First Semester (5 page)

“You hug that boy any tighter you ain't gonna have to worry about no GPA,” he said. “You gonna have to give him CPR!”

“Shut up, Leroy,” my mom said, brushing away tears from her eyes. “Well, let me go. You know I gotta get back to Oakland and keep your sister in line. So I guess I'll be seeing my college student on Christmas.”

She gave me another hug and told me she loved me again.

“I love you too,” I said. “Call me as soon as you make it home.”

“I will, baby.”

“Thanks for your help, Uncle Leroy,” I said as he tried to maneuver out of the cramped parking lot.

“Thank me by doing good in school, young buck,” he said. “And remember, you've got to get in a girl's head before you let her get in your bed!”

“Leroy!” my mom yelled, poking him in his side.

“What? He needs to hear that.”

“No, he doesn't,” my mom said. “The only thing he needs to be worried about getting into is the books.”

“Hey, nobody knows where the nose goes when the doors close,” he said.

“You ain't got no sense, Leroy,” my mom said as she stuck her hand out the window, giving her signature homecoming queen wave as they left the parking lot.

I turned to walk back toward my room to check the agenda the cutie in the O.G. T-shirt had given me earlier. There were a couple of girls talking to a few guys sitting on the steps leading to my dorm. I felt a few of their eyes wander my way, but I didn't pay them any attention. That was all part of my game. I had girls all figured out. The less attention you showed them, the more interested they became. It was a mind thing. I acted as if they weren't even there and kept walking.

When I opened my door, the sweet smell of the incense I had lit earlier flooded the hallway. I started to step inside my room, but I noticed the McGrudens holding hands in a circle having a family prayer, so I stayed outside. I leaned my back against the wall and started to nervously nibble on my fingernails. I was reminiscing about my old hood when I heard a thick Atlanta accent coming my way. It was my next door neighbor.

“Say, shawty, what kind of incense you burning?” he asked.

“It's the one that comes in the blue box. I forget the name of it. But it smells hella good.”

He came closer, flashing his gold fronts with his balled-up fist outstretched to give me some dap. I gave him a pound.

“That's that good-good right thurr', shawty. You'll let ya boy hold one of 'em?”

I wanted to let him hold a pack of Certs and a bottle of Scope. His breath smelled like he had just polished off a bowl of uncleaned chitterlings.

“I ain't tripping, family,” I said, as Timothy's parents walked out of the room. His father stopped right in front of me.

“Have you accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior, son?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I answered.

“Keep God first and all of your needs will be supplied. You're welcome to come to church with Timothy the Third any Sunday. Have a blessed day.”

“You too,” I said.

I looked at the dude from Atlanta. He looked back at me. We both shook our heads. The McGrudens were something else. I walked into my room and saw Timothy typing diligently on his computer. If he had typed any faster someone would need a fire extinguisher to put out the smoke from his keyboard. That must've been some e-mail, because he never even looked up. I grabbed my agenda, a stick of incense, and stepped back outside.

“What your name is anyway, shawty?” he asked.

“James, but everybody calls me J.D.”

I noticed what looked like a bullet wound on the right side of his chest. He had a tattoo of Jesus's clasped hands and R.I.P. tattooed on his right shoulder. I tried to make out the name underneath but couldn't. I started to ask about it, but I left it alone.

“What's yours?” I asked.

“Lawry,” he said in a Southern drawl.

“Larry?”

“No, sir. L-a-w-r-y. You must be from Cali,” he said, laughing.

“How'd you know I was from Cali?”

“Y'all talk so proper, shawty, it's easy to tell you ain't from 'round here. Plus, y'all always say ‘hella' when y'all talk.”

“What part of Atlanta you from?”

“Ret here in da SWAT, shawty.”

“What's the SWAT?”

“Southwest Atlanta.”

“How come you don't just stay at the crib, instead of paying to stay in the dorm?”

“Since I don't have to pay tuition, my pops said he would pay for me to stay on campus.”

“How you got it like that, where you don't have to pay tuition?”

“My mom works for the school.”

“So that means you go to school for free?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That's what's up,” I said. “What your mama do for the school, blood?”

“She's the director of student enrollment.”

“Oh, so you're in there like booty hair, then, huh?” I asked.

“I guess you could say that, shawty,” he said, laughing.

Any time he used words that started with th or took a lot of breath to pronounce, I became woozy. He was hella cool, but this cat's breath smelled like a fish tank that hadn't been cleaned in a year.

“If my mom had known that, I know she would've filled out an application for a job here,” I said.

“If it wasn't for my mom working here, I probably wouldn't even be going here. Not at eight thousand dollars a semester! I couldn't even do it.”

“Who you tellin', blood? I'm figna come out owing about fifty g's in student loans. And that's not a good look.”

“Neither was summer school.”

“What you mean, summer school?”

“Since I don't have to pay tuition, my mom made me go to summer school so I could get a jump on my classes. I guess it was straight because I got to meet some of the females before y'all got here. Plus, I already got thirty credits on my transcript.”

“What you mean, you guess, blood? You already got a head start on everybody else with the breezies
and
you didn't even have to pay for it? I would've signed up for that in a heartbeat.”

“When I was sitting up in the hot-ass classes all summer, I wasn't even thinking about all that, shawty. Now that I think about it, you got a point. But enough about classes. What you figna get into?”

“I can't call it, family,” I said, glancing at my agenda. “It says we're supposed to meet the O.G.s in front of the Student Center for a tour of the campus in ten minutes.”

“I don't know about all that,” he said.

“I know. It does seem kind of lame, huh? But I know there's gonna be some sexy young brizzles out there, so I'ma see what's up with it.”

“You ain't lying, shawty. You see ol' baby with the short skirt on?”

“Did I? I didn't know it was going down like that down here, blood.”

“I'ma go on and get out there with ya. Let me light this incense and throw a shirt on.”

I wanted to tell him to add brushing his teeth to his to-do list. I stepped inside his room, and the first thing I noticed was a slightly musty stench. He definitely needed the incense. Aside from the smell, his room was a disaster. He had boxes of just about every flavor of ramen noodles you could think of laid out on his bed, and clothes and shoes were strewn all over the floor. I figured his roommate had made it in already. I knew that one person couldn't have junked up a room this bad by himself.

“My roommate ain't made it in yet,” he said. “I wonder what kinda nigga he is. I made it here first so I could pick which side of the room I wanted.”

By the looks of things, he hadn't made up his mind yet.

“I see you rooming up with Urkel, huh? He must have that HOPE scholarship too because I seen him in a couple of my classes this summer. He's lame to death. But shawty is hilarious! I swear, we must've laughed at that fool every day.”

“Yeah, he's an L-seven.”

“What the hell is an L-seven, shawty?”

“Make an L with your left hand, a seven with your right and put your fingertips together.”

He dropped the stick of incense on his bed and followed my directions. But he still didn't get it. “What the hell is you talking 'bout, shawty?”

“He's a square, blood. A square.”

“Damn sure does make a square. I like that right there. L-seven. I'ma have to use that one.”

“You 'bout to make us late, blood. Throw on a shirt so we can make this move.”

Lawry searched through the rubble on his floor, mumbling something about not being able to find anything to wear.

I said, “If you cleaned this joint up you'd probably be able to find something. You got it looking like Ground Zero in here.”

“Everybody ain't have they mama come make up they bed for 'em, shawty,” he said, throwing on some blue denim shorts and slipping out of his wife beater. When he turned around, my jaw damn near hit the ground. He had fresh, red lacerations and whip marks from the top of his shoulders to the bottom of his spine. The first thing that came to mind was
Roots
and Kunta Kinte. Then,
The Passion of the Christ.

“Dizamn!” I said, at a loss for words. “What happened to your back, blood?”

“Oh, that ain't nothin',” he said, playing it off. “We got into it with these cats at the club a few days ago. A nigga cracked me in the back with a Moët bottle. But it ain't no thang, shawty. C'mon, let's get out of here.”

With that, he flicked off the lights, and I followed him outside. I knew there had to be more to his explanation, but I figured it was probably best for me not to know what really happened, unless he wanted to tell me. When we made it outside, we walked past a group of girls sitting on the steps leading to our dorm. At best, the finest one was a six, and that's being generous. But the way Lawry got at her would've made you think she was Halle Berry.

“Say, shawty, what yo' name is?” he asked.

The girls kept talking like he hadn't said a thing.

“I say, what yo' name is, shawty?” he said, looking right at Halle Scary.

Her eyes got big and her head swiveled frantically, like she had just noticed her cell phone was missing from her pocket, and she had to find it. She kept looking around, with her “I know this nigga ain't talking to me” face on, before finally saying, “You can't be talking to me,” in a high-pitched voice.

“Why can't I be?” he asked in an even higher pitch, flashing his golds. The other girls chuckled.

“Don't no nigga approach me like that. I ain't ashy, I'm classy. Come at me with some respect next time and I might entertain your thoughts and tell you my name.”

She didn't have to blast him like that. I felt kind of sorry for him. I could tell he wasn't going to let her have the last word.

“No, this scallywag didn't,” he said, turning back toward me. “All the horses missing hair around here on account of you, and you got the nerve to have a stank attitude.”

“Not as stank as your breath,” she said.

That one hurt. Her friends laughed like they were watching
In Living Color
reruns. Lawry looked like he was lost for words. For a second, I thought he was going to hit her.

“I didn't want your phone number anyway, shawty,” he said as he walked away, sparking a Black & Mild cigar.

Lawry had kind of played himself with that last line. She hadn't even said anything about him trying to get her number, so you could tell he was a little shaken up. Both of us laughed as we walked across the street to the Student Center. He laughed to keep himself from feeling embarrassed, and thought I was laughing at his joke. But I was laughing at him.

“I ain't trippin' on her anyway, shawty,” Lawry said. “If anything, she would've just been good for some late-night cut. I got a girl.”

“Oh yeah?” I asked, still laughing. “What's her name?”

“Well, she's not
officially
my girlfriend just yet, but it's only a matter of time.”

“I can dig it, blood,” I said. “What's her name?”

“She's fine as hell too,” Lawry said, completely ignoring my request for her name. “She's a petite redbone, with long hair. Everybody says she looks like Alicia Keys.”

“That's what's up,” I said. “But what's her name?”

“And she's from the D.C. area, so you know she's got that sexy East Coast accent,” he said.

“That's nice,” I said. “Does she have a name?”

“Oh, her name is Jasmine.”

“Oh, okay,” I said. “Alicia Keys, huh?”