145th Street (6 page)

When I got to school I was feeling good. Math was the first class and we had one of Galicki’s famous pop quizzes. I was sitting in the back of the room where I always sit and dreaming about laying some serious lip on Celia when I heard Mr. Galicki calling my name.

“Yeah, wazzup?”

“I said”—Mr. Galicki raised his voice—“that I’m really surprised that you did so well on the pop quiz. You really understand parallelograms.”

Hey, what can I tell you? I met Froggy, who was coming from band practice, and told him the good news.

“That’s two things,” he said. “You got five left.”

“That wasn’t luck,” I said.

“Math?” Froggy said. “You’re good in math?”

It was luck. I had to be careful. I needed to get a yes from Celia before I used up my streak. I stopped right there in the hallway and told myself to calm down.

“Calm down and think hard, my Nubian selfhood.”

I needed a soda. I went to the cafeteria, looked around to see if Maurice was there, saw he wasn’t, and went and dropped a quarter in the machine.

“Yo, it ain’t working!” Tommy from the ball team called to me. “It takes your money, but you don’t get a soda!”

I had only put in a quarter, but the machine was whirring and humming. Then a bottle of soda came down.

The guys came over and started pounding on the machine, but nothing happened for them. That was my third lucky thing on my streak. I had four to go.

Okay, I had to go for the big time. Celia was from Santiago, DR. Just looking at her made me want to move to the Dominican Republic. I decided to go the whole nine with her, flowers and everything. The plan was this. I buy some roses, take them over to her house, which is up on 153rd and Broadway, give her the roses, and ask her to the dance. There’s a guy on 135th who sells roses, so I bought six. A dozen sounds good but six is cool.

Then I get a little nervous. Celia can make you nervous because she is so fine. Anyway, girls make me a little uptight. But I’m working on the streak so everything is everything. I buy the roses, and I come home. Ellen is checking me out and I tell her to mind her business. Then I call Celia’s number, which I had gotten from Ramona Rodriguez, who is also fine, but she goes with Paco, and nobody messes with Paco.

“Hello? Mrs. Evora? This is Jamie Farrell. Is Celia there?”

“Who?”

“Jamie Farrell,” I repeated. “I go to school with Celia.”

“Oh, she had to go to the doctor,” Mrs. Evora said. “She has an allergy to certain flowers and she has to take treatments.”

“Roses?” I asked.

“She told you?”

“Something like that,” I said. “Will you tell her Jamie called?”

“Yes, Gamie called to find out about her allergy,” she said.

Right. Gamie called to find out about her allergy. I gave the flowers to my mother. That was four good things that happened. But the flowers cost me a lot and if I was going to take Celia to the dance I’d at least need money to stop for something to eat afterward and a taxi to get her home.

My streak was running low and I was getting nervous. I still hadn’t actually asked Celia to go to the dance with me.

“So just do it,” Froggy said. “Walk up to her and say, ‘Hey, mama, let’s you and me start working on the
lambada
so we look good for the natives at the dance.’ ”

“What’s the lam—what did you call it?”

“Call the chick quick,” Froggy said.

So I’m lying in bed listening to the news, which sounds like the same thing they’ve been telling us for the last year, so I don’t see why it’s news, when there’s a knock on my door. I figure it’s Ellen coming to borrow something, so I don’t say anything. Then the door opens and it’s my dad and he flicks the light on.

“Can I talk to you?” he asks.

“Yeah, sure,” I say. I’m wondering if he ever dated a Dominican fox.

“Son, I want to talk to you about drugs.”

He never dated a Dominican fox, I think. He must have got lucky with Mom.

Then my dad breaks into this whole rap about how bad drugs are and it’s like we’re making a television commercial or something. All the time I’m wondering how I’m going to get the money to take Celia home in a taxi and if I could make a move on her in the back of the taxi.

“I know that so many young men living in the inner city feel deprived of the better things in life,” my dad was saying. “Son, I’m going to give you this hundred dollars so you won’t feel that way. And I’m asking you, in return, to come and talk to me about anything that bothers you. You seem so depressed lately. I won’t push it, though. I’ll wait for you.”

That was the fifth thing in the streak. My dad giving me a hundred dollars just when I needed money. I was in desperate trouble.

I had to concentrate on Celia. Celia, with the dark eyes and the nice boobs. I was in love with her and I had this one shot, this one streak to get her to go to the dance with me. Concentrate. Concentrate on Celia.

I called Froggy.

“You’re in trouble,” he said. “Your streak is jumbling up on you.”

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

“It’s out of control,” he said. “You’re probably just naturally lucky, so your luck is coming too fast.”

Nothing. That was what I was going to do until I got Celia on the phone and asked her to the dance. Nothing. Lie on the bed. Nothing. I wasn’t even going to think of anything. I got a sheet of paper and wrote down all the good things that had happened to me. Then I realized that I was doing something that could result in good luck. I was lying on the bed and lifted my head until I could see my wastebasket. I tossed a high, arcing shot toward the basket.

Panic! I dove for the paper to knock it away! I didn’t want this to be my next lucky thing. I hit it up in the air just before it went into the basket. Then the door opened and knocked the paper against the wall just over my Malcolm X poster, against the side of my dresser, and into the wastebasket.

“What is wrong with you?” Ellen stood in the doorway. “Are you, like, freaking out or something?”

I called Froggy.

“Did you want the paper to go into the basket?” he asked.

“Not when I realized it was going to be my sixth lucky thing,” I said.

“But when you threw it, you did, right?” Froggy asked.

I hung up and made a note to myself that I did not like Froggy.

Okay, get the picture. I’m in school and I’m running out of luck. I’ve got one shot left on my streak.

And my school, Ralph Bunche, is playing against Carver. We’re not supposed to beat Carver. But I’m worried and I tell the coach that my ankle is hurt and I can’t play. He looks at the ankle and it’s still swollen and he says okay. I’m on the bench.

Carver is supposed to kill us. They’ve got guys on that team that are fifteen, maybe sixteen feet tall. But somehow our team stays with them and I’m praying that us winning with me not even playing is not my last lucky event. I figured no way that could happen. But then our guys, really going all out, are playing Carver so tough that the game is just about even. But some of our key guys are fouling out. It gets down to the end of the game and the coach turns to me.

“Either you play or we only have four players and we lose for certain,” he said.

Just don’t shoot, I think.

I remembered how this whole thing began. Fifteen seconds to go against Powell Academy and me running toward the basket and then missing the shot. I want us to win this game but I want to go to a dance with Celia even more.

I looked up at the clock. Nine seconds. I looked up at the scoreboard. Carver 47, Ralph Bunche 46. Don’t shoot, I said to myself. Just don’t shoot. Think of Celia. Dark eyes. Short skirt. Beautiful teeth. Nice boobs.

“We’ve got one chance in a million,” the coach said. “We’ll go with the thirty-four play to Tommy. Jerry inbounds the ball to Tommy and everybody else blocks out their man the best they can.”

“Good choice, Coach,” I said.

Jerry inbounded the ball or, at least, he tried to inbound the ball. A Carver guy knocked it away and it came to me. I picked it up and saw Tommy sliding inside. Two huge dudes from Carver came after me. I needed to get the ball to Tommy and threw it over their outstretched fingers. The ball went up, and up, and up. The buzzer went off as the ball went down and the referee pointed to it. The last shot of the game. Only it wasn’t a shot. It really wasn’t a shot. It really, really,
really
wasn’t a shot even as it came down through the net.

They carried me off the court and, to tell the truth, it felt pretty good. But I had blown my one chance with Celia.

The next day in school everybody was talking about how I had won the game and everything and how cool I was with it. What I was waiting for was my new streak to begin. So I’m walking down the hall and who’s coming down the hall with two of her girlfriends but none other than Celia Evora, Her Loveliness.

“Nice game,” she says to me. Her teeth are like sparkling and her eyes are like flashing and my heart is beating like crazy but I know the score.

“It was luck,” I said.

“My mom told me you called,” she said.

“Just wanted to see how you were doing,” I said. “Your mom said you had an allergy.”

“Yes, and I wanted to talk to you about something,” she said.

“What?”

“You going with anybody to the junior dance?” she asked.

“I hadn’t thought about it,” I said.

“You want to go with me?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said.

“I
knew
you would say yes,” she said. “I just knew it.”

“You did?”

“Sure. This is my lucky week. Figure it out. The hospital finally figured out what I’m allergic to, and I passed every test I took in school. Then, just after my mom said I couldn’t go to the dance because she didn’t trust any of the boys, you called to find out about my allergy and she said you had to be the nicest boy in the school and if I went with you I could go. Am I lucky or what?”

“It sounds like you’re on a streak,” I said.

“I hope it never ends!” she said. “Pick me up early for the dance.”

Celia turned her head, flashed those dark eyes at me, and danced her way down the hall.

Froggy saw me standing in the hallway leaning against the wall.

“What happened?” he asked. “You okay?”

“I just figured out that the whole world is on a streak,” I said.

“What does that mean?” Froggy asked.

Froggy went on about what the word
streak
meant. I really didn’t care anymore. It was all good.

T
he Tigros hit the ’hood gradually, like the turning of a season. First we saw some tags scrawled on the wall near the Pioneer Supermarket. Then we heard that a kid on 141st Street got stabbed and they arrested a member of a gang called Tigros.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Fee asked. “What’s a Tigro, anyway?”

I didn’t know. I didn’t even want to talk about gangs. Some people said—okay, it wasn’t some people, it was my uncle who runs the barbershop—Uncle Duke said that I had a bad attitude about Harlem.

“You’re so anxious to leave you’re not even giving your homeland a chance,” he said.

“Africa is my homeland,” I said.

“That’s the easy answer, isn’t it?” he said. He was sweeping the floor of the shop. “Like running away from the neighborhood.”

He was right, really. Fee, who is my main man, said that I had black skin and white dreams, that all I wanted to do was to get away someplace and be with white people.

I liked a lot of things about Harlem, especially the block, which was how we talked about 145th Street. There were good people on the block, but what I wanted was to be more than what I saw on the block. Uncle Duke said I could be more, but if I put Harlem out of my heart I could end up being a lot less, too.

Yeah, well, I was ready to take my chances. What I wanted to do was to be a doctor and have a nice crib, and a Benz, the whole nine. Then the thing happened with Monkeyman.

Monkeyman was always quiet. He was down with the books and everything, but he kept to himself a lot and didn’t get into anybody else’s business. We used to call him Monkeyman because sometimes he would go to the park, climb up into a tree, and sit up there and read all day. We weren’t dissing him, we just gave him the tag and he seemed to like it, so it stuck.

Anyway, the Tigros turned out to be a new gang that were trying to build a rep in the ’hood. They were biting all the stuff they read in the papers about wearing colors and flashing signs and whatnot. It wasn’t a real big thing until they started terrorizing stores and then they beat up a lot of people and stabbed that one kid. After that you saw their tag all over the place, like stabbing a kid was something to be proud of.

What usually happens when a new gang makes the scene is they jump bad as a posse for a while until they step too far and their leaders get busted. Then, when they realize that their reps and tattoos and colors don’t keep them out of jail, they chill and their colors fade. But that hadn’t happened yet with the Tigros. They were still wilding and messing with people and putting out squad tracts. A squad tract is when somebody messes with a posse and they let everybody know they’re going kick his butt. When the word comes down that a gang is after you it’s scary, and one of the reasons I wanted to leave the area.

Okay, so here’s what happened with Monkeyman and the Tigros. It started when one of the Lady Tigros got into a beef with Peaches. The Lady Tigros were just as bad as the dudes and one of them slapped Peaches in the face. Peaches and the girl got into it pretty good and Peaches won the fight. Then, on the way home, two of the Lady Tigros went after Peaches and one of them had a razor blade. Monkeyman was coming from school and had stopped off to buy a soda on the ave. He saw the girl trying to cut Peaches and he ran out and knocked the blade from the girl’s hand. Bingo, the fight’s over because neither of those two girls wanted to mess with Peaches without a blade and they weren’t on their turf anyway. But one of the Lady Tigros went to the same school as Monkeyman. She went back and told the Tigros and before you knew it everybody on the block was talking about how Monkeyman was in big trouble.

There were signs painted on the walls—
MONKEYMAN MUST DIE!
and
MONKEYMAN GOT TO FALL!
It was all signed by the Tigros.

Uncle Duke saw Monkeyman in the barbershop and told him to lay low for a while. Fee told him the same thing but everybody figured that Monkeyman was going to get beat up and maybe even worse.

“You know any karate or anything?” I asked Monkeyman when I ran into him on the corner.

“I read a book on it once,” he said.

“That’s not good enough,” I said.

He shrugged and gave me this little grin. Okay, let me back up a little. Monkeyman is six feet tall, maybe even six feet one, and thin. He plays a little ball but he’s really not kicking hoops and he’s kind of mild-looking. He’s not a lame or anything like that but he’s more down with his mind than his hands. So we worried about him.

“We need to get together and help Monkeyman,” Peaches said.

“That’s hip,” Fee said. “It’s hip to help a brother in trouble and everything, but what you’re talking about is getting a posse together to go down with the Tigros and that’s heavier than it is hip.”

“We can tell the police,” Peaches said.

“A guy I know went to the police when he got into trouble with a numbers runner,” I said. “The numbers runner said he was going to cut him a new place to pee from. He went to the police and the police told him they couldn’t do anything until something happened.”

“They’re into cutting people,” Peaches said. “That’s serious.”

“Yo, Peaches, I didn’t know you were sweating Monkeyman,” Fee said.

“Lighten up, lame,” Peaches came back with her quick mouth. “Monkeyman had the heart to help me when I needed some help. If you don’t have the heart to help him that’s cool, but don’t try to finesse it off like it’s no big thing.”

“He needs a gun,” Fee said. “That’s the only thing they respect.”

Just blow the word and I was ready to split. From a scrap in the street the jam was jumping to nines. On the way home I tried thinking about what Monkeyman could do. If the Tigros came on him and just beat him up it would be cool. I mean, that was sick but it was better than being cut or shot. And the thing was that a lot of kids were talking about being down with gangs and trying to make themselves large by going to wack city and offing somebody. That was the danger big-time. To me it was like some moron jumping off a big building and styling for the camera on the way down. They would be throwing away their life, and taking somebody else’s life for some moment they imagined would happen. This craziness filled my nightmares. And it might have been sad but the truth was that I was glad it was Monkeyman on the line, and not me.

Two weeks passed from the time that Monkeyman had stopped the girl from cutting Peaches and it looked as if things might blow over without anyone getting hurt. Then a guy called Clean entered the picture.

Ralph J. Bunche is the best school in the ’hood but every so often we get in a guy who doesn’t fit. That’s what Clean was. He wasn’t a big dude, more small and wiry. He wore his pants low in hip-hop style with about four inches of his shorts showing. You’re not allowed to style down in the school but he kept at it and the hallway teachers got on his case. He told everyone he was from L.A. and used to run with the Crips, but Fee peeped his school record and the dude was really from some place in California called Lompoc.

Clean hooked up with some folks who told him about the Tigros posse. Check this out, to get into the Tigros you either had to slash a saint in public, meaning cut somebody who wasn’t involved in nothing, just walking down the street, or make something that was foul righteous. According to the Tigros posse, since Monkeyman had messed with them and that was foul, getting even with him was making it righteous.

It got around in the cafeteria that Clean was going to do up Monkeyman. Peaches was still trying to settle things peacefully.

“Let’s just go up to the dude and see if we can talk a hole in his ego or whatever else it takes,” she said. “Because I got to be watching Monkeyman’s back the same way he turned out for me.”

A few other kids said they were willing to try to talk to Clean. But the truth is that some dudes you can talk to and some you can’t. In the first place Clean was not into brain surgery. I mean, his favorite sentence was “Huh?” Clean was in a class called ZIP. ZIP was supposed to stand for Zoned for Individual Progress, but all the kids called it the Underground Railroad because it was the last stop you made before you dropped out of high school.

Okay, besides Clean not being a brainiac he was also like nine shades of serious wack. He was the kind of kid who made you wonder what his mama had been smoking when he was in the womb. But, hey, give it a shot, right?

We found him on the street, and Peaches took the first shot at Clean. “So,” she said, “there’s no use in us, as young black brothers and sisters, getting into the same violence thing that’s killing us off and messing up our dreams. If we can’t respect each other, how are we going to expect people to respect us?”

“He messed with the Tigros so he got to be messed up!” Clean answered.

“Why?” came out of me before I could stop it.

“Because that’s the way it goes!” Clean said. “He got to be messed up!”

I could see that Clean was getting off with everybody standing around trying to cop a plea for Monkeyman. We split the session and I was still hoping that things would blow over. For Monkeyman’s sake and for Peaches’ sake, too.

The next day Clean got busted bringing a knife to school. If you bring any kind of weapon to Bunche it means an automatic suspension and then you have to go through the bring-in-your-parents bit to get back in. When Mr. Aumack, the principal, called the police, Clean got mad and walked out of the school. But before he left he sent word that he’d be waiting for Monkeyman when we got out at three-fifteen.

Three-fifteen came. When we looked out of the windows, we saw about a dozen Tigros outside. They were all wearing their black do-rags and some of them had jackets with their tag on them.

Mr. Aumack called the police again and in a few minutes the whole block was filled with squad cars. Their lights were flashing and police were snatching everybody wearing Tigros gear. One of the Tigros spotted Monkeyman and got up in his face. He said, “When we catch you we’ll cap you.”

“How about tomorrow night, eleven o’clock in Jackie Robinson Memorial Park?” Monkeyman said.

“Bet!” the Tigros dude said. “Tomorrow night in the park. Be there, sucker, and wear something that’s going to look good at the autopsy.”

“And bring your whole posse,” Monkeyman said.

Whoa. Monkeyman had called out Tigros big-time. I grabbed his arm and we started walking away.

If you’re going to get into somebody’s face you got to know they got a mind somewhere behind their eyebrows. Then maybe they’ll do some heavy thinking and settle for a chill pill.

“What you doing, Monkeyman?” I asked.

“What’s got to be done,” Monkeyman said. “Just what’s got to be done.”

The word bounced around: Be in the park to catch the go-down at eleven. Some kids said they didn’t want any part of it.

“Let’s kidnap Monkeyman,” Fee said. “He don’t show and nothing can happen.”

It was all gums and teeth because nobody really knew what to do. I was all for dropping a dime to 911 but everyone else said no.

“I’m going to be at the park,” Peaches said.

Fee said he would be, too. So did Tommy Collins, Debbie, LaToya, Jamie, and me. I didn’t want to show, but Peaches made it clear that anybody that didn’t would be punking out.

We hadn’t seen Monkeyman all day and rumors were that he had left town.

“Maybe he’ll show at the last minute with an Uzi and start blowing away all the Tigros,” LaToya said.

Nobody said anything when we headed up the hill to the park. I wondered if everybody else could hear their heart beating. I was wearing my sneakers, ready to run if I had to.

When we got to the park there were maybe twenty-five guys in their Tigros gear and ten girls.

My knees got real loose and I was having trouble swallowing.

“Where Monkeyman?” Clean asked. He was wearing a heavy jacket and had his hands in his pockets. “Where Monkeyman?”

“We thought he was here,” Fee said. I noticed Fee’s voice was kind of high.

We waited for another ten or fifteen minutes with all the Tigros posse calling us suckers and stuff like that. I was hoping they didn’t turn on us.