Authors: Todd Strasser
On Christmas morning, Gramma gave me a tight-fitting, fuzzy blue sweater I knew I'd never wear. I gave her and Nia little bottles of perfume that a man on the street had sold me. Nia gave me a DVD of the
Transformers
movie. We ate a Christmas lunch. In the afternoon, I went out and found Lightbulb.
“Where're we going?” he asked as we climbed the piss-smelly stairwell.
“Upstairs,” I said.
He stopped. “You crazy? No one but Disciples are allowed up there.”
“Shhâ¦. Quiet. I need a lookout.”
“Who's gonna look out for me?” Lightbulb asked.
“I got a Snickers bar.”
The top two floors were Disciples territory. Not that they paid rent. They'd broken through the doors and put on their own locks. They used the apartments as places to live and safe houses for anyone who needed to hide. On the fifteenth floor the stairwell and hallway were covered with loopy tagsâTAP and Casper and Babyâand also, everywhere, like religious symbols to
ward off evil spirits, was the six-pointed-star symbol of the Disciples.
Pressed against a wall was an old chest of drawers. It didn't make sense for it to be there, and I pushed it aside.
“What're you doing?” Lightbulb asked in a quavering voice.
“Shh⦔ Behind the chest was a hole through the cinder-block wall big enough for someone to crawl through. I bent down and peeked into an empty room with a bare mattress lying on the floor. Giving the Snickers bar to Lightbulb, I said, “You hear anyone come up the stairs, you holler into this hole, then go down the other stairs as fast as you can.”
Lightbulb was already tearing open the wrapper. He took a bite and nodded. I crawled through the hole. In the room on the other side, the floor was covered with empty bottles, cigarette butts, magazines, and food wrappers. The bare mattress was stained a dozen different shades of yellow and brown. I crossed the room and stopped at the door to listen. It sounded quiet on the other side, and I slowly opened the door and went down the hall.
About a million cockroaches scattered when I entered the kitchen. It smelled like garbage, and the sink and counters were covered with dirty dishes, empty take-out containers, fried-chicken buckets, and pizza boxes. I opened the cabinet under the sink, and about a million more cockroaches fled. At the back of the cabinet was
another hole leading to the next apartment. I'd heard that the holes were so gangbangers could escape if the police raided. In some rooms there were even holes in the floors so they could drop down to another floor and escape that way.
I crawled into the next apartment. This one had a strong chemical smell. In the middle of the living room was a Ping-Pong table with cutting boards, white breathing masks, a couple of small postal scales, and razor blades smudged with yellowish white powder. Hundreds of small Ziploc bags and plastic vials were scattered about.
Piled on the kitchen counter were dozens of empty baking-soda boxes, as well as half a dozen old cooking pots caked with sootâthe tools for making crack.
Two apartments later I got to the one where Jamar and Laqueta lived. Terrell said that ever since Darnell died, Laqueta was staying with them on the sixth floor so I knew it would be empty. Unlike the other apartments, this one was clean and had curtains on the windows, nice furniture, and a big TV in the living room. An unfamiliar smell hung in the air, and it took a moment for me to realize it was the pine scent of the Christmas tree in the corner.
I went down the hall to a bedroom with a small bed with brown and green Simba sheets and pillows. Some stuffed animals and toy trucks were on the floor. The window was open, and the blue curtain was half in and half out, so I knew there was no window guard.
Carefully pulling the curtain back, I stuck my head outside.
Down in the yard, people were the size of Tic Tacs, and on the street, cars looked like Matchbox toys. Behind Frederick Douglass was a big rail yard with dozens of tracks and all kinds of trains, and I heard the sharp squeak of metal wheels on rails. Between Frederick Douglass and the yard was a double row of tall chain-link fence with coils of razor wire on top.
I looked at the window frame. In the holes that would have held the window guard were broken, rusty brown screws with shiny silver insides, as if they had just recently snapped. To my mind, it would have taken a hard kick to break those screws.
A lock clacked somewhere in the apartment, and I quickly spun around and ducked down behind a chest of drawers. Through the open doorway, I heard footsteps and the rustle of clothes. My heart started beating hard and my breaths became short and shallow. I knew if I got caught, I might be the next kid to fall fifteen floors.
“You got hollow tips?” a voice asked.
“Dollar each,” answered a voice that sounded like Jamar's.
“A dollar each? That's robbery!”
“Take it or leave it,” said Jamar.
“Ain't no other place else to get 'em,” the other voice said angrily. “You got me right where you want me, don't you? Risking my life to come over here, and you
darn well know I can't go back empty-handed.”
If Jamar answered, I couldn't hear him. Then the other man said, “I'll take a hundred. And I won't be sorry if one of 'em winds up in the back of your skull.”
“Merry Christmas,” said Jamar.
A door slammed, but I heard footsteps in the apartment and knew Jamar was still there. I stayed behind the dresser, my heart racing and body tensed. Darn Lightbulb. He was supposed to warn me. Now I was trapped.
Jamar moved around in the other room, whistling and humming to himself. Then the door creaked and closed. I heard the lock click. It sounded like he'd left.
I took a deep breath and felt light-headed with relief. Still I waited a few more minutes before quietly leaving the bedroom and going out into the apartment. On the living room table was an open black and gold box about the size of a small loaf of bread. Inside were bronze and gray bullets.
I crawled through the holes in the apartment walls and back out into the hall. Lightbulb was gone. He probably heard Jamar and the other guy coming up the stairs, got scared, and ran. If any other kid had done that, I would have been mad. But it was hard to be mad at Lightbulb.
The First Baptist Church was in a storefront on Belmar Street, at the edge of the area called the Flats. It had once been a pet store, but there'd been a fire and now it was a church with rows of pews and an altar. On damp days the rancid smell of old smoke still hung in the corners.
On the day of Darnell's funeral, the Disciples stood on the sidewalk outside the church, wearing sharp, neatly buttoned gray suits with black shirts and ties. Instead of baseball caps, they wore gray fedoras. Their suits looked new and expensive, and I felt ashamed of the ill-fitting secondhand jacket and slacks Gramma had bought for me at Goodwill. Nia, wearing her frilly, pink Sunday dress, hat, and white gloves, went to LaRue and gave him a kiss, but as I passed the Disciples, I kept my eyes down. The sleeves of my jacket barely reached my wrists, and the bottoms of my gray pants flapped above my ankles. Not knowing how to tie a tie, I'd made up a knot.
At the entrance to the church, a hand came out to stop me. I looked up into the small, hard eyes of Marcus. “Turn around,” he ordered.
I did as I was told and felt him press behind me as
he reached over, untied, and retied my tie. The corner of something hard jutted into my back, and I knew at once why all the Disciples had kept their jackets buttoned.
Marcus's hands were quick and sure as he tightened the tie around my neck until I thought I'd choke. Then he placed his strong hands on my shoulders and pointed me inside.
They'd put Darnell in a small, light blue coffin surrounded by bunches of red and yellow flowers. The coffin was open, and people were going up to look. In the front row Laqueta sat with Mrs. Blake and Terrell, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. She turned her head and looked to the back of the church, and I realized she was looking at Jamar. Maybe she wanted him to sit with her. But Jamar stood with the other Disciples and didn't move.
Terrell's mom whispered into his ear, and he scanned the crowd until his eyes caught mine. He jerked his head, and I knew he wanted me to go with him to look in the coffin. Like I said before, I'd seen dead people, but never a shorty and when Terrell and I went up to the front I didn't want to look at first. But they'd dressed Darnell in a light blue suit with a white shirt and silver tie and his eyes were closed, so he looked like he was asleep.
“My little cousin,” Terrell whispered with watery eyes. I put my hand on his shoulder, and after a moment we went back to our seats.
Â
Pop!
Minister Franklin had barely begun his sermon when the first shot was fired. Hardly anyone looked up. Maybe we were all so used to hearing gunfire that at first it didn't mean anything. But louder shots quickly followed.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
Glass began to shatter and some plaster in the wall exploded. Women started screaming. Minister Franklin ducked down behind the pulpit, and Gramma pushed Nia and me down to the floor between the pews.
The tiles felt cold and gritty. All around us people were on the floor, their eyes squeezed shut and their good clothes getting dirty.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
We could hear the sharp zings and cracks as bullets whizzed overhead, hitting walls and pews. Cold air started floating in through the broken windows.
Then car tires screeched. Footsteps slapped as some of the men ran outside. I slithered along the floor and stuck my head out into the aisle. All that remained of the windows at the front of the church were jagged shards. Outside on the sidewalk, framed by the doorway, Marcus stood tall, his arm straight out, firing a big black gun with slow deliberateness.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
Then his arm went down to his side, and faint wisps of smoke drifted from the gun's barrel. He looked so powerful in his dark suit. Like some TV hero who wasn't afraid of anyone or anything. A few other
Disciples who'd crouched behind cars and lampposts joined him.
Inside the church people began getting up. Minister Franklin poked his head out from behind the pulpit.
“Damn Gangstas,” Nia grumbled angrily as she smoothed out her pink dress and brushed the dirt off.
“How do you know?” I asked.
My sister looked at me like I was stupid. “It's Marcus's nephew in that casket. Besides, who else would shoot up a funeral?”
Marcus came down the aisle, his face squeezed tight with anger. He said something to Minister Franklin and then went outside again.
The minister continued the service. Only now Marcus and the Disciples stood on the sidewalk in case the Gentry Gangstas came back. Cold air filled the church. We pulled our coats on and shivered while Minister Franklin told us how Darnell was with the angels.
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Public schools in the United States are becoming more racially segregated, and the trend is likely to accelerate because of a recent Supreme Court decision forbidding most voluntary local efforts to integrate educational institutions.
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“Cuz see The schools ain't teachin' us nothin' they ain't teachin' us nothin' But how to be slaves and hard workers For white people to build up they [stuff*].”âfrom “They Schools” by Dead Prez *lyrics edited for language
The projects stayed the same, but I changed. I wouldn't be caught dead in the pants and shirts Gramma got from the Goodwill store. Now I wore baggy jeans, big hoodies, and chains like the other guys.
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I woke early and quietly dressed. It wasn't even eight o'clock and already the apartment felt hot. In the kitchen the cockroaches scattered from the counters when I turned on the light. After wiping a bowl clean in case roaches had crawled on it during the night, I filled it with Corn Flakes and looked in the refrigerator for milk, but there was none. It was the end of the month. We were out of bread, and there weren't enough powdered eggs left in the box for a meal. This wouldn't be the first time I'd eat Corn Flakes with water.
I was heading for the front door when Gramma shuffled out of the bedroom.
“Where you goin'?” she said.
“Out.”
“No, you ain't. Been too much shootin' around here
lately. Now get away from that door.” She crossed her arms and waited. But why did I have to listen to her? Who was she anyway? Just some gray-haired woman in a ratty old nightie.
I put my hand on the doorknob.
“You'll be sorry,” Gramma warned.
I started to turn the knob, but something was holding me backâall those years of being a good boy, always doing what I was told. “I won't go far. I'll be okay, Gramma, really.”
“You don't know what you'll be, child,” Gramma said, the veneer of sternness giving way unexpectedly to something sad and defeated. “But I do.”
“Just because I'm going out doesn't mean I'll join the Disciples,” I said, pulling the door open.
“Just because you're goin' out don't guarantee you'll come back,” Gramma muttered.
I hung my head, unable to look her in the eye, but felt a call from outside that I couldn't resist.
The sun was bright and a few people were going to church. The men were in shirtsleeves, and some of the women carried umbrellas to shade themselves. Lightbulb was sitting on the back of the bench nearest our building, writing in a book. A little nappy-haired girl of about eight was playing with a doll in front of the bench. She was wearing a stained, green jumper and had a lollipop in her mouth.
“Hi, Lollipop,” I said.
Lightbulb's sister looked up at me and grinned,
some gaps where her baby teeth had fallen out. The lollipop bulged in her cheek.
“You watching her?” I asked Lightbulb.
He nodded. “Till my momma gets back from the store.”
I looked over his shoulder. “What's that?”
“Sudokus.” He tore a page from the book and gave it to me. The page said
EASY
, but it wasn't. I worked at it for a while, then got bored and quit. Meanwhile Lightbulb worked on a puzzle in the
SUPER HARD
part of the book. In no time he'd finished it and turned to the puzzle on the next page. Someone who didn't know him might have thought he was faking, but he wasn't.
The sun rose higher and the day grew hotter. Women came out with babies in strollers and sat in whatever shade they could find. Some older guys squatted near a wall, playing hip-hop on a boom box while they smoked and shot dice. Lightbulb's mom returned and took Lollipop.
Terrell came out wearing a sleeveless white T-shirt, his pants so low it was hard to understand why they didn't slide down to his ankles. He slid his earring into his ear and turned the bill of his cap to the right.
“S'up?” he asked.
“Just chilling.”
“Cooking's more like it,” Lightbulb said. By now he'd finished all the
SUPER HARD
puzzles and was wearing the book, opened in the middle, on his head to keep the sun off.
A car horn honked. A police cruiser had stopped at the curb, and inside, Officer Patterson wagged his finger at me. But I didn't move.
“Ain't gonna talk to your friend?” Terrell asked.
Those days were over. Officer Patterson and I exchanged a long look, then he drove back into traffic.
Terrell bounced from foot to foot, jittery like a dope fiend who can't find a fix. Only Terrell was no addict. “I got to get out of here,” he said. “Sometimes I just can't take this place one more minute. Look at it. Everything's broken and dead. It's like the last place on Earth.”
I knew what he meant. Except for the weeds, the ground was bare and dusty. Broken glass glittered in the sun, and here and there lay a discarded Pampers. Just a few years ago we'd happily run around and played our games here. It never occurred to us that there was anything wrong. But now it was like we'd grown a new set of eyes.
“Want to take a walk?” I asked.
Terrell shook his head. “Too hot. Wish there was some place air-conditioned to go.”
“The bus,” Lightbulb said.
Terrell grinned. Neither he nor I would have thought of that. “Let's bounce.”
“Where?” Lightbulb asked nervously.
“Don't matter,” Terrell said. “We'll stay on till it comes back.”
We'd spent enough time sitting on the bench
watching traffic to know that sooner or later the buses always came back.
“I better not,” Lightbulb said.
“You a momma's boy?” Terrell taunted him.
“No!” Lightbulb insisted.
“Prove it.”
Lightbulb looked at me. “You gonna do it, DeShawn?”
I nodded, not letting on that I was probably as nervous as he was. We waited at the bus stop where Gramma stood in the morning when she went to clean houses. When the bus came, Terrell led us through the middle doors, where people usually got off. The three of us squeezed into a seat, and the air-conditioning poured over us like a cool, welcoming breeze.
“Uh-oh.” Lightbulb gulped. The driver was frowning in the rearview mirror.
“He won't do nothing,” said Terrell. He was right. The bus pulled into traffic, and before long we were in a different world, where the buildings were twice as high as at Douglass and the sidewalks were filled with people jammed so close that it looked like they were brushing shoulders.
Everything looked shiny and new. The stores had sparkling windows without bars, and doors you could simply walk through without being buzzed in. It seemed impossible that all this existed just a dozen blocks from where we lived.
“Man, that's a lot of white people!” Lightbulb blurted.
A fat man in a seat near us chuckled, and Lightbulb
lowered his voice to a whisper. “I never knew there was so many.”
“There's way more white people than black,” Terrell whispered back. “Look at TV.”
“There's plenty of blacks on TV,” Lightbulb said.
“Where?” Terrell said. “On BET? Comedy shows? Rap videos? You ever seen
a crowd
on TV? Like at a baseball game? The Olympics or something? It's all white. The only time you see a crowd of blacks, it's got to be a riot.”
Terrell had a point, but I understood what Lightbulb meant too. Except for TV and the movies, I'd never seen so many white people. And not a single empty store or vacant lot or boarded-up window was in sight.
People got on and off the bus. Some noticed the three black kids squeezed into one seat, but most didn't. The three of us kept staring out with round, wide eyes. All those tall, clean buildings. All those people hurrying like they had important places to go. It wasn't that I wanted to be part of that world; it seemed strange and foreign. I felt as if they'd spot me right away as someone who didn't belong, who didn't know the right way to act or what to say. They'd shoo me away or maybe even call the police.
But how could that world exist so close to ours?
“Where's that toast and olives, DeShawn?” Nia called from the living room.
“Coming up,” I called back from the kitchen as I toasted bread in a skillet on the stove.
Tanisha smiled at me and her eyes twinkled. The kitchen was the only place in the apartment where we could get a little privacy. I opened the refrigerator and pulled out the butter, jelly, and olives. It was just past the first of the month, and Gramma's check and food stamps had arrived, so there was plenty of food.
“She eats all day,” Tanisha whispered.
“You would too,” I whispered back, then headed to the living room where my sister was propped against some pillows on the couch with her hair tied into a dozen little pigtails and her face glistening with a sheen of perspiration. The TV was on loud so she could hear it over the whir of the window fan. Under a big white T-shirt her stomach was swollen to the size of a basketball.
“You're a good brother,” she said, shifting uncomfortably and taking the plate from me. She lifted a piece of toast to her lips, then winced.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Nothing. One of 'em just kicked.”
“Can I feel?”
My sister gave an irritated groan and nodded. She was getting tired of me asking to feel her stomach, but I was fascinated by how tight and firm the skin of her belly had become as it stretched to encase the new lives growing inside her.
“Okay, that's enough,” Nia said when my hand had overstayed its welcome.
“But they didn't kick yet.”
“I said,
enough
.”
I went back to the kitchen. Tanisha had pulled her hair into a ponytail and lifted it to cool the back of her neck. She wore long, glittering earrings, a white T-shirt, and shorts that showed off her long legs. She gently dabbed her forehead with a folded paper towel, trying not to smudge her makeup.
“I better go,” she said.
“Just a little longer.” I took her in my arms we kissed. Over the past year, my worries about her being from Gentry had been outweighed by the attraction I felt toward her. Other girls wore sexier clothes and more makeup. They brushed against me in the school halls and gave me inviting looks. But there was something proud and dignified about Tanisha that they didn't have.
She started to wiggle out of my arms. “Lemme go, DeShawn,” she breathed hotly in my ear. “If I don't get home soon, my momma's gonna start asking
questions.” While my family knew about Tanisha, she had not told her family about me. If it weren't for those stupid gangs, there wouldn't have been a problem.
As we left the building, Tanisha slid her hand into mine. I didn't like holding hands in public, but I didn't want to hurt her feelings, either. The afternoon sun had dipped behind Number Three, casting a long shadow across the yard, which was crowded with people escaping from hot, cramped apartments.
“Hey, lover boy!” Terrell and his new crew were hanging around the bench. I pulled my hand from Tanisha's, but it was too late. The guys were grinning. There was the fat kid named Bublz and a kid a year younger than us named Darius, who was small, but wiry and stronger than he looked. They wore their hats backward and three small fake diamonds in the shape of a triangle in their right earlobes. Since Marcus wouldn't let his cousin become a Disciple, Terrell decided to start a junior gang of his own. They sold bootleg CDs and DVDs. As long as they didn't sell drugs or interfere with other Disciple business, Marcus didn't seem to care.
“Going out back?” Terrell yelled with a grin. “Out back” wasn't any place in particular. It was what the older guys said when they were taking a girl somewhere private. Terrell had only said it to impress the other guys, but he shouldn't have been using me to impress them. And he knew it.
He slid off the bench and came toward Tanisha and
me with a swagger in his step. Jerking his head to the side like some kind of hard hitta, he said, “Let's talk.” The tough pose annoyed me, but since he was my friend, I gave Tanisha a look that said to wait. Terrell and I walked out of earshot and stopped beside the spot near our building where eight months before, Darnell had fallen to his death. All that was left of the shrine was a piece of wood from the cross and the stub of a red candle.
Terrell pulled a toothpick out of his pocket and slid it between his lips, like Mr. Tough Street Thug. “What're you doing with that Gentry girl?”
I'd had enough of his act. “You know her name. Don't pull this crap with me.”
Terrell shook his head. “This ain't no crap. Gentry's the enemy.”
“Maybe the Disciples's enemy, but not ours. Besides, she's no Gangsta and I'm no Disciple.”
Terrell shifted the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other and narrowed his eyes at me. The pose was starting to get on my nerves.
“How come you won't get with Soon To Shoot?” he asked.
I glanced at his “crew” around the bench, crossing their arms and lowering their gazes, practicing defiant, menacing looks. “You sure you don't want to call yourselves Soon To Shave?”
Terrell's lower lip jutted out angrily. “The only reason you ain't with us is because of
her
.”
“The only reason I ain't with you is because I don't
want
to be with you.”
“House boy,” Terrell taunted. It was about as bad an insult as you could fling. Already frustrated by not getting to be alone with Tanisha, I felt my fists clench.
Terrell lifted his fists. “Okay, come on, let's see what you got.” But as he spoke, his eyes darted back at his crew, and I knew it was just more show. I dropped my fists and started back toward Tanisha. Terrell followed.
“You're messing everything up for me,” he said in a hushed voice he didn't want the others to hear. “If you got with us, Marcus might think serious about bringing us into the Disciples.”
“How about you get with me and think serious about coming back to Washington Carver?” I asked. School was set to begin in a few days, and Terrell had said he wasn't going back.
Terrell jerked his head at Tanisha, who was talking on her cell phone, her face bright and animated. “Only reason
you
go is 'cause of her.”
I spun around and aimed a finger at his face. “For the last time, you leave her out of this. You get with the gangbangers, and all
you're
gonna do is wind up in jail.”
“Marcus and Jamar ain't in jail,” Terrell said. “They're wearing fresh clothes and driving hot rides. They got more bank and bling than you'll ever get from going to school. All they teach in school is how to work for the white man.”
“Stop talking trash.” I turned and headed again toward Tanisha.
“Am I?” Terrell asked, following me. “Look at what they teach us. The history of white people. Books by white people. Stay in school and all you'll ever be is a pawn for white people.”
“Not me,” I said.
Oh, yeah?” Terrell said. “Then what else you gonna be?”
I didn't answer. The truth was, I didn't know.
“Come on, DeShawn,” Terrell said behind me. “You know you gotta get with us sooner or later. Around here there ain't nothing else you can do.”