[3 of 5] Buck: A memoir, Chapters 19-27. by M. K. Asante (2013) - The U School 25-26 - Mellon - English 10-2
Author: M. K. Asante
Asante, M. K. (2013). Buck: A Memoir, Chapters 19-27. Spiegel & Grau.
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19
Can't Stop, Won't Stop
Roach is chasing me down the hallway, limping after me like a hungry pirate. He's the shape of a sack of laundry-a stuttering hamper coming right at me. I don't even know why he's chasing me or what I did this time. I just decide to run, so now I'm running, fast like how my dad says my great-great-grandfather ran when he escaped slavery in Valdosta. It's not even lunch yet and the Limp is after me. Feets, don't fail me now.
The BS starts in chemistry.
I get there and teacher Helga is in my ass like a bike with no seat.
"Where were you?" she asks like the police. Her face drags and drips like an old melted candle.
I just shrug. She doesn't know what's going on with my family. Doesn't want to know either Plus I'm not telling my whole life story in front of the class.
"Well what?"
"Detention," she says.
"Do what you gotta do," I say.
She notices my rolled-up sleeve. I'm wearing my fresh tat like a Purple Heart. It's big and raised like it's in 3-D.
"See, class?" she announces to everyone. "You'll go nowhere in life with that thing on your arm. Nowhere!"
Written in school textbooks, Bibles, et cetera.
Fuck a school lecture, the lies get me vexed-er
("One Love," Nas, 1994.)
She gets back to the class, lecturing us about substances that can't be broken down into any other substance.
"Helmets, helmets," she keeps saying in her thick German accent. Her voice is always harsh and angry. I laugh. She means "elements."
What's the point? My hands are in my pocket rubbing lint. I'm broke. Mom's broke. Dad's broke. Uzi's broken.
"Can you teach us how to make money?" | ask with my hand up.
"No. This is chemistry."
"You said that chemistry came from alchemy . . . and alchemy is turning base metals like copper and lead into precious metals like silver and gold . . . turning something into nothing . . . how do you turn rabbit ears into fat pockets?"
"Stop talking right now." She points at me.
Nothing they teach here is useful—just a bunch of stuff to memorize and spit back, like this is karaoke night. I don't see the point. Maybe it's like the whole camels-and-lions thing. Maybe this is where they train the camels to follow blindly. Tests, tests, and more tests, that's the only language they speak. Fuck their test. Life is my test.
I'm tagging in my notebook when I hear his voice in the hallway.
"Where's Milu?" | hear him ask. He can never say my name right. Why? It's not that hard—Malo (ma-low)—plus I hear this muhfucka say way harder names perfectly. He never fucks up Tsyplakov (sip-lih-kov) or Rydzewski (rid-zes-key) or Ruotsalainen (roo-aht-suh-li-nen). Fuck is so hard about Malo?
I don't even know why he's looking for me. I never know.
I slide out of the back door and into the hallway. He buzzes across my sight. Beelines toward me.
"Milu! Come!" he yells at my back like I'm Lassie. I might turn into Cujo on his bitch ass. I act like I don't hear him-he didn't call my name anyway.
I run down the hallway, book bags scattered along the sides like sandbags. All eyes on me. I slap all the open lockers shut. This school has mad hiding spots and I know them all. I've used them all before.
Random classroom—
Posters of dead white dudes-Washington, Adams, Jefferson-stare down at me as I hide. They grit on me like the judge gritted on Uzi in Arizona.
Storage closet—
Crystal finds me in here. Kianna calls Crystal a "fast-ass lil' skeezer." She's my age but she's always messing with older guys. She flashes me and I feel her up until Bobby, the janitor, old black dude with a pimp stroll, barges in. "Give me five on the black hand side," he says to me, then tells us "to get the hell outta here."
Bathroom—
I find my boy Jessie in here. He's mixed, lives with his white mom and grandma, who are both cool as shit. He writes graffiti and has a name all over West Philly. I wish he was in my grade but he's in high school. He pulls out a silver Sharpie and we bomb the stalls. He tells me about all the rappers who write graf.
"Fat Joe writes Crack. Masta Ace writes Ase. Havoc from Mobb Deep writes Nal. Bushwick Bill writes Spade. Fab 5 Freddy writes Spin."
Jessie writes JesOne. Me: MALO. They'll never forget my name.
I got twenty-five cans in my knapsack, crossin out the wick-wack
Puttin up my name with a fat capt
("Out for Fame," KRS-One, 1995.)
On the roof—
Bird's-eye of Philly. Dirty gray sky pushes down on me from above. Down below the city waits to swallow me up, its big mouth open wide like it's yawning.
I keep running. In the hallway, I bump into Fred. He's standing there with Flynn, this rich white kid who's always wearing bow ties and boat shoes and who likes to laugh and make fun of the starving African kids in the Feed the Children commercials-punk ass. Fred is mixed, black and white, and we go way back. Back in elementary we used to kill the talent shows. We were Kris Kross, had the whole school like "Jump, Jump" in our backward Phillies and Sixers jerseys, hair twisted up with little black rubber bands. We did the Kid 'n Play too, dancing, rocking the crowd like House Party. But now he hangs with these corny-ass kids. He fronts like he doesn't know me, doesn't know my mom, my dad, my bro, like we didn't spend weekends together playing in North Philly or Mt. Airy, like we never had love. Fred laughs when his new friends talk shit about black people like he's not half black. Fuck it, no time to think about that right now.
"Shhhhhh . . . don't say anything," is the only thing I say as I run past him. As soon as Fred sees me, then Roach, I hear him blurt out: "He went that way, Principal!"
At the end of the hallway, the end of the road, a dead end. My back against the big brown doors that sound like trucks when they open. Roach's a few feet away. I push the doors open with my
"If you leave, don't come back," he says.
The brown trucks give one last honk as I burst out into daylight and keep running.
Dear Carole,
The crowd of "friends" around me disappears after Chaka leaves. Every now and then Malo says, "So-and-so said to say hello." I ask him, "Why didn't you tell me that you saw so-and-so?" His response is, "They know your number." It sounds cold to me but it's true.
If they want to talk to me, they can pick up the phone or drop me a note. Some of them try. But truth be told, I don't want to hear from anyone. Why would I?
Who are these people and what are they to me? How do they see me and in whose image? The platitudes and praises are gone but I knew this. "Don't take it seriously," I remember telling myself. "There is an agenda behind those flowery words." Malo has always taken everyone with a grain of salt. At his young age, he knows bullshit. He wants no part of it. He knows how to hide his disdain, but doesn't.
They expect me to keel over and wither. They expect me to howl at the moon. They expect me to beseech and plead, to cower and beg, to grovel and bend. I'm dying a little inside but they don't know who I am: the little girl from Brooklyn that can throw down with the best of them. I'm in survival mode and it's taking all of the energy I have.
I'm in survival mode and everyone and everything that crosses my path has to bow to that energy. Even my dreams are in survival mode. "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger!" I wonder who said that. It might be true but all of this was killing ground. It was a matter of when and where. The killing ground was the given and I know it all too well. Survive and the ground won't swallow you! Survive and the fear won't envelop you! Survive and the next day the horizon appears just as you thought you were breathing your last breath. I know something about life and death. I can't embrace life the way that many people do but I know how to survive.
So it's no surprise when the company disappears and the phone calls stop. On chance meetings at a store or on the street, they examine me intensely, looking for "damage." | smile inside. The "damage" you are looking for has always been there. What you are seeing now is "survival."
God, give me strength.
Amina
20
C.R.E.A.M.
The root of evil isn't money, it's not having money. Brokeness blows dark thoughts into my mind like thick black smoke. The worst part is seeing my mom suffer. It weighs on me, clings to me like wet clothes.
Criminal minded you've been blinded . . .
The other night, riding 'round the city with Scoop and Amir, I peep what this whole world is about. It's as clear as a Ziploc that cash-bucks, endz, dough, bread, scratch, cheese, loot, green, gwop, bank—rules everything around me, near me, in the distance, and on the hazy horizon. I hink about all the songs about money: "Get Money," "For the Love of $," "C.R.E.A.M.," "All for he Money," "Dead Presidents," "Paid in Full," "It All Comes Down to the Money," "Mo Money Mo Problems," "Money, Power, Respect," "Money Money Money." About how all the artists that made those songs probably felt like I feel right now.
Visualizin the realism of life and actuality
Fuck who's the baddest a person's status depends on salary
("Life's a Bitch," AZ (Nas featuring AZ), 1994.)
I see how the jawns react to bread. Like this one girl, Jade, gorgeous thick dime jawn from Nicetown. She's older, like eighteen. One day I try to rap to her on the C bus, approach her all respectful, and she just igs me like I'm not even there. Then this other day I'm riding through her hood in Scoop's bug-eyed Benz and she spots me, flags me down like l'm a taxi. I barely have to speak, she just hops in and starts giving me head in the whip like l'm Joe Pesci in Casino. Later on she tells me, "Nghz are like bank accounts. Without money, they don't generate interest."
Far as I can see, money buys everything: hoes, cars, clothes, land, even freedom. Uzi's only in jail because we don't have the money to keep him out. At Uzi's sentencing, cracka-ass judge spent more time talking about fines and money and restitutions and penalties and paybacks and fees than anything else. Shit is a racket. Everybody's getting paid: the lawyers, the judges, the guards, the cops, the old chick with the glasses typing, all the companies making the uniforms, the hand-cuffs, the shackles. Everybody's banking-everybody except us.
I'm about to change that, though. I'm fifteen now, man of the house, and it's time to make my own way. America is about the golden rule: those with the gold make the rules. I'm getting my own gold. It's like that Billie Holiday song my mom used to play around the house: God bless the child that's got his own, that's got his own. It's on me. My mom is already stressed out enough, I'm not going to make it worse by asking her for money. I want to give her one less thing to worry about. I don't want to ask my pops. He's cheap and probably doesn't have it anyway. Plus-fuck asking. Asking means strings attached, means owing, and I don't owe nobody. I feel like I'm alone anyway.
Where did my family go? What happened to us?
The day has come. Time to get my hustle on. Fashion trends are always changing, but getting money is a style that never plays out. The hustle runs through my blood like diabetes.
Bone presses a code to unlock a door to a secret storage room in his basement. Everything is dark, smoky, shadowy. Duffle bags, scales, baggies. Barking, howling, pacing pits and Rots with wet fangs guard the gates to the Garden of Weeden. The basement is dark with low ceilings. Bone is short with hair all over his face like the Lebanese dudes that own all the sneaker stores on Market Street. He's got a blue Phillies fitted over his eyes.
"I get everything," he says. "Blueberry Kush, Super Skunk, Sour Diesel, White Widow, Maui Wowie, Blue Sky, Afghan Kush, Acapulco Gold, Holland's Hope, G-13, Jedi Kush, Northern Lights, Panama Red, Purple Haze, Quebec Gold, Three Kings, everything." Bone moves more trees than Timberland. "All my shit is KB, kine bud. Kine basically means 'the shit' in Hawaiian."
People around my way are used to dirt weed, that brown brick catnip shit from Mexico that smells like feet and doesn't really get you high, just gives you a sleepy headache, and has more seeds and stems than Fairmount Park. Some grimy dealers spray their dirt with Raid ant killer and try to call it exotic.
My plan is to bring Bone's shit back around my way and make a killing.
I got advice from my father, all he told me was this
Ngh, get off your ass if you plan to be richt
("Blasphemy," 2pac, 1996.)
I know Bone through Amir, and Amir knows him through Damien. Damien is this fat black boy from South Philly who lives with Bone, they're like brothers. He's also the hatchet man, the bodyguard, down to do dirt. Amir tells me that Damien killed somebody who owed Bone a hundred bucks, just off principle.
We walk into the main room and Damien starts talking shit, first on Amir, then on me, then Bone:
"Amir so black he bleeds smoke.
"Malo, your head looks like Mt. Rushmore . . . Your hats and haircuts should cost extra.
"Doesn't Bone look like a retarded albino Chihuahua?"
The whole time Amir is just shaking his head, trying not to laugh. Then Amir slowly rises to his feet for his stand-up:
"Damien, you so ugly, when you smile your face hurts.
"You so fat you livin large.
"Look at your hairline, Damien, it's pushed so far back I can read your damn mind.
"Damien's so fat he got arrested for having twenty pounds of crack!"
Everybody laughs except Bone, who takes me back into the stash room. He weighs out three ounces on a digital scale.
"You got three things," he says. "Good, fast, and cheap . . . but you can only have two at any given time. So if it's fast and cheap, it ain't good. If it's good and cheap, it ain't fast." He hands me the work. "This right here: fast and good . . . not cheap."
Dear Carole,
Philadelphia public schools are notorious in many ways and I need to protect Malo as much as I can. Malo has been stoic throughout all of this but I wonder what is going on with him inside.
My mind is on the future and determining what school Malo will attend. Education for me was always the key and I assumed that my sons would feel the same way. After all, African Americans have made great strides but we still have so far to go. That is my dream for my children but reality is seeping in as they let me know in many different ways that they don't want to follow. Like Daudi, Malo was expelled from the seventh grade. And like Daudi, he has picked up on the thug life. My sons love the hood and its most material aspects. He is wilding out. He smokes weed and drinks. He seems most concerned with hanging out and doesn't want to spend any energy on his future right now. He is angry with me and I understand that.
I understand Malo's need to explore and test the boundaries. I rebelled in a different way but I definitely rebelled. But as someone who grew up in the hood, I am all too aware of its dangers and peril, especially for young black men. It will sort itself out but I know that this precipice that they are on could drop from underneath them and then the journey is over.
I want to protect Malo most at a time when he least wants to be protected. I want to be close to him when he wants to be as far away from me as possible. I sense the perils that hover over him and smell the excitement and the adventures that await him. My sons are dear to me. Daudi with his maddening, manic behavior and Malo with his sly, confident moves are a part of me.
I hug Malo but my mind is on the future. How is it that the future has become so tenuous for both of my sons and, truth be told, me?
God, give me strength.
Amina
21
G-TOWN
Me and my mom move to the twelfth floor of this building in Germantown that my mom calls a "concrete monstrosity." My old neighborhood, in Olney, wasn't the ghetto. It had its ghetto parts with drugs and shootings like everywhere in Philly, but my block was nice and our crib was a big brown and white Tudor house. But this new spot in G-Town is the ghetto for real. Our building looks like Tracy Towers, the building where my cousins stay at in the Bronx, and Tracy Towers looks like the building from Good Times. Ain't we lucky we got 'em.
And like Tracy Towers, our building has an incinerator for trash. My mom tells me where it is and hands me a plastic CVS bag full of trash. I walk across the hall to the little incinerator room. It's warm and smells like the steam from manholes. I grab the metal handle and pull open the shaft. I can feel the heat from below. I put the bag in the chute, close it, and listen to our trash fall, crash, and burn.
I didn't want to move here, but fuck it, l'm never home, so it doesn't really matter where I live, I guess. It's like Uzi said: "I'm a Nomadic Addict Merchant." Anyway, it's probably a good thing. I think my mom needs to get away from our old crib, too many memories. Too much pain living in those old walls.
Our new walls are paper thin, absorbing the voices, noises, and lives of the people living above, below, on both sides, and across from us—box life.
Germantown is still Uptown Philly, it's like a ten-minute ride from Olney. It's blacker than Olney, though. In Olney, you got everybody-Cambodians, Indians, Russians, Puerto Rocks, Caribbeans, blacks, whites—on some United Nations shit. G-Town is basically all black except for the people that own the blur of sneaker, beauty, and liquor stores and the bail bond, check-cashing, and tax return spots and the Chinese food, Chicago, Louisiana, Kentucky, New York, and Hollywood Fried Chicken joints. Other than that it's all black.
We live on the twelfth floor. From the terrace, everyone below looks like little commas. Rooftops bright with hanging laundry and satellite dishes. At night, police choppers, ghetto birds—vultures—fly around with their thirsty searchlights crawling up the walls, flooding the night.
It's cold. The heat in our apartment isn't working, so I pull the oven open.
The walls in my room are naked white and I ain't putting no clothes on this cave bitch. No posters, no pictures, no shit to remember or to live by, no nothing. Who knows how long I'll be here?
I'm older now, see what having a father's about
One day they can be in your life, next day they be out
("Poppa Was a Playa," Nas, 1998.)
My mom tells me I got a letter from my dad. I'm still too mad at him to open it. I just add it to the pile. When Amir comes over to see our new spot, he peeps the stack.
"These all from your dad?" he asks, thumbing through the envelopes.
"Yeah."
"You ain't open none of 'em?" he says, face scrunched in confusion.
"I don't fuck with him like that. Not after what he did." Every time I think about my dad, I see him leaving, hear my mom crying, and feel Uzi screaming in the cage.
"Man, at least you got a pop. At least he's trying. Nobody's perfect but at least you can talk to him, at least he wants to talk to you." He stares through me, his eyes burning into mine. Amir has never met his dad even though they live in the same neighborhood. "You know what I'd do to get a letter from my dad? A phone call? An acknowledgment? Anything, anything!"
Amir takes off his chain.
"See this?" He flashes it, then throws it to me. The chain is silver and flat with a charm on the end.
"That was my dad's. It's the only thing he left." The charm is a symbol l've seen somewhere before but can't place it. It kind of looks like a W with too many loops and arrow points at the top. Maybe it's another language?
The next time my pop calls, I pick up. I don't know what the fuck to say. I want to hang up.
"Come stay with your father a few nights . . . in Levittown."
"Levittown?" I say after a while. Where the hell is that? There is so much I want to say but I don't want to show him how hurt I am. "That sounds far."
"It's not that far from Philly, depending on traffic. About forty-five minutes."
"Forty-five minutes? Might as well live in Jersey."
"Well, it's actually right on the border. This area was built after the war by Levitt and Sons. They wouldn't sell to black people. The first black people to move into this neighborhood, Bill and Daisy Myers, in 1957 . . . I think it was '57 . . . they moved to Dogwood Hollow. People threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at their house, drove by and screamed 'nigger' and 'porch monkey,' bomb threats. They stayed in Levittown, though, stuck it out. They called Daisy Myers the Rosa Parks of the North."
"You moved out there because of all that?"
"No. I thought I should get out of the city . . . and this is all I could afford. But let's talk about this face-to-face. I want to see you."
"Nah, I gotta stay here. Somebody's gotta watch after Mom. She's sick, remember?"
"Let me come pick you up. We can talk."
"Nah," I say, ice cold.
"Why?" he asks.
"You made your bed. Lie in it."
Dear Carole,
I am sure that Malo is selling weed or something! How can I say that so calmly? My calm is actually tenuously sitting on a very stormy sea and one more huge wave can knock the two of us into the water, never to come up again. I tried to give Malo some money and he told me not to worry-he had money, and if I needed money, he would give me some. I just looked at him. I heard what he was saying and I could see his mouth move but I couldn't comprehend that this child had his own money. He is fiercely independent.
I'm not afraid for him just as I wasn't afraid for myself when at a younger age than Malo I rolled a drunk's pocket in the hallway of my apartment building on Cooper Street in Brooklyn. He was there for the taking and I with no money saw him lying there and I could hear the jingle of coins in his pockets. He would mumble a few words every now and then but he was basically out of commission. Where did I even get the notion to roll him? I honestly don't know. But I did just that. I was able to get a few dollars and thought no more about it.
I never asked Malo if he was selling weed but I know and I also know that the ground beneath us has gone asunder.
Malo doesn't know what tomorrow will bring now that his father has left. He doesn't trust the state that I am in or will be in. And why should he? His father was a constant. Not because he was always at home but because he had always been on the road, and when he wasn't on the road he was always at the office, and when he wasn't at the office he was always cheerful. "Wake up in joy" was his expression in the morning. He didn't have to be hospitalized and he wasn't sad and he didn't take medicine for depression, so despite his chronic absences from Malo's childhood, he was a known equation.
I, on the other hand, represented the mercurial, the artiste, the reclusive, and the unknown. Perhaps Chaka had spoken to Malo about my "condition." I don't know. I am the parent that is there but not there. Chaka was away but he wasn't away. At least that is what everyone likes to think.
My mother called me a thief. She said if there was one thing that she couldn't stand, it was a "thief and a liar." | was both. I stole because I had to. My mother seemed oblivious to our plight, so I had to do something about it. My mother felt that honesty somehow trumped poverty and that we could hold on to honesty even when we were hungry. I didn't buy that line and was angry with my mother for a long time because of that.
I stole food from the corner store until they caught me and told me never to come in the store again. I stole food. After Ben and Irving (that was the name of the store owners) banned me from the store, I sent my brother to go "get" food for us. I stole from my aunt. I would wait for her to go to sleep and then I would roll her. She snored heavily and that was my signal to go into her purse and take some money. Unlike my mother, she always had a little money on her. During the day she carried her money in her bra but there was always a few dollars in her purse. I never took everything and tried to take an amount that she wouldn't miss. Eventually I was caught and had to pay my aunt back but the worst part was my mother's scorn: "I don't care how smart you are, if you are a liar and a thief, you will never be any good." The ironic part is that my aunt took advantage of my mother and our situation for years. She didn't have a problem cheating us and there wasn't anyone to call her out on this.
There was a time when I stole the rent money from a family that lived right behind us. I can still see them. There was a mother and father in that apartment so that stuck out. I was back there playing with the kids and somehow I noticed the envelope with the rent money. Now this was a lot of money. It was around ninety dollars. I took the entire en-velope. This was serious business and I felt it. I remember their grief at "losing" the money and how everyone was looking for the money. They never suspected me and I don't know why they didn't. This was a terrible move on my part. First of all, it was really more money than I could handle. It took me forever to spend it and I ended up giving some of it away and my aunt cheated me out of the rest. Secondly, they moved shortly afterward and I always felt responsible for that.
My mother got wind that I had some money and of course she asked me about it. I wasn't going to tell her where the money came from. A constant threat in my home was the juvenile detention center, where liars and thieves were sent if they continued to mis-behave. My aunt stepped up to the plate and said that the money was hers. Now I knew that was a lie but there was nothing that I could say. So my aunt was the lucky recipient of my ill-gotten goods and I was on punishment once again. Things are never what they seem. I believe that my mother knew that my aunt was a liar and a cheat but she depended on my aunt emotionally and in some ways financially. I think that my mother's super-piousness stemmed from an imaginary place that placed an extraordinary value on being "good."
Malo isn't in the exact place that I was but he is in a place that has him thinking for the first time in his life about survival. I understand that and I trust him but I don't want him selling weed.
God, give me strength.
Amina
22
Trouble in Paradise
I hit up Twin Gold on Fifth Street to buy a fourteen-karat white gold tennis bracelet for Nia. She didn't ask for it. It's not her birthday or anything, I just want to do something nice for her. I give it to her and her eyes light up. Then they get dim. She puts two and two together and asks me straight up if I'm selling.
"Don't ask too many questions and I won't tell you no lies," I say, laughing. I forget where I heard that. She's not laughing, though.
"I'm getting money." I pull out a knot as thick as a pocket Bible, trying to impress her. "That's all that matters."
"That's not all that matters, Malo! You know where you're going to end up doing that."
"Where?"
"Dead or in jail."
"Look," putting my money away, "I need a girl to blow my mind, not my high. You know how many—"
"What? How many girls are easily impressed? I'm not them. Money doesn't impress me. Everything isn't about money." There's something refreshing about that but I'm not trying to hear that right now.
"Yeah? Like what isn't?"
"Love, my love for you . . . do you know what that means? Love?" | think about love. I do love Nia but haven't told her yet. I shrug.
"Love is learning the song in someone's heart and singing it to them when they forget, forget who they are, forget where their brother already is."
I try to kiss her—
"Don't."
She gives me an ultimatum: her or hustlin.
My palms itch, I can feel the money coming.
My heart hurts, I can feel Nia leaving.
My soul cries, I feel death calling.
I choose the hustle.
Dear Carole,
The people who were always around during my marriage left without a goodbye. They didn't leave really, they disappeared. One day they were there and then they were gone. In their absence, I survive. In their absence, I pull in the night and walk with the day. In their absence, I don't suffer fools and prophets. Instead, I listen to the silence. In their absence, the silence whispers and then shouts and I listen. In their absence, I learn the meaning of one. In their absence, I cry without tears and sound but cry just the same. In their absence, I stand for fear of what would happen if ! lie down. In their absence, I remember how I used to play.
Double Dutch was my game and I was good at it. I loved the competitive nature of it and winning brought me great pleasure and attention. The older girls let me jump with them, and the rope became a safe haven for me. "All, all, all in together now, how do you like the weather now. . ." I knew how to play. I could remember "scaling" fences and how exhilarated it made me feel to be able to go over the fence without touching it with my legs. I knew how to play. I knew how to play stoopball. I loved handball although my brother always beat me at it. I drove my sister's bike until I almost ran over a little girl and the father said to me, "You are too big to be riding a bike!" Is that what he meant to say? I was thirteen or fourteen. I lived on Georgia Avenue then. I stopped riding Maggie's bike after that and it was stolen shortly after that. Who told me I couldn't have fun? I know how to play.
God, give me strength.
Amina
23
The Greek
Ryan's gun in my grill.
"Don't point that shit at me," I say, pushing him away. He tilts the piece in my direction-this way, that way, like he's selling it to me. Morning light bounces off black steel.
"Fuck you say about my mama?" he says like O-Dog from the opening scene in Menace II Society. He stands, points the tool in the air, and flashes a smirk.
"You feel sorry for who?" he says, and moves closer.
"I don't want any trouble," I say like the Korean shopkeeper. "Just get out!"
Blal! Blal! Blal! He punches the gun sideways and I can almost hear gunshots. Blal! Blal! Blal!
"Where's the motherfuckin videotape? Give me the motherfuckin videotape . . . Stop, bring yo . . ." Blal! Blal!
"Hey, ngh. Clean the cash register. Come on," he says, and sprints out of my room laughing. He comes back in with a big smile on his face. "Today is the day," he says. "The Greek. Get up! Time to ride out."
The Greek is this festival where everybody goes buck. A Carolina-blue sky hangs over West Phil. The thermometer above the PSFS bank on Girard Ave. says it's 101 degrees. We pull up to the Greek like Mad Max, zooming over cobblestones and trolley tracks on ATVs.
I'm on a black Yamaha Banshee four-wheeler with chrome pipes, hitting the throttle and making it growl like a Harley. Vhm-hm-vhm-vhm-vhm-vhm-vhmmmmm. Ryan is on a Banshee too, blue and yellow, with a cocaine-white T-shirt wrapped around his head like some Saudi oil sheik. Amir and Kam are on dirt bikes. Then there's the extended fam, other crews on all types of off-road shit. Big tees flapping in the wind as we weave up Girard Ave. through parking-lot-pace traffic. We ride into the Plateau and chill on a hill overlooking the festival.
Out in Philly we be up in the parks
A place called the Plateau is where everybody go
("Summertime," DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, 1998.)
The park is jumping, the most people l've seen in one place since my pops took me to the Million Man March, the last place I remember chilling with my dad, just me and him, and a million other brothers. I remember Farrakhan saying: "We want to bring you back to Washington with your wives . . . because the new century must be the century of family. Without strong family you don't have strong community or a strong nation. We must rebuild the black family." I guess we ain't going back to Washington.
The Greek isn't about black family, it's about black freaks. Hot boys stuntin, fly girls struttin, every-goin back e mishi about black freaks Hot by stuntin, its struti, everybody showin out. Girls, every shade of brown, colorful as feathers, brush by looking like queens, stars, models, video vixens, hood rats, and hot-ass messes. They cut across my sight with big phat donkey butts switching in every direction. Crayola hair colors. Daisy Dukes cut as tight as bikinis. D cups fall into the dope boy whips: 600 Benzes with AMG kits, 5-Series Beamers, Mazzies, Lambos, Rostas, Raris, Double R's.
Banging girls with skin like shiny marble. Diesel dudes shove by with cobras and boa constrictors around their necks like gold chains. Shorts and Timbs. Polo sweats with one leg up. Jerseys: Iverson, Kidd, Bryant, Jordan. Mecca, FUBU, Maurice Malone, Pelle Pelle, Enyce, Ice Berg, Moschino, Versace, Lo. Lowriders with hydraulics and juicy paint jobs, cruising on three wheels, hitting switches like mad scien-tists. Dudes with canes, dancing with arms out. Pink, yellow, purple biker shorts. Herringbones. Bathing suits. Bandanas. Some girls dancing on top of cars. Washcloths on top of their domes. Drinking bottles of beer. Wet T-shirt contest. Junk trunks. Booty shake shake-offs. Hot dogs and burgers on the grill. Even white girls out here, the kind with wraps and gold chains, white chocolate.
Anything goes out here. Guys film up girls' skirts. Girls whip their titties out like badges-flash. Dudes pulling their dicks out, flashing girls. Every few minutes—a roaring outbreak. Thirsty guys with camcorders getting girls in booty shorts to go buck.
"Take yo shirt off . . . Let me see something . . . Pull 'em out . . ." Hands grabbing whatever they can.
"Stop . . . Move . . . Get away ngh . . ." They run through an endless tunnel of pinchers, cuppers, cuffers, palmers, grabbers. Asses bouncing everywhere like a Snoop video. Dudes splash water on chicks like it's champagne and they just won the championship. "Pussy," someone says. We turn to see a girl with a short-ass skirt and no panties. Fifty dudes swarming her, video cameras pointed every which way like the paparazzi. A circle with popping pussies and asses in the center.
The crowd moves to South Street and I think about Odunde, this summertime African festival on South Street that my dad took me to back in the day. I remember all the people, the families, smiling, dancing, eating, laughing, posing for photos. I remember how my dad would give me ten bucks and I'd bargain with the vendors. Then we'd follow this procession led by stilt dancers in African masks with drums and shekeres and stop at the South Street bridge overlooking the Schuylkill River.
From the street, we would watch the priest and priestess, dressed in white robes, stand over the bridge singing African hymns, dancing, and throwing flowers into the river.
"They're making an offering to Oshun," I remember my dad telling me. "Oshun is the unseen mother present at every gathering. She is the goddess of the river. The Yoruba say that no one is an enemy to water and therefore everyone must respect Oshun." The crowd joins the white robes and catches the spirit, chanting and shaking.
"The Yoruba say that when she possesses her followers, she dances, flirts, and then weeps."
"Weeps? Why?" I said, thinking about my mom.
"Weeps because no one can love her enough and the world is not as beautiful as she knows it could be."
Night falls hard.
Me, Amir, and Scoop hit up Club McDonald's on Broad and Susquehanna. Most of the people who were at the park earlier are now out here in front of Mickey D's. Steam shoots up from manholes. Scuffles, commotion, little rumbles break out around us. Scoop is thirsty for drama. He's mean-mugging every-body, pushing nghz, and instigating fights.
The Ruff Riders crew zooms back and forth on Kawasakis, tires burning rubber and spinning smoke in the street. They put on a show, busting out long seat-scraping-street wheelies while they stand up, sit with their feet on the handlebars, legs crossed, backward, one foot, no hands-showtime.
Shots ring out, buck! buck! buck! The crowd stampedes like the running of the bulls. Girls scream. This way, that way, everybody zigzagging. Police horses screech, kick high, and charge the crowd. I catch Amir's eyes-heavy, alert, and breathing like glowing coals. I lose him and Scoop in the chaos. I scan the faces, but they're gone. More shots pop in the night. I run with the flow of the crowd to avoid getting trampled. I push up against the backs of strangers, dominoing around, drifting farther and farther into darkness.
I walk home alone, thinking about the last time I saw Amir.
24
Homegoing
25
Killadelphia, Pistolvania
A gleaming black casket lined with satin cream ruffles. The smells of talcum powder, oil sheen, and death float through the tight room.
Tears explode from dark sockets, streak across puffy brown cheeks, and run under veils.
"When are y'all going to wake up?" the funeral director asks us. "Y'all got to wake up now . . . or rest in peace." After the service he calls all the young people to the back of the funeral home.
Ryan leans over to me. "I don't even care who, Malo, but somebody got to pay." He tells me to keep my suit on. "Or whatever you might want to get buried in." He's got two gats on him like Face/Off.
"While revenge weakens society, forgiveness gives it strength," the director says.
I'm numb to the world. A chunk of my soul is gone, and even offing the ngh that did it—if we knew who did it—wouldn't bring my best friend back. I hear his funny voice—Malo, you so black you showed up to my funeral naked—but a cold, pained grimace is as close as I get to laughter. I know his playful self would want me to laugh, to smile, but I can't. Amir's mom sobs with a veil over her face, eyes as thin as paper cuts. I pull out the chain Amir left at my house the other day, the one he always wore, hand it to her.
She gives it back. "He wanted you to have it," she whispers under soft piano sounds. I put it on and tell myself I'll never take it off.
Long barrel automatics released in short bursts
The length of black life is treated with short worth
("Thieves in the Night," Black Star, 1998.)
"I know y'all are hurting, l'm hurting too. Every week I'm burying kids. Babies in boxes. Younger and younger each year: twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. Virgins! A young person dies and us old folks imagine all of the experiences we would have wished for you . . . You aren't even giving yourselves a chance at life, a chance to be lawyers, doctors, teachers. You're giving it all up to be statistics!"
He shows us the coffins and tells us, "The little ones, for teenagers like y'all, are my best sellers and business is booming! Booming!. . . But I want you to put me out of business. Put me under! I'd rather sink than to have to keep burying babies."
I think about how we used to brag about Philly being the murder capital—da murda cappy—and how this year, in Philly, we got more dead bodies than days. Shit ain't cool. Anybody can get it. Amir wasn't even the target. Nghz can't even aim 'cause they got no direction.
Some kid behind me says, "I can't die yet anyway, ain't got nobody to pay for my funeral."
Me and Ryan spark a blunt and hotbox the car on our way home. Smoke curls through the whip as we drive through the city, buzzing by faces. I study each one. The cops don't have a suspect, so everyone we drive past, pull up next to, or see on the street is a possible suspect. The cops are suspect for not having any suspects. They never have any suspects when we die. Tupac gets shot, dies, no suspects. Biggie gets shot, dies, no suspects. Big L gets shot, dies, no suspects. Amir gets shot, dies, no suspects. My soul weeps for Amir, for all the Amirs in this city.
We blaze until our eyes bleed.
26
The Pipeline
We pour into Fels High like syrup, steady and slow.
This school looks just like jail. I wonder why mad schools look like jails. Or do jails look like schools? The jail Uzi's in actually looks nicer than this. If schools look like prisons, and prisons look like schools, will we act like students or prisoners? Police roam the hallways whirling nightsticks like band directors. The windows are tinted with bars. No sunlight like a casino and you never win in here either.
At my old school, Friends, the teachers always fucked with me. At Fels, the teachers don't know who the fuck I am. Overcrowded like Amistad. Fels is the opposite of my old school, Friends-Foes. They say Foes is one of the best schools in the city. They say Fels is one of the worst. Foes, private. Fels, pub. Foes, mostly white. Fels, mostly black. Foes kids' parents got tuition money. Fels kids' parents ain't even got lunch money.
The metal detector line is long like the line to get into Club Dancers on Saturday nights. A bucket full of lighters, nail files, pocket knives. Everybody beeping, police digging through bags like moles. It takes forever to get in.
The hallway is a fashion show. Muhfuckas won't even come to school if they ain't got something fresh to throw on.
The bell goes off like we're in some factory somewhere. Here.
First period—
I think this is homeroom. The teacher never shows up so no one really knows. Girls just sit and do their
makeup and hair. I dip in and out of the pissy hallways.
"Take your hat off . . . Pull up your pants . . . Where's your hall pass?" The guards yell every fifteen seconds like a recording. I act like I'm going to take my fitted off, then pull it down. I pull my pants up and let them fall back down-kiss my ass, toy cops.
I spill Remy on imaginary graves
Put my hat on my waves
("Take It in Blood," Nas, 1996.)
The pyros light the trash cans on fire around this time. The smoke detectors don't work, so the bathrooms are on Amsterdam, smoke clouds thick enough to hold rain. The first fight always jumps off around this time, either in class or in the hallway. We chase the fights like Action News reporters run after stories. Motherfuckers get their ass beat coming into school in the morning and leaving in the afternoon.
Sometimes this Chinese teacher, Mr. Lee, comes in and takes roll.
"Yo," this kid Lamont says real loud after Mr. Lee calls my name on the first day of school. The whole class turns to hear what he's about to say. "What the fuck is a Malo?" Everybody laughs. Lamont is strong but he's slower than a tar drip, too slow to see it coming. I show him what a Malo is, right there in the middle of the class, hit him with the punch my uncle Jabbar showed me, make him swallow and spit at the same damn time.
Second period—
"Turn off your beepers and cell phones" is how Ms. Mackey greets us every morning. Nobody turns shit off. My jawn vibrates like an engine on my hip. I don't even know what class this is or what Mackey teaches. The flickering fluorescence over our heads reminds me of hospitals and nightmares. There's never enough seats, so if you don't snag one early, she makes you stand up against the wall like a wallflower at a house party. This one day, when there are no seats, she gives me the evil eye 'cause I sit on the desk.
"Whatever your name is—off the desk!" she barks. She doesn't know anybody's name. When she calls roll, she just listens, never even looks up.
"My leg hurts," | say, all in my I-shall-not-be-moved Rosa Parks bag.
"Off the damn desk!"
"Don't talk to him like that." My homegirl Tamara jumps up. "You need to get some more seats up in here." Tamara is always rumble ready. Sometimes she comes to school in her fight gear: sweatpants, beat-up Reebok Classics, fake Gucci scarf, Vaseline face.
Mackey grabs the phone and, within seconds, police with crooked mugs and big black boots are dragging us out. Her class is stupid anyway, you just copy whatever she writes on the board, which doesn't usually make sense. If someone asks a question, she calls them "ulcers" and starts talking about how she doesn't even want to be here and how she gets paid either way. Sometimes she's too lazy to come and we get a sub-fresh meat.
Every period I think about Amir. Sometimes it feels like he's right there, sitting next to me cracking jokes and sunflower seeds.
Third, fourth, and fifth periods—
Lunch, lunch, and lunch. Every student is assigned a lunch, either third, fourth, or fifth period. I don't know which lunch I am . . . so I always hit up all three. The cafeteria guard doesn't say shit because he's a customer, buys an eighth of Sour Diesel from me every other week.
The cafeteria: bananas, pure chaos. The benches and tables are bolted down and midget-low from when this used to be a middle school. There's always a couple fights during the first lunch, mostly girls, haymakers and windmills, boobs popping out like Jell-O, spinning, spitting, a lot of hair pulling. The fights leave weave tracks and braids scattered on the floor, right there with the spilled milk, baked beans, and textbooks facing down, pages open like dead birds.
Fourth lunch is live because that's when my homies Q-Demented, QD, this Puerto Rican rap crew from Olney, come through and murder the cypher. They roll into lunch mad deep like Wu Tang. It's usually Apathy, Blacastan, Block McCloud, Celph Titled, Crypt the Warchild, Demoz, Des Devious, Doap Nixon, Esoteric, Journalist, Jus Allah, King Magnetic, King Syze, Planetary, Reef the Lost Cauze, Vinnie Paz, and V-Zilla. I huddle with them and kick freestyles:
Boom box, beat box, or table drum, don't matter-the beat goes on like life does. Girls come around, dance, back it up for us real quick, and stomp away laughing.
Fifth lunch is the Wild West.
I shoot dice with the get-money boys in the corner. I shake, roll, then jump back fast like bacon's popping.
"Door blow . . . head crack . . . faded . . . bet, bet, bet. . ." as red dice tumble around fresh Timbs, Air Maxes, and Jordans. Sometimes I come up a couple hunnit, sometimes not. That's the game, like life, mountains and valleys, ups and downs.
/Fifth lunch is like a slaughterhouse, the killing fields. Gang fights, knives, all-out food fights, even race wars: Cambos vs. blacks, Puerto Rocks vs. blacks, whites vs. everybody. Me, I'm cool with all the races. My favorite color is green.
I don't know what classes I have after fifth period; I never stay longer than the last lunch. There's really no point. There's no learning going on at Fels, just rules and yelling and chaos and screaming correc-tional-officer teachers. I feel like I can learn more outside of these dead school walls.
Every day I dip out the back door of the cafeteria, hop the metal fence, and speed away from the school that looks like jail, feels like jail. They do what they always do, the only thing they know how to do, what jails do: punish me with detention and probation, like the judge did Uzi.
27
Shape-Up
—"'Sup, this Malo. Right place, wrong time. You know the drill . . ."
ー*10
—"Welcome. You have eleven new messages . . ."
In Fresh Cutz barbershop getting my weekly shape-up, checking the voice mail on my new Motorola StarTAC. I give everybody my new number, even my school so they don't stress my mom with their BS. I keep my hair in a low, dark hustla jawn with long sideburns. In Philly, a fresh cut is mandatory. Jawns be like, Damn, ngh, you wolfin, if your shit ain't sharp.
—"What's up, Malo? Dis Keisha from the other night, at Gotham. Hit me up, boo." Message deleted.
—"Son, it's your father. I'm trying to connect with you. How are you? Call me back, please. I want to see you, need to see you, it's been way too long." Message deleted.
Fresh Cutz is around my old way in Olney. They sell everything: DVDs, water ice, birthday cards, socks, incense, whatever. They're always selling random shit. When I walk in, Mike, my barber, asks me, "You know anyone who wants to buy some vending machines?" Mike is a cool old head hustleman. He's pi-geon-toed, which makes all his sneaks lean.
"Vending machines?" I laugh. "Nah."
—"This is a very important automated message from the School District of Philadelphia; please listen carefully . . . Hello, this is Samuel Fels High School calling about your child's attendance who was absent today, missing all scheduled periods. Please call the office—" Message deleted.
The crackheads outside the shop are wiping down my new whip: a baby-blue Ford Explorer coupe, eighteen-inch Asanti wheels, 5 percent limo tint, an Xtant/JL Audio system so loud you can hear me coming from a block away.
"That muhfucka bad," the smokers say when I pull up. I can feel all the girls in the salon next to the shop checking for me when I pull up. Driving this car, hanging with Scoop, and getting paid has got grown-ass women throwing the panties at me. MILF jawns with mortgages and kids my age.
—"I don't even know why I would even believe that you would call me back after I let you hit. You're a trifling-ass person but it's cool 'cause karma's a bitch and I wish I could be there when it bites you in the ass! Fuck you, you stupid lying-ass bitch . . . Oh, and I'm not trying to make you feel some type of way because I'm sure you don't even give a fuck but—" Message deleted.
—"Son, it's your father. Please call me." Message deleted.
I'm blowing money faster than a hollow-tip. I get it, I spend it. It takes my mind off the bullshit: off the fact that my best friend is gone, my mom is in a coma, my dad left, my sister's on the funny farm, and my brother is locked in a dog kennel in Arizona. I run through Vizuris and Bloomingdale's and Neiman Marcus with Scoop. Versace. Iceberg. Moschino. Ralph Lauren Purple Label. Tommy Hill. YSL. Jordans. Timbs. Air Maxes. DKNY. Gucci. We walk out of the mall swinging bags like bandits.
My Moschino hoe, my Versace hottie
Come to find out you was fuckin everybody
("Get Money," Junior M.A.F.I.A., 1996.)
I'm like my mom in that way, I like all the finer things in life. Everything I want is expensive. It's crazy that people only say hello and thank you in this city when you're in a store buying shit. When you're spending money, everyone is your friend. People open doors, smile at you, laugh at your jokes, apologize all the time. Let me get that for you . . . Can I help you?. . . May I? . . . Fake fucks.
New Jack City is on in the barbershop. Nino's like: "I'm not guilty. You're the one that's guilty. The lawmakers, the politicians, the Colombian drug lords, all you who lobby against making drugs legal. Just like you did with alcohol during the prohibition. You're the one who's guilty. I mean, c'mon, let's kick the ballistics here: Ain't no Uzis made in Harlem. Not one of us in here owns a poppy field. This thing is bigger than Nino Brown. This is big business. This is the American way."
—"Stay away from my girl, dog, forreal. Keisha's mine. I'm not gon' tell you again, man, she mine." Message deleted.
I realize you can spend any amount of money too. The more you get, the more you spend. I used to think a thousand dollars was a lot of money, but me and Scoop blow that in a night now. My Versace jacket cost a G. No matter how much I spend, though, the pain is still there, it never goes away, like a tattoo.
—"Malo, it's Bone. Hit me up, let's get this paper." Message deleted.
I'm spending money and, at the same time, learning all types of interesting things about money. I don't even call it "paper" anymore like everybody else does because money isn't actually paper-it's cot-ton, the same cotton my dad picked, his dad, and his dad before that. One of my customers works at the Mint in Old City, he showed me how they make money. I broke him off with an eighth of Purple Haze and showed him how I make money.
—"You are the most ignorant person I have ever met in my life! Fuck you, Malo! You ain't shit and I hope your ugly black ass gets hit by a truck—" Message deleted.
I also stop calling money "dead presidents." Jay-Z's got that song "Dead Presidents" where he samples Nas on the hook, saying, "I'm out for presidents to represent me." Then there's that movie Dead Presidents with the chick blasting out of the dumpster in whiteface. But Benjamin Franklin is on the hundred-dollar bill and he wasn't a president. Then there's Alexander Hamilton on the ten-dollar bill, John Marshall on the five hundred, and Salmon P. Chase on the ten thousand, and none of them were presidents either.
I'm an addict for sneakers
20s of buddah and bitches with beepers
("N.Y. State of Mind," Nas, 1994.)
—"A chick who knows her position will never lose her place . . . I know my position, so hit me up, boo . . . Ashley." Message deleted.
Mike is telling everybody why he thinks Tupac is still alive. "He's alive, man, he's alive, he's alive," he says like Frankenstein. "No pictures of him in the hospital. . . No funeral, no viewing . . . He changed his name to Machiavelli. That's the ngh that faked his death . . . In the video for 'I Ain't Mad At Cha' he's already in heaven, the shit was planned . . . His last album was called The 7 Day Theory and he was shot on September seventh, survived until the thirteenth—seven days!—then died . . . In 'Toss It Up' and 'To Live and Die in L.A.' he's rocking the Air Jordans and the Pennys that didn't come out until after he died . . . In 'God Bless the Dead' he says 'Rest in peace' to my ngh Biggie Smalls, but Pac was murdered before Biggie . . . Explain that!"
—"Son, this is your father. Why are you doing this? Why—" Message deleted.
"But you know how I really know Pac is alive? How I really, really know?"
"How you know?"
" 'Cause real nghz don't die."
—"It's me . . . Nia." Message saved.
Dear Carole,
I get up when I can, I eat when I want to, I bathe when it is absolutely necessary, and I sleep even as I wake.
I no longer talk about suffering. Everyone suffers. It is about expectations. If your expectations aren't met, then you suffer in some way. The intensity of your suffering has to do with how invested you were in your expectations. Even those who give up and say they don't have any expectations have the expectation of no expectation, so they suffer as well. I didn't play the game of "my pain is greater than yours." Pain, after all, was pain. Was there something greater than pain?
I have about seven scars on my belly from various surgeries. They are my lifelines. Each time I went under the knife I wasn't certain that I would survive, and with each surgery I began to wonder if I should survive. My husband could not hide his wishes that I shouldn't survive. My belly is etched with my history and my life. Both of my sons have made their marks there and so I wear these marks with pride. They are symbols of a terrible beauty that speaks to life.
Malo is—
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