by Sharon Flake
“How you gonna do that? Girls don’t like you, and they don’t like me.”
He follows them up the street, telling me to wait no matter how long he’s gone.
I’m on Diamond Street; by the time he catches up to me it’s half an hour later. He’s got four girls with him— and they ain’t ugly either. They’re North Philly girls— fine. Walking slow and talking with their hands a lot. Smelling sweet and glossing their lips.
These girls, whose shorts are so tight and small I’d rather walk behind them than beside them, introduce themselves to me. Raven is shy, I think. She stares at the ground more than she looks up. That’s my type—cute and quiet.
“There’s a block party off of Ridge,” Elliott says, putting his arms around Erista. “Let’s hit that.”
Philly loves block parties. You can find one anywhere in the summertime. So it doesn’t take us long to find one. The street’s blocked off, and all the cars are gone. Old ladies and fat girls line dance in the street. Men cook and cut cards. Little kids run up and down the block blowing bubbles, shooting water, and crying when they fall. The girl in front of me snaps her fingers and shakes her butt, then stops, drops, and pops. People laugh and run in and out of doors for more salt, spicy mustard, and lite beer. “I got next,” a woman says, sitting down at a table to play tonk.
A boy my age stands up asking if anybody wants to play Pokeno. “For quarters, not nickels, though.”
“Y’all eat?” a woman sitting out front her house asks. None of us knows her. She hands us plates. “Don’t pass my house without eating something.”
I pile my plate and dig in, eating everything I see— barbecued ribs and jerk chicken, potato salad, tuna salad, deviled eggs, and candied yams. At the next house I get watermelon, steak, and hot dogs. Then I stash empty M&M, Snickers, and Peppermint Pattie wrappers down my front pocket. Elliott tells me to chill when I pick up an empty pizza box, peeling off a piece of cheese that’s still on it.
“Wipe your mouth,” Jamilla says, patting my lips with a napkin.
I don’t think Raven liked that.
We hit another block. Check out another party. It’s hot and getting hotter. The dejay on the radio says it’s ninety-seven degrees. “And we ain’t done cooking yet.”
Raven’s nose sweats. Elliott’s forehead is red. And me, well, the elastic around my drawers is soaking wet; so is the rest of me down there.
“We can go swimming,” Elliott says.
“In what?”
The girls don’t live far away, so they’ll get their things, they say. It’s Elliott and me that can’t get into the local pool. But you know Elliott is nuts. He asks some people if they got old trunks or gym shorts that we can borrow. A woman who works at Sears, and lost her son in Iraq, feels sorry for us. She gives us trunks. And they fit.
North Philly girls got the best bodies, I swear. Karen and Jamilla don’t have on blouses, only bikini tops with peep holes in the middle. Erista’s got a chest big enough for two girls, and a butt as big as the moon. And even though Raven’s suit is under her clothes, I’m thinking about how she’s gonna look in it, and starting to sweat all over again.
“Check this out.” Elliott’s in front of a house that’s just about burnt down. He’s pulling Karen by the arm. She’s giggling. Acting like she doesn’t want to go in, but not fighting hard enough to stay out. I’m wondering about old needles, and rats. But she goes inside anyhow. When they come out, you can tell what happened. He got kissed. Her hair got messed up and so did her top. “Fix this,” she says, asking her girl to retie the strings to her suit.
Raven looks at me. “Don’t even think about it,” she says, like I ever would.
We’re outside the fence watching; smelling chlorine in the water and food cooking in the park across the way. People laugh and girls lie, telling guys, “Quit dunking me,” then going back for more.
I sit by Raven on the edge of the pool, staring at her flat belly, wondering what she’d think if I picked up the pecan swirls wrapper or that Arizona Iced Tea empty and stuck ’em in my pants pocket. My stepdad hates when I do that. But I got my reasons.
Raven slides into the pool, one toe, one thigh, one arm at a time, like it’s icy cold instead of warm as the sun. Dripping wet and smiling, she asks where I live and go to school. I forget about trash. I want to know if she has a boyfriend; what her cell number is. Not like I ask, though. I get in and out of the pool talking to her, but making sure not to splash her hair, even though a little water finds it anyhow.
It’s packed in the pool. So you can’t help but bump into people. Since we came an hour ago, I accidentally knocked into this one dude like four times. I can’t afford to do that no more.
But it happens anyhow.
“Quit it, man!” He’s all muscles, like my stepdad.
“Sorry.”
“Naw, man. You gotta do better than that.”
He’s like nineteen or twenty. Loud-talking me for swimming into him, ’cause too many people were around for me to do anything else. I walk away. He shoves me. Normally I would keep walking. But she’s watching. “I said I was sorry! What you want me to do?”
“Yeah. What you want him to do?” It’s Elliott. He is five-six and a hundred and ten pounds. No one is afraid of him. So the guy keeps talking to me.
He pulls his shorts up. “When I’m in the pool, you stay out the pool. Awright?”
“This my little brother. Don’t talk to him like that.” Elliott’s got a big mouth.
The guy pushes me down and holds me under until water fills up my mouth. I come up coughing and spitting. People circle us, looking at him and waiting for me to do something.
“You don’t own the pool,” I say.
Elliott’s fists are up, but he gets pushed under the water, too, and held down a long time. Elliott is a fool. When he comes back up, he’s still talking. “Do you know who I am? Do you know who my father is?”
The dude shoves him under again. Elliott comes up blowing snot into his hand and washing it off in the pool. Then out of his mouth comes the biggest lie. His father works for the DA, he says. And he pops off names to prove it. His mother is the mayor’s secretary and his uncle is the assistant to the assistant chief of police. “You don’t believe me, huh, huh?” Elliott is climbing out the pool. “Who got a cell? Hand me a cell!”
I don’t know if the guy believes him, but the lifeguard comes over and asks what the problem is. He tells people to swim or get out. The guy who dunked us is underwater, at first. Then he pops up with a girl on his shoulders. She laughs. He throws her off and swims to the other side of the pool.
It’s still not over when I get ready to leave.
Bam! I’m down on my knees.
“Don’t swim near me no more,” he says, diving back into the pool.
Elliott doesn’t say a word. Neither do I. This is North Philly. This thing could go on until something even worse happens.
“You okay?” Raven wants to know.
The other girls are laughing.
My back burns so bad that I ask Elliott if he sees blood. “I think he used something,” I tell him.
“Don’t be like that in front of girls.”
“Like what?”
He covers his mouth when he says it. “Like . . . lame.”
I walk as straight as I can. But all I really want to do is sit down, before I fall down.
The girls spread out towels on the grass, then kicking off their flip-flops and sandals. Seals spit water at two little boys, while old men sit and play checkers. A half an hour more and then we’ll leave, we all figure. Only Raven’s friends take off before then. “Y’all boring,” they say, leaving with their towels. I’m not sure why she stays. I wouldn’t figure her to be the type to stick with two boys she hardly knows. We three stretch out in the hard, dry grass, listening to Michael Jackson singing on somebody’s car radio, and water splashing. I close my eyes. Elliott asks her a question. I never hear the answer.
* * *
“How long we been asleep?” Raven wants to know. The pool is closed, and the creeps are out. “I don’t know. An hour?”
I tell her we’ll walk her home. “Not till the fireworks are done, though,” Elliott says, running up the hill and sitting down.
This is why I love North Philly. You can see all kinds of people and do all kinds of things—good or bad. Two Harleys ride up the middle of 33rd Street, side by side, doing wheelies and slowing traffic. Cars fly by in the opposite direction, beeping their horns at a man holding a sign saying honk if you’ve been tested. Music loud enough to hear downtown makes one woman dance all by herself. She’s throwing down so hard that a white dude jumps out his Volkswagen and finishes the song with her. Girls walk up the block in threes and tens. Cop cars creep up the street, watching, while reefer smells up the park and the homeless do their business in the dark.
I should go home. I’d tell Elliott that too, but she’s here. And my stepdad is probably home, ready to shoot me. So I lay next to her and listen to the fireworks thunder and whistle, explode and pop, whiz nearby and shoot up high, then burst into a thousand stars.
As soon as it’s over we run across the street. “Stop. Let’s get some watermelon,” she says. A man with a truck full of little ones gives us a sample. It tastes like sugar water, only sweeter. So we ask for more.
Elliott walks ahead of us, pointing at women painted blue and holding mics. Raven faces me. We walk and talk about the fireworks and melon, running out of conversation right in front of my favorite mural: a wall full of horses and people from around this way sitting tall on ’em. Golden always wants to ride on my back when she sees it, then we talk about all the places in the world she’ll ride to one day. Raven tells me about the mural on 22nd Street. It’s her favorite. “Somebody’s gonna draw me on a mural one day,” she says, posing. “Then I’ll live forever.”
Gunshots don’t surprise us when we hear them. It’s the Fourth of July weekend. Somebody’s gonna die. “We better leave.” I take her hand. She holds my fingers tight. I think I am the luckiest boy in the world.
Elliott is cool sometimes. While I walk Raven to her front door, he keeps quiet, mainly lighting matches and flicking ’em high in the air. I stare at her hard as I do those murals, because I know I won’t ever see her again.
She licks her pretty lips. I lick mine. She clears her throat. I do the same. Then a window opens. “Girl, get in here,” her sister says. “Dad’s looking for you.”
Just like that, Raven’s inside the house. Gone.
“You get her number?” Elliott asks.
“No.”
“She wasn’t that cute anyways.”
It’s what we say when we strike out.
We speed up, sweating like crazy. Philly heat don’t know when to call it quits.
“He’s gonna be mad,” Elliott says.
I quit walking. “It was worth it. I didn’t even notice the heat all that much. I mean, I met a girl. You can’t meet a girl in the house with your sisters.” We bump fists and I notice for the first time that him and me stink. I sniff my underarms. “You think she smelled me?”
“I smell you.” His nose goes under both his pits. “But we always smell like this. What’s the problem?”
Ain’t no problem, I’m thinking, taking my time walking back home, watching fireworks shooting off of porches. “I had me the best time. Dag.” I jump up, punching the air. “So I don’t care. For real. What he say or do to me don’t matter.”
“Blame me.” Elliott stops. “People blame me for everything anyhow.”
My mother says Elliott’s got sad eyes. They’re not sad, just big and tired-looking, like he never sleeps, which is true. He’s up till three every night. “Never could sleep,” his mother always says. “Even when he was a baby.”
“You gonna sleep good tonight,” I tell him, yawning. “As soon as he finishes yelling, I’m going to bed.” I don’t mention what I think next. That I’m going to sleep and kiss that Raven in my dreams.
Elliott turns in the opposite direction, jogs toward the corner. “Hold up. I’ll be right back.”
I pick up a Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos bag and two Hot Tamale boxes, flatten them and put them away. Our teacher said if we showed him what our neighbors were eating, he’d tell us what was eating our neighbors. He got sick and left for good back in May. But I’m still doing the project. Hot. Spicy. Sweet. That’s what they like around here. I don’t know what that means yet, but I’m gonna someday.
“Elliott!” I yell like he can hear me, then walk around the corner to find him. I’m in enough trouble already, I think.
I find him on the next street, sitting in a car somebody ditched, firing up trash. I don’t know if he knows why he does it.
“Elliott!”
“I quit last summer.”
“I know.”
“But quitting only makes me think about it more.” He takes the lighter and holds it to the busted leather seat with the stuffing pulled out.
“I know,” I say, holding my hand out.
He adds more trash, trying to build a good fire. “If the whole car went up . . . man, that would be cool.”
I look at him. “You take your medicine?’
He looks at me. “Naw.”
My hand burns when I snuff out the fire. “What about yesterday? You take it then?”
He smiles. “It makes me sleep. All the time.”
“You never sleep. That’s your problem.” I start walking. He jumps out the car and follows. “You got too much energy—up here.” I point to his head. “Take the medicine. It’s good food.”
We laugh at that because his mom always says it. It’s hard, I guess, being smart like him with a 130 IQ, but with a mind that won’t do what he says.
“I ain’t bad.”
I take his hand. “Come on, we have to go.”
He hands over the lighter, then digs in his pocket and gives me two more. “She was cute,” he says, talking about Raven.
“Sure was. I shoulda asked for her number.”
He slaps me on the back. “You gonna be fourteen soon. Not a kid no more. You better learn to ask.” He digs in his pocket again and pulls out three numbers. “I do,” he says, when we hit our block.
This is why I like Elliott. He’s braver than I am. Funny and loyal, too. You can’t give up on someone like that just because their mind don’t work like yours.
There are police cars parked in front of my house. That ain’t no surprise. We stop at the corner. I pick up an empty juice box and the top to a pack of Lemon-heads.
“See you next year,” Elliott says, crossing the street. “Hey. Happy birthday, early.”
He’s right. I’ll be on punishment when my birthday comes in October.
“I’ll get it for you. Her number, I mean.”
Elliott and I would do anything for each other.
Everyone’s outside, waiting for me; waiting for their houses to cool off too, I guess. Miss Evelyn’s sitting on her steps, watching the news on TV. Four little flags hang in front of her house, drooping like her flowers. “Boy . . . when you gonna learn?” I stare at the screen. There’s a reporter talking about a dead body they found, and there’s a helicopter in the sky shining a light on another street.
Patricia and Golden run up and hug me. “You in trouble,” Patricia says. “But I didn’t tell.”
One policeman is sitting in a car. The other one, Mr. Dave, is standing by the curb. “Hey, Mr. Dave,” I say, watching him put his pad away.
“Where you been?” It’s my stepdad.
Mr. Dave is my godfather. “This daggon Philly heat,” he says, wiping his forehead. “It’ll make you crazy.” He looks at my father, while the other car pulls off. “Make a good boy do the wrong thing sometimes. Know what I mean?”
I tell them our house is hotter than fire. “We just wanted some air; water, too.”
My stepfather grabs me by the front of the shirt. “I been calling the house all day. Da
nka finally told me how you left them girls and never came back.” He asks what I was thinking, neglecting my sisters like that.
I push his hands away. “I’ll be fourteen soon. I shouldn’t be locked up in the house like you do them crooks!”
The people across the street get quiet. Patricia and Golden too.
My stepdad smells my breath. “I don’t drink,” I say, feeling Elliott rise up in me.
He pats my pockets.
“What you doing?’
“Empty ’em. Slow. One by one.”
I’ve never ditched my sisters before. Never stayed out until dark. It’s not right, him doing this to me. In public. And for what? Being a boy?
“Do you know how many people been shot tonight already?” He kicks my trash and asks my sister to pick it up. Sweat drips down his chin. “You know how many times I called home; rode around this neighborhood?” His fingers shake. And he stares at the ground. “Boys like you get into trouble ’round here all the time.” He stands up straight and sends the girls inside to get something to eat. “I should . . .” His fist goes back. My eyes close.
Mr. Dave steps in between the two of us, and then walks a little ways with me. “When you’re a father, you’ll understand.” He takes out a cigarette and lights it. “When you a cop, you know already. It’s mean out here.”
He starts walking. “Don’t make your father hurt you.”
I try to explain.
“He will hurt you, if he thinks it’s gonna keep them from hurting you,” he says, pointing up the street. “Understand?”
“Yeah . . . but.”
He tells me to shut up, then walks me over to my dad and says the two of us have to work it out. We sit outside, the three of us, talking. I try to tell them that I’m not a kid anymore. “You lock me up, I’m gonna bust out— anybody would.” I’m shaking while I’m saying it, because once Mr. Dave is gone, my stepdad will show me who’s really in charge. But I don’t care. I met me a girl. I ate me the best food. And I’m never gonna forget those fireworks and her sleeping next to me.
My stepdad stares at his boots. “I told you . . .”
“I know.”
“If you got hurt . . . if the girls got hurt . . .”