Authors: Marcus Burke
As if things weren’t already getting funky enough, about five minutes after my Squad Six boys got there and didn’t even address me, I looked down off the court and I could see Smoke and company rolling toward the park too. Right as Smoke and his crew got to the court I had game point. Both crews were postin’ on picnic tables on opposite sides of the court.
From the roar of both crews I could tell shit was about to hit the fan. Me and Beezy returned to sworn enemies. Beezy checked me the ball and I drove baseline on him. Up and under and the game was over. With both crews watchin’ close, the tension in the air felt like Nana Tanks’s homemade pickled pepper sauce. I thought my heart was going to pop out of my throat.
D-roc yelled out, “Man, we just the best, ain’t it!
Squad Six!
We got little niggas that’ll body ya!” He jumped up and down with his fist pumping into the air like he was letting off shots. Now I don’t really think he was speaking to anyone in particular, but Kendrick, Smoke’s homeboy, seemed to take a special offense to D-roc poppin’ off at the lip like that.
“Yeah ’ight, nigga, you better shut the fuck up before y’all niggas get exposed.”
D-roc rumbled back, “ ’Ight bet. What you trying to do?” Reggie shot him a look. Then D-roc said, “Fuck it. I’ll put five hundred on my little soldier right now, what!”
Reggie smirked. “Naw, fuck that. We’ll put up a whole stack. These niggas is puppy treats. I got faith in my little nigga.” He looked down at me. “Andre, get at these bum-ass niggas.”
Then he looked back over at Smoke. “We go hard out here. I’ll send my little nigga to merk you. Game’s to fifteen.”
I really didn’t even want to play anymore, but then Beezy slammed the ball in my chest talking about “Check up, pussy.”
That’s all the invite I needed to oblige him in a good old-fashioned Squad Six beat down. I shoulda just socked his fat ass when that ball touched my chest. Instead, I gave his punk ass fifteen straight buckets. Beezy had nothing for me inside or outside. I ran circles around his jiggly fat ass. He should have known not to pull my gully card in front of my crew. When the ball dropped through the net on my fifteenth point, I caught it and slammed it down like a touchdown spike.
“And take that to the bank, fuckhead! Now go get our money, bitch!” And I chest-bumped him in the back as he walked away. Beezy ain’t say nothing. Smoke had a whole lot to say, though. When Beezy got over to his side, Smoke mushed the stack in his face. The dollars drizzled everywhere.
“What a waste you are, you fat shit,” Smoke said as Beezy brushed by him and started walking home. Smoke’s eyes
got small and his nostrils flared and he started scratching his head. “Hold da fuck up. I know you ain’t ’bout to bounce without touching this little nigga up. I wish a nigga would chest-bump me in the back. Beezy, bring yo ass!”
Beezy turned around. I wanted to evaporate. Shit, I won, why I gotta fight? But from the devil in Beezy’s face, I knew he was about to buck. I told Reggie to hold my stuff.
Reggie looked me in the eyes. “Yo, break his neck, ya heard me? Don’t be afraid to hurt ’im ’cause he ain’t afraid to hurt you. These boys ain’t ready.”
After Reggie told me that, I turned around and
boom!
Beezy tagged me in the face. “What up? I ain’t the only one leaving here with a L today,” he said.
At first I didn’t think Beezy was going to fight me for real. I mean, we were boys no more than an hour ago. But I tasted the blood flowing from my nose and it was on. I grabbed the fat fuck by his shirt and chopped him right in the voice box.
“Yeah, kill all that noise, bitch,” I said as he crumpled down to the floor holding that fat-ass double chin he called a neck. He fell and I hopped on top and started hooking off. It was like everything went fuzzy. I couldn’t feel any of the licks he was laying on me. I just kept swinging until I heard Smoke say, “Ayo, that’s enough, yo. Y’all got that.”
D-roc, barked, “Nah, you the one that done wound up your little toy soldier, let them niggas fight.”
But Reggie grabbed me. “Now that’s how the fuck you hold it down, Andre! See, I told y’all bitch-made niggas,
you don’t want no drama
! Now where the fuck is my
money
!”
Reggie put his hand out. Smoke took out a rubber band and slung it around a roll of cash and flicked it halfway across the court.
Reggie laughed, “Boy, I tell ya, these new age cats sure are
disrespectful.” He patted the top of my head. “You earned it, playboy, go grab that up.”
As I jogged over to midcourt to grab the cash, I watched as Smoke walked Beezy away from the court like a principal who’d just broke up a fight, except he was choking him by his shirt collar like a dog.
Beezy turned around and looked at me. We made eye contact and it hit me. I really just fought him. When our eyes met we agreed, silently, that was stupid. I wanted to say I was sorry and probably would have if Reggie and D-roc weren’t jumping up and down in my face, shouting at me ’bout how I looked like “Tyson on that nigga, son.” I earned my stripes and I kept ’em. But it didn’t feel right.
The whole ride home in D-roc’s car with the bass boomin’, all I could think about was how badly Beezy was getting it for letting me do him like that. All them Squad Six boys came to the conclusion that it wasn’t Squad Six no more; it was more like Team Seven.
When that boy strolled in my house looking like a crash test dummy, trying to act like nothing happened, I was ready to go. “Dre, what in God’s natural world happened to you? Look at you. You were fighting! Where was Reggie?”
He looked at me like I was talking to him for my health. He sat there like he didn’t have crusted blood around his nostrils.
“Oh, so I get it. Code of the streets, huh? You’re not going to tell Mommy what happened because you don’t want to be a sissy, huh? I know how this game works, Andre. Don’t forget I married your father. A cut above the rest, Dre! What don’t you get about that? All this foolishness in these streets ain’t
for you. You’re not like these corner boys going nowhere fast in these streets. I’ll make sure of that. So who was it, huh?”
When that boy told me that Reggie and Smoke put my baby and little Beezy up to fighting, my blood started to boil.
When I asked him why he didn’t just come home, I wanted to smack him, talking about how he “couldn’t look like no punk.” I told that little boy, if I hear he’s out there fighting anymore I’m going to punk him and whoever else wants some. It’s times like this that I really just wish I had a little help. Maybe if Eddy would be around more that boy wouldn’t feel like he had to be so damn tough all the time. Lord knows, it’s not easy raising two. It’s just me. Even with the change Reggie drops off over here, it’s hard to make ends meet.
No games. I took the situation into my own hands. The next morning when Andre left for school I called into work and told them I was going to be late. Hell, if them boys are too pigheaded to make peace, I will. See, I know Smoke, his mother and I are actually friends. I remember him when he was just a little stinka butt running around this block. Back when he wasn’t nothing but little Stanley Taylor, Miss Myra’s boy. Now he thinks he can terrorize my baby. Oh, I don’t think so.
And I know Reggie loves Andre and won’t disrespect me. Smoke, or should I say Stanley, he better not make me have to call his mother. He wasn’t afraid of much, but when it comes to Myra, she got that boy in check.
I set out on a relaxing stroll around the neighborhood. Right when I got to the gate I could see Reggie and the rest of his squad hanging on the corner. I saw Reggie looking over. From the look on his face he could tell I was ready to begin acting up. I started in his direction and he left the corner and met me halfway. See, I appreciate the money Reggie gives me, but if he thinks I’m going to let him ruin my baby, he can take
that money and wipe his ass with it. Before I could get a word out he gots to explaining, “Check it out, Miss Ruby. Before you come over here riffin’ and shit, let me tell you. You should be proud! The boy has hands. I mean, hot damn, he served that boy up something proper.”
I took a step back. “Reggie, what the hell do you think this is? You think I’m trying to raise the future Mr. Get Bad? That boy ain’t but ten years old … I’m trying to raise up a good man!”
“And I’m trying to help you, Miss Ruby. You think I started that fight? Naw! Shit, if someone up rocked your jaw then what you gon’ do?”
This Negro must have thought I was one of his little around-the-way hoes. He wasn’t fixing to run that preschool game on me. I told that Negro, “Well, however it goes, I don’t want my child being used as a pawn in your foolishness. Dre came in the house last night looking hurt. I’ve got enough weighing down my heart without worrying about y’all fools messing with him. Come hell or high water, there ain’t nothing going to harm that boy. Especially these games y’all playing in these streets. Now I’ve got to live here, Reggie. It’s on you to make this right. I ain’t playing either. And you best tell your little gooney squad there will be no addition to y’all’s little crew. So rethink it. Y’all stay with that Squad Six business y’all like to write on the walls everywhere, and Dre’s going to be a kid.”
He cut me off.
“I got you, Miss Ruby. You right. I’m grown. I’ll make it right with Andre and Beezy. Just understand, you really stretching out my box on this one.”
With that being said, I turned around and strutted away. And to my delight, I didn’t even need to raise my blood pressure going up the other end of the block and dealing with
Smoke and his pure ignorance. As I started walking back toward my house, Miss Myra was heading my way.
“Ruby, I know you’ve heard about this. Little Brendan cried himself to sleep last night. Them boys didn’t want to fight, girl.”
“Girl, who you telling? I know them knuckleheads put them up to it. I just got done setting Reggie straight.”
“Yeah, Stanley knows what’s up. Ain’t gon’ be no more problems. He values the life he lives. Girl, these boys think they tough. I told that boy if I hear he’s messing with his little brother anymore, bone marrow gon’ fly. He knows.”
Me and my older sister Nina were setting the table for dinner when I heard the tick of Pop beating on his snare drum rising from the basement. My smile met Nina’s frozen face. The tick followed by the kick of his bass drum immediately broke me out with chill bumps. I didn’t even know he was home. Pop liked to sneak in and out of the house through the basement door, that way we couldn’t keep track of his comings and goings. Ma was on the back porch grilling some chicken. Nina’s eyes got wide and then sunk into her face as she rolled them. “Guess we need to set one more, huh?” she complained and tossed me an extra place mat.
“I love it,” she whined, “how he comes in here and tries to play it cool. Shit’s not cool, Dre. When was the last time we even saw his sorry ass, huh?”
She paused. “Oh, yeah, you right, you can’t remember, huh?”
I really didn’t have much to say. She wasn’t too far off. Ever since the night we saw him hit Ma and the police took him away, he’s shown his long drawn-out face in the house less and less. It’s just Pop’s way, he’s a rolling stone, always gone and no one knows where he’s at or what he’s doing other than drugs, his one true companion in life. Ma says she thinks he’s out there hustling and working under the table so he won’t have to pay child support, but I don’t know.
Pop’s timing couldn’t have been worse. Of all the days to show up, he had to come home for the worst possible dinner of the fourth term. Progress report day. The barbeque chicken and grilled corn filled the house with an aroma that made me want to eat the air. But when I heard Pop in the basement, I started to feel the burn of the butterflies flapping in my belly. It was bad enough that I knew Ma would ask in her sweet little Negro-I-wish-you-would-lie-to-me voice, “Didn’t progress reports come out today?” But to make things worse, Pop would get to throw in his two cents.
Ma’s temper was not above coming upside my head and Pop’s an erratic bungee-cord-type nigga, I never quite knew when he was gonna snap. Factoring all this together, I came to the conclusion that sitting the four of us at a table for dinner was like mixing all the ingredients for a Molotov cocktail. Shit was gonna jump off one way or another. The common denominator would be Pop. He was liable to get into it with Ma. They always seemed to be in each other’s faces about God knows what. Then Nina and Pop couldn’t get along for shit either. Nina said she hated the man. Me and Pop, we really didn’t talk much about anything other than sports. It just seemed he took the ruckus everywhere with him like a devil with his pitchfork.
After we finished setting the table, I wanted to go outside and enjoy my last bits of okayness, maybe shoot some hoops, but with Pop and the progress reports I wasn’t risking Ma having to look for me, with the possibility of a slap in the head at dinner turning into a leather belt beat down before we could even eat. Using our good sense, me and Nina took it to the living room to forecast how dinner was about to go. I told her I wasn’t worried. Well, yeah I was. Just not as worried for
me as I was for her. For me, science was a C, math and social studies were both Ds, and English was a D-plus. But with no Fs, I was living. No Fs equaled no knots on my head. I hoped.
Nina, she was buggin’. When my eyes rolled up and down her wrinkled progress report, I couldn’t help laughing. Homegirl was rocking it with two Ds in math and science, a D-minus in English, and an F in gym class. I must admit I was impressed that she found a way not to pass gym class. Nina was going to spark the explosion at dinner, I could feel it. On the bright side I got to play the good child for a change. What a great sister, I thought for a quick sec. It was usually me getting in all the trouble. Nina was more like a quiet storm. She moved in silence with her dirt, but there was nothing slick about that progress report.
After I showed her mine, she hissed through her teeth and dropped it on the floor and sat down next to me. I clicked on the TV and we started watching
Rap City
. We could hear Pop downstairs trying to sing through his vibe-triggered Jamaican accent. The deep thud from the kicks of his bass drum rattled the house. The chimes from the vibrating plates and forks acted as the nerved-up countdown music to our soon-to-come Dinner of Doom. Depending on the riddims he was rocking at the time, I could get a good gauge on his mood. Pop liked the old-school classics. Old Bob Marley covers, Toots and the Maytals, Burning Spears.