Love/Fate by Tracy Brown

Wizz all day, trying to be somebody for a change. Jamari and Wizz think they doingsomething, but them niggas ain’t making no money. Them niggas ain’t seein’ no real paper out there. I shut the hill down, and them mutha-fuckas is nibbling on the crumbs that fell from my plate. Jada’s just one of my crumbs.”
    Anisa stared at him, seeming to listen attentively. But in her mind, she was thinking,
No, this nigga is not laying here talking about another woman when he just finished having sex with me.
She wondered if he had been thinking of Jada while they were having sex. She was fed up.
    â€œYou’re sick without her. It’s so obvious.” Anisa had said it calmly, and sat up in bed. She seemed like she wasn’t mad, but she knew that his love for Jada was still haunting him, and she began searching for her clothes.
    â€œNah.” Born had denied it. “I ain’t sick without nobody.”
    Anisa looked at him, her lips scrunched up in disbelief. “Well, then stop talking about the bitch, then. I’m getting kinda sick of hearing about her. Especially since I’m the one who just made you cum like that.”
    Born smiled, and told himself that he probably was talking about Jada more than he should. He made a mental note to curb his mention of Jada’s name in Anisa’s presence from that day forward. Maybe he was slipping.
    He didn’t talk about Jada much after that, but she still dominated his thoughts. Jada had no clue as to how deeply he had felt for her. Truth was, Born was brokenhearted. His mama told him that you never get over your first love. Instead, he replaced her with Anisa. She was not Jada, but she was also not a crackhead.
    Born had held out hope that Jada wasn’t really dealing with Jamari like that. But the more he heard the rumors, the more he felt like Jada had been a complete waste of his time. He knew that he had taught her better than that. Born saw clearly from the beginning that Jamari was only trying to provoke him. He wondered how long it would take before the two of them bumped heads at last.

31
CONSEQUENCES
    September 1998
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    Born sat in Slim the barber’s chair at the barbershop on Bay Street. He had just sat down, and his cape was secured around his neck. Slim was called that for a very obvious reason. At six-foot-four and 170 pounds, he was a thin young man who ran his own shop, keeping his eyes open and his mouth shut. He cut Born’s hair to perfection every time, and for this reason he counted him as one of his regulars. He worked alongside Barnes and Kevin, two other barbers with decent followings of their own. On this day there were three other patrons in the shop besides Born. Two were young men in their twenties, as Born was. He recognized one of them as Breeze, from the Stapleton projects, while an unknown young man in a red Hilfiger shirt sat in Kevin’s chair getting his hair cut. The other customer was an older man in his fifties. Slim began the process of cutting Born’s hair into the perfect fade. The mood was calm, it being a cool September morning. The radio played in the background, and the topic changed from local gossip to current events. Soon Slim was putting the finishing touches on Born’s mustache and goatee. The older man left the shop, and the subject was hip-hop’s East Coast-West Coast beef.
    â€œAll I’m saying is, the shit done got out of hand. It ain’t about music no more. And once it stopped being about music, I lost interest.” Slimsaid as he maneuvered his clippers skillfully across Born’s dome. “What do you think, Born?” he asked.
    Born pondered the question as he looked at the reflection in the mirror on the wall opposite him. He could see the street through the mirror, and he watched as cars pulled up, and people came and went. As usual, Born was on point. Although, to those who looked at him it may have appeared that he was simply having