The Coldest Winter Ever Read online

  I liked Midnight for other reasons too. In the summertime he wore white when he played basketball. His mother, or whoever washed his clothes, must have been more handy than them happy homemakers on the TV commercials ’cause his shit was crisp. But what really got me was that black skin. It was smooth and perfect. It laid on top of his bone structure tight like Saran Wrap. His arms were cut. I could tell he lifted weights. But he wasn’t all big and swollen like those little-dick assholes in the magazines. He was tall, yet medium-sized, and perfect. His muscles were defined, his veins stuck out, emphasizing his strengths. His neck was slim and strong. He would come to the park only on Sundays. I know because I was clocking him like that. He would be wearing a new sweat suit everytime. He held his money in a gold money clip. He would take the money clip, with the money neatly stacked, out of his sweat pants pocket. He’d take off his pants, stripping down to the basketball shorts he had on underneath. His powerful legs were as cut as his upper body. For this I gave him mad respect. I can’t tell you how many guys I’ve seen with strong upper bodies and legs like a chicken. He would put that money clip on the inside of his basketball shorts and play ball. My eyes would move in and out of his structure. I couldn’t wait to put my lips against his skin and maybe even suck his collarbone or something. To make the package complete, Midnight’s kicks were always new and clean.

  Now Midnight never paid me no mind. I wasn’t worried about it though, ’cause one thing I learned from my mother is a bad bitch gets what she wants if she works her shit right. Pops also taught me something useful about patience. He said sometimes a victory is sweeter when it takes a long time to carry out the plan, and you catch the person completely off guard. What I was up against was the fact that Midnight worked for my pops. So, even if he had ever considered me, he probably ruled me out. He was five years older than me. So, he might have also considered me jailbait. The worst thing about it was that I couldn’t tell either way. You know how they say a person’s face is a dead giveaway? Well Midnight was the opposite. His face seems serious all the time. His reactions just didn’t show up. Even when he plays ball, he didn’t talk trash like the other niggas. He didn’t even react when they try to mess with him. He just seemed focused on the basket, made his moves, scored his jumpers, and didn’t even smile when he won. At first, to get his attention I did the regular things like rocking my skirts extra mini, shortening my already short shorts, sporting halter tops and cute little metallic bras. As I got sexier, he went from looking at me almost never to never looking at me at all. While in his presence, or at least when I was in the same park he was in watching him play ball, I would try to get his attention by acting mad. I’d suck my teeth, roll my eyes at him, still nothing. So I decided to make him a long-shot project.

  Meanwhile I had my own fun stuff going on. I would let niggas take me to the movies, or should I say I went to the movies with my girlfriends and met niggas there, not wanting to ruffle Santiaga’s feathers by bringing a “worthless nigga” home. Sometimes we would just chill at my girl Natalie’s apartment. Her moms was never home so we had free run of the place.

  Getting my first sugar daddy was no problem. His name was Sterling. I met him in lower Manhattan at a grocery market when I ran in to get some Chap Stick on a fickle autumn morning. I guess my style just overwhelmed him ’cause instead of reaching into the cash register and giving me my damn change his eyes were sliding in between my breasts like he wished he could be one of my gold chains. I recognized him immediately as a sucker, somebody I could take for all he had. All his thoughts showed on his face. It was clear that I had his full attention as I gave him a blast of ghetto attitude. I put my hands on my hips, saying, “My money or your life?” He looked startled, stopped staring, and counted out my change. I laughed.

  “Do you need your receipt?” he asked with his enthusiastic corny ass trying to prolong the conversation.

  “If that’s all you have to offer,” I said with a serious look sprinkled with sexiness. He gave me my money, and cleared his throat, turned from the register with his cheap white dress shirt and two-dollar tie, and followed me as I walked toward the door. I guess he had it like that. He could walk away from the register because he was the store manager.

  “So what’s your name?” he asked, looking like he thought he could actually make some progress with me.

  “Winter,” I said, rolling my eyes with disinterest.

  “You live around here?”

  “Brooklyn baby!! No doubt.”

  The rest is history. He got paid every two weeks and so did I. He worked at the store and I worked on him. I had him buying me shit he couldn’t afford. We ate at places he never knew existed. Whatever little money he took home in pay, I took my 25 percent like I was his freakin’ agent or something. It worked out smooth, him living in Manhattan out of Santiaga’s eyesight. Besides, the little piece of cash he provided meant a new outfit, an extra gold bangle to my collection, whatever—like mom says, you can never have too much.

  Santiaga shook up what was supposed to be my sweet sixteenth with shocking news. We were all around the table. My chocolate Baskin-Robbins ice-cream cake was bombarded with small nuts and sixteen carefully placed maraschino cherries. Daddy handed me a long slim box, the kind I like because it almost always means jewelry. I tore off the gold wrapping paper and smiled wildly as I lifted my new diamond tennis bracelet off of the clean white cotton. My mother’s mouth hung open as she inspected my diamonds from across the table. Even though she knew better, she was confirming that they were white, clear, and sparkled like diamonds, not cubic zirconias.

  As I put the bracelet on, Santiaga handed me a birthday card. This was unusual because we weren’t big on cards and poetry and shit like that in my family. As I fumbled with the catch on my bracelet, my mom opened the card, suspecting I guess that there must be some birthday money in it or something. She probably figured that if I got cash in addition to this bracelet Santiaga had gone overboard again, and would need a talking to later on. As she opened the card two Polaroid snapshots fell out and onto the table. She picked it up, twisted up her face with curiosity and said, “Baby, what is this?”

  “It’s our new house in Long Island,” Daddy said coolly with pride and confidence. “I wanted to surprise everybody and I figured today was as good as any day. We’re moving! First class baby! Only the best, top shelf for the ladies in my life.” I was feeling crazy. The gold candles on my cake melted away and so did my dreams under the pressure of the flickering fire.

  All I knew was the projects. It was where my friends, family, and all my great adventures were. I knew these streets like I knew the curves of my own body. I was like the princess of these alleyways, back staircases, and whatnot. What was the point of moving? Santiaga always said you gotta live where business is to avoid a hostile takeover. He said that a man gotta carry a powerful presence in his neighborhood so the small-timers didn’t start itching with takeover fever. Now it was like we was cutting out. So I did something that I normally would not do. I questioned Santiaga.

  “Why? What’s the point? Why are we about to do something that you said we would never do?”

  Santiaga simply said, “Baby girl, things is on a new level. It was cool to rest my head here in the past. But my business is bigger and better than ever. I can’t let them get too familiar with the routine. I gotta switch up, keep ’em guessing.” Me, Momma, and Porsche were all seated stiff and silent. The babies didn’t know what the fuck was going on. Surprise swirled around, strangling us. He continued, “Everyone can’t handle my success. Eventually some fool will snap out of order and try to bring it to me by hurting one of my girls.” His long finger pointed at us. His eyes locked into each of our eyes individually. He was making good sense but I was still vexed. I figured, yeah sounds good and all but I’m not down with the idea of running from a fight. It’s just straight up not Santiaga style.

  Santiaga picked up on my expression quickly and said, “Now you know I don’t run from no w
ar. I’ll take on anybody who wants to bring it to me! But what I’m not having is nobody fucking with my ladies. If they want war, let it be man to man, and only the men.” It seemed like Santiaga knew something he wasn’t telling us. He was dead serious and I knew that his statements were coming from somewhere. “This place,” he added, holding up the picture, his finger pointing out the mansion, “this is a safe place. Man, wait till you see it. Shit, is laid out so nice it’s like heaven.”

  The rules for our move out of Brooklyn were clear and nonnegotiable. Don’t talk about it. We knew no matter how silent we were, there would still be chatter. My mother’s brothers and sisters, and their husbands and boyfriends, who all worked for Poppa, would definitely have something to say. That didn’t matter, Santiaga said, “I’ll take care of everything. Just don’t add to it.”

  In my last few days everything was moving like in a slow-motion film. Shit that stank, stank more. Anything sweet seemed even sweeter. I spent all my extra time with my girls. We were mad tight, many of us born and raised in this same spot. Take me and Natalie for instance, we did everything together. We even got our cherries busted together and lied to each other about how good the first time felt, when the truth was those big dicks ripped our tight little twelve-year-old tunnels apart. We fought over whose date was finer, even though Jamal and Jacob were twins! But I knew Jamal was cuter’cause he had a fine black mole on his right cheek and that shit was sexy. Natalie said Jamal was the one who made my titties grow, ’cause after me and him started “getting down” I went from flat-chested to all eyes on me!

  When my girl Toshi had beef with these chicks from around the corner, me, Nat, Zakia, Simone, Monique, Reese, all of us took off our jewels, greased up our faces, braided down our hair, and had our razors under our tongues ready to go to war. Before blows could be thrown or razors spitted out the big doofy girl from the other crew, who was s’pose to scare us, shouted out, “Yo, that’s Santiaga’s daughter. You crazy, I ain’t fucking with her.” Then the chicks we was supposed to be fighting started fighting each other ’cause some of them wanted to fight and some of them didn’t. So we started running toward them. We charged thoses bitches and they flew. We ran till we got tired and cracked up laughing at how stupid they were. I know one thing, they never fucked with Toshi again.

  We blew trees together then got so hungry we ate four family-size bags of nacho cheese Doritos and watched our girl Asia, the only chubby one in our crew, throw up from the bellyache. Hell, we went from patent leather shoes at five-year-old birthday parties, to matching tomboy outfits and brawls, to fighting over whose titties were bigger.

  Chanté, who was older than us, taught us all the sexual positions. She let us watch while she got down with boys when her mother was at work. She liked the idea of being our “teacher.” She even taught us how to suck a dick.

  We had our first beef patties and coco bread, bun’n cheese and ginger beer together ’cause our girl Carmen was from Jamaica and used to take us to the spot where the dreds chilled out. She taught us how to dance like the Jamaican winders by moving our bodies slow and sexy like caterpillars. But none of us took fashion tips from her ’cause her gear was out of this world.

  There wasn’t nothing that we hadn’t been through, including going to the funeral for Nique whose mother pushed her off the roof after she found out her man had been fucking her daughter. I was gonna miss BK, the music, the vibe, the hot dogs, and mostly the streets. It didn’t matter what no one said, Brooklyn is the shit, number one in my heart.

  No one was supposed to know we were leaving. But on our last day there, Natalie, who had a way of finding out all and any dirt on anybody, said to me out of the blue, “I’m tryna get my mother to get our long distance turned back on so I can make long-distance calls.” When we parted, she said, “Stay real, don’t switch up on us, bitch.”

  We left in the evening. The whole thing was casual like we were going out to dinner or some shit like that. We didn’t take nothing with us ’cause Santiaga said we didn’t need it.

  2

  Oohs and aahs were the only sounds anybody could hear as my three little sisters were completely won over by the drive through the fancy big-money Long Island neighborhoods. As my dad’s Lexus zoomed up the winding tree-lined driveway, the clean snow dropped onto the car windows, adding to their amazement.

  The way I figured it they were young so they were quick to betray Brooklyn. The huge doors to our new home looked more expensive than our entire old apartment. The warmth in the house invited us in, yet and still Santiaga lit the fireplace. More like a museum, there was enough space in this joint to fit seven or so families. It was so wide we could even park our cars indoors if we wanted. The floors were made of white marble, huge three foot by three foot squares, to hell with tiles and linoleum. Momma sprawled out on top of the white mink rug that Poppa had laid out in front of the fireplace. The way she sunk into that fur and the way her eyes were twice their normal size made me know we were here to stay. The icing for Momma was when Santiaga said, “It’s all for you to decorate any way that you like.”

  For an entire month we went through catalogs and magazines, mail-ordered shit, and received deliveries that Santiaga arranged. Santiaga was so live that he had a guy who could make whatever he wanted to happen, happen. Designers, carpenters, locksmiths, tailors, you name it, they came when he called. They gave him respect, tried to keep their eyes from roaming around Santiaga’s home. You could see them shaken by Poppa’s power. Although I wanted to be in Brooklyn, I could see that this is the way a man like Santiaga is supposed to live. What we considered to be high quality before wasn’t nothing compared to now. But those slim corridors in the Brooklyn projects—where the smell of fried chicken collided with the smell of codfish and ackee, then got drowned out by the smell of liquor—still had my name on it.

  The silence in the Long Island mansion was killing me. You couldn’t just open the window, yell downstairs, and find out what’s jumping off later that night. The reality was that for the most part, in this area where we lived, nothing jumped off, period! The whole idea of next-door neighbors was dead. Forget borrowing a cup of sugar, a few cigarettes, or whatever. You’d have to walk what seemed like a mile just to get to the next house. Even then you wouldn’t be tryna borrow shit from them ’cause, hell, you don’t know them from jack and they don’t know you. Your ass is black, they old and white and the bottom line around these parts is you’re just expected to have your own shit and not borrow anything anyway. Now I don’t want to lie to you, there were some blacks in the neighborhood but they asses was so uptight. I figured if I asked them a question they’d want me to pay for the answer.

  When I registered at the new school I knew that I would be spending even less time there than I had at my other school. There was just nothing live about it. Plus it’s bullshit moving anywhere when you’re already a teenager. By this time everybody is all paired off, grouped up, friendships cemented. You’ll look like an ass tryna link up with some-body’s clique when you don’t even know nobody in the whole circle. So I decided why fake it when it’s not even worth it.

  Now every girl needs company. Trying to figure out how to meet a young nigga out here was like a fucking brainteaser. It wasn’t like people was walking outside on the streets like in Brooklyn. Here I could put on a Chanel suit, stand on the corner, and meet nothing but the wind and maybe even get a ticket for loitering. I had my driver’s license now but it didn’t matter. We had one car, the Lexus, and it was Santiaga’s. He promised Mom she was next in line to get her car. I was sure that after her car came mine, but who knew how long that was gonna take. Santiaga had to hook everything up just right so as not to bring too much attention on himself with too many big purchases.

  After a while, me and my moms were going stir crazy. But we were the only ones disappointed. My little sister’s room was so big it was like a separate apartment. Even the twins were having a ball because they had plenty of space to tear up in. At the
rate they were moving, we joked that our part-time housekeeper, a little Spanish woman named Magdalena, would be quitting any minute now.

  “What good is all of this, baby, if I can’t show it off? I need my family to share in what you have given us.” Momma’s words were never ignored by Poppa. Once she lured him into the bedroom she would get what she wanted. Soon Santiaga agreed to allow Mommy to throw regular Saturday night parties. Invitations were limited to carefully selected friends and family. Santiaga spared them no luxury. They ate like pigs, drank the liquor from our bar, and powdered their noses with the cane available in candy dishes usually reserved for jelly beans. They partied every weekend and stayed at our house so late that some of them were at our breakfast table on Sunday morning. These parties excited my mother and added the necessary spice to our new boring Long Island life. She got to show off her house, furniture, and all that good shit. If certain people were skeptical about giving us props before, they had to now ’cause our shit was official. Nobody from our neighborhood could lie and say that they had what we had. From the way their eyes popped open when they first came to the house, we could tell they had never been in nobody’s house that compared to ours.

  These parties did nothing for me though. Point blank, I wasn’t invited. Even though I was sixteen, Santiaga couldn’t get it through his head that I was growing up. Inside I think he figured if he treated me like a little girl I’d remain one. Somehow he thought he treated me better than any man claiming to love me would. So, that should be enough for me. But it wasn’t enough.

  So I learned to work around Santiaga’s ways. First I found the bus stop. That may sound simple but believe me it took real detective work. It was about a mile and a half from our house. I took the bus to the mall. That’s when I realized where everybody in Long Island is, at the mall! I cased the place just to see what stores they had up there. They passed my quality test. Coach store, yes, Versace yes, and of course Ralph Lauren, and Joan and David shoes. My heart rushed as I shopped. I spotted a few cuties, but not exactly my type of men. They had the blank sort of look in their face, not aggressive enough the way I liked ’em. Trust me, though, they didn’t have to look no particular way to eat my pussy, and right about now that’s exactly how I wanted to relieve my tension. So I sipped a chocolate malt, bought myself a designer T-shirt, hooked it up the way I wanted it, and smiled quietly to myself.