Page 35 of Welcome to the Table

Hollygrove

T his nigga wasn’t playing about this two-day shit.

Hellcat was bent on making Jaci wait to take her shopping like we didn’t have other shit to do.

Money to pick up, niggas to kill and threaten, but he wanted to be petty.

My phone rang at ten in the morning, and I felt like I had just put my head on the pillow.

Unlike the rest of them, I remained in the hood I grew up in.

I just couldn’t leave it. I wanted to make it better.

The St. Thomas Housing Development was where I was born and raised.

My mother delivered me on the fifth floor of her apartment building with her neighbor, who was a midwife, because she was scared to go to the hospital.

She was cracked out and didn’t want the state to take me from her.

My mother was a functional addict. She graduated from college with her Bachelor of Science degree and went on to pursue her nursing degree at the Charity School of Nursing.

That is, until she met my father, and he got her hooked on that shit, then left her high and dry, and pregnant.

She refused to abort me because she didn’t believe in it.

From what Ms. Doretha told me, after giving birth to me, the withdrawals were too much, and it killed her a week after I was born.

I would forever be grateful to Ms. Doretha because she took me in and raised me as her own.

The St. Thomas was made up of five buildings.

I owned one and had all the walls knocked down and remodeled.

Now, it looked like a big ass mansion that Ms. Doretha and I resided in.

I fixed the other buildings over time, and she oversaw the financial side of it.

She made sure I graduated from high school and went to college.

I graduated with my degree as a plastic surgeon and knew one day I would open my own practice, but not in New Orleans.

I’d left for a while for my residency in California, and I loved that shit.

They treated a nigga like a king, but I missed home, so I came back.

Hellcat and I had been friends since the sandbox and dirty clothes.

Getting ass whippings for thinking we could actually eat mud pies and damn near killing ourselves.

That nigga wasn’t a dummy either. He got his degree and master’s too, but he couldn’t leave the street life alone.

I told him one day that all this shit was gonna come to pass, and we would be living in mansions in the hills, and his only response would be ‘nigga, that’s your dream, not mine.

’ I would laugh it off because this nigga breathes BGM, as did I, but we always had a backup plan.

“Punky, it’s time for yo’ ass to get up and go with that crazy boy and his sister.” Ms. Doretha was beating on my door, calling me by the nickname that she gave me. I didn’t understand it, but it was her thing, and I let her have it.

“Okay, Brewster,” I yelled, finishing the name.

Punky Brewster was a show that she watched while I was growing up.

I didn’t understand the shit because she was a girl, but she would watch that shit and laugh over and over again.

So, I guess it was our thing. I heard her granny slippers slide across the floor, so I knew she was walking away.

I hopped out of bed and went into my luxurious bathroom.

I loved the way I had the building remodeled. If Brewster didn’t come on my side, we barely saw each other. I checked on her coming in and when I left, but she made sure I had a hot meal waiting for me every time I came in the door, and one before I walked out.

After draining my main vein, I turned on my shower.

I wasn’t dressing up to go to the mall because I knew she would drive us crazy.

I also had to dress comfortably because we weren’t going to the bullshit ass malls down here.

Jaci would want to go to the Mall of Louisiana in Baton Rouge and stop everywhere else on the way back, having us hold her fucking bags as we went in and out of every store.

I didn’t mind, though, because it was the type of normalcy that I craved outside the mafia world.

After I handled my hygiene, I did some lightweight shit.

My dreads were crinkled, so I let them hang in my face and down my back.

I put on my simple gold cross chain with a pair of Polo jeans and a shirt with a pair of Js to match.

My lining was always on point, so I didn’t have to do much to look fly.

I put my diamond bottom grill in my mouth that matched the diamonds in my ear.

I made sure my gun was securely in my back and my wallet, which was connected to my chain, was in my back pocket before I went to the second floor, where the kitchen was.

As I made my way down the stairs, the aroma of maple honey bacon and the sweet smell of pancakes flowed through my nostrils, and my stomach growled with anticipation.

It didn’t matter what I ate, I would always ate her food because I didn’t want to hear her fussing and cussing me out for not eating what she cooked.

I walked into the kitchen, and her back was to me.

She was slightly bent over the oven, and I knew she was making my favorite homemade buttered biscuits.

She was humming one of her favorite hymns, giving me peace like she always did, as she put the pan on top of the stove and continued to move around the kitchen.

I stood in the opening, watching her move around, and it gave me a sense of peace.

This was home to me. It didn’t matter how crazy I got in the street; all that shit disappeared when I stepped over the threshold.

“What yo’ silly ass standing over there smiling for? You better come sit down and eat before you leave this house. Plus, I made your favorite,” she said.

I swaggered over to the island and took my seat. She made me a plate with eggs, pancakes, a biscuit, and breakfast sausage. She then poured me a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and set it by my plate.

“You always take care of me,” I felt the need to tell her.

Brewster was seventy-one and didn’t look a day over fifty, and she wore it well.

She was very healthy and didn’t want for anything as long as I kept breath in my body.

I would lay my life on the line for her.

When I came home, BFM didn’t exist. I was regular ass Hollygrove, a hood boy whose momma died from the effects of using drugs.

She smiled at me like only a mother would.

“Punky, I’ll always take care of you. That’s what God put me here for.

You just make sure you make it home in one piece, and we ain’t gon’ have no problems. You know I keep my nine on me,” she said, and I almost spit my food out.

She laughed and shook her head, but I knew she wasn’t playing.

I didn’t give a fuck how we lived, and the security I had watching her, we still lived in the heart of the hood, and jealousy was always lingering. People knew she was my weakness, and I would make the streets bleed behind her because she gave me a different kind of love, a motherly love.

“You know Imma always make it back home, bloody and barely breathing, but imma make it here,” I told her seriously.

“Don’t say shit like that because just like you got a team, so do I. So don’t play with me like that, Punky.” I put my hands up in surrender. I knew she had connections, but I never questioned it.

“I keep telling you that I don’t need your protection. I got people watching me when you think they not, so I will forever be good. I got God and my Glock, so I’m good.” She laughed, and I joined in. It got quiet as she made her plate and sat across from me. We were both in our own thoughts.

“Don’t worry about cleaning this shit up. I got the maid service coming today to clean and wash everything. You need a break. Here, take this.” I handed her a Black card with her name on it.

“Have one of your friends from church go with you, and y’all get out the hood for the day. Take a driver. You ain’t about to drive. Put on some cute lil shit and get out for the day,” I told her, and she gave me a death stare.

“I ain’t Hellcat or that mean nigga Calliope, so don’t use them words with me before I bat the piss out of you. You ain’t too big for me to fight yo ass,” she said, and I fell out laughing.

I didn’t doubt her hitting me, but she had a squeaky voice, and the shit was funny as hell.

“You got that. My bad,” I told her, and she looked down at the card.

“I don’t need your money. You give me stacks of money every week, and I never spend it, so what do I need this black ass card for?

I don’t need a bitch around here cleaning my damn house and touching my clothes.

Wiping my countertops and cleaning my damn kitchen.

I am the queen of this castle, and I don’t need any help.

I been cleaning this big ass house for years without help, so I don’t need it now. ” She had spunk.

“That money is for a rainy day. If something happens and you have an emergency. You don’t have to touch that, and you not about to carry no cash in your purse while you are shopping.” I gave her a serious look, and she laughed.

“The only rainy day I will ever have is if you don’t walk through that door. I don’t care about that money, Punky.”

She walked around the counter and wrapped her arms around my waist. I embraced her like a mother because she was just that, my mother.

I only saw pictures of my real mother, but that didn’t do shit for me because she wasn’t here.

I didn’t have a memory of her. It was like she didn’t exist. She slowly let me go and looked up into my eyes.