by Gabriel Bump
I woke up in the hospital. My eyes were swollen shut. I heard Coach Harper.
“Don’t you fucking scream, Claude,” he said.
“Why would I scream?” I asked. “Where am I?”
“You’re in hell,” he said close to my ear. “Don’t you say a fucking word.”
I smelled a pile of mint green.
“You say anything,” he sounded farther away, “and I’ll destroy you.”
“How will you destroy me?” I asked. But he was gone. I asked again.
“What the hell are you talking about,” Grandma’s voice was over me. “Did they give you drugs? Nurse. Did you give him drugs?”
“The voice,” I said. “The voice said it was going to destroy me.”
“Nurse!” Grandma yelled down the hall.
A nurse hurried in, wiped smudged frosting from her cheeks and full mouth.
“Was someone in here with my grandson?” Grandma asked.
The nurse swallowed.
“It’s Raven’s birthday,” the nurse said. “We were eating cupcakes. She’s thirty. Her father came down from Waukegan.”
“Did you give him drugs?” Grandma asked.
“Why would I do a thing like that?” The nurse walked out the door.
Grandma rubbed my forehead.
“Don’t worry,” Grandma said. “You’re just going a little crazy.”
I spent two days in the hospital with two broken ribs, a broken nose, a concussion, and a scuffed-up face. I was discharged on Halloween. Little monsters banged on our windshield when Grandma pulled up.
Mothers screamed for their children to come on, that house doesn’t have any candy, move it, dark’s coming.
“I’m going to kill Paul,” Grandma said as she led me up to our porch.
Paul was dressed like a cross between Madonna and Diana Ross. He held empty bottles of vodka in each hand. He only drank vodka when he ran out of cigarettes and the world was closing in on him. He was supposed to go to a party up north. He was supposed to leave a bowl of candy on the porch.
“Hell has risen on our doorstep.” Paul clanked his bottles together. “The trumpet sounds and our chariot awaits.”
“Claude”—Grandma led Paul into the kitchen—“go to your room.”
My vision was blurred still. I tripped four times going up the stairs. Jonah was on my bed.
He moved to the floor.
His brother woke up the day George Bones put me in the hospital. He’d heard I was coming home. He’d knocked on my front door and asked Paul if he could wait for me.
Seven people were shot when I was away. The neighborhood was back to normal. The miraculous disappeared. Ms. Germaine, from Seventieth Street, had a pistol stuck into her stomach for her Social Security check. Downstairs, Paul yelled about rising dead, ash falling like snow from swollen black clouds, parking tickets, forever-constant meteor showers—End Times.
“Paul begged me to kill him,” Jonah said.
“Oh,” I said. “He’s not well.”
“Sorry,” Jonah said.
“About what?” I asked.
“Not sure,” Jonah said.
He got up and left. I started to follow him. Then I got dizzy and had to lie back down.
I heard Grandma say “Hey, Jonah” and “Goodbye, Jonah.”
I heard the front door slam.
I heard Paul make belated attempts at redemption.
I heard him scream for mercy and forgiveness.
Paul swore off breakfast liquor. Grandma refused to cook any meal for him. He sopped up our bacon grease with stale bread.
“I’d rather die than live under that devil’s thumb,” Paul said, still drunk.
“Stop this nonsense,” Grandma said over her full plate.
“What devil?” I asked.
“That Jonah,” Paul said.
“He’s just a boy,” Grandma said.
“He has power,” Paul said.
“Enough,” Grandma said.
“He just balls,” I said.
“Look what happened when he stopped,” Paul said.
He pointed a trembling fist toward my still-bruised face.
“Paul.” Grandma jabbed him with his fork. “That’s enough.”
“That devil might ball,” Paul continued.
I smelled fear and booze.
“You scared Jonah,” Grandma said to Paul.
She turned to me.
“Was it good seeing him, Claude?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Are you going to see him today?” she asked.
“Of course,” I lied.
Coach Harper and my principal came over around lunch. They wanted to know if I remembered who attacked me. When nobody was looking, Coach Harper ran his index finger across his throat.
“I’ll wait in here with little Claudey,” he said when the other adults went to grab sodas from the kitchen.
“This is all I have, Claude,” Coach Harper said.
He picked up a flower vase next to his chair. He put the vase down. He massaged the tulip bulbs. He studied the flower vase as he talked to me.
“If you tell them the truth,” Coach Harper said, “they’ll kick George Bones off the team.”
I didn’t know what to say to him. I didn’t want to say something wrong. There was something unmistakable and unstable in his eyes.
“I’m all alone in this world,” Coach Harper said. “If they kick George Bones off the team, I won’t have anything.”
“You’ll have Jonah,” I said. “We all have Jonah.”
“Michael needed Scottie,” Coach Harper said. “Jonah needs George if we’re going to win the city championship.”
He picked up the vase again. He put it down when the adults came back in.
“Now, Claude,” my principal said, “I hear George Bones might have had something to do with this.”
“Yeah,” I said. “He did it. He did all of it. It was all him.”
Fuck George Bones, I thought. Fuck Coach Harper and his ruined world.
Coach Harper picked up the flower vase and threw it at my head. He missed. He lunged at me. Grandma stuck a foot into his knee and dropped him.
“Can I go back to bed?” I asked while the adults held Coach Harper on the floor. I went upstairs.
“You ruined me!” Coach Harper yelled, stood up.
“You ruined me.” Coach Harper cried, bent down.
George Bones was kicked out of school. Coach Harper was fired and ordered to counseling.
That Sunday, when Jonah and his parents came over for dinner, a bee landed on my neck. I didn’t feel it. One sting would’ve put me in intensive care. Jonah brushed it off, and it stung his hand.
His parents were over to talk about moving. They wanted Jonah to say goodbye.
“This place is fucked up,” Jonah’s mom said, without hesitation.
“We’re moving downstate,” Jonah’s dad said. “Close to Missouri.”
Paul looked relieved. He lit a cigarette and smoked slowly.
“That’s nice,” Grandma said. “That’s a good thing to do.”
“That’s nice,” I said.
“All this craziness,” Jonah’s mom said. “This isn’t good for raising kids.”
Jonah stood over the sink, his back to us, soaking his bee sting in warm water. We looked at his back. We wanted him to say something. He didn’t. He stood in his Nike gear and considered his wound. Next morning, they were gone.
Jonah still lives downstate. He doesn’t play basketball. His parents got divorced. Jonah won’t even visit South Shore.
A few years ago, his brother died in his sleep from an unknown disease.
I wonder if Jonah knows it wasn’t his fault.
I wonder if he sees benevolence in his shadow.
Sixty-Seventh Street
Grandma took the swing beside me and matched my lazy rhythm. After Jonah left, I started running away. Not far; just up the block, a few blocks over, the small park on S
ixty-Seventh.
“What’s wrong with you and this game?” Paul would ask each time he retrieved me. Sometimes, Grandma came for me.
Once, Grandma hung with me for a little bit, swayed with me, kicked off her sandals.
“Say the word, and we’ll move to Hawaii,” Grandma said to me.
Silence was my other new impulse.
“Well, just listen then,” Grandma said.
She put her hand on my back, pushed me gentle and slow.
“Those kids standing around that bus stop aren’t going anywhere. You know what they’re doing? They’re not waiting for the bus. You know who those kids are? They’re Redbelters, those boys and girls. Don’t look too long, just glance. You know what they’re doing? Those kids, boys and girls, dealing drugs. I knew them when they were you: young and sad at the world. I knew their fathers and mothers, most of them. They’re smart like you. Smart enough to do basic math, smart enough to know when someone’s trying to kill or fool them. That’s smarter than a lot of people in this world. Still, society doesn’t want them to go anywhere. Those kids aren’t taking the bus. They’re going to stand all day; then, they’re going to stand all night. They’re going to stand until dust settles on their exposed skeletons. Do you know what I mean?”
I didn’t.
“I failed with your mother,” Grandma continued. “The universe failed your father. I’m not going to lose you. You got something special deep in there. We don’t know what it is yet. We’ll find it. Don’t worry. We’ll find it. I’ve ruined too many fixable things in my life, and I’m not that old. There’s hope for us yet—goddamn it, baby, I love you.”
We watched the buses go by. An undercover screeched onto the sidewalk, and those Redbelters scattered.
That night I dreamed my room was a spaceship. I was a skeleton, and my ceiling fan swirled mini dust tornadoes around my bed and eyeballs. Those Redbelters were writing scriptures on my wall with pens. At least, that’s what they said they were writing. Scriptures? Scriptures? I kept asking. It was all equations I didn’t understand, written in the shape of a colonnade. They finished and asked me to read it back to them, starting with the end. The end, I saw, was a chain of interconnected circles swirling around a burning building. I tried to speak, and they all turned into skeletons, like me. Then, we all turned to dust. We died like that; just like that.
Janice and the Redbelters
Chill’s Smokehouse was a front. The Redbelters handed out flyers in the parking lot after school. Everyone got one. The flyers promised half-off the lunch special.
“We got fries,” a large man in sunglasses told us from behind the counter. It was November and cloudy. He wore a camouflage tank top with a blue whale printed across the stomach. We tucked the fries deep in our backpacks.
That was my freshman year in high school. That was the year Chicago Public Schools lunches were deemed subhealthy. Fries were the first to go.
The next day, we hustled over.
Their marquee advertised ribs, pizza, and gyros. They didn’t even have a soda machine, fryer, or oven. Fries were the lunch special. They microwaved them by the pound. Mine were cold and soggy. A bearded linebacker passed out paper plates covered in ketchup, for dipping.
“Y’all got mustard?” someone asked.
“Coming soon,” the linebacker said.
Everything was coming soon. Like chairs and tables. Sticky brown and yellow stains dotted the linoleum floor. A door slammed behind the counter.
And Big Columbus appeared.
We knew we had made a mistake. Big Columbus sold drugs and guns to kids and teenagers. Big Columbus was head of the Redbelters.
“How y’all doing today?” Big Columbus asked. Someone raised a hand. Big Columbus called on him.
“I have to go home,” the person said. The bearded linebacker blocked the entrance. Big Columbus ignored him.
“Who here wants to save South Shore?” Big Columbus asked.
No one answered.
“Who here wants to get rich?”
He stood up on the counter.
“Who here knows who I am?”
Everybody nodded.
“Good,” Big Columbus said. “If any of you get sick of being chess pieces and want to be soldiers in the fight for sovereignty, you know where I am.”
Big Columbus hopped down. The bearded linebacker moved from the door. The street outside was littered with flyers, paper plates, and fries. Ketchup splattered the sidewalk.
. . .
Grandma wanted to put Big Columbus in a headlock.
“I knew that boy when he was in diapers,” Grandma said.
“How?” I asked.
“Don’t worry,” Grandma said.
“He said he wants to save South Shore,” I said.
“Those Redbelters think they’re Black Panthers,” Grandma said.
“We were the struggle,” Paul said.
“You were a Girl Scout,” Grandma said to Paul. Paul took his pasta and went upstairs.
“They gave us fries,” I said.
“They were probably microwaved,” Grandma said. “And they probably didn’t have any mustard.”
She slapped her palms against her head.
“Don’t be stupid,” Grandma said to me. “If you’re stupid I’m going to drop-kick you.”
She kissed my eyebrow, grabbed her coat, gave Paul a gentle slap, and ran out the front door. Paul reentered the kitchen. He was holding a framed picture.
“This look like a Girl Scout to you?” Paul asked, shoved the picture in my face.
I’d seen pictures like that during Black History Month. Young Paul stood behind a man screaming over a podium. Everybody had fists raised. Most of them were wearing sunglasses and Afros. Paul was slim, muscular, smiling. He was smiling wide. He wasn’t wearing glasses. His smiling eyes shone under his space-black shrublike hair.
“That’s power.”
He leaned back in his chair and put his hands on his belly.
“That looks like Fred Hampton,” I said.
“It is Brother Fred,” Paul said. “Brother Fred would make Big Columbus shine his shoes.”
“They killed Fred Hampton in his sleep,” I said.
“That’s not his fault,” Paul said.
“Whose fault is it?” I asked.
“Whenever we come together,” Paul said, “they want to break us apart.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” I asked.
“Us,” Paul said.
“Who’s ‘they’?” I asked.
“Everybody that isn’t us,” Paul said.
“Why didn’t they kill you?” I said.
“I’m unkillable,” Paul said.
He yanked the picture out of my hand and went into the living room.
Over the next several weeks kids stopped showing up to class. Chin, a freshman fourth-string running back, thought working for Big Columbus was safer than sprinting full speed into an immovable pile of lineman. Travis left because Gone with the Wind ruined his appetite for reading. Last winter, Mary Dobson had given her baby to relatives in Ohio; now, she wanted to send money. And so on. Freshman, sophomores, juniors, and seniors. They were all making money. Principal Carmichael was worried. He had principaled through the Stones and GDs. Those gangs had imploded. That took years though, generations. Principal Carmichael didn’t feel like waiting for the Redbelters to self-destruct. He was old and scared and ready to make history. He called a lunchtime assembly.
We shuffled into the auditorium. I sat in the back, behind band kids and the science club.
“There is a disease among us.” Principal Carmichael whispered into the microphone, for gravitas. “Let’s talk about a cure.”
Vice-Principal Mac yelled for him to speak up.
“We can’t hear you, preacher,” he yelled. Word was Vice-Principal Mac used to run guns from Indiana and sell them to Latin Kings. When we read about British sympathizers during the American Revolution, I pictured Vice-Principal Mac and his big earrings.
Principal Carmichael turned the mic volume up but spoke softer.
“How many of you are scared?” Principal Carmichael asked.
The rows in front of me raised their arms.
“So here’s what we’re going to do,” he continued.
Double doors slammed. A pigtailed girl I recognized from lunch came down the row.
“Ms. Camden, please take a seat,” Principal Carmichael said in his strict voice. Then he kept whispering.
“You’re Claude, right?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. Her pink T-shirt hung past her knees. Her baggy sweatpants bunched around her chunky white shoes. Her face was sharp and movielike, stunning. She smelled musty and real.
“I’m Janice,” Janice said.
“I’m Claude,” I said.
“I know that,” Janice said.
I had nothing else to say. Janice shifted in her seat, pulled her knees up to her chin, into her T-shirt. Her head atop a pink blob.
“What is this anyway?” Janice asked.
“An assembly,” I said.
“I know that,” Janice said.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You’re nicer than I thought,” Janice said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“People talk about you,” Janice said.
“I know,” I said.
“They say you have no friends,” Janice said.
“I have friends,” I said.
“They say you’re going to shoot up the school,” Janice said.
“I have friends,” I said.
“Really?” Janice asked.
“Everyone has friends,” I said.
“I don’t,” Janice said.
I didn’t know what to say. Until then, as we had talked, I had kept my head forward, spoke sideways. Now, I looked at her, stared. She kept her head, balanced on her blob, angled down.
“Like who?” Janice asked.
“Paul,” I said.
“Paul Newson?” Janice asked. “He plays baseball; he’s not your friend.”