After a while, though, Mr. Brand figured out that if he let the class mess around for a time, they might get bored and eventually let him teach. Some days it worked, some days it didn’t. A week like this, before a big vacation like Christmas, was usually a lost cause.
In a moment of quiet, Mr. Brand saw a chance to step in. “Who can tell Antwan the difference between Egypt and Africa?”
A couple of hands went up, including mine.
“DeShawn?” Mr. Brand called.
“Africa’s a continent,” I said. “Egypt’s a country in Africa.”
“Where in Africa?” asked Mr. Brand.
“Like, North Africa.”
“Well, look at the brains on DeShawn,” Antwan said snidely.
“That’s enough, Antwan,” Mr. Brand said.
Antwan ignored him. “Maybe I’ll kick your Douglass butt,” he threatened.
Instead of answering, I gave him the steely look I imagined Marcus would use. Only I wondered if Marcus’s heart ever beat as nervously as mine was.
“What’s that?” Antwan taunted. “You tryin’ to look tough? You about as tough as my baby sister.”
“I said, that’s enough,” demanded Mr. Brand. But it didn’t matter. The class was waiting for my response.
“I’ll see you after school,” I muttered.
Everyone oohed and aahhed.
Antwan narrowed his eyes and nodded, as if he accepted the challenge. Meanwhile Terrell motioned to me with a fist under his desk. As best friends, we had sworn to watch each other’s backs.
When class ended, Mr. Brand asked me to wait until the others left. When they had, he gave me a searching look. “Are you really going to fight him?”
“If I have to.” The truth was, most of the talk was just bluster, to be forgotten as soon as the bell rang.
Mr. Brand shook his head as if it made no sense. “Tell me something, DeShawn. Why do they even bother coming to class?”
“Nothing better to do,” I said.
“What about you?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer. Gramma said I was a good boy, because I did what I was told. But most of the time I only did that because it was easier than not doing it. Even at twelve I had a pretty good notion that school wasn’t the way to succeed. We’d all heard stories about the rich and famous rappers and athletes who’d come from the projects. But you never heard of anyone from the projects who got famous for going to school.
Mr. Brand tapped the eraser of a pencil against his desk. “Have you ever heard of Hewlett Academy?”
“No, sir.”
“It’s a magnet high school over in Beech Hill,” he said. “You’ll get a better education there.”
“Why can’t I get it here?” I asked.
Mr. Brand’s eyes darted toward the closed door. He lowered his voice. “Just between you and me, DeShawn. This is a dumping ground for teachers who can’t get jobs anywhere else. It’s hard to get a good education from bad teachers.”
“But Beech Hill’s far,” I said a little nervously.
“You could take a bus.” He could probably tell that I wasn’t thrilled by the idea. “Don’t want to leave your friends, right? Don’t want to leave the comfort and familiarity of the hood.”
I nodded.
“DeShawn, what do you think’s going to happen if you stay here?”
“Go to Munson, I guess.” That was the local high school.
“You know that more than half the kids who enter there don’t finish?”
“Doesn’t mean I won’t,” I said.
Mr. Brand’s shoulders sagged as if pulled down by the weight of something he knew that I didn’t. “DeShawn, listen to me. It’s one thing to go to school here with all your friends. But it’s different when your crew’s dropped out and you’re the only one left. It’s harder when you’re still walking to school each day while your peeps drive around in hot whips. You can understand that, right?”
I nodded again. The second bell rang. It was lunch-time and I started inching toward the door.
“Hold on. I’ll write you a pass.” Mr. Brand pulled a pad out of his desk and started to write. “I want you to think about Hewlett, okay?” he said, tearing a sheet off the pad. “You’re still two years away, but you could start to prepare for the entrance exam. There’s a special Saturday program I could help you get into.”
“I’ll think about it.” I reached for the pass, but Mr. Brand held it out of range.
“You’re pretty good at telling people what they want to hear, aren’t you?” He knew he had me. I couldn’t go out into the hall without that pass. I looked into his green eyes.
“You wondering why I even bother?” Mr. Brand asked. “Most of these kids don’t want my help, DeShawn. They’re perfectly happy to waste their days clowning around without a thought about the future. But maybe you’re different. You’re one of the few in this class who reads at grade level. Maybe you’re the one who’ll really do something with his life. But to do that, you’ll need a better education than you’ll get here. So you’ll think about Hewlett, right?”
I nodded. He placed the pass in my hand, and I headed for the door.
DISAPPOINTMENT
Just before the end of school, they announced a delayed dismissal and all sixth graders were sent to the gym. This happened about once a month, usually because there was going to be a gang fight and the school found out and called the police.
“You think that’s why LaRue brought that box cutter?” Terrell asked as we walked down the hall to the gym.
“Shhh!” I pressed my finger to my lips. You never knew who might be listening.
In the gym, kids were standing around in groups or sitting in circles on the floor. Lightbulb sat down with a book and a thick pair of old-man eyeglasses with big brown frames.
“Since when do you need glasses?” I asked.
“They make me look smart,” he said.
“You look dumber than Urkel in those things,” Terrell said. “Ain’t nothing gonna make you look smart.”
“Says you,” said Lightbulb. Some of the teachers said Lightbulb was a genius.
“What’s 145 times 216?” I asked.
Lightbulb closed his eyes and moved his lips. “31,320.”
“That right?” Terrell looked at me.
“How would I know?” I said.
Lightbulb read for a while, then took off the glasses and pressed his fingers into the corners of his eyes. “It’s hard to see through these things. My head hurts.”
“Where’d you get those glasses?” I asked.
“Found ’em.”
“You can’t just wear any old glasses,” I said. “You have to go to a doctor and get them made special.”
“For real?” Lightbulb said. He may have been a genius in school, but in some ways he really was the dumbest kid we knew.
“Hey, DeShawn.” Terrell nudged me with his elbow. “Someone’s checking you out.”
A group of giggling girls sat in a circle across the way. One was taller than the others, with long brown hair and sparkling eyes. We’d been exchanging looks for a few weeks.
“She’s pretty,” said Lightbulb.
Terrell nudged me again. “Go talk to her.”
“Back off.”
“You scared?”
The truth was, I did want to go. I felt drawn to that tall pretty girl the way Lightbulb was drawn to candy.
“He’s going,” Lightbulb cheered when I started across the gym.
“Go, DeShawn. Go!” Terrell chanted.
The girls around the tall one grew jumpy with excitement and began whispering in her ear. Her eyes widened, and then a faint scowl appeared on her face and she turned and shook her head sharply. Suddenly it seemed as if she was annoyed with their chatter, because she got up and came toward me. We met in the middle of the crowded gym.
“Go on, get closer,” one of her friends called, and the others cackled.
The tall girl turned to them. “Shush! Shut y
our mouths.” She spoke with authority, and the other girls got quiet. I liked that.
“I’m DeShawn,” I said.
“I know,” she said, tilting her head toward the other girls. “They told me. I’m Tanisha.”
“New here?”
She nodded. Her eyes were glowing.
“Where’re you from?” I asked. My heart was fluttering in my chest, but I knew I had to play it cool.
“Over on the east side of town. We moved over the summer.”
“How come?” I asked.
She lowered her head and stared at the floor. The reasons for moving to the projects were never good.
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s none of my business.”
She raised her head. “How long’ve you been around here?”
“All my life. My gramma moved here about thirty years ago.”
“Your momma go to this school?”
“Yeah.”
“Bet she had Ms. Rodriguez,” Tanisha said. “She’s so old, everybody must’ve had her.”
I laughed. Ms. Rodriguez had been a teacher before she became assistant principal. Tanisha was funny. I liked that, too. “Where do you live now?”
“Gentry,” she said.
And just like that we went from hot to cold. From hope to no hope. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t a Disciple. I was from Frederick Douglass, and if I was seen by Gentry Gangstas on their turf, they would automatically consider me a spy and up to no good. They might not kill me for that, but I was sure to catch a beating.
Sensing that something was wrong, Tanisha frowned.
“Well, nice to meet you,” I said, and turned away.
BULLETS
On Christmas morning, Gramma gave me a tight-fitting, fuzzy blue sweater I knew I’d never wear. I gave her and Nia little bottles of perfume that a man on the street had sold me. Nia gave me a DVD of the Transformers movie. We ate a Christmas lunch. In the afternoon, I went out and found Lightbulb.
“Where’re we going?” he asked as we climbed the piss-smelly stairwell.
“Upstairs,” I said.
He stopped. “You crazy? No one but Disciples are allowed up there.”
“Shh…. Quiet. I need a lookout.”
“Who’s gonna look out for me?” Lightbulb asked.
“I got a Snickers bar.”
The top two floors were Disciples territory. Not that they paid rent. They’d broken through the doors and put on their own locks. They used the apartments as places to live and safe houses for anyone who needed to hide. On the fifteenth floor the stairwell and hallway were covered with loopy tags—TAP and Casper and Baby—and also, everywhere, like religious symbols to ward off evil spirits, was the six-pointed-star symbol of the Disciples.
Pressed against a wall was an old chest of drawers. It didn’t make sense for it to be there, and I pushed it aside.
“What’re you doing?” Lightbulb asked in a quavering voice.
“Shh…” Behind the chest was a hole through the cinder-block wall big enough for someone to crawl through. I bent down and peeked into an empty room with a bare mattress lying on the floor. Giving the Snickers bar to Lightbulb, I said, “You hear anyone come up the stairs, you holler into this hole, then go down the other stairs as fast as you can.”
Lightbulb was already tearing open the wrapper. He took a bite and nodded. I crawled through the hole. In the room on the other side, the floor was covered with empty bottles, cigarette butts, magazines, and food wrappers. The bare mattress was stained a dozen different shades of yellow and brown. I crossed the room and stopped at the door to listen. It sounded quiet on the other side, and I slowly opened the door and went down the hall.
About a million cockroaches scattered when I entered the kitchen. It smelled like garbage, and the sink and counters were covered with dirty dishes, empty take-out containers, fried-chicken buckets, and pizza boxes. I opened the cabinet under the sink, and about a million more cockroaches fled. At the back of the cabinet was another hole leading to the next apartment. I’d heard that the holes were so gangbangers could escape if the police raided. In some rooms there were even holes in the floors so they could drop down to another floor and escape that way.
I crawled into the next apartment. This one had a strong chemical smell. In the middle of the living room was a Ping-Pong table with cutting boards, white breathing masks, a couple of small postal scales, and razor blades smudged with yellowish white powder. Hundreds of small Ziploc bags and plastic vials were scattered about.
Piled on the kitchen counter were dozens of empty baking-soda boxes, as well as half a dozen old cooking pots caked with soot—the tools for making crack.
Two apartments later I got to the one where Jamar and Laqueta lived. Terrell said that ever since Darnell died, Laqueta was staying with them on the sixth floor so I knew it would be empty. Unlike the other apartments, this one was clean and had curtains on the windows, nice furniture, and a big TV in the living room. An unfamiliar smell hung in the air, and it took a moment for me to realize it was the pine scent of the Christmas tree in the corner.
I went down the hall to a bedroom with a small bed with brown and green Simba sheets and pillows. Some stuffed animals and toy trucks were on the floor. The window was open, and the blue curtain was half in and half out, so I knew there was no window guard. Carefully pulling the curtain back, I stuck my head outside.
Down in the yard, people were the size of Tic Tacs, and on the street, cars looked like Matchbox toys. Behind Frederick Douglass was a big rail yard with dozens of tracks and all kinds of trains, and I heard the sharp squeak of metal wheels on rails. Between Frederick Douglass and the yard was a double row of tall chain-link fence with coils of razor wire on top.
I looked at the window frame. In the holes that would have held the window guard were broken, rusty brown screws with shiny silver insides, as if they had just recently snapped. To my mind, it would have taken a hard kick to break those screws.
A lock clacked somewhere in the apartment, and I quickly spun around and ducked down behind a chest of drawers. Through the open doorway, I heard footsteps and the rustle of clothes. My heart started beating hard and my breaths became short and shallow. I knew if I got caught, I might be the next kid to fall fifteen floors.
“You got hollow tips?” a voice asked.
“Dollar each,” answered a voice that sounded like Jamar’s.
“A dollar each? That’s robbery!”
“Take it or leave it,” said Jamar.
“Ain’t no other place else to get ’em,” the other voice said angrily. “You got me right where you want me, don’t you? Risking my life to come over here, and you darn well know I can’t go back empty-handed.”
If Jamar answered, I couldn’t hear him. Then the other man said, “I’ll take a hundred. And I won’t be sorry if one of ’em winds up in the back of your skull.”
“Merry Christmas,” said Jamar.
A door slammed, but I heard footsteps in the apartment and knew Jamar was still there. I stayed behind the dresser, my heart racing and body tensed. Darn Lightbulb. He was supposed to warn me. Now I was trapped.
Jamar moved around in the other room, whistling and humming to himself. Then the door creaked and closed. I heard the lock click. It sounded like he’d left.
I took a deep breath and felt light-headed with relief. Still I waited a few more minutes before quietly leaving the bedroom and going out into the apartment. On the living room table was an open black and gold box about the size of a small loaf of bread. Inside were bronze and gray bullets.
I crawled through the holes in the apartment walls and back out into the hall. Lightbulb was gone. He probably heard Jamar and the other guy coming up the stairs, got scared, and ran. If any other kid had done that, I would have been mad. But it was hard to be mad at Lightbulb.
DRIVE BY
The First Baptist Church was in a storefront on Belmar Street, at the edge of the area called the Flats. It had once been a pet st
ore, but there’d been a fire and now it was a church with rows of pews and an altar. On damp days the rancid smell of old smoke still hung in the corners.
On the day of Darnell’s funeral, the Disciples stood on the sidewalk outside the church, wearing sharp, neatly buttoned gray suits with black shirts and ties. Instead of baseball caps, they wore gray fedoras. Their suits looked new and expensive, and I felt ashamed of the ill-fitting secondhand jacket and slacks Gramma had bought for me at Goodwill. Nia, wearing her frilly, pink Sunday dress, hat, and white gloves, went to LaRue and gave him a kiss, but as I passed the Disciples, I kept my eyes down. The sleeves of my jacket barely reached my wrists, and the bottoms of my gray pants flapped above my ankles. Not knowing how to tie a tie, I’d made up a knot.
At the entrance to the church, a hand came out to stop me. I looked up into the small, hard eyes of Marcus. “Turn around,” he ordered.
I did as I was told and felt him press behind me as he reached over, untied, and retied my tie. The corner of something hard jutted into my back, and I knew at once why all the Disciples had kept their jackets buttoned.
Marcus’s hands were quick and sure as he tightened the tie around my neck until I thought I’d choke. Then he placed his strong hands on my shoulders and pointed me inside.
They’d put Darnell in a small, light blue coffin surrounded by bunches of red and yellow flowers. The coffin was open, and people were going up to look. In the front row Laqueta sat with Mrs. Blake and Terrell, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. She turned her head and looked to the back of the church, and I realized she was looking at Jamar. Maybe she wanted him to sit with her. But Jamar stood with the other Disciples and didn’t move.
Terrell’s mom whispered into his ear, and he scanned the crowd until his eyes caught mine. He jerked his head, and I knew he wanted me to go with him to look in the coffin. Like I said before, I’d seen dead people, but never a shorty and when Terrell and I went up to the front I didn’t want to look at first. But they’d dressed Darnell in a light blue suit with a white shirt and silver tie and his eyes were closed, so he looked like he was asleep.
If I Grow Up Page 3