“We goin’ to Florida!” Oomz howled as he took his spot opposite Naz, who gripped the football in his right arm.
“Set! Go!”
The boys ran toward each other and collided with a mighty thud.
Ooooohhhh!
Oomz drove Naz to the ground and their bodies smacked the dirt, kicking up a cloud of dust that seemed to swallow them whole. Naz began coughing violently and kept coughing as he got back on his feet. He bent over with his hands on his knees, spit out some dirt, and then continued coughing until he made it to his water bottle at the base of the light post 20 yards away and gulped down the dust caught in his throat. He poured water on his head to wipe the dust from his eyes and face. He patted dust off his shoulder pads and chest, then jogged back, still covered in dust.
All the boys were covered in dust when practice ended and they stood around Esau. It was a quiet night, the park nearly empty, the clouds of dust wafting past the stadium lights shining down on them. Esau spoke about the upcoming game, spoke about focus and preparation, spoke about making the most of every opportunity. Then he told them about an old friend of his from the neighborhood.
“He just died in his sleep last night,” he said. “Twenty-two years old. Nobody knows why. Take care of your bodies. You don’t know, you just might not wake up in the morning.” Then, sensing the dark turn he had taken and seeing the worried eyes of the boys around him, Esau added, “All y’all gon’ wake up tomorrow morning.”
“You should say ‘God forbid,’” Chaka said in a shaky voice.
Esau looked around and saw boys more aware of death than middle schoolers should be.
“None of y’all gon’ die tonight.”
Two days later, on a bright and cool Sunday morning, the Pee Wees and their parents and coaches gathered at Betsy Head, split up into seven cars, and headed for Roselle, New Jersey. When they got to the stadium, they found Chris Legree sitting alone on the bleachers, smoking a cigar.
19
THE REMATCH
Late October 2014
THE BUS FROM NEWARK PULLED INTO THE PARKING LOT, and the Brick City boys marched out silently. Like the boys from Brooklyn they would battle later today, they came from a hardscrabble place with a tough reputation, a place in the heat of dramatic change, for better or worse.
They too came from a city with a progressive new mayor. When Ras Baraka took office in 2014 following Cory Booker’s departure for US Senate, the city was struggling. It faced a $93 million budget deficit. Its unemployment rate was nearly 10 percent. Its failing public school system was under state control. Its crime rate was rising, with residents suffering through a wave of carjackings and the highest murder rate since 1990.
A quarter of the city’s children had asthma—three times the national average—because of the exhaust from rail yards, incinerators, and dumps, and the procession of buses and ships flowing in and out of the Port Newark–Elizabeth Marine Terminal, one of the largest ports in the world. Baraka, a former high school principal and the son of poet Amiri Baraka, campaigned on the slogan “We are the mayor” and vowed to push back against the outsiders who seemed to be taking control of the city: the charter school networks, state oversight officials, real-estate investors, and political consultants. He declared that his “movement to transform Newark” wouldn’t come at the expense of long-term residents.
Newark’s struggles ran parallel to Brooklyn’s struggles, which paralleled the struggles of the past century in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Saint Louis, and Oakland. The cities shared a singular question about the fate of their communities: Was development possible without displacement? Or were these residents, and the communities they had built, the cost of progress?
Newark locals saw it coming. Over the past decade, private investors had swallowed up scores of cheap buildings and lots in the city’s downtown. One partnership spent $130 million on 79 properties, with publicized plans to turn them into condos, charter schools, offices, retail space, a hotel, and a soilless farm. People priced out of Manhattan had already moved to Jersey City and Hoboken; the investors were betting that Newark was next. The city’s residents sensed the gentrification crawling south, just as Brownsville’s residents sensed it sweeping east across Brooklyn. From Brownsville, it took an hour to commute to Manhattan by train or bus; from Newark, the trip was 20 minutes.
The displacement had already begun in many other cities across the country. Low-income black and brown people, unable to afford homes in historically low-income black and brown communities, were settling into suburban neighborhoods that had been reserved for white people less than a lifetime ago. According to a study by the Brookings Institution, the number of people living in poverty in New York City and Newark decreased by 7 percent from 2000 to 2010. Over that stretch, the number of poor people in the region’s suburbs increased by 14 percent. By 2011, there were three million more people living in poverty in America’s suburbs than in its cities.
Roselle, New Jersey, a solidly middle-class suburban town for decades, was bruised by the recession and saw its economic divide widen. From 2000 to 2010, while the median household income increased by $7,000, the child poverty rate jumped from 8.5 percent to 14 percent. Over that period, a fifth of the town’s white people left, replaced by black and Latino people, who now made up 81 percent of the population.
Whatever poverty existed here lingered quietly below the town’s surface. It was poverty without density, poverty hidden behind the doors of moderately sized wood-paneled houses with driveways on winding residential streets, poverty without a robust public transportation system or easy access to social services or a convenience store and Laundromat at the end of the block. It was poverty in a place designed for middle-class comfort. Poverty still without the stigma of places like Newark and Brownsville.
As Oomz looked out the window of his mother’s car, he didn’t see the signs of the struggle that existed here. He saw only peace and lush green lawns, the images that he’d learned to believe represented achievement. He saw a place that felt far different from the place he knew best. When he got to the stadium, he noted how loud the birds chirped, pointed out a hawk gliding low in the sky, and excitedly stood over a gopher hole.
“Oh word, there’re groundhogs and everything here,” he said in wonder. “You buggin’. You buggin’.”
He bent down and peered into the hole, then dropped in a pebble to see how far it would go. A cold wind nipped at his neck. He stood straight and looked up at the trees around him, squinting his eyes against the glare of the sun.
“I wanna play here,” he said.
He felt excited and clear minded. He felt at peace. His mother had gotten him into a new school several days earlier. Like every school he’d ever attended, Mott Hall Bridges Academy was almost all black and brown, and most students qualified for free or reduced lunch. Though the school was in Brownsville, Oomz liked how much the teachers focused on life beyond the neighborhood. Around the start of each school year, sixth graders took a trip to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan. Seventh graders had to take a class on entrepreneurship. All but three students in the school’s most recent graduating class of 75 eighth graders went on to high schools outside the neighborhood. The classes were challenging, Oomz said, and the students were diligent and chill. “They teach us more advanced stuff at this school,” he said. “I feel like I really have to pay attention and I’m learning a lot. I actually like going to school again.” Mott Hall had gained acclaim from local education officials, but it didn’t have enough space for every child who wanted to attend. Like other charter schools, a child had to be selected from a lottery. Only a third of applicants made it in. The school shared a building with two other public schools, and on their way to class in the mornings, Mott Hall students, in their purple uniform shirts, often crossed paths with kids not lucky enough get picked. Oomz had been on the waiting list and only got in when another student left the school. “I think I’m o
n a good path now to do everything I wanna do,” he said. “I just gotta keep my focus.”
Oomz had been smiling all morning, but now, as he lined up with his teammates for the weigh-in, his face turned serious, the hard look he wore in the moments before big games. Big Oomz stood alongside him, dropping bits of advice to his fellow running backs.
“Use that power. Use that strength,” he said to his son.
“Use the whole field today, man,” he said to Isaiah. “Your eyes guide your feet.”
Big Oomz took a step back and snapped photos of Oomz and his teammates. He had arrived at the stadium early, before the Pee Wees had even slipped on their pads. He was the only parent to follow the boys and their coaches down the bleachers, over a wooden bridge, and into a grassy area separated from the stadium by a creek and a wall of shrubs. There, he sipped from a paper cup and watched the boys practice their offensive plays. He’d been skeptical of Mo Better’s coaches all year. The team’s success had softened but not defeated his doubt. As he stood beside his boy in the weigh-in line, he said in a low voice still loud enough for others to hear, “Come play for me next year. I’ma train you, get ya speed up.”
All his life, Oomz had admired his father, had wanted to play like his father. All his life, he had craved his father’s approval and wisdom. All his life, he believed he needed whatever his father could give him. But today, as his father tried to plan their future, Oomz looked straight ahead and didn’t respond. Father and son stood beside each other in silence as Oomz stepped onto the scale, stepped off, turned, and, without even a glance at his father, jogged back over the bridge to join his teammates. Big Oomz found a seat in the bleachers.
SOON THE 16 Pee Wees were huddled together.
“Playoffs, baby!” Marquis said.
“Let’s go! We gon’ win this!” Isaiah said.
“I don’t know why they even here!” Dorian said.
Esau stepped into the center of the circle and the boys went quiet. They hopped on their toes and shook the stiffness out of their hands and arms. They tightened the straps on their gloves and pulled their socks up to their knees. Every eye was on Esau, who stood before them scanning their faces, nodding his head.
“We got this game,” he began. “Trust me. We just gotta put it all together. Like I told y’all, they can’t fuck with y’all. You gotta believe that.”
He paused. A gust of wind rustled jerseys and leaves.
“They don’t want us to take this game,” he went on, slowly and calmly. “They don’t want us to go further. They don’t want us here next week. They don’t want no Brooklyn team in it.”
Then his voice got loud and the pace of his words quickened. A year’s worth of strain and care and frustrations and hopes came tumbling out. Esau recognized the magnitude of the moment and he sought to instill in his boys this same understanding, of the rareness of certain opportunities, the way they pass so quickly but linger so long and painfully in memory.
“Y’all goin’ to war, I’m goin’ to war with y’all! We goin’ to war together! This shit here is war! We goin’ real fuckin’ militant. We goin’ to war today. We goin’ to war today, a’ight?”
The boys clapped their hands, nodded, let out their shouts. They lined up, single file behind Isaiah. Esau marched up and down the line, bobbing his head as he preached, and soon his voice cracked and tears welled in his eyes.
“This shit is real emotional for me,” he said. “Look at me in my eyes. I don’t want y’all to go home today! I love y’all! Y’all see these tears? These tears real. ’Cause I love y’all. If y’all knock somebody head off, I’ll knock they coach head off, and that’s on my mother! Put it all on the line today and we’ll have tomorrow.”
He stopped pacing, put his hands on his hips, and looked to the ground. His boys stood frozen, eyes still locked on him.
“I got nothing else,” Esau said. “I give everything I got for y’all. I need y’all to give everything you got for me. I love y’all. I love y’all, and I don’t want to see y’all go home.”
They marched ahead, silent, over the bridge and into the stadium, deadened to the noise stirring in the stands around them.
“This is it!” Mr. Hart shouted. “This is it!”
“You ready, son?” Mrs. Hart shouted.
“He ready,” Mr. Hart said. “Don’t distract him.”
“He look ready,” Mrs. Hart said.
As the boys took the field for the kickoff, the stadium dropped into a hushed tension. Legs in the bleachers jittered nervously. Knuckles cracked. Hands tightly gripped the railing in front of the stands.
“They beat ’em last time,” one man said to another. “In double overtime.”
Brick City shot out like a cannon ball. Its offense knifed through Mo Better’s defense for 33 yards on the first two plays, blockers laying knock-down hits, runners gliding through big gaps in the middle of the field. By the fifth play, nearly every Mo Better defender had been bumped to the ground. On the sixth play, the quarterback easily scrambled into the end zone. 6–0.
Big Oomz, who had volunteered to work the orange down marker on the sideline, looked on in disappointment. “Stop being scared,” he said to the Pee Wees. “If you don’t wanna play, say you scared. That’s what you got equipment on for—to hit.”
The kickoff sailed over Isaiah’s head, and by the time he corralled the ball, the defenders had swarmed him, cutting him down at the four-yard line. The offense made no headway through three plays, and on the fourth play the defenders poured into the backfield and tackled Oomz in the end zone. A two-point safety. 8–0. Oomz slapped the ground, an anguished, frustrated look on his face.
“Get it together!” Big Oomz shouted. “It’s football! Relax!”
Hart sensed the game spiraling out of control. He thought about their game against Brick City last year, as Junior Pee Wees, when he and his teammates crumbled once the breaks went against them. On his first play back on defense, he stuffed the runner behind the line with a force that knocked the boy’s helmet straps loose. The hit sent a shock of inspiration though Donnie. “At the start, I was just like kinda frustrated that they was winning, but when Hart came through like that, I wasn’t sad anymore about us losing, but instead I was mad about it,” he said later. Donnie transformed into a bull, intense and fuming, crashing through Brick City’s offense, repeatedly shattering their plays like a baseball through a window. “Donnie look like a killer out there,” Coach Chris said.
The defenses owned the rest of the half. But while Brick City’s offense found occasional moments of promise, Mo Better’s offense was only knocked backward. Brick City defenders shook their blockers, cutting off Isaiah and Oomz before they had a chance to find an opening. For the Mo Better runners, it felt as if there were 20 blue jerseys attacking them, surrounding them, ganging up on them. In their 11 plays, the Brownsville boys had lost 14 yards and failed to get a single first down. As the team passed around water bottles and the coaches made strategic adjustments at halftime, the 8–0 deficit loomed over them like a high-rise.
Down on a knee, his arm leaning on the helmet in his hand, Hart clenched his jaw, pressed his lips together, and swallowed hard, trying to keep tears from falling. Isaiah stared at the ground, eyes wide with shock. Oomz stared ahead dead eyed. Only Donnie, it seemed, could escape the darkness. He ran over to Chris and, his voice giddy, reminded him of the $50 the coach promised him if he caused a fumble.
“Did you see it? I got back there and I almost got it! Did you see it?”
When the team huddled before the start of the third quarter, it was Donnie who declared that they would win this game, who slapped them on their shoulder pads and helmets and shouted, “Come on! We got this!” He brought belief back into the eyes of the boys who had worked so hard to get this far.
The Brownsville boys rushed out of the break with energy and hard hits. The offense nudged forward, and it seemed that perhaps the team was on the brink of a big play—they only needed one. But
Brick City’s defense held, as solid and unyielding as their name. Soon, Esau pulled out the trick plays he’d saved for big moments, and when they didn’t work, he fanatically fed the ball to Isaiah, but that still didn’t work either. Isaiah felt helpless, his powers doused like a bonfire in a hurricane.
“Yo, get my lil’ man the ball!” Big Oomz shouted. He paced in a small circle, shaking his head, and then, with a tone of disgust, added, “Doin’ all that damn blocking! They got him blocking all damn day and they not getting him the ball!”
Mo Better’s defense continued to stuff Brick City, but each time they got the ball back, it was the same old story. Late in the third quarter, with Mo Better’s offense pinned back near their own end zone, Brick City forced another safety. 10–0. A sense of inevitable defeat came over the Mo Better side of the bleachers. The parents fell quiet.
Then everything fell apart. Early in the fourth quarter, Brick City intercepted a pass and returned it for a touchdown. 17–0. Two plays later, they did it again. 24–0. The Brick City bleachers erupted in celebration. A boy raced up and down the track waving a big blue flag with a lion on it. Coach Chris and Coach Gary turned and began walking off the sideline toward the parking lot. In the trunk of Gary’s van were several big garbage bags, which they would fill with helmets, jerseys, and pads and then store for the off-season in a green shed under a staircase in the Garvey projects. They knew it was over. Their faces were not pained and their voices were not angry. They had been in the game for many years and they had seen many hard losses. They looked past the disappointment of the present, to their visions for the following autumn.
“The further away it is, the more hope you got,” Chris said with a smile.
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