La Familia

by Paradise Gomez

Genres: Urban Fantasy

Synopsis

Mouse and Sammy grew up as close as sisters in the notorious Edenwald Projects in the Bronx. Fighting to protect their territory and their reputation is a way of life, but the two loyal friends have goals. The girls have a passion for music and yearn to become famous someday. They perform as the rap group Vixen Chaos in local clubs, providing the only relief from their violent inner city lives.

When Mouse starts dating Rico, an up-and-coming drug dealer from the hood, he promises to finance their music career. Sammy is doubtful, seeing that Mouse is becoming too caught up in her relationship with Rico. The two friends are at odds, and Sammy’s biggest fear soon comes to light. Mouse becomes pregnant by Rico, putting their music careers on hold.

As Mouse’s belly grows, Rico becomes more absent from her. He loves the street life, constantly leaving Mouse alone in the apartment while he basks in the attention of other beautiful women. Soon Sammy gets swept up by Rico’s swag and gift of gab, and the two start dating on the down low. The friendship is ruptured when Sammy finds out that she’s also pregnant by Rico. Things turn ugly and violent, and the girls end up fighting in the middle of the street.

They realize they have much bigger problems to worry about when Rico is picked up by the feds. Now he’s serving a lengthy sentence, and his absence from the streets sparks a deadly war. Mouse and Sammy will have to raise their children alone, surviving by any means necessary.

Release date: March 1, 2014

Publisher: Urban Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

“Fuck that bitch up! Fuck that bitch up!” Sammy shouted at me as I went blow to blow with Denise in the middle of the street.

The crowd surrounding our fight was hyped and shit. Bitches and niggas were yelling and animated like they were watching a Mike Tyson fight on the block. Bitch shoulda charged muthafuckas to watch this ass whooping I was giving this bitch. But this was the Bronx, Edenwald projects—survival of the fittest out here, and I was a bitch who knew how to survive because I had no choice. I’d been through hell growing up and this bitch wasn’t just going to disrespect me in front of my peers like I was some clown-ass bitch, so I had to give her the fundamentals in a quick beat down.

I caught Denise with a few hard rights to her face and made her stumble, but she refused to go down. She was no match for me. It was a one-on-one fight so far. None of our girls jumped in yet; they all sat on the sidelines screaming and huffing. I knew my best friend, Sammy, was ready to go tag team on this bitch and get her hits in too. She couldn’t stand Denise either, and was ready to pull her hair out by the roots. I was already trying. I had that bitch’s weave wrapped tightly around my fist and yanked her ass in every direction. I pulled and then caught her with a few more hits to her black-ass face. When she finally fell on her back, I went fuckin’ in on this dumb bitch!

“Yeah, Mouse, fuck that stupid bitch up! She ain’t shit!” Sammy screamed, excited that I put that bitch on her back.

“Edenwald projects, bitch. EBV, bitch. Edenwald Blood Vixens!” I shouted, letting these haters know where we were from and who we represented.

Denise instantly went into the fetal position and tried to cover her face, but it was too late. I already had half that bitch’s cheap weave pulled out and in my hand, and caught the side of her face multiple of times. It felt so good punching that bitch while she was down, it was making my pussy wet—almost better than some good dick. I already felt her shit swelling up. I wanted to kill this bitch, but she wasn’t worth catching no murder charge; just me embarrassing this bitch in front of her peers was proud enough.

Denise was always a shit talker in the hood. She never knew how to keep her fuckin’ mouth shut and wanted to spread rumors behind a bitch’s back, saying out loud to people that I was fucking her man and gave him an STD, gonorrhea at that. And she thought she was too cute with her split ends, nasty weave, and no ass. The bitch was whack.

So this bitch came at me on some disrespect shit with accusations about me fuckin’ her man, Danny. Now I admit Danny was a cutie with his long cornrows, hazel eyes, and chiseled physique, looking like Terrence Howard somewhat. However, Denise had it twisted; he wanted to fuck me. I wasn’t even interested in that nigga, and he was a fuckin’ whore. Danny would put his dick into anything wet with a pulse. He had a reputation already for fuckin’ with multiple women and being a playboy. I personally felt the nigga was a walking STD. And I wasn’t fuckin’ with him at all. I loved my health. Too bad I couldn’t say the same about Denise.

But anyway, I was in the projects kicking it with my bitches, Sammy and Tina, and here came Denise marching my way with three of her friends and this nasty scowl trained at me. This was a dumb, bird-looking bitch.

“You fucked my man and gave him gonorrhea, you nasty-ass bitch!” Denise had shouted at me.

She had jumped in my face with her hands and shit. I wasn’t going to take accusations like that, especially when it wasn’t true.

“Bitch, you the fuckin’ nasty one, and get ya facts straight. I don’t want that nigga, and I ain’t never fucked that nigga!” I had shouted heatedly.

“Bitch, you fuckin’ nasty. You nasty, bitch. You nasty, stay the fuck away from Danny before I fuck you up,” she had ranted.

We continued to exchanged harsh words, and it don’t take much to set me off, especially when you come at me about some dumb shit that I ain’t do and want to try to humiliate me. So I swung first. She ain’t see it coming and we started tearing into each other like savages.

I already had the advantage. My hair was real and already styled into a ponytail, and hers wasn’t. It was a bad weave, loose and down to her shoulders, easy to grab and pull the fuck back—mistake one. Her second mistake—nah, actually her first mistake—she came at the wrong bitch, ’cause I was known to fuck bitches up on the block—me and Sammy. My hands should have been licensed because I used to box when I was younger. I had training. I started when I was ten and it lasted until I was fifteen. My gang, music, and the streets became more important to me. Denise was a puppy trying to go against a lion, something sad to watch. The first two hits opened her face up like a breezy day. The third, I saw the fear in her eyes. I had power and speed. She was just a loud bark without any bite.

“Get the fuck off me, bitch! Get her off me!” Denise screamed with me on top of her, her body against the pavement.

This bitch’s face started to feel like wet tissue against my fists. I started kicking her face in with my sneakers; I wanted her to feel my wrath and everything. I wanted to make her regret that she even came to me with that bullshit.

“I’m Mouse, bitch! Don’t you ever fuck wit’ me!” I yelled.

My fists and feet rained down on that bitch like a thunderstorm. She couldn’t get up. She cried out; the lion had the puppy in its teeth. But then I felt myself being attacked from behind. It wasn’t a fair fight anymore. It’s like that in the Bronx. You see your friend losing badly, so then you jump in to help, and Denise’s girls decided to jump in when they saw the bitch getting her face and teeth smashed in against the concrete. I felt my ponytail being yanked and I caught a blow to the side of my face. But it didn’t deter me from still pounding on Denise. I had friends too. Sammy and Tina didn’t let the unbalance go on for too long. They intervened, and then a full-blown fight ensued right in the projects. It was nothing new though.

The crowd around us became more glorified. It was four against three, and we still had the advantage. Sammy and Tina were nothing to play with. They were already itching to get into a fight, and when they tried to jump me, shit done set off. Denise’s girls weren’t a match for Sammy. Right away, she dropped two to the ground and she and Tina jumped on the next bitch. There were weaves and torn clothing everywhere. Tits were being exposed and the niggas watching the brawl were excited and drooling like they never saw breasts before—so fuckin’ pathetic. I was still working on Denise, though; she was done for, out for the count, and her weak-ass friends were about to be the same way. I already proved my point. Sammy and Tina had to pull me off that bitch.

“C’mon, Mouse, let’s go!” Sammy shouted.

I was so heated. I wanted to scar that bitch for life. But I didn’t have my razor on me, because if I did, I definitely would have cut her face and left a disgusting mark for her to personally remember me by.

“Dumb bitch!” I shouted.

My final hit was the tip of my sneaker crashing into the side of her face, causing blood to spew from her mouth, and her face and body to twitch violently like she was having a seizure.

“Damn!” the crowd hollered in awe.

We took off running, once again, being the victors in the brawl. The Edenwald Blood Vixens were nothing nice to play with. We ran deep, and our reputation was fierce in New York, especially in the Bronx. You fucked with any one of us, and you were going to get fucked up, cut or, worse, killed. Yeah, we were some pretty bitches, but on the inside, we were pit bulls in skirts.

We called ourselves the Edenwald Blood Vixens, EBV for short, because, one, we gonna always represent where we come from—our home, Edenwald projects in the Bronx, New York. And we were part of a notorious blood set that wasn’t fucked with, and Vixens, because a Vixen is a female fox, or a spiteful or quarrelsome woman, and that’s what we were, what we represented. That combination described us so accurately.

We left for Tina’s apartment on the other side of the projects, on the north side. Among us, Tina had the more stable home. She lived with her mother, who had a city job working for the MTA and making bank. It was just them two, and Tina’s moms was rarely home. If Ms. Green wasn’t working, she was spending time with her boyfriend in Brooklyn or gambling in Atlantic City. So it pretty much felt like Tina had her own place, and whenever she had her own place, then Sammy and me had our own place. When times became rough with our parents, Tina would let us crash at her crib until things calmed down in our homes.

Tina was a great friend. The three of us were like sisters. Yeah, we rocked with other bitches, our gangs had straight love for us, but Sammy was my best friend, my ride or die sister, and Tina was right along with us. The two or three of us were always together.

Tina’s place was quiet, like always. I was in the bathroom licking my wounds, but there weren’t any wounds to lick. Denise barely got a hit off me, maybe a scratch here or there, but beside that, I was fine. I stared at myself in the mirror. There was a reason these bitches hated and niggas wanted to fuck me so badly. Not to boast, but I was a bad bitch. I knew I looked good with my angelic features, high cheekbones, and petite figure. It was one explanation for why my friends called me Mouse. I was only five feet three inches, with shiny raven-black hair that flowed freely, and it was my real hair, no weave. But despite my beautiful and innocent appearance, I was one ferocious bitch when it came to fighting. I didn’t take shit from anyone, and if you started it, I was surely going to finish it.

Lil Wayne and Drake were blaring in the background and I could already smell the weed burning from the living room; it was haze and I couldn’t wait to put my lips to the blunt. Sammy was no joke when it came to rolling up a joint, and I needed to smoke. It had been a stressful day and smoking and laughing with my girls was something I needed.

I walked into the living room and Sammy and Tina were lounging on the couch and already on like their third pull. I loved chilling at Tina’s place. She had all the amenities a bitch like me could get used to: large flat-screen TV in the living room, plush couches and chairs to relax in, a high-end stereo system and surround-sound entertainment system to enjoy, and an extensive DVD and CD displayed on the shelves for us to see. If Tina weren’t my friend, yeah, a bitch would hate right now.

“Damn, y’all bitches couldn’t wait for a bitch?” I joked.

Sammy took a deep pull from the burning haze, exhaled, and then responded, “Bitch, you shoulda stopped tryin’ to look cute in the bathroom mirror. You okay anyway; that bitch ain’t even put a fuckin’ hand on you.”

“Why bitches be so fuckin’ dumb and shit?” Tina chimed.

“They don’t know how we get down, right, Sammy?” I replied, slapping Sammy five.

“Damn sure don’t,” she responded.

She passed me the blunt and I took a few pulls, feeling the weed seeping into my system and already soothing me. I sat next to Sammy, took another pull, and passed the blunt to Tina. I lounged, listening to Lil Wayne’s voice chime through the speakers in the room:


I nodded, feeling Lil Wayne was one of the best rappers in the world. I kinda had a crush on him, loving his swag. He made me want to tighten up my own rhymes and become his first lady; fuck that bitch Nikki Minaj. I truly felt Sammy and I were better than her. I loved rap. And despite rap/hip-hop started before we all were born, we grew up on it and fell in love with music. I was a huge fan of the old school: Kurtis Blow, Slick Rick, the Sugarhill Gang, Fab 5 Freddy, Busy Bee Starski, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Ice-T, Doug E. Fresh, LL Cool J, and so many more.

I started to rhyme at twelve years old. Coming from the Bronx, the birthplace of hip-hop, we had visions of becoming superstars in the game. I remembered my first rhyme at twelve: “My name is Mouse, I love the boys and get shit poppin’ on the rouse, and I’m pretty fine, so smile, got all the boys loving me like Mattel. BX is where I’m from, Edenwald is my home, so I’m lethal wit’ it, ain’t no traps catching this mouse, cuz I’m slick wit’ it, got my own cheese, no need to scurry around, on stage like Broadway, I am the show, got my own traps for these dumb, black cats, how they gonna try an’ eat me, bitch, I ain’t nuthin’ nice to digest.”

It was cute when I was twelve, but now things done changed and I’d been through a lot more drama and pain. My rhymes were sexier and harder, more methodical and catchy. And now I had a partner, Sammy, and we called ourselves Vixen Chaos. We felt that name described us perfectly, ’cause we were vixens wherever we went and we could easily create chaos on the scene. We’d been doing our thang in the clubs for one year now, trying to make a name for ourselves on these New York streets and get put on. We had a small buzz out there, but it wasn’t anything life changing that had us ready to move out of the projects and live a rock-star lifestyle.

They say fame and success take time, but we were ready now. We put in our dues, we felt. I mean, growing up in the Bronx projects was already a rite of passage. We weren’t fake and what we rhymed about was real and what we’d actually been through, not like some of these lame rappers in the game making up fraudulent street credibility. It was a laugh to me. The world needed to know our stories, and our talents needed to be displayed. I was a gift ready to be opened.

Sammy and I grew up together. I’d known her since I was eight years old. Back in the days our mothers used to be best friends. Like us today, they did everything together, even got high and smoked crack. So while they were getting high in the apartment, Sammy and I would be playing in the hallway, maybe the rooftop, and getting into all kinds of mischief. We were learning about life’s hard lessons on our own without too much parental guidance interfering.

Sammy grew up to be too beautiful. We were both eye candy in this asshole of a place called the projects. I mean, the Bronx is my heart, but I always knew there was more out there for us. We thought in a different way from our peers. Don’t get it twisted, we were fuckin’ hood as fuck, got it poppin’ and whatnot, but I had big dreams of becoming somebody important and having respect that reached beyond the projects. Sammy was with me too.

This place took my mother away from me when I was ten years old. She had overdosed on a bad drug and died in the stairway of a project building in Soundview. She had a crack pipe in her hand when she passed. Her death troubled me. But I learned how to move on.

Sammy and I did everything together since we met ten years ago. We were like two peas in a pod. Shit, we were so close that people thought we either were sisters or lesbians—so far from the truth. However, we both lost our virginities together with the Johnson brothers at fourteen on the building rooftop. I was with the older brother, Mike, and she was with Cashes, and there we were, the both of us on our backs next to each other on tattered blankets against the hard gravel with our legs spread, Mike forcing his nice-sized dick into me, causing me to cringe, and Cashes trying to work his shit inside Sammy. It really hurt at first, but we got through losing our virginities together because we supported each other.

We stole cars, sold drugs, shoplifted, got into numerous fights with hating-ass bitches and niggas, ran from police, and got arrested together. If it happened to me, it happened to Sammy, and vice versa. We constantly fought to protect our territory and reputation, and remained loyal to each other. I think the only thing we truly feared the most was losing each other.

Me, I would die and kill for Sammy. She was my best friend, my ride or die bitch. When I looked at me, I saw her.

Tonight was the night Mouse and me were set to perform at Latin Quarters in Harlem. It was rap night at the club, where numerous rappers, or MCs as some like to call themselves, got on stage either as individuals or in a group, and showed the crowd their skills in five minutes or less. The event was hosted every second Saturday of the month, and some of the best of the best, and even the worst, got on that live stage and did their best to entertain the crowd. And if you weren’t nice, then the crowd would let you know within a heartbeat. They were brutal. It was like our own ghetto Apollo.

Tonight would be our first time performing at the club instead of being spectators. We had our act and rhymes together. I was more the salacious one in the group, while Mouse was the Left Eye of TLC, and together we were Vixen Chaos. We tried to be different, not falling into that same cliché that other female rappers do. Yeah, we rhymed about the streets and sex, ’cause the streets was what we knew and sex was what I was good at, but we tried to put some humor into our rhymes along with realness. Like Biggie, we were storytellers. I wanted to tell my story, because my story was deep. I wanted to be a voice out there. I wanted to be heard and my story was told via rap.

Growing up was hard for me. My mother was a whore and she was HIV positive. Shit like that scared me. My biggest fear was becoming like my mother, burnt out from being in the streets too long and becoming sick. That slow death was the worst for me. I mean, slowly, I could see my mother deteriorating day by day. She was a heavy drinker, a nympho, and a chain smoker, so of course her immune system was shutting down. Her health was nonexistent. I mean, every day it was one thing or the other with my mother. Her life had caught up to her and it caught up to her in the worst way. Catching that monster was a stigma on you. Back in the days, my mother, Dana, used to be a beautiful woman; she had a lot going on for her, and many said I favored her in so many ways. But I didn’t want any of her traits. I wanted to become my own woman. I wanted to use my talents, which were rapping, singing, and my looks, to bring me out of the projects. I needed to become that success story. I needed to break this curse of being trapped in this place and shut the haters up.

I stared at my outfit for the evening hanging on the back of the closet. It was a quiet night in my room and in the projects for once—no gunshots and no violence. Yesterday’s incident with Mouse and Denise was being talked about heavily. But there were always fights and shootings in the projects, and for the moment, the topic of the day was our brawl; but then tomorrow, it would be something else that caught the project’s attention.

I sat near my bedroom window, with the dark kinda inviting, and stared at my home, one of the most notorious projects in New York, from the sixth floor and thought about my rhyme for tonight. Living in Edenwald was a muthafucka, but it was home, and would always be home. I done experienced the good, the bad, and the ugly, and I survived the ugly.

Edenwald was located in the northeast section of the Bronx, north of Baychester, south of Wakefield, east of Bronxwood, and west of Boston Road and “the Valley,” a sub-neighborhood of Eastchester. Edenwald project was the largest housing development in the Bronx and home to the forty-seventh precinct, one of the most active precincts in the city. With forty buildings from three to fourteen stories tall, it had about 2,000 apartments housing 5,000 people. Yeah, with all them muthafuckas stacked up over each other, you were going to have some shit and deal with all kinds of trouble. I mean, it was the Bronx, and the Bronx was an infamous borough, known for everything from being the birthplace of hip-hop to breeding some of the most notorious gangsters that New York has ever seen. Pistol Pete, Larry David, and John Gotti. Yeah, Gotti is from the Bronx. But the Bronx to me was much more; it was a place of culture and diversity. We have the Yankees, the most dominant baseball team in the world, and we have our history, the people.

Where I lived, the crime rate was heavy and the drugs were prevalent. Everybody wanted to escape their poverty. The drug dealers did it by selling drugs and making money, the fiends escaped their hell by getting high, the residents did it by working every day and maintaining, and I escaped by music, and yeah, sex. But we each had our own little way of zoning out from our harsh reality, even if it was only for a moment.

Tonight, performing at the Latin Quarters was going to be our escape, me and Mouse. I was nervous, because it was going to be a huge crowd and there was no telling who was going to be in the house. The Latin Quarters was known for having A&Rs from different music labels coming through to check on the talent, trying to decipher who was nice enough to take it to the next level and have a big hit. I definitely wanted to catch a bigwig’s attention via my talent and my sex appeal.

I looked at the time and removed myself from the window. It was almost seven p.m. The show started at nine p.m. I wanted to get there early and check out the scene. When it came to my career I didn’t do the CP time.

I decided to call Mo. . .