After Tupac & D Foster (6 page)

“I don’t care if I don’t have cute clothes or if some days my hair be looking messed up—I just don’t never want to be hungry like that again.”

There were tears in her eyes but they weren’t spilling down, just sitting there all shiny.

“I see Tupac rapping and I see he got that same look that I got—like we both know what it feels like to be that hungry, to want to eat something that bad. And then when you finally get something to eat, your stomach gets all cramped up around it and you can’t even keep it
down
. Can’t even keep it inside you.”

“You know my mama ain’t never gonna let you be hungry no more,” Neeka said. “She ain’t the best cook in the world, but there’s always gonna be a plate for you.”

“You my girls,” D said back, her voice all choked up and hoarse.

I put my hand on D’s head and slowly stroked her hair. After a few moments, she put her head down on her lap and started crying. Then we all just sat there, looking out over the street, crying quietly, for D, for Tupac, for our own selves.

“He ain’t gonna die,” D said.

“What makes you so sure?” Neeka asked. I wiped my eyes and took a deep breath.

“It ain’t his time. I don’t feel it.”

“So you all psychic now.”

“All day long I been thinking about it, you know.” She looked at Neeka. Watch him come back stronger. Shot like that—you either say ‘I’m out’ and you die, or you hold on real hard. And come back stronger.

“I know it sounds whack,” she said, so softly it sounded like she was talking to herself almost. “But when I see him on TV, I be thinking about the way his life was all crazy. And my life is all crazy. And we both all sad about it and stuff. But we ain’t trying to let the sad feelings get us down. We ain’t trying to give up.”

We all got real quiet. I wanted D to just keep on going but she didn’t. She just sat there a few minutes, looking up at the streetlight. Then, without saying anything, she got up, waved without even looking at us and started heading down the block. After a minute passed, Jayjones jumped up and ran up to her. He put his arm around her shoulder—not like a boy-friend but like a big brother—the way he did sometimes with me and Neeka. D walked with her head down, her hands inside her coat pockets.

“May as well sleep over at your house again tonight,” Neeka said, wiping the snow from her face and getting up. “So we can keep up with this craziness.”

“Neeka,” I said as we headed into my house. “You think we the lucky ones?”

Neeka stopped at the bottom stair leading up to my apartment. It was warm in our hallway. Someone had baked something sweet and the smell made me hungry.

“Like how?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. When I heard D talking about her life like that . . . when she was saying about being hungry and—”

“If we so lucky, how come she’s the one get to take the bus all over the city
by herself
and don’t have to worry about being home until nine o’clock?”

I didn’t say anything. I wondered where Tupac’s mama was. Wondered if she’d heard any news.

CHAPTER NINE

Tupac got better and the judge sent him to prison. The morning the sentencing came down, it was Valentine’s Day. I’d gotten Mama a small red heart filled with chocolate-covered cherries and she’d given me a box of peanut clusters—the kind with the nuts and caramel and chocolate working all together to taste crazy in your mouth. I’d only eaten one, but she hadn’t eaten any of her candy yet. We just sat there, reading the articles over and over while the radio played Tupac songs. The news said Tupac had touched a girl on her behind and the judge said that since he was such a thug, he was gonna show him a lesson. Up to four and a half years. Maximum security. They’d sent him off to Rikers Island that morning. From there he’d go upstate.

That afternoon on TV, they showed Tupac leaving the courtroom. He walked slowly, with his head down. When he got outside, he lifted his eyes, and slowly his beautiful, sad eyes looked into the camera and out at the world. Then he lowered his head again and his whole body seemed to sag. His whole body seemed to say,
How did this happen to me?

Then it seemed like all over Queens, brothers were getting arrested and sent upstate. It felt crazy to turn on the television and see rappers talking about prison and doing these video scenes in prison and then to turn around and see your own people getting sent away. It was all crazy real and feeling like some kind of strange dream at the same time—people we didn’t even know singing and rapping our stories.

But I was still a few months away from twelve when I was first starting to understand. And I’d sit in my room watching the stars on my ceiling begin to fade up into a glow and I’d just try to figure it all out. Just a little kid really without any of the words I needed to explain all the things my mind was just beginning to think about.

In May, me and Neeka turned twelve and Jayjones treated all of us to McDonald’s—buying us whatever we wanted.
Just Big Macs, fries and shakes for all of us,
Neeka said.
And don’t forget to hook us up with some of those pies that always be burning our mouths.
And when Jayjones came to the table with our food, we all sang the Stevie Wonder birthday song real loud.

PART TWO

CHAPTER TEN

“Brothers be hunted,” Jayjones said one Sunday morning. We were walking home from church. In front of us, Miss Irene and my mama each held one of the twin girl’s hands and talked real soft about Tash and the fact that he’d just been transferred to another prison, right near the one he’d already been doing time in. It was cold out. The summer had flown past us and before we could even get used to all the warm weather and freedom, fall came. We got taller and D turned thirteen and by then Neeka’s body had started catching up to D’s. I was still tall and skinny, but some curves were starting to happen for me too. By November, we couldn’t walk anywhere without boys hollering at us.

I wanted to tell Jayjones that sisters were hunted too—boys screaming behind you and whatnot. Trying to touch you when you walked past them like they had some kind of right to your body. It was
crazy.

Neeka shivered. Maybe she was thinking the same thing.

November had come on quick and cold and the only good part about the whole fall was that Tupac had gotten out of jail and was making videos again.

Jayjones had his hands in the pockets of his Sunday coat. Neeka was on one side of him and I was on the other. Emmett turned around and stopped when he heard Jayjones, but Albert kept on walking.

“Like people hunt for deer, Jay?” Emmett said, his eyes getting wide.

“Worse than that,” Jayjones said. He was frowning. He’d frowned all through the church service and even as we were leaving and all of us shook the pastor’s hand.

“You gotta walk crazy slow and not be in the wrong place or be driving the wrong car—like a Jaguar or a Mercedes or something.”

“I can’t drive no nice car?” Emmett said. “What if I buy it with my own money?”

“Then you better drive it real slow.”

Emmett shrugged, then turned around and went to catch up with Albert.

“You be filling that boy’s head with a lot of junk,” Neeka said. “I’m going to tell Mama—”

“Mama knows!” Jayjones said. “She got four boys and one of them already in jail. She just holding on tight to the rest of us.”

Neeka made a face.

“You think Tash deserves to be in jail?” Jayjones asked her.

“No.”

“You think Tupac deserved to be in jail?”

“Of course not.”

“Then multiply that and then multiply what you get and keep on multiplying.”

“I read they be building more jails than schools,” I said.

Jayjones put his arm around my shoulder. It felt warm and nice there. He put his other arm around Neeka’s. She made another face but let him keep it there.

“Keep reading,” Jayjones said. “You gonna have more people than my thick-headed sister to be convincing about this stuff. It’s crazy.”

“Yeah,” I said, moving a little closer in to Jayjones. “Real crazy.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

One Friday night that winter, me, Neeka and D were playing cards at my kitchen table when D said real soft, “Y’all want to roam with me?”

Me and Neeka looked at each other. Snow had fallen twice during the week and although the streets were plowed, it was still piled up against the curb and on the sides of our steps. Cars were still halfway covered from the plowing and the wind was kicking up like it was losing its mind.

“Where?” Neeka asked.

D shrugged. “We just go,” she said.

Neeka’s mom had said it was okay to spend the night over my house and D’s curfew wasn’t for another two hours. My moms was doing overtime, so I knew she wouldn’t be home for a while.

“Off the block?” I said.

“No,” Neeka said, rolling her eyes. “Let’s just walk up and down the hallway stairs for about an hour.” Then, even though we were the only ones home, she dropped her voice. “Yes, off the block! D gonna show us the world, girl!”

“So your mama and my mama could break our behinds?” I put down my cards and picked up the book I’d been reading about the Black Panthers. Back in the day, there’d been a revolution going on. “No, thanks.” I leaned back and opened it to where I’d left off. “D’s thirteen now—she’s almost out of butt-beating times. But you and me straight up in them.”

Neeka came over and snatched the book out of my hand.

“C’mon, Neeka. I’m reading about a
revolution.
”

“Well, I’m talking about revolting so get dressed, girl, we gonna roam. My feet itching like I got athlete’s foot.”

“Your mama will knock you into next week,” I said.

Neeka got on her coat, then went in the closet and threw mine to me. We both had down coats, brown with fur collars. D’s coat was some kind of black wool with little pilly things all over it. She put it on and wrapped a bright green scarf around her neck, then put on the hat that matched it. With the scarf and the hat on, the coat didn’t look that bad.

“Oh—we are
so
out of here,” Neeka said, her grin getting all wide.

I pulled my coat on slowly. We’d been to Manhattan and out to Brooklyn with our mamas but always by car and never by ourselves. The
Don’t Leave the Block
rule was like something God had burned into those Ten Commandment tablets for Moses. Serious.

“This is crazy,” I said, already feeling my two selves separating from each other—one going over to the couch with my book, the other one roaming. “I’m not going real far, y’all. I’m telling you that right now.”

D nodded. “I got a place—it ain’t far and it’s only the bus—you don’t even have to get on the train.”

Neeka looked real disappointed.

“We don’t have any tokens or anything.” I started to take off my coat.

“I got it covered,” D said. “It’ll be cool, for real.” She looked at Neeka, whose face was still all bent with disappointment. “We can’t be going all the way to Manhattan—I gotta be home too early and your moms wouldn’t be having it.”

“We could just go to like the first stop in Manhattan—get out and walk around for a minute just to say we did,” Neeka said.

I still had my coat half on, half off. “You can go there by yourselves.”

“Forget it,” Neeka said. She gave me a look. “Let’s just go wherever. Least we’ll be getting off the block.”

When we got outside, we took a quick look up at Neeka’s window to make sure her moms wasn’t watching, then ran to the corner and around it without stopping.

By the time we got to the bus stop, we were out of breath and laughing. D got three tokens from her pocketbook and gave one to me and one to Neeka. “I bought a whole bunch ’cause Flo hit me with a twenty. After school, they don’t be letting you use your bus pass anymore. Bus drivers be clocking it all careful and whatnot.”

We sat there shivering—from the cold and from knowing what would happen if we got busted—until the bus came. Then me and Neeka put our tokens in the slot like it was something we did every day and followed D. There were a few other peeps on the bus and it was nice and warm. I felt the scared leaving me.

Neeka moved to a window seat and I moved to one on the other side. In the darkness, we could see our own neighborhood disappearing and the houses getting bigger and bigger. Soon, there weren’t even that many streetlights—just darkness and the yellow light coming from people’s windows. Then the houses got farther apart and it was spooky the way there weren’t any people on the street, no corner stores or stairs to sit on. Just big front yards with tiny yellow lights glowing a path up to people’s doorways. I stared out the window and hugged myself, trying to imagine what it would be like to grow up with not a lot of people on your street. Nobody calling you out the window. Nobody catching you sneaking off the block. It felt strange. Lonely. The only sound was the motor of the bus, and for some reason, it made me miss my mama. I leaned my head against the cold window glass.

“This is like way out—going out by Long Island,” Neeka said.

I must have looked nervous, because D said, “Don’t worry—I ain’t taking you to Long Island.”

We all got quiet and just stared out the window. People got off and the bus got emptier and emptier.

It seemed a long time passed before D said, “This is our stop,” and we followed her off the bus.

When we got out, it was dark and cold. Me and Neeka stayed real close to D as we walked. When we came to the entrance of a big park, D stopped and smiled. The moon had come out and there were a few lights but mostly it was dark.

“We’re here,” D said.

Neeka looked at her. “You
must
be high.”

I didn’t say anything. The cold air felt good—not wet and hard like it had felt earlier. The wind had stopped losing its mind and the snow looked like it was glowing where the moonlight hit it.

“C’mon,” D said.

“You think I’m going into that dark park to get beat up and raped and who knows what all else peeps thinking about doing to little girls?” Neeka said.