Again, I don’t leave.
Mama says, “I’m sorry, baby. I don’t quite know how to handle all of this. You’ll have to forgive me. My son getting beat up…being so traumatized he has an accident on himself.”
I look at Kenya. She told. I can’t believe it. The scowl on my face could melt metal.
Kenya obviously isn’t metal.
She says, “Who you trying to look at all mean? You better chill, boy.”
I say, “I’m not going to be too many more people’s boy today.”
Kenya says, “Look at you getting your panties in a bunch. What happened? Some little old lady punked you today or something?”
She’s trying to be funny, and yet has hit the nail so squarely on the head I’m stunned. That’s pitiful.
I say, “Go ’head with that,” and wave her off.
Something I’ve heard Crash say.
Mama says, “You two, stop. Eric, your sister was concerned about you. She came to speak to me out of love.”
I say, “Whatever. And if I came to you and told you Kenya was using your shower massager for something other than its intended purpose and that she’s been seriously contemplating doing the do with a certain boy she often sneaks in the house, would that be love, too?”
Kenya gasps.
Mama says, “Kenya?”
Kenya’s nostrils flare. Fire is in her eyes. She says, “Can’t believe you went there. You are so lame. That’s why nobody can stand you.”
Mama is in another place. My words have opened a whole new world of worry in her heart. Now she’s worried more about her teenage daughter than her teenage son. Mama’s head is no doubt filled with the prospects of grandbabies before their time, that and worse. “Is that true, Kenya?” she asks. “And who is this boy?”
Kenya ignores her. Instead, she directs all her anger at me. “Sometimes I hate you, Eric.”
She sounds like she means it.
Mama asks her another question about the mystery boy. Again, Kenya ignores her.
I say, “Sometimes I hate you, too, Kenya. So we’re even.”
She shakes her head. “I assure you, we aren’t. I said sometimes, but it’s more like always. You’re an embarrassment to me. I wish you were never born.”
I think she’s done.
She isn’t.
She says, “Crash was considering letting you slide. Came and talked to me about it. You know he’s always liked me.”
He has.
But Mama would have a fit, and Kenya knows better.
She continues. “I gave him my blessing. Told him to do whatever he had to do to you. I didn’t care.”
What?
I can’t believe what I’m hearing.
Kenya can’t possibly hate me that much.
I say, “You didn’t. You’re just talking.”
Mama’s completely silent. Lost, I suppose.
Kenya says, “I sure did. I wanted him to beat you up. You do stupid stuff, Eric. And then everybody comes to me with it. And I have to end up cleaning all your messes. I wanted you to have to clean this up yourself. Teach you a lesson, I hoped.”
I open my mouth to speak.
Not for the first time, nothing comes out.
Kenya continues. “I regret it all now, though.”
I swallow. There’s still a crumb of something between us, at least. I was worried for a moment. All our recent troubles aside, I love my sister. I remember the days when we danced the night away in our pajamas. I remember our games of checkers, tic-tac-toe. All the times we drove Mama crazy playing tag in the house.
Kenya says, “I regret it because then you went and wet…You embarrassed yourself. All everyone talks about.” She snarls at me. “And you’re nobody, so it all falls on me. You being my brother and all. I didn’t expect that to happen. Thought you’d have to pay the piper on this one alone.”
I’m nobody.
My own sister’s estimation of me.
Mama finally comes to life, says, “Oh, Kenya. Take that back. That’s a terrible thing to say.”
“Terrible, yes, Mama,” Kenya admits. “True, though, too.”
Mama protests some more.
I finally find my voice. “No need for her to take it back, Mama. She’s right. I’m nobody.”
Mama says, “Eric, that’s not true. Not one bit.”
Hollywood walks in then. Wrecks our family moment. Loud, as usual. He knows no other way to enter a room. “What’s up with dinner?”
Mama says, “My children are going through some things.”
Hollywood says, “Your children.”
He has on his work overalls. His boots are clean. There isn’t any dirt under his fingernails. His hands are baby-bottom soft. I feel like exposing his secret to Mama, as well. Let it all hang out today. But I let it go.
Mama, despite all of her tough talk about men to Kenya, moves to finish the dinner preparations.
Hollywood asks Kenya, “So what’s happening got all y’all up in here disturbing your mama?”
Kenya is the only other person in the house he speaks to regularly, including Mama.
He practically ignores me.
I don’t fit his perception of what a teen boy is, I guess.
Well, he doesn’t fit my perception of what a grown man is, either.
So we’re even.
He says, “Huh, girl?”
Kenya doesn’t answer him. She can’t stand Hollywood. She moves past all of us, leaves the kitchen in a huff. Like a gusty wind on a bad day.
Hollywood tells Mama, “That girl’s got a serious attitude. You need to check her, Pam. Put her in her place. She in your house running around like she owns the place.”
Mama says, “Doing my best.” She moves over toward him, caresses his arms. “Eric is having problems at school. Problems fitting in. Why don’t you give him some advice.”
No, I want to say. Hollywood isn’t an advice giver. I don’t want anything from the man, and I certainly wouldn’t heed anything he says to me. But I don’t say anything. Mama doesn’t like it when we say negative things about Hollywood.
Hollywood stares me down for a moment and then says, “Stop being such a pussy. That’s my advice.”
Some advice.
I leave the kitchen with it.
I don’t even hear Mama raise her voice to him.
I told Mama I left Benny’s house and came home early because I have a project to work on. That wasn’t an outright lie, even though Mama saw through it as if it were as clear as Sprite. It was a partial truth, I admit. I never set out to mislead Mama. Don’t have it in me to lie to her. I do have homework. But it isn’t for school, as I led Mama to believe. It’s for me, a personal project of the highest importance. It holds more weight than anything I’ve ever done in any of my classes. More important than reading The Scarlet Letter in English, fiddling with a Bunsen burner in science, and certainly more important than timing my run of a mile in gym.
The outcome of this project will determine what direction my life takes.
That’s how much importance I place on it.
So after I leave Mama and Hollywood in the kitchen, I head straight for my room. Inside, I lock my door, make a call to set up my project, and then move toward the window over my bed. I climb out, just as Ricky Williams does by Kenya’s window, and crawl slowly down the side. I’m not cool, true enough. But I’m not afraid of heights, either. I descend smoothly and quickly, too. I’m like Spider-Man if you ask me to scale anything. In some way, I think that must be cool. It feels as if it is, at least. On safe ground at the bottom, I brush off my pants and hands and head to meet up with the person I called to help with my project.
I start walking to our meeting place, wishing the entire time I had an iPod. I have to do something about that soon. I’m a few years away from driving, so everywhere I go is on foot, by public transportation or in the passenger seat of Mama’s car. In none of those places am I afforded the opportunity to listen to music I love to hear.
Traveling without music isn’t good.
When I reach the street of my destination, my palms start to sweat.
Nerves bunch up in my stomach.
What if this doesn’t work?
Then what?
I have no options beyond this.
I’ll be dead in the water if this fails.
Which means one thing: this has to work.
I look up and notice her coming down the stoop in front of her apartment. I call her name. She frowns and motions for me to keep walking by. I do. When I reach the corner, I turn back to see if she’s following. She is. I smile at the sight of her. Let the project begin, I think. As Swizz Beatz says, Game time.
“Sorry,” she says. “I didn’t know if my parental units were looking out the window. They know you’re Kenya’s brother, but…well, they’re protective of me, you know?”
I nod. “Thanks for helping me, Lark. I truly appreciate it.”
“I haven’t helped yet, Eric. But I will try. I feel bad for you.”
“That makes two of us.”
She rubs her hands together. “Okay, let’s get to work. Favorite book?”
I squint. “Say what?”
“I want to start by asking you some questions. Okay?”
I don’t know about this, but I say, “All right.”
Lark says, “Now. What’s your favorite book?”
“Anything by Baldwin,” I tell her. “Oh, and Richard Wright, also. It’s too bad we don’t read them in school. I loved—”
I stop because I notice Lark is looking at me strangely. She doesn’t say a word.
I say, “What?”
“This is going to be hard, Eric. I’ll tell you that right now.”
“I messed up already?”
She nods. “You answered wrong. And then you started talking about books with enthusiasm. The goal is to be popular, correct?”
I say, “Yes.”
“So start over. What’s your favorite book, Eric?”
I don’t know how to answer. What would a popular boy read? Harry Potter?
Lark says, “You wouldn’t be caught dead reading a book. XXL magazine, maybe Vibe, comic books, that’s it.”
“That’s it? No real diversity in what I read?”
Lark sighs. “And if you keep using words like diversity, you can forget it.”
“You’re right. I can’t do this.” I start to pace the alley we’ve picked to serve as our classroom. It’s cluttered with garbage from the Chinese restaurant out front. A few stray cats move about carefully, their colorful eyes scanning everything that moves around them.
Lark says, “Don’t get down on yourself. Let me toss you an easy one. What’s your favorite song right now?”
I think about that one for a moment, come up with, “Birdman and Lil’ Wayne’s ‘Pop Bottles’ is kind of cool.”
Lark smiles, nods and says, “See what I’m saying? You aren’t hopeless. It would have been better if you’d said it was fiyah, but that’s nitpicking.”
You aren’t hopeless—that’s about the best thing I’ve ever heard.
I say, “Mario’s ‘Crying Out for Me’ is fiyah.”
Lark’s shoulder’s sag; she buries her head in her hands.
I say, “No?”
She shakes her head.
“What’s wrong with it?”
She looks up. Says, “Nothing, Eric, unless you’re lacking testosterone. If you gotta go R & B, make sure it’s something sexual in a bragging way. Stick with R. Kelly and no one else if you get confused. You’re a guy. You’ve gotta act the part. Guys don’t like love songs. And if they do, it won’t be a sweet love song, it’ll be a sexy love song. No emotion involved, just booty. Like R. Kelly.” She stops, thinks, and then sings, “‘Rubbing on that booty. That booty. That booty.’ Okay, Eric?”
“Okay.”
She makes a motion. “Walk to that garbage can and back.”
I do.
She says, “You need to watch yourself walk in the mirror.”
“I have.”
“And you still walk like that?”
She must notice the look that comes over my face. She softens her voice, says, “Walking is all about rhythm. Walk like you hear the music from your favorite song playing in your head. Okay?”
I nod, try again.
Her sigh lets me know how I did. She says, “So your favorite song is by Kevin Federline?”
Ouch.
I say, “I’m hopeless.”
She says, “No,” and looks at her watch. “But I have to head back, Eric. In the meantime, I have an assignment for you.”
“Shoot.”
“Get out. Observe people. The mall is a good place to observe. You know which boys are cool, which girls are popular. Mimic them. That’ll work better than anything I can teach you.”
I nod, hold out my hand. She moves beyond it, gives me a hug.
She says, “Take care. Be good.”
I watch her move up the street with pep in her step.
Observe and mimic.
I can do that.
Sister
Sister woke from a deep REM sleep.
She’d been inside a nightmare she never wanted to relive. But she knew she would. Knew she would relive it over and over and over again. What really made that bad was the fact she’d relive it while awake.
She blinked, looked through the darkness of her room. Brother had fallen asleep in her room, as well, again, and lay by the foot of her bed, his CD player’s headphones still on, some rapper spitting that nonsense that Brother took as the gospel truth. Brother loved those rappers, lived and would probably die with them. Sister couldn’t understand it. Smart as Brother was, how did he get so caught up in some dumb rapper’s web? Money, cash, hoes, just as Jay-Z said. All the rappers ever talked about. Sometimes it made Sister sick to her stomach. The girls in the videos, the girls at school, the dudes in the videos, the dudes on the corner, they were all hypnotized in the same way as Brother. They didn’t see the bigger picture. The flaws in rap, how it was destroying what little sense of community still existed. The disrespect. The lack of originality. How all the rappers seemed to follow the same beaten path. And Brother idolized them.
Sister slid the earphones off Brother’s head, hit the power button on his CD player, eased it away and hopped off the bed. She crossed the room barefoot, placed the CD player carefully on her dresser. Was about to do something when a sound caught her ear. Noises in the house made her jumpy. Any noise in the house scared her, to be honest. That was the sad part of her life, now. She was always on edge about something or other. Especially unexpected noises that were a problem, for sure.
They never led to anything good. They always led to something bad.
She moved to the door, listened intently.
One of Momma’s Marvin Gaye albums was playing loud on the stereo. What else? That record was all Momma ever listened to. Or so it seemed. It was good music, though, and Sister could admit as much, even though she was a teenager and every last one of her peers would prefer Young Jeezy to Marvin Gaye any day. Sister wondered where Momma’s boyfriend was. He was probably in the bathroom, fussing over the Star-Ledger. The sports section first, then everything else in order, starting from page one. He’d stay in there so long his leg would fall asleep. He’d come out, loud, telling it every time. As if it were something to be proud of. I guess when your days were filled with nothing, like his were, anything was a source of pride.
Sister couldn’t think of what value he brought to their family.
In fact, all her mind wrapped itself around was the negativity that seemed to follow him.
But there wasn’t any use telling any of this to Momma.
Momma was happy.
And blind.
Momma should have been listening to Ray Charles or Stevie Wonder, blind as she was to what was happening under her own roof.
Sister stepped out of her room, headed into the living room. Momma looked up and smiled. Momma w
as vacuuming, a pot boiling in the kitchen for the dinner she’d be preparing once she’d cleared their threadbare carpet of dirt. Seemed like Momma was always vacuuming, cooking dinner or making excuses for her boyfriend. She was a superwoman for real. Keeping the house going was a juggling act that she’d perfected.
Sister hollered, “What’s that playing, Momma?” Joking. She knew the record well.
Momma paused the vacuum’s choom. “What, baby?”
“What’s that playing?”
Momma sort of frowned, said, “My soul on wax, baby,” and went right on back to vacuuming.
Sister wasn’t in the mood for riddles.
She moved over to the stereo, picked up the album cover for the first time and dusted it off. Here, My Dear was the title of the album. Sister wondered what that meant. If she’d taken the time to really listen to the lyrics in the songs, perhaps searched the album title on the Internet to find out more about its recording, she would have found out some things that made what her mother said so much clearer.
Marvin Gaye had completed it after his divorce from Anna.
It was an artistic album, and his poorest seller.
It was about the heartache and pain of an ending love.
It was Momma’s soul on wax.
Interesting.
Sister placed the album cover back neatly where she’d gotten it, went back to her bedroom. Brother was just rising from his sleep as she walked in. Seeing him stir made Sister smile. Brother was just about the best thing in her life, even though she’d never admit that out loud. They argued, for sure, but he was her buoy. He kept her from drowning. She was popular in school, unlike him, but that popularity was fool’s gold; those same kids who smiled in her face would never be there for her if she ran into any real trouble and needed any real help. Brother would, though, and so she loved him dearly. Not that she’d ever admit any of this to his face.
Wiping his eyes, stretching, yawning, Brother took a moment to fight off the disorientation that came with just waking up. Then he said, “Why won’t Momma turn off that sad record? She keeps playing it over and over again.”
Sister said, “Mind your business. Momma can play anything she wants. I like the record myself.”
“You would.”
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