basketball team, she had been head cheerleader. Most important to many of their classmates, though, their successes hadn’t changed them. Terence had never varied from his trademark image: a near-bald haircut, a clean-shaven upper lip, and a wardrobe consisting of blue jeans and sweat suits, all of which looked suspiciously alike. The boy was known for keeping it real, and that would never change.

  Lisa had always been round-the-way as well. Although she never claimed to be a beauty queen, she was one of the most desired girls at Cardozo High and had always attracted the attention of other boys. At five feet six she was dwarfed by Terence, but her firm, well-rounded build and meticulous perm made her appear taller and more striking than she would have otherwise. What always captivated Terence more than anything was her chocolate brown face. Her cute pug nose and wide, inquisitive eyes gave her a childishly innocent aura. Of course it didn’t hurt that she had what his boys referred to as “nice back” either, but when he had fallen in love with this woman, it had been for her brains as much as her beauty. His feelings for her hadn’t changed, either, but today he’d made himself a promise. She was not going to seduce him and make him forget all that she’d done. No diggity for Lisa, Terence promised himself.

  “Ooh, is this CD any good?” Lisa had moved over to his stereo.

  Terence eyed his new Isley Brothers CD. “Oh, yeah, it’s straight. I would’ve thought you’d have bought that joint by now, what with all that extra scholarship money you have.”

  A momentary look of concern passed through Lisa’s eyes. “Terence, you know scholarships don’t put extra money in your pocket, they just pay the bills.”

  Terence picked up his Nerf basketball and began batting it from hand to hand, regretting his little jibe. The last time he had thrown her out, they had argued about whether or not he was still harboring envy over the scholarship, for which she had beaten him out when they both decided to attend Highland. Without one of Highland’s rare merit scholarships, he’d been plunged into the world of need-based federal loans and grants that continued to make life a living hell.

  “My bad, let’s try a different subject,” he said. “How are your job interviews going?”

  Lisa smiled. “Well, a pleasant subject indeed. Chevron just made me an offer to start as a chemist at one of their operations in San Francisco next fall.”

  “That’s hittin’! Would you really go all the way out there?”

  “I wouldn’t rule it out. The money they talkin’ sounds awfully good.”

  Terence let loose a sheepish smile. “You mind if I ask how much, just out of curiosity?”

  “Try somewhere north of thirty-five thousand.”

  Terence moved closer to the bed, leaning against the maple wood dresser adjacent to Lisa. “Oh, rhe-he-hea-eally,” he said, twisting his voice into a corny Jim Carrey impression. “I’m scared of you, girl. You go! I’ll bet there’s more offers out there still, too, huh?” It was times like these, seeing her field job offers, that he wished he’d done a four-year major like chemistry. Engineering required too much work to cram into eight semesters.

  Meeting his eyes after pretending to be embarrassed by her accomplishments, Lisa cracked another smile. “Well, Merck’s offering a little less to work at its headquarters in Jersey, and I’ve still got several other promising interviews in the pipeline.”

  Terence smacked his lips as he sank a Nerf shot into the distant net. “Mmm-mmm, so you gonna have to hook a brother up when you start collecting them big checks.”

  Leaning back on the bed, which wasn’t exactly foreign to her, Lisa rested her head on top of her palms. “Speaking of money matters, are those idiots in financial aid treatin’ you right yet?”

  “You don’t wanna hear the half of it,” Terence said, waving his hand dismissively. He tried to avoid the subject of Ms. Simmons around Lisa as much as possible. There were aspects of that relationship that he would be taking to his grave. “I’m workin’ on it. They harassing me about not being able to register next year if I don’t get this bill paid up once and for all. I got a small advance from Technotronics, plus Jerry Wallace, my mentor there, called Ms. Simmons on my behalf, you know, assuring her that I will have the money to pay off my bills once I start working for them full-time. So financial aid’s backed off a little, but they’re still coming down on me.” Terence knew Ms. Simmons’s promises to cut him some slack could be trusted about as far as he could throw her, but he didn’t feel like dwelling on that right now.

  Lisa screwed her face into a frustrated frown. Her full-ride scholarship had inoculated her against the vagaries of the financial aid office, and even after four years Terence understood why she couldn’t relate to that special brand of misery. “I don’t understand, Terence. Don’t they know you have a Pell Grant that’s supposed to cover all your tuition? Why do you keep coming up short?”

  “Well, every year it’s somethin’. This year the story was that I filed some forms after the deadline, meaning my grant was reduced fifteen percent, leaving lil’ ol’ me to make up the shortfall. And you know how the story goes; they never have to register me again, as long I have an overdue balance.”

  “I guess you owe Ms. Simmons a little gratitude for not throwing you overboard, but you need to set her straight.”

  Terence tried to choose his words carefully. “Well, she and I had a long talk about her attitude toward me a few months ago. She agreed to stop meddlin’ and just mind the store. Since then, the only communication I get from her is my monthly statement, along with some ominous handwritten notes.” And you’ll never know exactly what she asks for in return, he thought.

  Chuckling to herself, Lisa sprang to her feet, facing Terence head-on. “That lady is a character. No wonder she’s been knocked out by more Highland parents than anyone can count.”

  “The only question is who will knock her out next, not if or when,” Terence replied, his eyes caught deep in Lisa’s. He had promised himself he would not let her have him so easily.

  Interrupting their flow, the shrill purr of the phone demanded his attention. Reluctantly, he tore his eyes from Lisa and jumped over the bed, landing at his desk. As he pulled the phone to his ear, he bit his lower lip, aware of who the caller was even before hearing his voice.

  “This is Terence.”

  “T, whaz up, nigga? This Biggie!”

  “Biggie, what’s happenin’?” Terence acknowledged his brother with a defeated sigh, sinking into the black leather chair at his desk while rolling his eyes at Lisa. He had never hidden his feelings for Biggie from her. He had only recently stopped trying to be his brother’s savior.

  “Nuttin’ much, dog. Just figured it was time for my monthly check-in with my big bro. You know, a brother needs a good role model these days,” Biggie said, snickering.

  Wiping his hand over his face, Terence dispensed with the inane jokes. “How is the baby doing? That’s what I wanna know.”

  There was a momentary pause on the line. “The baby, nigga, is just fine. You need to stop by Adrian’s house and see her again sometime, she lookin’ just like me, dog, though I’m still partial to my little Dwayne.”

  “They’re both your children, Biggie, they deserve equal treatment.” It disgusted Terence sometimes that although he knew he himself was not ready to bring a child into the world, his irresponsible little brother had already taken that liberty twice.

  “I know, I know, but I be seein’ Dwayne’s momma more often than Adrian. She don’t be talkin’ all that crazy mess about committin’ to a relationship, settlin’ down, you know? I can just kick it with her. Hell, she done already had kids by two other Negr
oes since me.”

  Terence looked at Lisa and rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

  “Hey, look,” Biggie said, “you still involved with that Ellis Center, man? I ain’t tryin’ to freak you out, but I been hearin’ Nico Lane and ’em want it shut down. I heard anybody who tries to get in their way’s gonna get a cap busted in their ass. You know what I’m sayin’?”

  “Nico Lane? Biggie, are you working for that fool again?”

  “A brother do what he gotta do. Don’t worry about it. You just watch your ass.”

  Terence bit his lip. Biggie was out of his mind, talking stuff about Ellis. The center might not be popular among the local dealers and gangbangers, but they knew Ellis couldn’t keep all the kids from their grasp. Biggie was probably high, spewing a bunch of marijuana-aided nonsense. Unable to bear his brother’s annoyance any longer, Terence cleared his throat. “I’m gonna have to check you later, man. I got company.”

  “Company?” He could hear the start of hiccupping laughter in Biggie’s voice. “You can’t say who it is, can you, nigga? Well, let me see . . . if it was a bro, ya’d just say so, and if it was a new honey you’d probably fess up on that, but that would never happen. No, my bleedin’ heart, do-good bro has eyes for only one lady. You got that trick Lisa up in there, right? Just how many other brothers is she gonna have to do before you give up on her?”

  “Dammit, Biggie, you had to go there!” Terence stomped his feet as the rage he had fought to hold back finally unleashed itself. “Don’t you ever disrespect Lisa or any other woman in my life like that again, do you understand? Now get off my damn phone. I said I’d call you back.” Punk-ass drug dealer, Terence fumed, who does he think he is, talkin’ to me like that?