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[4 of 5] Buck: A memoir, Chapters 28-36. by M. K. Asante (2013)
Author: M. K. Asante
Asante, M. K. (2013). Buck: A Memoir, Chapters 28-36. Spiegel & Grau.
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28
Burn
"What are you doing?" I slam the journal closed but it's too late—l'm caught. My mom studies her secret words between my palms. "Why are you reading my journal?" She's standing in the doorway to my room, eyes glassy from meds, staring at me like I broke her heart.
She snatches her journal from me. "How could you?" she asks, thumbing through the pages as if to make sure they're all there. "How could you violate me like that? How could you?"
When it rains, it pours. Her eyes fall on my table—on my gun, my pound of weed, and all my money. Her face tightens. She sees the piles of new clothes on my bed. She grabs as much gear as she can hold, then power walks out of my room. I follow her out to the terrace. She hurls my clothes over the railing.
I bolt downstairs.
". . . the fuck," seeing more shit flying down: It's a bird, it's a plane—no, it's fly gear falling from the sky
like parachutes. It all settles on the concrete like autumn leaves over puddles.
I grab what I can grab and come upstairs dragging my clothes through the hallway. She's thrown some of my clothes in the hallway too. I try to open the door but the top lock stops me. I bang on the door like five-o.
"Ma?" Bang-bang-bang. I feel her on the other side of the door.
"What?" she says, cold.
"Open the door, Ma."
She's at the door like a bouncer. "No. . . I want you out of my house."
"Where I'm s'pose to go?"
"I don't care. You're old enough to sell drugs, carry a gun, steal my journal behind my back? Then you're old enough to be on your own."
"I was trying to help you."
"Help me? You're never here! You don't care about me." Her words feel like punches to the throat.
"I'm not the one that left you. Where your friends at? Huh? Where's Dad? Where's Uzi? I'm the only one still here!"
"Out!"
I can't believe this shit. "You kicking me out, Ma?"
"Yes, I want you out!" Maybe the pills got her spazzing? Someone gets off the elevator, sees the chaos, keeps it moving.
Me and my mom just stand there for a minute, different sides of the tracks, listening to each other's breath. Hers is heavy and distant like a freight train.
"Alright, Ma, I'll leave . . . but open the door first, I gotta get my stuff." I'm not scared. I have enough money and bud to get my own spot, to make moves on my own. I don't need nobody. Fuck it.
I get on my linebacker shit and hit the door with my shoulder like it's a running back coming through the middle. Pops open. I slide past her and go to my room.
All of my shit—the weed, money, gun—is gone, everything gone.
"Where is it?" The table is a blank page.
"Out!" she screams after me.
"Where's my shit, Ma?" I'm looking around the room, searching, panicking.
"I threw it away." I run to the trash. Dig through. Nothing.
"Where's it at, Ma? I ain't playin."
"The incinerator."
"You're toxic," I say, looking right at her. She smacks the dog shit out of me. My face on fire.
My last words: "Now I see why Dad left."
29
Spaceships and Crowns
A nation of questions: Where to stay? Who to stay with? Who to call? Where the fuck am I going? Where to get money? What am I going to do about Bone's money? What's the point ... of life? Who killed Amir? Who am I? Am I who I say I am? Why am I here, in Philly, in America, on Earth, right now? What's my purpose?
I hit 10 Gs, thinking, I'll crash at Ted's crib, lay low, and plot my next move. I spot the crew, standing where they always stand, between the liquor store and the corner store, next to the Fern Rock Apartments fence, under the train tracks, and across the street from Rock Steady, this bugged ngh who sits on a crate all day with a broken radio, rocking his head back and forth to a beat no one else can hear.
Everything looks the same, except them. They're all rocking baby Afros and wearing all black everything, like Darth Vader. I feel like I missed a memo.
"Peace, brother Malo." | laugh, thinking, Brother Malo? How long have I been gone? Since I moved to G-Town, I haven't been around here much. Plus I don't understand why none of them came to Amir's funeral.
"What's up with the 'fros?"
Ted pulls out a long pick with a black fist on the handle, fluffs his 'fro. "Crowns," he says.
"What?"
"These are our crowns," cuffing it. "In the Bible, Samson got his power from his hair." He looks at my fresh cut. "Malo, you keep going to the barbershop, losing your power, losing your crown."
" 'Thou shalt not mar the corner of thy beard.' Leviticus 19:27," D-Rock reads from a book with a glowing black man drawn on the cover.
"Let me hit that," | say, reaching for the strange little blunt Ted is blazing. He doesn't pass it.
"It's a beedi . . . not weed."
"It get you high?" I ask. "I'm stressed."
"No high, just sacred Indian herbs."
I ask them for a forty and they say it's liquid crack.
"Take a chicken bone, the wishbone, and drop it in a bottle of malt liquor-OE, Steel Reserve, St. Ides, Crazy Horse, Hurricane, Midnight Dragon, Colt 45—that shit will dissolve in under a minute. It's poison, brother."
Huh? But these are the nghz that slid me my first forty, made me take my first shot of Henny, passed me my first blunt, handed me my first gun. I step away from 10 Gs for a couple of months and they turn square?
"Da fuck is going on with y'all? The 'fros, the gear, poison?" | say.
They call it Right Knowledge.
D-Rock's like, "There's nothing left, so we gotta be right. Right Knowledge leads to right thinking, and right thinking leads to right action. We are a part of the Holy Tabernacle Ministries . . . the Egyptian Church of Karast . . . the Holy Seed Baptist Synagogue . . . the Ancient Order of Melchizedek. . . . the Ancient Order . . . the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors . . . Yamasse Native American Tribe . . . the Washitaw Tribe."
"Real eyes realize real lies," Ted says, gazing into my eyes. It's like he's in a trance, like he's under a spell. I hear the Twilight Zone theme.
"Yo, y'all in a cult?" I can't believe this. Uzi's not going to believe this shit.
"The Holy Tabernacle Ministries is no cult. Check yourself, man."
They call the leader Dr. York. They talk about him like God and say something about how they're going down to Georgia to live in some pyramid he built.
"He has seventy trillion years of knowledge."
"What's his name?"
"Dr. Malachai Z. York . . . Imperial Grand Potentate Noble: Rev. Dr. York 33 Degrees/720 Degrees . . . Malachi Zodok . . . Amunubi Rah Ka Ptah . . . Abba Issa . . . the One . . . Isa Abd'Allah Ibn Abu Bakr Muhammad . . . Akhtah Isa Jabbarlah . . . the Angel Michael . . . Murdoq . . . El Qubt... the Green One . . . Yanuwn . . . Rabboni Y'shua Bar El Haady . . . Sabathil . . . Maku . . . Baba Bassa Afrika . . . the Master Teacher . . . the Grand Hierophant . . . Chief Black Thunderbird Eagle . . . the Reformer."
They pop in a CD:
". . . Where are you going? Where we came from. Where have we come from? Every place and no place, so come, let's go... I am a being from the nineteenth galaxy called Illyuwn. We have been coming to this planet before it had your lifeform on it. I manifest into this body to speak through this body. I am a entity, an etheric being . . ."
"Y'all serious?"
"Dead serious."
". . . My incarnation as an Ilah Mutajassid or avatar was originally in the year 1945 A.D. In order to get here I traveled by one of the smaller passenger crafts called SHAM out of a mother plane called Nibiru. I am an Anunnaqi or what you would call an Extraterrestrial; I am what you call an Angelic being, an Eloheem from the eighth planet Rizq... I have incarnated here in this form for the sole purpose of saving the children of the Eloheem, the Nubians, the chosen 144,000 . . ."
They ask me what I think about all this.
I think of this Richard Pryor flick Uzi used to watch all the time. Richard Pryor is sitting down, making crazy faces, smoking. Goes: "In my neighborhood, you know, there used to be some beautiful black men that would come through the neighborhood, dressed in African shit, you know. Really, now, you know, 'Peace and love, remember the essence of life, we are people of the universe, life is beautiful.' My parents would go, 'That ngh is crazy.' I used to love to go to the meetings, though, when you get down. I got ultra black for a while. Brothers would be rappin, I never knew what they were saying, though. But the brothers would be having them motions. 'You see the first thing you got to know is about eating pork. Now you eat a piece of pork, you don't realize the suffocations of this individuality's prospect. What the man is trying to lay on you through porkitis, you would not understand, because the trichinosis of your mind would not relinquish the thought of individuality. You know what I mean?' Now that ngh is crazy."
I'm standing here, listening to spaceships and stars, and all I can think is: These nghz are crazy . . . even crazier than the Hebrew Israelites with the bullhorns and Afrika Bambaata outfits at Broad and Olney.
I also think it's kind of cool, though. Cool that they're into something, something besides the block. They're teaching themselves, questioning stuff, and trying to figure this crazy world out—and that's dope.
They give me a copy of a book called Behold a Pale Horse. The cover has white horses, black horses, fires, angels, chariots, the devil, and heaven and hell on it. Shit looks like a nightmare. They tell me that politics is politicks because ticks are bloodsuckers. Human is hue man. American is Ameri-con. Nubian is new being. They call me an A-alike.
"A-alike 'cause we B-alike and C-alike."
They say they are part of the chosen—the 144,000 Eloheems that are going to board the mother ship.
"When?" | ask.
"Y2K. The year 2000. That's when we board Nibiru and leave this galaxy."
"Let me see your hand, Malo." I put it out like I'm trying on a ring. He studies my hand.
"Look," he says to D-Rock. D-Rock looks at my hand.
"Fuck y'all doin?"
"Making sure you ain't no reptilian. Reptilians are disagreeable beings, opposed to the existence of humanity. You can tell by their fingers, if they got webs or not. And they got grayish skin 'cause they evolved from dinosaurs. Their hair grows in sixes, like white people's, hence six-six-six. Our hair, the Eloheems', the black man's hair, grows in nines."
A cult, though? A cult? Uzi won't believe me if I tell him. I'm learning to expect the unexpected.
I don't even ask Ted if I can crash at his spot. He's acting too weird. I just pull off while they go on ramming about crowns and spaceships. I chuck the deuces and keep it moving.
Alone in the streets.
30
No Place to Be Somebody
No place to be somebody. I can go everywhere but can stay nowhere. I feel like the blunt l'm smoking, burning way too fast. Sixteen going on what? I dip from spot to spot, going through chambers like a Shaolin warrior lost on an impossible quest.
I go to Bone's house to work something out. I owe him three Gs because the pound my mom burned up was given to me on consignment. I didn't pay for it yet.
In his dark, dirty basement, with his pit bulls barking nonstop and his goons palming pistols on the couch, he tells me cold: "I'll give you until the end of the week. That's it."
I think about what Amir told me about Damien-how he killed someone over a hundred bucks, off prin-ciple—and how I only really know Bone and Damien through Amir, and how Amir wasn't even that cool with them. I feel dead already.
I drive around the city thinking of my next move.
I miss everybody: Amir, Mom, Dad, Uzi. I think about them all as I cruise through South Phil, blunted, eyes low, plotting my next move. I wonder if Amir can see me now, can picture me rollin. I wonder if Uzi can see me. He doesn't call, write, nothing.
Uzi it hurts, leave you double-dead
I'm a bubble-head
I never listened to nothing my mother said:
("Banned from TV," Big Pun (Capone-N-Noreaga featuring Nature, Big Pun, Cam'ron, Styles P, and Jadakiss), 1998.)
I keep falling asleep behind the wheel. I just wake up . . . driving . . . and I'm like, Damn, how long was sleep for? It's usually for a few seconds, but still. I dream quick dreams like flashes of broken light. A flash of Zimbabwe, of Uzi, Mom, Dad, happier days.
I think it's because most nights I don't sleep. I stay up all night, up with the night workers and night-walkers, dope fiends and crooked cops, the stars and the nghz under them searching for stripes, pimps and stick-up kids, truck drivers and dope boys, take-out spots and road crews, hoodies and heels, dungeons and dragons. I love the night. Everything, everyone, everywhere changes when the sun dips.
I never go to sleep. I might crash, pass out, fall out, dip, but I never go. I'm like a ngh on the run and sleep is the cops, trying to take me off the streets, slow me down. I might get locked up, but I ain't turning myself in. I don't go to sleep.
I wake up everywhere, different parts of the city, usually still high and drunk from the night before, usually on the floor. You can't fall out of bed when you sleep on the floor . . . or in the car.
—S—
I wake up on Marshall Street in South Philly. I stay in Kam's basement with him and his cousin J-Money. It's a cave that smells like pussy, cologne, and crack. Kam's mom goes to work and Kam goes to school—I haven't been in months-so me and J-Money chill on the block during the day. He's like nineteen, sells crack, and gets off on fuckin other nghz' girls. That's his thing, always talking about "Don't bring your girl around me, dog." Bone keeps hitting my cell, but I don't answer. He wants his money and I don't have it, so there's nothing to talk about.
Fiends always at the window on Marshall Street, yellow fingernails like tap tap tap. The crack is stashed outside, everywhere: in crumpled Checkers and Wendy's bags in the trash; inside tennis balls; behind a brick in the wall; in a dirty mattress in the alley. One day he's taking a dump and asks me to make the sale. Fuck it. I go out there and it's J-Money's grandma, standing there, fidgeting like a first-grader. She hands me the dirtiest ten-dollar bill l've ever seen. I drop it and run back into the basement.
"Yo, it's your grandma," I say outside the bathroom door.
"Serve her!" he says, toilet flushing. I don't. He does.
Cuz being a ngh means you love nghz
So how could you love nghz if you tryna drug nghz?
('N.I.G.G.A. (Never Ignorant Getting Goals Accomplished)," 2Pac, 1998.)
I bounce the next day, tripping on how the streets turn you cold, how money has us out here like zombies,
killing each other for crumbs.
—W—
I wake up on Frazier Street in West Philly.
Staying here with Amir's cousin June. The house is across the street from a church with a lawn sign that says God Saves. I think, Bullshit. Saves who? Not Amir. Saves what? When? Whatever.
The block is quiet during the day. These old heads play chess on the hood of an old Chevy Monte Carlo. They call me over one day, try to read me, see what I'm about. One of them, he's got his cane resting on his knee, tells me I'm not a man yet.
"You ain't a man until you learn that your dick is either a commodity, a tool, or a weapon."
"My dick is just big," | laugh, and go back in the house.
One day they tell me some guys came around looking for me.
"Asked if we knew where you were."
"You sure?"
"They said your name. Malo. About three or four of 'em. Ugly fellas too. I hope you ain't in no trouble."
I rack my brain. No one knows I'm here except June. It's got to be Bone and Damien trying to collect. I leave that night, keep it moving.
I learn to always keep it moving, never stay anywhere too long. They say if you drop a frog in boiling water, it'll jump out. But if you drop it in room-temp water and slowly heat it up, the frog sits there and dies. I'm trying to be the frog that gets the jump on the boil. So l'm learning to see as far as possible and, same time, avoid being seen, lay in the cut like peroxide. I'm growing eyes that hear and ears that see. The only ones who make it out here are the nghz that move fast. So I keep my train moving so I don't get moved on. Harder to hit a moving target.
I drive around the city looking at the shapes the shadows make on the ground, against the buildings, on people. Philly is a city of shapes. Out here everybody has an angle, like geometry. Squares trying to box me in. Octagons trying to stop me. Circles trying to throw me for a loop. Everything on the line. The sooner I catch the angle, the better off I am.
ーNー
I wake up on Allegheny Ave., staying with Scoop. Kianna told me to stay away from him but this is a last resort. I don't even know who lives in this house. It's just a spot full of random people coming and going—turnstile. It's above a Korean corner store, so we chill in front of there a lot. I wonder why-wonder when, wonder how—Koreans who don't speak much English just come up in the hood, set up shop, and make mad bank off nghz. Fuck it—it is what it is—ain't mad at 'em. Everybody gotta eat.
Normal corner store shit: quarter hug juice, chips, blunts, beer, cigs, and straight-shooter crack pipes right next to the candy. Scoop's always arguing with them.
"A pack of Pall Malls."
"Pall Malls?" | say. Every black person I've ever met smokes Newports.
"I like designer clothes, Versace, Moschino, Polo, but l'm not paying for no designer name-brand cancer. Give me the cheap shit."
When Scoop was with Kianna, everybody knew he had screws loose, but now that they're apart, it's clear that his screws are actually gone for good. Kianna's the only one who can calm him down. Every day he's beefing with nghz, robbing people, fighting, and creating enemies. One night the house gets lit up. A drive-by. I'm sleeping on the floor when it happens. Glass exploding. People screaming. Tires screeching. I leave the same night.
ーPー
I wake up in my car under a bridge in Logan. Alone with my heartbeat. Get out to pee.
"Run that shit!" I'm got. This hairy-face ngh, gat in palm, eyes like tinted windows with air bubbles. The other boy, corn bread husky, grim-reaper hoodie on, looks out.
"Hurry up." He pats my pockets. "Run all that shit!" He helps me take it off. Snatches my beeper. Spots the chain, the one Amir gave me, under my rugby. "Chain too," he orders like it's already his. And that's the last straw. It hits me—| don't even care if I die, fuck it, I ain't got shit to live for. I'm ready to die for this chain Amir loved so much, his prized possession and the only thing his pops left him.
"Shoot!"
"Bang 'im."
He rips the chain from me.
"You Muslim?" He stops struggling with me, studying the chain. Seems like everybody in Philly is Muslim. I nod fast. He looks at his friend-they talk to each other without speaking. He pushes the chain into my fist, then gives me all my shit back.
"My bad . . . Salamu alaikum," he says, and fades into the night.
Amir's chain is broken but I'm just relieved that I still have it.
I find out later the charm says Allah, which means "God" in Arabic.
I remember the sign on Frazier Street: God Saves.
31
On the Road
Ryan shows up in the middle of the night, sweating, heaving, eyes breathing like glowing coals, the way Amir's looked the last time I saw him. We just leave—before he even tells me the whole story about how he's on the run, what went down—we just hit the highway and don't look back.
"They coming for me, Malo," he says as I chug down 1-95, windows down, music blasting. I feel like they're coming for me too: the cops, Bone, Damien, Scoop's enemies.
"Slow down, Malo, they got a APB out."
"APB?"
"All points bulletin."
We pull over at a rest stop, fill the tank, and spend our last few bucks on snacks and a map of America. We spread the country out on the dash of my Explorer. We're in Delaware.
"Where you wanna go?"
"Anywhere. Just away from here."
Embrace the wheel and hit a buck without crashin fuck
My drug passion got a nigga stashin fast what
("Channel 10," Capone-N-Noreaga, 1997.)
I call my older cousin Chris, who lives in Ft. Worth, Texas.
"Y'all fools need to come down here to the Funky . . . tell 'em he can stay down here and lay low." Chris came to stay with us in Philly a few years ago and remembers Ryan. He's cool as shit, from L.A., straight outta Compton like N.W.A. "Bompton" is how he reps it. He claims Ft. Worth too. He stays with us for like a year, goes to community college, and puts me on to Texas hip-hop: Geto Boys, UGK, Rap-a-Lot Records, DJ Screw.
"Say no more," he tells me on the phone. "Come on, kin-folk! What y'all waitin on?"
We drive through Richmond and Raleigh, through Memphis and Little Rock. We watch the sun rise, set, and then rise again, like watching reruns of a miracle. I bask in the miracle, in the warmth of its rays, in its rise, fall, and redemption.
Nighttime comes and swallows everything. Eighteen-wheelers roaring past like trains, then disappearing into the black.
In front of us, the horizon trembles in haze. Ryan drives. I pull out Noreaga's CD and, bored, peep the liner notes: To my real thugs on da run eating—avoid court, da C.O.'s, da P.O.'s, county and state police. When in and out of state remember your name or attribute change with da town, so as u travel remain eatin'. All authorities are crazy for trying to take on our destiny in their hands.
I think about Uzi, think about all the Uzis, all the Amirs, the Ryan, the Malos, running ... from what? I don't know why I'm running but I feel like I can't stop. I'm tired but don't want to stop. Not the car, not the music, nothing. There's something scary about stopping, like in that movie Speed, where the bus has to go faster than fifty-five mph or else it blows up.
To stop: to die.
The only thing I know about Ft. Worth is that it's always the featured location on my mom's favorite show, Cops . . . and that my favorite cousin, Chris, is waiting for us to show up in Funkytown.
The air is hot and sticky like we're inside a plastic bag. Chris lives in an apartment complex and pushes a black Mustang.
"Y'all lil' nghz grab a beer and come on back," Chris says. He's got broad shoulders and dark curly hair. Hazel eyes that match his complexion. He's in his classic black hat—no logo, no team, just black with a bent brim.
We're at Chris' boys' crib. They play dominoes and yell shit like "Study long, study wrong . . . Fish wata stank . . . Follow that cab—it got dope in it . . . Getcha kids out the street . . . Domino motherfucker!"
These twins, Lil' Brain Dead and Half Gone, show up with this girl.
"Give the lil' nghz some head," one of them tells her.
"Okay, daddy," she says. "But one at a time….. baby face first," pointing at me, strutting into the back room.
"Handle that." Chris hands me a Trojan. "Strap up." I go in first. She's laying on the bed playing with herself. I can't. I walk out of the room and it's a revolving door for the next couple of hours. Tag team. Choo-choo.
Let it sit inside your head like a million women in Philly, Penn.
It's silly when girls sell their soul because it's in
("Doo Wop (That Thing)," Lauryn Hill, 1998.)
All I can think about is Nia, my heart. She has the energy that holds this whole damn world together, that makes the sun rise. Her voice whispers to me thousands of miles away.
I call but it just keeps ringing . . .
My uncle Howard picks me up from Chris' in the morning. Gives me a giant bear hug. Tightest embrace ever.
He has a slow, proud walk. Chest out.
"I'm eighty-one," he tells me. He can pass for fifty.
His house is an oasis. Like calm in the middle of a storm. We sit on the couch with my aunt Georgia and watch this movie Powder, about an albino boy with special powers. I check out the box cover, it reads, "An Extraordinary Encounter with Another Human Being."
We're all really feeling this movie. It feels like Powder is talking directly to me. He's like: When a thunderstorm comes up, I can feel it inside. When lightning comes down, I can feel it wanting to come to me. Grandma said it was God. She said the white fire was God ... Energy, always relaying, always transforming, and never-ending ... Have you ever listened to people from the inside? Listened so close you can hear their thoughts—and all their memories. Hear them think from places they don't even know they think from.
Me and my uncle talk about death, life, belief. He's a mystical man, a thinking man, with the widest, most inviting smile l've ever seen, ever felt.
"Walk with me." He leads the way in slow, proud strides. Big freckles like stars.
"I know about your friend," he says. Know what? I think. That he's on the run? About the gun? The stash? "! can tell by your eyes, you got something you want to say... but can't. Not yet." Crazy how he knows all this. I feel like he knows everything. About me, about Ryan, all the shit we're into. But he's not judging. Those eyes, deep like canyons, seeing right into my soul, doing something to me.
"I know."
We walk along a creek behind his house.
" 'Like black pearls trapped in the white cerebellum, we glisten out of reach of drum gun and talking bird . . . I want you to leap high in the sky with me until we see yellow trees and blue gulf.' "
I don't know what he's talking about. It's like he's speaking a foreign language, a foreign language I want to learn.
"Henry Dumas," he says. "Heard of him?"
I shake my head.
"Heads up," he says, pulling a thin book from his back pocket and tossing it to me. I look at the cover: Poetry for My People.
"Check it out," he says. "Dumas was from my hometown. Sweet Home, Arkansas."
I stand at the edge of the water, on the edge of being, reflecting-on my mom and how I want to tell her, to show her, that I'm sorry; on Bone and how I'm going to stop running and face him like a man when I get back to Philly; about Uzi and how I don't want to end up in jail like him; about my dad and how I miss him; about what Amir said about fathers.
"'Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.'" He pats me on the shoulder. "That's Rumi."
Later on, at dinner, Uncle Howard tells me about the war inside.
"There's a war between two wolves inside everybody. One is anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, inferior-ity, lies, and ego. The other's good. it's love, peace, beauty, happiness, truth, hope, joy, humility, kindness, and empathy."
I'm thrust back to reality when my cousin Kianna hits me up. She's frantic. Out of breath. Tells me my mom OD'd . . . that they don't know if she's going to make it.
"Where are you?" she asks.
Me and Ryan at the doorway with our bags.
"I'll take my chances back up there . . . can't see myself living down here," Ryan tells me. He's coming back to Philly with me, facing the risk. "Is what it is."
I give long, deep hugs to Uncle Howard and Aunt Georgia, then hop in the car with Ryan. I start the engine, then jump out, forgetting something.
I walk up to my uncle. "In the story," I ask, "who wins . . . between the two wolves?"
"The one you feed."
32
The White Fire
"Slow down, Malo." | hear Ryan, but my foot is heavy. Heart heavier. Speeding through Little Rock with the windows halfway down, feeling halfway between everywhere, right and wrong, past and present, life and death, me and me.
Between the no longer and the not yet.
Thunder, lightning, dark clouds swirling above us like vultures. We're driving straight through a storm from the Bible.
I think about the wolves inside me, growling, fighting.
Lightning in front of us, treetops flashing. We head right for it like an electric finish line in the sky.
No music, just storm.
White fire in the sky.
"Slow down, Malo." But I'm in go mode. I feel like scum for what I said to my mom. If she dies, I don't deserve to live.
I drive so fast, so hard, I don't even notice the cops on our ass. Ryan's jaw tightens in thought.
Speak when spoken to, say less than necessary, I tell myself as the trooper crushes gravel on his march toward us.
"What state we in?" Ryan asks me.
"I don't know, maybe Virginia."
"I tailed you for two miles at ninety mph." Pale stone face.
"My mom's in the hospital... I'm rushing to see her... Sorry, officer, I didn't realize how fast I was going."
"You said your mom's in the hospital?"
"Yes."
"So that gives you the right to speed through my county?"
"But she—"
"I could care less, boy," he says, scoping my system in the back: speakers, amp, neon bars. "Now look here: the only person with blue lights around here is going to be the law."
Cops like him are the reason for these songs: "Black and Blue" by Brand Nubian, "Coffee, Donuts and Death" by Paris, "Crooked Cops" by E-40, "Crooked Officer" by Geto Boys, "Dirty Cop Named Harry" by Hard Knocks, "Duck da Boyz" by Strickly Roots, "Fuck tha Police" by N.W.A., "Get the Fuck Out of Dodge" by Public Enemy, "Good Cop/Bad Cop" by Blahzay Blahzay, "Illegal Search" by LL Cool J, "In the Line of Duty" by Eightball and MJG, "One Time Gaffed 'em Up" by Compton's Most Wanted, "Looking Through the Eye of a Pig" and "Pigs" by Cypress Hill, "Protect and Serve" by UGK, "Punk Police" by Mac Dre, "Say Hi to the Bad Guy" by Ice Cube,
"Sound of Da Police" by KRS-One, "Time for Us to Defend Ourselves" by MC Shan.
I want to get to my mom and I don't want to bring any attention to Ryan.
"Yes, officer." I bite my tongue. "I understand."
More cops show up, some in regular clothes. They make us sit on the side of the road, cuffed, while the K9 tears my car up.
Mr. Police, please try to see
That there's a million muthafuckas stressin just like me
("Only God Can Judge Me," 2Pac, 1996.)
"Sorry, man. My bad." | feel like I let Ryan down, like I'm letting everyone down.
"It ain't your fault."
"If I would've just done the speed limit . . ."
"I can't run forever," he whispers.
"Well, I'll be damned," the officer says after they run everything. "You aware there is a warrant for your arrest?"
They take Ryan and vanish into the foggy night.
33
Brooklyn Girl
A bleak hospital is all hospitals. On the elevator up, I think about how I hate hospitals. The odor of the help-less, hopeless. The doctor is this pretty Indian lady. She tells me how my mom almost died.
I lean over Mom. She grabs my hand.
"I'm sorry, Ma," I keep saying. A million lights and indicators around her like NASA. I think about my brother, about me, and about her. About the last time she was healthy.
"Where were you?" she asks.
"A little bit of everywhere." She rubs my hand.
I stay with her, by her side, all day, all night. I dab her lips with the sponge-tipped water tube when her mouth gets dry. I want to make her happy.
I ask, "Were you ever happy? Like really happy?"
"Yes."
"When?"
She closes her eyes and grins.
"It was when my mother played Fats Domino records and closed her eyes when she danced... when every black girl wanted to look like Dorothy Dandridge and sing like Sarah Vaughan . . . when black girls were bronze, honey, tan, sepia, and black was the color of tar babies . . . when the Roxy was popping and all the brothers wore conks... Philly had the baddest jitterbugs and Detroit had the meanest gangs . . . when the blues was country and rock 'n' roll was city and they both was good for dancing . . . when my mother gave rent parties long after the rent was paid . . . when Easter meant new clothes and Cuban-heeled shoes and nobody seemed to mind that Jesus and the Easter bunny were white . . . when everybody went to church on Sunday no matter what happened Saturday night and Monday mornings belonged to the Man . . . when everybody knew they were colored and nobody wanted to be white—just don't call them black . . . when Mama rolled her hair up in paper curlers and everyone just knew she went to the beauty parlor . . . when nighttime was for lovers, and alleys and stoops were lovers' lane for a minute . . . when all old folks were grandma and grandpa and all children should stay out of grown folks' business . . . when I was everybody's child and had fifteen play aunts and uncles... It was when funeral homes gave out fans and drugstores gave out calendars and the corner store had a credit list just for Mama . . . when reading one book made you a bookworm and going to college made you damn near a genius . . . when certain things were said in front of white folks and white folks said everything . . . when we knew they weren't right but we didn't know nothing about our rights . . . when the weather was on our side and God only had one name . . . when prayers were answered and miracles were the order of the day ... when children called grown folks "Miss Sarah" and "Brother James" and grown folks called children "sweetheart" and "honey" . . . when Mama used to wear circle skirts and scream when the wind blew her skirt up . . . when Daddy would slick his hair with Dixie Peach and then refuse to go out in the rain . . . when nobody touched the TV except for Daddy and nobody sat on the living room furniture except for company . . . when Grandma refused to wear her teeth and nobody complained . . . when everyone always had something to do and didn't mind doing it . . . when was it when everything was in place, or so it seemed? It was when little girls dreamt about growing up, and when was it that I grew up? When Mama talked about being respectable and Daddy talked about getting some . . . when home meant the projects, and when was it that the projects meant the ghetto? It was . . . a long time ago . . . when love was life and living was loving and everybody belonged to somebody."
I'm hugging on her, praying she can be happy again.
I think Uzi, my dad, and me are the reason she's in the hospital now. We did this to her, to us.
"What about school?"
Shrug. I tell her the truth.
"I dropped out."
She tells me about how important school is. How she had to fight for it. How it was for her, in Brooklyn, coming up.
"It's the only thing they can't take away from you," she says, "your education. Your passport for the future."
I tell her I would go back to school but Fels won't take me back.
"If I find a place—a school that will take you—will you go?" she asks.
I nod, anything for her.
34
The Alternative
It's called Crefeld.
"It's an alternative school," my mom says.
"Alternative?"
"Yes, alternative." She smiles. We're back in G-Town, together. I'm getting ready for my first day of school.
When I leave, she's up, listening to music and sketching dances in her notebook.
My third school in three years.
Foes looked like shit.
Fels looked like jail.
Crefeld is perched on a hill and looks like a gingerbread house.
Kids shuffle in, the weirdest kids l've ever seen. A freak show: one white boy with a purple Mohawk and a neon green spiked dog collar; a group of kids draped in trench coats and dark ponytails, looking like Columbine shooters; little hippies barefoot in tie-dye; a Goth chick with her head shaved clean like G.l. Jane. A black kid with a blond Caesar and a huge Master lock around his neck. Most of these kids look like they're on strong meds. A handwritten sign reads: Welcome to Crefeld, Home to the Mixed Nuts.
I'm looking at these kids, thinking, Alternative school? I'm not this damn alternative.
"First day?" this kid asks.
"Yeah." I squint at him.
"I'm Dan." He looks Indian and has long tangly black hair with all types of ornaments—paper clips, charms, bottle caps, beads, keys-dangling off like a Christmas tree.
"Malo."
"Crefeld is like an island of misfit toys. Manufacturer rejects. Error cards."
"Yeah, well, not me. I'm normal."
"Normal, huh? Good luck with that." He treks up the hill.
Crefeld's the size of a mansion but inside feels busy like a row house. All the doors to the rooms are wide open. No bell, no guards, no metal detectors, everything here is different. They do this thing called Morning Meeting. People make announcements, eat muffins, sip tea. It feels like some camp l've never been to, like s'mores and sleeping bags.
"We need better snacks, Michael," Dan says. Other students join in, complaining about how there are no snacks and refreshments at the school.
Michael says, "Working on it." Michael's the principal! Everyone calls the teachers by their first name, it's wild. Debbie, Dan, Stacey, Rena, Bill, Kevin, George, Greg. None of them look like teachers. They look more like surfers, skaters, hippies, and straight-up bums. The principal is rocking ripped jeans and sandals— Air Jesuses. There's a dog, Max, that lazes around.
This is written on the bench I'm sitting on:
Ten Tips for Being a Crefelder
10. Don't drink the water.
9. Shakespeare is kind of cool after a while, if you do drink the water.
8. Beware! If you ask Rena to sing, she will.
7. You'll dance to anything.
6. Lab reports are hard but you realize how wonderful learning is when you're not being force-fed.
5. Hyperactivity is contagious.
4. Introspections are harder.
3. You people are lunatics.
2. Never underestimate the value of eccentrics and lunatics.
1. Remember: With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Smile.
I smile for the first time in a long time.
35
The Blank Page
Stacey tells us to form a circle with our desks.
"A circle is a reflection of eternity," she says. Stacey's the English teacher. She's young with skin the color of art gallery walls and hair the color of tree bark. "Circles can't be broken. No beginning, no end, just motion."
There's only like a dozen kids in this class. This really short girl walks in late and sits next to me. If Amir was here—I miss him so much—he'd be like, She so short she poses for trophies, so short she hang glides on Doritos, so short she does pull-ups on staples, so short she gives head standing up.
Stacey sketches circles in the air. "If you put circles on top of each other, stack them up, you get a spiral." Stacey's big eyes search our faces to see if we follow. "Spirals are infinite."
"Pull out something to write on, something to write with: a pen, pencil, bloody fingernail." Everybody inks up. I don't have anything to write with. No paper either. I can't even remember the last time I did schoolwork.
Stacey puts a blank page down in front of me. Pen on top of it like a paperweight. "Okay, class, write!" Everyone in the class starts scribbling fast like reporters at a press conference. I just sit there, confused. She makes her way over.
"Write," she says, hawking over me.
"Write what?" I look around at everyone writing, lost in their own little worlds. I wonder what they're writing.
"Anything you want," she says.
"Anything I want?" | want to make sure I heard that right.
"Anything."
I know this trick. She's bullshitting. Teachers always tell you to express yourself, then when you really do, you get in trouble.
I write "Fuck school" and wait for her to flip. She's probably going to lose it, kick me out.
"Okay," she laughs. "Now keep writing. Keep going." Ha, okay, since when?
"Write your thoughts," she tells everyone.
"I'm trying," the short girl next to me, Ellen, says. "The only problem with writing my thoughts is that
sometimes I don't know what I'm thinking."
I turn the page over. It's blank again.
The blank page is the starter pistol that fires and triggers my mind to sprint. What will I write? What will I say? Will I say what / write, write what I say? Something funny? Something serious? Something about my family? Something about Amir? Ryan? How will I start? Whose story will I tell? My story? Something made up? A story about a boy from Philly, a lost boy, who wants to find himself but doesn't know where to look, who wants to tell his story but doesn't know where to begin... or end, who searches anyway and discovers something about himself, the world?
Stacey reads from The Pillow Book: " 'There are times when the world so exasperates me that I feel I cannot go on living in it for another moment and I want to disappear for good. But then, if I happen to obtain some nice white paper... I decide that I can put up with things as they are a little longer!"/
I stare at the blank page, an ocean of white alive with possibility.
I hear myself take a breath, then exhale—deep, like I just rose from underwater. It's like l'm at the free-throw line again. Foul shots. Like the game is on the line ... again. I remember something my dad told me: Shoot to make it.
My hand shaking, trembling like it's freezing.
Then it hits: a silence louder than all the music l've ever heard in my life.
All the light in the world, in one beam, before me.
Pens dance to the beat of Stacey's voice: "Picture yourself writing ….. your mind moving . . . notice what you notice... catch yourself thinking... the purpose of writing is to stop time . . . what is the sound of one hand clapping?. . . writing synchronizes the mind, body, and spirit . . . open your mind and your mind's eye . . . only emotion endures... picture yourself writing . . ."
I grip the pen and something shoots down my spine, sits me straight up. The pen feels heavy, like it's made of stone.
At exactly which point do you start to realize
That life without knowledge is death in disguise?
("K.O.S. (Determination)," Black Star, 1998.)
I stare deep into the blank page and see myself. I feel something I've never felt before: purpose. I don't know what my exact purpose is yet, but I know it has something to do with this pen and blank page. I am a blank page.
Holding the pen this way, snug and firm in my fist, makes me feel like I can write my future, spell out my destiny in sharp strokes.
But I can't write. So many things I want to write, but my pen is stuck, trapping my words like water under an ice block. The distance between my mind and the page feels like it could be measured in light-years.
"It's like there's a wall."
"Every wall is a door."
"You don't need to be great to get started, but you need to get started to be great." She sees my pen in the block of ice. "Try writing the first word that comes to your mind."
B-U-C-K.
buck (n.): a fashionable and typically hell-raising young man. 2 racial slur used to describe black men. 3 a young black man: what's up young buck? 4 the act of becoming wild and uncontrollable: he went buck wild. 5 a dollar. 6 to fire gunshots: buck shots in the air. 7 to go against, rebel: buck the system
36
Circle of Love
After free write, we share. She calls it the circle of love—you get a chance to read what you wrote. It kind of feels like what I imagine a campfire feels like, or an AA meeting.
We move around the circle.
SHAWN: "Orange-hued rainbow skies, eternal stormy summer nights, and stellar angel cloud dancing . . ."
SARAH: "If I were me, talking to me, l'd smack me already . . . It's funny how the intimidating are usually the intimidated . . ."
JOHN: "He's a politician. It's like being a hooker. You can't be a good one unless you can pretend to like people while you're fucking them."
RACHEL: "You raped my body but not my soul / Once broken, now I'm whole / You raped my body but not my mind / Can now see, was once blind . . ."
BECCA: "Feeling all alone / All alone at home / Going to school / Not acting very cool / Happy, sad, mad, no dad. Poem writing, lots of typing . . ."
AARON: "Rest my eyelids on the ride / Or get caught in riptide / If you like it french-fried / Be my bride. Seagulls dropping left and right, all night. All right. Okay, twine frays, repeated phrase, ruffled Lay's and sun rays in a haze . . ."
KATE: "There's hell in hello, good in goodbye, lie in believe, over in lover, end in friend, and ex in next sc vhat's next . . . A true friend stabs you in the front . . . I have a shooting star on my wrist, means to go far. I have a heart on my hip it means to always love.."
TARA: "Amidst a hidden green hill / Tucked behind brass barriers far away / A figure is played on a windowsill / A daunting paragon of Irish beauty lay / Her pristine pale skin and soft pink cheeks / Frame large abyssal eyes / Which tell of the adventures she seeks / And imagines in the skies / Each cloud stretches and reaches / Satisfying her imagination / Natures she beseeches / To animate her creation."
GEOFF: "Money can't buy you love, but love can't buy you hookers . . . I would read my words but I'm being sued by Webster for plagiarism so . . ."
MALO: "I don't want to share."
"History admires the wise but elevates the brave," Dan says.
"And what does history say about assholes, yo?"
"I personally tend to have a lot of faith in assholes. My mom calls it self-confidence." I like Dan's sarcastic ass. He's witty and unafraid like Amir was.
I'm not ready to share, though. I just want to write.
After class I keep writing. School lets out and I'm still going, flowing, writing, writing. No one comes in. I hear Frank, the maintenance man, tell someone, "Yep, he's still in there, writing. Been in there for hours."
Next week it's the same thing: "Yep, he's still in there." I keep writing.
I write sentences that flow, like water, then I ride the word waves into new perceptions, new ideas.
I never thought I'd be voluntarily staying at school after school, but here I am. I realize that school and education don't go hand in hand, that school and education can be as distant or as close as sex and love.
The sun slopes across my face like a blessing.
Falling rays light up the page and make my words glow.
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