If I Grow Up

by Todd Strasser

  Tanisha rushed into the hall behind him. “William! Don’t!”

  Her brother pulled a black gun from his waist and pointed it at me. My heart was beating so hard that I began to feel light-headed and had to remind myself to breathe. “Who are you?” William demanded.

  “He’s a friend of mine.” Tanisha stepped next to me.

  “How the hell’d you get in here?” her brother asked.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off that gun. At any second it might go off. Even if it was an accident, it wouldn’t matter.

  “I let him in,” Tanisha said.

  “The hell you did,” William said. “You were in the living room bothering me about the weather.”

  “No, I meant before you came home,” Tanisha quickly explained.

  Her brother lowered the gun. As the barrel went down, my eyes went up, past the string of green and yellow beads, to his face. He was broad-shouldered, and I knew I’d seen him before, but it took a second to remember where. That day behind King Chicken with Lightbulb and Snoop. William was the one who’d hit the old guy in the face with the butt of his gun and nearly shot Snoop.

  I saw a glimmer in William’s eye and quickly looked away, but it was too late. “I know you?” he asked.

  Staring at the floor, I shook my head.

  “Yeah, I do,” William said. “I seen you before.” He turned to Tanisha. “Where’s he from?”

  “School,” Tanisha answered.

  “Yeah, but where’s he from?”

  We both knew what he meant. I didn’t want Tanisha to have to say it, so I did. “Douglass.”

  William cursed and started to raise the gun again.

  “He ain’t no Disciple!” Tanisha gasped.

  “You think it matters?” her brother replied coldly, and glared at me. “How old are you?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Know any Disciples?”

  I nodded. It would have been stupid to lie. You couldn’t live in Douglass and not know someone from the gang. By now the gun was level with my eyes.

  “You can’t shoot him!” Tanisha cried.

  “Not here,” her brother answered ominously. Keeping the gun on me, he glanced at his sister. “How stupid can you be? What do you think would happen if word got out you was seeing some boy from Douglass?” William swung his head back and forth in disbelief. “Might as well line me up in front of a firing squad.”

  “Please let him go,” Tanisha begged.

  “You ever gonna see him again?” William asked.

  The question caught us both by surprise. Tanisha’s mouth fell open, but no words came out.

  “Well?” William demanded.

  Tanisha’s eyes began to glitter. “But…,” she said beseechingly.

  “Don’t ‘but’ me,” her brother snapped. “Everyone makes mistakes. Now say it before I put a cap between this punk’s eyes.”

  A tear rolled down Tanisha’s cheek. She hung her head. “I won’t.”

  “Won’t what?”

  “Won’t see him again.” Tanisha let out an anguished cry and ran into the living room. Even with the TV on, we could hear her sobbing.

  William aimed the gun at me. “When you go, keep your head down. Don’t let anyone get a good look at you. Go straight back to Douglass. And so help me, I ever see you on this side of town again…I ever hear that you came near my sister again, I will hunt you down and kill you sure as the sun will rise.”

  DICE

  Nia banged on the bathroom door. “Open up, DeShawn.”

  “Just a second.” The lock was broken, so I kept my foot jammed against the bottom of the door.

  “I’m gonna tell Gramma what you’re doing,” Nia threatened.

  “Go ahead.” The truth was, I was shaving my upper lip. I didn’t have any hair growing there yet, but I’d heard if you shaved, it made your ’stache grow in faster.

  Nia banged again. “Come on! I gotta go!”

  “Another second.” I rinsed the razor and put it back in the medicine cabinet, then wiped my face with a towel to get rid of any telltale shaving cream.

  When I opened the door, Nia looked around suspiciously and took a deep sniff. “What’re you up to?”

  “Nothing,” I said with a smile.

  Nia squinted her eyes severely, as if accepting a challenge. After grabbing the towel off the rack and burying her face in it, she looked up, puzzled at first, and then frowned. “Shaving cream?”

  I felt my face turn hot.

  My sister’s disapproval turned into a triumphant smile. “You even got anything to shave, baby face?”

  “A little.”

  “Well, keep your fingers crossed, and maybe you’ll be shaving by the time you’re twenty-one,” she said. “Now get out of here and let me do my business.”

  I left the bathroom. The bedroom door was open. It was one of those rare, quiet moments when both babies were asleep. LaRue was sitting on the corner of the bed with a small paintbrush in his hand. Curious, I stepped closer and saw that he’d placed half a dozen little jars of paint on the floor and was carefully painting an action figure holding a sword.

  “What is it?” I whispered, not wanting to wake the babies sleeping on the bed.

  “Warhammer,” he answered and pointed at a small, black plastic case, which lay open by his feet. Inside, a dozen painted figures of knights with shields, swords, and spears were nestled in gray foam.

  “You painted all of them?” I asked.

  LaRue nodded. “I play over at the hobby center.”

  “Play?”

  “It’s a strategy game. We have armies that fight each other.”

  Like gangbangers, I thought, and headed into the living room. Gramma was watching Judge Joe Brown, and I knew better than to interrupt her. Her gray hair stuck out unevenly, and she had bags under her eyes. Lately it seemed like she was going to work less and spending more time sitting on that old couch. It used to be that she’d dress up and go out on the weekends more, too. But now she was forty-five, and that was old.

  She didn’t bother to ask where I was going when I left.

  Down in the lobby, Terrell was sitting on an old car seat some guys had dragged inside, drinking a bottle of malt liquor. His mustache was growing in—not enough to shave yet, but what there was made him look older. He wore a chain around his neck and a black leather wristband. Offering the bottle to me, he said, “Wanna play some C-Low?”

  Ever since that day at King Chicken when Marcus had slapped him around, Terrell had been changing, forcing himself to get tougher and meaner. He always had gambling and drinking money now. Not what guys called “real” money, like enough to buy a car or even a flat-screen TV. But enough to make life a little more interesting than before.

  “Who’re you shooting with?” I asked.

  “Bublz and some friend of his.”

  The words were hardly out of his mouth when Bublz and a stocky, ominous-looking guy came into the lobby. The stranger was wearing a black knit cap, a heavy, green and blue plaid shirt, and had an earring.

  “This is my cousin Jules,” said Bublz proudly, as if he was glad to be related to someone who looked so tough. Unlike the rest of us, Bublz’s voice hadn’t started to drop yet. He was like a big, chubby, overgrown baby.

  “Where you from?” Terrell asked in his “hard” voice, not getting up or offering to shake hands.

  “Here, now,” Jules answered just as hard and cracked his knuckles. “Just moved in.”

  “Like it?” Terrell asked, joking.

  But Jules didn’t get the joke. “You serious? It’s worse than ghetto.” He looked around impatiently as if he wasn’t interested in chitchat. It was all part of the pose. “So, where you want to play?”

  “In the back,” said Terrell, slowly hoisting himself to his feet, trying to look as menacing as he could. We went down a hall and through a back door. An outside security light provided illumination. A couple of kids were spraying tags on the wall, but now that Terrell was a Disci
ple, all he had to say was “get lost,” and they scattered.

  Terrell, Bublz, and Jules knelt down and started to roll. Terrell and Jules were quiet and intense, working hard to out pose each other, while Bublz jabbered nervously in that high voice. Having no gwap to gamble, I stared out into the dark and smoked some bud. The more I smoked and drank, the less sharp and jagged was the pain of missing Tanisha.

  I closed my eyes and let my head tilt back. Every sound around me seemed amplified: the clickity clack of the green and red dice, the hopeful mutterings of the guys, followed by disappointed grunts or triumphant chortles, the traffic out on Abernathy, the angry couple yelling from a window somewhere above. It all came together in the music of the projects.

  Back in the day when Terrell and I were shorties, there’d been different music in our ears. Playing box ball, cops and robbers, tag, and hide-and-seek, the music was a chorus of laughter and shouting. There were gangs and shootings back then, too. But they were just brief interruptions in the fun and didn’t mean anything.

  Crash! Smashing glass snapped me back. Jules had tossed a bottle into the dark. “I’m sick of playing for a dollar or two,” he grumbled in a voice that sounded syrupy from drink and weed. “Who wants to make it five and ten?”

  Terrell’s eyes were glazed, and his movements were slow, but there was no way he was backing down. “Sure. Five and ten.”

  “I don’t know,” Bublz said nervously. “I ain’t got that much.”

  “Then just watch,” Jules grumbled.

  Bublz backed away while Jules and Terrell rolled. Soon there was close to eighty dollars lying on the ground, and Jules was shaking the dice. He had to roll a six. The dice skipped across the asphalt and ricocheted off the brick wall. I could have sworn he’d rolled a three, but an instant later his hand swept down, scattering the dice.

  “I won,” he said, scooping up the bills.

  “You rolled a three,” said Terrell.

  “A six,” Jules insisted. Shoving the money into his pocket, he got to his feet and stumbled backward, waving his arms to keep his balance.

  “A three.” Terrell also rose unsteadily. “Then you knocked the dice away.”

  They glared at each other. I got up, feeling woozy but alert to the growing sense of danger. The music of the night faded away.

  “Where you going anyway?” Terrell asked.

  “Gotta fade,” Jules said.

  “The hell you do,” Terrell snarled.

  “Hey—,” Bublz started to say, but Jules cut him short with, “Shut up.” Then Jules glared at Terrell and cracked his knuckles. “Who’s gonna stop me?”

  “Give me that money,” Terrell said.

  Jules turned to Bublz. “You tell him. It was a six, right?”

  Bublz’s eyes darted frantically between his cousin and his friend. He lowered his gaze. “I didn’t see.”

  “Did you see?” Terrell asked me.

  I nodded. “Looked like a three.”

  “Well, you’re wrong. It was a six,” Jules said, puffing out his chest. “And I gotta bounce.” He turned to leave.

  “You ain’t going nowhere,” Terrell threatened. Suddenly he started to wheeze and reached into his Starter jacket for the inhaler.

  Jules watched him inhale his medicine, then grinned. “Some tough guy.”

  Terrell slid his hand inside the Starter jacket again. But this time it didn’t come out. “Give back the money, or else.”

  I felt a chill. Jules stared at the spot where Terrell’s hand disappeared into his jacket. His lips parted into a grin. “Or what? You gonna shoot me with your inhaler?”

  Terrell took something different out of his pocket—a small, black pistol.

  “Oh, no,” Bublz whimpered and backed away. Jules stared at the gun, and a taunting smile slowly appeared on his lips. “You ain’t got the guts.”

  “Give the money back,” Terrell said coldly. He was trying to act tough and doing a pretty good job of it. Someone who didn’t know him as well as I did might think it was real. Or maybe I no longer knew him as well as I thought.

  “Give it back, Jules,” Bublz warned in a trembling voice. “He’s a Disciple,”

  “I don’t care if he’s the NBA, FBI, and NFL,” Jules spit.

  “You will when you sober up,” said Bublz.

  Jules ignored his cousin. “He don’t have the guts. Probably don’t even know how to use that thing. I bet it ain’t even loaded.”

  “This is the last time I’m gonna say it,” Terrell warned. “Give me that money.”

  Jules cursed him.

  Terrell lowered the gun. Bang!

  Bublz and I jumped. Jules went down with a thud and grabbed for his foot. “My foot!” he cried. “He shot my foot!”

  “You’re lucky I didn’t shoot your face,” Terrell growled.

  Jules lay on the ground, clutching his foot and grimacing. Tears squeezed out of the corners of his eyes. His white sneaker turned red. Bublz stood frozen with his mouth agape and his eyes bulging. Terrell bent over Jules and started going through his pockets, searching for the money.

  Wham! Jules swung his arm out hard, catching Terrell square in the face. My friend fell back, and the pistol clattered to the ground about five feet away. Jules rose to his hands and knees. He looked at the gun; then he looked at me.

  I knew what he was thinking.

  He lunged for the gun. For a kid who’d just been shot in the foot, he moved pretty fast.

  But I was faster, scooping up the gun and aiming it down at him. This was the first time I’d ever held a real gun, and even though it was small, it weighed more than I’d expected. My heart was hammering and my hand trembled, but I willed it to stop.

  Still on his hands and knees, Jules looked up at me uncertainly. Then, out of nowhere, a different sensation took hold. With that gun in my hand, I began to feel powerful in a way I’d never felt before.

  Terrell rose unsteady to his feet and staggered toward me with his hand out. “Gimme.”

  “No,” I said, knowing what would happen if I did.

  “I said, gimme!” Terrell demanded.

  Keeping Jules in the corner of my eye, I swung my arm around and aimed the gun at Terrell.

  “What?” My friend’s mouth fell open, and his face scrunched up like he didn’t understand. “You…” He squinted his eyes. “Whose side you on?”

  “Yours, stupid.”

  Terrell cursed. But it was all for show. I aimed the gun at Jules. “Keep your hands where I can see them. Bublz, take forty dollars out of his pocket and give it to Terrell.”

  Since Terrell and Jules had been playing head on, half the eighty dollars belonged to each of them. Now they were even.

  Terrell counted the bills and shoved them into his pocket. Then he turned to Jules. “I ever see you around here again, I’ll kill you soon as look at you.” He disappeared into the building.

  Jules sat up, holding his foot and moaning. His sneaker and hands were smeared red. Bublz squatted next to him.

  “Take him to the emergency room,” I said. “Tell them you and him were playing around with a gun, and it went off accidentally.”

  I bent down in front of Jules. “Know what happens to snitches?”

  He didn’t respond.

  Slap! I smacked him half-hard in the face. “Answer me.”

  Jules jerked up his head, gritting his teeth venomously. “I know.”

  “They’re gonna try to get you to change your story,” I told Bublz, “but no matter what they say, you stick to it. You tell anyone what really happened and—”

  “Don’t have to tell me.” Bublz helped his cousin up. Jules grimaced and draped his arm over Bublz’s shoulder for support. He kept the wounded foot raised and hopped on the other foot. But he narrowed his eyes and gave me a look to let me know that if I weren’t holding that gun, he’d kill me with his bare hands. A lot of guys may act tough, but if they’re shot in the foot and still give a look like that, they are tough.

&n
bsp; I waited until they left, then went out to the street and threw the gun down a storm drain.

  The next day I woke up with a headache. Didn’t feel like going to school. I was loafing around watching TV when LaRue came out of the bedroom, buckling his belt. “Get dressed,” he said.

  I didn’t have to ask why. A little while later I was on the fifteenth floor for the first time since that day, two years before, when Marcus gave me his bail money. In the middle of a filthy room, Jules was kneeling with his hands bound behind him and his eyes blindfolded. His lower lip was swollen and split, and his nose was caked with blood. His left foot was wrapped in a bandage, so I knew he’d made it to the emergency room the night before.

  Marcus and Terrell were there, along with Tyrone.

  “Where’s the gun?” Marcus asked me.

  “Threw it down a storm drain,” I said.

  “What?” Terrell sputtered.

  Marcus gave him a silencing look, then turned to me. “Smart. Cops can’t prove nothin’ without a weapon.” He gestured at Jules. “He cheat?”

  I glanced at the blindfolded, cowering figure. “He’s new around here and made a mistake. We were all pretty wasted.”

  “Say what?” Terrell gasped incredulously.

  With the blindfold on, Jules couldn’t see me press my finger against my lips to hush Terrell.

  “So you don’t think we should kill him?” Marcus asked with a wink.

  Jules shuddered.

  “Hell, no,” I said. “In fact, I think he’d make a pretty good Disciple.”

  “Over my dead body,” Terrell snorted.

  “Don’t say that,” LaRue muttered. “Unless you want it to come true.”

  FIFTEEN YEARS OLD

  In the inner cities it is not uncommon to find twelve-year-olds who cannot read. In some gang-infested neighborhoods in California, only one in twenty high school students can do grade-level math or English.

  “His last words, promise me this much in death Don’t let my boy live to retrace my steps.”—from “Grown Man Business” by Mos Def

  BABY DADDY