Secret Saturdays (5 page)

On that last word, me and Kyle started laughing. I didn't know why. We just did.

“Oh man,” Kyle breathed out hard. “That was fun.” But then he went back to playing his game.

But I was still pumped from rapping and wanted to keep going. You corny, Kyle, I thought. Back on the computer. If he'd been Sean, he wouldn't have done that. Me and Sean probably would've started freestyling. Made up our own rhymes. Had a rap battle.

I wondered if Sean was up right now. I had energy and didn't know what to do with it. I changed channels until I found another video I liked.

“Kyle, you saw this one?” I was about to raise the volume when I looked at my digital clock. It was 2:15 in the morning. My mom would flip if I turned it up.

I left the volume alone.

 

Out my window I heard the stoop door slam, but nobody was there when I checked. Sometimes, at four, five in the morning, you didn't need to watch TV to stay up. Just watch my stoop. People argued and fought down there. Drunks, crackheads, drug dealers. Right now, I couldn't tell if the stoop door slamming meant drama.

Kyle was laid out on my bed. Asleep. Even though the television was on. His eyes half open and rolled up in his head. He maybe could sleep through a fire. I turned off the television and there was another slam. I went back to the window. What I saw bugged me out.

“Sean, baby.” Sean and his mom stepped off the stoop. “Wake up.”

Sean was half asleep and standing wobbly like he was about to fall over. His mother put one hand under his arm to hold him up. She had a small suitcase in her other hand. Tiny enough for a weekend trip. I backed a bit out of the window so they wouldn't see me.

What's up with that? Sean had told me he would be around this weekend on punishment. Why were they leaving? Did they have a family emergency?

“Come on, Sean,” Jackie said. She took him by the hand and led him off the court. They disappeared behind a building.

I wanted to wake up Kyle and tell him what I had just seen, but all these thoughts were going through my head. Did Sean know he was bouncing this weekend? Yes or no? He never went somewhere without telling me first. Where were they going at so early the morning? With a suitcase?

I let Kyle sleep and decided not to tell him what I had just seen. Maybe because I didn't want to hear Kyle say something like, “We should mind our own business.” I wasn't in the mood to hear that, because I was worried about Sean. He didn't look like he knew where his mom was taking him. Was she taking him somewhere to leave him?

THE NEXT MORNING,
Kyle didn't stay for breakfast. He pitched for a Little League team and they had a game that day. His parents were the coaches and picked him up early from my place.

After brushing my teeth, I sat at our breakfast table while Ma cooked. I was there with no video game. No nothing. Just me hunched, confused about why Sean had snuck out last night and hadn't said where he was going.

“What's bugging you?” Ma asked.

“Nothing,” I said, but she wasn't stupid.

The pancakes on the stove sizzled. Usually I couldn't wait to eat them. But right now Ma's food didn't faze me.

“Justin, if I looked like this”—Ma puffed her cheeks and folded her arms—“would you say nothing is wrong with me?”

I smiled. I didn't think I looked like that.

“At least I'm not wearing slippers five sizes too big for me,” I joked.

“If you want me making pancakes and eggs for you like I do every Saturday morning, I'm cooking them in my clown slippers.” Ma stuck her tongue out at me.

I laughed.

Ma's black hair was curled in rollers. Pink ones. Matching her pink, fluffy bathrobe. Ma liked her pajamas loose-fitting. Her collar was turned up and the sash around her waist was tied in front.

She scooped two pancakes from the pan, slid them onto a plate of steaming scrambled eggs, and set that in front of me.

“So what's bothering you?” There. Ma was picking at me again.

“I just feel like being quiet.”

But Ma hated it when I didn't speak for a long time and sat angry.

“Guys out here get taught from little to act hard,” she would say. “They're supposed to pretend nothing is wrong with them. They think they can't ever be sensitive because that's considered soft or gay. So these boys and men out here bottle in their real feelings. Wearing armor and fronting. But being hard only leads to trouble. Feelings explode out and lots of guys are in jail, hooked on drugs, and dead for being hard.”

Ma used to have three brothers. It was her, Robby, Craig, and Josh. My uncles were hard. Now all of them are dead or locked up. Robby sold drugs and got shot in the head when he was in high school. Craig caught HIV sharing needles and died at twenty-two. Uncle Josh is alive and in jail for life because he was a gang leader out here and had somebody killed. He was my only uncle and once Ma took me upstate to see him, but on the bus ride home she told me, “I'm not taking you back to see him. I'm not getting you used to being inside a jail. Josh chose that life for him. I didn't choose jail for you.” And just like that, we never visited Uncle Josh again.

After Ma's mother and father died, it was just her. Alone. Out here in Red Hook. Maybe I have uncles on my father's side, but I've never met anyone from my father's side because they live down south, and Ma said, “If they're not coming up here, we're not going down there.” It sucks not having a father or uncle, because I see boys out here playing football and doing things with their dads and uncles. I have to do that stuff with my mother. Which is cool. But kind of gay too.

Ma grabbed a plate out the cupboard. “You feel like being quiet. Fine. So maybe I feel like not telling you what I saw last night.”

I asked, “What you see?”

“I'll tell you one thing”—she flipped a pancake over and pointed the spatula at me—“if you tell me one thing?”

“Okay.”

She said, “Sean.”

“And his mother,” I said.

“Yep,” Ma said. “I woke up around two-something and couldn't go back to sleep. At four in the morning, I heard the stoop door slam and I looked outside. That's when I saw Jackie and Sean. Where were they going?”

“I don't know.” I felt stupid saying that to Ma.

“Sean didn't tell you?” She looked at my face and checked for something. Ma probably thought, What type of best friends are you and Sean? Or maybe she felt I was lying.

“No,” I said. “He didn't say.” I could tell when Ma thought I was lying to her. She would wrinkle her nose a certain way and shake her head. She didn't do it this time.

“Mmm.” Ma turned back to the stove and flipped over another pancake. “I hope everything's okay.”

“Maybe Sean will say where he went when he gets back,” I told her. “If he doesn't, that's cool.” When things bothered me, Ma didn't want me keeping that stuff to myself. She didn't like if I avoided telling my guy friends how they bugged me. Ma hated that because she said I was acting hard. She felt that only made problems worse.

“So what if Sean doesn't tell you where he went?” Ma asked.

I grabbed my fork and cut a piece of pancake. I hoped that by the time I swallowed and looked up, Ma would be focused back on the stove and not on me. I gulped down my food and checked. She was still staring at me. Dead in my eyes. I shrugged. “I'll be fine if he doesn't tell me.”

“Justin,” Ma said, all serious. “Look at me. If Sean doesn't tell you where he went and you have a problem with that, you better ask him.” She kept her eyes on me for a second and then turned back to cooking.

A FEW TIMES ON SATURDAY AND SUNDAY I CALLED SEAN.
Nobody picked up his house phone or cell. On Monday, we didn't come to school together because he never answered his phones. I didn't see him until fourth period in gym.

First, our gym teacher, Mr. K, made us put our stuff in lockers. Then we sat on the floor while he took attendance. After that, he let us have “free play.” While we were on the floor, I looked over at Sean. He nodded to me.

“What up?” Sean yelled after Mr. K finished taking attendance.

You needed to shout in gym because the sound of kids was everywhere.

“What up,” I said. “What time you came to school?”

“Second period.”

That's an hour after school started. Sean had perfect attendance. He never came to school late. So what was up with him coming to school second period?

I opened my mouth to ask him where he had bounced to this weekend, but a bunch of kids we played dodgeball with ran up. Plus two eighth graders we had never played with before. Mark and Junito. Mark was Sean's older cousin, but they weren't close. Jackie didn't like how her sister had no rules in her apartment. Mark was off-the-hook wild.

“What's good?” Mark asked Sean.

“What up, Sean,” Junito said.

Sean nodded and gave them pounds. “I'll come see you at the bleachers after I'm done with dodgeball.”

What? Sean was going to the bleachers to hang with them? Why?

Sean had grabbed the dodgeball before we sat for attendance. As Mark and Junito walked off, this kid Big Eddie came over and snatched the ball from Sean's hands. We sometimes called Eddie that because he was in the sixth grade but he was as big as an eighth grader. He even had a light mustache and caveman hairy arms. Maybe he'd been left back a few times. Maybe not. I saw his pops once. His father looked like Big Foot.

Big Eddie bounced the ball he had just snatched. “I'm captain.”

I get heated when people snatch things from me. That's like punking someone. But Sean didn't mind stuff like that.

“Bet,” Sean said. “But I choose first.”

Sean picked me for his team. Big Eddie chose this quiet dark-skinned West Indian boy in our class. Soon Sean and Eddie were shouting and pointing at kids so fast that we had two teams quicker than you could count to five.

The teams ran to opposite sides.

When the ball came to our side, Sean got it and threw it mad hard at Miguel. It was like a cannon shot it. Everybody dove out the way.

Some kid let it bounce, and then he picked it up and threw it back.

The ball hit the floor next to me. I grabbed it and flung it. I caught some kid who wasn't looking. In the face! He was dazed like he saw birds chirping.

“You out!” I yelled.

The kid went and stood on the sidelines.

“Good one,” Sean said.

Ask Sean now, I thought. Nah. The timing was off. I decided to wait until dodgeball ended.

 

When the game was over, Sean walked toward the bleachers and I followed him.

“Where you went this weekend?” I asked.

“I told you,” Sean said. “My mom had me on lock-down. Doing chores.”

“What about your phones?” I asked. “I called your house and cell. Nobody answered.”

Sean shrugged and squinted hard at something far off. “I lost my cell battery. I don't know what happened with my house phone.”

“And your mother?” I asked. “She didn't hear your house phone ring?”

“Oh!” Sean said. “I almost forgot! My mom was on it a lot with my pops. Maybe she didn't click over when you called because she was on long-distance with him?”

Mark ran up on us. “Ayo, Sean. Come tell Junito and Eric that deadbeat dad joke you told me earlier.”

After Sean left with Mark, I felt like Sean had just treated me like we weren't friends. Why couldn't Sean look me in the eye? I wondered. Ma always said liars avoid eye contact.