Karma's a Bitch (5 page)

“Nigga what the fuck you doing with my phone??!!”

“This my phone, whatchu talkin’ about man? Go on with that shit.”

Gucci continued yelling obscenities through the phone, but Tony, Rob and Scoop’s laughter only grew louder and louder.

“Yea yea yea, I got me a new phone and some new keys. To a shiny new Benz. Hahaha….” Tony laughed and then hung up the phone. The phone rang three more times before Gucci gave up. Tony scanned the keys and wondered if it would be worth trying to find Gucci’s Benz out in the parking lot…

“Ya’ll took that man’s keys for real? How the hell is he supposed to get home and in his house?” Terrance’s voice of reason piped in as he slowly caught up with what was going on.

“Man, fuck that nigga. He should have thought about all that before he pushed me,” Tony snorted out and then leaned down in the passenger’s seat.

“Oh so he just pushed you outta nowhere. Yea, that sounds right,” Terrance said sarcastically and thoroughly angry at the situation. How were they going to take the man’s cellphone and keys to his house? What did they need the keys for? That was just trifling.

“Yea that’s right. And that nigga got his shit rocked.” Tony reached his hand over and held it out for Scoop to slap. “Now he’ll know, don’t fuck with these niggas in the club. That’s a bad idea dude.”

“So all three of ya’ll niggas were involved right? I thought you said he pushed
you
?” Terrance directed at Tony.

“You fuck with my boy, you fucking with me,” Rob reasoned as he started chomping on some barbecue potato chips he had grabbed from the vending machine in the club.

“Nigga, I know you ain’t eating no chips in my truck!” Scoop yelled at Rob. “You black burnt crispy Pillsbury dough boy lookin’ muthafucka! Why you always gotta be eating somethin’? Damn!”

Rob stopped chewing.

“You know, you always doing that shit Tony. Getting other people to fight your battles. I don’t think you’ve ever even got your own hands dirty, not even back in elementary school,” Terrance accused.

“Shut the fuck up Terrance, I ain’t trying to hear all your whining tonight. Don’t be mad at me cause you ain’t get no numbers. That nigga deserved what he got,” Tony retorted.

“Actually, I did get numbers. Two. And they wasn’t no straight up hoochie ass skanks like the ones I seen you with. I guess they can spot a
real
man when they see him,” Terrance confirmed. Rob and Scoop ooooohhed at Terrance’s comment.

Tony turned around and looked at Terrance as if he were out of his God-given mind. Rob tried to mediate before things got out of hand. The truth was, he respected Terrance despite his tendency to be a square, and would never think of trying to lay a hand on him in defense of Tony of all people. A stranger though, that was no problem. Besides, Terrance would probably whoop his ass.

“Aiight ya’ll. What’s done is done, that nigga done lost his shit, and he’s gonna have to deal with it. That’s the risk you take. We probably was fucked up for taking that shit, but what we gonna do now? Nothin’. So just drop it,” Rob said, trying to end the conversation. There was quiet for a few moments.

“Alright. But just know that what goes around come around. You don’t do people like that and get away with it,” Terrance said after thinking over what his friends had done with complete disdain.

“Yea yea, whatever,” Tony scoffed. He rolled down the window and threw Gucci’s keys out of the window carelessly. The car sat in silence the rest of the ride home.

* * *

It was 5:14am that same morning when Tony got a call on his cellphone.
Who the fuck could this be? It better not be one of these bitches
, he thought to himself as he looked over at Quanisha. She moved a little, but was still fast asleep. Quanisha was a very deep sleeper.

He reached over and clicked the phone’s talk button.

“Hello?”

“Tony! Oh Tony, baby, they robbed me…” the familiar voice moaned.

“What? Momma? What are you talking about?” Tony asked frantically. It was his grandmother, who he considered to be his mother since she had raised and taken care of him.

“Baby, they took everything. Both my TVs and my good china… they just cleaned me out…and knocked me over…”

“What? Momma finish what you sayin’???”

“They knocked me over the head with a gun baby, and I’m bleeding. I’m bleeding bad…” Tony’s grandmother’s voice faded again.

“Momma!! Imma be RIGHT there aiight??” Tony yelled into the phone to make sure she heard him before he ended the call, fingers shaking. He threw the covers back and leapt out of bed.

When Tony finally jumped in his Cavalier it was about three minutes after his grandmother had made the distressed call. It was breaking his heart; Tony’s grandmother meant everything to him in the world. Despite how he treated her – always asking her for money, coming into her house at all hours, smoking weed in her basement, yelling at her when things didn’t go his way – he loved his Grandma more than anything or anybody. He turned the ignition and sped off down the street into the night towards his grandmother’s house in West Philly.

When he reached the red light at the corner of 53th and Baltimore he had to pause. He had run every light from 60th and on, but now there was a cop crossing down 53rd. He had two nick bags of weed on him, and he didn’t need that extra added aggravation. He knew that even if he explained what his rush was about, they would tell him to calm down, detain him at first and hold him from seeing to his Grandma. He watched the officer pass, and the officer looked right back at him.

As he finally saw the officer turn the corner out of sight, his car began puttering and jerking violently. He looked down at the dash as if that would stop what was happening. The car finally just shut off completely.

“What the?” Tony tried the ignition, but it only made that grinding noise that tells you it’s not planning on starting up any time soon. He tried it again, and again, cursing and screaming as the car behind him finally got the idea and went around him. He tried one more time, pressing the gas pedal all the way down as he turned the key, but still the car didn’t turn on.

“Noooo, this cannot happen right now!” Tony screamed and then fumbled for his cellphone in his pocket. He retrieved the cellphone he had taken from Gucci, and dialed the number to Quanisha’s, who had barely even stirred when Tony ran out of the door.

At Quanisha’s, the phone rang, and rang, and rang. Quanisha, who was still fast asleep, was dreaming about sitting at her big desk, at her own office at the beauty salon she had always wished she could open. She figured the phone sounds were the phones ringing off the hook at her shop, and smiled in her sleep as Tony’s call got sent to voicemail.

“Quanisha!” Tony yelled into the voicemail as if Quanisha could hear him. Gucci’s cellphone made a loud beeping sound. “What the hell is wrong with you! Pick up the phone!” he hung the phone up angrily. He dialed Terrance’s number and the voicemail picked up on the first ring. Terrance had his high tech home phone programmed to go straight to voicemail at night so that he wouldn’t be disturbed before he had to go to work. Only his mother and sister’s phones could get through at that time of night. Terrance hated cellphones, and the only one he carried was paid for by his job and used for work purposes only. Nobody even had Terrance’s cellphone number besides his mother.

Looking down at the phone he noticed that the battery was about to go out. He threw the phone down and pulled out his own phone. He tried to call Quanisha’s house again, but this time his phone wouldn’t even dial out. The message just kept saying “connecting.” Pissed, Tony threw the phone on the seat. He jumped out of the car and searched his pocket for change. All he had was a bunch of pennies, and the two quarters that he was going to give the bartender at Devilutions. Thank God!

He picked up a payphone, threw in the dimes frantically and tried his boy Terrance again in vain. Instead of the voicemail, this time an automated voice came on and said “45 cents please. Please deposit 45 cents to complete this call.”

“Shit!” Tony had forgotten that Terrance lived outside of his 215 area code. He clicked the hook to get his change back, but the bootleg payphone ate his quarter. He cursed again and dropped his last quarter into the slot to try Quanisha again, but the phone just kept ringing. The voicemail picked up before he had a chance to hang up, so he lost that quarter too. He banged the receiver of the phone down several times, trying to break it. It had been a total of about ten minutes since his Grandma had called, and he was still a 15 minute run away from her house. It was time to call the paramedics.
What the hell was I gonna do when I got there anyway?
he thought to himself. He had panicked, and wasn’t thinking right. He picked the phone back up and dialed 911.

Tony was sprinting down 52nd Street towards Market, but as soon as he turned the corner on 52nd, three blocks away from his Grandma’s house, his legs buckled underneath him and he fell to his knees.

“Ssss, owww. Damn,” he winced in pain, holding his left hip, the same one that had gotten hit in his accident on the street that day on 69th Street. It had been bothering him ever since, and nobody had seen or reported the guy who hit him. It had been getting so bad that he was starting to think it was necessary to see a doctor about it, but he had no insurance and no money. A bad combination. Any money he needed to spend on medical problems right now would have to be towards his brand new STD, which was still also causing him urgent pain whenever he went to the bathroom. He wished he could use his grandmother’s insurance; she was retired but had very good insurance from her days as a Septa driver. But being 25 and never having even seen the inside of a college, Tony couldn’t be claimed as a dependent under her medical plan.

Tony set his right foot up in front of him, still grasping his left thigh, and struggled to his feet again. The pain was unbearable. But he had to get to his Grandma’s. He slowly put one foot in front of the other, in a slow and painful gait.

When Tony finally arrived at his grandmother’s house, he could hear the sirens approaching in the background. It had been almost 25 minutes, and the paramedics were just now coming? He rushed up, pushed open the already ajar door and immediately saw his poor grandmother leaned back on the stairs in her nightgown, passed out. Her hands were strewn across the steps, and her feet were hanging down touching the floor. There was blood coming down the side of her face. He limped quickly to her side.

“Mom!! Mom!! Can you hear me? Ma? Say something!” he demanded, trying to pick her head up and shaking her shoulders intermittently. She started a low moan and slowly opened her eyes. Though she was beginning to suffer from cataracts, she instantly recognized her grandson.

“Baby? I’m so glad you’re here…It…” Grandma’s voice trailed off again and she looked as if she was about to lose consciousness again. Tony shook her.

“Ma you gotta stay up and talk to me, the doctor’s will be here any minute! Tell me what happened??!!” Tony yelled, feeling a lump develop in his throat.

Grandma tried her best to stay alert. She spoke slowly. “Oh. It was horrible, Anthony. They came in here, those thugs. I think through the back. Cuz I thought I heard something in the back. They had on black….” her voice trailed and she closed her eyes, then they shot open again. Tony listened intently his red eyes nearly bugging out of his head. “They had on black hoodies, I couldn’t see their faces…”

“Why did you come downstairs Ma? You should have just stayed upstairs and called the police!” He could see the lights from the ambulance now flashing in front of the house.

A second later the paramedics came through the door and asked Tony to step out of the way.

“It’s about time, what took ya’ll so damned long!” he let out a frustrated rant, fear evident in his voice from the situation. The paramedics just ignored him.

He looked down at his grandmother again, who had passed out completely again by this time and stroked her wild hair down a bit before finally getting up and letting the paramedics take over. He felt helpless as he watched them load his grandmother onto a gurney. They carried her out of the front door, her head falling lifelessly to the side as Tony followed close behind.