If I Grow Up (6 page)

It was the evening before school was supposed to start. Terrell's punishment for stealing was over, and he and I were in his room playing Grand Theft Auto on his Xbox.

“Terrell!” Mrs. Blake suddenly screamed. We raced into the living room. Laqueta was flat on her back on the floor. Her eyes had rolled up into her head and only the whites showed. Terrell's momma was straddling her, slapping her face, and crying, “Come on, baby, wake up! Wake up!” When she saw us she yelled, “Call 911!”

Terrell ran into the kitchen. Mrs. Blake kept slapping Laqueta. White foam trickled from the corner of her mouth. When Terrell came back, his momma said, “Go downstairs and wait for the ambulance. Soon as it gets here, bring the men up.”

Terrell and I went down to the yard. It felt like a long time passed before we could hear the sirens. After a while, a boxy, red and white ambulance pulled up to the curb with its lights flashing. The two men inside took their time getting out. One was white, the other black. They looked around warily, as if this project was the last place in the world they wanted to be.

“Come on!” Terrell anxiously pointed back at the building. “My cousin's out cold. We don't know if she's OD'd and passed out or what.”

“She drink? Take drugs?” asked the black ambulance man.

“Both,” said Terrell.

“Better get the stretcher,” the white one said. They went around and opened the back doors, still taking their sweet time. The black ambulance man started to wheel the stretcher toward the building while his partner stayed behind with the truck.

“Maybe you both better come,” I said. “Could take two to carry her down.”

“Or maybe you got friends in there waiting to jump us,” said the white one. “Or we'll get back here, and the ambulance'll be ransacked for drugs and needles. So I'll stay here and keep an eye on the truck.”

There was no use arguing. Terrell and I followed the black ambulance man wheeling the stretcher toward the building. He kept looking around as if he expected at any second to get jumped. We went into the lobby, and he pushed the stretcher toward the elevators.

“The elevator's broke,” Terrell said, and pointed at the stairwell. “We gotta walk up.”

The ambulance man hesitated. “How far?”

“Sixth floor.”

The man shook his head. “You'll have to bring her down.”

“You crazy?” Terrell began to bluster, but I grabbed his arm to stop him and asked, “How?”

“Make a sling with a blanket,” he said. “Four of you can do it if each one holds a corner. Won't take long.”

Halfway up the stairs, Terrell started gasping and had to stop and use his inhaler. By the time we got to the apartment, LaRue and Marcus were there. They'd moved Laqueta to the couch, but she was still limp. More foamy spit dripped from the corner of her mouth. Mrs. Blake carefully dabbed it with a towel.

“Where are the ambulance men?” Marcus asked.

“Wouldn't climb up the stairs,” I said, and told him about the sling.

Marcus cursed and told Mrs. Blake to find a blanket. When we moved Laqueta, her arms and legs flopped every which way, and her head rolled loosely. Marcus, LaRue, Terrell, and I each picked up a corner. With the four of us lifting her, we went out into the hall and started down the stairs. Marcus and LaRue went first because they were taller and stronger. Even then Terrell and I struggled to hold up our end. Mrs. Blake yelled at us each time we let Laqueta bump against a step.

Pop! Pop! Pop!
We were on the fourth floor when the shooting started outside and the sounds of shouting drifted up the stairs.

Marcus momentarily lowered the blanket with Laqueta to the floor, then lifted again. “We gotta get her down. Come on.”

The lobby was full of people who'd run inside to get away from the shooting. Most stayed clear of the doors and were huddled near the stairs. We eased Laqueta down on the lobby floor, and once again Mrs. Blake slapped her face, trying to wake her. Snoop trotted by, sniffing here and there. I found Lightbulb hiding under the stairs with his eyes squeezed tight and his fingers in his ears.

I shook his shoulder. “You see an ambulance man?”

Lightbulb opened his eyes. “He left when the shooting started.”

Jamar came in from outside with a skinny Disciple named Tyrone, who was grimacing and clutching his arm. Blood darkened his shirt and dripped to the floor. Marcus spoke to them, then he, LaRue, and Jamar went back out through the lobby doors, reaching toward their belts to pull guns.

“Come on,” Terrell whispered. He wanted to follow them. I don't know why I went. It was stupid, but in the excitement, I wanted to see. Outside the night air smelled of burned gunpowder. Terrell and I pressed against the building. The bricks still felt warm from being in the sun all day. In the dark the yard looked empty, but slowly I began to see shapes. A woman cradled a baby behind a tree near an overturned baby stroller. Two old men lay on the ground near a bench, covering their heads with their arms.

Pop! Pop! Pop!

Terrell and I ducked down. The shots were coming
from around the corner of the building. Terrell crept to the edge and peeked, then waved for me to join him. I scampered up. Out in the yard, Marcus ducked behind a bench. LaRue crouched behind a metal garbage can.

Pop! Pop! Pop!

They both fired and then moved forward as if driving the invaders back toward Abernathy Avenue. Jamar followed, reaching each spot only after Marcus or LaRue left it.

Pop! Pop! Pop!
More shots, then car doors slammed and car tires screeched. There was silence for a moment. Then the normal sounds of a summer evening—car horns, the rumble of bus engines, music, even voices—began to return.

Out in the yard, Jamar rose to his feet. But where were Marcus and LaRue?

People began to come out like rabbits leaving their holes after the fox goes away—slowly and carefully, stopping and listening before taking another step.

There was still no sign of Marcus or LaRue. Suddenly I felt scared. Marcus wasn't just the leader of the Disciples. He was the father none of us had. He gave us jobs, issued orders, settled disputes, and kept people in line. It wasn't until that moment that I realized how people depended on him and needed to know he was there.

Two figures came around the corner. Even in the dark I could see that their clothes were disheveled and their arms hung loosely at their sides. As Marcus
passed, he glared at Jamar and spit on the ground. Jamar began to say something, then clammed up and hung his head. We all knew he'd been a coward. Terrell and I followed Marcus back into the building. By now most of the people had left the lobby. A few women were still bent over Laqueta. Someone had rolled up a shawl under her head, and someone else was fanning her with a newspaper while Mrs. Blake dabbed a wet cloth against her forehead.

“DeShawn!” My sister's anxious voice called from the stairwell. “Anyone seen DeShawn?”

“In the lobby,” I yelled back.

Nia came to the top of the stairs with her hands on her big belly and consternation on her face. “Gramma wants you upstairs
right now
!”

I could feel people's eyes on me, and wished she didn't sound so bossy. Nia came down the stairs, grabbed me by the arm, and squeezed hard. Suddenly I knew it wasn't just Gramma who wanted me out of harm's way.

Meanwhile Marcus lifted Laqueta in his arms. Her head rolled back. “We'll take my car.”

Someone held the door open, and he went through sideways careful not to let his sister bang into the door frame. LaRue, Mrs. Blake, and Terrell followed. Marcus was a gang leader and drug dealer, almost surely a murderer, and as brutal and hard as anyone I'd ever met. But he was the only hero we knew.

A few days later I walked home from school with a black cloud over my head. It was Friday and Tanisha wanted us to go to the movies with friends that night, but I had no money and no way to get any. I couldn't decide which was worse: telling Tanisha we couldn't go, or going and letting her pay.

“Hey,” someone said.

I looked up. Marcus's black Mercedes was rolling slowly along the curb beside me. He steered with one hand and leaned his elbow out the open window. “What's wrong?”

“Who said anything's wrong?” I said.

“Looks like you got the weight of the world on your shoulders,” he said, pulling the car to the curb. “I been drivin' alongside you for almost a whole block, and you ain't looked up once. You got a problem, maybe I can help.”

That reminded me of something. “Laqueta okay?”

“Yeah, she's back home now.” He gazed at me with steady eyes. “You gonna tell me what's botherin' you?”

“I can take care of it,” I said.

If a muscle in Marcus's face moved, I didn't see it. “Come over here. What grade you in?”

“Seventh.”

“How you doin'?”

“Okay. I may even go to Hewlett Academy over in Beech Hill.” That very day, Mr. Brand had given me a red folder filled with a dozen pages of words he wanted me to learn for the magnet school entrance exam.

“You gotta take some kind of a test to get in?” Marcus asked.

“Yeah. Vocabulary, math, a lot of stuff.”

“And suppose you get in,” he said. “Then what?”

“I don't know. Get a better education, I guess.”

Marcus rubbed his chin across his forearm. “So how come you're mopin' along like your dog just got run over?”

Suddenly I knew I was going to tell him. It was the kind of thing you wanted to talk about with a guy who had experience. “My girl wants to go on a date tonight, and I'm a little short.”

“That's messed up,” he said, nodding slowly. “How bad do you want to go?”

“I don't care,” I said. “But my girl wants to go so bad, she says she'll even pay.”

“No way.” Marcus shook his head, and I knew he understood. His arm disappeared from the open window. When it reappeared, a bill was folded between his fingers. “Fifty do you?”

I hesitated. “What you want in return?”

“Nothing.”

 

That night Tanisha and I went to the movies with her friends. It was the first time we'd been alone in the dark—the first time I'd been alone in the dark with any girl—and when the movie was over, my life had changed. I was on my way to becoming a man.

Afterward I walked home. Subwoofers boomed from the slow-moving rides cruising the streets, and styled-up folks waited in lines to get into clubs. It was Friday night, and everyone was trying to get what they'd waited for all week.

In the yard at Douglass, people were having a homecoming party for a guy named Derek who'd just gotten out of the army. Dance music blared from a sound system rigged to a car battery. Jamar was talking to a girl with a big chest and short brown hair pasted tightly to her skull. In the shadows near one of the trees, LaRue was slow dancing with a skanky-looking girl in high heels with bleached-blond pigtails and a short, low-cut dress. I pretended not to see him and hoped nobody told Nia.

I was about to go in when I noticed someone on the bench, bent over with his head on his arms. “Terrell?”

My best friend lifted his head. Even in the dark I could see that one of his eyes was swollen shut and dried blood caked his nose and lips.

“What the hell?” I said.

He made a fist. On the back of his hand were three ugly, reddish cigarette burns. Then he pulled a string of black-and-white beads from under his shirt and gave me the sign of the Disciples. A crooked smile worked its way onto his swollen lips. He was in.

When President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act in January of 2002, he promised that by 2014 the quality of inner-city school education would catch up to that of suburban schools. But by 2007 the gap between black and white eighth graders was worse than ever.

 

“Struggle is my address, where pain and crack lives,…Born on the Black list, told I'm below average.”—from “A Dream” by Common

“I wish we could be alone,” Tanisha whispered in my ear. We were in the hall between classes, pressed against her locker, pressed against each other. We were eighth graders now and sought each other out whenever we could.

“Me too.” I kissed her. She smelled like cocoa butter, and the mixed sensations of pleasure and yearning were enough to make my knees feel weak. But it was nearly impossible for us to be alone. Lately there'd been more and more shooting between the Disciples and the Gangstas. Anyone, not just gangbangers, from Douglass found in Gentry territory was liable to be shot.

“Maybe you could come over after school,” she whispered with closed eyes as I kissed her neck.

Despite the danger, I was seriously tempted.

“My momma'll be at work, and William's never around.”

I'd never met her older brother, William, but I knew he was a Gentry Gangsta.

“Let me think about it….” We pressed together,
feeling more heat than the friction of our clothes alone could create.

“Enough of that, you two,” someone snapped sharply. It was Ms. Rodriguez, the assistant principal.

I backed slowly away from Tanisha. Past were the days of jumping when some authority figure gave an order.

“I'm getting tired of telling you two to find some place else for that.” The old white-haired woman focused on me. “DeShawn, come to my office.”

“Sorry, Ms. Rodriguez,” I said. “It won't happen again.”

“This is about something else,” she said.

In her office I sat in an old wooden chair. Ms. Rodriguez pulled a pink sweater over her shoulders. “Now you know why I spend so much time in the halls,” she said with a shiver while she searched through a pile of folders on her desk. “Been years since any heat came out of that radiator. Here we are.” She opened a folder. “Mr. Brand left instructions for you to take the entrance exam for Hewlett Academy.”

“What happened to him, anyway?” I asked. It was November, and I had not yet seen him around school.

“He took a job at one of the suburban schools,” Ms. Rodriguez said. “Too bad. He was one of our better teachers.”

While the assistant principal studied the folder, I watched through the dirty, bar-covered window as a crusty old bum, who looked like he was wearing three
coats, trudged past lugging a huge plastic bag filled with empty cans. “Now, you understand, DeShawn, that we're only allowed to submit a certain number of students for that exam. Have you prepared?”

I shook my head. I'd never gotten around to studying the list of words Mr. Brand had given me.

Mrs. Rodriguez frowned. “Let's take a look at your transcript anyway.” She turned to her computer and studied the screen, tapping a bony finger against her lower lip. “You are certainly one of the better students, especially among the boys.”

“Mr. Brand said I was reading at grade level,” I said proudly.

“Let's see your standardized test results.” She typed and a different screen appeared on the computer. Her eyebrows dipped. “City-wide, your test scores are in the twenty-third percentile.”

“What's that mean?” I asked, although I could tell by her expression that it wasn't good.

“Compared to students from all the other schools, you're in the bottom quarter.”

The radiator made a faint gurgling sound, as if water was struggling to get through.

“It's not your fault, DeShawn,” Ms. Rodriguez said. “Many children get private tutoring or special preparation for these entrance exams. Things we can't give students here.”

Secretly, I felt relief. I didn't want to leave Tanisha and take a bus every day to Beech Hill. And now I didn't
have to feel bad about letting Mr. Brand down, because he could have come back to Washington Carver if he'd really cared.

Ms. Rodriguez tapped the bottom of the folder against the desk. “All right?” She had other things to do. I got up and started to leave.

“DeShawn?” she said. “One other thing. Your friend Raydale Diggs.”

“Who?”

“I believe you call him Lightbulb?”

It had been so long since I had heard his real name, I'd forgotten it.

“Maybe you could do us a favor,” Ms. Rodriguez said. “He's one of the brightest children we've ever seen here, and we would like him to apply to Hewlett Academy, but he seems reluctant. Perhaps you'd talk to him? You're a friend, so he might listen to you.”

Nia had twins—a boy named Xavier and a girl named Jayda—and the population in our apartment increased by three, not two, because LaRue moved in. Gramma gave her bedroom to the new family. Now she slept on the couch, and I slept on the floor on a small mattress that we hid behind the curtains during the day. In no time it felt like those babies took over the whole apartment. The kitchen counter was covered with plastic baby bottles and cans of baby formula, and the garbage can was a heap of stinky Pampers. Hand-washed baby clothes and maternity bras hung in the bathroom. I spent as much time as I could outside.

 

Terrell and I were hanging around the bench talking to Precious and listening to 50 Cent on Terrell's boom box. He was wearing his black Disciples colors, his cap turned to the right, and his sleeves rolled up to show off his new tattoos. Precious wore a lot of eye makeup, and her fingernails were long and painted blue. Her tight, white T-shirt said
SO MANY BOYZ
,
SO LITTLE TIME
.
The material was so thin that you could see the pink bra underneath.

“Your daddy see you dress like that?” Terrell asked.

Precious's face hardened. “He ain't around no more.” When she talked, you saw the stud in her tongue.

“What happened?” Terrell asked.

“What do you
think
happened?” she shot back, as if it were obvious. She glanced at the boom box balanced on Terrell's knees. “Why you got that hunk of junk? Can't you afford an iPod?”

“What's the point?” Terrell asked, slightly annoyed.

“Get a lot more songs than those cheap bootleg CDs you play.” Precious spoke in a taunting, angry way, as if challenging his manhood. So different from that cute little girl in the pink jacket a few years back who was so proud that her daddy lived with her.

Terrell played it slow and cool, like he had nothing to prove. “Trouble with that iPod is you can't listen with your peeps,” he said, gesturing toward me. But the truth was, putting music on an iPod required a computer, and neither Terrell nor I had one.

“Want to go out sometime?” Terrell asked her.

“With who?” Precious asked haughtily, and pretended to look around for someone worthy of her.

“Who do you think?” Terrell asked.

She gave him a cool appraisal. “You? You ain't nothing but a two-bit crack dealer. Where we gonna go? You got money? You got a car? You even old enough to drive? 'Cause I ain't going on no bus date.”

“I can get a car if I want,” Terrell said.

“Uh-huh. Sure you can.”

A hype came up, all ashy skin and bones, missing teeth and wearing filthy, ragged clothes. We called them “the walking dead.” She handed Terrell some money, and he pointed at a shorty leaning against a wall, head bent, thumbs flying over the controls of a PSP. The kid couldn't have been more than nine years old. He led the hype inside the building.

Dealers used shorties to hold their crack, weed, and pills because the worst thing the cops could do was confiscate the drugs and take the kid home to his momma. Everyone knew the courts wouldn't put eight-and nine-year olds in juvie for drugs. The mothers knew it too. Some of them waited until the cops left and then sent their kids back out to work.

“So maybe you got some money,” Precious said, but what she didn't know was that almost every penny Terrell earned went to the Disciples, not Terrell. She took a compact out of her bag and checked her makeup.

Terrell cleared his throat. “So? Wanna go out?”

Precious gazed up over the compact at him. “You better have a car, and you better take me some place nice.” She snapped the compact shut, spun on her toes, and walked away.

Terrell grinned and held out his palm for me to slap. “Friday night's starting to look good.”

 

The day drifted past. I hung around the bench with Terrell. Girls played jump rope. Young mothers pushed babies in strollers, and old folks hobbled past on canes. No one else came by for drugs, and after a while Terrell's shorty said he had to go.

Then Bublz showed up. “Look what I got.” He fanned out a bunch of King Chicken coupons. “Buy one, get one free.”

I was hungry. Most of the food stamps and welfare money that month had gone toward baby formula and Pampers. Terrell hadn't left the bench in hours. He had to be hungry too.

“Can't,” said Terrell.

Bublz looked around. “Come on. You'll be back in twenty minutes. No one'll know you was gone.”

On the way to King Chicken we ran into Lightbulb being pulled by Snoop, who'd grown to be a medium-size dog but was still as wild as a pup.

“You gotta train that dog, Bulb,” Terrell said.

“He's trained,” Lightbulb insisted.

“Hey,” I said. “Ms. Rodriguez wants to know why you won't apply for that Hewlett Acdemy.”

“My momma can't pay for no bus,” Lightbulb said.

“Maybe Bulb ain't smart enough,” Terrell said.

“Ms. Rodriguez says he's one of the smartest they've ever seen.”

“Him?” Terrell pointed at our friend. “No way.”

Lightbulb hung his head.

“You guys go ahead,” I said to Terrell and Bublz. “I'll catch up.”

When they were out of earshot, Lightbulb scuffed his foot against the ground. “I don't want to go, DeShawn. Just want to stay where I am.”

“But this is nowhere.”

Lines appeared in his brow. “I'm happy here.”

“For now. But then what? You gonna be a gangbanger?”

Lightbulb shook his head. “No. What are
you
gonna do?”

I didn't answer because I didn't know. We watched the cars pass on Abernathy. All those people with places to go.

And we had nowhere to go.

Snoop started to tug on the leash again. “See you,” Lightbulb said, and let Snoop drag him away.

A few minutes later I joined Terrell and Bublz in a booth at King Chicken. They were working through a bucket of legs and breasts and slurping from big cups of soda.

“I'm takin' out Precious Friday night,” Terrell announced.

“I thought she only dates older guys,” said Bublz.

Terrell grinned. “Older guys…and me.”

“She said you had to drive,” I reminded him.

“I'll get a car,” Terrell replied, as if it were as easy as buying a candy bar. “Jamar showed me how.”

“Just because you learned how to steal one doesn't mean you know how to drive one,” I said.

“How hard could it be?” Terrell waved at the traffic outside. “Look at those dumb asses driving around.”

The door to King Chicken swung open, and Marcus marched in. Terrell and Bublz had their backs to the door and didn't see him. But Terrell must've seen it in my face because he started to turn around.

Wham!
Marcus smacked him on the side of the head. In the next booth a lady with two small kids screamed. Bublz cowered in the corner of the booth, his eyes squeezed shut and his arms covering his head. I jumped up, my lap dark with spilled soda. Terrell was too stunned by the blow to move.

Wham!
Marcus smacked him again. Everyone in King Chicken stopped eating. Some people hurried for the door. Terrell huddled against Bublz, who was still cowering in the corner. Marcus raised his open hand again. “I say you could leave that bench?”

“Wasn't nothing happening,” Terrell stammered.

Marcus grabbed him by the collar and yanked him up with one hand until they were practically nose to nose. “You don't decide that, understand? You don't decide nothing. You just do what I tell you.”

“I'm telling you,” Terrell said in a quavering voice. “Wasn't no one buying nothing.”

Marcus flinched and glanced around. He grabbed Terrell by the hair and hauled him out of the booth.

“Ow! Ow! Man, stop it!” Terrell wailed as Marcus
dragged him out of King Chicken. “Ow! Let go, man, I'll go! I'll go!”

But Marcus didn't let go. He dragged Terrell into the parking lot. I followed, keeping my distance. Bublz took off down the sidewalk as fast as his big, bouncing gut would allow. Still holding Terrell by the hair, Marcus backed him against the wall.

“Mistake number one,” Marcus growled in a low, ominous voice. “You don't leave that bench unless I tell you to. Ever. Understand?”

Terrell stared at the ground, unwilling to look the gang leader in the eye. Marcus yanked his head up until they were eyeball to eyeball. Terrell's were wet with tears. “I understand,” he sniffed.

“Mistake number two,” Marcus continued. “You don't talk business when anyone else can hear. Understand?”

Terrell nodded, blinking rapidly. Tears ran down his cheeks. He started to wheeze and quickly dug out his inhaler. Marcus let him go but held his hand close to Terrell's face. My friend winced as if expecting another blow. But instead, Marcus patted his cheek.

“Hey,” he said gently. “Everybody makes a mistake.”

Terrell looked up at him with reddened eyes and sniffed. “It ain't fair. I sit all day on that bench. Most days I don't even sell fifty dollars worth of rock. Then I got to give all the money to you. I'd make more working here.” He nodded toward King Chicken.

“I told you it takes time,” Marcus said. “You gotta work your way up. Pay your dues. A year from now you'll be making more in a day than you could make at this place in a month.”

Terrell nodded and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. Marcus looked at me. “Both of you in the car.”

Being a Disciple, Terrell rode in the front while I sat in the back. Back at Douglass, Marcus parked on Abernathy and turned to Terrell. “Do your job. And don't let me ever see you leave that bench again.”

Terrell got out. I slid across the backseat to get out too, but Marcus looked over the seat at me. “Hold on.”

I stopped.

“How's them little babies doing?” he asked.

“Okay.”

“LaRue move in?”

I nodded.

“Must be getting kind of crowded in there.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Ever think that someday you could have a place of your own?” he said. “A place to bring that cute girlfriend of yours.”

Tanisha had spent enough time around Douglass for just about everyone to know she was my girl, but it still surprised me that Marcus paid attention to things like that. I glanced out the window at Terrell, who'd gotten back up on the bench.

“That won't be you,” Marcus said.

I swiveled my head toward him. “How come?”

“Still got that envelope I gave you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Ever tell anyone?”

I shook my head.

“See, DeShawn, the Disciples is like a company,” Marcus said. “Different guys get different jobs. All depends on what the boss thinks you're good for. Right now Terrell's on that bench because that's what he's good for. You'd be good for other things. Things that pay a lot better.”

I gazed at the teardrop tattoo at the corner of his eye. Maybe I should have been afraid, but I wasn't. I'd noticed something about Marcus. He could get really mad when you did something wrong, but he also listened when you spoke your mind. “I think you forgot to tell Terrell that there's a chance in a year he'll be making good money, but there's a better chance that he'll be dead or in jail.”

“He knows that,” said Marcus. “He'd have to be stupid not to.”

It got quiet in the car as if Marcus was thinking. Then he said, “Listen, DeShawn, you don't have to worry about being jumped in. You'll get blessed in. No one'll touch you.”

I tried to hide my surprise that he was so eager for me to join the Disciples. Marcus leaned closer. “You're a smart kid. Not school smart; street smart. It ain't something they give grades for. It's just something you're born with.”

“Something I got from my momma?”

“That's right.”

“If she was so smart, how come she's dead?”

Marcus gazed at me thoughtfully with his small, deep-set eyes. “Bad luck. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Could have been anyone.”

“Not me,” I said.

“Even you.” He gazed past me and suddenly his face hardened. I turned and saw that Officer Patterson had pulled to the curb behind us in his police cruiser. Marcus tilted his head toward the door. I got out and he drove away, but Officer Patterson didn't. He just sat in his car, watching me.