the Other Wes Moore (2010) (14 page)

Wes's smile always put people at ease.

Aunt Nicey was a second mother to Wes when he was growing up.

The cops stood outside for what seemed like forever, discussing our fate. I wanted to ask Shea if he had any of his "work" inside the bag too but decided against it, feeling it was better for me not to know. In fact, I didn't even want to talk to him. I wanted to wait in silence.

One of the officers, a stocky Italian with jet-black hair, moved toward the passenger side of the car and opened the front door. He folded himself in and looked back at us over his left shoulder. Shea and I sat silently, me with wet eyes and a look of uncertainty, Shea staring back with cocky, smug indifference. The cop turned back around and began to write something on a clipboard. Finally he looked back at us and said, "What the hell are you thinking?"

Almost simultaneously, Shea launched into his brilliant "It wasn't us" story while I loudly attempted to overrule him by apologizing profusely. When we were done with our overlapping monologues, we glared at each other.

The cop shook his head and pointed his right index finger in our direction. "You kids are way too young to be in this situation. But you know what, I see kids like you here every day. If you don't get smart, I am certain I will see you again. That's the sad part."

He paused and looked into our eyes, searching for a reaction. Mine were probably filled with tears. I was wincing because the handcuffs were beginning to hurt my wrists, but I was also sincerely fearful about what was going to happen next. And the self-righteous look on Shea's face was starting to piss me off. I'm sure in my outlaw fantasies I would've been as defiant as Shea, but something about this situation had soured me on romantic rebellion. It may have been the moment when the officer finally pulled my second arm behind my back and tightened the handcuffs. In that moment, I became aware of how I had put myself in this unimaginably dire situation--this man now had control of my body; even my own hands had become useless to me. More than that, he had control of my destiny--or at least my immediate fate. And I couldn't deny that it was my own stupid fault. I didn't have the energy for romantic rebellion--the possibility of losing all control of my life was like a depthless black chasm that had suddenly opened up in front of me. All I wanted to do was turn around, go home, and never find myself at this precipice again for such a stupid reason. Kid Kupid! What was I thinking?

The cop opened his car door, allowing himself out. The other officer began to move toward his side of the vehicle. Within moments they'd opened the back doors. The officer who'd been lecturing us reached in and grabbed me by the shirt until he could get a good grip on my shoulder and pull me out of the vehicle. As I cleared the door, he stood me up straight, and I noticed the same happening with Shea on the other side of the car. The officer reached down and, with a quick turn of his wrist, the cuff on my left wrist opened up.

"I hope you really listened to what I told you," he whispered in my ear, opening up the other cuff to let both of my hands free.

"Yeah, thank you," I replied as I rubbed each wrist with the opposite hand, trying to ease some of the pain of the metal handcuffs pressing against my skin.

"All right, guys, the bag is ours. Now get moving."

Shea looked as though he was about to start protesting to them about keeping the bag until I grabbed him by the left arm, telling him it was time to get moving. We began to walk back down Allerton Avenue, turning around every few seconds to see the cops, who were still staring at us. The cops gave us a gift that day, and I swore I would never get caught in a situation like that again.

A week later, Kid Kupid was on the loose again, adding my tag to another graffiti-filled Bronx wall.

Lost
1991

"Get up, get up, get out of your racks, plebes!"

It was 5:30 in the morning, my room was pitch-dark, and the sound of half a dozen teenagers screaming at the top of their lungs startled me out of the light sleep I'd just drifted into. I was on the top bunk of a metal bed that was more sturdy than comfortable--and probably built during the Second World War. My roommate was awake too--I could tell because he jumped out of the bottom bunk and stared up at me; even in the dark I could see that his face was masked with panic. He was wearing an oversize white T-shirt that draped over his bony shoulders and gray thermal underwear that covered his legs, which were now trembling in fear.

"Moore, we have to get up and go in the hallway!" he said. His pubescent voice was cracking from the stress.

He stood there for a moment, waiting for me to respond, shuffling his feet as if he had to go to the bathroom. His face was aimed at me, but his glasses sat on the wooden desk next to the bunk bed. The lenses were as thick as Coke-bottle bottoms, so I doubt he saw much.

I watched him do his pee-pee dance for a moment, then peeked over at our clock, which sat across the room. I couldn't believe it.

"Bro, it is five-thirty in the morning! You tell them to come get me around eight," I said and yanked my covers tighter around me. "I should be ready to go then."

My roommate somehow managed to look even more dumbfounded. Just as he was opening his mouth to say something, another yell came from the corridor, a single voice now, ordering us into the hallway. My roommate's attention shifted; he wasn't going to waste his time trying to convince me to get up. I was either really brave or really stupid, and he was not going to wait around to see which. Within moments, I was left alone in the room.

Once I had the room to myself again, I rolled over, turning my back to the door, and pulled the covers over my head to avoid the commotion coming from the hallway. Seconds after getting comfortable, I heard the yelling voice with a new clarity. It was right on the other side of my door.

"Why is there only one person outside this room?"

My door slammed open, and in walked First Sergeant Anderson, a high school senior with an impressively premature five-o'clock shadow, a scruffy voice, and the posture and mannerisms of a bulldog. Still half-asleep and turned away from the door--I refused to believe this was happening--I heard the sound of boots approaching my bunk and then stop. And that's when the screaming started. Anderson's anger, efficiently transmitted through his sonorous, full-toned voice, had shifted from general displeasure with all of us to a focused rage pointed in my direction.

"Get your goat-smelling ass out of the rack!

"I am going to smoke you so bad, they will need dental records to identify your body!

"You better get that z monster off your back, turdbird!"

Some of the curses he used I hadn't heard before. But I could figure out they weren't compliments or normal pleasantries.

I turned around so I could face him and was met with a fusillade of saliva as he continued his tirade. Why in the world was he yelling so early in the morning? And who did he think he was, screaming at me like that?

I slowly sat up and wiped the cold out of my eyes. The first sergeant paused for a moment--he saw me moving and must've figured his tantrum had done the trick. As silence finally returned to my room, I moved my hand from my eyes and calmly spoke: "Man, if you don't get out of my room ..."

His eyes widened, then slitted. His angry face broke into a devilish smile. Just as quickly as he'd come into the room, he walked out.

This was my first morning at the military school.

I knew my mother was considering sending me away, but I never thought she'd actually do it. The final straw came one evening while she sat downstairs on the phone listening to my dean from Riverdale explain why they were placing me on academic and disciplinary probation. It wasn't pretty. Bad grades, absence from classes, and an incident with a smoke bomb were just some of the reasons he rattled off as my mother sat silently on the couch with the phone to her ear. Her conviction was increasing with every bad report. Meanwhile, upstairs, Shani and I sat in my room watching television--or trying to. Our eighteen-inch color television, topped with a wire hanger where the antenna should have been, was a blizzard of snow. I got bored and looked around for alternative entertainment. The only thing available was my sister. I began to lightly punch her in the arm, first with my right fist, then with my left, trying to get her to pay attention to me. She stubbornly kept staring at the ghostly images of Pat Sajak and Vanna White flickering through breaks in the snow. Eventually she told me to stop, never taking her eyes off the screen, but I kept on aiming blows at her shoulder. Boredom in teenage boys is a powerful motivation to create chaos. At that moment, Shani's arm was my time filler.

Finally fed up, Shani turned to tell me to stop and, as she did, my right knuckles skipped off her shoulder and into her bottom lip, which immediately stained red.

In more shock than pain, Shani saw this as an opportunity. "Oooooh, Ima get you now," she said. She smiled slyly as the blood covered her bottom row of teeth.

The smile faded, and her bottom lip began to tremble. Her eyes filled with tears. And then came the scream...

"Mommy! Westley hit me in the face, and I'm bleeding really bad!"

Damn.

I tried to stop her from running to my mother, but she beat me to the door and began a full sprint down the hallway. Her screaming continued as she disappeared down the stairs. Her acting was stellar, and since she still had the blood on her rapidly swelling lip and the crocodile tears streaming down her face, I knew the evidence was against me. There was nothing left to do but wait. I sat back in front of the television and watched as Vanna came briefly into view, strutting across stage to turn a blank tile into the letter
R
.

When I heard my mother coming up the stairs, I braced myself. She walked into my room, tired from her long day at work, disappointed by the conversation she'd just had with my dean, and furious after seeing her youngest with a split lip that her only son had given her. As soon as she came close enough, I tried to plead my case, but as it turned out, she had nothing to say. She simply pulled her right hand back and slapped me.

The burn consumed the entire left side of my face. Not willing to show fear or weakness, I stood there looking back at her. I guess she was expecting tears or apologies. When neither came, she reached back and unloaded another slap to my face. She looked at me again, waiting for a reaction. My jaws clenched, and my hands balled into fists. By this time, I was five inches taller than she was, and my recently defined shoulders, biceps, and triceps made me look older than my age. Every reflex inside said to strike back, but I didn't. How could I? She was my everything, the person I loved and respected most in my world. I had no idea what to do.

Neither did my mother, it seemed. Her almond-shaped eyes were overflowing with anger, disappointment, and confusion, and maybe even a little fear. I would never have hit my mother. But in my room, at that moment, she was not so sure. She looked at me as if for the first time. The days when she could physically intimidate me were clearly over.

She turned around and walked out of the room. She was devastated. She was losing her son, and she was not sure how to turn the tide. We didn't know it at the time, but once alone, we both started to cry.

After my first sergeant left the room, I lay back down and pulled the covers back over myself. As my head hit the pillow, I smirked to think that I could make them leave my room so easily. I was from the Bronx, after all, maybe these country jokers were intimidated. Maybe I could manage this military school thing.

Moments later the door slammed opened again, hitting the wall so hard flakes of the crusty blue paint chipped off. My entire chain of command, eight large and angry teenagers, entered the room and, without saying a word, picked my mattress up off the top bunk and turned it over, dropping me five feet to the cold, hard, green-tiled floor.

Welcome to military school.

Valley Forge Military Academy is in Wayne, Pennsylvania. It's on the prestigious Main Line, just twenty-five minutes outside Philadelphia, on a rolling campus surrounded by overgrown foliage. It was a more austere version of Riverdale, a far cry from my Bronx neighborhood. Our days began before the sun came up and ended well after it retired. Over our first few days we would learn how to shine our shoes using Kiwi black shoe polish, a cotton rag, and a pretty disgusting amount of saliva. We would learn how to execute military commands and repeat our drill and ceremony so many times that "right face," "left face," and "parade rest" became as familiar as our own names. We would learn how to "square our meals," a way of eating that forced us to slow down and savor the sometimes unidentifiable cuisine we were forced to eat, and "square the corridors," which required marching around the entire hallway to leave the building, even if the exit was only a few steps away from your room. Our birth names were irrelevant, as were our past acquaintances and past accomplishments and past failures. We were the same now. We were nothing. In fact, we were less than nothing. We were plebes.