Free Dutch by Teri Woods Page A

as he blew a ring with his cigarette smoke.
    “Nigga, please! Ain’t no way you bagged that bu-gee bitch. You? Aw, hell no,” Dutch replied.
    “Yo, that’s my word. Shortie on my dick, callin’ me every five minutes and shit, talkin’ ’bout when we gonna go back to Pebbles
     Beach so she can suck me off,” said Craze, laughing along with Dutch. Pebbles Beach was slang for the rooftop of any project
     apartment building.
    “Let me find out, nigga. You musta’ started stickin’ niggas or something. Ain’t no way you gonna tell me she just fuckin’
     you on the strength.”
    “Naw, yo, I been swingin’ with that cat Sugar Ray from time to time and you know how Ray get down. I ain’t gonna front, he
     been schoolin’ a nigga on the broads,” Craze admitted.
    Dutch knew Sugar Ray was a wannabe pimp. Ray was a top player in Newark, specializing in women. And while he wasn’t a real
     pimp in the true sense of the word, he tried his damndest to live the life of one.
    “Angel said the chop shop connect got popped. Y’all ever find another one?” asked Dutch.
    “Naw, you know how niggas is about connects.”
    “Then why you ain’t start clockin’ wit’ Angel? She said she tried to put you on but you ain’t want to. The fuck up wit’ you,
     nigga? You and Scotty hangin’ out again?” Dutch questioned, half joking, half serious.
    “Fuck you, nigga. I ain’t smokin’ no crack.” Then he turned up the radio playing Colonel Abrams’s “Music Is the Answer.”
    “So, what is you doin’?” asked Dutch, turning the volume back down.
    “Yo, I’m sayin’, shit just ain’t been right. It’s like I been stuck, you know. You know I’ve known you forever and it’s always
     been me and you. You know what I’m sayin’? Roc and Zoom my niggas and Shock, God bless the dead. Angel, she like my lil’ sister.
     But, wit’ out you…” Craze completed his sentence by shaking his head, not knowing how to express what he had been feeling
     for the past year and a half since Dutch had been gone.
    Dutch understood. Craze needed to say no more.
    “But, now… since you back, I know shit gonna be all right. Word. I know it,” he said, his words expressing nothing but love
     for Dutch.
    When they reached Newark, the streets themselves seemed to welcome Dutch home with the sounds of a hundred booming systems,
     children laughing, and people crowding the streets, and the urban smells mingling in Dutch’s nostrils. Young women ornamented
     the city blocks like jewels and became the twinkle in his eyes. Dutch felt invigorated, renewed, free.
    They rode up Elizabeth Avenue and made a right onto Pomona. Pomona Gardens was on the corner where Craze pulled over.
    “Why she move here?” Craze asked.
    Dutch didn’t know, and he didn’t answer. He just opened the door and got out of the car.
    “Wait here,” he said, walking away from Craze and over to the building he had been told his mother lived in. He searched the
     panel for Murphy, Delores’s last name, but it wasn’t listed. Luckily, someone was coming out and he entered the building and
     took the elevator to the fourth floor. He found 406, Delores’s apartment, and knocked on the door. Waiting, he felt butterflies
     and nervousness.
Why didn’t she write me back? And why’d she move over here?
    There was no answer.
    He knocked again.
    Something in his heart told him his mother was home. He decided to knock once more, but as he was about to, the door slowly
     opened and his mother stood in the doorway in her housecoat.
    “Hey, Ma,” he said, not knowing whether to hug her or just stand still.
    She gazed at him momentarily, then spoke. “When you get home?”
    “Today, just now,” Dutch answered, feeling awkward standing in the hallway, seemingly barred from what should have been his
     home. She stepped aside, though, and pushed the door open wider to let him pass.
    Dutch looked around the place. It was the same size as their apartment in Brick