I stood there and watched Jazz pick at the rug like she had lost her mind. What the hell was she doing? She picked up what looked like an old piece of soap and jumped up like she had just uncovered a buried treasure. She grinned at me. I grinned back. I really didn't know. I had no idea A. That she was looking for a stray piece of crack, when we had a whole straight drop sitting right there on the kitchen counter, and B. That she thought that was an actual rock in her hand.

I mean, damn...

I didn't know until she pulled out a pipe that I had never seen her with before. My eyes bugged when she tried to fit the soap in there and smoke it. First of all, the thing was too big. There was no way it would fit, but she just kept trying to shove it in there anyway. Somehow she got it in, though, and then tried to light it.

Immediately after she tried to hit it, Jazz looked over at me like I had just played the cruelest joke on her. It hurt me, because I would never do that to her. I already knew Aunt Jazz was smoking, and how bad she would fiend sometimes. So I would never trick her like that. But I just...didn't know it had gotten this bad. And I had never actually seen her smoke before. Rico had me out all night most nights now, so I wasn't around her as much as I used to be. Not enough to know that she got like this...

"Kenney...give it to me." She said it like I had given her the fake rock with one hand, and had the real one in my other hand. Then she gave me a look that I hated. I hated when crackheads gave me that look. And it really messed me up when Jazz did it.

I mean...really fucked me up.

For life.

Usually, when Jazz told someone to do something, they did it. Immediately. But I wasn't about to do this. She was pregnant and didn't need to be smoking in the first place. It pissed me off every single time she did. It pissed me off even more that I was the only one who knew she was pregnant. But it wasn't my place to tell anyone else that she was. I would never tell anyone any of the secrets that Jazz asked me to keep for her. And I also wasn't going to tell my favorite aunt that she was anything less than perfect in my eyes. I would never tell her that because she needed so much to be perfect to me.

So I let her be.

"Kenney...give it to me. Now."

It was the first time in a long time that I could remember Jazz having to tell me to do anything more than once. But I was scared. Real scared. She was doing that...fiend shit...they do, and I didn't really know how to handle it coming from her. Especially since I knew without a doubt that I wasn't about to give her a damn thing. We were the only ones in the house, and this was the only time in my life that I wished someone else was in there with us.

I mean, what the hell was I supposed to do? I was only twelve years old.

But I was at least old enough to know about babies. And women. And I knew that women should not be smoking that shit while they were pregnant.

So I told her no.

Again.

I told my Aunt Jazz, who I had never said no to in my life, no.

Again.

She looked me dead in the eye, her eyes so much like my Sammy's, and it was like I had just betrayed everything that we had ever built together. It had always been me and Jazz. I knew that. My whole life, she was the one who held me down. I knew that. And there she was, giving me that look, and I hated it. I hated her for becoming just like everyone else on the block when she used to be the Queen, and I hated myself for what I knew deep down that I would eventually do.

Because I couldn't take that look coming from her.

Not from my Aunt Jazz.

"Kenney. I neeeed it..." she whined and started bouncing from one foot to the other and wringing her hands together...like a crackhead.

I hated that shit.

Some of the crew loved it. They were entertained by it, and would make the dope fiends dance for a while before they gave up the rock. But I. Hated. That. Shit. To see an adult begging my young ass for anything that bad had always bothered me. Unlike the rest of them fools, I actually had parents. Parents that acted like parents. And even though I had to be a grown man out there with those fools, I knew that with Jazz especially...until that very moment...I was just a kid. Her kid. Not her son, exactly, but definitely something like that.

She was my keeper and my guardian, and there she was begging me for something that I knew there was no way in hell I was about to give her.

"Aunt Jazz...please stop."

I looked up for God, not at her. But I couldn't find Him. I couldn't find God for anything. He was nowhere to be found. Just like daddy, who was also nowhere to be found. And Sammy. I needed Sammy so much right then. She always knew exactly what to do whenever mama lost it, so I knew she would know what to do with Aunt Jazz.

"Oh my God..." I whispered, truly searching for an answer from heaven.

Jazz focused in on me. But it was a weird focus. A driven focus. And I had run Rico's corners too long to not know what was coming next.

"Please don't Aunt Jazz. Please...don't..." I wanted to drop tears. But after Sammy died, I couldn't cry anymore. I tried a few times, just to let some of our fucked up shit out, but it never happened.

"Kenney..." She gave me that sticky sweet fiend grin that I hated. "It's me! Your favorite! Jazzy Jazz!" She bounced from one foot to the other nonstop like she had to go to the bathroom, and I honestly was about to make a run for it, when she suddenly stopped bouncing and took two steps closer to me. We were almost nose to nose. I could smell death on her. "Kenney. Give it to me. Right now."

"No." I didn't blink and I didn't back down, just like she taught me.

Even though I was scared as shit.

I loved her. I respected her. But on the low, I had always been afraid of Aunt Jazz. Everyone was. And here I was, the keeper of this nightmare that had turned her into...something...that I didn't recognize. My Jazz. My favorite aunt and my favorite adult. Reduced by this shit that I served to everyone on our block's parents...everyone's parents...

To a begging child.

We switched places that day, and for the rest of my life I never knew what to do with that.

"Kenney..." She kind of looked down, ashamed, and then back up at me. "Kenney..." She took a step back away from me and looked down again. "I..." Everything that I knew about her was gone. I saw it all drop off of and away from her like armor, and the only thing left was something...that I needed to protect. "Kenney..." She said it again and kind of stooped down close to the floor like she was about to drop down on her knees in front of me.

"Oh...my God..." I really was calling on Jesus because this...was unreal. "Please...Jazz...don't."

I knew this. What I was looking at. I knew how this whole thing played out. Too many grown women...and men, if you can handle the truth, had already offered it to me for rocks, heroine, whatever, and it made me sick every. single. time.

Well...if I'm really telling the truth...the offer from a dude made me sick every time. But I would only pass up on a woman sometimes if I recognized her as somebody's mama, or if she was pregnant, or if she looked fucked up. But if she was fine, I'm not even gonna lie...

But this?

What the hell was this?

"Please God...please..."

I whispered it, but obviously I should have said it louder because God either didn't hear me or was on some more important business at the moment.

"Kenney..." Aunt Jazz looked around and then looked down so, so ashamed. She looked like she needed an out for what she was about to do, but couldn't find any other option. "Kenney...I'll...do anything. Anything...you want..." and she looked at me waiting.

I didn't say anything. I couldn't. I was frozen in place. The fact that she went there first told me everything I needed to know. Number one being that she must have already done this before and gotten what she wanted out of someone in our crew. I tried to stay focused on the situation at hand for now, and not zone in on who the fuck was about to die as soon as I found out who did this to her.

"Anything..." she repeated and started to drop down further onto her knees. Her comedown was making her crazy. She wasn't thinking straight.

I felt sick. And everything down in my stomach was about to come back up. Soon.

"Aunt Jazz..." I covered my face. "Please get up." I couldn't look at her. Out of all the things that I had already seen Jazz go through, this I just couldn't deal with. I couldn't handle it.

I just couldn't handle it.

She tugged at my jeans. "Please, Kenney. I need it."

I don't think she was pulling at my jeans, I think she was just trying to get my attention. But to see my aunt, my favorite aunt in the same position that every other fiend that we sold to eventually ended up being in, sent my heart racing almost to a flatline. And she was pregnant. I got dizzy and needed to sit down. Was God really serious right now? I mean really really? Didn't I have enough shit to deal with without this...whatever the fuck this was?

"Aunt Jazz...get up."

She could have it. She could have it all. If she smoked up everything I had and everything I owned, I wouldn't try to stop her again. She could smoke that whole straight drop if she wanted to, and I would just deal with Rico later for her.

"God...Aunt Jazz...oh my God..." I couldn't stop calling God. And He still wasn't answering. "Oh my God..." I covered my face again. I didn't want to see her like this. I couldn't see her like this.

And I knew that she didn't want me to see her like this.

"Aunt Jazz...you can have anything you want. Anything. Anything of mine. You can have it all. Oh my God...Jazz..."

I still had my face covered with my hands, waiting for her to get up off of her knees, but she never did. When I finally looked at her, I saw that she was hiding behind her own hands. And she was crying. Hard. Her sobs were having such a hard time coming up and out that they were shaking her whole body. I had no choice but to kneel down in front of her.

"Aunt Jazz..." I took one of her hands away from her face and then the other. I put them down on either side of her and held them in place so that she wouldn't try to pull at my clothes again. "Please don't ever come at me like that again, ok?"

She nodded, but wouldn't look at me. I loved her so much, and I knew even while she was doing that crazy shit that she didn't mean it.

"Aunt Jazz...it's ok," I whispered. Finally, she looked at me for a second, but then looked away quickly. "I need you, Aunt Jazz. Understand? I need you." She looked at me again, but her mind was somewhere else. "Please...keep it together. They'll take me away if you don't."

Foster care should have been the last thing that I was worried about right then, but it was the only thing that I was worried about right then. Because I knew if they took me, they would take Charity, too. And who knows what would happen to my sister if they took her some place that I couldn't keep eyes on her.

"Please don't ever come at me like that again, Jazz. I'll give you anything. Anything you want, ok?" She nodded. "Just...come to me. Don't...go anywhere else. You...don't have to do that, ok?" She nodded again, but still wouldn't look at me. "I got you, Aunt Jazz. I got you. Don't...do that. You don't have to do that. Please...just let me get it for you."

Jazz was the Queen of our block. And me and Rico were the Prince and King. And there was no way that she should ever have to do that for something that we had plenty of.

I reached out my hand and she took it. We stared at each other for a suspended amount of time and then she smiled sweetly at me, like she didn't have a care in the world, and said, "Kenney..." She stretched out her fingers expectantly. "You got me?"

Hey Moonbeams! Part 1 of this series, Still Waters is now available on Amazon! Get your copy today! ❤️

Still Waters: An HBCU Tale (The Still Waters Series) (Volume 1) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0692869409/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_FuPHzb0RCGEXY