Buck (18 page)

“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.”

“Slow down, Malo.” I 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.

“Sorry, man. My bad.” I 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.

A bleak hospital is all hospitals. On the elevator up, I think about how I hate hospitals. The odor of the helpless, 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.

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 I’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.I. 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 I’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:

I smile for the first time in a long time.

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?” I 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
?