If I Grow Up (2 page)

Darnell's momma was Laqueta, who was Marcus's sister and my best friend Terrell's first cousin. I didn't know who Darnell's father was, only that Laqueta's new boyfriend was Jamar, the Disciples' second in command, and that they lived up on the fifteenth floor. Everyone said Laqueta was the prettiest girl in the projects, with her big round eyes and straight white teeth and constant smile. At least, until the Gentry Gangstas threw Darnell off the roof.

The next morning, Gramma made me put on a heavy coat, gloves, and a hat before I could take my bike outside. Despite the cold, I liked riding around because the ground was hard and you could go almost anywhere in the project. Not like in the spring when the yard was soft and muddy.

Outside, something lay on the ground about thirty feet from the yellow-taped crime-scene spot where Darnell had fallen, far enough away that it might have been missed by the crowd in the dark the night before. It was a window guard, bent in the middle, as if someone had kicked it out of a window frame.

“This where that little boy fell?” a voice behind me asked. I turned. It was a girl with big, pretty eyes, wearing a clean pink jacket with a hood lined with white fur pulled tightly around her face like an Eskimo.

“Over there.” I pointed toward the yellow tape.

“It's so sad.”

“They say the Gentry Gangstas did it,” I said, repeating what I'd heard.

The girl scowled. “Who's that?”

It was hard to believe she didn't know. “The rival gang,” I said. “From over in the Gentry Project. I heard Jamar, the baby momma's boyfriend, told the police he saw two men run away wearing green bandanas. That's a Gangsta color.”

We were in the shadow of the building where it was cold enough to see our breath come out white. A dozen yards away, in the bright sunlight, was a bench. I walked my bike toward it, and the girl and I told each other our names and ages. Hers was Precious, and like me, she was twelve. The wooden seat on the bench was broken, so I hopped up on the top. Precious stood in front of me with her hands in her pockets. The sun was strong and took some of the icy sting out of the air.

“Where'd you get that nice jacket?” I asked.

“My daddy gave it to me for Christmas.” She had a bright smile that reminded me of Laqueta.

“Oh, yeah?” I hardly knew anyone who had a father at home. Much less one who gave gifts. “Only Christmas isn't till next week.”

“I got it early 'cause it's cold and I don't have anything else warm.”

My best friend, Terrell Blake, came out with his bike. He was wearing baggy pants and an extra-large gray hoodie that hung down to his knees. He rode with one hand, the other jammed down into the hoodie's pocket.

“How come they let you out?” I asked, knowing he was supposed to be inside grieving for Darnell with his family.

“It's too sad and stuffy up there,” he said, straddling his bike. “Makes my asthma act up.” Terrell was taller than me, with skin a little lighter and a thinner nose. One of his front teeth was chipped from a rock fight we'd had a few months before. Recently he'd started to let his hair grow, and it was almost long enough to braid. He eyed my new friend.

“This is Precious,” I said. “She lives in Number Three.”

Number Three was the building across the yard from ours. Until that year, my friends and I had stayed close to our own building, warned by our families not to venture too far because we might get caught in the cross fire of gangs shooting. But now we were older and more daring.

We were talking to Precious when Marcus's Mercedes pulled up to the curb on Abernathy Avenue. It was rare to see gangbangers that early in the day. Glancing around warily, the leader of the Disciples started toward
us. Marcus's expression was intense and serious all the time. You never saw him joking or clowning. As he got close, I could see the small tattoo of a tear at the corner of his right eye. For people on the outside, the tear was supposed to mean someone close to you had been killed. But in the projects, we knew differently—that tear really meant you had killed someone.

Terrell straightened up. “Uh, hi, Cousin Marcus.” His voice quavered.

Marcus barely acknowledged the greeting. “Watch my car,” he said. He'd started toward our building when I blocked his path with my bike.

Marcus stopped and scowled at me.

“There's something you should see. Over here,” I said, and led Marcus to the window guard. Terrell got on his bike and trailed behind until Marcus swung around. “I tell you to come?” he asked sharply.

Head bowed, Terrell rode back to the bench. In the cold shadow of the building, Marcus picked up the window guard and stared up at the highest floors where Laqueta lived with Jamar and Darnell. Then he looked at me. “DeShawn, right? Raven's son?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Anyone else know about this?”

I shook my head. “No, sir.”

Marcus slowly squeezed the window guard until it doubled over. The skin of his dark hands tightened and his knuckles bulged. The metal creaked until it formed a
V
, like the
V
in the furrows of skin between his eyes
as he fixed them on me. “Know what happens to kids who snitch to the police?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I can trust you?”

I nodded. “What about Darnell?”

“I'll take care of that,” Marcus said. “Meanwhile this is our secret, understand?”

I understood.

“Who was that?” Precious asked when I returned to the bench where she was talking to Terrell.

Her eyes widened when we told her. “You Disciples?”

“Not yet,” Terrell answered.

Even in the sun, the cold gradually seeped through your clothes. Precious shivered and hugged herself. “You want to come to my place and watch TV?”

It was tempting. Neither Terrell nor I had ever been invited into a girl's home before.

“Maybe another time,” I said. Terrell scowled at me, and I nodded toward Marcus's car. The corners of my friend's mouth turned down.

Precious's pretty lips pursed. “See you later.” She started across the yard toward her building.

Terrell and I rode around the yard, always keeping Marcus's car in sight. I asked him how Laqueta was, and he said she'd cried all night.

“Jamar stay with her?” I asked.

Terrell shook his head. He got off his bike and started sliding around on a frozen puddle, leaving white scratches
in the dirty, brownish ice. “If I grow up, I'm gonna have a ride like Marcus's,” he said through chattering teeth. He must've been freezing, wearing only that hoodie. “And chains and bling like you wouldn't believe. You know Rance got a solid gold chain that weighs five pounds?”

“How do you know that?” I asked. Rance Jones was the leader of the Gentry Gangstas. I'd never seen him, and I was pretty sure Terrell hadn't either.

“I heard from someone,” Terrell said. “And he got a twenty-five-karat diamond pinkie ring. Them Gangstas use kids nine, ten years old.”

“Maybe you should join them Gangstas,” I joked.

Terrell gave me a sour look. “Marcus is my first cousin. He should let me join the Disciples.”

“And get jumped in?” I asked. To prove you'd be loyal to the gang, you had to let yourself be beaten up and burned with cigarettes.

Terrell shrugged. “Everybody else been through it.”

On Abernathy Avenue, a police cruiser stopped behind Marcus's car. The window went down, and Officer Patterson wagged a thick, brown finger at us. He was the only person I'd ever heard of who'd grown up in Frederick Douglass and become a cop. I slipped off the bench and went to see what he wanted.

“How you doing, DeShawn?” he asked. He had a round face and a thick, bushy mustache. Growing up, he'd known my mother, and he always said hello when he saw me.

“Okay.” I leaned in the open window. The car smelled
like coffee. A shotgun and a computer were mounted next to the driver's seat. Officer Patterson nodded at the Mercedes. “Marcus was that little boy's uncle, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Give him my condolences, okay?”

“What's that?”

“Tell him I'm sorry about his nephew.”

“Yes, sir.”

Officer Patterson took a sip of coffee from a paper cup and brushed his mustache with the back of his hand.

“Gonna join the Disciples someday?”

“No, sir. Gonna stay in school and out of trouble.”

“Good boy.” Officer Patterson reached over and patted me on the shoulder. Then he drove off. I went back to the bench.

“What do you talk to him for?” Terrell asked.

“He knew my momma.”

We huddled on the bench, shivering. The three identical buildings in the Frederick Douglass Project loomed up like dirty tombstones. Half the windows were boarded over with wood. The grounds around the buildings were either cracked concrete walks covered with broken glass, or hard-packed, bare, brown dirt with a few trees and some dead brown weeds.

Benches lined the walks, but they were mostly broken. Same with the playground. There were no swings on the swing set, just rusty chains hanging down from the top. The seesaw was gone. What little sand was left in the sandbox was the color of dark smoke. Only the
rusty monkey bars remained. As shorties, we used to play on them for hours and then go home with burnt red palms.

We waited until Marcus came back, then, shivering cold, we hurried inside. The lobby was lit by one long, flickering bulb. The mailboxes in the wall had all been busted open by drug fiends looking for welfare checks. The walls were covered with colorful, loopy graffiti and the black slashes of Disciples' tags. Here and there someone had hung a small Christmas wreath or a bunch of holly outside a door.

The elevator was broken as usual, so we carried our bikes up the stairs. Some floors smelled of cooking. Others smelled of weed. On some floors you heard loud TV. On others, rap and hip-hop. And always in the winter, the banging of the heat pipes day and night, like a prison gang eternally busting rocks.

Taped on the wall of each landing was a blue sheet of paper saying that Darnell's funeral would be at one p.m. on Saturday at the First Baptist Church.

Leaving my bike in my apartment, I helped Terrell carry his upstairs. The door to the Blakes' apartment was open, and inside it was hot and crowded with grown-ups. Even though it was the dead of winter, the windows were partway open and women sat fanning themselves. The few men—there were always way fewer men than women—dabbed their foreheads with handkerchiefs.

On a table in the middle of the living room were
plates of food and vases of flowers. It was getting toward the end of the month and, for a lot of people, food was running low. That was especially true around Christmas when there were presents to buy. The sight and smell of those heaping plates made my stomach growl.

Terrell's cousin Laqueta—Darnell's mother—was sitting in the middle of the couch, wearing an old, yellow housedress and clutching a tissue. Her eyes were puffy and red from crying. Terrell's mother, Mrs. Blake, sat on one side of her, and his aunt Rosa sat on the other. Other than Marcus, I'd never heard that Laqueta had any other family.

When Mrs. Blake saw her son, she opened her arms wide. Terrell hesitated and glanced around as if embarrassed to be treated like a little boy. But then he stepped forward and let her hug him. “Terrell,” she said in a sad voice. “You're the only good man that's left.”

She was looking over Terrell's shoulder at Jamar when she said that. Laqueta's boyfriend sat with his elbows on his knees and his head hanging, a tear tattoo beside each eye. He was tall and rangy, with hair split into cornrows. In his left ear was a big diamond stud, and his hands were covered with gold rings and tattoos. He raised his head and blinked hard, as if trying to squeeze out tears that weren't there. “If only I hadn't left him alone,” he said woefully.

People heard him, but no one said anything.

During the day, the cops and housing police came around, but as soon as it got dark, they were gone. Sometimes gangbangers shot at cops at night or dropped broken TVs on patrol cars or threw bottles out the windows at them. If Gramma had her way, I'd be a house boy—allowed outside only to walk to and from school.

 

That night Gramma watched
Sanford and Son
and laughed so hard she had to take the tissue out of her sleeve and dab her eyes.

“How can you laugh like that?” I asked. “You've seen this episode a hundred times.”

“Something got to make me laugh,” Gramma said, still jiggling. “After what happened to that little boy.”

Pop! Pop! Pop!
Outside they started shooting. It sounded more like cap guns than the big bangs you heard on the TV. Next thing I knew, Gramma was down on the floor next to me and I smelled her perfume. She raised her head alertly. “Where's Nia?” she asked, even though we both knew she was with her boyfriend, LaRue.

Pop! Pop! Crash!
More shots, and somewhere nearby a window shattered.
Bang.
A door slammed downstairs, and we heard rapid steps coming up. A key jiggled in the lock and Nia rushed in. My sister was fourteen and had long, straight brown hair and, almost always, a smile. She was breathing hard, and her face was flushed from running. But her eyes gleamed with excitement.

Gramma propped herself up on her elbows. “Get down!” she commanded.

Still gasping for breath, Nia dropped to one knee.

“You're gonna get yourself killed someday,” Gramma muttered, even as she relaxed knowing that Nia was safe.

“Those boys shoot all the time,” Nia scoffed.

“You forget how your momma died?” Gramma snapped. “How many times I have to tell you not to run when they shoot? You could run right into the cross fire. You hear shootin', you drop to the ground and stay there.”

“And get my clothes all dirty?” My sister shook her head.

The shooting stopped. The TV was still on, and Redd Foxx's gravelly voice and the laugh track lured Gramma back to the couch. Nia flopped down and put her arms around Gramma's neck and hugged her.

“DeShawn,” my sister said. “Turn the channel to BET.”

“Hey!” Gramma started to protest.

“Oh, come on,” Nia said with a laugh. “You seen
Sanford and Son
so many times, you know it by heart.”

I grinned at Gramma. “
Told
you.”

“You two are too smart for your own good,” she grumbled.

Pop! Pop! Pop!
The shooting started again, but now it sounded far away. Gramma stiffened but then looked at Nia and me and relaxed. We were safe. At least for tonight.