Memoirs of an Accidental Hustler

by J.M. Benjamin

Genres: African American Urban

Synopsis

A teen with good intentions fights a tempting, troublesome path as he transitions to adulthood.

Moving from a brownstone in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn to a housing project in the small town of Plainfield, New Jersey, young Kamil is exposed to another world and a different breed of people. Bonded by the pain caused by their absentee fathers, Kamil and his brother befriend a group of boys from the neighborhood, forming an unbreakable connection. The boys vow not to travel down the same road as their dads, making a pact to stay in school and out of the streets. When Kamil discovers the allure of the opposite sex, a childhood crush develops into something much more.

Walk with Kamil as he transitions from childhood to young adulthood and struggles with the very things his mother tried so hard to prevent him and his brother from embracing. What starts out as a game and a means of survival ultimately ends up serious and addictive. This is Memoirs of an Accidental Hustler. What did you want to be when you grew up?

Release date: February 28, 2017

Publisher: Urban Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

Twenty Months Later

“Grandma, I finished my homework. Can I go outside now?”

“Okay, but if you go on the other side don’t cross those train tracks. Walk your tail around and stay away from that handball court. Don’t let me catch or hear your butt was over there, Kamil, you hear me?” my grandmother warned. The handball court was where all the older people hung out doing illegal things. I knew better than to defy her. She didn’t play when it came to following the rules or, rather, her rules. Besides, I knew it was because she was concerned about my safety.

“Yes,” I answered without hesitation.

“Can I go too, Grams? I’m done,” Mal asked, straightening up his books.

“Yeah, you can go too; but what I tell you about calling me Grams like I’m some old woman or something? I told you before about picking up that street talk and bringing it up in this house with you, boy.”

“Excuse me, Grandma,” Mal corrected himself.

With the exception of her long silver hair, nothing about my grandmother indicated that she was an old woman. She had smooth almond-colored skin and a perfectly round face. Even though she had given birth to my moms and six uncles, she wasn’t a big lady and stood only five feet tall. I had seen pictures of her when she was a teenager and she still looked the same. She was small in size but huge in heart and was full of life and full of energy. She always said, “You’re only as old as you feel, and I’ll be twenty-one years young on my next birthday.”

After the last time we saw my dad, things began to change. Actually, everything began to change. We moved out of our neighborhood in Brooklyn and moved in with my grandmother in the projects. She lived out in New Jersey, where my parents were originally from.

We started seeing less of my moms because she was now working two jobs. When my dad had been there, he did all the working. Even when the Bad People took him away from us he used to send money to my moms, but then he just stopped. I never really knew what type of job he had, but I knew that it had to be a good one because we never wanted for anything, and never had to struggle—up until now, anyway. All I knew about my dad’s job was that he used to travel a lot and would sometimes be gone for days, even weeks, at a time. I guessed he was some type of traveling salesman, so when I was asked what my father did for a living I just used to say he was a businessman.

In spite of my moms working, there were a lot of strangers coming to the house demanding money when we still lived in Brooklyn. At first, I used to think that they were Jehovah’s Witnesses, but then I knew that it couldn’t have been them because she wouldn’t have opened the door. I didn’t figure out that all the strangers were bill collectors until the gas and electric got turned off, and we had to move from our brownstone because my mom couldn’t maintain the rent while raising four kids on her income.

Don’t get me wrong, Jersey was okay, but still it wasn’t New York, so like anything else that’s new or different you had to get used to it. I knew a lot of the kids out here in the projects though, because every summer my moms used to send Mal and me to my grandmother’s to spend time with her, not knowing that my brother and I had to fight the whole time we were out there just to prove that we were tough New Yorkers. Jersey kids thought New York kids couldn’t fight. They thought that we only knew how to rob and steal or, in our case, they thought we were too uppity to know how to defend ourselves. But my dad and uncle used to box and they taught us. After all the fights we had, we were finally accepted in the Jersey ghetto as two of the boys; and we looked forward to our summer trips to Plainfield.

“Yo, Ant, what up?” My brother spotted one of our homeboys from building 532.

“Chillin’, chillin’, what up with you?” They gave each other a pound and embraced one another.

“We tryin’ to see what’s goin’ on out here in the hood,” said Mal jokingly.

Ant was twelve years old, two years older than me and one year older than Kamal; but he treated us as if we were all the same age. We learned a lot from Ant, because he grew up in the streets so he was more hip to how things were running out there.

His father was where we used to go visit my dad; but he told us that his dad was away for selling drugs. It was Ant who broke me out of saying that the Bad People had my dad and started me saying he was “away.” The more he began to educate us about where we now lived, the more Mal and I began to question what it was our father was really away for.

Ant also had a brother who sold drugs. He was only seventeen, but he already had a 1980 Caddy, similar to the one my dad used to drive. Ant told us how his brother always bought him the freshest clothes. They were fly, too, and Mal and I were envious, especially since we were still wearing some of the same gear we had since we moved from New York, and now we had to share our clothes and wear hand-me-downs from the Salvation Army.

“Let’s go over Trev’s crib and see what’s up, see if we can put together a free-for-all or something,” Ant said.

“Bet,” Mal and I agreed.

Trevor lived in building 120 on the Elmwood side of the projects, and he was Ant’s best friend. Their families were actually two of the first to move into the Elmwood Gardens housing projects back in the sixties and they were close, so it was only right that when they were born and grew up they became close themselves. I found out my grandmother was one of the first to move around here after my grandfather had died from a heart attack, and she couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage on the house they had lived in for four years until his death.

“Who is it?” we heard Trevor asking from the other side of the door.

“It’s the police. Open up before I kick it in!” yelled Ant, trying to disguise his voice.

“Kick it in and you’re gonna pay for it, nigga,” Trevor yelled back as he opened the door and embraced his best friend, recognizing Ant’s voice.

“Trev, what it is?” said Ant.

“You know, maxin’ and relaxin’, that’s all. Mal, Mil, what up? We got muthafuckin’ New York in the house!” he shouted, and laughter began to fill the little apartment.

“Forget you,” said Mal, laughing along with them. It was something we were used to, not being from Jersey. It was our own little joke.

Once Trevor closed the door behind us, the rest of the crew began pulling their beers, cigarettes, and weed back out. Everyone had hidden whatever they were doing when Ant pretended to be the police. All of our boys hung out over at Trevor’s crib doing the things they knew they couldn’t get caught doing at home, except for Ant, unless they wanted to die at a young age; but Trevor’s crib was cool because his moms worked mostly all day, so he practically had the house to himself Monday through Friday.

“Nigga, why you gotta play so muthafuckin’ much?” Shareef asked Ant.

“Man, cool out. Trev knew it was me.”

Outside of Trevor and Shareef, the rest of the gang consisted of Quadir, Shawn, Mark, and Black. Everybody was pretty much around the same age, between the ages of eleven and fourteen. In fact, I was really the youngest out of the bunch and the littlest, too; but I was accepted just the same, because I had heart and wasn’t afraid to fight.

“Yo, Mil, come hit this spliff, nigga. This that shit right here,” said Black, coughing from the smoke. Black was the oldest and had the most experience around the projects. His real name was Bernard, but he earned the name Black from the darkness of his complexion.

“Nah, man, you know I don’t smoke, kid. I don’t even know how to,” I answered, shaking my head. I knew he was trying to be funny because he knew my brother and I didn’t smoke or drink.

“Oh, that’s right. I forgot you a young whippersnapper,” Black joked. “But you still my nigga, even if you don’t get any bigga,” he added in a laughing manner, while taking another pull of the joint. “This is for you, baby boy!” He held the weed wrapped in white paper in my direction before passing it to Quadir, who gladly accepted it.

“Yo, Trev, we was comin’ over here to see if we could get a football game goin’ on the other side, but you niggas up in here getting all high and shit, so that cancels that,” Ant said disappointedly.

“Maaaan, ain’t nobody all high and drunk up in here, nigga,” Trevor said defensively. “You always comin’ at us sideways every time we tryin’a have a good time, actin’ like we some of them junky and whino muthafuckas out there on the block. We just havin’ a little fun, know what I’m sayin’?” Trev stated. “Besides, the alcohol and weed make me play better and harder anyway, so let’s rock. You ain’t sayin’ nothing!” he concluded with a smile before Ant had a chance to rebut.

We were all used to them going at it like brothers. It was comical to us and we knew it was all in love. At some point, we all had gotten into it with one another, but the next day we would be right back to kicking it again like the boys we were.

Everyone jumped up hearing Trevor’s words and one by one we began spilling out of his apartment, headed over to the field on the other side of the tracks.

“We ain’t got all day, momma’s boys,” Black was the first to yell as we approached the field.

“Word up,” Shareef followed up.

While everybody else crossed the train tracks to get to the other side of the projects, Mal and I walked around, remembering what our grandmother had told us, so they all had to wait for us. Kamal stuck up his middle finger at Black’s comment while I stuck mine up at Shareef. Before it could escalate to anything else, Trevor started picking teams.

“Me, Quadir, Shawn, and Mark, against you, Mil, Mal, and Black,” he said to Ant. “Reef, you ref the game.”

“Why the fuck I gotta ref the game?” Shareef questioned.

“Nigga, you know why you gotta ref the game. ’Cause ya ass is wack and you don’t know how to play,” Trev said, as we all burst into laughter. Everybody around the projects, with the exception of Shareef, was good in everything we played, from football to basketball down to baseball. Although we weren’t originally from the projects, Mal and I loved playing sports just as much as we did watching them, but when it came to God handing down skills and talents in the athletic departments Shareef was standing in the wrong line. He couldn’t catch a football even if it landed in his hands; he couldn’t swing a bat if his life depended on it; and he couldn’t dribble a basketball unless he used two hands, no matter how many times we tried to teach him.

“But I can fight,” Reef spat back. That was his response every time.

“I bet you won’t win if we jump ya punk ass, nigga,” was Ant’s comeback each time, as we laughed even harder.

Up ahead of the field was the handball court. All of the older teenagers and old heads hung out up there, either hustling, getting high and drinking, shooting dice, shining up their rides, kicking it to girls, playing ball, or just coolin’ out.

I was always good with remembering faces and names, so I knew all the hustlers and the cars they drove, too, and they knew who Mal and I were, through my dad and Uncle Jerry. It wasn’t until Ant’s brother told him that my dad was a street legend out there that I began to realize my father wasn’t any type of traveling salesman.

The more we hung around Ant and the rest of our friends the more Mal and I learned. I didn’t want to at first, but as time went on I had no choice but to believe what they were saying about my father. In passing, my brother and I would hear some of the hustlers saying things like, “Their dad was clockin’ major dough,” or “Their dad was paid.” Because of who he was in the streets, we received a lot of respect from the people who hung out by the handball court.

While we were out there playing football, we noticed that guys were beginning to scatter, running all over the place; and then we saw the police jump out of their unmarked and patrol cars from everywhere, both in plain clothes and uniforms. Some guys sprinted into the housing projects complex while others made a mad dash for the bridge and the train tracks. Just as I was about to move out of the way, one of the fleeing runners seemed as if he was about to hit me with a football tackle. I tried to maneuver out of his way but it was too late; he was already up on me. I braced myself for the hit.

“Li’l Mil, hold this,” he said as he continued to fly right past me, headed in the direction of the train tracks.

I knew who the guy was. Everybody knew. His name was Mustafa. He was a nineteen-year-old hustler from the projects who was known for being thorough, a ladies’ man, and one of the best dressers in the hood. Ant told us how he was well respected by all in the streets, young and old, and didn’t take any junk from nobody. Without giving it a second thought, I took what Mustafa had handed me and shoved it into my left sweatpants pocket. A few seconds later, one policeman, who was out of breath from giving chase, came to a complete stop in front of all of us.

“Hey, you kids, did you see anybody drop anything by you?” the plainclothes officer asked us.

“No, sir,” we all answered in unison, knowing that even if we had we still wouldn’t have answered him truthfully.

“All right, well, we need you to clear this area so we can search it,” he said.

We were used to one of our playing sessions being broken up because of something that had happened up by the handball court. There was always something going on in the West End Gardens housing projects known as the Bricks. Because the ones we lived in were newer, they called the Bricks the Old Projects and ours the New Projects. Hustlers from both sides would go back and forth over the train tracks hanging out and hustling unless they were beefing with each other. When that happened, we weren’t allowed to play on the other side. But for the most part everyone got along.

As we were leaving, Ant saw his brother hemmed up against the police car with handcuffs on, along with a few of the other local hustlers from our side of the projects.

“Man, my mom is gonna kill Terrance when she finds out they caught him again,” Ant cried. “This is the second time this month he’s been in the youth house.”

That’s what they called the juvenile detention center for anybody under the age of eighteen years. It was a type of jail for young people that held you until you were released to the custody of your parents by the judge. All the guys Kamal and I hung with, except for Ant, had already been there at least once, and they bragged about it as if were a fun place to be or it made you cool.

Speaking of the youth house, if the plainclothes officer knew what I had in my pocket, I would’ve been right alongside Terrance and the rest of them, handcuffed and on my way to the detention center. My mother would’ve killed me if that had happened. She wouldn’t have understood the position I was in at the time. I knew my dad would have, though. It was either take what Mustafa handed me and do exactly what I did with it, drop it and let the cops find it, or hand it to them. If I didn’t take it then I would’ve been looked at as a sucka by my friends; if I would’ve dropped it and somebody saw me I would’ve been looked at as a coward; and if I would’ve given it to the police then I would’ve been looked at as a snitch. Even though I knew I had no business accepting what Mustafa had given me to hold, I knew I didn’t want to be labeled as a sucka, coward, or snitch.

We all went our separate ways, slapping one another five. I couldn’t wait to tell Kamal what Mustafa had given me back there. No one had seen him give it to me. I really didn’t know what it was myself, but I was curious to find out.

I took a glance back to make sure our boys were out of range before I spoke. They were already up the rocks and on the tracks, crossing back over. “Mal, guess what?” I said, looking around to see if anyone else could hear me.

“What up, Mil?”

“Yo, when Mu ran past us in the field he tossed me something and told me to hold it,” I said, waiting for his reaction.

“What? What is you talkin’ about?”

“You heard me. Mu tossed me something to hold when we were back there in the field playing football.”

“And you took it?”

“What was I supposed to do? He was runnin’. I couldn’t catch up to him and say, ‘No, I can’t hold this, take it back.’ And I couldn’t turn it over to the cops ’cause that would’ve been snitchin’, and I don’t want no rep like that ’cause nobody respects a snitch or rat.”

“Where you learn that at?” Mal asked.

“I heard Dad say it one time when him and Uncle Jerry was in the living room talking. Trev and them said it a few times too when they be talking about the youth house.”

“Yeah, you right. I remember. And, plus, Mom and Dad taught us to always mind our business. We don’t see nothin’, we don’t hear nothin’, and we don’t know nothin’. Yo, whatever you got don’t pull it out here, though. Wait until we get in the house; and make sure you act normal when we get in there ’cause Grandma ain’t slow. She’s from the old school and she’ll know somethin’s up.”

My brother had said a mouthful. My grandmother was as sharp as they came. For someone who never really left the house she always knew everything about everything. Whenever she would be talking to my mom, or one of her friends who came over or called on the phone, she would always start out by saying, “It’s not any of my business, but you know so-and-so did this,” or “Such-and-such happened to so-and-so.” There wasn’t anything that you could do or say without my grandmother not catching wind of it.

“I’m not, and I know Grandma be on point,” I agreed with my brother.

“You boys are back early. Is everything all right?” my grandmother greeted us as soon as we walked through the door and passed the kitchen. We could smell what she was cooking the moment we entered the building. No one’s fried chicken smelled better than my grandmother’s.

“Some boys got chased and the police broke up the game,” Kamal answered for us.

My grandmother just shook her head. We prepared for the “I told you” speech but surprisingly it didn’t come. I made my way to our room as Mal followed.

“Did you lock the door behind you?” I asked Mal as I pulled the plastic sandwich bag out of my pocket.

“Yeah, it’s locked, boy. Stop being so paranoid like you used some of that stuff already,” Kamal whispered back.

I shot him a look that made him know that I thought he was talking out of the side of his neck, saying something like that.

When I opened the plastic bag, I saw it contained a bunch of tiny little balloons, some red and some blue. Thirty-five reds and fifteen blues, to be exact. “What the heck is this?” I said aloud, surprised to be seeing balloons instead of drugs.

“Don’t be stupid,” said Kamal. “It’s drugs. The drugs are in the balloons, goofy.”

“How do you know?” I asked curiously.

“Because I used to hear the guys out there hustling, yellin’, ‘I got that Boy and Girl,’ and then I’d see the fiends lined up to spend their money in exchange for the balloons. I asked Ant what were Boy and Girl, and he told me that his brother told him that Boy, in the blue balloons, was dope, and Girl, in the red ones, was coke, and that the Boys go for five dollars and the Girls go for ten.”

“So you mean to tell me that these little balloons are worth four hundred twenty-five dollars?” I asked my brother as I calculated the value in my head, which was easy to do because math was my strongest subject in school, as well as my favorite.

“Yep,” Mal replied.

“Dag! Mu must be rich if he got it like that.”

“Man, that ain’t nothing. They be out there with more than that on ’em. Put all that stuff back in the bag and tie it back the way it was before you opened it,” Mal told me. “Tomorrow, as soon as you see Mustafa, we gonna give him that stuff back; and I don’t want to hear about it again,” Kamal demanded.

“I’m with you on that, bro. I don’t want no part of this either,” I agreed.

The next morning, before Kamal and I went off to school, we looked for Mustafa, but he was nowhere to be found. Out of fear of Moms or Grandmother finding the package in the house, I took it to school with me. Here I was, just turned ten years old last month, in school with over $400 worth of drugs in my pocket, not able to do any schoolwork, waiting for class to let out so I could get back around the projects and give Mustafa his stuff.

At 2:45 school let out and I waited for Mal out front.

“Yo, you a’ight, bro? You look like you about to pass out,” Mal said to me.

“Man, this stuff been drivin’ me crazy all day being in my pocket. I don’t know how they do it, standin’ out there like that around the way, ’cause I feel like Five-O gonna run down on me any minute now. I wonder if Dad had to go through this when he was our age,” I stated to my brother.

“I wish he were here. Then we could’ve gone to him for help, ’cause if Moms found out she’d flip out and probably try to keep us in the house until we turned twenty-one.”

“You got that right,” said Mal.

As we turned the corner, approaching the projects, I heard my name. “Ay yo, li’l Mil!”

When I turned around to look, I saw Mustafa rolling down the black-tinted window of a pearl black BMW 318i with gold rims, and a gold front grill to match. You could tell it was brand new, because it still had the dealer temp tags in the back window.

“Yo, get in,” he leaned over toward the passenger’s side and shouted. “I wanna talk to you for a minute. Li’l Mal, you too.” He gestured to him.

Mal and I both knew what he wanted to talk about, but we still were a little nervous about getting in the car with him. We knew if our moms, our grandmother, or someone who knew them saw us getting in this car we’d be in serious trouble. I looked both ways to make sure the coast was clear then walked over to the passenger’s front door and hesitantly opened it to get in the front seat, as Kamal opened the back door and hopped in.

When we closed the doors, Mustafa drove off to the sounds of the latest Run-D.M.C. cut, “Here We Go,” rolling the tinted window back up. This was the first time I’d actually ever been in a drug dealer’s car, but being in the car with Mustafa felt like being in any other, ordinary person’s ride, with the exception of his appearance.

When we got in, the inside of the Beemer smelled like Mu had just come from the barbershop. His sharp chin-strapped line and goatee confirmed it. As he drove, I tried not to stare, but I couldn’t help it. He was sharp from head to toe. On his left hand, he had a two-finger gold ring with a dollar sign on it that covered his pinky and ring fingers. He had two separate rings on his middle and pointer fingers; one had an M and the other had a U. On his right hand, he had a four-finger ring on, with lion heads on both sides, with red rubies in their eyes. I could see the name MUSTAFA in between them, on the plate of the ring. Around his neck, he had three different sizes of gold rope chains, with medallions on them. He wore a pair of silk pants with a silk shirt to match, only the shirt was yellow, and the pants were black. To top it off, he rocked a yellow and black beanie with a tassel dangling from it and he had on the black and yellow British Walkers. Everything he had on matched and coincided with his ride. I was in awe.

The sound of his voice snapped me out of my daze. “Yo, remember yesterday when I ran past you?” he stated rather than asked as he lowered the volume of his music.

I tried to answer, but instead I was only able to nod. I wasn’t afraid, but I was nervous. I had never been so nervous in my life. Maybe because I knew what I had done was wrong and I knew the consequences behind my actions. I just wanted it all to be over.

“What did you do with that?” Mustafa asked in a cool tone.

“I got it right here, just the way you gave it to me, Mu. And I didn’t tell anybody. Well, except for my brother, but he didn’t tell anybody,” I rambled.

“Relax, Mil. I believe you, and I’m not gonna hurt you, either, so chill,” he said with a grin on his face.

“Okay.” It wasn’t so much what he said, but how he looked when he said it that put me at ease.

“Yo, Big Jay ya pops, right?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I answered, never hearing anyone refer to my dad as “Big Jay” before; but I knew they called him Jay, which was short for Jayson.

“Your pops is a good man, so I knew the apple didn’t fall far from the tree,” Mu said. I was too young to understand what he meant by the statement. He must’ve remembered that he was talking to a couple of kids, because he broke it down so Mal and I could understand. “What I mean is, I figured you were just like your pops,” he rephrased his comment. “That’s why I trusted you like that with my stash.”

All I could say was, “Thanks,” not really knowing whether what he had just said required a response. But out of politeness I responded to what I believed was a compliment.

“Li’l Mil, stay the way you are and you’ll go far in this world,” he told me. “’Cause a man is measured by three things in life.” His tone changed. It became smoother, but serious. “And that’s his loyalty, respect and, most importantly, his money,” he quoted as if he read the lines straight out of some philosophical book.

Then he pulled out a knot of money filled with nothing but hundreds, bigger than both of my hands put together. My eyes grew wide. It looked as if it could’ve been over $10,000. I noticed that he didn’t have any twenties, tens, fives, or singles in his bankroll, as he peeled off two hundred-dollar bills and gave one to me and one to Kamal, saying, “This is for you, for holding it down, and this one is for you, Kamal, for havin’ your brother’s back. Always hold each other down, no matter what,” he told us as he took the sandwich bag from me. “And stay away from this,” he said in a much sterner tone, holding the bag in the air. “’Cause this shit will kill you! You understand?”

Mal and I both nodded yes.

Mustafa pulled over, up the street from the projects, and let us out by the vegetable garden on the corner of West Second and Liberty Street.

Just as he was about to pull off, he rolled down his window. “If either one of you ever needs anything, just let me know.”

Then the words of Whodini’s latest cut, “Friends,” flowed out of his sunroof and filled the air as he pulled off. From that day on, I had a different outlook on drug dealers.

Two Years Later

“Hey, Kamil.”

I heard my name sung in unison as I unchained my bike from the bike rack while waiting for my brother to come and do the same. For getting good grades last year, Mustafa bought Mal and me matching Diamondback bikes. Mine was light blue, because blue was my favorite color, and Kamal’s was light green. They both came with the white pegs on the front and back. The only thing wrong with the bikes was that we couldn’t keep them at home because we’d get questioned and then killed by both our moms and our grandmother, so we had to leave them over at Ant. . .