This went on—the toothpicking and the toothpick passing—and the orange slices I’d prepared (prepared always makes me feel like I did more than just peel and split) created the band of the cowboy hat. I ain’t even know cowboy hats had bands around them. Like the ribbon part that’s usually on smooth hats worn by smooth people. Suit hats, not cowboy hats. But I don’t really know nothing about cowboys, so, whatever. Maybe they do. Mom had also taken grapes and attached them along the border of the watermelon block, which I guess would be the brim of the hat. I ain’t think cowboy hats had decoration around the brim. I ain’t think cowboys were so . . . fancy. But mothers know a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff, so when she yelled, “Wallawallabingbang!” I knew cowboy hats could be fancy. At least in her world.
“That’s it?” I asked, sizing up the art. I tilted my head a little, hoping that it would look more cowboy-y if I checked it out from a side view.
“That’s it. Ain’t she something?”
“She look like a . . . one of the ones I see . . . a Mexican kind—”
“A sombrero? Nope. Definitely not. Too small.” She shook her head and pointed to a picture of a woman on the windowsill, just above the sink. My mother loved this lady. Her name was Frida. Mom always said the lady Frida also made lightning. Through art. In the photo Frida was standing next to this big dude and was wearing a sombrero. I’ve been seeing this picture my whole life and never even noticed it. “That’s a sombrero.” She picked the picture up, examined it, glanced at the watermelon hat, then back to the picture, and added, “Well . . . maybe a little. But still, this is a cowboy hat for the . . . confident cowboy.” She set the picture down, then turned to me. “Listen, it’s artistic expression. So . . . let’s just box it up, and go, ’kay?”
There’s a tradition my mom and me have when delivering her fruit masterpieces. On the way, we listen to her music, which is old music, and on the way back we listen to my music, which is good music. On this trip, going, it was Bobby Brown. He got a song called “Roni” that my mother loves, that I think is so funny, because this dude, Bobby, just be calling this girl that he says he loves a “Tenderoni,” which I think is such a stupid name. Seriously. Like . . . what? So whenever Mom be singing it, I just change out Tenderoni with Macaroni or Pepperoni. It makes her so mad.
“You ruining this song for me, Lu. Do you know your dad and I danced to this on our first date and at our wedding?” She turned the volume down just low enough to make sure I could hear her, and she could still hear the song.
“If Dad called you Tenderoni, why would you go out on a second date with him? That’s like calling you Turkey Wing,” I explained. “ ‘Oh, oh, if you find a Turkey Wing that is right for youuuuu,’ ” I sang, pretending to be a lover boy like Bobby Brown apparently was.
“You too young to understand.”
“Okay, so . . . you want me to call girls Tenderonis? Tenderoni and cheese? Tenderoni salad? Tenderoni sounds like cooked macaroni. Matter fact, Dad told me I could name my new little sister.”
“I know. So . . .” She checked her mirror, slapped her blinker on.
“So what if I went with Tenderoni? Tenderoni Richardson. Rolls off the tongue.”
“Okay, Lu. Okay, okay. You win,” she said, changing the station. Next up, a tune called “My Prerogative.”
“Ugh. What . . . is . . . he . . . talking about?”
“You know what . . .” Mom sucked her teeth and turned the radio off.
We drove down the boulevard, cutting through neighborhoods, the street that I’d become so used to running on Thursdays when the Defenders did our long run. Eventually we turned in to Glass Manor.
“Says it’s right around here,” Mom said, slowing down in front of . . . not the house of a distinguished gentleman.
“Right here?”
Mom checked her paperwork. Then checked the GPS. “That’s what it says. Right here.”
It was a corner store. The sign above it read in faded paint: MR. CHARLES’S COUNTRY STORE, which I thought was funny because we don’t live in the country. But we were delivering a cowboy hat that we made from fruit grown on some lady named Frankie’s farm, so . . . maybe this Mr. Charles knew something I ain’t know. I’d been holding the cowboy hat in one of the plastic boxes my mother uses—stickered and ribboned—the whole ride to make sure the potholes ain’t ruin it. They didn’t. My mother’s car was a different story.
“You got this, runner?” my mother asked, putting the car in park and leaning over to peer out the passenger window to make sure we were at the right place. What she meant by “You got this, runner?” was, Lu, get your butt out and deliver this to the door. I was the runner. Not just on the track, but off the track too, back and forth from the car to all the lucky customers who were the proud recipients of fancy-looking fruit . . . things. Bowls. Baskets. Fruit . . . pieces. Not pieces of fruit, but masterpieces of fruit.
“Of course,” I said, opening the door. I always say of course because I know I really don’t got no choice. And I’ve met, or at least said hello to, some strange people. Snake milkers, who are these people who take venom out of snake fangs so it can be used for medicine, which is a medicine I don’t never want to take. Or this lady who was a professional snuggler, which would be the perfect job for somebody like Sunny. Or a dog-food taster—a man who tested dog food by tasting it to make sure it was good . . . for dogs. Yeah. But this time I wanted to be the runner, because I just knew Ghost was gonna be there.
“Lu.” My mother tugged on the back of my shirt as I was trying to get out of the car. “Remember, this is work time. This ain’t about your friend.” Another reminder.
I nodded. One foot out of the car.
“And Lu, remember to smile.”
“I know.” Two feet out.
“Oh, and say, good after—” she went on, but the “noon” in “afternoon” got snipped by the slamming door.
The store was wide open, and I walked right in, mouth also wide open. Big (fake) smile, ready to hit the stage and play myself, with Good afternoon, my name is Lu, and I have a package for Mr. Charles Ringwald, from Picasso of Produce. And right before I broke into it, I caught a familiar face in the corner of my eye.
I turned, looked.
Stuck. Swallowed. Stick in throat.
Ghost. Standing next to who I wished was a ghost.
Kelvin.
No.
No. No. No. No. No. No. Kelvin. NO! NO!
Not him! NOT HIM!
Kelvin Jefferson. Or, Smellvin Kelvin, as I called him, but only when he wasn’t around or when I was talking under my breath. He was in the same class with me every year. And because of this stupid idea teachers be having about doing everything in alphabetical order, as if that’s the only way to be organized, I always ended up sitting right next to him. Yes, even though the J in Jefferson is far away from the R in Richardson, it was just my luck the only person with a last name between those letters, Corey Moore, had bad hearing and did better sitting in the front of the class. So, that left Smellvin’s J sitting right next to my R. Which basically means I was always in slap-on-the-back-of-the-head range. Always close enough to hear him whisper:
Yo, you look like a cotton ball dipped in white paint.
Like milk. Like somebody supposed to pour you over cereal.
Like grits with no butter.
Like sugar.
Like a cloud with eyeballs.
Like vanilla ice cream with whipped cream on top.
Like the lines of a crosswalk before being walked on.
Like your face look like fake teeth.
Your whole body look like the palm of a hand.
Like a Q-tip.
Like cooked rice.
Like fresh snow.
Like a ashy elbow.
Like the moon if the moon had arms and legs. And ashy elbows.
Like soapsuds.
Yo, you look like spat-out toothpaste.
Like old tighty-whities, bleached.
&nb
sp; Like bleach bleached.
Like a uncracked egg. And not the brown kind. The white kind.
Like a piece of paper with no lines and no ink.
Like a whole bucket of baby powder.
Like a ghost that God brought back to life but still left as a ghost.
Yo, you look like something wrong with you.
Yo, you look like something wrong with you.
Yo, you look like something wrong.
Yeah. Seven years of Kelvin Jefferson. He used to scrape mud off the bottom of his sneakers and smear it on me and say, Look, I fixed you! And when I tried to “fix” him back, when one day at recess, in the fourth grade, I finally was able to scream out Smellvin! and tell him that his breath smelled like he had a rotten tongue, like his teeth were made of mildew, like he ate scrambled poop for breakfast, like he tried to wash up in his own sweat, like he drank toilet water . . . with a straw. And he had all these dark spots on his arms and legs. Purple and blue. Told him it looked like God was trying to make a leopard but halfway through changed his mind and decided to make a loser. When I finally got the nerve to hit him with all the rapid-fire heat I’d been storing up, Kelvin squared up, puffed out, balled up his fists. (Surprise!) And when he did that, I stepped back, lifted the orange I was holding—I’d saved it from lunch—cocked it back like a pitcher, and fast-balled it at his ugly face. BLAP! Snot and pulp all over the place. Fool started crying like a little baby.
Okay, okay, okay. I’m lying.
That part about the orange, that ain’t happen. I mean, it did, but only in my mind.
Kelvin Jeff . . . er . . . son. See, here’s the thing about Kelvin Jefferson. He big for his age. Too big. It don’t even really look like he was born, but instead was built, put together in some kind of blockhead bully factory. Assembled. Like there was a conveyor belt that just screwed on his arms and legs. Something like that. Dude stands like a capital T. That’s how I knew them purple and blue spots weren’t bruises, or nothing like that. Couldn’t have been, because nobody was big enough to bruise Kelvin. Nobody. So when I tried to zing him back—it was more like, zing zing zing zing zing!—he squared up on me.
And . . . I . . . dropped the orange and ran. Got ghost. Zoomed around the monkey bars, and back and forth across the basketball court. I dodged him as he cannonballed toward me, weaving through the swings, bumbling across the field like some kind of corny—but scary—fairy-tale troll. And when we got back to class, I sat on the edge of my chair with only half of a half a butt cheek actually on the seat part. The rest of me was just kinda hovering there, my face turned to the side so one eye could always be on him, waiting for school to be over. And as soon as it was out . . . I was out. Jetted. Pyewn! He tried to keep up but stumbled over his clunky feet in the hallway. I heard it but didn’t see it. Wasn’t about to turn around. Just kept pumping out of school, through the bus lines and carpool kids, past the crossing guards, slicing right through their stop whistles, off school property, through Barnaby Terrace, home.
When I got to my house, my mother asked me what was wrong, and I wasn’t about to tell her, Kelvin Jefferson. I couldn’t.
I know what you thinking. Bullies should be snitched on, especially if you don’t feel like you can back them down. And honestly, I agree. But in that moment, I’m thinking about me, about how my name would go from Lucas Mucus—which is what he called me—to Snot as soon as my mother showed up to the school all mom’d out, ready to see who’s “teasing her baby.” She’d probably be wearing her mommiest of mom clothes, like them sneakers she swear cool, even though I keep telling her they not. And then she say they comfortable. And then I say that’s why they ain’t cool. And then I’d have to get called out of class over the intercom, and then Kelvin and I would have to sit in the principal’s office, or worse, the nurse’s office, and talk about our feelings, and I would be okay with talking about mine because they were being hurt every single day, but he would probably go back to class and tell everybody I was crying and that I snitched on him and that my mother with the busted shoes came to beg him to be nice to me. The fly boy ain’t nothing but a cry boy. Wah wah wah.
And I ain’t need that.
So I told her I was just . . . practicing.
“Practicing for what?” She looked at me, and I could tell she was looking for the lie.
I said the only thing I could come up with at the time. “Um, I’m practicing . . . for . . . sports.” Sports? Just . . . sports? Who says that? Me. That’s who. What can I say? What could I have said back then other than that? That I was practicing being out of breath? Practicing not getting crunched by a dude twice my size and having my new chains—my dad’s chains—snatched? So yeah, I said sports.
The thing is, the only sport my mother could think of that involved no physical contact (because she wasn’t having that . . . and neither was I) was . . . running. Track.
So, here I am. A runner, because I was scared to fight Kelvin freakin’ Jefferson.
Anyway, this the first year me and Kelvin ain’t have class together. Or school together. Well, we did, but only for half the year. He stopped coming right before the track season. Just . . . disappeared. Some people said he quit school and went to work. He definitely could be mistaken for a grown man, but for real for real, his grades were too good to quit school. He was a dummy, but he wasn’t no dummy. Some people said he was in juvie. But I ain’t believe that either. Other people said they heard teachers talking about he had stuff going on at home, and whenever people say stuff going on at home, they mean bad stuff. And because of that Kelvin had to move in with his grandfather. That made more sense.
All I know is I was glad he was gone. Meant I ain’t have to always be looking over my shoulder, worried he was gonna get me. Which is why I was so surprised (scared) to now, all of a sudden, see him standing right in front of me, in this corner store.
Un-gone.
I swallowed again, this time forcing down the Good and hacking up, “aft . . . er . . . noon . . . um . . . ,” turning toward the man behind the counter. He was a funny-looking old guy with a white waterfall of hair flowing from his head. His face was friendly, but his skin was loose like a trash bag with a basketball in it. Get it together. Start over. “Um, sir. Good, good afternoon.” I tried to save the smile, but it was too late. It also might’ve been too late to save myself. I glanced back at Kelvin, who was looking at me with the same wild look I was probably giving him.
“What you say?” the man behind the counter, who I figured was Mr. Charles, asked. It wasn’t until then that I realized how loud it was in the store. There was a TV behind the counter showing something old, something black-and-white, something involving horses.
“What you doing here, cream filling?” Kelvin said, his head cocked, his eyes going small.
“How . . . what . . . you doing here?” I shot back, my eyes going big.
“Y’all know each other?” Ghost said. He was coming toward me with his hand out. He was dusty, and his T-shirt was spotted with sweat. Both of theirs were, but Kelvin always looked like that.
“Yeah . . . unfortunately,” I muttered, slapping Ghost’s hand, but it was so loud in that place, he probably ain’t hear me.
“What you say?!” the man behind the counter shouted again.
“Oh . . .” I turned back to what I was supposed to be doing, which was delivering a cowboy hat made of fruit. “I have a delivery for Mr. Charles.”
“I’m Mr. Charles, but I didn’t order nothing, unless you got extra toilet paper, because I’m missing some of my toilet paper order.” He pressed his fingertip to a piece of paper on the counter.
“No, no, we found the rest of it in a different box,” Ghost said, brushing dust from his T-shirt.
“What?!”
“I said, we found it! We found the TP!” Ghost shouted.
“You found the TV? It’s right here. Been here for years. It’s the toilet paper we’re looking for, but don’t worry, I think maybe this young man has brought it.
” Mr. Charles smiled. I was so confused. Mr. Charles turned back to me, leaned over the counter. “That was a joke, son. I know you aren’t delivering toilet paper.”
“No, he’s not,” Ghost chimed in, grabbing the plastic box. “This is a gift from me and my mom.”
And then my mom hit the horn. She was probably wondering what was taking me so long, and I knew that I only had a few seconds before she came through the door, and then I’d be even more freaked out. She was wearing her comfy shoes. The mom ones.
“Um . . . I gotta go,” I said, setting the card on the counter. “Ghost, I’ll get at you later.” And, I, the runner, ran back to the car.
“You all right?” Mom asked as I basically dove back into the passenger seat, my heart booming like rap bass.
“Yeah.” I glanced over at the store again. The old man, Mr. Charles, had come around the counter. He was hugging Ghost.
“What took you so long?”
“I was . . . talking to Ghost. Not about the cowboy hat. Just . . . talking.” I darted my eyes at her. Shrugged. Swallowed. Smirked. Then put my eyes forward. I was definitely a little shook. A lot shook. And she was looking at me, grilling the side of my face with her eyeballs of fire. “Time for some music,” I said, uncomfortable, turning the radio on, and immediately jumping to the station that plays good music. Not music about . . . prerogatives or piranhas or whatever they be talking about in my mother’s songs.
“Oh boy,” Mom groaned, finally pulling away from the store. “Time for some of that boompity bump bump, yeah, yeah, yeah, ah, ah, woo, woo, grrr, skit skrrrt music you love so much. Let’s hope it don’t make me nauseous.” She bobbed her head ridiculously hard, to be silly. “Use your words, child! Use your words!” she yelled at the radio.
I tried. Before. To use my words. Even though my mother wasn’t talking about me, that’s what I wanted to say. I tried before to use my words. And my words almost got me crushed. By Kelvin Jefferson. I always thought the thing about lightning bolts was that they were electric enough to never have to speak. I thought they could just strike. Could just set fire. And disappear.
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