Memphis Streets 4: Skeletons

Chapter 14- Brielle

"What in the hell just happened back there?" I ask Dice as he drags me out of that old lady's hospital room.

"What did she mean that she's Mason's aunt? Are you guys related? Why did your mother tell the cops that she's never met her before tonight?" Dice shakes his head and shrugs at the same time, but something is off.

There's something that he's not telling me. "What did she mean by your mother stole—?"

"Shhh." Dice jerks me up against him, cutting me off. He glances over his shoulder to make sure that no one is listening in on our conversation.

"Just tell me. What the hell is going on?" I feel as if I'm caught up in some kind of matrix. Dice releases my arm.

We're standing in a small waiting area with one old guy huddled up and snoring in a corner. Even then, Dice doesn't seem to be in any rush to spit the truth.

"Well?" I press him.

"All right, look," he starts under his breath. "There's a lot of shit in the family closet that I'm not supposed to know, but . . . one of the obvious things is that Mason and I weren't really truly brothers —not by blood. I mean, at heart, we accepted each other as brothers. We were brought up together and everything." He's rambling.

To calm him down, I take his hand and smile. "So? Mason was adopted." I shrug. "I figured that much. No offense. It's not like you two look anything alike." I laugh to soften the mood.

It doesn't work. In fact, he gets more worked up. "Mason wasn't adopted," he says, running a hand over his head and looking back over his shoulder again. "He was kidnapped."

"What?" I blink, and then run his words through my head again. "I don't . . . What do you mean?" Dice huffs out a long breath, hesitating to spill his family's secrets.

"I don't know. Mason only told me the one time . . . and he was pretty fucked up that night that . . . shit. I thought his ass was trippin'."

"You're jumping all over the place. I don't understand. What happened?" He takes another deep breath and starts over.

"There's this one time, years ago, at Mason's eighteenth birthday party. My mom and I flew up from Atlanta. We had this huge block party. No expense was spared. We had the best La, the best girls, the best food and music—you name it. Mason was officially a man—The Man—and he wanted everyone to fuckin' know it. Of course, we all knew that Mason was already boss. He'd been head nigga in our set since Smokes got locked up.

"Cartel Lords all up and down the East Coast rolled through and dropped off gifts. Mason basked in that shit, took me under his wing and told me that one day niggas were gonna be bowing down to me, too, if I followed his lead. At that time, Momma wasn't tryna hear about my ass moving back here. Memphis had too many bad memories for her. Anyway, some time during the party, Mason disappeared so I went looking for him.

"When I found him, he was . . . upset, but he wouldn't tell me why. He went back to the party, but from that moment on, it was clear that he wasn't feeling it. Momma was acting funny too that night, but I couldn't get anything out of her either....For hours I watched them, knowing something was up. Hell, I thought that they were fighting over me—on whether I could move back to Memphis and stay with him. "Hours later, when niggas were falling out and hooking up for the night, I found him again. This time he was angry. I pressed him on what was up. He shook me off for a little while, but then the Hennessey kicked in and loosened his tongue. . . ."

She snatched me. Can you fuckin' believe that shit, dawg?" he said.

I didn't understand what the fuck he was talking about. "Who snatched you?" I asked him.

"Moms. Straight snatched me from my people and . . . nah." He shook his head. "Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. This is my real family—not those grimy . . . "

He worked his mouth like he couldn't even say the words. "The oven . . . the bitch put my ass in the damn oven like I was fuckin' dinner. " I was still lost. "Don't you think that shit is fucked up?"

I shrugged even though I wasn't sure what to make of his drunk rambling. "My blood . . . runs black and gold—there's no coming back from that.... What the fuck am I supposed to do with that information now? After all this time? I mean, why tell my ass now?"

Mason jumped up from his armchair and paced around like a caged animal.

"Nah. Nah. We squash this shit. Right here. Right now. We're never gonna talk about this shit again. You feel me?"

I hesitated only because I wasn't too sure of what the hell I was agreeing to squash. "YOU FEEL ME?" he demanded.

I jumped, but quickly agreed. "A'ight. Yeah. Cool. "

"Cool. Cool."

Mason turned up his bottle of Henney. I side-eyed him, tryna gauge his mood. Hell, I was young. I didn't know what to make of the shit. Couple of seconds later, he changed up.

He plastered on a smile, grabbed my head like it was a football—that shit used to always bug the fuck out of me—and then refused to let me go until I cried uncle.

When he let me go, he had this strange look on his face. "Tell you what, Ray. No matter what nobody says, I'm always gonna be your big brother. You got that?"

"Yeah. I got it." Mason's smile wobbled.

"Good. Now forget all that other shit. Get the fuck out of here and let your big brother go find something soft and gushy to get up in—before this fucked-up birthday really goes to shit."

When Dice's story drifts off, I wait a second to see if he's going to finish it, but then he doesn't say anything else. "That's it?" His eyes snap back to me. "That's enough, don't you think?"

I pause a minute so that I can digest that story. "So that woman back there really was Mason's aunt?"

"I don't know." Dice shrugs. "She could be." His cell phone rings and he quickly scoops it out of his pocket.

"Who is it?"

"Lucifer." He shakes his head and then stuffs the phone back into his pocket. "I'll call her back later." I glance back down the crowded hallway at the closed hospital room.

"So the woman who kidnapped them was—?"

"I said I don't know. Fuck. Enough with all the damn questions."

"All right." I toss up my hands. "Forget I said anything." Dice's mom races out of the room with her face in her hands, running blindly.

"Mom." Dice takes off after her. I toss another look at the guarded hospital door.

Maybelline Carver. Carver.

Isn't that Snake's last name?