If I Grow Up

by Todd Strasser

  “This is Precious,” I said. “She lives in Number Three.”

  Number Three was the building across the yard from ours. Until that year, my friends and I had stayed close to our own building, warned by our families not to venture too far because we might get caught in the cross fire of gangs shooting. But now we were older and more daring.

  We were talking to Precious when Marcus’s Mercedes pulled up to the curb on Abernathy Avenue. It was rare to see gangbangers that early in the day. Glancing around warily, the leader of the Disciples started toward us. Marcus’s expression was intense and serious all the time. You never saw him joking or clowning. As he got close, I could see the small tattoo of a tear at the corner of his right eye. For people on the outside, the tear was supposed to mean someone close to you had been killed. But in the projects, we knew differently—that tear really meant you had killed someone.

  Terrell straightened up. “Uh, hi, Cousin Marcus.” His voice quavered.

  Marcus barely acknowledged the greeting. “Watch my car,” he said. He’d started toward our building when I blocked his path with my bike.

  Marcus stopped and scowled at me.

  “There’s something you should see. Over here,” I said, and led Marcus to the window guard. Terrell got on his bike and trailed behind until Marcus swung around. “I tell you to come?” he asked sharply.

  Head bowed, Terrell rode back to the bench. In the cold shadow of the building, Marcus picked up the window guard and stared up at the highest floors where Laqueta lived with Jamar and Darnell. Then he looked at me. “DeShawn, right? Raven’s son?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Anyone else know about this?”

  I shook my head. “No, sir.”

  Marcus slowly squeezed the window guard until it doubled over. The skin of his dark hands tightened and his knuckles bulged. The metal creaked until it formed a V, like the V in the furrows of skin between his eyes as he fixed them on me. “Know what happens to kids who snitch to the police?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I can trust you?”

  I nodded. “What about Darnell?”

  “I’ll take care of that,” Marcus said. “Meanwhile this is our secret, understand?”

  I understood.

  IF I GROW UP

  “Who was that?” Precious asked when I returned to the bench where she was talking to Terrell.

  Her eyes widened when we told her. “You Disciples?”

  “Not yet,” Terrell answered.

  Even in the sun, the cold gradually seeped through your clothes. Precious shivered and hugged herself. “You want to come to my place and watch TV?”

  It was tempting. Neither Terrell nor I had ever been invited into a girl’s home before.

  “Maybe another time,” I said. Terrell scowled at me, and I nodded toward Marcus’s car. The corners of my friend’s mouth turned down.

  Precious’s pretty lips pursed. “See you later.” She started across the yard toward her building.

  Terrell and I rode around the yard, always keeping Marcus’s car in sight. I asked him how Laqueta was, and he said she’d cried all night.

  “Jamar stay with her?” I asked.

  Terrell shook his head. He got off his bike and started sliding around on a frozen puddle, leaving white scratches in the dirty, brownish ice. “If I grow up, I’m gonna have a ride like Marcus’s,” he said through chattering teeth. He must’ve been freezing, wearing only that hoodie. “And chains and bling like you wouldn’t believe. You know Rance got a solid gold chain that weighs five pounds?”

  “How do you know that?” I asked. Rance Jones was the leader of the Gentry Gangstas. I’d never seen him, and I was pretty sure Terrell hadn’t either.

  “I heard from someone,” Terrell said. “And he got a twenty-five-karat diamond pinkie ring. Them Gangstas use kids nine, ten years old.”

  “Maybe you should join them Gangstas,” I joked.

  Terrell gave me a sour look. “Marcus is my first cousin. He should let me join the Disciples.”

  “And get jumped in?” I asked. To prove you’d be loyal to the gang, you had to let yourself be beaten up and burned with cigarettes.

  Terrell shrugged. “Everybody else been through it.”

  On Abernathy Avenue, a police cruiser stopped behind Marcus’s car. The window went down, and Officer Patterson wagged a thick, brown finger at us. He was the only person I’d ever heard of who’d grown up in Frederick Douglass and become a cop. I slipped off the bench and went to see what he wanted.

  “How you doing, DeShawn?” he asked. He had a round face and a thick, bushy mustache. Growing up, he’d known my mother, and he always said hello when he saw me.

  “Okay.” I leaned in the open window. The car smelled like coffee. A shotgun and a computer were mounted next to the driver’s seat. Officer Patterson nodded at the Mercedes. “Marcus was that little boy’s uncle, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Give him my condolences, okay?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Tell him I’m sorry about his nephew.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Officer Patterson took a sip of coffee from a paper cup and brushed his mustache with the back of his hand.

  “Gonna join the Disciples someday?”

  “No, sir. Gonna stay in school and out of trouble.”

  “Good boy.” Officer Patterson reached over and patted me on the shoulder. Then he drove off. I went back to the bench.

  “What do you talk to him for?” Terrell asked.

  “He knew my momma.”

  We huddled on the bench, shivering. The three identical buildings in the Frederick Douglass Project loomed up like dirty tombstones. Half the windows were boarded over with wood. The grounds around the buildings were either cracked concrete walks covered with broken glass, or hard-packed, bare, brown dirt with a few trees and some dead brown weeds.

  Benches lined the walks, but they were mostly broken. Same with the playground. There were no swings on the swing set, just rusty chains hanging down from the top. The seesaw was gone. What little sand was left in the sandbox was the color of dark smoke. Only the rusty monkey bars remained. As shorties, we used to play on them for hours and then go home with burnt red palms.

  We waited until Marcus came back, then, shivering cold, we hurried inside. The lobby was lit by one long, flickering bulb. The mailboxes in the wall had all been busted open by drug fiends looking for welfare checks. The walls were covered with colorful, loopy graffiti and the black slashes of Disciples’ tags. Here and there someone had hung a small Christmas wreath or a bunch of holly outside a door.

  The elevator was broken as usual, so we carried our bikes up the stairs. Some floors smelled of cooking. Others smelled of weed. On some floors you heard loud TV. On others, rap and hip-hop. And always in the winter, the banging of the heat pipes day and night, like a prison gang eternally busting rocks.

  Taped on the wall of each landing was a blue sheet of paper saying that Darnell’s funeral would be at one p.m. on Saturday at the First Baptist Church.

  Leaving my bike in my apartment, I helped Terrell carry his upstairs. The door to the Blakes’ apartment was open, and inside it was hot and crowded with grown-ups. Even though it was the dead of winter, the windows were partway open and women sat fanning themselves. The few men—there were always way fewer men than women—dabbed their foreheads with handkerchiefs.

  On a table in the middle of the living room were plates of food and vases of flowers. It was getting toward the end of the month and, for a lot of people, food was running low. That was especially true around Christmas when there were presents to buy. The sight and smell of those heaping plates made my stomach growl.

  Terrell’s cousin Laqueta—Darnell’s mother—was sitting in the middle of the couch, wearing an old, yellow housedress and clutching a tissue. Her eyes were puffy and red from crying. Terrell’s mother, Mrs. Blake, sat on one side of her, and his aunt Rosa sat on the other.
Other than Marcus, I’d never heard that Laqueta had any other family.

  When Mrs. Blake saw her son, she opened her arms wide. Terrell hesitated and glanced around as if embarrassed to be treated like a little boy. But then he stepped forward and let her hug him. “Terrell,” she said in a sad voice. “You’re the only good man that’s left.”

  She was looking over Terrell’s shoulder at Jamar when she said that. Laqueta’s boyfriend sat with his elbows on his knees and his head hanging, a tear tattoo beside each eye. He was tall and rangy, with hair split into cornrows. In his left ear was a big diamond stud, and his hands were covered with gold rings and tattoos. He raised his head and blinked hard, as if trying to squeeze out tears that weren’t there. “If only I hadn’t left him alone,” he said woefully.

  People heard him, but no one said anything.

  SHOOTING

  During the day, the cops and housing police came around, but as soon as it got dark, they were gone. Sometimes gangbangers shot at cops at night or dropped broken TVs on patrol cars or threw bottles out the windows at them. If Gramma had her way, I’d be a house boy—allowed outside only to walk to and from school.

  That night Gramma watched Sanford and Son and laughed so hard she had to take the tissue out of her sleeve and dab her eyes.

  “How can you laugh like that?” I asked. “You’ve seen this episode a hundred times.”

  “Something got to make me laugh,” Gramma said, still jiggling. “After what happened to that little boy.”

  Pop! Pop! Pop! Outside they started shooting. It sounded more like cap guns than the big bangs you heard on the TV. Next thing I knew, Gramma was down on the floor next to me and I smelled her perfume. She raised her head alertly. “Where’s Nia?” she asked, even though we both knew she was with her boyfriend, LaRue.

  Pop! Pop! Crash! More shots, and somewhere nearby a window shattered. Bang. A door slammed downstairs, and we heard rapid steps coming up. A key jiggled in the lock and Nia rushed in. My sister was fourteen and had long, straight brown hair and, almost always, a smile. She was breathing hard, and her face was flushed from running. But her eyes gleamed with excitement.

  Gramma propped herself up on her elbows. “Get down!” she commanded.

  Still gasping for breath, Nia dropped to one knee.

  “You’re gonna get yourself killed someday,” Gramma muttered, even as she relaxed knowing that Nia was safe.

  “Those boys shoot all the time,” Nia scoffed.

  “You forget how your momma died?” Gramma snapped. “How many times I have to tell you not to run when they shoot? You could run right into the cross fire. You hear shootin’, you drop to the ground and stay there.”

  “And get my clothes all dirty?” My sister shook her head.

  The shooting stopped. The TV was still on, and Redd Foxx’s gravelly voice and the laugh track lured Gramma back to the couch. Nia flopped down and put her arms around Gramma’s neck and hugged her.

  “DeShawn,” my sister said. “Turn the channel to BET.”

  “Hey!” Gramma started to protest.

  “Oh, come on,” Nia said with a laugh. “You seen Sanford and Son so many times, you know it by heart.”

  I grinned at Gramma. “Told you.”

  “You two are too smart for your own good,” she grumbled.

  Pop! Pop! Pop! The shooting started again, but now it sounded far away. Gramma stiffened but then looked at Nia and me and relaxed. We were safe. At least for tonight.

  WEAPONS

  Gramma’s apartment had one bedroom with one bed, which she and Nia shared. I slept on the living room couch. On most mornings, Gramma left to clean houses before we woke up. After breakfast Nia and I washed the dishes and put them in the rack to dry. On TV, people had kitchens with dishwashers and bathrooms with showers, but all we had were sinks and a bathtub. Sometimes I’d go into the bathroom and find Gramma on her knees, washing clothes in the tub. There’d once been washing machines in the basement of our building, but they’d been broken so often, the city took them out.

  Outside, Terrell and Lightbulb were waiting for me in the yard. In the spot where Darnell fell, someone had stuck a small wooden cross in the dirt, with candles and bunches of flowers around it. The yellow crime-scene tape lay twisted and trampled on the ground. The three of us stared at the cross without speaking. Then Lightbulb said, “You got that Snickers bar?”

  I gave it to him, and he tore it open while we walked to school. Terrell turned the bill of his cap to the right and stuck in his gold earring. Ahead of us, Nia and her boyfriend, LaRue, waited on the sidewalk. They were in eighth grade. LaRue was slim with light chocolate skin and almond-shaped eyes, as if he had some Asian blood. His thick black hair was long with lots of loose dreadlocks. The bill of his cap was turned to the right and a black bandanna poked out of his back pocket.

  “Terrell,” he called. “Com’ere.”

  My best friend practically bounded over. He didn’t have those cool, slow moves yet like the older guys. He and LaRue went behind some parked cars. When they came back, Terrell was arranging the front of his hoodie.

  “What’d he give you?” I asked when we started walking again.

  Terrell told Lightbulb to get lost. Our friend hunched his shoulders like his feelings were hurt, then went off. Terrell opened the pocket of his hoodie just enough for me to see the gray handle of a box cutter inside.

  “Are you whack?” I hissed.

  “I’m just gonna take it inside and give it back to him,” Terrell said.

  “They find it, you’ll get expelled,” I said. “And what do you think LaRue’s gonna do with it in school?”

  Terrell shrugged as if he didn’t care. “All I know is he said he’d put in a good word for me to Marcus.” He took out his asthma inhaler. He seemed to need it whenever he got nervous or excited.

  Lightbulb joined us again and we continued to school. Washington Carver was on the border between Frederick Douglass and the Gentry Street Project. To the school’s builders, that must’ve made sense, because kids from both projects could go to it. But the location also put the school in the middle of the war zone between the Disciples and the Gangstas.

  Like a jail, our school had metal bars on all the doors and windows and a tall metal fence that circled the grounds. The sixth graders went in a different entrance than the seventh and eighth graders, whose bags were scanned and bodies were sometimes searched. The sixth graders were rarely searched.

  At the sixth-grade entrance stood Ms. Rodriguez, the assistant principal, as ancient as the history in our history books. Her short hair was completely white, and she was all wrinkled skin and gristle. Her job in the morning was to make sure only kids who went to Washington Carver entered, and not any troublemakers from someplace else.

  While we waited to go in, Terrell began wheezing again. He took out his inhaler and breathed in deeply. Then it was our turn. At the doorway, Ms. Rodriguez narrowed her eyes at my friend, whose hands were both jammed into the pockets of his hoodie.

  “What have you got there, Terrell?” she asked.

  CLOWNING

  Terrell began trembling, and even though I’d done nothing wrong, I felt nervous and scared too.

  My friend sputtered anxiously. “I—”

  “Don’t give me explanations,” Ms. Rodriguez snapped. “Just show me what’s in that pocket.”

  Still trembling, Terrell slowly drew his hand from his pocket.

  In it was his inhaler.

  Ms. Rodriguez’s expression softened. “You okay, honey?”

  Terrell nodded and she waved us in.

  Inside school my friend grinned devilishly. “Thought I was gonna get busted, right?”

  “So did you,” I said.

  He shook his head. “Nah, I was just foolin’ around.” He went down the hall toward the cafeteria.

  “Where’s he going?” Lightbulb asked.

  “Nowhere good,” I said.

  It seemed like everything in Washington
Carver was held together with tape. The cracks in the grimy windows, the pages in the tattered old textbooks, the pull-down maps in the front of the room—all held in place with yellowed, peeling tape.

  The only things new at school were the teachers. Every year at least half the faces were different. Take Mr. Brand, for example. He had light brown hair, greenish eyes, and copper skin. He spoke proper, not ghetto, and wore button-down shirts, and slacks with cuffs. He was average height but rail thin, because, he said, he ran marathons.

  “Settle down, everyone,” he said at the beginning of class. “Open your textbooks to page two hundred and eighty-five. Who can tell me why the pyramids were built?”

  There were more than forty kids in the class and not enough desks, so some of us had to share. The chubby Douglass kid we called Bublz raised his hand. “Hey, Mr. Brand, is the reason you like ancient history so much because the Egyptians ran marathons like you do?”

  “The Greeks ran marathons, not the Egyptians,” Mr. Brand replied patiently.

  “My book ain’t got a page two hundred eighty-five,” complained a girl named Ikea.

  “Then share with someone else,” said Mr. Brand.

  “Hey!” said a big, tough Gentry boy named Antwan. “I didn’t know them Egyptians were brothers!”

  “What’d you think, dummy?” said Bublz. “They come from Africa.”

  “No, they don’t,” said Antwan. “They come from Egypt. That’s why they’re called Egyptians, stupid.”

  “You’re stupid,” Bublz shot back. “Where you think Egypt is?”

  “In Egypt, retard,” said Antwan. “And Africa’s in Africa.”

  Bublz shook his head wearily. “If you were any dumber, they’d have to give you a brain transplant.”

  Bublz and Antwan were engaged in the daily ritual of clowning. At the beginning of the year, Mr. Brand would tell kids to quiet down, but they would ignore him and continue sassing each other, seeing how far they could push our teacher before he blew. It took a couple of weeks, but Mr. Brand finally exploded, ranting and yelling at the class, which was exactly what they wanted.