The Streets Keep Pulling Me Back

by Brittani Williams

Genres: African American Urban

Synopsis

Go on a roller coaster ride with Tank, a man who battled a tortured past to become a “made man,” determined to win no matter what he must do, or who he must hurt in the process …
From the day he was born, Martavious “Tank” Young had to fight for what was his. No parents, no family, mentally and physically abused throughout his childhood. The challenges he endured only made him stronger and soon, the man
who grew up with nothing had it all. Now, Tank is the man running the streets and the city, both legal and illegal. His money is long, his patience is short, and his reach is far.
Finally at the pinnacle of the game, he’s decided the time has come to leave the streets alone and retire, enjoying the life of luxury he’s worked hard to achieve. But, when vengeance rears its ugly head and Tank is the target, it almost costs him everything, including his life.

Release date: January 25, 2022

Publisher: Urban Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

“Man, how you gon’ say Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the better player? Everybody knows it’s Jay T.”

“What? Jay T? Man, naw. Jay T is just a newer version. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the man,” a young Martaveous bragged.

“Yeah, the man that needs to sit in the stands. He ain’t been doing nothing for years. But Jay T is killing it,” Ty insisted.

“Yeah, right. Kareem done played more seasons than Jay T, done had more playoffs than Jay T, more all-star games, and he done scored way more points than Jay T,” Martaveous argued.

“So? The only reason he got more points is ’cause he played so old,” Ty argued. “But Jay T is the leading scorer in points and steals, and he averages more points a game. Plus, you don’t see nobody rocking no Air Kareems. They rocking them Jay Ts!”

“But you ain’t,” Martaveous said, pointing to his friend’s shoes.

“I will, though,” Ty shot back. “When I get in the NBA, I’m gonna be just like Jay T. And I’ma have all the J’s.”

“Don’t nobody care. Yo’ ass ain’t going in the NBA anyway,” Martaveous grumbled.

“Man, whatever. My game is better than yours.”

“That’s because you like eight feet tall,” he pointed out.

Martaveous and his friend Ty were outside playing on the basketball court at the park, talking trash to each other. You would think they hated each other the way they argued back and forth. Despite their bickering, they were really close. They had been best friends for the last few years. For Martaveous, Ty had been his only friend. At 9 years old, they were active, like most typical kids their age. Their life was consumed with basketball, toys, the occasional video game, and having fun. The only thing that was different regarding their childhood is that they were in the system.

Both Martaveous and Ty had met in foster care. Martaveous had been in longer than Ty, however, and his situation was a little different. Martaveous’s mother was a drug addict who, right after birth, bailed, abandoning him in the hospital. He remembered hearing one of his many caseworkers talking to a coworker on how she read that his mother didn’t even stick around twenty-four hours. She slipped right on out of the hospital undetected, and he was alone. God only knew where his father was, so Martaveous immediately became a ward of the state. For as long as he could remember, he was passed from group home to group home and from foster house to foster house. He dreamed that one day he would wake up and someone would come and get him and tell him that his father had been found and wanted him, or that his mother was clean and was ready to take her baby home, but sadly, it never happened. Nobody wanted him.

Ty, on the other hand, had a glimpse of what a typical family was like. His mother didn’t leave him at birth. He wouldn’t be in the system if it weren’t for her fatal car accident when he was 5 years old. His father was like most niggas who were hitting females raw . . . ghosts. His grandmother had dementia, so the state had no choice but to put him in a group home.

The two stayed at the same foster home for a while and became friends when an older kid was trying to pick on Martaveous. Ty came to his rescue. At first, Martaveous thought that Ty was going to pick on him too. He was much taller than Martaveous, and he looked like he could lay somebody out. But lucky for him, they became best friends, with Ty looking out for him.

They were thick as thieves, but they were separated and placed with different foster families when their foster mother was arrested for welfare fraud. Ty was seven miles away with a nice family, so he would catch the city bus to see Martaveous on weekends, and they would play and catch up on stuff that happened during the week or complain about their foster families.

Martaveous looked forward to Ty coming over. He could at least relax then. Ty never really experienced the things that Martaveous did. That’s why Martaveous was so jealous of him. Martaveous felt like God didn’t care about him because of what he was going through. He couldn’t stand being in his current foster home because of his foster dad, Mr. Tyeone.

Mr. Tyeone was one of them niggas that basically just tried to live his life through his kids because his own life sucked. He was tall and had a medium complexion with a bald spot in the middle of his egg-shaped head. He was always wearing tight shirts like he was fit, but his stomach overlapped. He hadn’t worked in months, so that was part of the reason why he had taken Martaveous in like most foster parents . . . to get the money.

Martaveous knew the minute he got in that house that his new foster father was all about the money and didn’t give a fuck about him. How he managed to become a foster parent was beyond Martaveous. He had three kids, two of which lived with his ex-wife, but his son, Kevin, lived with him and irritated the fuck out of Martaveous. He made it his mission to pick on poor Martaveous. Kevin was twice his size and had light skin. Martaveous was scrawny, short, and had dark skin. Kevin would always talk trash about Martaveous no matter what was going on. He would call him “Blacula,” “Midnight,” “Monkey,” and everything he could think of to make him feel bad about how he looked. Kevin would tease him about his birth mother being a crackhead and how he was so ugly that even a crackhead didn’t want him. He would tell him that he looked like beef jerky with nappy hair. Telling Mr. Tyeone was pointless because the young boy was always told to “man up” and stop acting like a little bitch. To say that he hated being in the house would be an understatement.

Every chance Martaveous got, he would leave just so that he wouldn’t have to deal with it. He figured that as long as he stayed out of everyone’s way, that he would stay off the radar and wouldn’t have to worry about being the object of ridicule, and for the most part, it worked.

“Ay, let’s go to the store,” Martaveous said suddenly as they continued to take turns taking shots.

“You got some money?” Ty asked him.

“Yea.” Martaveous nodded, bouncing the ball before taking a shot. “I snuck into Mr. Tyeone’s room and took some money off the top of his dresser.”

“And he didn’t see you?” Ty said, surprised, running to catch the rebound.

“Nope. He was drunk and lying in the chair,” Martaveous bragged. “So, while he was doing that, I snuck into the room and took it.”

“Whoa.” Ty nodded, impressed. “Well then, let’s roll.”

“Yeah, let’s go get some Now and Laters,” Martaveous suggested.

“Yeah. Ooh, and some of those Push Pops,” Ty added.

They played basketball for a little longer, talking about what they would get from the store and arguing about who the better basketball player was. Then they spent the next several hours loading up on candy and ice cream before they headed back to the house.

By the time they made it back to Mr. Tyeone’s, both of them were hyper and bouncing all over the place.

“Let’s play Nintendo,” Martaveous suggested, already running to the console to turn it on.

They sat down on the couch and picked up their controllers. Next to his friend and basketball, playing Nintendo was the only thing that Martaveous really liked doing. He felt like a normal kid then. That was all he ever wanted. But he never really got what he wanted.... Something he was sadly all too used to.

“Uuh! Now what? I told you, boi, you can’t see me in this game,” Martaveous taunted.

“Man, that’s because I can dust you in real life, sucka,” Ty laughed. “Besides, I’m letting you win, so you don’t feel like I’m better at everything than you.”

“Man, whatever. You just mad ’cause I’m dusting you,” Martaveous said, focusing on playing the game. “I’m the champ.”

“Ha. More like the chump,” Ty snorted.

“Shut up,” Martaveous shoved him.

He and Ty were sitting on the living room floor at Mr. Tyeone’s house. They had just gotten back from the store after eating up a bunch of candy and had decided to come in for a while to play video games. Martaveous had checked before he and Ty started playing and saw that Mr. Tyeone was in his room asleep with the TV on loud. He didn’t see Kevin, so he figured they had a little time to play before he came in and started terrorizing him.

It had been a little over a year since he had been placed here. It was much like his last foster home, only fewer kids. His previous foster home had almost ten kids in it, and he stayed to himself. It was easier not to be noticed because of the hustle and bustle. But being at Mr. Tyeone’s, he was an easier target. At least here, though, he had food and a real bed. There were so many places that he had been in where he had to fight other kids for food and a whole lot more.

He knew that his foster parent got a nice-size check because of him. Of course, he never saw any of it. But Kevin always had new sneakers, the latest clothes, and anything he wanted. He knew when the check came because Mr. Tyeone would get dressed and go to the liquor house. He would always bring some random female home, and Martaveous would have to hear them all night long. Martaveous never saw anything new. He got Kevin’s old hand-me-downs, even though he was almost twice the size of Martaveous. Martaveous looked even smaller in the baggy clothes, but he didn’t complain. He just made sure to stay out of the way as much as possible.

“Yo, you just gonna keep staring at the TV, or you gon’ play?” Ty asked.

Martaveous didn’t even realize that he had stopped paying attention to the game because he was too busy thinking about sneaking into Mr. Tyeone’s room again to take some more money while he had the chance. He had been stashing money in the room that he shared with Kevin. He knew that he could be put in another home at any given moment, and he wanted to be ready. Sometimes, he didn’t have food or the basic necessities, so he tried to save as much as he could, just in case.

He turned his attention back to the game, and they spent the next several minutes playing the game until Ty suddenly put his controller down.

“They’re moving me to another group home,” he announced.

“What?” Martaveous dropped the controller and turned to his friend.

Ty nodded his head slowly in confirmation, sad at having to tell him that.

“But—why?”

“My foster mom, Jessica, said that she couldn’t take care of me no more and that they wasn’t giving her the money for us for the last few months,” he told him. “She said that they were going to come take me and Nicole separately, but I know that’s some bull ’cause Nicole already told me that she never said anything to her about going nowhere.”

Ty stopped, looked around, and leaned forward.

“I think they just want me out of there because of what Nicole told me about the dude that lives there,” he added. “Nicole told me he be touching her.”

“Whoa,” Martaveous whispered.

“Yeah,” Ty nodded. “It’s Jessica’s boyfriend, Dan. Nicole told me that he be coming in there and touching her in the middle of the night, and she said he was sticking his thing in her. So I tried to tell Ms. Jessica, and then the next thing I know, she said that we were being moved, but Nicole said that when she went and asked her, she told her she wasn’t goin’ nowhere.”

“So, where they got you going?”

“I’on know.” Ty shrugged. “I know she said they would pick me up Friday.”

“But . . . That’s only two days away,” Martaveous objected.

“I know.”

Martaveous was angry. They were taking away his best friend. He and Ty were like brothers. They couldn’t do that to him. Ty was all he had.

“This isn’t fair,” Martaveous said, trying to hold it together.

He was so mad that he wanted to fight. He was used to being moved around all the time, but since he had met Ty, they had always been at a close distance. Where was he going to go? Martaveous was scared that Ty would end up someplace far away, and he wouldn’t be able to see him.

“I heard one of the directors talking about how the group home ain’t gon’ be open much longer and how some of the kids are gonna be sent to Orlando. Like a bunch of ’em.”

“Orlando? Where Disneyland is?” Martaveous said. “I wonder how far that is.”

“Hours,” Ty confirmed.

“That’s too far.”

“I know,” Ty agreed. “But I’ll run away first before that happens.” He perked up quickly, looking at Martaveous hopefully. “Maybe I can come stay with you? I can ask them if Mr. Tyeone will let me stay here.”

“You don’t want to stay here.” Martaveous shook his head quickly.

He wanted to be near his friend, but he definitely didn’t want Kevin to have somebody else to pick on. Although Ty was bigger than him, and he knew he could handle his own, Kevin, on the other hand, was another story.

“Well, I gotta do something.”

“We can both run away,” Martaveous blurted out. “I got like thirty dollars saved up.”

“You ain’t got shit, li’l nigga,” Kevin sniped, walking in the room.

Martaveous tensed up, all nervous, when he saw his tormentor come in.

“Leave us alone,” he said softly.

Kevin stared at the two of them, looking for a reason to beat him up, and then saw his Nintendo turned on.

“Who told you that you could play with my stuff?” he barked, standing over Martaveous, who was shaking.

“We was just playing with it for a minute,” he explained. “We not playing with it now.”

“Come on, Martaveous,” Ty said, getting up and yanking his friend’s arm.

“I told you not to touch my stuff,” Kevin warned, standing over him.

He kicked Martaveous hard, causing him to fall over in pain. Then he wasted no time jumping on him.

“Didn’t I tell you to leave my stuff alone? Huh?” Kevin spat. “I told your ugly Tank ass not to touch my stuff ’cause you dirty. You a dirty-ass, Tank-ass nigga.”

Martaveous tried to fight back, but he was dealing with a boy twice his size. Ty jumped on Kevin, trying to defend his friend. He landed a punch in his gut, giving Martaveous a split-second opportunity to run from the room. Ty was still swinging. He was a wild child. He fought a lot and didn’t care what size anyone was. If they came at him, then he would handle them. And because Martaveous was his boy, he would handle Kevin too. Martaveous stood in the hallway, watching the two brawl on the floor.

“Y’all stop all that damn noise,” Mr. Tyeone yelled out. “Stop tearing shit up. If I get up, it’s gon’ be trouble.”

The boys froze, and Kevin fell back, glaring at Martaveous.

“Yo, you a little punk,” he accused. “Punk ass can’t even fight for yourself. Gotta have your friends fight for you. Go on,” he said to Ty. “Go take care of your pet monkey. Ugly ass. That’s why don’t nobody want you. You close your eyes, and can’t nobody see you. Dark ass.”

He was taunting him, and Martaveous was really getting mad. He was tired of being teased about something he couldn’t control. He hated people talking about how dark he was. Back then, it wasn’t cool to have dark skin. He was teased every day about it. Kevin gutting him about it was making his blood boil. But he knew he wouldn’t try to fight him. He would get whooped.

“‘Nard’! Bring me a beer out of the fridge,” Mr. Tyeone yelled.

Kevin walked past and mumbled something under his breath. All Martaveous could make out was the word, “Tankie.”

Martaveous headed to Mr. Tyeone’s room, thinking he could tell him what he just experienced with Ty there with him. He had to believe him. He had to know how his son was. He was the devil’s spawn. He motioned for Ty to follow him down the hall so he could rat him out.

“What?” Mr. Tyeone growled, looking up long enough to see him at the. . .