by Marcus Burke
He paused to light another cigarette, and I heard Nina sniffling, but I couldn’t see her good enough to know if she was crying. I thought he was done talking but he dove back into his story.
“One night Duval said he wanted me to try some new shit with him, and when I saw the needle and the band around his arm I was shook. I don’t like needles, but the first time I speedballed, I was in love all over again. I didn’t know where I was or what was going on. I woke up six months later and called your mother one day and just cried into the receiver of the pay phone. Crack is one thing, but that heroin is the dark side of the street. Shooting up had become like a job and I was tired. Your mother kept saying, ‘Baby, where are you? Baby, it’s okay,’ and I couldn’t even make my lips form the word ‘Sorry.’ Your mother sent me a bus ticket back to Boston, but no cash ’cause she knew what I’d do with it. When you get strung out you end up staying somewhere a lot longer than you expect.
“See, babygirl, there was a time in my life that I turned it all around and then I went and fucked it all up, and the best I can do is believe that maybe one day I’ll find the strength to do it again. All I’m saying to you, Nina, is everybody’s got a bag of demons to deal with, all different kinds of stuff. So before you go blaming me for everything wrong with your life, remember we can all blame but we all gotta deal. So if you find yourself in a fucked-up spot in life, just make sure it was you who put you there.”
I had goose bumps. It almost felt like he was talking to both of us. He leaned back in his chair and smoked his cigarette. The silence felt thick. The only sound was Nina clearly crying, and the crickets. After a short while she whimpered out, “Thanks, that’s all I wanted.”
In a way it’s kind of what I wanted too, but he told the story to her, not me. She stood up with her arms wide like she wanted to give him a hug and I went back inside the house. With all the same neighborhood issues hanging over my head, something inside me just wasn’t quite as moved.
13
Smoked Out
School let out in early June and now it’s the twelfth of the month and it feels like everyone’s been whispering about the “Battel Bible Study.” Nobody’s clowned me outright to my face about it yet but I’m waiting, and since me and Beezy been on some frenemy shit and Chucky’s busy with baseball, I been kicking it over on the nicer side of town with Aldrich Watson. With the whole Smoke situation, I been wishing nighttime didn’t pause for day. Every time I step out the house I feel myself sliding on the last grains of sand falling through the hourglass. If I can just make it until the fifth of July then I’ll be gone hooping with my AAU team for the rest of the summer.
I got Smoke’s money but I been a little too nervous to go and give it to him. I asked Nina to take it to him for me and she refused. And Reggie don’t mention it, and I don’t say anything to him about it because the last thing to be wearing out here is a coward-heart on your sleeve. I had a growth spurt a while back, and my size alone makes most niggas think twice. Only thing is, if that problem don’t think twice, then it’s indeed a big, big problem. A problem big enough to crush me. It’d be like the steam coming off the concrete after the rain: I could try and run from it but not for long.
I don’t even bother talking to God anymore. With the way I be getting down, what’s the point? I stay high, hazy, and all smoked out. I’m smoking more through force of habit, but I hardly even get that high. I still be hustling, me and Pop still don’t really be talking, and Nina still talks shit. Nowadays when I be getting wit’ Tunnetta I be taking out all my stress on her. Sometimes I feel bad, but other times I can’t help hating her for the way she carries herself and how we could never be anything. She does her bouncing around from nigga to nigga, but she always comes back to me. I tried to explain the situation to Reggie but he told me, “Some broads don’t like nice guys, sometimes they needs niggas like us to come through and fuck up their worlds. Don’t trip, lil’ homie.” So I just let it ride. I think Beezy caught wind of how Tunnetta’s been getting down because he been mean-mugging me more lately and we don’t speak no more. It’s all hand pounds and head nods between us.
The first Bible study is still a few days away and I don’t want to go. Ma doesn’t know that yet. I been chilling by Aldrich Watson’s crib, staying out of harm’s way, acting like I’m really into Dragon Ball Z and going to their country club, chilling with the other high-siditty folks from Milton. I even been caddying golf there too. Don’t knock the hustle, it ain’t hard work. All I do is carry the bag of clubs and walk just far enough away from whichever golfer from the country club decides to take me out. If I’m hiding out, I might as well be getting paid.
All the members are some kind of important person and they always invite other important people over to the country club to golf with them. It’s not what I thought it would be, I don’t need to know the clubs because I put the bag down and the golfer picks his club himself. Really I’m just a tracker. They send me off a far distance to forecaddie when they’re teeing off, I mark where my golfer’s ball lands and wait for the group to make it up the hill and he picks his club. That’s it, eighteen holes and it’s done. I’m usually a shade or two darker from roasting under the sun, but golfers tip well.
Plus I like to listen to all the big-boss shit-talk them rich old cats talk to each other on the course. It’s some higher-level shit-talking, not like the smack we talk on the basketball court, in the barbershop, or on the corner. Them rude old rich dudes talk shit in the form of questions and it seems like everything is fair game. It’s like politics, they ask loaded questions and try calmly to answer them. Questions like “What number wife is this one?” “Is your daughter still in rehab?” “That sissy-boy of yours come out yet?” They ask each other the craziest shit with the straightest faces. Besides the boss-talk, the best part of caddying is listening to the golfers trying to one-up each other, especially when they get going about their kinky-ass fucked-up sex lives.
It seems like the minute one of them rich old bastards gets away on a business trip there is always a secretary or a waitress or a bitch from a bar that wants to fuck the money out of their pockets. They egg each other on, grinning, nodding, and winking at each other, making eyes with me to confirm that we all know these stories are a bunch of lies.
Some days I lie and say I am going to Aldrich’s and walk down to Mattapan station and get on the bus, riding from avenue to avenue by myself, court-hopping or trying to sneak into the YMCA. Other than doing workouts, playing in the city is the only thing that helps me get my game up. After I got ranked I earned myself a nickname in the parks. Folks started calling me “Dreidel” because they say I be leaving cats spinning when I handle the rock. I like playing streetball in the city parks much better than organized ball; no blood, no foul is the only rule. You gotta have heart enough to hold your own playing out on the blacktop. Like when I slash across the lane and catch the ball in traffic and put it on the floor and it feels like I’m trying to bust through a gauntlet. I cup the rock to my chest like a fullback and dip my head and stutter-step through the lane, and when I see the tiniest bit of daylight I come up for air and focus, gather my weight, square my hips, and render my angle. I find the little red box and explode, teardroppin’ it home.
If I make it, and most likely I will, when I land someone’s getting screamed on, chest to chest, nose to nose. If I slip up and don’t make it, then it was a foul, but I won’t call it. Unless it’s game point and when I call it, I call it like I mean it, like I’m ready to smack the mouth of anyone who feels any different, but usually there’s no need to take it there. Generally in the park, the guy defending you calls foul for you, if he’s got any decency. Ain’t no pretty-boy shit, though. Don’t fall out of bounds and grab your wrist sounding like a dog biting down on a squish toy talking ’bout a “foul.” That’s what causes fights. If it’s really a foul, the whole court stops play because your defender’s usually helping you up off the pavement. Shake hands, check ball, play on. That’s the d
ifference between hooping in Milton and playing in the city—that’s where all the heart’s at.
Around the way, Reggie and Smoke both stepped it up to selling coke now, and it seems like every nigga in Team Seven is clipped up and gat touting except for me. I could get my hands on a burner if I really had to go there, but I’m good with my chrome flick-knife for now. If Ma found a gun in our house, she’d probably shoot me with it. Milton’s really not that kind of place. Some guys try and act hard because they know somebody in a hood in Boston, but generally it don’t go too much past a fistfight, or maybe somebody getting jumped. But I can’t front, though, all these guns around here are starting to make me nervous.
When I’m in the house, if it wasn’t for Nana Tanks, I don’t know what the hell I’d do. She’s the only one who still laughs and jokes with me and treats me like a normal person. She don’t know the half about me, though. If Papa Tanks told her about our little run-in inside his toolshed, she sure as hell don’t act like it. She still tells me, “Andre, you’re a nice boy,” and pats me on the head and I smile playing along with her.
After I come in from playing ball I sit with her, rubbing my sore knees with Cofal. I’m not really sure what Cofal is, but Nana and Papa Tanks seem to use it to cure everything from muscle aches to upset stomach. It’s sort of like Bengay but stronger, and sometimes Nana even puts a scoop in her tea if her cough is bad enough. Anyway, she tells me stories about all the madness and drama that went on back home in Costa Rica.
If I go upstairs and she’s watching her evening novelas on Telemundo, I know not to say anything until a commercial break. She’ll be sitting eager-faced on the edge of her seat, thinking out loud with her whole body, yelling at the TV in Spanglish. She’s always trying to warn her favorite characters about what’s going to happen to them, which for some reason she always knows. Nana Tanks just has a way about her, always trying to look out for somebody.
About a week ago she was sitting in her comfy chair when I walked into her room to rub my knees with Cofal. It was Saturday night and Reggie and them weren’t out on the corner. I knocked on her door and she smiled at me as I walked in.
“Sit, my dear. Take off your baseball cap.” She studied me from head to toe as I hung my hat up besides Papa Tanks’s. She eyed me and her nostrils puffed out and her forehead coiled up.
“Why you keep yourself rough so like Barabbas? Ya hair don’t brush and you smell like sow.” I sat on the edge of her bed and opened the canister of Cofal. “Why you don’t cut your hair like a nice boy, Andre, ya don’t see ya mudda go’ start up Bible study?” She reached over and cupped my chin in her little palm and looked me in the face. I met her eyes and respectfully looked away. Her hand was warm and tender on my chin and I smirked.
“That’s not it, Nana, I just haven’t had ten bucks to cut my hair, but I’m sure Ma will give me ten bucks Friday when she gets paid and I’ll get it cut for Bible study.” I gave her a kiss on the cheek, “Okay, Nana?” I stood up and held her hand.
Nana Tanks sat back in her chair. I hadn’t thought about it before Nana Tanks brought it up, and wasn’t in the mood for being questioned. She looked up into my face and I could tell she wasn’t mad but genuinely confused. Ma talks about us “new age kids” and how she doesn’t understand us, but Nana Tanks really did come from a different place in time. But the truth is, I guess I’d been avoiding the barbershop. There’s always a long wait and what better place to get caught slipping?
The week of the first Bible study we were in the middle of our first heat wave of the summer and it was officially on and poppin’. I could feel the trouble coming, it was like a cloud swelling up over my head, growing bigger and bigger. I been watching Nina super close because with the way she’s always warning me about Smoke, I think she might be scheming on me too. Sure, she called Ma and told her I hit her and how I was acting “bad” in the streets, but I know Nina, she’s vicious. Her, Aldrich, and Tunnetta are the wild cards in this whole mess. They’re all dumb and think they’re smart, never realizing how close they are to real danger until the shit is actually in their nostrils.
Reggie and my Team Seven niggas called Aldrich a dick-rider the last time I brought homie to the block. I should’ve known that running with this petrified-black nigga was gonna get me caught up. He’s just so damn thirsty to be up under niggas, but he’s got not a drop of common sense.
All week, Smoke and his boys posted up on their end of the street and we held down ours. The girls wore hardly any clothing and played in front of the water spraying from the busted water hydrant in the middle of the block. All the old folks sat in the house watching the Maury Povich show or whatever other talk show helped them pass the day and keep their brains off of waiting for the other shoe to drop. The whole block seemed on edge ’cause of the heat wave, everybody sitting around sort of aggravated like something bad just happened, but nothing ever did except some old folks getting heatstroke or sun poisoning. Yet everyone flocks to the supermarket and stuffs their cabinets full of canned food, candles, and bottled water, like there’s ever really a way to prepare for trouble or rough times.
The day the dark cloud over my head exploded, it was like the perfect storm and felt like watching a nurse jab a needle into my arm, nothing could ready me for the sensation. It was the first Friday of Bible study and the eighth straight day of ninety-five-degree-plus weather. Ma was on fire, floating around in a trance and being led by the Lord. Nana Tanks spent all day downstairs helping Ma clean our apartment. They baked brownies, fried chicken wings, and made a jug of Kool-Aid. Nana Tanks got tired and sat down as Ma sprayed down the house with a can of “Country Fresh Scent” Raid roach spray, and Nana Tanks took mercy and offered up their living room and front den upstairs to host the Bible study. Nana Tanks was just like that.
After she told Ma to host the Bible study in their place, she went upstairs and called down and told me to come up to her room. I walked into her room and there was a ten-dollar bill sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Come, sit down, babylove.” She smiled at me and whispered, “You need haircut.”
She pushed back and looked up at me from her comfy chair.
“Woiy, you getting big so. How many girlfriends you have now?” She smiled, started shaking my wrist. “Come on, you can tell Grandma.”
I laughed and said, “Other than my basketball, I don’t have any girlfriends, Nana.”
She looked me in the face and folded her arms. “No girlfriend?” Her lips sunk deep into her denture-free jaws, her eyes narrowed, and she turned her head and looked up at me sideways, “A big broad-chest boy like you, with jacket-shoulders and no girlfriend? You don’t like boys, do you?” She pointed up at me and leaned in like she was telling me a secret, “I don’t like boys that like boys.” She said it low.
I shook my head, “Whoa, no, Nana. I don’t like boys.”
Her face loosened and she said, “Good,” and perked back up and handed me the ten-dollar bill.
“Be a nice boy, Andre, and go get a haircut so you can find yourself a little girlfriend.”
I took the money and my pants sagged as I stood up and the edge of my boxer shorts peeked out from under my T-shirt. Nana Tanks grabbed the waistband of my jeans, yanked them up, and hissed. I pulled my jeans up and she let go.
“Why you sag your pants like the ruffian on the corner? Don’ make Grandma have to vex now. Wear your pants on waist, like nice boy.” She rested her elbow on the arm of the chair, hunched over, and gave me a look that shrank me down a few inches. Then she pointed again. “Because even when I’m dead and gone, I’ll come back down from heaven and pull them back up.” She broke a grin at me and I laughed.
I stood and gave her a kiss on the forehead and she hugged my upper shoulders. She looked up at me and said, “Ya know Grandma love you, right?” and squeezed my hand.
“I know, Nana. I love you too.”
“Remember what I said, ya hear?” She leaned back and closed her eyes.
/> I said I would and gave her another kiss on the forehead and walked out the door heading downstairs. She turned up the Telemundo and shimmied herself comfortable so she could fade off into a nap.
Fifteen minutes after I got downstairs, Nana must have woke from her nap and forgotten she’d given me the money because she called downstairs and started complaining to Ma about my hair and Ma made Pop give me ten dollars to get a cut, which I gladly took.
I could tell Ma was nervous that nobody was going to show and that the whole thing would be a big divine joke and she’d look like a fanatic or a fool around the neighborhood. As I got ready to walk to the barbershop I heard Ma call Mr. Watson and set up plans for Aldrich to meet me at the barbershop and walk back to the house with me for Bible study. Ma’s not dumb. I think she could tell I was up to something. Aldrich grates on my nerves, but it’s not his fault his folks brought him up so square it hurts. His parents only let him come to Mattapan when he was with me, and it was like a field trip for him. She saw me wearing my basketball gear under my clothes, but it wasn’t going to stop me. It was smart thinking on her part, put a snitch candidate like Aldrich with me. I’d never even mentioned not coming back in front of her but she’s tricky like that. But she can’t stop me. If I don’t want to come back for Bible study then I’m not going to. The worst she could do is beat me, and I take harder hits at the park.