At the Crossroads

by Travis Hunter

  Rico took a few deep breaths and turned away. He looked back at the neighborhood bum, who had dirt and leaves all in his hair and a bloody nose. “You better fix this situation with my brother, or I promise you the next time I won’t stop, ya heard.”

  “I ain’t gonna ask you twice to get your filthy hands off of my baby,” Stick’s mother said.

  Rico pushed the skinny man down onto the ground and stood up. He stared at the woman as if daring her to shoot him.

  “You have a good night,” he said, and kicked Stick in his ribs before walking over him and toward his house.

  “You got a death wish, boy,” Stick’s mother said before rushing over to help her sorry son to his feet.

  Franky followed Rico into the house and paused as his cousin paced back and forth to let off a little steam.

  “We gotta get Nigel out,” he said. “I don’t mind him sitting in there if he got caught doing his dirt, but I’ll be a snake in the grass if he do one day behind the fence for that fool, Stick. He at home chillin’ and my brother in there doing his time. That just can’t happen. Nah, I won’t be able to sleep. And that trash he got for a momma gonna regret the day she pulled a gun on me. You pull a gun on me, you better use it.”

  Franky listened to his cousin rant and knew there was truth to everything that he said. He didn’t like Stick nor did he care too much for the woman who enabled him, but he didn’t wish them any harm.

  “Do you know if Nigel paid that rent?”

  “Yeah. He paid it. He dropped it off with the landlord before he took me to school,” Franky said.

  “Dag,” he snapped. “I needed that money. I gotta get some dough, whoadie. I’m going a different route than that lawyer. I wish they would just let Mrs. Bertha have a visitor, and she can fix this whole mess—that is, if they cops go holla at her.”

  “What you mean you going a different route?”

  “Don’t worry ‘bout it, whoadie. I just need to get my hands on some cash.”

  “I know a dude who might be able to let me hold something. I’ma have to pay him back, though,” Franky said, thinking of the money that was stuffed in his brush.

  Rico looked at him as if he knew something wasn’t right. Franky was probably the world’s worst liar, but the streets had taught him that he’d better get good at it if he was going to survive.

  “Get what you can and I’ll make sure he gets it back,” Rico said.

  “I’ll see him at school tomorrow.” “Good. Get that because what I got in mind ain’t cheap, but it’s gonna work.”

  13

  The school was buzzing about the new boy and how he knocked out bigmouthed Tyrone. Everywhere Franky went, people spoke to him, nodded at him, pointed at him, and some of the kids even walked up and shook his hand. He was confused by his newfound popularity and didn’t like it one bit. He was standing in the hallway fiddling around with his locker when Khadija walked up.

  “Here ya go,” she said, handing him a book bag.

  “Thanks, Khadija,” he said.

  “I thought you were gonna call me back last night.”

  “How are you gonna be a princess if you don’t know how to speak to folks?” he asked.

  “Hello, Franky. How are you doing this fine morning at M and M High?”

  “I’m good. How are you?”

  “Just dandy. Now stop dodging my question: Why didn’t you call me back last night?”

  “I’m sorry about that. Things got crazy after I got off the phone with you. My cousin Rico beat this dude up, and the dude’s mom pulled a gun out and started shooting. Then the police came out and started asking questions, but of course nobody told them anything. It was just a bunch of drama,” Franky said as he finally got his locker open. He shoved his books inside and kept the two for his next classes.

  “Is your cousin okay?” Khadija asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “He’s okay. I’m a little worried about my oldest cousin, Nigel, though. He’s still locked up, and he didn’t call like he said he would.”

  “Maybe he will call you today when you get home,” she said.

  “I hope so,” Franky said.

  He looked at her hair and nodded his head approvingly at the braids without the colorful yarn. “Nice. Now you look like a human being. Maybe even a princess.”

  “Whateva, shawty. What did I look like before?”

  “A nut,” he said.

  She reached over and punched him on the shoulder.

  “Ouch,” Franky said. “Girl, you hit hard. Are you sure you’re a female? I know this is Atlanta, but I don’t do that same-sex stuff.”

  “You wanna get knocked out?” she said, drawing back her little fist.

  “No, ma’am—or sir,” Franky said, and braced himself for another punch.

  The bell rang, and it was time for them to go to their classes.

  “A’ight, dude. I’ll see you in Spanish class,” Khadija said. “Try not to get into any fights until I see you, okay?”

  “I’ll try,” he said, and walked off toward his English class.

  Right before Franky walked into his class, he heard his name being called. He turned around to see Bubba waving him over. He walked to where Bubba and Nard were standing.

  “What’s up?” he said, shaking both of their hands.

  “You killing that polo shirt,” Nard said. “I like the big horse ones. Where you get that from?”

  “I don’t know, whoadie,” Franky said. “My cousin Rico gave it to me. He comes up with all kinds of things all the time. I’ll see if he can look out for ya.”

  “Oh, yeah. Franky always rocking them freshest gear,” Bubba said.

  “Man, I’ma holla at y’all later. I need to get to this class. I was registering yesterday round this time, so this will be my first day in here. Gotta make a good impression, ya know.”

  “Yeah,” Bubba said. “I feel ya. But listen, we wanted to see if you was interested in making a lil extra money.”

  “How?” Franky asked eagerly. All he could think about was getting his cousin out of jail.

  “We’ll talk about it after school,” Bubba said.

  “A’ight,” Franky said before shaking their hands again and walking off.

  “Hold up, Franky,” Nard said. “I got this class, too. How you like the school so far?”

  “It’s cool,” Franky said, noticing how nice Nard had all of a sudden become. Just yesterday he was mean-mugging him.

  “I heard you knocked Tyrone out cold,” Nard said.

  Franky grunted. Now he saw the reason for the suddenchange of heart. It was amazing the guys who frowned at you before they knew you could knock that frown upside down. He guessed Nard was in that crowd and figured it’d be better to be friends than enemies.

  “It was nothing, man,” Franky said, and walked into the class.

  English class should’ve been called the zoo. Ms. Chappell, a twenty-two-year-old white woman who had just graduated from college, had no business teaching at an inner-city school. She stood before the class seemingly on the verge of tears as the kids made more noise than a group of two-year-olds. Nard walked in and started teasing her about her clothes. Franky didn’t see anything wrong with what the teacher had on, but that didn’t stop the fat boy from giving her the business.

  “Whatchu do, get dressed in the dark?” Nard said. “And where you get that Orphan Annie shirt from? You look a hot mess.”

  “If you insist on being disrespectful, I’m going to write you up,” she said without much conviction.

  “Shut the hell up,” someone said.

  “Is this what you guys come to school for? To get a laugh?” Ms. Chappell said. “To talk about people? And you wonder why you can’t find a job?”

  “Who can’t find a job? Do you mean black people?” a girl asked, standing up and rolling her neck. “You a racist and I don’t want you to be my teacher no more.”

  “I’m not a racist,” Ms. Chappell said, and seemed genuinely offended. “Wh
y would I choose to work in a school that’s almost one hundred percent African American if I was a racist?”

  “ ‘Cause you stupid,” the same girl said. “I’m outta here.”

  “Tanisha, sit down,” Ms. Chappell said, but to no avail.

  “Nah,” Tanisha said, walking out of the class. “I don’t like racist white people. I got a bad temper, and I just saw Roots. Fuse real short right about now, so it’s best I leave this classroom before somebody gets hurt.”

  “She ain’t mad—she just want an excuse to get out of class,” Antonio, the short snoring kid from Franky’s Spanish class, said.

  Tanisha turned around and gave him a laugh before walking out of the door.

  Ms. Chappell huffed and walked back to her desk. She stood there staring at the class, shaking her head.

  Franky walked over and sat at a desk in the front row. He looked at the teacher, who already seemed defeated. He felt sorry for her. He was embarrassed by the way his peers were carrying on. They were acting like animals, and he hated them for it.

  “Hey, yo, Ms. Chappell,” Nard said. “Can I go to the bathroom?”

  “No, you cannot go to the bathroom,” she snapped. “Every single day that you come in here, you ask to go to the bathroom. School has just started, and you should’ve used the bathroom at home or before you came to class. Now sit down and take out your textbook.”

  “Who you talking to?” Nard said.

  “I’m talking to you, Bernard,” she said, marching around her desk as if she had finally snapped and was ready for war. “I’ve tried my best to be nice to you people.”

  “Whoa,” almost the entire class said at once.

  “What do you mean, ‘you people'?” a kid asked.

  “She means black people,” another student said.

  “You people as in young people in this class,” Ms.

  Chappell said, trying to clean up her statement. “You guys seem to think life is one big joke. Do you really think it’s funny to come to school and throw away an education? The sad part about it is you guys are only setting yourself up for a bleak future. What kind of life do you expect to have without an education?”

  “Shut up,” Nard said.

  “Is that the best you can come up with, Bernard? When you don’t have anything intelligent to say, your response is ‘shut up'?”

  “Yep. Since I don’t have no kind of education, that’s ‘bout the best I can do,” Nard said, much to the delight of the classroom.

  Franky stood and walked over to the teacher. He handed her his schedule.

  “Nice to meet you, Franklin,” she said.

  “It’s Franky, and it’s nice to meet you, too.”

  “I apologize that your first day has to be like this.”

  “It’s no big deal,” Franky said, hunching his shoulders. “I know I missed three weeks of school already, and I was wondering if I could get the makeup work.”

  “Absolutely,” she said, almost too enthusiastic.

  The class was so loud that he could barely hear the lady, and she was standing less than two feet away from him. They were getting on his nerves, but he didn’t say anything. He walked back to his desk and took a seat.

  “Take your books out and turn to page twenty-seven,” Ms. Chappell said. “We will start where we left off yesterday.”

  Franky looked around and didn’t see one person pull out their book. Nard stood up and walked out.

  “Bernard,” Ms. Chappell called out to him, but all he did was fan her off and kept walking.

  “Ms. Chappell,” Franky said, waving his hand to get her attention.

  She turned to him but didn’t answer. She wore her frustration all over her face, and the kids took full advantage of it.

  “May I go talk to him?” he said, nodding toward the door that Nard had just walked out of.

  Ms. Chappell nodded, and Franky jumped up and headed out of the classroom.

  “Nard,” Franky called out once he was in the hallway.

  “What’s up, playboi?” he said, stopping to allow Franky to catch up.

  “Why are you giving that lady such a hard time, man?”

  “I don’t know,” Nard said, smiling. “Ain’t got nuttin’ else to do.”

  Franky sighed. “That’s not cool, man.”

  “Why it ain’t?”

  “What’s up with the money y’all talking about making?” Franky asked, getting to the real reason he wanted to leave the classroom.

  “You down?” Nard asked.

  “Depends on what y’all talking about.”

  “Well, my man got some stuff. This stuff will pretty much sell itself. I’ll share more details with ya once I know you’re in. We see that you be fresh and figured you might have a few extra dollars to make some more. Just wanted to know if you wanted to be down.”

  “What’s it gonna cost me?”

  “Depends on what you wanna do.”

  “Meaning?” Franky asked.

  “Well, it means if you invest a lil money, your cut is one thing, but if you wanna get a little deeper, then it’s another. Still decent money no matter which way you go.”

  “How much are you guys talking about?” Franky asked, knowing full well that he wouldn’t be selling any kind of drugs.

  “You give me two hundred and I’ll get you five hundred by Friday. You get me four hundred and I’ll get you a thousand bucks by Friday and so on.”

  “So it’s that simple, huh?”

  “Pretty much. So whatchu gonna do, barbecue or mildew?”

  “A’ight,” Franky said, feeling himself crossing over into a world he always said he didn’t want any part of. “Come holla at me after school, but I never wanna know what you guys are doing. I don’t care. I just need to make some money.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Nard said, walking away. “See no evil, hear no evil.”

  “And, Nard,” he called out.

  “What?”

  “Come back to class and give the lady a break. We are in there acting like we belong in a zoo.”

  “Most of them fools do belong in a zoo.”

  “Maybe, but those same people respect you, man. So I bet if you act right, then they will, too.”

  “What?” Nard asked with a confused look on his face. “Why do you care about what that skinny lil white girl thinks about us?”

  “It’s not about her. Even though she shouldn’t be talked to like that,” Franky said, walking away. “Are you coming?”

  Nard looked at Franky like he was from another planet. Franky turned around and walked backward, keeping his eyes on Nard. Nard dropped his head and shook it. “I can’t believe I’m letting you talk me into going back to that bony lil white chick’s class.”

  “Aww, come on,” Franky said, slapping his arm around Nard’s neck once he caught up to him. “It’ll be good for you to do the right thing every now and then.”

  “I’ll go back, but I ain’t doing jack,” Nard said. “So don’t ask me to.”

  Franky laughed and held the door for him to enter.

  14

  “Grandma,” Jason said through sniffles. “She … she … she’s dead.”

  Franky held the phone up to his ear in a state of shock. His little friend was crying so hard he could hardly make out what he was saying.

  “Jason,” Franky said, trying to get a word in between the little boy’s sobbing. “Calm down a little bit, whoadie.”

  “She dead. She told me she wasn’t ever gonna leave me, and now she done left me to go die. She gone and I don’t wanna stay with nobody but her.”

  Franky took a seat at the kitchen table, because his legs were too weak to stand on. He had dealt with so much death over the last few years, and he realized that it was one of those things he could never get used to. His heart ached for his little friend because he knew exactly how he was feeling. He was hurting as well because he really liked Mrs. Bertha. She was always so kind to him and his cousins.

  “What’s wrong?”
Khadija asked, taking a seat beside himat the raggedy card table that they used for their dinette set.

  Franky held up a finger to her and allowed his little friend to grieve.

  “If I be good, will God bring her back? I’ll be good, Franky. I’ll be good. I won’t talk back no more. I want do nuttin’ wrong. I want my grandma,” Jason said, crying harder now. “Why she have to leave me? You said she was strong, Franky. You told me that she was coming home and now she gone. Tell God I’ll be good.”

  Franky listened to his little friend and couldn’t help but feel his pain. If there was a magic stick he could wave to stop the pain he was hearing over the phone, he would do it. And as much death and destruction he’d dealt with in his own short life, he didn’t know what to say to Jason. He hated it when people came up to him after his mother and father died with lame lines like Your daddy’s in a better place or Your mother isn’t suffering anymore. Those people, although they meant well, really pissed him off. How was his father in a better place when the best place for a father to be was with his child? And how did they know if his mother had been suffering? All of these thoughts ran through his mind as he held the phone to his ear listening to how Mr. Death had broken his young friend’s little heart.

  “Hello?” a female’s voice said into Franky’s ear.

  “Yes,” he answered.

  “Who is this?”

  “This is Franky. I live across the street from Jason.”

  “Oh, I see,” she said calmly. “Well, Jason is upset right now, so I think he needs to get some rest.”

  “I understand,” Franky said. “Tell him I’ve been there, and he can call me anytime he likes.”

  “I don’t think he’ll be doing that. Have a good day,” she said, and the phone went dead.

  Franky pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at. “What was that all about?” he said, hanging up.

  He told Khadija the details of his conversation with Jason, and she held her hand to her heart. “Aww, no,” she said. “That’s the little boy you’re always telling me about?”

  “Yeah,” Franky said. “But then this lady got on the phone and basically told me he had to go and wouldn’t be calling me anymore.”