Chameleon (2 page)

Everybody was busy just doing their thing when four gangbangers rolled up on the court, laughing, carrying forties, and choking on weed smoke. Their red All Stars, polos, and dangling bandannas let us know they were Pirus.

“Wuzzup, blood?” one of them said.

My mouth widened as my eyes narrowed in on fat red rollers curled into his permed hair. Fresh-pressed black Dickies drooped beneath his boxer shorts, which glowed white on his jet-black torso. Skull and skeleton tattoos screamed from his skin. A red bandanna dangled from his back pocket alongside a golf club that had been broken in half. The club end stuck straight into the air and jammed him in the back. His left hand gripped his crotch while his right hand clutched a forty-ounce of malt liquor covered by a brown bag. He strolled up to the four of us, tugged on his crotch, and spoke again: “I said . . . wuzzup, BLOOD!”

My mouth closed and my eyes blinked. I swallowed hard, then managed to squeeze out, “What’s up?” with Trent and Lorenzo.

The three of us hovered near the basket while Andre shot free throws behind us.

40-Ounce called out to Andre, “Ay. Navy . . . come here! Navy! Come here, Navy!”

Andre clanked the free throw as he heard the request. We turned and locked eyes with him to tell him not to move.

“Don’t look at them! Ay! I’m talking to you!” 40-Ounce pointed his brown bag toward Andre. “Come here!”

Andre dropped the ball to the ground and headed toward us. Slowly.

40-Ounce shook his head and raised his voice. “Uh-uh . . . bring yo’ ball.”

MLK, a favorite park of all the neighborhood kids, quieted its buzz of activity as all eyes fell on the four of us, surrounded by red Pirus. Double-Dutch ropes swung by schoolgirl hands stopped skipping. Kickballs bouncing off schoolboy feet stopped flying. The distant sound of an old man playing checkers, shouting, “King me!” to his opponent, broke the silence.

Like four vulnerable black checkers, we stood waiting to get jumped by red.

“You heard me,” 40-Ounce called.

One weed-choker added, “Come on, li’l man. We ain’t go do nothing. Just wanna talk to ya.”

“Come here, podna,” 40 said. “Lemme ax you a question.”

Andre stared at his sneakers and shuffled over with the ball on his right hip. He tried to keep some distance between him and 40, but 40 claimed the space and stood right next to him. The brown bag shifted from 40’s right hand to his left. His right arm swung, fatherly, over Andre’s shoulder.

“What’s yo’ favorite color?”

“Purple,” Andre said without hesitation.

“Purple!? Ain’t that kind of a faggoty color?” 40-Ounce said, shaking Andre’s shoulder in mock jest.

Andre squeezed the ball between his hands and replied, “I ain’t no faggot. I like the Lakers. So purple is my favorite color.”

“So if purple is yo’ favorite color . . . why are you wearing those?” 40’s bottle pointed down at Andre’s navy shorts.

“Oh, these. These are my brother’s.”

Andre’s left hand began to rub his waistband front to back, back to front. His right hand, his shooting hand, clutched the ball at his side. Each skinny digit caressed each ridge and dimple.

“What set yo’ brother roll wit’?” 40 spit into Andre’s ear. His left hand reached back to the golf club in his back pocket to shift its position against his back.

“Come on, Doc, let’s play some ball,” Laugher #1 said. He took a long pull on the joint, then offered some to 40.

“Naww, I ain’t done wit’ Navy yet.”

So the other Pirus surrounded a bench near the court to watch, and the joint made its way around the circle.

“Ay, Doc, swing that 40 over here,” Laugher #2 shouted.

“I don’t remember any of y’all puttin’ in on this,” 40-Ounce said, looking over at them. “Besides, I told you, I ain’t done here yet.” His tattooed arm remained draped like a shackle around Andre’s shoulder, to whom he returned his attention.

40’s words spit quicker. “Look here, podna. Let me ax you this. . . . Are you disrespecting me?”

His eyes filled with fire and flamed onto Andre’s face, up close and personal.

“Nah, man. I don’t wanna disrespect nobody.”

“Wearing those shorts
is
disrespectful to me. How you go come up here in
my
park, in my hood, and disrespect me like this?”

In one swift motion, he dropped his arm and shifted the bag from left to right. His left hand plunged past his waistband and into his checkered boxers.

Andre jerked.

Booming bass crept into our eardrums as a candy-apple-red Chevy Impala glided by. Its speakers carried the beat away to another block as the other Pirus picked up the chorus to Parliament’s “Flashlight.”

Dah dah dah dee

Dah dah dah dah dah dah daaaaaaahhhhh

The hot air pressed down on us.

The three of us looked at Andre and tried to use the Jedi mind trick to tell him it was gonna be cool, but Andre stood still as a statue.

“Relax, man. My nuts just itch,” 40 said, scratching and laughing.

The bag remained swaying in his right hand while his funky scratch-hand made its way around Andre’s shoulder and dangled in front of his nostrils. Then 40 took a swig of his brew.

Andre stepped away from the funky fingers.

“Look here, podna. Gimme yo’ shorts,” 40-Ounce said, no longer laughing.

“Huh?”

“You heard me. Gimme yo’ shorts.” 40 stood large over Andre and glared down at him. Spit rained from his lips when the next sentence exploded from his mouth. “Did I st-st-stutter? You heard me — TAKE OFF THE DAMN SHORTS, HOMEY!”

That answered Andre’s question all right. Weed-Choker and Laughers #1 and #2 sat and watched. Weed-Choker dug into his pants and pulled out a plastic baggie filled with brown, dusty weed.

“Who got the Zig-Zags?” he asked.

The hyenas began looking in their pockets.

“You got papers, Doc?” #1 called out.

“Man, don’t you see I’m busy?”

“Ay, look here, Navy. You better give up the shorts. ’Cause he go get ’em one way or another. Catch my drift?” #1 said, now serious.

Andre stood center stage, his brother’s navy shorts hanging on him like a flag about to be captured. He tried to negotiate again.

“Ummm, my brother gave me these shorts, and I don’t see him but once in a while, so I really can’t give ’em to you.”

Andre tried to step away.

40 pretended to listen, then a sinister grin crept across his face as he hoisted his pants quickly, then screamed, “J-Dee! Ant-Dog . . . GRAB THIS FOOL!”

The two Laughers sprang off the bench so fast, it looked like they were on speed instead of weed. Laugher #1 grabbed Andre’s arms and head and put him in a headlock while #2 grabbed his legs. The ball bounced to someplace safe. Trent rushed to help Andre while me and Lorenzo moved in to back him up. Before we could blink, 40 reached in his back pocket and swung the cut-down club on Lorenzo. ’Zo ducked out of the way, but it slammed into the meat of my back and knocked me to the ground. MAN, THAT HURT! I got a face full of dirt as Weed-Choker rushed over and planted a heavy red All Star into the pounded flesh of my back where I had just been whacked.

Andre was locked in tight by the Laughers while 40 held his club inches from Trent’s and Lorenzo’s wide-eyed faces.

“Now see what y’all made me do! I didn’t want to have to use this, but y’all made me do that. Just back on up, let me get them shorts, and we’ll be Kool and the Gang,” 40 said.

Weed-Choker’s jeans drooped far below his butt, now exposing most of his boxers. I tried to wiggle free from the foot but only got a mouthful of dirt as it pressed harder.

Andre squirmed in the arms of the Laughers while 40 strolled over and yanked the shorts off in one quick jerk. He dangled them from the handle end of his club and twirled them around in circles.

“See, that wasn’t so hard now, was it, Navy?” He laughed.

The Laughers dropped Andre as quickly as they had rushed him. His bright cotton tighty-whiteys glowed among a sea of bloodred.

“You lucky yo’ underwear ain’t blue or we woulda took those too, homey,” one of the Laughers said.

Andre got up slow and tried to pull his baggy T-shirt down as far as it would go.

My back got lighter, so I stood up too. I dusted off my body and my pride and made my way toward Andre. Lorenzo and Trent were huddling close, trying to shield him from all the eyes in the park.

40 stood proud like a victorious general, admiring the captured shorts spinning on his club.

As we turned to leave, Trent grabbed the ball from the grass, and once again 40 spoke up.

“I’ll take that ball too.”

“Ay, man, that’s my ball,” Lorenzo said, stepping closer.

“Was I talking to you, fat boy?”

40 snatched the ball, then raised his club high.

“You don’t want no more of this, do you?”

Lorenzo stepped back.

40 threw the shorts over his right shoulder, then bounced over to the bench where the other Pirus had sat down.

“I got some Zig-Zags in my back pocket,” he said.

And that was that. The Pirus continued their party as we walked out of the park. Young girls laughed and pointed at Andre in his underwear. Young boys whispered among each other, knowing the same could happen to them at any time. A pair of gray-haired men playing checkers shook their heads and continued playing. Battered, bruised, and broken, we got out of Dodge with our confidence bubbles burst.

Staring down at
my
dark blue shorts, I replayed that scenario in my mind — only in my replay, each of us whipped up on one of the Pirus:
Lorenzo snatched the red off them. Trent shut the hyenas up. Andre poured the forty over 40’s head, and I whupped him with his cut-down club while I screamed, “See what you made me do. I didn’t want to have to use this, but you made me do that. You made me do that!”

Judging by the fire in my boys’ eyes, I wasn’t the only one remembering and changing the ending of that movie.

Yeah, I remembered that day. I remembered it well. How could I forget? Piru red was branded into each of us forever.

MY BRAIN WAS BLAZING, memories tightening my back and marinating my mouth with the taste of dirt. The breeze caressing my scalp did nothing to cool my thoughts.

“Come on, Shawn, let’s go change your shorts. Your auntie’s house is on the way,” Lorenzo said, slapping me on the back.

Unfortunately he was right. My watch ticked ten minutes to noon. That meant ten minutes to Aunt Gertie’s favorite soap opera,
All My Children.
That meant that a pint of the brown stuff had already been polished off.

How could anybody drink that crap in the daytime?

How could anybody drink that stuff period?

“Shoot! You know what? . . . I forgot, I don’t have any extra shorts at my auntie’s house. . . . Mine are all at my house,” I said.

“I don’t know how you do it, Shawn. Going back and forth and everything. I would get too mixed up,” Andre said. He paused at the curb.

My house is about twelve miles away, in Carson, but with nobody there to watch me, Mama always drops me off at Aunt Gertie’s before work and picks me up after. I go to school here and spend most of my time here, so I hang with my boys whenever I can. It’s a lot of back and forth between Carson and Compton, but I always know where home is.

Red light. We stopped. Stood still. Waited. Gray Cadillacs, red DeVilles, blue Impalas, burgundy Regals, and primered Pintos paraded past us in a procession of traffic. Lorenzo tugged at his waistband, the ball between his legs. Trent tied his Stars. Andre scraped gum from his Ponys with a sharp stick. My nostrils twitched at the scent of burnt hair and fried fish floating on the breeze.

“So what now?” Andre said. His right foot scraped against the concrete like a baseball batter digging his cleats in for a pitch.

“You got some shorts that’ll fit me?” I asked Andre.

“You know I live back the other way, Shawn.”

It was bad enough that Auntie might be drunk, but worse if she was passed out. The fellas still don’t know about her, but I think they gettin’ hip to me, because in all the years we’ve known each other, they still haven’t been there. I always manage to come up with some excuse. I don’t want them to see the bottle or hear the slurred words as she repeats the same stories over and over and over again:

“I’m glad he’s gone . . . thas right . . . I’m glad. . . . He wadn’t goo’ fur nuthin’. . . . No, he wadn’t. . . . That goo’-fur-nuthin’ durrty dog . . .”

I still haven’t figured out who “he” is.

I didn’t want them to see her limp body sprawled across the couch, hand clutching an empty glass. I didn’t want them to smell the stench of the whiskey-splashed carpet from days past, memories lost, and fights forgotten. I didn’t want them to hear the constant moaning or the endless drunken sighs.

“What about you, Lorenzo?”

“I know your skinny butt is not asking me to borrow some shorts. Shoot, you and a twin could fit into a pair of my shorts, skinny as you are, Shawn.”

“Why can’t we just go back to your auntie’s house, Shawn? It’s right on the way,” Trent said. “You’ve gotta have something there you can wear.”