Team Seven

by Marcus Burke

  Mr. Stow paused his sentence about inertia and called on me.

  “Excuse me, sir! What’d you give me detention for? I wasn’t even in the room. How’d I get detention when I wasn’t in the room?”

  I couldn’t hide the anger in my voice. I crossed my arms and glared at him. He snapped the piece of chalk in his hand and his face soured as his blue eyes narrowed on me. He said, “Mr. Battel, you were gone much longer than it takes to use the washroom. Now please stop interrupting. We can discuss this after class if you’d like, but for now—Newton’s first law of motion.”

  He turned his back on me and wrote Newton’s first law of motion on the board:

  An object at rest remains at rest unless acted upon by a force. An object in motion remains in motion, and at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by a force.

  Mr. Stow turned back toward the class and wiped two big yellow streaks of chalk dust on the pockets of his black corduroys.

  “Let’s see if I can give a more practical example of the law of inertia. Say, for example, a student decides to go off wandering the hallways because he or she is bored. So boredom is what set the student wandering. Unless I, the teacher, stop this wandering, it may never stop.” He was looking straight at me but swung his arms wide while asking the class, “Now, does that make sense?”

  No one answered him, the bell rang, and everyone started packing up their stuff. He walked over to the door, saying bye to everyone as they walked out of the room. As I walked toward him I put my head down and brushed past him.

  “See you at two o’clock, Mr. Battel,” he called to me as I walked up the hallway heading toward the resource room.

  When school let out I walked straight to Kelly Park to play some basketball. I didn’t show up for Mr. Stow’s detention because I hadn’t done anything wrong. What gave him the right to keep me after school for being at the bathroom too long? What if I’d had the bubble guts or something? I didn’t, but what if I did? After school, before the streetlights come on and Ma gets home from work, my time is mine. I don’t need Mr. Stow busting my balls. I get enough headaches just being at home. Between Ma, Nina, Nana Tanks, and Aunty Diamond, there’s enough eye rolling, finger snapping, and teeth hissing to last me a long while. Especially now that Aunty Diamond and Ma been beefing. Aunty Diamond started it really, she’s crazy. She thinks the entire world has beef with her, but I think it’s the other way around.

  When Aunty Diamond divorced Uncle Elroy, she got all weird. She started wearing all black and stopped hanging out with us and talking to Ma, and even though she lived upstairs in their apartment, she started being mean to Nana and Papa Tanks. She’d explode on them for the pettiest things, like one of them warming up her leftovers the day after she ordered food. She stayed in her room and didn’t really come out unless she was going or coming from work, getting something to eat from the kitchen, or using the bathroom. She wouldn’t even come out of her room to eat with us on Thanksgiving. She’d come out maybe for Christmas but that was only if one of her two boyfriends was around. There was her skinny, pale-as-pasta boyfriend Lex, he’s Haitian and deejays on the weekends but he ain’t got no real job. He’s usually hanging around the house waiting for Aunty Diamond to get off work. That’s only until she gets sick of him always mooching off her, which seems to be every couple of weeks, and she throws him out and calls her married boyfriend Brent. He’s not around as much, but sometimes I can never quite tell who I might see upstairs in Nana and Papa Tanks’s apartment.

  This summer, after years of acting like all of us didn’t exist, Aunty Diamond emerged from her bedroom like an animal fresh out of hibernation. One night we were sitting down to eat dinner when Aunty Diamond knocked at our back door. She had a bright smile, a paper plate and plastic spoon in her hand. She looked ready to sit down and eat dinner with us. Ma stood in the doorway. Aunty Diamond sniffed over her shoulder, “Smells good, Ruby. Whatcha making?”

  Ma didn’t budge from the door.

  “Nice to see you, Diamond. Wish I’d known you were being social again, and maybe I’da made enough food for a guest.” Ma closed the door, she didn’t slam it but it didn’t seem as if their conversation was over. The next morning I woke up really early. I sat eating a bowl of cereal while Ma was in the shower, Aunty Diamond snuck downstairs and shushed her finger to her lips and crept into Ma’s room. She came out with an armful of Ma’s work dresses. Again she shushed her finger to her lips, laughing like we were playing some kind of game. She skipped back upstairs. Ma got out of the shower and noticed immediately. She went upstairs in her bathrobe and I couldn’t hear what they were saying but I heard yelling. As I was finishing my bowl of cereal Ma busted through the back door with all of her dresses in her arms. Aunty Diamond was behind her and Ma slammed the pile of dresses on the ground and blocked Aunty Diamond from coming into our apartment.

  “Ruby, just let me wear the dress,” Aunty Diamond demanded.

  “Diamond, you can’t just up and decide we’re sharing clothes, especially when before yesterday it’s like you didn’t even know my phone number. Why didn’t you ask me first? That’s your problem. You just do whatever you want to people. But I’m done letting you walk all over me.”

  Aunty Diamond folded her arms, looked at Ma. “So quick to burn a bridge, Ruby. Don’t forget, one day you might need something.”

  Ma slammed the door in her face and Aunty Diamond yelled, “Bridge burnt, Ruby!” and walked back upstairs laughing this evil high-pitched witch-sounding laugh. Ever since Aunty Diamond started coming back out of her room it’s like she feels like Ma owes her something. Whenever Ma gets anything, Aunty Diamond wants it, no matter what it is, money, a new hairstyle, a dress, a new set of friends. It just seemed like Aunty Diamond was plain jealous of Ma and everything she did. She’s always trying to compete with Ma but the one thing Ma has that Aunty Diamond will never have is kids. In this department Aunty Diamond can’t compete, and she’d complain to me and Nina and get mad at us, claiming we always forgot about her, leaving her out of the things we did as a family. I try to avoid her when she’s around the house, she’s forever crying and complaining when there really isn’t much for her to be bitching about. She’s always swearing to the high heavens that the world doesn’t care about her. The weirdest thing about Aunty Diamond is that we’re so broke all the time, it’s crazy to even think we got anything for her to be jealous of. She has her own car, pays no rent living upstairs, has a full-time job, and supports Lex the full-time mooch. She has the most money out of anybody in the house and she seems the most miserable too.

  Besides that, ever since Pop took me out to Lynn and forced me to meet EJ and his fat-ass mother, it’s the only thing I can think about. I never told Ma or Nina about what happened that day or where he took me. I didn’t tell so I could protect Pop either, I didn’t want Ma to feel bad about trying to do something nice for me. I can still hear his voice ringing in my head, fooling me into thinking that the whole thing was okay, “Now, Dre, who in da world said we haf ta tell ya mudda ’bout dis. When your friends at school do things, do you tell your teachers? I am your friend, right? So why would we have to tell her?”

  I knew there was something flawed about his reasoning and the more I thought on it, the flaw was that me and him ain’t friends, he just wanted to cover his ass. Ma’s been suspicious of me since that day, no doubt. She asked me why I came walking around the corner and why Pop didn’t drop me off in front of the house. I panicked and told her that I’d asked Pop to drop me off at Kelly Park because there was good run up at the courts. I told her I’d played for a bit and came home. She asked why I wasn’t sweating and I didn’t answer her. I could tell she didn’t believe me, but she didn’t press the issue any further. I didn’t know how to tell her what’d happened. I was mad at Pop, mad at myself, and I didn’t want Ma to feel bad about setting the whole thing up. Plus, there was no telling what would happen if Ma found out. Now when I’m home I try to stay in my room listening to music or
upstairs in the den watching cable. If I’m not doing either one of those things I try to be asleep. Ma always asks me what’s wrong and I always tell her nothing, but the weight of the secret from my birthday has been weighing me down, thoughts and images from that day are always playing in my head, bouncing around and itching at my brain like a mosquito bite. I want it all to go away but it seems ain’t nothing that can be done to change the truth.

  I don’t know what I thought was going to become of the detention, and I knew better than to tell Ma about it, so I did like Nina, acted liked I didn’t care and let it ride. I needed to be at Kelly Park, at the basketball court. It’s the place where my standing doesn’t change as long as I work on my game. It’s where I have control over how people judge me. The basketball court is the only place where everything that makes me uncool doesn’t matter. I can turn it all over on its head. It doesn’t matter that my sneakers aren’t name brand or that my father’s a deadbeat, or that Ma doesn’t drive a nice car. At the basketball court it’s simple, all that matters is putting the ball through the hole, whether or not you’re good at it. There’s a big gap between talking and talented and everyone’s truth is revealed at the basketball court.

  The best part about basketball is all I need is me, the ball, and the rim. Even if there’s nobody running full court I’ll shoot by myself until my arms are tired or the calluses on my fingers start to crack. Ma always tells me my life’s “off balance” because of how much time I spend playing ball, but at the basketball court I can be what I can’t be everywhere else: good.

  Ma asked me how the first day of school was, I told her “fine,” ate my dinner, and went to my room.

  The next day of school, I walked into science class and my name was still written on the board. This time it had a big yellow check next to it. Again, I raised my hand and asked why.

  Mr. Stow clasped his hands and rocked on his heels as he said, “I missed you yesterday after school, Mr. Battel. So much so that now I’ll be seeing you after school for the next two days.”

  Then he told me again to stop being rude and interrupting his class.

  I heard a few girls in the front of the room gasp, and the new kid Roy Shepard, who was sitting behind me, started laughing and kicking my chair.

  I’d stepped on Roy’s sneaker in the cafeteria on the first day of school and he tried to make a scene. He dropped to his knee all drastic and started spit-shining his Jordans. He looked at me and pointed at my sneakers whining, “Dammmn, man, don’t be stepping on my J’s with your cheap-ass, Boe-Boe-ass sneakers.”

  I wanted to smack him in the mouth but no one really paid any attention to our exchange so I let it slide. But now whenever I see Roy he calls me “Boe-Boe.”

  Roy kicked my chair again as Mr. Stow asked everyone to take out our textbooks. As I turned in my chair to get my book out of my bag, Roy gave me the middle finger and I could feel my face heating up. He kicked the back of my chair again and I edged my desk forward, out of kicking range. I could tell if we kept going at this pace, we were going to fight.

  I felt my heart sink as I looked at the clock and saw that there was forty minutes of class left. I tried drawing circles, scribbling big bull’s-eyes, ignoring Roy, watching the passing clouds, and thinking to myself. First off, I ain’t coming to no two days of detention because I took too long going to the bathroom. Even if I did walk around for a bit before I got there. I mean, who the hell does this guy think he is?

  What I wanted to know was, who polices the teachers, who sets their rules? Because Mr. Stow’s pretty damn rude too. I mean, what’s the motivation to stop “being rude” once your name’s on the board and you’ve been singled out? Isn’t that an outside force acting on an object at rest? I didn’t even get a warning, I didn’t start any trouble with him until he started with me. Isn’t it rude to call me out, trying to embarrass me in front of the whole class? It’s bad enough already that since middle school started I don’t hardly get to see Beezy and Chucky no more and every day Roy Shepard has something new to say about what I’ve got on, calling my sneakers “Boe-Boes,” saying I dress like a white boy just because I’ve got on a pair of cargo khakis.

  The tag was sticking out from the collar of my T-shirt and Roy read it aloud, “B.U.M. Equipment, isn’t that the brand they sell at the discount store Bradlees?”

  I could hear Roy hissing at me and slowly scooting his desk forward so he could try to kick my chair again. My legs started shaking. I sat clicking the top button on my pen, trying to calm down. I stabbed my pen into the notebook and started raking tears down the page.

  “It’s all about power and friction,” Mr. Stow rambled on about the second law of motion.

  Roy kicked the back of my chair again and I leaned to the side like I was trying to tie my sneaker and spat a big wad of phlegm onto his sneaker. He kicked out and yelled, “Ayo!”

  Mr. Stow looked at him and said, “Roy, what’s wrong? If you’d like to add to the discussion, please raise your hand.”

  Roy didn’t answer him and my breathing steadied and I started thinking about the idea of power. Where does power come from? And how do people get it? And why do they have it? What gives people the right to have power over other people when we all start off as little helpless babies born to our parents? Why does being a teacher give them the power to give out detentions and why do cops get to arrest people when they’re just people too when they’re not working. Who gives churches and schools the power to operate? Churches are inspired by God and schools are funded by the government, but it seems like the two things don’t mix, so they can’t get their power from the same place, so then where does all the power come from? Some things I just can’t figure out.

  After I got tired of racking my brain about power, Roy started kicking my chair again.

  I raised my hand and asked to use the bathroom.

  Mr. Stow sighed and said, “No, Andre, you can’t.” He looked me off and resumed talking about Newton’s second law of motion, he had it written on the board:

  The change of momentum of a body is proportional to the impulse impressed on the body and happens along the straight line on which that impulse is impressed.

  I was bored and pissed off and, sure, maybe I wanted to take a little walk, but I did also have to use the bathroom. I tuned out Mr. Stow and sat in my chair shocked, Roy Shepard lightly chanting in my ear:

  Boe-Boes, they make your feet feel fine,

  Boe-Boes, they cost a dollar ninety-nine.

  I tried to tune him out too. What was it about being a teacher that gives this jerk the power to take away my right to go pee? It’s crazy and unreasonable to deny anyone the right to use the bathroom. It seemed like a joke. I could feel the side of my head pulsing and heard Roy chanting that damn Boe-Boe song, and all I want to know is why everyone thinks they got the power to fuck with me. My legs started shaking again. I knew I told Ma that this year would be different, but it feels like I’m losing control.

  Ever since Ma joined New Day Pentecostal and stopped letting us go trick-or-treating, she’s always going on about how if you stand for nothing, then you’ll fall for anything. She was talking about Jesus, but I was thinking more along the lines of my pride. Without recess, or Chucky and Beezy, I was right back at the bottom of the social totem pole, and Roy Shepard was on top. His father’s a doctor and drives a Range Rover. He lives in a nice house and he’s already damn near got a full goatee. Roy crushed me in the coolness department, but the more he whisper-chanted the Boe-Boe jingle in my ear the closer I came to the conclusion that it was time for me to take a stand.

  Roy will learn to stop fucking with me.

  I hated the way things switched up once middle school began. I liked going to Tucker Elementary better, everyone knew my name there, and not because I was a troublemaker either. Everyone knew my name because I had had enough playground fights that they knew I wasn’t afraid to fight and was actually pretty good at it. It’s not my favorite thing, but it goes hand in hand
with being the best athlete in our grade, and everyone knew that too. Every day at recess me, Chucky, and Beezy dominated the playground. I wasn’t ever afraid with them around, but none of that really mattered now.

  I had to make a new name for myself.

  Roy Shepard stopped kicking my chair and started throwing pieces of paper at the back of my head. It was only Wednesday of the first week of school and I didn’t want to start off the year fighting, but Roy was grinding on my nerves. Another piece of paper hit the back of my head and Roy said, “I bet yo mama cuts your hair in the kitchen. Huh?”

  It was true but I ignored him and raised my hand again. I made eye contact with Mr. Stow, and he brushed me off and called on someone else. Another piece of paper hit me in the back of the head and I turned around. Roy grabbed his pen like he was writing notes and looked up at the blackboard like he wasn’t doing anything. I could feel my shoulders getting tense and right then I decided, Before I tear this classroom up, I’m out of here.

  I stood up, put my book and notebook in my backpack, zipped it closed, smacked everything off of Roy’s desk, and walked across the room. The whole classroom paused, then broke out into a chorus of “Oooooohs” and laughter as I turned the doorknob and walked out into the dimly lit hallway. Mr. Stow ran to the doorway and yelled, “Get back here right now! Where do you think you’re going?”

  “To take a leak,” I called back.

  I heard more laughter and Roy’s voice yelling, “Look at Andre go, in those ugly-ass Boe-Boes.”

  I kept walking and I thought Mr. Stow would just let me go, but I heard his voice getting closer to me as I walked and when I turned around his skinny body was striding right at me. I ran a couple steps and stopped. I turned around and stomped my foot and screamed, “What!”