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  To Devin AKA BIP, may you Rest in Power

  When you learn, teach, when you get, give.

  —Maya Angelou

  My junior high school class, wish I stayed there

  Illegal entrepreneur, I got my grades there

  Blaming society, mad, it wasn’t made fair

  I would be Ivy League if America played fair

  —Nas

  THE BEAST SIDE OF BALTIMORE

  I saw bullets rip through the faces of adolescents.

  I saw mothers abandon their kids. I saw fathers go out for milk to never return. I saw kids turn into killers. Cops steal and grandparents raise infants around here.

  I saw kids slap spit out of adults.

  I saw the devil. I saw dude shake dude’s hand before whipping out his gun and making dude put his hands up.

  We go through midlife crises at fifteen around here.

  I saw friends kill friends. I saw friends kill friends and then attend their wake. I saw teachers tell kids that they’d die like their parents or siblings. What does hope look like?

  I saw shot dudes in wheelchairs be shot again while they sat in their wheelchairs.

  I saw shots that made bodies flip. I saw colostomy bags burst, guts spill, brains on the curb, brains on the wall, brains by the car, contusions, limbs knocked off, faces rearranged, eyeballs, small intestines, and flesh chunks. I saw flesh sizzle like minute steaks.

  We all self-medicate around here.

  I saw murder after murder. I’ve smelled murder. I saw bodies rot. I read 150 teen obituaries—all with short bios. I know hate.

  I saw barefoot families, I saw drug money buy churches, I saw hoop dreams spark and fade. I saw all types of dreams spark and fade. I saw house raids, I saw families evicted, I saw AIDS spread, I saw thousands made, and lost right in the middle of the place where cops enforce, terrorize and collect—I saw it.

  I saw it all.

  LOOKING FOR BIP

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  Aunt Kim’s front door almost thumped off the hinges, while I was rolling a celebratory blunt because College Park, Georgetown, Loyola, and a couple of other schools were letting me in.

  “Kim, kill the music!” I said, looking through the peephole.

  I opened the door without removing the latch to see Ron G prop both hands on his knees like kickstands, his oval belly peeking out of his shirt.

  “Ron, what the fuck is up?” I said.

  He breathed heavily. “Yo, find Gee. They shot Bip!” he said–with his pudgy face pinching through the door.

  “What?” I opened the door to let him in, but he continued down the hall shouting.

  “Gee! Gee! Where you at! We got a problem! Gee!”

  I didn’t believe that shit. My bro Bip’s not dead. Did I hear shots? East Baltimore is a gun range, so I always heard shots. Shots ring out in east Baltimore all day—especially when it’s hot out. People always get shot but not Bip. Fuck Ron, I thought.

  “Kim, Ron lost his got damn mind!”

  You’d have to be psycho to shoot at my bro. Bip was the neighborhood dope man, a real star. He employed everyone, paid cops, financed the lives of murderers, fed and housed ex-cons until they could feed and house themselves. Bip’s like Superman mixed with Jesus. He’s not dead.

  Ron G’s stupid—I think he dropped out of kindergarten. Plus he’s on acid, sherm, loose pills, and some other shit—it probably wasn’t even Bip, I thought.

  I dialed Bip’s cell to tell him how stupid Ron G was, but I only got the voice mail “You reached the right nigga at the wrong time, hit me back—one.” BEEP.

  “Kim, stay here and roll another blunt while I see what’s up,” I said.

  She was all frowned up like “Be carefullllll!” Bip and I aren’t her kids, but she always treated us like we were. I felt her anxiety in my chest as I bounced.

  “Please, baby, be careful!” she called out again as I shut the door.

  Bip was driving a T-Top Z300 that day. He bought it from a Jewish car wholesaler named Seth. Seth was known for getting cars with clean titles and untraceable paperwork for young dealers. Seth helped Bip get that 300, a GS, and my Acura. The front of our house was a car show.

  Bip’s 300 was whiter than untouched snow with an identical shade on the wheels. It had white piping and the inside was reupholstered with beet-juice-colored leather.

  I saw it double-parked a block away from Kim’s.

  Everyone knew Bip’s car—he called it blow. That day, it was right in front of the food spot CC’s Carryout with the hazards on so I knew he was in the gathering crowd I saw. I couldn’t wait to tell him the stupid shit that Ron had said, and, more important, how I got accepted into college. He’s going to flip over the amount of schools I gained acceptance to, especially since none of the guys in our family ever went to college.

  Bip was probably pushing up on a girl, I thought—we were on a mission to book and bone every woman that we weren’t related to. Bip was winning—only because he’s older. But I was on his heels and had gotten three phone numbers the previous day.

  Hurk, my best friend and one of Bip’s workers, spotted me swimming through the mob. Hurk towered over all of us like an NBA player—his knuckles practically scraped the ground when he walked.

  “Dee, oh God, Deeee!” he cried.

  Hurk ran up on me like a crazed fan. His long face balled like crumpled paper, his dreads whipped every which way as he came toward me. He squeezed me hard, like he was trying to make my shoulders touch.

  “Shorty, Im’a murk dem niggas that rocked Bip, put that on my muther.” Tears scaled his face. I remained silent but the crowd didn’t.

  Bip’s not dead and Hurk’s just looking for trouble; he’s been like that since we were two. “Nooooooooooooo,” he howled as I pulled away, “Get the fuck off me, Hurk, I need to catch my brova.”

  I just needed to get through the mob of gossipers. I thought he was probably stuck in CC’s because there were a million people blocking the door. I elbowed through the crowd. Everyone gazed at me like I walked in class late. Wet eyes and bent faces circled the scene. I inched closer. The Koreans who ran CC’s Carryout clutched their babies while peeking through the caged door.

  A young black man, blood all over his face, covered by a still sheet laid stretched across the concrete. The dead kid had on orange-and-white CB34 sneakers freckled with blood poking out from under the sheet. Everybody in the hood had those kicks—I was wearing them—so that could have been anybody lying there. Someone moved the body and his arm dangled.

  I saw Bip’s diamond two-tone gold bracelet gleam.

  I ducked under the yellow warning tape and pushed past the beat cop. The sheet folded down a little as I stood closer. Brains and blood everywhere. Then the noise stopped and a cold silence blanketed the crowd.

  “Bip, get up!” I begged. “Get up. Come on!”

  It was the first time he ever ignored me. “Please yo!”

  The beat cop gathered himself and slammed me down next to my brother. He flipped me like a pissy mattress, positioning for a chokehold. Fuck fighting back. I wished I had died too.

  MY BROTHER’S KEEPER

  Did you eve
r idolize a person you could touch? Was him bragging that you were his little brother the biggest honor you could possibly imagine?

  Did your big brother ever run a dope strip? A crack spot? Both?

  At age eleven, you watched him run the courtyard from your cousin’s second-story window, working for your uncle—serving customers, ducking cops, and bossing around dudes twice his age.

  You knew he loved you because he took his earnings and bought you whatever you wanted; you didn’t even have to ask.

  You remember him counting all of that cash until his fingers cramped and then falling asleep with his Nikes on, and you would take them off, wipe them down, and then place them back into their original box because he was such a neat freak.

  Selling drugs seemed legal where you lived and he taught you how to be extra careful because bodies dropped every day—big dudes, baby girls, OG’s, fat aunts, city workers and all. Bullets ain’t have no name and he taught you that. He taught you everything.

  Then there was the day your brother realized that he didn’t have to work for your uncle anymore. That he was smart enough to run his own shop and could triple his profits.

  He sees you blending in with losers, being lazy and smoking weed all day. He realizes that you have no positive role models, not even him. He sees that you, his little brother, are failing in school and life.

  He tells you these things bother him and that he’s going to make a change. You know he’s going to make a change because he’s a doer. You want to be a doer too.

  When you are twelve your big brother moves out—your feelings are split because you want to stay and leave with him. Your mom is a praying woman but she understands what it’s like for you on these streets, and the rest of your family ignoring your exit makes your decision more than easy.

  He puts you in a row home on Curley Street overlooking nothing and explains why he must hustle and why you must stay in school. You promise him that you will go to school and try hard. He gives you a stack of books to read about Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X because he came of age in an era when black awareness was at an all-time high. Rappers and dealers wore Afrocentric clothes, had a strong sense of negritude, and praised the motherland.

  You didn’t get it but you can’t let him down so you try to understand; you read the books even though you hate reading. You scribble all in the margins in an effort to retain the information. It works a little. He’s working too. His safe is full of cash, and so are your couch cushions and the Hefty bag in the closet.

  You hear him and his crew living it up under the glowing streetlights every night. You want to live too. They post up and yell, “Blue tops of Cosby nose, blue tops of Cosby nose!” They trade Big, Pac, Nas, and Jay Z lines, fussing over who is the best. Others slap box, and pretty girls come past to chill, all on the same block that is flooded with laughing drug addicts who dance to songs only they can hear, and the fun never ever stops.

  You see it all in a thousand-mile-per-hour blur—their jokes, their smiles, their corner—where transactions are made before the police hop out with cocked pistols, causing everyone to scatter. Sometimes they make arrests; sometimes they just beat on black teens with gun handles and wooden batons until they spit out blood, lunch, and teeth.

  Gentrification peeked in but ran in fear. You don’t run. You can’t because your older brother wouldn’t run. He taught you that heroes are afraid to run.

  Years pass and your big bro, your idol, is still the king of east Baltimore, the reigning champ of the block. You realize that he’s what you want to be. You even try to step outside to greet his crew and join in the drug talk. “Y’all rockin off a lot of coke out here!” you say, looking for approval. He laughs at you and says, “You finish those books? I got more!”

  You reply, “Fredrick Douglass says, ‘If there is no struggle, there is no progress’ and ‘Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.’”

  He smiles and spits three more Douglass quotes, six more facts about things you and the other guys on the corner have never heard of and then another twelve book titles that you need to read.

  You could never stump your brother. He didn’t go to school but he was smarter than every teacher you ever had. He sends you back in the house with your head down. You know the corner isn’t for you and he has no trouble reminding you.

  You really don’t know what’s for you because you’re his shadow. People see you and speak of him. He wants you to be a reader and not a hustler. You don’t want to read, you want to hustle, but you still do what he says.

  You’re fifteen now. That original crew he slang with under the lights are all dead and have been for a while. He has a whole new staff with similar looks and names. You see three or four new sets of new people every year. There’s a low employee retention rate in his business.

  You used to weep at funerals: every death used to feel new. Death started feeling the same. You used to wear suits to funerals but they’ve become so common now that you just show up in jeans and a hoodie, if you show up at all. Your brother is beyond successful. He’s still out front, but also up the street now and around the corner too. He celebrates by giving you cash and buying nice cars.

  You love your brother’s gold ropes. They scream wealth. You always try his on when nobody’s around. They give you power and connect the two of you. They make you handsome and interesting. Without them you are frail. You look in the mirror and see that your face is chubby and naked; you both share the same blank stare but you wonder when your face will tighten like his, when will your lip carry the same mustache. Adding the ropes makes you forget about the physical imperfections you see. They make you taller, smarter, more mature and polished. They make you complete.

  He buys you some little chains as a reward for doing well in school. You wear them proudly, never tucking them in.

  Seventeen and you are finally, almost, as popular as him. You have studied him religiously. You own his walk, his talk, his laugh. You drive his cars even though he bought you your own.

  You now get his vision for your life and don’t care about selling drugs or being a thug anymore. You like school and even apply to some colleges. Mr. Brown, your high school history teacher, recognized your potential and set you up with some SAT prep courses so that your test scores can be as high as your GPA. You study the courses, take the test, do well and start visiting colleges. Your brother goes with you to visit the University of Maryland’s campus. You catch your tour guide checking his jewelry; he notices too and you both laugh.

  A few more visits go down and some of those colleges let you in. The ones you’d least expect. You celebrate with your aunt because your big brother isn’t around. She yells, “My baby got into Georgetown!”

  You reply, “I’d be in Harvard if America wasn’t so racist!”

  You both laugh, crack jokes, and blast music. She doesn’t know the difference between Georgetown and Harvard, she is just proud. You never saw a person look as proud as she does on that day—that makes you proud. You may never see that look again. Heaven came to that apartment and stayed until Ron G beat on the door.

  You dress up for this funeral. Death feels new again.

  You see wall-to-wall people there. They all look foreign. They never came around when he was alive. They all reach out but you don’t reach back. Your eyes look puffy, the lower lids inflamed. They look like you are in the eleventh round of a twelve-round fight. You’re losing. You can’t fight any longer.

  Burying him in his jewelry is the only thing that makes you happy. He always told you about Egyptian kings being buried with their favorite items, food they loved, and their best jewelry. You want to be buried with your favorite things too; you want to be buried with him.

  Weeks pass and you are still paralyzed by his death. You can’t leave your crib. You consider moving to a new crib to escape the pain, hoping it won’t feel the same. There’s only one way to make this type of pain stop. He used to keep a pearl .357 Magnum under his bed; it was smooth an
d deadly, just like him. You keep it under your bed now.

  You reach for it. It’s fully loaded. You empty the bullets onto your mattress and then pick one up and look at it—it’s not too heavy, but heavy enough to erase your pain. You drop it in the chamber.

  Spin spin spin…

  The cold steel is connected to your temple with no space in between. You close your eyes and rub the trigger. It feels right. You squeeze. Click! You squeeze again and hear another click, a louder click. It’s the loudest click you ever heard, louder than bombs dropping on crowded towns. Nothing happens. Night darkens the room. You doze off next to the gun, praying that you don’t wake up.

  AFTERMATH

  Two weeks after Bip died on the concrete, one week after his funeral where a collage of ex-girlfriends, junkies, and gangstas packed every corner of a Baptist church we never attended—all screaming louder than newborn crack-babies—I sat.

  Alone in the same corner of my house, in the same clothes, looking at the same Polaroids wondering who would do this. Who? Who could kill my bro and why?

  My mom called me every day, telling me to pray. Bip wasn’t her son but she felt his loss through me. I got on my knees and looked up at God for an answer two or three times a day but never got a response.

  A lot of us have to put all of our faith in heaven because our lives here on earth are so messed up—the afterlife has to be better than the pain that comes with black skin.

  East Baltimore is a place where people come and go. Loyalty, not blood, makes you family here because people are gained, trusted, and loved as quick as they fade. Some began to resurface after Bip passed. I felt like half of the city had stopped past my crib. They all had wild theories on what happened. A regular shooting transforms into a global massacre by the time it reaches the fifth dude. I wasn’t really trying to hear it. Some really wanted to offer condolences but most came because they heard I was giving away Bip’s old things. I passed out bags of hoodies, leather coats, and unworn sneakers.