Page 38 of K.I.N.: Karma Is Near

Wasn’t my marriage.

That was the only reason I hadn’t said shit.

Whatever fucked-up shit them people had going on belonged to them.

Still…

That was your wife’s little sister, nigga.

I glanced over at him again.

Still in that fucking phone.

See, me and Xay was different.

Always had been.

I was a hustler at spirit.

Xay always wanted to be a hustler at spirit.

That’s the difference.

I had been finding ways to make money before I even understood what having money really meant. Back in high school, I sold chips, candy, gum, whatever I could fit in my bookbag and get somebody to buy. I’d clean my Jordans until them bitches looked damn near new, sell them, take that money and buy another pair. Somebody needed something and I could figure out how to get it?

I wanted a cut.

Nobody taught me that shit.

Definitely not my mother.

Me and Xay grew up in Newark.

And not that new Newark motherfuckers liked showing when they wanted to talk about how much the city changed.

Nah.

I’m talking about the Newark where me and Xay could walk through our building and find crackheads in the hallway before we made it upstairs.

Sometimes one of them crackheads was our mother.

Andrea.

I tightened my hand around the steering wheel.

To this day, that woman still ran them same streets.

Every few months came the same story.

I’m getting clean this time, Levin.

I’m serious.

I’m tired.

I’m ready.

Then I’d get a phone call from somebody who knew somebody who knew me.