I realize the two kids are as used to playing tag around crack dens as other children are used to playing in country fields.
When they see me watching them, they suddenly stop. The boy lowers his jeans to his ankles and prepares to take a dump over the side of the tub. LaToya, the little girl, who wears her hair in pigtails, raises her fingers to her lips and gives me a melancholy look.
“You wanna see Big Bird?” she asks after a couple of seconds.
“Who?”
She stretches out her hand like she wants me to take it and follow her somewhere. Aaron pushes her hand away with the muzzle of his gun, but she doesn’t get discouraged.
“Mom say Big Bird ’sa big Muppets,” she tells me, the words whistling through the space in her teeth.
I’d noticed her brother playing with Muppet toys before. She must have some of her own in one of the other rooms.
“That’s your Big Bird?” I say. “I thought Big Bird was on a TV show.”
She nods wildly. Aaron is half bored, half listening, not making any effort to interrupt.
“What day is the show on?” I ask, playing for time and trying to figure out if there’s another way out of here.
She looks at me blankly. She doesn’t know the days of the week. I smile to show her that’s okay.
“Mommy say they got Big Bird downtown, but she can’t take me.”
“Why not?” I can’t tell if she means there’s a movie with Big Bird in it or a stage show at Radio City or what.
“Mommy say she too busy,” she says. She gives me a little coquettish smile. “’Ould you take me?”
Even Aaron seems interested in what I’ll say to that, peering at me over the sights of his gun.
“Sure, I’d take you,” I say.
Aaron shakes his head like maybe he’d like to go too. But the little girl studies my face for a minute and her smile disappears. “No, you don’t,” she says softly. “You don’t take me anywhere.”
She hardly knows me and already she’s disappointed in me.
“Well, I’ll try,” I tell her.
Aaron motions with his gun that he wants me to leave. The smell was starting to get to me anyway. But before I go, I notice the girl has a little purplish bruise on her left cheek.
“Hey, what happened to you there?” I ask, pointing to it.
She looks up at me and puts her finger to the side of her head.
“Crack,” she says.
She goes running out of the bathroom, leaving me completely confused. Maybe she meant a crackhead did this to her. Like Darryl or one of his friends. Or maybe crack was the sound she heard when she got hit. But there’s another possibility, just barely edging into my mind. Maybe she meant somebody gave her crack and this is what happened to her when she got high. I know that couldn’t be, but now I can’t shake the idea.
It’s that look she gave me. The one that said: You may think this is a hard place to be right now, but try growing up here.
74
DARRYL’S MOTHER WAS CRYING when he came back into the bedroom.
“Oh, Darryl, we gonna die,” she said.
“What the fuck, Moms.”
The television was still on. It showed night outside their building. This time there were gas masks, ladders, and assault rifles all over the place. The sidewalks around the Fortress were packed with black and Hispanic mothers, fathers, and children—many of them residents of the building who’d been chased out by the King family posse and the cops who’d arrived on the scene. Concession stands were set up near the curbs to sell fried meat and Malcolm X T-shirts.
The picture on the TV suddenly turned black-and-white. It looked like one of those old-fashioned movies. People were running around, like a riot was about to start. Then there was a lot of smoke and it was hard to see what was going on. They cut to a picture of a black guy lying facedown on a concrete floor near a pair of binoculars. Next there was a white guy on his back in the mud with his arms spread out and a bloody bandage over his face.
“’S a war,” said Darryl.
More tears streamed down his mother’s face. “’S not a war,” she told him. “That’s Attica. That’s what they say is gonna happen with us.”
Darryl stared at the screen, but the black-and-white pictures had vanished like it was all a bad dream. The TV lady was on again, saying something about how they’d return to the scene before the midnight deadline and now it was back to the studio. Darryl was starting to feel drowsy. He sat down next to his mother on the bed and reached for the crack pipe on the night table. There was a story about an airplane crash on when he flipped open the top of the lighter.
“Darryl, we gotta do something,” his mother said through her sobs.
He tried thinking about the future, but it didn’t work anymore. He couldn’t visualize it. Too much going from one high to the next. Even now, his mind kept wandering back to how he’d like to beam up. If only he could get his hand up to light the pipe. But sleep was draining away his energy and his arm started to fall. His eyes closed and the lighter slipped between his fingers.
It fell on the carpet with the top open and the flame still going. On the television screen, the anchorman said they’d just learned that the cop wasn’t going to be indicted for shooting Jamal Perkins. Darryl’s mother began to weep a little louder and a little harder. She looked over to say something to Darryl, but he was already sleeping. When the commercial came on, she punched him in the shoulder and told him to get up.
His eyes slowly opened and he gave her that look that made her fear for her own life again. “There’s things I wanna tell you,” she said.
“What?” He bent over and picked up the lighter, without noticing where its flame had licked the carpet fibers and started them smoldering.
“I hope you don’t think you getting high now.”
He lit the pipe and took a long hit. His face closed up and his body shook a little. “Relax, Moms,” he said.
She started to dry her eyes with the sleeves of her blouse. “In four hours is midnight,” she said. “And they gonna come for us.”
“Well, I ain’t gonna give up now,” he said sullenly.
“Well, I ain’t asking you to,” she snapped at him. “Your father couldn’t do prison time, so you couldn’t neither.”
He was going to say something to her about that, but now he couldn’t think of what it was. The newspeople came back on the TV and did a story about sea cows mating at a zoo and the New York Yankees.
“There’s things I want to tell you before I die,” his mother said more softly.
“What?”
“I don’t know.” She looked up at the ceiling for a minute and he could still see where the tears had left their tracks on her face. The voices outside seemed to be shouting his name out.
“I ain’t worked it all out yet,” she said finally. “But there’s things I wanna say to you about life.”
He rocked himself up onto his feet. “Well, I ain’t dead yet,” he said. “I’m gonna get us outta here.”
“Well, what nonsense you telling me now?”
“We’re gonna get out and start making that crazy money.”
The confident way he was talking made her want to start crying again. But he was already waking himself up and working himself into a mood. “This a opportunity,” he was saying. “We got the whole world in front of my hands.”
She screwed up her mouth skeptically and put her hands on her skinny hips. “Well, tell me how you figure on that.”
“Motherfuckers got to give me what I’m asking for,” he said, clapping his hands together like an athlete about to take the field. “We still got the hostage here.”
His mother began crying again, but by now Darryl was fed up. He flapped his hands and started to walk out of the room. His mother threw a balled-up Kleenex after him. He stopped in the doorway and looked back in, wrinkling up his nose.
“You smell something funny?” he asked.
“Only you,” his mo
ther told him.
75
EVER SINCE IT SAID on TV that the cop who shot Jamal Perkins wasn’t going to get indicted, I’ve been waiting for the explosion in here. For a couple of hours things have been degenerating. That kid is still flicking droplets on my face and the one called Bobby “the House” is wandering around in shades muttering, “Violence, ultraviolence,” over and over.
Most of the lights have been turned down and in the flickering blasts of illumination from the television set, I can see four of Darryl’s other lieutenants hovering around the dinner table, which is just two or three yards from the front door entrance. The table is covered with guns and set up so that each kid can grab one on his way out, just as other boys their age grab a hat and mittens heading out for school on a cold winter’s day.
It’s almost a relief when Darryl comes out of the back bedroom with his mother, though my mouth still hurts where he belted me before. At least with him around I know I’m dealing with the real power around here, not just a dangerous functionary who’d pop me for no good reason. I have a feeling things are coming to a head quickly and no one’s ready for it. The voices outside seem to be getting louder and the lights appear brighter. I guess it’s almost midnight now. Once the deadline arrives, the forces outside will have to try crashing in, or Darryl and the others will have to try crashing out. Either way, I’m probably dead.
I start talking, as if words themselves can keep me alive.
“Hey, what’s going on out there?” I ask Darryl.
“Yo, shut the fuck up, man. Who asked you?”
He looks over at Bobby, who’s holding a gun on me, like he’s about to give him an order. “Hey,” I say, bracing myself. “I was just looking for information.”
Darryl turns up the side of his mouth. “Oh that’s all,” he says, balling up his fists and taking a step toward me. For most of the day I’ve been avoiding looking him in the eye, kind of the way you don’t look at people on the subway. But now our eyes meet and it’s like wires crossing.
I’ve never known there could be such violence in just a look before. There’s no white showing in his eyes, only huge, angry pupils staring out of a ruined face. He’s got that horrible crack breath again and two lines of sweat are coming down his brow.
Normally I’d be too scared to say anything, but with the way things are going I better take a shot at it. “So did you talk to the guy?” I ask.
“Who?”
“The hostage negotiator.”
He smiles like everything’s under control.
“What’s so funny?” I ask, looking back to the bedroom where he’s been with his mother.
“I’m about to get paid,” he says.
An old subway mugger’s line. I’m starting to wonder if he has any real sense of what’s about to happen here.
“So what’d you say to the guy?” I ask.
“I gave him my list.”
Darryl looks around at everybody else in the room like they’re going to confirm that’s just what they discussed.
I try not to let my hopes get up too high. I’d thought his last few conversations with the hostage negotiator had gone badly, but now he’s acting like they might’ve worked out a deal. Maybe he’s somehow managed to seize the moment and act rationally.
“So what was on your list?” I ask him.
“Business equipment,” he says.
That stops me cold and I look at the others to see if they have a clue as to what he’s talking about. In the red light from the TV, his mother looks like she’s trying to shrink down and lose herself in the folds of her blouse.
“Business equipment?” I say. “What does that mean?”
“Equipment to start my business,” he explains. “They’re gonna give me a helicopter, and two keys, so I can get started up right up …”
My sense of hope is fraying, like an old cable carrying too much freight. “They’re not gonna give you dick.”
“Yes, they will,” he insists.
One of the other kids comes over to take Bobby’s place, holding the gun on me. I don’t know this kid’s name, but he’s about sixteen and he wears an NWA baseball cap with the bill turned sideways. He’s only a couple of years younger than the inmates we just saw in the film clips of Attica, who were holding knives on the hostages when they got shot themselves.
What they said on TV was that the prisoners and the authorities couldn’t agree on the demands and, after a while, the state just had to reestablish order, no matter what the cost was to lives. It’s about to happen again here if we don’t watch it.
“Didn’t you talk to the guy about amnesty?” I ask Darryl, figuring he must’ve seen that part of the television report.
“Nope,” Darryl says. “Don’t have to.”
“What did he say?” I hear Darryl’s mother asking somebody in the corner.
“You mean you didn’t even talk to the guy about letting me go in exchange for some leniency?” I say. At this point I stand up in front of Darryl, just to make sure he’s listening to me.
“Sit your ass down,” he says.
“Didn’t you talk to him about doing a deal with the judge?”
“Nigger, sit your ass down.”
The guy in the NWA cap puts his hand on my shoulder. All the other people who’ve been milling around, doing drugs, and watching TV stop talking and start watching us more carefully. Like something really serious is about to happen. I sit down slowly.
“Damn,” says Darryl, rocking from side to side, and spoiling for a good fight.
My scalp tingles like my hair is turning gray while I’m sitting here. “Listen,” I say, “you gotta try and call that guy back. He’s gonna make this deal.”
“Why the fuck don’t you call them?” he says, bellowing the words down into my face.
“Because you won’t let me.”
“’S right,” says Darryl. “’S my motherfuckin’ house. Who asked you to come up here?”
“Nobody. You broke the law.”
“What law?”
“Come on, you know what law,” I say, trying to keep the discussion reasonable. “Like the law against shooting cops.”
“What law’s that?” he says, throwing up his hands. “Motherfuckers come in my house and tear shit up. They threaten me with violence. Shoot them guns off. What law’s that?”
“’S right,” says a voice from the darkness.
“You tell ’im, D.,” adds Bobby.
“That’s not what it is,” I say, fumbling the words. “That’s not the reality of it.”
“Reality?” Darryl’s voice goes up and his head jerks back. “Motherfucker. Lemme tell you about the reality. You come around here talking about the law. But there be your law and the law of the jungle. You know what I’m saying? See, you in the jungle now, Mr. Bomb.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I turn halfway away from him in my seat. “I know all about that.”
“No, you don’t. You think you know. Because you sit in your office, and you be the law and the rest of us be niggas. But now you come in my house. Right? You in my supervision. So you respect my law. Understand what I’m saying? You not any better than us. You the nigga here.”
In the dark, one of the boys makes a hissing noise and says, “Aw busted …” That gets a short laugh out of the others without really cheering anybody up. “Say it,” someone else chimes in. It’s like a disillusioned revivalist meeting where no one can quite find the spirit. But in the blue radium flashes of television light, I see at least a dozen pairs of worried eyes looking around, just as afraid as I am.
“Well, I’m sorry you feel that way,” I say slowly, trying hard to keep the fear and anger out of my voice. “But what you’re talking about isn’t the same thing.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“Because I didn’t kill anybody. I don’t come to your neighborhood and rob people.”
“But you put the shit right in my face!” Darryl yells. “You put the shit right in my face!” He
’s pointing furiously at the television, like it’s the whore that’s led him down the road to temptation. “I seen it right there. People be making all that crazy money. People flying with helicopters, and their boat, and driving around in the limos. And with the females. I seen it right while I was sitting there.” He kicks the chair I’m sitting in. “You put the shit right in my face and tell me I can’t grab for it.”
“’S the system,” I hear Darryl’s mother muttering.
“They doing it to us again,” someone else calls out.
“Conspiracy,” says Aaron, adding his voice to the growing uproar.
“The way they want it,” says Darryl’s mother loudly.
“Genocide,” says Darryl, using the word like it’s something he heard on TV.
“Oh, fuck you,” I say, rising to my feet. “Who told you to put a needle in your arm? Who said go smoke twenty-five vials of crack. If I gave you rat poison, would you do that too? Why’s it always our fault?”
“BECAUSE IT IS!” says Darryl. “YOU PUT THE SHIT RIGHT IN MY FACE!!”
For Bobby, this is the cue to take leave of his senses and he starts raving at me too.
“YOU WERE THE ONE!” he shouts. “YOU BROUGHT DISEASE INTO THIS HOUSE! YOU EAT PORK! AND THE PORK EAT WORMS! AND THE WORMS EAT DIRT!!! NOW there’s worms in this house. This used to be a CLEAN HOUSE.”
“Bobby,” says Darryl in a quieter tone. “Chill, man. ’S just life.”
I’m standing in the middle of the darkened room, and Darryl’s prowling around me. In the flashes of television light, I can see the rest of them in a loose circle around us, but I can’t make out any of their faces.
“Motherfucker tryin’ to tell me how to negotiate,” I hear Darryl saying, like he can’t believe I had the nerve to second-guess him before.
“THAT’S RIGHT!” one of the others cries out. “THAT’S WHAT HE TRY!”
Now Darryl’s standing right in front of me and snarling. “Let me ask you something, Mr. Bomb,” he says in a low voice. “What give you the right to tell me what to ask for when I’m in negotiations?”
Slow Motion Riot Page 37