by Dwayne Reed
Dad and Moms went to run errands this morning and left all three of us with Ms. Estelle for most of the day, so we head to Maria’s to eat. My stomach grumbles at the thought of what we’ll eat, while I’m still hype off of my first real rap performance outside of the house. It gets louder as we get closer to their building, letting me know I’m crazy hungry. Rappin’ is hard work!
That night we have rice and beans, stewed chicken, and tostones, which look like light green bananas that somebody smashed into the table with their fist. If Moms saw me eating she’d be big mad at my manners for shoving so much food into my face so fast and chewing with my mouth open, but the Notorious D.O.G. hasn’t really eaten since Thursday night. Before scared stomach took over and made me nauseous just thinking about it. After I shove the last spoonful of rice into my mouth, I slump back in my chair, thinking about how good it feels to eat hot food, cooked in a real kitchen.
Some people don’t even have one house to eat in, and this week I ate at two. Sunny has almost the same thing on every time I see him, but I have all these new clothes to change into after I cover myself in puke. And even though today was the first time strangers heard me rhyme, my parents and brothers are always here to listen to me. Everyone should have a place to eat and sleep. Everyone should have clean clothes. Everyone should get a chance to be heard and have people to clap for them. People should know Sunny’s name.
WHEN SUNNY SINGS A SONG
EVERYBODY LISTENS.
THE SHOW HE BE GIVIN’
DON’T NOBODY WANNA MISS IT.
HE’S ALWAYS IN IT,
SHINING EVERY MINUTE.
A STAR WITH HIS VOICE,
FROM THE START TO THE FINISH.
WHEN HE’S IN HIS SPOT
YOU CAN TELL THAT HE’S HOT.
FROM THE BOTTOM TO THE TOP,
HE GIVES EVERYTHING HE’S GOT!
We don’t notice that Diego the cat is chilling under the dinner table waiting for scraps to fall until C.J. lets out a burp so loud that Diego runs, scared, out of the kitchen.
“Wow, look at that! It looks like you’re magical, too, C.J.,” Maria tells him. “Diego can make things I can’t find magically appear, and your gassy breath can make him disappear. Amazing.”
“Beans, beans, the magical fruit. The more you eat, the more you toot, Ri-Ri! This whole kitchen gon’ be stankin’ in about five minutes. And it ain’t just gon’ be me,” C.J. sings, shooting the joke back at Maria, looking at our empty plates that were full of rice and beans just a few minutes ago. My stomach does kinda feel like something dangerous is gon’ come shooting out any second, but not like yesterday’s puke-fest. This time I just feel full and a little bit sleepy. But I have to do something first. As much as I want to hang out some more with my friends, it’s time to go home. For once, I’m feeling like I know what to say. I gotta get home now so I can write it down for my presentation.
CHAPTER 18
MOMS TRIES TO ACT LIKE IT ISN’T STRANGE that she’s walking with me to school for the second time in only a week, but at least she doesn’t try to hug me or reach for a corny high five in public this time. She turns to face me at the bottom of the steps in front of the school and just pauses to look me up and down. I know Dad probably taught her how to dap me up, so it’s kinda funny when she lifts her fist to bump mine just before I turn to walk into the building. There’s no big breakfast leftover, wrapped up for me in my backpack, and nobody calling today big. It’s just my second Monday as a fifth grader. I see Mr. James and run up behind him to tell him I won’t be running out the classroom today.
“You promise not to leave us hanging this time?” he says, walking beside me toward the classroom door. As always, his shoes match his tie. This time the tie seems way too big, shiny and covered in polka dots. If it wasn’t for those dots, I think he’d probably disappear into the wall of words a little bit, standing in front of us matching too much.
“I promise, Mr. James. I skipped breakfast and didn’t eat too much last night, just in case.” Just the thought of standing in front of the whole class again makes me feel a little gurgle deep in my stomach, but this time I feel sorta different. This time I feel like I really have something to say.
“Yo. Just remember that your mama don’t like you wasting your food, bruh,” C.J. says as he shuffles farther down the hall to Mrs. Leary’s class. “If it gets real bad, just think about all those dishes she gon’ have you doin’ if she find out you covered the boys’ bathroom floor in last night’s dinner. We can’t lose you to dishes, Notorious D.O.G.,” he yells from the doorway before disappearing past Mrs. Leary’s wrinkled, bony hand. I stand there for a second smiling like a goofy, hearing someone call me that in front of everybody. My hands tighten around the straps of my backpack as I walk into 5-B.
HERE I GO AGAIN, HERE I GO AGAIN!
I’M READY TO LET PEOPLE KNOW WHO I AM.
LAST TIME WAS WACK, BUT THIS TIME IS DIFFERENT,
HERE TO GIVE THE CLASSROOM A REASON TO LISTEN.
SUNNY TOLD ME TO LET MY VOICE BE HEARD,
SO I’MA DO MY THING WITH MY MOVES AND WORDS.
MOMS TOLD ME TO LET MY VOICE BE HEARD,
SO I’MA DO MY THING WITH MY MOVES AND WORDS.
I KNOW THAT I’M SMALL, BUT WHAT’S THAT MEAN?
CUZ WHEN I OPEN UP, THEY GON’ HEAR BIG THINGS!
I AM SIMON BARNES, THE D.O.G.
AND LOOK, DON’T FORGET THE NOTORIOUS, SEE!
SUNNY TOLD ME TO LET MY VOICE BE HEARD,
SO I’MA DO MY THING WITH MY MOVES AND WORDS.
MOMS TOLD ME TO LET MY VOICE BE HEARD,
SO I’MA DO MY THING WITH MY MOVES AND WORDS.
“Hey, Mr. James, ain’t you scared he gon’ run away again?”
“Like I said, Kenny, we all need a second chance sometimes. That was the whole point of Friday. To try things out. Now we all know a little bit of what it feels like to share our thoughts out loud in front of each other.”
“Well, I ain’t got all day!” Lil Kenny yells as if he’s got a job and appointments waiting, making the whole class snicker at me under their breath. Maria stays facing the front of the class, careful not to turn around smiling too big at me. She knows how I feel about today.
“So we’re all gon’ be respectful, right? Cuz if it was us we’d want everybody to show us some respect when we’re talking, too.” I focus on the I KNOW I CAN that hangs over Mr. James’s head, just now noticing how far below the words he’s standing. Mr. James probably had the mark lowest to the ground on the wall at his mama’s house, too. At first I thought he was so much taller than me, like everybody else, because of how much of his face his forehead takes up, but nah, Mr. James is a small guy, too. That big ol’ corny smile he always got on his face makes it so I never noticed until now, though. Just like C.J. at the Halloween party dressed as his dad’s favorite rapper, nobody messes with Mr. James, either.
For some reason, today Bobby’s seated in the same row as Maria but across the aisle. Probably got into big trouble with Mr. James and now he can’t sit in the back anymore. Just as I stand up to walk past him, a foot flings out from under his desk and I feel myself flying forward, my face almost eating dust. But Maria’s hand catches the back of my shirt. Bobby mumbles something under his breath that I can’t hear over Maria whispering, “It’s okay, Simon. You got this, Notorious D.O.G.” As Bobby’s mumbles get louder, Mr. James walks around the side of the desks and sits in my seat. I’ve never seen a teacher sit at a kid’s desk before, but for him it’s easy. People always come at us short people about being small, but I bet they WISH they could squeeze into just about anything, I try to tell myself.
IT’S YO’ TIME, SIMON, IT’S YO’ TIME!
BETTER DO YO’ THANG, BETTER GET YO’ SHINE.
GOT A WHOLE LOTTA FANS OUT THERE JUST WAITIN’.
NEVER WORRY ’BOUT FOLKS OUT THERE HATIN’.
I WAS MADE FOR THIS, I’M A STAR AND I KNOW IT.
A FRESH YOUNG DUDE, NOW I’M FINNA
GO SHOW IT.
AND EVERYBODY’S GONNA SAY, “HE’S THE MAN!”
REAL TALK! NO DOUBT! HOMIE, YES I AM!
WOOF! WOOF!
“Sunny Jackson is a musician who struggles with homelessness, and has lived in Creighton Park his whole life,” I read from my first flash card. I look up from it for a second, seeing Bobby going back and forth between looking at me and glancing around at the class. He shuffles around in his seat for a little while, making the bottom of his chair screech across the floor, until Mr. James reaches from behind him, putting one hand on the back of his seat to hold it in place. “Until last week I never thought about where he lived exactly. Or anything else about him. All I knew was that he was the old man always sweeping up everybody’s leaves and trash on my block.
“Then I found out he used to go to school here a long time ago, when he was a kid. And when he got older he started working here as a janitor cuz he never left. But before that, when he was a kid, he used to sing in the kids’ choir at his mama’s church, where he got to sing solos. Everybody clapped for him cuz he was really good. And when he wasn’t at church or rehearsal on the weekends, he would hang out in Creighton Community Park. Back then it was different, so he used to be over there all the time, and he would get into all types of stuff. One time he even walked up on a girl who climbed a tree to save her cat. And when he got older he married her.”
“Yo! Mista James, Simon up there tellin’ love stories!”
“Relax, Kenny.”
“Anyway, he used to be singing in these hallways when he cleaned Booker T., which was around way before any of us was even born. But then, one day, he lost his job because the principal said his job didn’t matter no more.”
“Dat’s CRAZY! If we ain’t have no janitors, the boys’ bathroom would still be covered in your spaghetti chunks as we SPEAK!” Lil Kenny blurts out right before Victor G. slaps the back of his head and Mr. James gives him the look. “My bad.” Suddenly I don’t need my flash cards. Lil Kenny blurting things out and the way Bobby’s looking at me make me remember something.
“Yeah, well. Sunny Jackson lost his job because the principal back then didn’t think he was important, and a lot of people have been treating him like that ever since. He could sing so good that he started getting paid to sing for a while after he lost his job here, but that didn’t last for long. He lost everything, and people started walking past him on the street and in the park, where he has to sleep almost every night, like he ain’t even there.
“This past weekend I learned he’s sixty-three years old, and if the homeless shelter down the street is too full he has to sleep in the park and find his dinner in the trash can if someone doesn’t give him something to eat. He doesn’t have somewhere to wash his clothes, and he doesn’t get a lot of hugs because people think he stinks.” Moms is always trying to hug me.
“But I ain’t never heard anybody that sounds like Sunny. And he’s one of the nicest, funniest people I know, who has all the best stories. He always remembers me and believes I’m great at things. He calls me his boy like he’s my real grandpa. And he’s always laughing and joking with everybody, even when he has a lot he could be sad about.” For a little bit I don’t know what else to say. I just stand there thinking about Sunny and the shelter and all of his friends and then I can’t stop myself from laughing.
“Yo, what’s so funny, Barnes? Gonna run out again like a little scaredy-cat?” Bobby’s voice reminds me I’m still standing in front of the class. And it isn’t the worst thing in the world.
“I was just thinking about how I almost saw Sunny’s butt the other day. His pants are always too big and he don’t never have no belt.” Maria’s hand flies over her mouth to control how much she wants to laugh. She remembers seeing that, too.
“I guess what I’m tryna say is that last week I didn’t know nothin’ about Sunny except that he was always nice to me and he was always cleaning up the sidewalks even though we never asked him to. I never thought about him at all, really. But now I know I should have known Sunny a long time ago. And there’s a whole lot of people like him in Creighton Park who we should know, too. My dad and the people at the shelter taught me the people who live on the street are just like us. That they’re people who deserve to be treated how we want to be treated. We don’t know nothin’ about what happened in their life, and we shouldn’t judge how they live.”
Maria stands up at her desk and starts clapping like I just accepted an award. She claps so hard it looks like she’s hurting her hands, but she just keeps smiling at me and keeps going until Lil Kenny’s up to clap, too. He’s probably just happy to have an excuse to make noise, but it still feels good. I walk back to my seat before I can mess anything up. I hope what I said was enough. Falling back into my seat as Mr. James claps on the way to the front, I hope Sunny would be proud of me. I’m glad the presentation’s finally over, but when I think of the way he clapped for me on Saturday, I feel like there’s more I need to do.
CHAPTER 19
WHEN I GOT THE CONFIDENCE TO GO IN front of the class to talk about Sunny, I wasn’t tryna make more work for everybody else. I wasn’t even tryna earn extra credit. But that’s still sort of what happened. Turns out Mr. James got so excited about my presentation that he turned our oral presentations into even bigger projects where we had to find ways to do something about whatever the timely issue in our presentations was. I was cool with that, though.
See, after school that day of my presentation, when Moms got home, I told her all about what happened and she asked me what I was gonna do.
“About what?” I asked.
“So you learned all that about Sunny, and you not gonna do nothin’ about it, son? Come on now, I know I raised you better than that,” she said, staring at me over the kitchen counter while I worked on a different assignment. I scratched my head a little, feeling confused because I really didn’t know for a second. All this time I thought I was just supposed to tell people about Sunny and then maybe something would change if more people knew.
Buzz, buzz. I jumped a little, not used to hearing the buzzer from downstairs ring. When Moms opened the door, it was C.J. and his mom standing there with bags.
“Sharon, Simon didn’t tell me y’all were comin’ by. Wassup, girl?” Moms asked, looking confused, as she hugged C.J.’s mom.
“Go on and tell her, Cornelius,” Auntie Sharon said, looking down at C.J. as he shuffled back and forth with his plastic garbage bag.
“Clothes, Miss Barnes. I—I—I got some clothes to give Simon.” C.J. ain’t never serious like that unless he’s talking to adults. I didn’t know why he was being so weird talking to Moms. I walked over to stand next to her at the front door and dap him up.
“Aw, baby, that’s real sweet, but don’t you think… they gon’ be a little… too big for Simon?”
“They not for Simon, ma’am. They’re for the kids that go to Booker T. who need them,” C.J. explained, handing the bag to me. Auntie Sharon dropped her bag in front of me, too.
“Well, what am I supposed to do with this, man? I been done with my project.”
“I don’t know. Maybe you could give them to Mr. James. I told Ma about what you said in school and she made me clean out my whole closet, dude. Just take the bag. It’s jerseys in there that I ain’t wanna give away.”
“That’s an interesting idea, C.J. We were just talking about something like that, right, Si?”
“Uh… yeah… something like that.” This whole conversation was making me sweaty because it sounded like more work, but Moms was kinda right. What was the point in learning all that stuff about Sunny if everything was gonna stay the same?
The next day C.J., Maria, and I saw Mr. James walking around the cafeteria and Maria got him to sit with us. I told him about the clothes C.J. and his mom brought over to our house and something I’d started wondering: Are there kids who go to our school who are like Sunny? I knew I’d been smelling the weird smell in our classroom and I knew it wasn
’t something I was imagining. Mr. James just smiled and nodded.
“Yes, I’ve got a cabinet we can keep all those in. And washers and dryers sound amazing! And free lunch is already a thing. I like the way y’all think!” he said. “Let’s talk about this some more this week.” We were all surprised that talking about this felt so easy and that Mr. James was down. We’re so used to adults talking about how doing things we wanna do costs too much money.
CHAPTER 20
SQUEEEAK. GOOSE BUMPS POP UP ALL over my body and I see the little hairs on my arms stand straight up like a bunch of soldiers. This is the third time C.J.’s gotten too close to the speaker while holding the mic cuz he won’t just stand still. Dad stands next to him looking like he regrets letting us set up the first Creighton Park Community Outreach Open Mic. But it was my idea, and I didn’t want to do it without my squad. Even though Miss Wanda won’t let C.J. handle the mic by himself, she let him do the sound check. Now we’re all suffering listening to him say Mic check one, two, three for the one hundredth time even though it sounds the same as it did the first five times. Dad yanks the mic from his hands and pushes it into the top of the mic stand, moving it farther away from the speaker so the squeak doesn’t happen again.