New Title 1

by White, Wrath James

  “I ain’t did nothin’. This kid just wants to fight me ’cause he wants to prove he can beat me. I don’t even know the kid.” That seemed to relax her a little. This was just typical adolescent machismo and not the type of thing kids got murdered for. It was much better than her knowing that I’d trashed the kid’s brother and he was out looking for revenge. She’d have worried herself sick if she knew that. Just like I was doing.

  “Well, ain’t nobody gonna beat you but me if you don’t clean up that room. Ain’t nobody gonna lay a finger on you as long as I’m around.”

  I loved hearing her say it, but even she knew that parents couldn’t protect me from everything. That life was bigger and stronger than Mom or Dad or even Grandma. Some kids make it all the way through college before they learned those lessons. But those kids never lived in the ghetto.

  “Do I have to clean my room now? I’m hungry grandma.” I made the most pitiful face I could muster and could see grandma’s resolve melting like an ice-cream castle.

  “Lord, child you gonna be the death of me. Don’t them people feed you at school?”

  “That food is nasty! I don’t eat that mess!”

  “Well, you sure got fine tastes for a little boy with no job and no money. Get in there and do your homework while I make you a sandwich. And don’t tell me you ain’t got none ’cause I know better.”

  “Oh, alright.”

  I picked the book up off the table and marched with it into the family room. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Grandma’s eyes latch onto the book and follow it out of the room. Now I was really curious. What was it about this little book that made her so afraid?

  Grandma went shuffling into the kitchen to scrape the meat off some left-over chicken legs to make me a sandwich and I sat down at the huge ornate dining room table that would have been a gorgeous antique in a nicer home but in ours, covered with cheap plastic placemats that smelled like airplane glue, it was just another piece in a cluttered maze of junk.

  I opened the book by Elijah Muhammed and began to read about Dr. Yacub and how the white man was the devil. I laughed as I thought about it. All the white boys I knew were far too soft to be devils. They were more like those bitch-ass cherubs in the renaissance paintings at the art museum. Then again I hadn’t been a slave nor had I been forced to deal with the degradation of the Jim Crow laws as most Black people did back when this book was written. Poverty was the only burden that Black people today had to bear and it seemed that much of it was our own doing. Dropping out of school, having babies at 15 years-old, getting thrown in prison before we could legally vote, voiding our minds with drugs, men abandoning their families to start new ones over and over again without supporting any of the children they produced. I didn’t see the devil involved in any of that. I saw our own self-destructive ignorance. Even my own family seemed to have a fear of success, afraid to risk everything to go for their dreams, but rather content to stay in the ghetto and complain about what they didn’t have.

  Even Grandma could have gone back to school if she wanted to. I’d heard of lots of middle-aged people who went to college to try to better themselves. Every day I heard my mother and grandmother complaining about the depressed economy and non-existent job market in Philadelphia, but yet they stayed here suffering, too afraid to leave the comfort and familiarity of the goddamned block. I made a promise to myself that I was going to get the fuck out of Philly the first chance I got. I tossed the book aside and started my math homework.

  All of a sudden I heard loud voices cussin’ and arguing outside. One of the voices was speaking in an almost indecipherable Jamaican patois’ and the other was speaking in the most exaggerated ghetto slang I’d ever heard. I could barely understand either of them.

  “What! Nigga, what! You betta act like you know and stop slangin’ that shit on my turf ’cause I know you don’t want no drama from me, fool!”

  “Go on bloodclot! Lickle peckerwood wannabe! Jah Warrior say ’ow tings go down ’ere and ’e say ya naw can claim nut’ing in G-town. Ya wan’ sell in G-town ya ’ave ta pay! Dis ’ere Jah Warrior territory! Now go on way from ’ere for I take it in my mind ta stop ya breat’ing!”

  “You know who you steppin’ to fool? This here is Scratch! I ain’t nuthin’ ta play with, son! I ain’t nuthin’ nice! You think shit is sweet up in this piece? You think you can run up in here and take my shit?”

  I had run to the window when I heard the dread refer to his adversary as a peckerwood because I just couldn’t imagine a white boy in our neighborhood, talking cold street, and stepping to one of those ruthless Jamaican dealers like he was some bitch.

  Just as I parted the blinds enough to see the two, this tall skinny white boy in a leather Nike running suit, a thick gold “dope rope” with a gold nameplate that read “Scratch”, and more lines carved into the side of his towering block taper than Vanilla Ice, drew a big shiny automatic pistol out of his waistband while the Jamaican reached for his and blew the rasta’s dreadlocks off his head along with the greater portion of his skull. His crown of thick dreads went spinning through the air looking for a moment like some type of grisly gore-streaked Christmas tree.

  I sat frozen at the window watching the emaciated scarecrow-like Jamaican whose eyes had burned like Moses slip to the ground with blood streaming out of his nostrils and ears and his brain flopping out of the top of his ruptured head. His body hit the ground with a soft thud and then a smack as his head struck the asphalt and his brains spilled out onto the street. His legs were still twitching and his fingers were clenching and unclenching. The white boy stepped up and put two more bullets into him silencing his restless corpse. I was transfixed.

  It was the first time I had seen anyone die in real life and several hundred thousand TV and movie murders hadn’t prepared me. This was not killing it was butchering. It was like watching videos of deer being gunned down for sport. Yet where those videos made me sad and angry, this left me feeling hollow, helpless, vulnerable, and then suddenly excited! If this white boy could take a life away so easily than so could I! To me it was like witnessing the power of a god. Then the white boy knelt down over the bleeding carcass and did something that no god I’d ever heard of would ever have done.

  A pink spaghetti-like mass of tissue oozed between the white boy’s fingers as he reached into the Rasta’s skull and scooped out his brain. I stared in shocked silence, my body shaking and the little hairs on the back of my neck standing on end, watching as he crammed the man’s brain into his mouth, gulping and swallowing like a snake swallowing a rat. I kept watching as he slid his fingers along the inner wall of Jah Warrior’s brain pan and brought two fingers dripping with blood and cerebral fluid up to his lips where he licked them clean, shuddering as if in the throws of orgasm. He smeared his face in the blood flowing from the dead guy’s head like war paint, a horrible grin scarring his features. If I’d been forced to describe Satan…that was the face I would have given him.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  I was terrified, but not nearly as much as I should have been. I know it seems bizarre now, but at the time I didn’t see anything at all unnatural about what he’d done. I even thought I could remember seeing something on National Geographic about a tribe in Africa that ate the brains of their enemies in order to gain their power but I couldn’t be sure. I guess I just figured that he was playin’ that crazy nigga role to build his rep and scare off witnesses and competition. Who would fuck with some crazy white boy who talked like a thug and ate motherfucker’s brains?

  “Ya’ll niggas ain’t see shit! Say you saw somethin’ and see what happens! See what I do to you! See what happens to your families!”

  He was standing in the middle of the street, waving his gun with one hand while wiping the blood and brainmatter from his mouth and chin with the back of his other hand.

  I couldn’t believe what I had seen. I thought about the book I had just started reading and what Elijah Muhammed had said about the White man being
the devil. I still wasn’t so sure about the white man being the devil but I was almost positive that this one was.

  I heard my grandmother’s footsteps moving faster than I ever would have thought they could and then I felt myself being hurled to the floor. She was praying and sweating and scared. I was scared too but I was also impressed. At that moment the white boy with the big shiny gun and the cannibalistic appetite loomed larger than life. A white kid who could walk into a ghetto by his damned self and gun down a member of one of the most vicious drug gangs around, in broad daylight, and then stroll right back out unmolested and unmarred. Here was a muthafucka who didn’t give a fuck. He was obviously insane, eating a niggas brains like it was a damned cheese steak hoagie, but that type of crazy just made you more dangerous by my way of thinking. I didn’t care if he was Satan or not. I wanted to be just like him. I would be and much worse.

  My mom made me stay in all night because of the shooting so I didn’t have to face Huey, but I knew there was no avoiding him at school. I was tempted to stay home but I also knew that everyone would know it was because of Huey and I didn’t want all the kids to call me a pussy. Mom still had one of Darryl’s guns around the house somewhere and with yesterday’s drama still fresh in my mind I considered confronting Huey with it. Even then the thought of murdering someone didn’t bother me one bit. I wasn’t planning on eating the nigga’s brains like that white boy but I’d damn sure peel his cap back if I had too. But I didn’t want to think of what would happen to me if I got caught. I liked the idea of walking the streets with the reputation of being a killer but I hated the idea of walking the prison yard for the rest of my life. Besides, I wasn’t certain I could find it anyway. Mom was a master at hiding things she didn’t want me to get a hold of.

  As soon as I left the house the other kids walking past on their way to school all turned to look at me. Then they looked back around the corner on Duval Street at something I couldn’t see. I knew that the something was probably Huey or Tank or both of them. I steeled my nerves and stepped on down the street strolling like I was the hardest nigga on the planet.

  Iesha, this little red-bone girl who lived up the street from me, came rushing up to me and grabbed my hand. I had a crush on her and she knew it, but fronted like she was naïve. I knew she liked me too, but her mom thought I was a little hoodlum so she had to keep her distance. Her mom would kick her ass at the drop of a dime, even in public. Her hand in mine sent shivers through me and when I turned to look into her light brown eyes all thoughts of Huey fled from me.

  “Oh, hi Ieasha. What’s up?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “Oh, I know about that shooting last night. The shit happened right in front of my crib. I watched the ambulance take the body away.” Even at ten I knew better than to admit to anyone that I had witnessed a murder. Especially when the killer was a psychotic white man who ate brains.

  “No, I mean about Huey sayin’ he’s gonna kick your ass! He’s right around the corner with his brother. You should go back in the house ’fore they catch you!”

  The concern and worry in her voice, the fear on her face, wounded me. Didn’t she think I could take care of myself? Shit, I ran that school and had kicked more ass than any ten kids and here she was telling me to run?

  “Before they catch me? Bitch, do you see me runnin’! Ain’t no bitch ass North Philly pussy’s gonna kick my ass!”

  I said it loud enough for all the kids on the block to hear along with anyone who might have been waiting around the corner, then I stormed down toward Duval Street hungry for blood. All the kids followed a few steps behind me like vultures circling carrion, leaving Iesha standing alone in the middle of the street still looking worried for me. I was going to beat this Huey kid ’til he lay bleeding at my feet for making Iesha doubt me.

  The air parted reluctantly as I charged through it. It was so thick with tension that running through it was like swimming through quicksand. All that did was make me even more desperate to get it all over with. I still had not learned fear yet.

  I was at the end of the block in seconds looking for the pretender who had come to usurp my crown as king of the block. I turned at Duval Street and didn’t see anyone but a bunch of second graders being walked to school by a woman too young to be any of their mothers. Just as I was about to sigh in relief and talk some trash to the other kids about scaring them off, Tank’s hulking bulk turned the corner from McCallum Street onto Duval followed by a little light-skinned kid who was almost pretty enough to be a girl.

  Huey was all of 4’ 8” and no more than 90lbs. His skin was butterscotch and he had big hazel eyes with long lashes, thick bushy eyebrows that rose to sharp peaks, and curly hair that grew in an unruly bush. My grandmother later referred to him as “That high-yaller nigga with the good hair.”

  When I saw him come walking down the street led by his behemoth “Little brother”, whom I’d already sent hobbling to the principle’s office the day before sniffing and crying with blood and snot dried and caked beneath his nose. I nearly burst out laughing. There was Tank with his nose all bandaged up, grinning like an idiot, walking alongside his “Big” brother who looked like you could knock him over with a few harsh words. I knew a lot of short kids who were bad as fuck but none of them were as pretty as this kid. He looked like a mark to me. I couldn’t imagine anyone who looked that feminine kicking my ass, but that just showed the limits of my imagination.

  He stepped up to me and I puffed out my chest and said “So, you’re Huey, huh?” His eyes met mine and I knew I had made a mistake. I knew that this little yaller nigga was dangerous. He had eyes like Darryl had after returning from ’Nam, eyes like my uncle had when we used to visit him at Gratersford prison before he was shot by a guard, eyes like that white boy who shot that Jamaican yesterday, eyes that have seen the worst the world had to offer, eyes that had seen lots of killing, eyes that have killed. We all look like that now, but back then you didn’t see eleven year-old boys with eyes like hardened cons.

  Huey didn’t say a word as he stepped up. He just kicked me right in the jaw with a move every bit as graceful and beautiful as himself. This was no Kung fu Theatre bullshit either. This little brotha new what he was doing. I felt my jaw pop and then a punch landed on the other side of it that felt like it would rip my head in two. Instantly I flew into a rage, throwing myself at the little pretty boy in a rage, but I couldn’t land a single blow.

  Huey slipped and ducked and weaved, while firing counter shots in rapid combinations. My blows were wild and flailing whereas his were precise and accurate. As his punches landed again and again my rage started to give way to fear. I couldn’t even see the punches coming and once they began they were like an endless wave of kicks. Knees, elbows, and hooks. He was taking me apart. I felt myself starting to lose consciousness so I did the only thing I could at that point to save myself. I ran. Hearing the kids behind me laughing, hearing Iesha’s pained voice calling my name, hearing my father’s disappointed hiss echoing in my mind more painful and intimate than the rest. I ran home and ransacked Mom’s room looking for Darryl’s gun. If I had found it Huey and I would have never become friends. If I had found it Huey and Tank would have never become anything but dust and stench.

  Grandma rushed upstairs when she heard me dismantling Mom’s room. She found me sitting in Mom’s closet with tears streaming down my face and blood and saliva drooling from my mouth, which hung carelessly open. My cheeks were swollen up like two puss-filled blisters about to rupture. She screamed and hugged me, and prayed, and dragged me to the hospital begging and praying to God all the way.

  They wired my jaw shut and I adamantly refused to go back to school looking like some freak whose braces had been welded together. I stayed home reading Elijah Muhammed’s book and thinking about what I’d seen that white boy do to that Jamaican dealer. The more I thought about it the more amazing it seemed. I’d never even heard about white boys that hard. Except maybe the mafia but I didn’t t
hink this guy was Italian. He looked too pale. And I’d never heard of anyone from the mafia eating anyone’s brains. It just didn’t add up. It didn’t make sense.

  Why would someone eat a niggas brains? Was he trying to claim that Rasta’s spirit or his power like those African tribes or was he just trying to establish some kind of weird-ass rep?

  It didn’t add up at all unless of course he really was some kind of demon. I kept thinking about the way his face had looked after he’d peeled that Jamaican’s cap back and scooped out Jah Warrior’s brains, all covered in blood with flesh and brain matter coating his gold teeth. His eyes had filled with something like ecstasy. There was definitely something not right about that white boy. He looked like he was possessed or something. But Elijah Muhhamed had said that all white people were demons. Did all of them do shit like that? I wasn’t sure. I just didn’t know enough about them.

  I started making it a point to question every Muslim I saw about white people and that whole devil thing.

  “No, brother. You got it all wrong. There ain’t no one white man walking around who’s the devil like they portray him in the white man’s bible. He ain’t got horns and tail or nothing like that. All white men are the devil. Every last one of them collectively make up that fork-tongued cloven-hoofed fiend. He is an amalgamation of evil and the white man is that evil.”