Page 36 of Saint Baptiste 2

Damn, I said I wasn’t playing referee, didn’t I?

Fuck it. A nigga just needed a got damn break. There was too much going on. I was literally scrambling. Everything was falling apart.

Blaise sucked his teeth and waved me off. “Fuck out of here, nigga. I’m just sayin.” He threw his hands up. “How many times he gon’ tell me he’s proud? Shit sounding like surprise to me.”

Jah nodded, sat back and said, “Mercy.”

Blaise paused in the middle of picking the bottle up to pour another shot.

I stopped running my hand over the top of my head.

We just paused. Couldn’t do shit else.

Mercy was venom. I was sure I could speak for the three of us when I said hearing it, especially used in this context, was a fucking trigger. I was surprised that nigga had used it.

Jah looked back and forth between the two of us. “Respectfully. Samuel’s promise of mercy isn’t my promise of mercy.”

For as long as I could remember, I wasn’t allowed to feel. If I was sad, I was a bitch. Too happy? A bitch. Excited? For what? Only bitches got excited. The only emotion we were allowed to feel was anger and even that had to be contained. However, there was one major flaw in Samuel’s parenting; we were human. We had feelings. And it just so happened, regardless of how much he tried to train us not to feel, we felt. And because we felt, and weren’t allowed to express, that anger he wanted us to contain? It couldn’t be. For a while, that was aight. He’d rather us on animal shit, than bitch shit. Until the nigga decided it was time to legitimize the business and clean the money up. But he couldn’t effectively clean the money up without cleaning us up first, right? So, he came up with mercy. Freedom to express. Freedom to feel. Without judgment. Mercy gave us the floor to speak. Mercy was Samuel’s way of showing compassion and an ounce of give a fuck.

Mercy sounded lovely right? Yeah, fuckin’ beautiful.

Samuel used mercy as a weapon.

Mercy was bullshit.

Could’ve been lovely. Would’ve worked if it was given by a nigga with decency. A nigga who could handle hearing an opinion that wasn’t his own. A nigga who truly gave a fuck about what he was doing to his children. But nah, it was created by a muthafucka that was trying to do a quick rush job on healing years of emotional wounds, just because he wanted to rub shoulders with white muthafuckas that would never view him as an equal, regardless of how clean him and his black ass kids were.

“How often did I push you, B? Hm? Tell me,” Jah continued since Blaise hadn’t spoken up. “I was the nigga advocating for this! Me. I believed in you years ago. I stressed the importance of establishing your own business. It was Samuel holding you back, nigga. Not me. He wanted to keep you grounded. He didn’t believe in you. Me? I’ve always believed in you. Always believed in the both of you. So, for you to sit there and paint me out to be anything other than what the fuck I’ve always been, is a bitch move, my nigga. That shit you got on you ain’t bout me, G.”

Blaise sat there, stoically stroking his beard with the corner of his top lip curled up into a snarl. He was stuck. Probably like me... stuck in the memory of what the fuck mercy did to us. Still... really couldn’t believe this nigga used it.

Mercy was supposed to be given by the standard of its textbook definition. Compassion or forgiveness toward someone. What we didn’t realize was that the nigga that introduced us to it had mercy for no one. Not even his seeds. But because we came from his ball sack, he had to pretend right? Follow me. Samuel was like that. A master manipulator.

Twice a month, we were given mercy; freedom to speak without repercussion. I was twelve when it was first introduced to the family. Jah, nineteen, Blaise three years younger. Naturally, since I was the youngest, it had the most psychological damage on me. Mercy wasn’t subjected to our household only—it was a Baptiste thing, but I was sure that Samuel was the only father who’d used it as a weapon. Out of his brothers, he was the coldest. Most ruthless. The one with the most rules that came with grave consequences. Which was what solidified us as the head of the family at the start. He was the chief. He was the boss. No one wanted to go against Samuel. He was a threat. To everyone. Which was why he got away with practically abusing us our whole lives.

That psychological damage was real. Trauma was crazy. Mercy was more damaging to my mental than anything else. Nothing fucked with me more than that and I caught my first body at age twelve. Beat a nigga to death with my bare hands. Had to. It was a part of Pops’ vigorous training. Before you were given a blick, you had to prove you could survive without it. I’d take that over mercy any fucking day.

“Listen,” Jahad continued. Wouldn’t shut the fuck up because although the tension in the room had been created by Blaise, he shifted it to something different. Something dark, cold, and menacing. Took us down a lane down memory road neither of us wanted to go down. Low key, he probably wouldn’t shut the fuck up because he was struggling too. “I?—”

“Y’all remember the price tag on the last one?” Blaise cut in, shifting his eyes back and forth between Jahad and I.

Of course we remembered.

“Heavy,” Jahad added before leaning forward to grab the bottle. Instead of pouring a shot, he popped the cork and drank from the neck.

I didn’t know what type of time these niggas were on today. They were taking it to dark places. Places we hadn’t been in years.

Blaise looked over at him. “You turned your back on us.”

I was grateful for the change of subject. However, I was gone already. Stuck in that dark place. Felt like they were too. The conversation had shifted a little from mercy but the direction it took could still very much reroute and take it right back there. We had Jah to thank for that. Nigga could’ve gotten B to speak up in a completely different way. Especially after we all agreed to leave that shit buried years ago. I didn’t just bury the word. Shit, I buried me. Mercy was created at a pivotal point in my life. I was a young nigga. Impressionable. Full of emotion. Full of rage. Confusion.. Last time we had a Mercy meeting, I got to going. Samuel didn’t like that shit. Hell naw he didn’t.

“Never. I turned my back on him,” Jah stated. “I?—

“You can’t see it that way because... you can’t see it,” I interrupted. “Nigga... you were always there. And then,” I shrugged. “You weren’t. I get it though.” Sighing, I nodded. “I fuckin’ get it. You don’t owe us a muthafuckin’ thing. Big bro gotta do what’s best for him, don’t you? Took care of us long enough, haven’t you?”

Jahad’s brows furrowed, confused.

Rightfully so. The detour took me in a different direction than earlier for sure. It was mercy. Had he left that shit out of it, I would have backed him a little. But... I couldn’t because it took me somewhere else. Being taken to that place... it put a lot of shit into perspective. I understood Blaise. I got it, completely.

---