Of Hustle and Heart
Page 5
“Mm-hmm,” I moan weakly as Ms. Boyd looks up at the vile faces I’m making and hands me the hall pass. Despite the distraction of Shannon Smith, I still manage to slide back into character in a pretty fine way.
As I walk back to my desk to retrieve my books and backpack, Shannon scrambles out of his desk. The noise he makes as he attempts to remove his six-foot-four frame from his desk is distracting and brash. But he finally manages to free himself and walks shamelessly toward me. He ignores the momentary glances of our classmates and reaches down to grab my backpack before I can. I watch him as he gathers up my stuff. He unzips my backpack and shoves my trig book and notebook inside.
“Is this all your stuff?” he asks.
He avoids making eye contact with me while he looks beneath my desk. He’s blocking Mrs. Boyd’s view of me, and I slip out of character long enough to force him to look at me.
“What’cha doing?” I ask, raising an eyebrow. He glances at me.
“I want to walk with you,” he whispers and then turns abruptly to ask Mrs. Boyd if he can escort me to the nurse’s office.
Mrs. Boyd smiles at the young gentleman she recognizes in him and agrees. Shannon slings my backpack across his shoulder and places a hand on my back, urging me toward the door.
In the hallway, I’m free to walk with the living. And I feel bad that I pulled Shannon into my lie.
“Why’d you wanna walk me?” I ask as he leads the way to the stairwell. He opens the door, holding it for me as I walk through. I look at him and wait at the top of the staircase for him to catch up. He is carrying my girlish book bag on his shoulder with no shame at all, as if my stuff is his. He doesn’t answer.
“Shannon, you don’t have to carry my bag.” I reach for it, but he jerks away and pushes my hand back.
“I got it,” he says. “What’d you think about the senior picnic yesterday?” His voice rumbles nicely in his chest.
“Umm…it was cool, I guess. Looked like fun,” I say.
“Looked like fun? You talk like you weren’t there.” He’s right. And I wasn’t there, not really.
“I was there…okay?”
He pauses on the bottom flight of stairs. I grab his arm to get him moving again.
“No, I ain’t happy that you came and sat by yourself. You didn’t look happy. I thought you’d have fun,” he says.
“I had fun eating.” I smile, but he ignores it.
“So what now?” he asks.
“So let’s move on. We still have graduation and—”
“And prom,” Shannon completes and smiles.
We exit the stairwell leading to the nurse’s office. I slow down because I’m planning to make a smooth exit through the side doors of the north wing. I walk behind Shannon, holding on to the straps of my backpack. He turns to look at me, as my pace slows. “You’re leaving, huh?”
“Yeah, I’m cutting out.” I smile. I don’t know what else to do. I want him to come with me, because I feel good about him being around. If he asks me to stay at school, I will, but I know he won’t.
“I can’t leave with you.” He pulls me underneath his arm. “But I’m not ready to turn you loose,” he says, pulling me into a headlock. I cuss and punch him in the side as I wrestle my way from underneath him.
“Don’t do that,” I warn. He grins as we continue down the hall. “So…where are you going?” I ask.
“I’m helping…taking you where you need to go.” His handsome face drops, and his arm tightens around my shoulder.
I’m still walking underneath Shannon’s arm when Beatrice, his girlfriend, walks out of the front office. She isn’t paying enough attention to notice us on her own. I guess she feels her boyfriend’s presence, or maybe she catches a glimpse of him from the corner of her eye, because she jerks around and looks from him to me with her mouth stuck open.
Here, Shannon sees her as she exits the office, and I promise you, the poor, stupid boy freezes dead in his tracks. He doesn’t know what to do. And the stiffness in his body lets me know he’s a little scared of what might happen next. It hurts me to know he cares so much about what Beatrice thinks when she sees us together. He cares about her more than I want to believe.
As the three of us stand in the hallway gawking at each other, I can tell Beatrice wants to slap the shit outta me—or him. Or both of us. I really can’t tell who she hates more. I wriggle away from Shannon slowly, because I don’t want Beatrice to think I’m ashamed that she’d seen us or scared me in any way. I’ll be very clear about that; I am not afraid of her. But I am afraid she’ll cause a scene in the hallway and fuck up my plan to ditch school for the rest of the day.
Beatrice places a hand on her round hip.
“What the fuck, Shannon?” she asks him as she gestures toward me with her free hand, her mouth turned up at the corner. “Where are y’all going?” She rolls her neck in the most agitating way.
“I’m walking Zina to the nurse’s office.”
Shannon hasn’t moved away from me, so I do him a favor and take a couple of steps away from him. I watch Beatrice carefully, my face as smooth as polished brown marble. There’s a whole host of things I would do if I were her. And I’m praying Beatrice’s self-proclaimed high-born status would compel her to do what a “good” girl would do. So far she’s living up to that high-and-mighty bullshit, though she rolls her eyes.
“Well, what the hell’s wrong with her? The nurse’s office is right there,” she says, jerking her head toward the office in the corner. “She can make it.”
Shannon takes a deep breath. “Yeah, I know.” His deep voice echoes softly in the hallway, and I get nervous.
“Shhhh.” I nudge him.
His eyes flicker at me. He doesn’t nod or anything, but I can tell he understands. The noise in the hallway is a problem, and he’ll try to keep it down.
“What the fuck, Shannon?” Beatrice says again.
I cringe as her voice is amplified in the cavernous hallway.
“Shhhh!” Shannon walks toward Beatrice, his hand extended in an effort to cover her mouth. She jerks away, and I start walking.
“Zina!” Shannon calls after me, though I wish he hadn’t.
I shake my head and keep walking. Shannon…you’re so stupid! You’ll piss her off more. I pick up speed and jog lightly past the nurse’s office. I’m halfway to the exit door, when I hear someone running after me. I don’t turn around to see who it is. I don’t care. Shannon sails past me and pushes the door open with his back.
“Hurry up, girl!” he beckons. I’m shocked to see him standing in front of me. “I think Mrs.—”
“Uh…excuse me,” Mrs. Welch calls out from the middle of the hallway as she grabs her walkie-talkie from her hip. “Shannon Smith!” She sounds startled, as if she can’t believe who she’s seeing.
Shannon flinches at the sound of her voice but doesn’t stop. He pushes the door open, grabs my arm, and yanks me through the back door, following quickly.
“Man, what happened?” I say as we run down the short flight of stairs that will take us to Chesney’s front lawn.
“She heard me and Beatrice going at it in the hall.”
“Dammit man, you and your stupid girlfriend,” I mutter.
Shannon kicks the next exit door open, and we run onto the front lawn.
“Wait,” Shannon says. He thumbs over his shoulder at the ledge over our exit. “Climb up there until she’s gone.”
He holds his hands out, palms up. When I step into his palm, he hoists me up. I stand and scoot over to make room for him. Shannon pulls himself up, and the two of us sidestep into one of the cement crevices that’s deep enough for the two of us to hide.
“Oh my God! Are there spiders?” I know I sound like a whiner, but I don’t care.
“Shhhh!” he says.
I bury my head into his back
and wrap both arms around his waist. Shannon steps back enough so that his body covers mine and mushes me into the crevice.
“Shannon,” I whisper, but he shushes me again.
“They’ll see me. They won’t see you.”
I squeeze him tighter. “You’re not going back to class?” I ask as we stand there together.
“I don’t know. Depends on how long it takes your bus to get here.”
As we wait, I ponder my next move and try to calculate how much money I might make today selling the bootleg CDs.
“You’re sweatin’ a lot,” Shannon says, breaking our silence.
“Dude, duh! It’s hot as hell out here, and I have a lot of hair,” I mumble.
I feel drained from the sun. It beats down on us, and the trees offer little protection.
“I see that,” Shannon says, staring at the thickness of my African roots.
Then he reaches out slowly to touch my hair. I stand still, afraid to move, and close my eyes. But the sound of the bus’s engine and breaks wakes me.
I’m not standing at the metro bus stop in front of the school, so the bus picks up speed, prepared to zoom right past Chesney.
“Come on,” Shannon says, snatching me from the ledge. He helps me down, and I take off running toward the bus stop.
CHAPTER 10
ZACARIAS
If I don’t want to go, my brother John sure as hell will never surrender.
“Move back in with you?” My heart stops. I sit down on the sofa across from my mother, loosening my ponytail enough so my tight curls would fall free, and run my hands through my sandy hair. I can’t think of anything to say that would secure both my freedom and my mother’s favor.
“Yes, son,” she says, crossing her legs as she nestles back in John’s chair. She beams at me, obviously excited by the idea. “I want y’all to come home. Moving out was nice. It was something you boys had to go through.” She rests a falsely empathetic hand to her breast. “But y’all have experienced it, so now let’s call it a day.”
Her tone mocks every decision John and I had made for the past two years. Leaving our mother’s home was not a phase for us. We had stayed with her for as long as we could take it; John did, anyway. I would still be there if my father and Francisco hadn’t pushed me to leave with John. So now I choose to say nothing.
I hear John moving around in his room and then water running in his bathroom. The vibrations of my phone go off. It rattles on the coffee table until I am forced to pick it up.
I didn’t want you to leave, the text reads. I want a better relationship than the one we have. I’m sitting outside. Can I come in?
I put my phone in my pocket and consider Whitney’s request. It’s really not a good time for her to come in. My mother has sensed the hostility between us lately, so she’s been on a “you could do better” campaign.
“Zacarias, I’ll make us a pot of tea,” my mother says as she gets up, tossing her purse into the chair. She stands up straight, smoothes the wrinkles from her skirt, and frowns. “Where the hell is your silly brother?”
I open my mouth to reply, but she silences me.
“Go get him, please, or I will,” she says and heads for the kitchen. “I came to speak with the two of you, not just you.”
Just then John comes out of the bathroom, a towel tucked around his waist. He arches both eyebrows at me and folds his arms. I can’t help but think he looks like some kind of a big, tanned genie.
“What the fuck is she yelling about?” he mutters at me.
“Man, just come out here. I’m tired of hearing it.”
John rolls his eyes, and our mother chooses that moment to stick her head around the corner.
“Don’t roll your eyes at me, son,” she calls from across the apartment as she waves two cups in the air. “Go put some clothes on and hurry up.”
I haven’t forgotten about Whitney; my phone continues to vibrate in my pocket as the three of us sit around drinking tea.
“Who is that?” John asks.
I look at him but don’t respond. As I slouch back on the couch, I meet my mother’s intrusive gaze. She stirs her tea without looking at it and watches as I fidget. She knows I’m avoiding something. When she finally speaks, she manages to bury the aggressive, demanding tone she’d used to coerce John into the living room and sounds like our wonderful, caring mama again.
“Zack, I haven’t seen Whitney in a while,” she says as she sips her tea.
“That cuckoo-ass girl…” John mumbles.
“John!” Somehow, our mother can still silence us with just one word, because John clams up tight. “She’s still working at Rico’s with you?”
“It’s her texting me,” I confess.
“So why aren’t you answering?”
“I’d rather not say, if that’s okay with the two of you.”
My patience wavers and mingles with my lack of sleep. My devotion to my mother, Madeline, is untested, and John is both my best friend and my brother, but I have no desire to continue this tea party with them. All I can think of is Whitney downstairs and the unfinished business between us. I want to talk to my girl. I need to sit with her. I just need her—I need somebody. I get up from the couch.
“Mama, I’ll be back,” I say, walking toward the door. She watches me go but doesn’t respond.
“Zack!” John calls out from behind me, and I pause at our front door, opening it a crack.
“She rotten, bro. Nothing good about her.” He shakes his head and reaches for his cup.
It’s a sour moment, hearing my brother refer to my girlfriend in such an unpleasant way. John’s comment makes me so angry that I storm out the door. Whitney catches it with the palm of her hand as I try to slam it behind me.
“Who’s rotten?” she says, pushing the door open enough so she can slide her slim physique through the doorway.
I follow her back inside, dreading what lies ahead. When John sees Whitney, he mutters something under his breath—obscenities, probably, but it’s hard to tell. My mother is glowing, and she smirks in anticipation of the confrontation. She’s been waiting awhile to see Whitney. I’ve kept them apart as long as I can.
John glances over at our mother. The look on her face is telling—he knows, like I know. John laughs out loud, rubs his palms together, and raises his teacup high in the air.
“Here’s to you, Whitney!” he says and smiles. “Our mother has been missing you, girl.”
CHAPTER 11
ZINA
During the fifty-three-minute bus ride, I question why a boy like Shannon—with a girl like Beatrice—would bother to sweat it out with me, even after the girlfriend busted him. It’s so stupid. And so confusing.
To say my family needs income is an understatement; we need a lifeline. And though I’m saving every single dime of my lunch money and allowance and go hungry more times than not, it’s not nearly enough. I put in four job applications this week, six the week before that, and eight the week prior. There are jobs everywhere, millions of people working every day. I’m just not one of them. I need to be.
I’m at the corner of Kingwood and MLK Boulevard, in front of Ms. Kim’s convenience store, hustling goddamn bootleg media. Nothing about this shit feels right. So far I’ve sold to a few passersby. Some are older cats, excited by the crappy job my little brothers did, copying the digital images of booty videos for the cover of one my CDs. Most of the people shopping here at this time of day are old, and they ask a lot of inaudible questions. The women are rude, and the men flirt too much. They insinuate that if they buy my stuff, I’ll owe them something. The first time I heard this, I was stunned. Then I got angry. Cuss words boiled up in my throat, but I held back. Now when it happens, I ignore it and stick straight to the business of things.
“Are you buying something or not?” I snap at them when I grow too hot and f
rustrated to deal. I hunch my shoulders and refuse to communicate with them anymore. Forget selling, because they’ve pissed me off.
I make ninety-seven dollars in the next two hours. More money per hour than my mama. Fuck, yes. I take thirty out for myself and recount everything in the back corner of Ms. Kim’s store. I use their restroom to cool off. I take off my shirt, pull down my jeans, and stand under the air-conditioning vent for about ten minutes, wiping myself down with brown paper napkins I’ve wet in the sink.
When I come out of the restroom, the parking lot is crawling with kids. Some are waiting for their buses, some wait for friends to arrive, and others wait their turn to go inside Ms. Kim’s. Oh lord, yes! Some just see a bunch of kids, but I see customers. When I count heads, I tally up a nice little grip of cash…And when I multiply today’s change by the number of school days in a week, I almost jizz myself.
The rule at Kim’s is that only two kids are allowed in the store at a time, and you gotta leave your backpack outside. I hit the in-store shoppers first. They obviously have cash and the will to burn it, so why not spend it with me? My first two customers are fourteen-year-old girls. They go half on a two-for-five deal on music by two femcees and then come back to buy two DVDs. They beat me outside and do what Rachel was supposed to do around Chesney: they tell everyone. By the time I buy myself a Nestlé’s iced tea and three packs of sunflower seeds for my little brothers, the kids are popping their heads inside the store, asking me for this and that type of media. They’re excited but not nearly as much as I am. I have every fucking thing they want. It’s rare that I thank God, though I don’t know why, but today I smile hard and do just that.
I sell out of all the good stuff, with demands for more. I’m actually surprised by the uproar. But when I think about it, it makes nothing but sense. This is a heavily populated area, full of kids like me. We all go through the same financial shit storms. Had I been more confident, I would’ve seen it.