Checkmate (8 page)

Sidney slapped his hand against his forehead. Bobbi leaned back in her chair and seemed to slump downward.

“He lost his rook!” Sidney said. “It’s over!”

There were a few more moves on the stage, quick moves that went on over the growing buzz from the onlookers. But it was clear that something important had happened and a few moments later I saw Pullman reach over and lay down his king. The game was over.

There was a brief smattering of applause. Bashir stood and put her head down.

“I would have kicked her butt,” Bobbi said.

Some of the kids watching were already leaving, and when I saw Sidney and Bobbi standing I was ready to go, too. We went down the stairs to the first floor with Sidney reciting all of the mistakes he thought that Pullman had made.

“The biggest was playing the King’s Gambit against a girl,” Sidney said. “When he sent that pawn strolling out to the middle of the board she had to grab it, and you know she’s going to have all the variations memorized. That’s what girls do.”

“Bull!” Bobbi said. “He thought he had an easy win and he played her easy. She just waited for him to blow and he blew! Case closed. Look, there’s Pullman with his father. His father used to play at City University a thousand years ago.”

I looked over at Pullman talking to a man only an inch
or so taller than he was. Mr. Pullman had shockingly white hair that stood out on all sides. He was looking at his son and kept pushing the chess player’s head up so that he could look him in the eye.

“He’s probably telling him the same thing you said,” I began. I was going to say something about what Pullman would do if he played the Kenyan girl again, but then I saw it. Mr. Pullman slapped his son across the face.

It was shocking, almost as if I had been hit. The kid stepped back and looked around quickly, bringing his hand to his face and looking around the fingers. I knew how he felt. He was embarrassed for everyone to see his father hit him like that.

“What’s that all about?” I asked.

“We’re not supposed to lose,” Sidney said softly.

I turned to Sidney and saw that his face was flushed. There were tears in his eyes. I could feel myself tearing up and I turned away from Sidney and Bobbi.

I hated to see kids get hit. Maybe even more than being hit myself. Pullman had made a mistake, had lost a chess game, but it wasn’t all that bad.

Sidney had one hand on my sleeve and one behind Bobbi’s back as we went toward the huge doors of the
Brooklyn Public Library. Outside there was a light rain that was moving people from the tables that fronted the library and off the stairs.

“I got to get home,” Sidney was saying.

“You want to stop for a soda or something?” I asked, my voice cracking.

“I got to get home,” he repeated.

“See you in school Monday,” I called to Sidney as he started down the stairs.

“I never thought of chess as being that serious,” I said.

“Look over there,” Bobbi said, nodding toward our right.

I saw the Pullman kid and his father walking down the stairs. The kid was about three steps behind, head down. Some dudes who looked as if they might be from the islands were on the stairs, talking. They wore bright yellow-and-green jackets that were close enough in design for them to be in a club or something. On the plaza in front of the library the blue umbrellas looked like a modern painting over the white tables. There were colors everywhere. Only the Pullmans were in black and white.

“I love chess, but I hate being a star,” Bobbi said. “That’s what Sidney’s message on the chessboard read in code. Now you know why.”

1. Thou shalt not hit thy child.

2. Thou shalt not be ashamed of thy child.

3. Thou shalt not wish thy child was more like another kid.

4. Thou shalt talk to thy child, not just yell.

5. Thou shalt not tell thy child how he should feel.

6. Thou shalt not tell thy child how he should think.

7. Thou shalt help thy child to feel good and think well.

8. Thou shalt be friendly to thy child.

9. Thou shalt not want thy child to be just like you.

10. Thou shalt love thy child.

Z
ander, are you playing that child?” LaShonda asked me at lunch. “Playing who?” I asked.

“Everybody’s talking about you telling Caren you’re in love with her,” LaShonda said. “And I can’t believe you fell in love that fast.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“What am I …?” LaShonda’s hand found her hip. “It’s all over the school that you and Caren are going out this weekend and she’s telling everybody about how you said you’ve been sweating her for over a year now and just got up the nerve to make your move! What you got in mind for that seventh-grader?”

“We’re going out this weekend but … who told you I was in love with her?”

“Marie Castro told Evelyn Nesbitt who told Zhade and you know if you tell Zhade anything you might as well put it in the newspapers,” LaShonda said.

“My grandmother said that she’s seen guys get lynched for messing with young white girls,” Kambui added.

“I didn’t know this train went to Stupid City,” I said. “I’m not
messing
with Caren, I’m just taking her to the movies.”

“I don’t like that girl all that much, but don’t use her, Zander,” LaShonda said.

I watched as LaShonda slung her book bag over one shoulder and stalked off.

Kambui shook his head and left our table right after LaShonda.

“Yo, Bobbi, you know anything about this?” I asked.

“I think sometimes Caren makes up stuff,” Bobbi said. “When we were in elementary school she told everybody her house had burned down one weekend. It hadn’t.”

“Why would she … you know, tell people I was in love with her?”

“Okay, I didn’t want to get into it but how come you’re going out with her all of a sudden?” Bobbi asked.

“She told me she thought her father was racist and we could find out by me calling him up and asking if … I could take her out.” I was beginning to see a whole scenario. Caren hooked onto the race thing and now everybody was thinking we were a couple. “You think I’ve been had?”

“It happens when you’re young,” Bobbi said, opening her laptop. “You want to talk anymore about Sidney’s problem? I think I have a solution.”

Me, tearing my head back from Caren and getting it back on Sidney. “Go on.”

“When we play next, Sidney is supposed to play Pullman,” Bobbi said. “That’s going to be a hard match. Suppose I get the coach to put him on the fourth board. That’ll put him on a weaker player and he can relax a little. It’s a bit of a comedown for Sidney but he’s going to get his points anyway. This team is the last really hard one we’re going to face this year until we reach the play-offs.”

“Okay, but do you think Sidney will go for it?”

“He will if you talk him into it. You can tell him that it’s to set up the play-offs,” Bobbi said. “That’ll put me up against Pullman, who’ll probably beat me, but we might get a full three points out of the match if the two and three
boards play well. If Sidney loses to Pullman in a quick game it’ll blow morale and we might all lose. We just have to convince Sidney to go along with it.”

That sounded good. I thought I could convince Sidney that it was best for the team and he’d go along with it. I told Bobbi that I would talk to him later.

I was on Wednesday schedule and had Language Arts and Physics to do after lunch. I couldn’t think straight in Language Arts, and Physics could have been in Greek.

I couldn’t believe that a seventh-grader had smoked me, but Caren had. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she hadn’t started telling everybody that I was in love with her.

In the hallway. There she was talking to Marie Castro. I went right up to her.

“Yo, Marie, mind taking a walk?” I asked.

Marie looked at Caren, giggled, and moved away.

“What are you going around telling people?” I started.

“Zander, don’t hate me for loving you,” Caren said. “Please don’t say you hate me.”

“I don’t … I don’t hate you or anything, but I just want to know what you’re telling people,” I said.

“Just the way I feel about you,” Caren said. Her eyes were tearing up. “Can we talk about it Friday —
please
?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Caren smiled, turned, and started down the hall.

I wasn’t sure if I had just set up a conversation for Friday or if I had just been had by a sneaky seventh-grader. Again.

Home. Mom had left a note on the television saying that there was food on the bottom shelf in the fridge and that she would be home late. I checked and saw two bags. One read
SNACK
and the other
SUPPER.
I opened them both. The snack was a sandwich: meatballs and peppers on a roll. The supper was an aluminum tray of fried chicken and yellow rice. I ate the chicken and rice first and then the sandwich.

I called Caren’s house as I ate and her mother said she wasn’t home.

“She’s at band practice, but I’ll tell her to call you as soon as she gets in,” her mother said.

I started thinking about Sidney again and the Pullman kid. Lots of kids got pressured when they played ball, but I had never thought of kids getting pressured when they played chess. I felt sorry for Sidney but I felt even sorrier
for the Pullman kid. He was good, he worked hard, but he wasn’t being allowed to relax and just play.

Then I started thinking about LaShonda and Kambui and wondered if they felt any pressure to get good grades. Maybe that’s why they liked the Cruisers, because we were kind of laid-back.

Finally, I started thinking about the kids that my uncle Guy had told us about. He hadn’t given us any real details, just showed us the places they had died and then showed us how nice they looked when they had been alive. I knew that I couldn’t just look at Sidney and see the pressure he was under to win all the time. I wouldn’t have even thought of it if I hadn’t seen the Pullman kid. I wondered if his father felt bad afterward. Probably not. He probably thought he was doing his son a favor by slapping him around.

I put on the television, then turned it off, then put it back on again. I was trying to think of a way to convince Sidney to play the fourth board. I went to the Internet and looked up what it meant to play which board. The way it looked was that the fourth board was the weakest on the team and I knew that it could be embarrassing for Sidney not to be first board. Where were all the easy answers?

I found his number on my cell and called him.

“Hey, Zander.” Sidney.

“Hey, Sidney. Look, Bobbi wants to put you on fourth board against Thurgood Marshall. She said —”

“Whatever,” Sidney interrupted.

“It’s okay with you?”

“Yeah.” Real quiet, though.

“You okay, man?”

“Yeah.” Real quiet again.

“Yo, Sidney, is your head straight, man?”

“Yeah, I’m all good,” he said.

He didn’t sound
all good.
I told him I’d tell Bobbi that he was down for the switch.

I don’t normally doubt the Cruisers. We are definitely chill in our approach to life and all up in the game, but Sidney and his whole world of chess was pushing me into corners I hadn’t been to before, opening my eyes to pressures that you couldn’t just walk away from. And the whole thing with the chessboard and Sidney’s code meant that he was having trouble dealing with the program. It reminded me of the way I dealt or, I guess, didn’t deal with my parents being split up. I didn’t think chess could slip-slide into
the world of just about violence. The Zander man tiptoeing down Wrong Street.

I knew everything wasn’t okay at all, but I didn’t want to push it. Sidney hadn’t been convinced, he just took it. Maybe he felt we were putting him down. I wanted to call him back and say we weren’t, but that might have felt like we were treating him differently, which we were in a way, and that might have made him feel … Where were the easy answers?

I called Bobbi and told her what happened. She said she would send the board assignments to Thurgood Marshall.

This was the flyer two girls from Pullman’s school, Thurgood Marshall Academy, were handing out in front of our school at lunchtime. They had come all the way to our school to mess with us. I hoped that Sidney wouldn’t
see the flyer. He didn’t have to. Mr. Culpepper saw it and called Sidney to the office. Then he called the Cruisers.

“No way!” he said. “Sidney is first board and he will remain first board. He is not a Cruiser and if this is your idea of how to dis-inspire our student body then I will go to Mrs. Maxwell and even beyond to see that your influence ceases once and for all! Do I make myself clear?”

“You’re clear but you’re wrong, sir,” I said. “If Sidney doesn’t want to play first board …”

“Sidney, what do you want to do?” Mr. Culpepper spoke softly but it was as if his voice was coming out all in capitals or something.

“I’d rather play fourth board,” Sidney said, his voice hardly above a whisper.

I looked at Mr. Culpepper. He was turning red. Then a brighter red. Then he took several deep, slow breaths, held his breath for a minute, exhaled slowly, and said, “You may all leave my office now.”

I felt real bad for Sidney. Kambui and LaShonda were telling him that he had done the right thing, and Bobbi was just looking kind of lost. I knew she felt bad. Our idea had been a good one, but the way Mr. Culpepper had put
it, and the way the kids from Thurgood Marshall had put it, Sidney looked bad either way.

“You want to hang out after school?” I asked.

“No,” Sidney replied.

“We meant to do the right thing,” I said.

“I know.”

I didn’t have anything else to say and had to watch him leave with his head down.