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tonight and see what takes place in these streets!”
    We’d played our position from the sideline long enough, but talking all silly like that wasn’t about to work out for nobody. We broke toward them before someone hit up the jakes and we all got in hot water.
    “Ayo, E-Bone, why don’t you just be out fam?” my right-hand homie Sticks yelled up the street as we strolled toward them. Buggy and his twin brother D-roc raced out a few steps ahead of the rest of us. Them two wild-ass Dominicans live across the street from me and Tony on Verndale Road, there’s no kill switch between the two of them, once one of them bucks ain’t no point in trying to stop them. But E-Bone’s a loyal customer. When he’s around the way he come to me for his bud, sometimes a little soft white, never gives me any trouble and I wasn’t really trying to fuck that up, but he was so caught up beef’n he didn’t even respond.
    When we got over to their driveway I flexed up and stepped between them. E-Bone looked me in the eyes like he wanted to box. He knew better. I’da beat the brakes off his punk ass right then and there. From the yellowish-red tint in his eyes I could tell he’d been fucked up sniffing the white girl and some other shit. He stared at Miss Ruby and crumpled up the paper, then said, “Cool,” and for a second they both lowered their voices. I looked at the boys and with a few nods of the head it seemed like our business was settled. I didn’t like that look E-Bone had in his eye, but we began to roll back over to our corner anyway. We turned and I heard a loud crunch and a dense thud and I knew what was poppin’. In the corner of my eye, I saw Miss Ruby’s long brown extensions fly up in theair under the streetlights. By the time I turned fully, E-Bone was on his tippy toes with Miss Ruby yoked up on his truck. We all doubled back. Before we could get there, he landed a big-boy combo on her jaw.
    “Fuck is wrong with you, nigga!” D-roc growled and then speared him from the side onto the wet concrete. “So what happens when everyone gets bagged ’cause you on some hotboy bullshit!”
    Buggy spat in his face and then slid a hook across his jaw. Them two could have handled him but we all pummeled. We were really total-packaging the fool too, until I started to hear the slow rattle of wind chimes and the squeaky swings of screen doors opening. I stopped and looked around to see the neighborhood slowly waking up. By the time we composed ourselves and wrestled him away from Miss Ruby, I could already hear the howl of the jakes racing up Blue Hills Parkway. We dipped up the block and stashed off all the product. By the time we made it back, the neighborhood was already buzzing with gossip as the blue and red lights strobed around the block.
    Through all the commotion, I looked up at Miss Ruby’s house and saw little Andre and Nina’s tear-swollen eyes looking out through the shades in their front window. A little farther up the way was Vernice Taft, the ringleader of the suntan ladies, standing in her driveway. Her and all her followers outside in their bathrobes and slippers, deep in a coffee klatch, all of them rocking curlers under their head wraps, weird-colored night crèmes dotted around their faces, smoking Virginia Slims, and generating rumors about the “Christmas Eve disturbance” courtesy of the Squad Six crew.
    These suburban broads love to hate and call the jakes on niggas, they think they’re the neighborhood watch but they’rereally the peanut-gallery-of-insignificant-opinions, that’s all. Ain’t nobody on the block two-faced like them hypocritical bitches. They hate on us from afar, but their thoughts and judgments don’t make or slow up my money none. We sit on the corner and in the summer they tan outside Vernice Taft’s house and because they’ve lived here longer than us, they think they got the right to talk shit all day. What them broads need is some hobbies and jobs. I mean, shit.