Beyond Poetry

by Nathan Jarelle

  “Why’d you bring me here?” he asked.

  “I brought you here because I know I could’ve written better if I had someone to encourage me when I was your age,” she said. “You can go places as a good writer, beyond Philly or anywhere else in this crazy ghetto we’re trying to survive in. So, keep on writing, Junior. Whatever you do, no matter what happens, don’t stop!”

  Sandy handed Junior his library card with his name written neatly in cursive on the back: Leonard Gerard Robinson Jr. He spent over an hour looking up books beside his mother until he happened across two or three authors that resonated with him. Sandy couldn’t help but smile as Junior breezed through his set of books while waiting in line at the register.

  “Got everything?” she asked.

  “Think so,” said Junior. “You think I could be a good writer?” he asked.

  Sandy kissed him on the cheek.

  “I think you could be anything you want to be, Junior. You don’t have to be a Michael Jordan, Bo Jackson, or Randall Cunningham. I want you to use your head for something else besides a target for someone to throw a ball at. Knowledge can’t be deflated, but a football or a basketball can. Do you understand?”

  “Yes ma’am.” Junior nodded. “Yes ma’am, I do.”

  I break my own heart.

  And sometimes you do it for me.

  —LEONARD G. ROBINSON JR.

  Two

  The morning after Junior got into trouble over his Walkman, he rode the bus to school, angry and embittered. Senior’s words had cut him deeply, depriving Junior of his vigor throughout the day at school.

  By the time Junior began his freshman year at Benjamin Franklin High in September of 1995, poetry was second nature to him. Since Lawrence’s passing, he had amassed over four thousand poems. In fact, Junior had filled so many journals that Sandy bought a large shipping box just for him to store his thoughts in. And since the Robinsons didn’t own a computer, Junior wrote all of his entries by hand. When storing his work became a chore, Sandy bought Junior an extra dresser to house his works. After every journal Junior finished, he laced it with a whipping signature and added the date, time, and place where he was. Some journals Junior finished in his bedroom, down at the library, or on the back porch.

  Standing at his locker inside Franklin High, Junior fingered the combination slowly, still depleted of all enthusiasm from the night before. Inside was a row of poems he’d taped to the walls and ceiling. Poetry, it seemed, was his only escape. Before the bell sounded to start his day, he took down the old poems and replaced them with new ones from the previous night.

  Junior hated Franklin High. The teachers there didn’t give a damn and neither did the kids. He had earned the name “Little Poet”, as he was always seen with a journal in his hands. In conversation, he was bashful but genuine, sweet, and had an innocent smile. Although the girls found Junior cute, he lacked the confidence to keep their interest for long. He looked down when he talked and avoided the social cliques. It was hard for Junior to talk to anyone. After the strife following Lawrence’s death, he remained leery of everyone around him.

  Franklin High wasn’t the same drug or gang-infested warzone as Crawford, but it was still a warzone. Tatted on the side of an old automotive shop across from Junior’s school was a picture of the devil and the caption “Hell Zone”. And that’s what it was. Weeks earlier, police had found a man with his thoughts blown out from a double-barreled shotgun. Out in front of the school, embroidered in the sidewalk, was a memorial for the deceased man police found by the auto shop. Hanging above the shop on a weak phone line was a cluster of mismatched sneakers, some of which had fallen over the years. Junior was hoping to graduate from Franklin without becoming a memorial.

  Adjusting to high school for Junior was stressful. Like the rec center back at home, the boys were much bigger and taller than him. They’d walk by Junior in a crowded hallway, snickering at his homemade haircut, harping on his clothes. The girls there were mostly pretty –- pretty far out of Junior’s league. Some wore large hoop earrings with vibrant hair and flashy jewelry. Not to mention, the teachers there taught at a much faster pace than what Junior remembered in middle school the year before. The popular kids at Franklin excelled in sports, sold dope, or bootleg tapes, CDs, and VHSs. The rest were comedic like Martin Lawrence, had natural beauty like Halle Berry or Denzel Washington, or could rap lyrics like Biggie Smalls. Junior was none of these things. He was awkward and didn’t talk much, wore clothes Sandy bought for him down at the thrift store and had a homemade haircut to save Senior money.

  The few standout athletes at Franklin High were all on the football team and received special treatment. One kid, who was a senior, was awful at reading but had the best grades because he was a star receiver who garnered collegiate attention. Another kid got to park in the staff lot because his father once played ball for the Philadelphia Eagles. Few teachers gave a damn about the kids’ futures. The kids with star appeal were treated better than everyone else, while the regular blue-collar kids like Junior found themselves at the back of the line.

  Fights happened at Franklin like anywhere else. At freshman orientation, Junior saw a kid get a jailhouse beatdown for accidentally bumping into another kid. The victim ended up with a broken nose and concussion. Later that same day, a fight happened in the lunchroom—three girls against one. At the end of it, hunks of braided hair and blood were scattered across the cafeteria floor. Supposedly, it was over a boy who wasn’t even a student there.

  Down on the first-floor near the freight elevators, kids gathered in a tight circle with their spliffs and performed freestyle rap battles. Each day, students brought an arsenal of lyrics to perform in what was known as the “cipher”. The champion was a guy named “Spider Da Chief”, a twenty-year-old repeat sophomore who was rumored to have once done a verse with a rapper named “Big L” out of Harlem, New York. And every freestyle battle Spider participated in, he brought his own personal human beatbox with him. The Doug E. Fresh wannabe was a freshman known as Hamm. Using his mouth as a mixing machine, Hamm could drum any rap song past or present to the delight of the cipher.

  Junior went to the cipher once, but the stench of heavy weed was too much for him. He passed on smoking after watching his fellow classmates cough stitches into their scalps as though they had the flu. During a break, a kid named “Jokey” hustled bootlegged movies that hadn’t yet made it to VHS. For the right price, students could get their hair cornrowed by a girl named Sasha during third-period gym. Weekends were for house parties. Somebody, somewhere, knew some kid whose parents were out of town and there would be a party with alcohol. Someone always came looking for a fight. Eventually, the cops would show up and shut everything down.

  For lunch, students could eat either inside or outside on the school’s campus. To dodge his peers and avoid conversation, Junior ate on the bleachers near the ballfields. Afterward, he’d read or write inside of his journal until the bell sounded, ending lunch. But despite going out of his way to avoid confrontation, trouble found Junior.

  Midway through his dreaded day, a kid, known around school as “Big Warren”, ran behind Junior as he walked to class, snatched his journal from out of his hand, and darted down the hallway, goading Junior to chase him. During the run, Big Warren began ripping pages out of Junior’s book, taunting him, daring him to fight. The chase lasted from the third-floor beyond Junior’s locker, down to the first-floor and back to the main level. Winded and gassed, Junior panted like a dog as he stood bent over at the waist with his hands glued to both knees. Meanwhile, Big Warren continued to tear into Junior’s journal, inciting a crowd. Leaking testosterone, he egged Junior to a fight, calling him names and claiming to have slept with Junior’s mother as the crowd oohed.

  Ticked off, Junior rushed at Big Warren and paid for it with a body slam to the floor. Outweighed by more than a hundred pounds and under-matched, Junior was no threat to the Franklin High superstar linebacker. He scooped Junior off his feet
, bouncing him from locker to locker before pinning him to the floor. As Junior flopped around, writhing in pain, Big Warren smacked him across the ear and head until the side of Junior’s face turned red. Then, as Junior tried to cover himself, Big Warren gave him a final shot to the stomach, folding Junior in half like a cheap lawn chair.

  “Welcome to Franklin, bitch.” Big Warren stood over him.

  He then opened Junior’s journal, gagged, and spat in the center.

  “Write that, faggot!”

  Afterward, he strolled off, leaving Junior in a pile of severed poetry.

  Hurt and embarrassed, Junior crawled across the floor, clutching his head and body with one hand as he collected the torn poems from his journal with the other. As most laughed at his misery, a couple of students helped him to his feet. Wobbling on fidgety legs, he scrounged the rest of his belongings and went in the opposite direction, using a row of lockers for support.

  Later that afternoon, Junior discovered that he had been the victim of a brutal hazing. Each year, members of Franklin High’s football team would scope out a freshman for demolition. Junior was an easy target, or so they thought. He was a bony, soft-spoken kid that appeared easy to punk or push over and would offer little resistance. What no one knew, except for Junior, was that contrary to his “safe” demeanor, he was tired of life kicking him around.

  When Junior’s day ended, he spied on Big Warren, following his adversary as he returned to his locker to tell his girlfriend goodbye. In the few minutes Junior spent tailing Big Warren from a distance, he began hating his adversary even more. Not only was Big Warren the star linebacker, he was also quite the smooth-talking pretty boy – which Junior envied. On his way to his bus in front of the school, Junior observed as Big Warren high-fived students and teachers alike. The school’s principal, Dr. Stanley, adored Big Warren, calling him a “living legend” and praised him as his favorite in all of Franklin. Junior looked down at his severed journal from earlier and growled. As he continued to follow Big Warren out to the bus, he thought of how helpless he had been to protect Lawrence and became agitated. At that moment, whatever punk was inside Junior left his fragile body. He became surly and vengeful, like Senior, wanting to do nothing more than destroy Big Warren and end his dreams of someday playing professional football.

  As Big Warren boarded his bus, Junior bypassed his own. Next to the main entrance in the garbage bin was an empty glass bottle of Lipton Iced Tea. Junior armed himself with the glass bottle and climbed onto Big Warren’s bus and followed him to the back. The moment Big Warren turned to take his seat, Junior readied himself with his weapon.

  “Remember me, bitch?” said Junior.

  In one arcing motion, he cracked Big Warren across the face, breaking the bottle in half as glass scattered throughout the bus. As his adversary fell onto all fours, Junior mounted Big Warren from behind, grinding the spiky bottle into his adversary’s ear as Big Warren wailed like a wounded pig. Junior then looped his arm around the kid’s neck, riding him like a wild bull as Big Warren gasped for air.

  “You tore up my journal! I’m gonna make sure you never play football again!”

  Junior reached into his pocket for an ink pen and jammed it into Big Warren’s arm, dropping him flat against the bus floor. Junior then mounted him and began pounding Big Warren’s face with punches as he begged for mercy. As he reached to move Junior off of him, Junior bit him across the hand as other riders cheered on the melee. The bus driver, a retired Vietnam veteran, took his time getting to the back, allowing Junior to carry on as he choked Big Warren until he turned blue. No student interfered in the savagery. It felt good to Junior, releasing his demons from the past year around his enemy’s throat until the blood vessels in Big Warren’s eyes burst, and he gagged for air. It was more than just the journal. It was his Walkman from last night. Not getting by with the kids in Brooke’s Rowe. It was Lawrence from the previous summer and everything else that had gone wrong for him since the move over the past year. It was the first and only time in Junior’s life that he had come close to killing someone. He was a kid overtaken by the devil.

  By the time the bus driver had cleared a path of hooting high schoolers, Junior’s shirt was covered in blood. Junior looked up to notice the kids were all looking at him as if he was some sort of rabid animal; he was. Back to reality, he dismounted Big Warren and apologized to his peers as the bus driver escorted him back into Franklin High to the principal’s office. When staff learned about the damage done to Big Warren, the police were called, and Junior was taken down to the Juvenile Justice Center down in Center City.

  Sandy was at work when she got the call from JJC about what had happened. The aide there told her that Junior had been arrested for aggravated assault and battery of a student on school grounds. Junior was huddled on a lone bench inside the detective’s office when Sandy arrived to pick him up. Fire was in her eyes as she showed up still donning her carrier uniform, scowling at him. When Junior noticed it was his mother there to get him as opposed to Senior, he exhaled; Sandy – although she was strict – was much easier to explain things to than Senior.

  At an officer’s desk, Junior waited as his mother signed his release form and read the narrative concerning his incident at school.

  “I-I didn’t start that fight!” he began explaining. “I was headed to lunch and then…”

  Before he could finish, Sandy buttoned him up. “Quiet!” she snapped. “Can’t you see I’m trying to read, Junior?”

  As Sandy read and continued filling out his release forms, she eventually asked Junior if he was alright.

  “You OK?”

  “I’m alright,” he said. “Man, I swear on a stack of bibles! I was minding my business on my way to lunch when…”

  “I didn’t ask you what happened yet,” she interrupted. “I asked if you were OK. Are you hurt or anything?”

  “I’m good,” he assured. “But I’m telling you, it wasn’t my fault. I know I might’ve lost it a little bit, Ma, but it was Big Warren, he kept on…”

  Sandy then yoked Junior by his collar. She was angrier than she had been when she first arrived to pick him up. Talking through her teeth, she demanded Junior stop talking.

  “We’re inside a goddamn police station,” she snarled at him. “You wanna incriminate yourself in front of all these cops? Now, stop talking! You can tell me on the way home!”

  Junior got the message.

  On the way home, Junior told his story to Sandy on repeat as she listened without saying a word. Fearful of what awaited him when he got home, Junior re-told his story again with a higher pitch than the first, second, and third time he told his story. According to the paperwork filed by his school, he was suspended indefinitely until his expulsion hearing the following week. Sandy about flipped when she read that Junior would miss at least ten days of school and that he could face expulsion.

  “Fuck!” she cussed. “Fuck me!”

  Sandy didn’t say the word “fuck” a lot. So, when she fucked, she meant it. Junior didn’t say it, but in his head, he thought the same. Fuck, was his mother upset. During the drive, Sandy raised holy hell at the possibility of him getting expelled. He was supposed to be the first male Robinson ever to graduate from anything. Senior dropped out young. Junior’s grandfather never went. Meanwhile, Lawrence was buried in an unmarked grave with a bullet in the back of his head next to Sandy’s mother who quit after the eighth grade.

  As they entered their tiny row house on Kennedy Street, Sandy removed her jacket and laid it across the sofa cushion before rendering her final verdict.

  “Believe it or not, I’m not mad at you,” she said. “I can’t be.”

  “You’re not?” Junior asked, surprised.

  “It’s been a lot on us lately with Lawrence being gone and everything,” Sandy empathized. “I haven’t been myself either over the past year. So, how in the world can I expect you to be any better, right? For God’s sake. You’re only fourteen.”

  J
unior looked on as Sandy lifted up a picture of Lawrence and him from the coffee table.

  “I just don’t want you to go around using last summer as an excuse to fight, Junior. Like your daddy said, these niggas out here don’t give a damn about nothin’ and certainly not you. It was my dream for you and Lawrence to graduate high school, and it still is. Regardless of how any of this turns out – do you understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” answered Junior. “So…I’m not in trouble?” he asked.

  “I don’t know yet,” she told him. “I haven’t made up my mind. We’ll see how this all turns out. Now go away before I change my mind. Let me talk things over with your daddy.”

  Quickly, before Sandy changed her mind, Junior hurried up the staircase, down the hall, and into his bedroom. Careful to stay out of his parents’ sight, he kept inside his room except for when Sandy called him for dinner.

  That night, through the floorboards of his bedroom, Junior overheard his parents arguing over the incident as he wrote inside his journal. He hadn’t realized it until then, but his parents had fallen behind on the bills. A picture of him together with Lawrence on his dresser rattled with great fury as Senior’s voice ricocheted from the walls. There were talks of the family splitting up and him moving to New Jersey. Next was Delaware and then Maryland which was funny to him considering Junior hadn’t been as far as an hour away from Philly. But whenever his parents brought up the notion of divorce, it broke him down. Distracted by the rhetoric of being separated, he blurred his parents’ talks of leaving with his Walkman. Junior’s parents had been married for twenty-two years. If not for him and his brother, Senior and Sandy would’ve split ages ago. Junior also learned that night that on the day Lawrence was killed, his parents had gone down to the courthouse to file for divorce. Together, they’d punked out at the commissioner’s office, promising to give things one last try just to arrive home to their ten-year-old son shot dead in the middle of Joseph Boulevard. Sadly, losing Lawrence was the band-aid their marriage needed to stand on its last leg for the time being. The irony in his parents’ marital woes prompted Junior to write a new poem.