All American Boys

by Jason Reynolds

  “Is that good?” Clarissa asked. I just nodded, which was hard to do because now my chin was smashed into my chest. I had literally been folded up.

  She moved the food tray back so that it was close enough for me to reach, and after telling us that the doctor would be in shortly, she left, and my mother helped me situate myself on the bed so that I could look and feel normal. As normal as possible. Normal enough for my father to get back to business.

  “So walk me through this, son. You got to the store . . .”

  “I got to the store, just to get gum and chips. I picked the bag of chips I wanted, and then I bent down and dug in my bag to try to get my phone so I could call Spoony. This lady didn’t see me squatting behind her, and tripped over me. Then I lost my balance, and the bag of chips went flying. The cop assumed I had done something to the lady, which I didn’t. The dude who works the register looks up and thinks I’m trying to put the chips in my bag, but I wasn’t. Then the cop rushed me and yoked me up all crazy.” I paused, then added, “And that’s it.”

  My mother sat quietly and my father paced back and forth, from the door to the window. Ma was clearly horrified. But Dad, he had on that Son, you aren’t telling me everything look. It was clear that to him, I had to have done something wrong to bring this on.

  “Were your pants sagging?” Dad interrogated, now back over by the door.

  “Were my pants sagging?” I repeated, shocked by the question. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Oh, it matters. If it walks like a duck, and it talks like a duck . . .”

  My mother glared at him. “David! This is your son we’re talking about. The boy’s never even been suspended.”

  “But they don’t know that,” Dad said. “What they see is what he presents. And it sounds like he presented himself as just another—”

  “Another what?” Ma cut in again, this time her voice spiking to that Don’t start level. Dad swallowed the rest of his statement.

  “Well, they said you resisted arrest,” he continued in another direction. “If you didn’t do anything wrong, why would you resist arrest?” His voice began to rise. “And how many times have I told you and Spoony, I mean, since y’all were young we’ve been going over this. Never fight back. Never talk back. Keep your hands up. Keep your mouth shut. Just do what they ask you to do, and you’ll be fine.”

  That was another one of those way-too-familiar songs Spoony and I were forced to sing when we were kids. Every time Dad said it, it was always the same. Just like the army talk. But this one was even worse, because it had a rhythm to it, like a poem, or a chant. Never fight back. Never talk back. Keep your hands up. Keep your mouth shut. Just do what they ask you to do, and you’ll be fine.

  “I know, I know. And I did all that,” I said, running through the scenario in my head again. “I didn’t fight back; I couldn’t. And I didn’t say jack besides trying to explain that I hadn’t done nothing wrong, but before I could even get a word out, he was all over me.”

  “You couldn’t have,” Dad said, matter-of-fact. He looked at me as if he didn’t know me and shook his head. As if he was disappointed. As if I asked for this. That really pissed me off. That really, really got me going, because I was being blamed for something I didn’t do, not just by that stupid store clerk and that asshole cop, but also by my father. A burning sensation rose in my chest and stomach, the fractured ribs sizzling. My eyes began to water with frustration.

  “I did.” My voice shattered in my throat and came out pitchy and emotional. “You don’t gotta believe me. But I did.” I turned my head away.

  You know who did believe me? My brother Spoony. He showed up a few minutes later, after working an overnight shift at UPS and catching a quick nap. And let me tell you, when he arrived, he was full of fire.

  First was the obligatory mother hug. Spoony ran over to our mom and gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Made sure she was all right. Then came the “Dad.” That’s all Spoony said to him. Just an acknowledgment of his presence. It’s not that he was beefing with our father or that they didn’t get along—I take that back. They really didn’t get along. They just couldn’t see eye to eye on most things. Dad was all about discipline and believed that if you work hard, good things happen to you no matter what. Of course, part of working hard, to him, was looking the part, dressing the part, and speaking the part, which Spoony didn’t really vibe with.

  Spoony had, I don’t know, maybe eight or nine locs sprouting from his head like antennae. Thick and matted like strips of carpet, but I always thought they looked pretty cool. Dad . . . not so much. They’ll think you’re doing drugs, he’d say. Spoony’s clothes were always two (or three or four) sizes too big. That was just his style. That was pretty much his whole generation’s style. Nineties hip-hop, gritty, realness. Wu-Tang. Biggie. Hoodies and unlaced boots. They’ll think you’re selling drugs, Dad would say. Why can’t you get a haircut? Why can’t you dress like a respectable adult? Why can’t you set an example for your brother? Huh, son? Why? And because Spoony was tired of explaining himself, and Dad was tired of asking him to change, they kept their conversations short and sweet. Like Spoony greeting him, “Dad,” head nod. Followed by Dad saying, “Spoony,” head nod. And that was that.

  Spoony came over to my bed.

  “Li’l bruh, you good?” he said, something grape-flavored on his breath.

  “I’m good.”

  “What happened?”

  I started running the story down and got about halfway through, just up to when the cop pressed me, when Spoony lost it.

  “See?” he said, looking around to our parents. “See? This is that bullshit! I’m so sick of them treating us like we animals. Like we America’s disobedient dogs!”

  “Calm down, Spoony,” Ma said, which only made it worse.

  “Calm down? Calm down?” Spoony’s voice got significantly less calm. “Haven’t we been a little too calm? They get to do whatever they want to us, to him—to your son—and we’re supposed to just calm down?” He put his hands on his head, flattening his locs, rocking back and forth in that way people do right before they punch a wall.

  “Spoony—”

  “And he was unarmed! Calm down? Do you know the stats? It’s something like black people are twice as likely to have no weapons on them when they’re killed by cops. Twice as likely! Should I run down the list of the people this has happened to? Calm down? Let’s paint their names on the walls and watch, there’ll be enough to give the entire hospital a fresh new look. Then tell me to calm down. He could’ve been killed!”

  “But he wasn’t,” Dad said, deadpan. He seemed totally unimpressed by Spoony’s outburst, and probably wrote it off as theatrics. He was always calling Spoony a rebel without a cause.

  “But he could’ve been! For a bag of chips that he was gonna pay for! For having brown skin and wearing his jeans a certain way. And guess what, Dad, that ROTC uniform was right there in that bag. The bag was open so that cop probably saw it. But did it matter?” Spoony’s voice fanned, the anger breaking him down.

  “That’s enough!” Ma said firmly.

  Dad and Spoony glared at each other until finally Dad turned away and looked out the window. Ma just sat on the bed, rubbing my hand, her eyes wet from it all. Spoony leaned against the wall. And I sat there thinking about what was going to happen to me. I know my father and brother were arguing about what had happened, but all I could think about in that moment was what was going to happen next. Would the charges stick? Would they follow me around, a smudge on my record until I was eighteen when it would finally disappear? Does anything actually disappear these days?

  The silence was much worse than the yelling, so I fiddled with the remote. The same one that controlled my bed controlled the television. I turned it on. Too bad TV sucks on Saturday morning unless you’re a little kid or a politician. And politics are painful to watch. Boring. So the sound of helium-pitched cartoon characters had to be the life raft for this
sinking ship of awkwardness. Thankfully, the doctor came in to save us from the equally awkward distraction of cartoons.

  “Good morning, folks,” he said, full of cheer, which was weird because this was not a cheerful occasion. But I guess doctors always have to try to lift the mood. “I’m Dr. Barnes.”

  “David Butler,” my father said, shaking his hand.

  “Jessica,” my mother said, doing the same.

  “Randolph,” Spoony said, introducing himself with his government name. He got the nickname Spoony because when he was young, he refused to eat with a fork. He was always scared he’d poke himself in the tongue, so he only ever used spoons. But that’s not something you tell a doctor.

  “And Rashad,” the doctor said, pointing at me. I nodded. “Nice to meet all of you. I just want to give you all an update on what’s happening and what’s ahead of us.”

  “Sounds good,” Dad said.

  “Okay, so Rashad’s nose was broken, but we’ve already set it, so as long as he doesn’t bump it or knock it, it’ll heal just fine. The same goes for his ribs. There’s really nothing we can do about them except make sure that Rashad isn’t in any pain, but as long as they’re fairly stable, they’ll heal up as well. We did do an X-ray just to make sure there were no lacerations to any of his organs, and there weren’t, so we’re pretty much in the clear with that.”

  “So when can he come home?” Ma asked, starting to beam.

  “Well, that’s the thing. Under normal circumstances I would say that Rashad could go home tonight.” Ma stopped rubbing my hand. The doctor continued. “But this isn’t a normal circumstance. He has some internal bleeding—hemothorax, it’s called—which just means there are some torn blood vessels around his lungs due, I’m sure, to the impact. Usually, this fixes itself, but we’ll need to monitor him for a few days in case it doesn’t.”

  “And if it doesn’t . . . ,” my mother began.

  “Then he’ll need surgery,” the doctor told us.

  Surgery. That’s one of those words that no matter how many times you hear it, it always freaks you out. Surgery. My mother’s face tightened as she did everything she could to hold it together, but she couldn’t keep her leg from bouncing like she always does when she’s trying keep her emotions tucked in. Spoony bit down on his bottom lip. My father just seemed to be taking it all in, not particularly bothered.

  “Sound good?” the doctor asked.

  “Sounds good,” Dad replied, shaking the doctor’s hand once more. Dr. Barnes said he’d be in to check on me in a few hours, and left.

  I reached for the remote and turned the channel.

  I wish there were more interesting things to tell you about the rest of the day, but the truth is that most of it I spent dozing in and out of sleep, while my family sat around watching me doze in and out of sleep. Well, at least, Ma and Dad did. Spoony was in and out of the room, making and taking phone calls, and whenever he was in the room he was texting. I didn’t know who all the texts were going to, but I knew at least some of them were going to his girlfriend, Berry. And, funny enough, Berry’s little brother was my homeboy, English. English Jones. The athlete, pretty boy, non-asshole who everybody loved. Yep, that guy. So I knew that if Berry knew what happened to me, English knew. And if English knew, Carlos and Shannon knew. And if those two dudes knew, then by Monday, half the school would know.

  And then I was asleep. And then I was awake again. And Clarissa brought lunch in. I had barely touched breakfast. The oatmeal. Maybe a spoonful or two. It wasn’t so bad, but after my father acted like . . . my father, I had pretty much lost my appetite. I offered it to my mother, but she couldn’t eat either. Spoony ate the fruit cocktail and said it reminded him of elementary school.

  “I used to love the grapes, but there was never enough of them,” he said, holding the cup up to his face and slurping the fruit out.

  For lunch, Central Hospital served up its finest turkey club sandwich with vegetable soup. I ate half the sandwich after my mother pretty much forced me to eat something, and I have to say, it was pretty good. All these years I had been hearing about how nasty hospital food was, and now that I finally got a chance to taste it, it wasn’t half-bad. Better than school lunch, that’s for damn sure.

  Still nothing on TV except for an overly dramatic Lifetime movie that my mother was totally into. A cliché stalker story. A woman meets a man on a bus on her way home from work. They exchange numbers. Go out on a first date. He’s perfect: attractive, smart, and he has a good job as an audio engineer for television shows. She’s excited until she finds out he’s wired her whole house so that he can hear everything she does when he’s not around. He can hear her shower, and cook, and talk to her friends about how crazy he is. And he listens to the feed while he watches TV, on mute, in the attic of the house next door, where he lives (she doesn’t know this, though). Total stalker. Shittiest actors on Earth meets the shittiest story on Earth, which makes for the perfect Saturday afternoon movie. For my mom.

  And then I was asleep. And then I was awake again. But this time, my folks were knocked out. Dad in the chair, his head bent at a painful-looking angle, his mouth wide open. As usual. My mother, small, had tucked her knees to her chest and nestled into her chair—the only cushioned one—like a child. She looked so peaceful. So calm. It was nice to see her get some rest. The only person who wasn’t asleep was Spoony. He was still sitting there. Still fooling with his phone. Still texting.

  “Spoon,” I called out softly—I didn’t want to wake my parents. It was nice to have the room quiet for a moment. It was nice to not see their eyes, my father’s disappointed, my mother’s all sad and worried.

  Spoony looked up and rushed to my bed. “Wassup, man, you okay?”

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” I said, calming him down.

  “Okay,” he said, glancing down at his phone. “Look, I talked to Berry and told her what happened. She’s been all over the internet, checking to see if anything has been posted—you know, some live footage or something.”

  “And?”

  “And so far, nothing. But something’s gotta pop up. And I don’t care what Dad says, this ain’t right.” He bit down on his bottom lip. “It just ain’t right. And you know me. You know I’m not gonna sit here and let them sweep this under the rug, like this is okay.”

  “I know.”

  I gotta admit, there was a part of me that, even though I felt abused, wanted to tell him to let it go. To just let me heal, let me leave the hospital, let me go to court, let me do whatever stupid community service they wanted me to do, and let me go back to normal. I mean, I had seen this happen so many times. Not personally, but on TV. In the news. People getting beaten, and sometimes killed, by the cops, and then there’s all this fuss about it, only to build up to a big heartbreak when nothing happens. The cops get off. And everybody cries and waits for the next dead kid, to do it all over again. That’s the way the story goes. A different kind of Lifetime movie. I didn’t want all that. Didn’t need it.

  But I knew not to even bother saying it. Not to Spoony. No point. Because he’d agree that this was normal, and that that was the problem. Spoony had been dealing with this kind of crap for years. He’d never been beaten up, but he’d been stopped on the street several times, questioned by cops, asked to turn his pockets out and lift his shirt up, for no reason. He’d been followed around stores, and stared at on buses by women who clutched their purses tight enough to poke holes in the leather. He was always a suspect. And I knew, without him saying a word, that the one thing he never wanted, but was sure would eventually happen, was for his little brother—the ROTC art kid—to become one too. So there was nothing that was going to stop him from fighting this. There was nothing I could do to calm him down. This was not going away. This was not getting swept under the rug of “oh well.” Not if Spoony had anything to do with it.

  In our town, it really isn’t shocking to see a fight go down. I’ve seen kids with house keys tucked between their knuc
kles throwing punches at each other. I’ve seen ten guys from our school chasing four dudes from another school down a block and a stranger step into the melee with a bat to protect the guys who were outnumbered. And Guzzo, Dwyer, and I spent most of Jill’s party telling ourselves we were tough as balls and that what happened outside Jerry’s was nothing. It wasn’t on our minds, we kept telling each other. No big deal. NBD, Dwyer wrote in beer on the wooden slats of the back porch with the nozzle from the keg.

  In fact, we spent most of the party on that back porch, ignoring everyone else. Guzzo never said a word to Jill for me, and through the window, I saw English moving through the room like the frigging king he is, getting up close to girls and making them laugh and giggle. I was sure if he found Jill, it’d be the same. I was out there in the darkness of the back porch, looking in through the window to the bright kitchen, like I was watching the whole damn party unfold on TV.

  I gave Guzzo my flask at some point and when I eventually got it back it was empty, but I didn’t bug him about it. Because even though what happened at Jerry’s was NBD, it was really all we talked about that night. “My brother has to deal with that shit every day,” Guzzo kept saying. “And he just does it, no complaints. He’s amazing.”

  But what had always amazed me most about Guzzo’s brother, Paul, was how he had made time for me. I was ten when my father died, and it was Paul who’d taken me down to Gooch to practice. Gooch was the neighborhood park, but Paul’d get us down there so early, we’d have the whole court to ourselves. He showed me how to do the spider drill, how to dribble with two balls, how to tuck my elbows when I shot. But the man I’d watched grind a kid into the sidewalk—I don’t know—was like someone else. Someone I couldn’t place, some hulking animal stalking the shadows of my mind all night. I could hear his voice, and yet it wasn’t him. I could see his face, and yet it wasn’t him.