by Sharon Flake
A white girl
That you say is all wrong for me
So you best get with this—
What you think won’t change a thing,
Until you learn to recognize a king
when he’s passing by.
THE POLICE MOST LIKELY WOULDN’T AGREE, but the hotter it gets in North Philadelphia, the better. Philly heat makes people come out their houses quick as roaches running off a hot stove. The front steps fill up then; so do the pavements and corners. The streets get busy with cars flying by, blasting music so loud it shakes windows and old people’s bones too, I bet. Summertime is crazy time around here, my stepfather likes to say. “People lose their minds.” I guess he knows how Philly heat can be, hot like cooked grits sliding down your back.
“The devil must have made Philadelphia,” my step-dad says, pulling up his pants, “so he could vacation here in the summer, and not feel like he ever left home.” His forehead is wet. So are his underarms, which stained his blue uniform already. His shirt is open, like all the windows in our house, but still don’t cool him off none. It’s eight a.m. the Fourth of July, and not just starting off hot; it’s still hot from last night and the day before. Philly hot. “Give me another glass of water.” He holds out a glass full of ice. “And fill up the pitcher in the fridge; a few jars, too. It’s gonna be a bad one.”
A bad one in Philly means a lot of things to a police officer like my stepdad, so I know he’s not just talking about the heat. He’s talking about all the things that can go wrong when heat and people who are sick and tired of the heat and everyone else all get mixed up together.
By the time I get back with the water, my stepsister Patricia is sitting in his lap, asking what she already knows the answer to. “Can we get us an air conditioner?” He hands her an ice cube. She rubs it over her forehead, under her arms, dripping water onto his pants. “They don’t cost all that much.”
She shouldn’t mention money to him. He’s cheap. And he’s working two jobs, saving up for a new house. Him and Mom are always telling us that saving money for what we need is better than spending money on what we want. “Sacrifice,” he says, patting her back so she will stand up and he can finish putting on his work boots. “We all gotta do it if we wanna get out of here.”
Here is North Philly, where I was born—him and my mother too. They got married last year. Then we moved into this row house, which he says costs more rent money than it should for a house that crackheads used to sleep in. He stands up, stepping into another boot. Tying laces and stomping dirt off before shining his boots with a rag. “I gotta go. Y’all know the rules, right?”
I’m thirteen. I know the rules. I shouldn’t have to repeat them to him every day before he leaves. I do anyhow, ’cause if I don’t, well . . . I just do, that’s all. “Stay inside. Clean the house. Don’t answer the door. No BET or MTV. Drink water. Save the juice for supper. Look out for each other. Tell the bill collectors you sent the money in. Hit the floor if we gotta. And call you if things don’t seem right.”
He is almost out the door when our two-year-old sister comes into the living room kicking off her Pull-Ups and carrying a soggy undershirt. Golden’s cheeks are as red as the mosquito bites she keeps scratching on her neck. My stepdad taped the holes in her window screen because he says we’ll be moving soon and it don’t make sense to buy new ones. But the bugs get to her anyhow. Picking her up is as easy for him as picking up chips off the floor. So before we know it she’s on his shoulders, and he’s telling her not to wet him before he goes to work. He kisses Golden and hands her to me. Then he hugs Patricia and shakes my hand. “They crazy ’round here. Lock up. Stay inside. I wanna find y’all alive when I get back.” He’s outdoors, saying hello to a neighbor, then listening while I put the locks on—one dead bolt, two chains, a latch, and a chair underneath the knob, just in case. Then he knocks to let me know I need to close some of the windows. I ignore that rule.
I keep looking out the window, making sure he gets that ride from Mr. Shabiz, just like he did yesterday. Then I’m picking up what my sisters threw down last night, thinking about the baths I got to give them, the lunch we have to get packed, the Kool-Aid I froze last night, and the kitchen floor that’s got to be mopped, all before we three get dressed and go outside and have some fun in that Philly heat that my stepdad cannot tolerate.
It’s bad enough to be hot in Philly; but to be hot and stuck inside should be illegal. So I move as fast as I can. Row houses catch the heat like frogs catch flies, and they hold on to it forever, the way graves hold caskets, Miss Evelyn said once. Besides, so much be happening out there, who wants to miss it? Only him, my stepdad, who don’t love North Philly nearly as much as I do, and don’t understand nothing about her neither.
Pop. Pop. Pow!
Patricia ducks.
Golden starts to cry.
I run into the street, watching firecrackers shoot over our house, turning silver, red, and blue.
“ ’Bout time.” Elliott walks up to us. “Y’all late.” He picks up Golden. “See what I got?” He hands a lit sparkler to her. “I’m ready to set something off.”
I take it away from her. “Don’t give her that.”
He puts her down, reaches into his pocket, and pulls out his lighter and flicks. Elliott looks at fire like it’s a girl he can’t wait to kiss. I have to watch him. Last year he accidentally set his house on fire. The whole living room went up in flames. The couch, the bookshelf, his favorite chair—all gone. That’s when I knew for sure you gotta keep six eyes on Elliott. It’s the reason he don’t come in my house no more either. Not because my stepdad says so, but because I say so. He might not mean to do it way deep down inside—but Elliott would fire something up in our place fast as you could turn on a light switch. And I like my sisters alive, and my bed just the way it is.
“Back up,” he says. “Here go another one.”
Before it’s in the sky good, an ambulance flies past our block with its siren blasting. Two fire trucks follow behind it, horns beeping, sirens screaming, forcing drivers out their way. Elliott starts running. It’s like the sirens are calling his name.
“Come on.” He takes off after the trucks. “Let’s see where they go.” He looks back at me, picking up speed when he sees I’m not moving.
I pick up a Blow Pop wrapper and then Golden and head for our porch.
My father’s rules are like a rope tied around my hands and feet, forcing me to stay put even when I want to break loose, even when it looks like I am free to do whatever I like. Watch them girls. Keep ’em inside. Be the man while I’m gone.
I pull out juice boxes and straws. Twenty minutes later I’m still stuck, trapped outside in this Philly heat with two girls and a braid that won’t stay plaited no matter how many times Golden asks me to redo it. “Let’s go back in.” Patricia wipes her sweaty forehead. “It’s boring out here.” She picks up a book and reads it to Golden when she sees me ignoring her.
Finally, Elliott comes back. “I couldn’t catch ’em. But if we take the bus . . . that would be the quickest, fastest way.”
I start packing up Golden. Patricia’s eyes roll. “We don’t wanna do that. It’s hot.” Her ankles cross so I know she ain’t moving. “I’m telling Dad if you make us.” She tells Golden not to move either. “Open the door so we can go in and watch cartoons.”
My stepsister is like her Dad. She don’t like this Philly heat and she don’t care for North Philly much either.
I didn’t want to ditch ’em—that was Elliott’s idea. But I could see my sisters weren’t going to make it today. Philly heat ain’t for everybody. Besides, Elliott reminded me, in three months it will be my fourteenth birthday. I’ve got to start acting my new age. “Dragging sisters around won’t get you no girls,” he says as we walk out of my cousin Danka’s house. She’s giving me three hours to hang out. “Any later and I’m feeding your sisters to the cats,” she tells me.
You can sneak onto a bus in Philly, if you know how to. So
when people get off the 32, Elliott and I go through the back door, crawling between legs and listening for the driver to tell us whether we’ve been caught.
We sit on the back seat, pushing open a broken window and sticking our heads out. Elliott yells to a girl wearing hardly anything. I watch the row houses go by, cats sitting under cars, cooling it, and girls with big thighs sitting on steps, using up their minutes. When someone wants off, the bus stops so hard that a woman who was standing ends up in some dude’s lap. I would just let her sit there, if it was me. She’s pretty. Dressed in a tan suit and wearing the kind of heels I like—red spikes.
“You smell that?”
I’m not sure if Elliott’s talking about fire or barbecue. I smell ’em both.
When he jumps up and pulls the cord, I know which one he’s talking about. You can eat anytime, but a fire you’ve got to catch when you can.
There’s a crowd on the corner, watching. We can’t see the flames, but we smell the smoke and hear firemen chopping doors and telling people to hurry out. “Excuse me. Sorry. Move.” Elliott pushes his way to the front. His cell clicks more than mine did when I took pictures of my cousin going to the prom. He could stay here all day. Could watch a match burn all week. But fires bore me after a while, so I leave him and take off by myself.
Philly’s got a lot of small blocks—mazes kind of. My stepdad says don’t get caught on some of them after dark. But he’s always looking at the bad side of things. They got murals in North Philly, too, the most beautiful in the world. I make my sisters stop whenever we see one, ’cause ain’t no harm in appreciating something while you trying to run the streets.
All the houses on this block are knocked down, boarded up, or busted up. It’s just me out here, smashing a SpaghettiOs can with my foot, putting it in my pocket, then climbing a tree that’s growing smack dab in the middle of a house, clear through the roof. A branch sticks out a third-floor window, like an arm through a sleeve. I get to the top of that tree and stare at the blue in the sky and everything down below, including cabbages growing in a yard next door, and pink roses climbing up a wall. I’m thinking about my sisters, wondering what my stepdad’s gonna say when he finds out I ditched ’em. But I’m out, so I might as well stay out as long as I can and make it worth getting punished for, I figure.
“Let’s go,” I say, when I get back to Elliott.
He wants to stay. I take off without him, for good this time. You gotta do that with Elliott—just leave him. He likes to be in charge; to do everything his way.
Before I get to the end of the block, he’s in front of me. “Look,” he says.
One day Elliott’s gonna get me killed. “Don’t look. Keep walking.” I’m trying not to look myself, but that’s a whole lot of money they counting up on that porch. It’s stacked as high as the red heels the lady wore on the bus.
Elliott stops. Not me. He heads for the porch. “What’s up?”
The man in the black do-rag nods, looks at his dough, and says for Elliott to keep stepping. The woman on the porch with the missing railing stays on her knees, counting. She reminds me of my cousin, Tracie. Skinny. Smiling, but looking like she is sad from her eyebrows to her toenails.
Elliott’s got this thing about him. He acts like he’s tougher than he really is. I think it’s because of all the cops in his family—two uncles, a sister, one brother, and a grandfather. He ought to know better, because even Superman could get jacked up around here.
Elliott gets warned again. “Don’t make me hurt you.”
“He’s slow,” I tell the man. “Not right in the head.”
He looks at the two of us. “So.” He reaches inside his shirt and pulls out a shank.
Elliott has always been a fast runner. So he beats me to the end of the block. We turn the corner, roll past a man sitting on his porch, drinking beer and lotioning his wife’s feet; almost run over a woman in a wheelchair riding up the middle of the street, carrying a rug and a floor lamp across her lap.
“Did you see it?” Elliott asks, walking backward. “All that money.”
I stop to catch my breath. “You . . . wanna. . . die?”
He holds up the lighter and sets off a firecracker. “People ’round here know better. They touch me, they in jail for life.”
Elliott first got the fire bug when he was six, he says, when his dad took him to a fire on South Street. It was big and went on for two days. People died. Some came out crying, with their clothes cooking and soot on their faces and their hair smoking, he told me. He felt bad for the people, but he fell in love with fire. “It made me feel happy like Christmas, not sad.” Ever since, it’s been in him to light and burn. His father tries to keep it a secret, but more and more Elliott says he can’t keep it under wraps. “I gotta do it,” he says, “like you gotta play Wii Sports every day.”
Sometimes we walk and get nowhere. Sometimes we get lucky. We both are feeling lucky right now, because of the girl across the street. Everything about her makes us stare: her tight, short purple skirt; her little top; and those lips—pink, big, soft.
“Man.” Elliott shakes his head. “Look at that,” he says, tripping over the curb.
North Philly girls can do that to you: make you forget what you doing. The way they get their hair done. The way they dress like they going someplace special, when most likely they are just going around the block. How they walk like they got all day, but you don’t mind because you ain’t rushing to noplace nohow.
I’m standing on my toes because I want to see every piece of her. But then another girl walks up to the bus stop. Elliott and I look her up and down, ’cause when a North Philly girl walks by, it’s like seeing one of them murals—something that don’t just look good but makes you feel good way deep down inside too. “Sometimes . . . I think I’m never going to get a girl,” I say.
Elliott wouldn’t admit that even if it was true. He slaps his chest. “Shoot. Girls won’t leave me alone.”
He and I aren’t the types that girls chase after. Or the kind they write notes to in class. Sometimes they call me “E” for “Ears.” Elliott gets called other names. Goofy. Maniac. Firebug. Mouth.
I take another look at that girl. “Nice,” I say, downing my soda, trying to cool off from this heat, and from that girl who is beautiful right down to the soles of her feet.
But we can’t stare at girls all day. So we cut up one street and head down another, where some dudes are standing on the corner downing brew and playing craps. Elliott wants in. Not me. “Let’s keep going.”
He gets loud. “So what you gonna do when you fifteen, sixteen?” Elliott asks, like he’s older than I am. “Still play video games? Basketball?” He crosses the street, flashing money. Dice hit the ground. Fingers snap. Hands slap, then stick out, waiting for people to pay up. I walk over too, because Elliott is right. I need to act my age. What do I ever do? Babysit. Collect trash. Who does that at my age? Nobody. I empty my pockets, dropping other people’s trash on the ground.
“Lend me some money, Elliott.”
Everyone here is older than us, in their twenties, mostly. They light up. Drink up. Cuss when they lose. Cuss when they win. And get tired of Elliott and his mouth after a while. I notice things like that. Elliott never does. So I tell him that I need to take a leak, not because I have to, but because I hate the way they’re talking to him—like he’s someone you put up with but you really can’t stand. A little while later, he’s outta money anyhow. So we take off, before they run us off.
By the time we pass Spangler Street, my skin feels as hot as the plastic bottle I pick up off the ground and put in my bag. So when we see a swimming pool in front of a house, looking cool and clean, I stop.
“Let’s get in.”
No one’s out on this block, just us. But we hear the family in the back, laughing and grilling. Elliott is out of his shirt and sneakers before I can change my mind. I kick off my sneakers. Let my shirt and pants hit the ground, then I slide into the water, staying undernea
th until my air is gone.
Rubber ducks and a beach ball, dead flies and a leaf float around us. Elliott does a headstand. I do a belly flop. He swims around the bottom, picking up pennies. It’s a big pool, like maybe six feet deep. That’s crazy. I never seen one this big sitting on a pavement before.
“Hey, Elliott, check this out.” I dive in this time.
“Mom! They in our pool!”
I hear the words while I’m underwater.
“They stealing it!”
A broomstick gets me in the ribs. I pop up. “Hey! Don’t . . .”
“Ouch!” Elliott holds his cheek. She smacked him with the bristles.
I’m limping, grabbing my sneakers and pants, telling him to bring the rest of our things. But then the father shows up. And he’s got more than a broom with him.
You can not outrun a pit bull. But I’m trying.
We’re running up the middle of the street, barefooted, wet, and in our underwear. “Help! Somebody . . .” I turn the corner, jump on the hood of a Merano, and climb onto the roof. “Elliott, run!”
Elliott hits the roof of a BMW so hard it dents. The dog puts its front legs on the fender; snaps and spits. People point. A man asks if we need help, but he don’t move. A few minutes later, the owner walks up the block, whistling and waving to people he knows. “Lesson learned?” he says, putting a chain on the dog’s neck.
Water is running down my legs, and it’s not pool water. “Yeah,” I say embarrassed.
“Wait till I tell my dad,” Elliott yells at the man. “He’s gonna kill you and your dog.”
A door opens. A woman yells for Elliott to get off her new car. “Now!” Then she runs down the steps, barefooted. Elliott and I hit the ground at the same time, turning the corner so fast it’s like we got wings instead of feet.
“This sucks.”
Elliott looks at me.
“People been chasing us all morning.” I pull up my pants. “I’m going home.”
Two Muslim girls walk by in jeans and hijabs. “What if I got us some girls?”