The Syndicate Read Online Free Page A

contain. I was known to be a silent killer with my temper. Stone-faced, locked jaw, usually it took nothing for someone to understand not to mess with me, or know that if they did not heed my one-worded warning life would become very difficult from that day on. The way I emoted my feelings started long ago.
    From where I stood outside of the house, I could see the parlor where we all once stood. People had entered and exited our childhood home as the wake finally ended. I could smell food resting in warmers from the kitchen. Greens with neck bones and ham hocks, sweet potato casserole, sweet cornbread cake, fried turkey, mashed garlic potatoes, seasoned green beans with potatoes, fried fish of every type: our home had turned into a prime soul food restaurant. All in the memory of our foster mother Claudette.
    Looking toward Shanelle through the window I watched her jet forward to frantically pick up the tumbler. Glistening tears spilled over her apple cheeks, as her amber brown skin had reddened. I saw myself going to her in two strides had I been back in the parlor. Saw my other self kneeling down to help her, then pull her into my arms as she held me and cried. But, none of that was going down. I stood with my hands in the pockets of my black slacks staring at my foster mother’s garden. It seemed, even as I was a grown man, Shanelle’s presence could keep my anger in check, and only two other people could be that type of anchor for me. One was my blood brother and the other was dead.
    My first memory of Mama Claudette was simple: she was my aunt. Not by blood though. How my mother, Toya, explained it was that back where she grew up, every kid in the hood called her Auntie, so that’s how. Every day it seemed my mom would drop Cory and me on her doorstep, even if my aunt wasn’t home. Toya would simply unlock the door, push us inside, and tell us not to get in trouble. See, the woman who pushed my brother and me from her twat was a manipulative leech and gold-digger.
    Whenever there was some old head who had money who lost a wife, she’d find her way near him in our neighborhood and live there until she got kicked out because a family member ended up learning that she was there. All of this while Cory and I ran the streets just to get out of the house from her tricking off old men. Nine times out of ten our mother kicked them out and it was on to the next one though. People in our hood always gossiped about how money ended up “missing” whenever Toya got involved.
    Twice Toya had been married. Her first husband, my father, was a terminally ill seventy-year-old man who was a war vet, surviving ’Nam. Dude got mad checks, one for being a war vet, and another for serving in ’Nam and having been sprayed with Agent Orange. When he died, my mom moved on, and a fat amount of money mysteriously disappeared with her. Everyone in the neighborhood spoke about that shit until she linked up with Cory’s father six months later.
    Cory’s father was a retired sixty-year-old Filipino who lived in our hood. He used to run several liquor and grocery shops in our area. Toya stayed with him the longest. I remember how he always was handing her ducats. She never took anything from him lower than $2,000.
    Toya and him would break up then get back together. He’d always give her money. Cory and I learned Tagalog and Spanish from him and Toya’s off-and-on boyfriend in between Cory’s pops. Eventually Toya’s running in and out of our lives and other niggas’ lives settled down when she went back to Cory’s father. Years later, after they divorced because she didn’t want to move to the Philippines, she collected money for Cory until his father died when he was ten.
    After that, she died six months later from being shot by the kid of one of the men she was trying to take money from, leaving me and Cory homeless and in the system. We were in Ohio then. I remember running away