Buck

by M. K. Asante

  I ask, “Were you ever happy? Like really happy?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  She closes her eyes and grins.

  “It was when my mother played Fats Domino records and closed her eyes when she danced … when every black girl wanted to look like Dorothy Dandridge and sing like Sarah Vaughan … when black girls were bronze, honey, tan, sepia, and black was the color of tar babies … when the Roxy was popping and all the brothers wore conks … Philly had the baddest jitterbugs and Detroit had the meanest gangs … when the blues was country and rock ’n’ roll was city and they both was good for dancing … when my mother gave rent parties long after the rent was paid … when Easter meant new clothes and Cuban-heeled shoes and nobody seemed to mind that Jesus and the Easter bunny were white … when everybody went to church on Sunday no matter what happened Saturday night and Monday mornings belonged to the Man … when everybody knew they were colored and nobody wanted to be white—just don’t call them black … when Mama rolled her hair up in paper curlers and everyone just knew she went to the beauty parlor … when nighttime was for lovers, and alleys and stoops were lovers’ lane for a minute … when all old folks were grandma and grandpa and all children should stay out of grown folks’ business … when I was everybody’s child and had fifteen play aunts and uncles … It was when funeral homes gave out fans and drugstores gave out calendars and the corner store had a credit list just for Mama … when reading one book made you a bookworm and going to college made you damn near a genius … when certain things were said in front of white folks and white folks said everything … when we knew they weren’t right but we didn’t know nothing about our rights … when the weather was on our side and God only had one name … when prayers were answered and miracles were the order of the day … when children called grown folks “Miss Sarah” and “Brother James” and grown folks called children “sweetheart” and “honey” … when Mama used to wear circle skirts and scream when the wind blew her skirt up … when Daddy would slick his hair with Dixie Peach and then refuse to go out in the rain … when nobody touched the TV except for Daddy and nobody sat on the living room furniture except for company … when Grandma refused to wear her teeth and nobody complained … when everyone always had something to do and didn’t mind doing it … when was it when everything was in place, or so it seemed? It was when little girls dreamt about growing up, and when was it that I grew up? When Mama talked about being respectable and Daddy talked about getting some … when home meant the projects, and when was it that the projects meant the ghetto? It was … a long time ago … when love was life and living was loving and everybody belonged to somebody.”

  I’m hugging on her, praying she can be happy again.

  I think Uzi, my dad, and me are the reason she’s in the hospital now. We did this to her, to us.

  “What about school?”

  Shrug. I tell her the truth.

  “I dropped out.”

  She tells me about how important school is. How she had to fight for it. How it was for her, in Brooklyn, coming up.

  “It’s the only thing they can’t take away from you,” she says, “your education. Your passport for the future.”

  I tell her I would go back to school but Fels won’t take me back.

  “If I find a place—a school that will take you—will you go?” she asks.

  I nod, anything for her.

  34

  The Alternative

  It’s called Crefeld.

  “It’s an alternative school,” my mom says.

  “Alternative?”

  “Yes, alternative.” She smiles. We’re back in G-Town, together. I’m getting ready for my first day of school. When I leave, she’s up, listening to music and sketching dances in her notebook.

  My third school in three years.

  Foes looked like shit.

  Fels looked like jail.

  Crefeld is perched on a hill and looks like a gingerbread house.

  Kids shuffle in, the weirdest kids I’ve ever seen. A freak show: one white boy with a purple Mohawk and a neon green spiked dog collar; a group of kids draped in trench coats and dark ponytails, looking like Columbine shooters; little hippies barefoot in tie-dye; a Goth chick with her head shaved clean like G.I. Jane. A black kid with a blond Caesar and a huge Master lock around his neck. Most of these kids look like they’re on strong meds. A handwritten sign reads: Welcome to Crefeld, Home to the Mixed Nuts.

  I’m looking at these kids, thinking, Alternative school? I’m not this damn alternative.

  “First day?” this kid asks.

  “Yeah.” I squint at him.

  “I’m Dan.” He looks Indian and has long tangly black hair with all types of ornaments—paper clips, charms, bottle caps, beads, keys—dangling off like a Christmas tree.

  “Malo.”

  “Crefeld is like an island of misfit toys. Manufacturer rejects. Error cards.”

  “Yeah, well, not me. I’m normal.”

  “Normal, huh? Good luck with that.” He treks up the hill.

  Crefeld’s the size of a mansion but inside feels busy like a row house. All the doors to the rooms are wide open. No bell, no guards, no metal detectors, everything here is different. They do this thing called Morning Meeting. People make announcements, eat muffins, sip tea. It feels like some camp I’ve never been to, like s’mores and sleeping bags.

  “We need better snacks, Michael,” Dan says. Other students join in, complaining about how there are no snacks and refreshments at the school.

  Michael says, “Working on it.” Michael’s the principal! Everyone calls the teachers by their first name, it’s wild. Debbie, Dan, Stacey, Rena, Bill, Kevin, George, Greg. None of them look like teachers. They look more like surfers, skaters, hippies, and straight-up bums. The principal is rocking ripped jeans and sandals—Air Jesuses. There’s a dog, Max, that lazes around.

  This is written on the bench I’m sitting on:

  Ten Tips for Being a Crefelder

  10. Don’t drink the water.

  9. Shakespeare is kind of cool after a while, if you do drink the water.

  8. Beware! If you ask Rena to sing, she will.

  7. You’ll dance to anything.

  6. Lab reports are hard but you realize how wonderful learning is when you’re not being force-fed.

  5. Hyperactivity is contagious.

  4. Introspections are harder.

  3. You people are lunatics.

  2. Never underestimate the value of eccentrics and lunatics.

  1. Remember: With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Smile.

  I smile for the first time in a long time.

  35

  The Blank Page

  Stacey tells us to form a circle with our desks.

  “A circle is a reflection of eternity,” she says. Stacey’s the English teacher. She’s young with skin the color of art gallery walls and hair the color of tree bark. “Circles can’t be broken. No beginning, no end, just motion.”

  There’s only like a dozen kids in this class. This really short girl walks in late and sits next to me. If Amir was here—I miss him so much—he’d be like, She so short she poses for trophies, so short she hang glides on Doritos, so short she does pull-ups on staples, so short she gives head standing up.

  Stacey sketches circles in the air. “If you put circles on top of each other, stack them up, you get a spiral.” Stacey’s big eyes search our faces to see if we follow. “Spirals are infinite.”

  “Pull out something to write on, something to write with: a pen, pencil, bloody fingernail.” Everybody inks up. I don’t have anything to write with. No paper either. I can’t even remember the last time I did schoolwork.

  Stacey puts a blank page down in front of me. Pen on top of it like a paperweight. “Okay, class, write!” Everyone in the class starts scribbling fast like reporters at a press conference. I just sit there, confused. She makes her way over.r />
  “Write,” she says, hawking over me.

  “Write what?” I look around at everyone writing, lost in their own little worlds. I wonder what they’re writing.

  “Anything you want,” she says.

  “Anything I want?” I want to make sure I heard that right.

  “Anything.”

  I know this trick. She’s bullshitting. Teachers always tell you to express yourself, then when you really do, you get in trouble.

  I write “Fuck school” and wait for her to flip. She’s probably going to lose it, kick me out.

  “Okay,” she laughs. “Now keep writing. Keep going.” Ha, okay, since when?

  “Write your thoughts,” she tells everyone.

  “I’m trying,” the short girl next to me, Ellen, says. “The only problem with writing my thoughts is that sometimes I don’t know what I’m thinking.”

  I turn the page over. It’s blank again.

  The blank page is the starter pistol that fires and triggers my mind to sprint. What will I write? What will I say? Will I say what I write, write what I say? Something funny? Something serious? Something about my family? Something about Amir? Ryan? How will I start? Whose story will I tell? My story? Something made up? A story about a boy from Philly, a lost boy, who wants to find himself but doesn’t know where to look, who wants to tell his story but doesn’t know where to begin … or end, who searches anyway and discovers something about himself, the world?

  Stacey reads from The Pillow Book: “ ‘There are times when the world so exasperates me that I feel I cannot go on living in it for another moment and I want to disappear for good. But then, if I happen to obtain some nice white paper … I decide that I can put up with things as they are a little longer.’ ”

  I stare at the blank page, an ocean of white alive with possibility.

  I hear myself take a breath, then exhale—deep, like I just rose from underwater. It’s like I’m at the free-throw line again. Foul shots. Like the game is on the line … again. I remember something my dad told me: Shoot to make it.

  My hand shaking, trembling like it’s freezing.

  Then it hits: a silence louder than all the music I’ve ever heard in my life.

  All the light in the world, in one beam, before me.

  Pens dance to the beat of Stacey’s voice: “Picture yourself writing … your mind moving … notice what you notice … catch yourself thinking … the purpose of writing is to stop time … what is the sound of one hand clapping?… writing synchronizes the mind, body, and spirit … open your mind and your mind’s eye … only emotion endures … picture yourself writing …”

  I grip the pen and something shoots down my spine, sits me straight up. The pen feels heavy, like it’s made of stone.

  At exactly which point do you start to realize

  That life without knowledge is death in disguise?*

  I stare deep into the blank page and see myself. I feel something I’ve never felt before: purpose. I don’t know what my exact purpose is yet, but I know it has something to do with this pen and blank page. I am a blank page.

  Holding the pen this way, snug and firm in my fist, makes me feel like I can write my future, spell out my destiny in sharp strokes.

  But I can’t write. So many things I want to write, but my pen is stuck, trapping my words like water under an ice block. The distance between my mind and the page feels like it could be measured in light-years.

  “It’s like there’s a wall.”

  “Every wall is a door.”

  “You don’t need to be great to get started, but you need to get started to be great.” She sees my pen in the block of ice. “Try writing the first word that comes to your mind.”

  B-U-C-K.

  buck (n.): a fashionable and typically hell-raising young man. 2 racial slur used to describe black men. 3 a young black man: what’s up young buck? 4 the act of becoming wild and uncontrollable: he went buck wild. 5 a dollar. 6 to fire gunshots: buck shots in the air. 7 to go against, rebel: buck the system

  * * *

  * “K.O.S. (Determination),” Black Star, 1998.

  36

  Circle of Love

  After free write, we share. She calls it the circle of love—you get a chance to read what you wrote. It kind of feels like what I imagine a campfire feels like, or an AA meeting.

  We move around the circle.

  SHAWN: “Orange-hued rainbow skies, eternal stormy summer nights, and stellar angel cloud dancing …”

  SARAH: “If I were me, talking to me, I’d smack me already … It’s funny how the intimidating are usually the intimidated …”

  JOHN: “He’s a politician. It’s like being a hooker. You can’t be a good one unless you can pretend to like people while you’re fucking them.”

  RACHEL: “You raped my body but not my soul / Once broken, now I’m whole / You raped my body but not my mind / Can now see, was once blind …”

  BECCA: “Feeling all alone / All alone at home / Going to school / Not acting very cool / Happy, sad, mad, no dad. Poem writing, lots of typing …”

  AARON: “Rest my eyelids on the ride / Or get caught in riptide / If you like it french-fried / Be my bride. Seagulls dropping left and right, all night. All right. Okay, twine frays, repeated phrase, ruffled Lay’s and sun rays in a haze …”

  KATE: “There’s hell in hello, good in goodbye, lie in believe, over in lover, end in friend, and ex in next so what’s next … A true friend stabs you in the front … I have a shooting star on my wrist, means to go far. I have a heart on my hip it means to always love …”

  TARA: “Amidst a hidden green hill / Tucked behind brass barriers far away / A figure is played on a windowsill / A daunting paragon of Irish beauty lay / Her pristine pale skin and soft pink cheeks / Frame large abyssal eyes / Which tell of the adventures she seeks / And imagines in the skies / Each cloud stretches and reaches / Satisfying her imagination / Natures she beseeches / To animate her creation.”

  GEOFF: “Money can’t buy you love, but love can’t buy you hookers … I would read my words but I’m being sued by Webster for plagiarism so …”

  MALO: “I don’t want to share.”

  “History admires the wise but elevates the brave,” Dan says.

  “And what does history say about assholes, yo?”

  “I personally tend to have a lot of faith in assholes. My mom calls it self-confidence.” I like Dan’s sarcastic ass. He’s witty and unafraid like Amir was.

  I’m not ready to share, though. I just want to write.

  After class I keep writing. School lets out and I’m still going, flowing, writing, writing. No one comes in. I hear Frank, the maintenance man, tell someone, “Yep, he’s still in there, writing. Been in there for hours.”

  Next week it’s the same thing: “Yep, he’s still in there.” I keep writing.

  I write sentences that flow, like water, then I ride the word waves into new perceptions, new ideas.

  I never thought I’d be voluntarily staying at school after school, but here I am. I realize that school and education don’t go hand in hand, that school and education can be as distant or as close as sex and love.

  The sun slopes across my face like a blessing. Falling rays light up the page and make my words glow.

  37

  Breakfast on J Street

  I’ve been at Crefeld for a month now. Every day when I come home from school, my mom is out of her chair and off the meds. It’s like watching a flower bloom. Today I come home to a dance studio. I walk in and am swept away—by sweet, sad symphonic strings, by mournful French horns, by a marching snare drum that ushers Amir into my thoughts, and by the silky sandpaper voice of Sam Cooke singing “A Change Is Gonna Come.”

  My mom directs two dancers, a guy and a girl, as they float around our little living room on tippy toes like black angels. The duo crash to the floor, then rise, jump in place, kick to the sky, and interlock like long-lost lovers, telling a story with their glistening bodie
s.

  My mom cues their movements. “Ba-da-da ba-de-ba-da-ba-da … Ba-de-da-da-da,” she sings. She’s wearing a leotard and looks good. Her face glows like it’s backlit. She stops the music and tells me they’re preparing for some big dance competition. I can hear it in her voice—she wants it.

  “Cross your fingers,” the male dancer, Kemal, says.

  “And … one of these is for you.” My mom hands me two envelopes. I recognize Uzi’s handwriting. I scream, “Yeah!” and jump around like I’m at a Cypress Hill concert.

  The other letter is for Ted. I pocket my letter to read later and head out to give Ted his.

  Back to 10 Gs.

  I spot the crew, standing where they always stand, between the liquor store and the corner store, next to the Fern Rock Apartments fence, under the train tracks, and across the street from Rock Steady, this bugged ngh who sits on a crate all day with a broken radio, rocking his head back and forth to a beat no one else can hear.

  Scoop and Ted both look gone. I give Ted the letter.

  “Thanks, Malo. Where Uzi at? The crib?” Ted looks horrible. His Afro is dry and uneven, his clothes dirty, his speech slurred.

  “He’s locked up in Arizona,” Scoop reminds him, wiping his drippy nose. “You know that.” Scoop looks bad too, like he’s aged ten years since I last saw him.

  “Yeah, that’s right … Yo, Malo, can you take us to get some breakfast?” Ted asks.

  “Breakfast? You know what time it is?” I laugh.

  “You know what I’m talking about.” Actually, I don’t.

  “Where?”

  “Down J Street,” Scoop says. “Come on, take us down there real quick.” I don’t feel like taking them, something tells me not to, but I do anyway.

  Let freedom ring with a buckshot, but not just yet