After Tupac & D Foster
Read After Tupac & D Foster Online
Authors: Jacqueline Woodson
Table of Contents
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
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Copyright © 2008 by Jacqueline Woodson.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Woodson, Jacqueline. After Tupac and D Foster / Jacqueline Woodson. p. cm.
Summary: In the New York City borough of Queens in 1996, three girls bond over their shared love of
Tupac Shakur’s music, as together they try to make sense of the unpredictable world in which they live.
[1. Coming of age—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Shakur, Tupac, 1971-1996—Fiction.
4. African Americans—Fiction. 5. Queens (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.W84945Af 2008 [Fic]—dc22 2007023725
eISBN : 978-1-101-17654-2
For Toshi Reagon and Jana Welch
PROLOGUE
The summer before D Foster’s real mama came and took her away, Tupac wasn’t dead yet. He’d been shot five times—two in the head, two down by his leg and thing and one shot that went in his hand and came out the other side and went through a vein or something. All the doctors were saying he should have died and were bringing other doctors up to his room to show everybody what a medical miracle he was. That’s what they called him. A Medical Miracle. Like he wasn’t even a real person. Like he was just something to be looked at and turned this way and that way and poked at. Like he wasn’t Tupac.
D Foster showed up a few months before Tupac got shot that first time and left us the summer before he died. By the time her mama came and got her and she took one last walk on out of our lives, I felt like we’d grown up and grown old and lived a hundred lives in those few years that we knew her. But we hadn’t really. We’d just gone from being eleven to being thirteen. Three girls. Three the Hard Way. In the end, it was just me and Neeka again.
The first time Tupac got shot, it was November 1994. Cold as anything everywhere in the city and me, Neeka, D and everybody else was shivering our behinds through the winter with nobody thinking Pac was gonna make it. Then, right after he had some surgery, he checked himself out of the hospital even though the doctors was trying to tell him he wasn’t well enough to be doing that. That’s when everybody around here started talking about what a true gangsta he was. At least that’s what all the kids were thinking. The churchgo ing people just kept saying he had God with him. Some of the parents were saying what they’d always been saying about him—that he was heading right to what he got because he was a bad example for kids, especially black kids like us. Crazy stuff about Tupac being a disgrace to the race and blah, blah, blah. The wannabe gangsta kids just kept saying Tupac was gonna get revenge on whoever did that to him.
But when I saw Tupac like that—coming out of the hospital, all skinny and small-looking in that wheelchair, big guards around him—I remember thinking,
He ain’t gonna try to get revenge on nobodyand he ain’t trying to be a disgrace to anybody either. Just trying to keep on.
Even though he wasn’t smiling, I knew he was just happy and confused about still being alive.
Went on like that all winter long, then February came and they sent Tupac to jail for some dumb stuff and people started talking about that—the negative peeps talking about that’s where he needed to be and all the rest of us saying how messed up the law was when you didn’t look and act like people thought you should.
Spring came and Pac dropped his album from prison and this one song on it was real tight, so we all just listened to it and talked about how bad-ass Pac was—that he wasn’t even gonna let being in jail stop him from making his music. Me and Neeka and D had all turned twelve by then, but we still believed stuff—like that we’d grow up and marry beautiful rapper guys who’d buy us huge houses out in the country. We talked about how they’d be all crazy over us and if some other girl walked by who was fine or something, they wouldn’t even turn their heads to look because they’d be so in love with us and all. Stupid stuff like that.
In jail, Pac started getting clear about thug life, saying it wasn’t the right thing. He got all
righteous
about it and whatnot, and with all the rappers shooting on each other and stuff, it wasn’t hard to agree with him.
Time kept passing on that way. Things and people changing. First, D turned thirteen, then me and Neeka were right there behind her—us all turning into teenagers, getting body, getting tall, boys acting stupid over us.
Seems soon as we started settling into all that changing, D’s mama came—took her away from us.
And time kept on creeping.
Then Tupac went and died and it got me thinking about D. About the short time she was with us and about how you could know somebody real good but not know them at the same time. And it made me want to remember. Yeah, I guess that’s it. I guess that’s what I’m trying to do now. . . .
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
Maybe, while he was in jail, Tupac started thinking about his Big Purpose. That’s what D called it—our Big Purpose. She said everybody’s got one and it’s just that we gotta figure out what it is and then go have it.
The night she said it for the first time, it was late in the summer 1995 and we were all just hanging out—me, her and Neeka—watching music videos on TV. Before they started coming on regular, we’d have to watch the bootleg copies and sometimes those were so bad, we could hardly see the people in them. If it was a Tupac video, the only thing all the girls wanted to see real good was Tupac’s eyes. He had the prettiest eyes of any rapper—they were all big and sad-looking and he had dark eyebrows that were so thick, they made you think about soft things.
That night, they showed “Brenda’s Got A Baby,” one of Tupac’s old videos where Tupac sang about the young girl getting pregnant, and in the video Tupac was holding the baby because Brenda had put it in a garbage can. Me, Neeka and D was sitting on the floor in my living room. We’d put our money together and had enough for a small pizza and a liter of Pepsi. With a small pie, everybody could have at least two slices. D hadn’t eaten anything since school lunch, so her eyes got real wide when she realized how much we had.
“Dag, my girls!” she said, her smile getting all big. “We gonna eat like we stupid tonight!”
And we did. We’d each had our two slices and were working on the last two, passing the slices back and forth between us—me taking a bite, then passing it to Neeka, Neeka taking a bite, then passing it on to D. D had the slice when Tupac’s video came on.
“They don’t hardly never be playing Pac,” she said. “It’s like they scared of him or something.”
It was dark in the living room except for the blue light coming off the screen. D got real quiet and stopped eating. I could see the shiny line of pizza grease moving past her bony wrist and on down her arm.
“Hey D,” Neeka said. “You babysitting that slice? Pass it on, girl.”
But D just kept staring at the TV like she couldn’t hear anymore, holding the slice up, frozen in midair.
“Forget about it,” I said. “I’m done anyway.”
I leaned back against the couch. Tupac’s beautiful eyes came up close on the screen. His mouth moved slowly as he sang about Brenda never ever really having a chance in life. His eyes looked sad like he was really singing about the truth and somebody he knew real good. Maybe he was thinking about his own mama—how she’d been in jail when she was pregnant with him. Not because she’d done something real wrong or anything—just because she was in this militant group, the Black Panthers. Back in the day, the Black Panthers were always marching and trying to get things changed so that black people could live a little bit better—like they’re the reason there was free breakfast in school and stuff like that. Tupac’s mama had gotten arrested and when she went to jail, she started making changes there—making sure pregnant women had decent food so that their babies could be born healthy and all. Everybody who knew Tupac knew about his mama. He loved her more than anything. Maybe Tupac was singing about Brenda but really thinking about his own mama—how she could have just thrown him away but she didn’t. Instead, she made sure he was born healthy. And strong.
“Him and me,” D said, real quiet. “It’s like we the same in some crazy way.”
Neeka looked at me and made a face.
“The only way you and him’s the same,” Neeka said, “is that you both Nee-groes. But you broke-ass and Tupac’s got some money in his pockets.”
D kept staring at the TV. Tupac was walking slow with his boys all around. His head down. He was so beautiful, I felt like I could see Brenda inside of him. Like even though he was singing about a girl who threw her baby away, he was thinking about himself. Made me wonder if he was seeing himself as Brenda or the baby.
“It’s like I look at him and I see myself. It’s like I’m looking in a mirror,” D said. She turned to the pizza slice she was holding, like she was just remembering it was there, then reached past Neeka. “Here,” she said, handing it to me. “I’m full.”