What's Really Hood! by Wahida Clark

it’s over if he disrespected you? What the fuck he do?” Ali aggressively persisted.
    Wiz checked his lip, glanced around, then proceeded to tell Ali what the fight was about. Ali and Al-Ameen listened to his
     whole Crystal story with expressionless faces. The only comments they made were mainly questions of clarification, but they
     held their tongues until he finished.
    “So I was like, fuck it, shoot a fair one,” Wiz concluded.
    Ali lit a Newport and put the lighter back in hispocket. He blew the thick smoke into the frigid night air and watched it quickly dissipate. “Nigguhs been tellin’ me you
     been tryin’ to turn a crackhead into a housewife, but I told them nigguhs, keep your name out they mouth. If that’s what you
     wanna do, fuck it. But then, I’m hearin’ how she always wit’ you, even when you in the mix, and I’m like whoa. Fuck is lil’
     cuz thinkin’,” Ali stated, and Wiz tried to explain, but Ali stopped him. “Let me finish.” He hit the cigarette, then said,
     “Word is bond, Wiz, you in a position to see some real cheese, okay, ’cause your weight is up here. Any mistakes and shit
     be like dominoes. You got enough problems than to be out here fightin’ over some chick! Smokin’ or not, what the fuck shit
     you on? Huh? You ’posed to have thanked Moo for pullin’ yo’ coat to that triflin’ shit, then took her home and whooped her
     ass, yo! Am I right, Ameen?”
    “Word is bond, Wiz.” Al-Ameen was far from a yes-man, he was just a man of few words. Wiz looked at the two men who had basically
     raised him in the life, knowing they were right.
    “Now dig, go home and straighten that. If you love this broad like that, raise her ass like a thoroughbred, if not, turn that
     mule into dog food and feed her to the street. Either way, I hear you doin’ this bullshit again, you gonna shoot me and Ameen
     a fair one, aiight?”
    Wiz nodded his understanding. As Ali and Al-Ameen walked to the car, Ali stood in the open driver’s door and said with a smirk,
     “A shame what happened to Moo, huh?”
    Wiz looked perplexed.
    “Oh, you ain’t heard?” Ali snickered. “Don’t worry… you will.” And with that he got in the car and pulled off.
    Three days later Wiz would find out Moo’s body had been found with two to the head on the steps of his own basement. But that
     night Wiz wasn’t thinking about Moo, he was focused on Crystal.
    Crystal sat on the toilet. The floor around her feet was cluttered with baking-soda-caked spoons, empty vials and half-empty
     lighters. She stuffed the rocks into the end of the pipe until she couldn’t stuff anymore, hoping to take a big enough hit
     to stop her heart. If not, to get so high she never came down, never feel anything again but cocaine’s sickening comfort.
     Her hand was shaking so badly, she could hardly keep the lighter to the opposite end. She inhaled, eyes widening as the smoke
     filled her lungs, her mind and her soul.
Higher, baby… Get higher, baby, and don’t ever come down!
    The words of Melle Mel’s “White Lines” floated from the back of her mind.
Twice as sweet as sugar, twice as good as salt. And if you get hooked, baby, it’s nobody else’s fault!
    “Yo, Crystal! Where you at!”
    She heard Wiz call and slam the door behind him, but she was ashamed to answer him. She sat paranoid on the edge of the toilet
     seat until she damn near jumped out of her skin when he kicked the door open.
    “You fuckin’ wit’ Moo now, huh?! You takin’ my money and spendin’ it wit’ him? Huh?”
    “I… I,” she stuttered, “I didn’t want you to get mad.”
    Wiz couldn’t believe the irrationality of her statement. “You didn’t what?”
    Crystal got up and came over to him. “I know how you hate to give me stuff all the time, so I figured—”
    “You’d go behind my back!” Wiz furiously finished her sentence, then turned his back and walked a few feet away.
    “No, I didn’t go behind your back,