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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 she done came down on a rock.

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. I would never tell anyone any of the secrets that Jazz asked me to keep for her. And I wasn't going to tell my favorite aunt that she was anything less than perfect in my eyes, either. I would never tell her that because she needed so much to be perfect to me.

And 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 there with us.

I mean, what the fuck 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 my eye, her eyes so much like my big sister 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 as hell by it, and would make the 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 that acted like parents. And even though I had to be a grown man out there with them, I knew with Jazz...until that very moment...that 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 when mama snapped, 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 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.