Thong on Fire by Noire Page B

subway.
    I never even slowed my roll. Pay that trick no damn attention! The only thing I was focusing on right now was Uncle Swag, and finding out what I had to do to help him get out this mess.
    When I got inside the apartment I could barely see Aunt Ruthie sitting in a chair in the dark living room rocking Kaz’s long-legged butt on her lap.
    “Turn on the television!” I hollered, throwing my bag on the floor. “Uncle Swag got arrested. He’s locked up!” The second I clicked on the light, I knew shit was much worse than I’d thought.
    The crib had been tossed. Shit was all fucked up. I walked through the apartment with my mouth open, unable to believe my eyes. Every dresser drawer in the house had been emptied out. The mattresses were torn off the beds and the stuffing was falling out. Books from Uncle Swag’s den were tossed all over the floor in the hallway, papers scattered everywhere. They had even dragged shit out of Aunt Ruthie’s closet and swept her dresser clean, breaking bottles of expensive perfume and leaving glass all over the damn floor.
    I almost broke down when I went into my room. That big old bed had been sliced down the middle and then all the way across, gutted like a deer. My satin sheets and blankets were all cut the hell up. My shoes and clothes were ripped and torn and in one big pile in the middle of the floor. My jewelry box was empty, and every diamond, pearl, and precious metal I’d owned was gone.
    It looked like a tornado had gone through the apartment, tearing shit up from one end to the other. Debris crunched under my feet as I walked slowly back to the living room where Aunt Ruthie was still rocking her oversized baby.
    “They had a warrant,” she said, and shifted Kaz on her lap, and the way he looked at me I knew he wanted to get down. She let out a short, bitter laugh. “But Swag left a dirty trail leading straight to his own front door.”
    I bit my lip. “Well what do we do now? Are they gonna pay for all the shit they tore up? I know they don’t think we gone live up in here like this! Did you hear from Uncle Swag? Do you have the number to his lawyer?”
    Aunt Ruthie yawned and started patting her foot.
    “I told Swag a long time ago to stop fooling around with them Haitians and signing all them fake documents. This is what you get when you climb in bed with drug dealers and low-down criminals. He knows I wouldn’t go down to no jailhouse even to see about my own mama, and if he has a lawyer I don’t know nothing about it.”
    I stood in the middle of the demolished room staring at her. The chair she was sitting on was almost the only piece of furniture that wasn’t broke up.
    This chick didn’t have no fight in her. I hated the way she had tucked her damn tail between her legs and given up. Uncle Swag was in jail, his picture all on the damn news, and all she could do was sit there rocking a fifty-pound pony and patting her damn foot. I could have yanked her off that chair and stomped her into the floor.
    “Aunt Ruthie, we gotta do something. We can’t just be sitting here looking stupid and waiting for something to happen. The first thing we gotta do is get Uncle Swag out.”
    She gave me a funky look, and opened her mouth, but then the doorbell rang and we both jumped. I threw Aunt Ruthie a funky look of my own before answering it. I looked through the peephole and when I saw Tollie standing out there I snatched the door open and almost fell into his arms with relief.
    “Tollie! Damn I’m glad to see you. Uncle Swag got—”
    Tollie pushed into the apartment and covered my mouth with his big ol’ hand. He shook his head quickly, then let me go and put his finger to his lips. I caught on real fast, understanding his signal. I had never stopped to consider that the house might be wired, but if the feds had Uncle Swag boxed in then there was no telling how they had gotten their info.
    We spent the next fifteen minutes passing notes. Tollie would write on a