Bronx Masquerade (6 page)

I’m better off with friends like Diondra and Janelle who know I’m more than what I look like. They know I’ve got a brain, and I know how to use it. They’re no dummies either. That’s why I asked Mr. Ward if the three of us could do a group project on Women of the Harlem Renaissance for extra credit. We had our first meeting at my house.

“Can we do Zora Neale Hurston?” asked Janelle. “I know we read
Their Eyes Were Watching
God in class, but she wrote a bunch of other stuff too.”

“You’re right,” I said. “Good idea.” I picked up my pad and wrote Z. Hurston at the top. “Okay. That’s a good start, but I think we should cover some women you don’t hear so much about.”

“Like?”

“Georgia Douglas Johnson. I read some of her work in a book called
3000 Years of Black Poetry.
I’d never heard of her before, and I bet nobody else in class has either.”

“Cool,” said Diondra. “Maybe I should read that book and see if I can get a couple of ideas.”

“You can borrow it from the library,” I said. “Soon as I return it, that is.” We all laughed. I’m notorious for turning library books in late. “Meanwhile, Diondra, you can start working on portraits of these sisters so we can use them for our report covers when we’re done.”

I didn’t wait for her to volunteer, because I knew she wouldn’t. For somebody who has talent, she spends an awful lot of energy hiding it. But I figure if enough people tell her she’s good, she’ll start believing it. That means people actually have to see her work. I’m going to make sure they do, even if I have to keep volunteering her for projects ’til we graduate. She’s not about to say no to me. She knows I’m stubborn when I want something.

“Fine,” says Diondra. “I’ll do the portraits, but don’t look at me when Mr. Ward sees those report covers and busts out laughing.”

“Laughing? What do you mean, laughing?” Janelle and I looked at each other. I nodded, and on the count of three, we jumped on Diondra and tickled her ’til tears of laughter squirted out of her eyes.

Them’s my girls. They don’t care what I look like. They know the only difference between my color and theirs is that the slave master who owned my family raped my great-great-grandma instead of theirs. And like my dad says, that ain’t nothing to celebrate or be stuck up about.

OPEN MIKE

BY TANISHA SCOTT

 

 

Now I know why the sista hisses every time I call her “caramel cutie.” That’d be the last thing she wants to hear! She’s proud of her African self, and I’m down with that. That’s why I be wearing my
kufi
every chance I get.

I wonder if the sista’s into African music. I gotta ask her about that sometime. Maybe I could hook up some African drum music to go with her poetry for the assembly Teach told us about. She could read her stuff, and I could play DJ. Yeah! I could get into that.

I look up from my lunch tray and catch Tanisha’s eye while she stands in the cafeteria line. We nod.

“Yo, brotha,” says Tyrone, thinking I’m nodding to him. I wave and turn away.

Tanisha is one fine sister, but I never say that to her face. She gets tired of hearing it from all the other guys. They look at her and that’s all they see, what’s on the surface. That’s what she told me when we talked once after Open Mike Friday. We talked about superficial judgments, how people look at you and think they know who you are, what you are, how they put you in a box: jock, china doll, whatever. That’s one thing me and Tanisha got in common. We know all about being put in a box. I feel like I’m gonna be climbing out of the one marked “dumb jock” all my life.

“Hey, Jump Shot,” I hear somebody call me from behind. It’s Mike from the basketball team. I nod, then go back to reading Imamu Amiri Baraka’s
Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide
Note. Mike slams his tray down beside me and sits.

“What’s that you reading?”

“Baraka,” I tell him. “Poetry.”

“Oh. Right. You got that class.”

At first I don’t say anything. Then I decide. “No, man. It’s not for class. I’m reading it for me, actually.”

“You gots to be kiddin’”

“No.”

“That’s so lame, man.”

I keep my finger in the book and turn to face him.

“You ever read Baraka?” No answer. “You should check him out.”

“Hey, do what you want, man. I ain’t interested.” Mike picks up his tray and moves to another table, shaking his head. I go back to my reading, seeing as how he’d given me
permission
and all.

Forget this. Tonight our team plays Bronx Science. When I get on the bus with the rest of the guys, I’m taking a copy of Baraka’s book with me to read, and I’m gonna make sure everybody sees it. Especially Mike.

OPEN MIKE

BY DEVON HOPE

 

 

The brotha’s right. I look around this class and nobody I see fits into the box I used to put them in. Startin’ with Mr. Ward. I figured him for a lightweight do-gooder who would last about five minutes in this neighborhood. But he stuck, and he got this poetry thing going. He even reads his own stuff sometimes. He’s okay.

Devon’s okay too. I don’t know how bright the other jocks are, but there’s nothing dumb about this brotha. Mr. Ward says you have to take people one at a time, check out what’s in their head and heart before you judge.

Word.

Devon shook his head when he saw me standing in the lunch line yesterday, fingering an imaginary fret, making the appropriate sound effects. Friend or not, he thinks I’m crazy, but the brother behind me got into it, snapping his fingers to the rhythm I set. “Yeah!” he said. “Preacher got it goin’ on.”

My name is Sterling Samson, but everyone calls me Preacher. I intend to become a science teacher, not a preacher, but I don’t mind being called one. Just so long as you don’t call me Samson. I’m hoping to end up in a little better shape than he did.

I turned to the brother behind me and eased into a smile. “I play a real guitar at church every Sunday. You ought to come by and check me out sometime.” Judging by the way the brother cut his eyes at me, his appearance on the steps of First Baptist Church seemed highly unlikely. Still, you never know.

I went back to my invisible string playing to keep my fingers limber for later. I had promised to hold the bass line for some of the brothers reading at this week’s Open Mike. Mr. Ward was kind enough to lock my guitar up in his office in the morning so I wouldn’t have to worry about it walking away before then.

Assuming I made it to his class without any trouble.

A brother named Leon “accidentally” bumped into me as I approached the cashier. He spilled, or should I say poured, a cupful of honey on my shoes. My new shoes.

“Oops! Looks like Mr. Goody Two-shoes got a mess to clean up,” he said, laughing. His buddies joined in.

I stared down at my shoes, counting.
One. Two. Three. Four.
By the time I reached ten, I realized counting was not going to suffice.

I counted backward from ten, felt my breath slowly evening out. A still, small voice reminded me to return good for evil, reminded me that my plans for the future do not include fisticuffs or expulsion. I am college-bound and nothing is going to keep me from it. Besides, these poor fools are only trying to get a rise out of me. They’re only trying to prove that the peace of God is nonexistent. But how can they?

I looked up at Leon and shook my head. Then I grabbed him by the shoulders, kissed him loudly on both cheeks, and gave him a bear hug.

“Get off me, man!” he said, trying to pull away.

When I finally let him go, I whispered, “Leon, I forgive you.” Fear blotted out the pupils in his eyes.

“Man,” he yelled, “you some kind of freak!”

I smiled, strummed my imaginary guitar, and sang, “I’ll be a fool for Christ, not just once, but twice.” Leon and his friends backed away as if I’d set a match to them. They put as much distance between us as possible.

“You sick, man,” Leon called over his shoulder. “Stay away from me!”

It’s always something with these guys. Either they’re trying to draw me into an infantile game of The Dozens so we can trade insults left and right, or they’re slapping porno pictures inside my locker hoping to set me off. If they had some direction in their lives like Raul, Devon, or Raynard, they wouldn’t have time to worry about me one way or the other. Which is precisely why I want to teach, to give young brothers like Leon some direction. Even Wesley has direction, although the brother could clean up his language. Sometimes he sounds like a thug in training. Leon’s not much better.

If only Leon and his friends knew how lame their antics are. As if any of that could stop me from believing in God.

All my life, I’ve seen my mother pray, and all my life, I’ve seen her prayers answered. There was the time my baby brother was dying of pneumonia and the doctors had given up, but she prayed until the fever broke. There was the time she was laid off from her job, and the refrigerator was empty, and she bowed her head over an empty pot and prayed for God to fill it. That night, a woman upstairs begged her to accept a bag of frozen meats and vegetables, because she was moving the next day, and she hated to see good food go to waste. We had steaks that night, and we
never
have steaks. There were lots of times like that. “See there,” Mom would say. “That’s God’s hand. If you have God’s hand on your life, everything will be all right.” So of course I believe. And I believe big. I’m believing God’s going to get me and my three brothers into manhood, into college, and off of these streets—with no more than maybe a couple of black eyes between us. How’s that for believing?

The change bell rang and I was still cleaning off my shoes. I could’ve used a few extra minutes to work on my own poem. It took me a while to get into this whole poetry thing, not that I don’t like it. I read
God’s Trombones
by James Weldon Johnson, and some of the work by Countee Cullen, like “Simon the Cyrenian Speaks,” and I liked what the brothers had to say, but their styles don’t suit me. Then Mr. Ward turned me onto Rev. Pedro Pietri, who is more my speed, even if he is kind of old. He knows how to put God and the street in the same sentence, and I figured if I’m going to write poetry at all, that’s what I want to do. So I put together a few. I couldn’t tell if they were any good, but I decided to read one anyway. If I get a laugh, it won’t be the first time.

The bell rang one last time. I took a few bites of my sandwich, wrapped up the rest, and tossed it in my book case for later. I told my growling stomach to be quiet and headed to Mr. Ward’s office for my guitar.

OPEN MIKE

BY STERLING S. HUGHES

 

 

The brotha took me to a whole other place. I’m not sure I got all of it, but I got that he don’t call himself no angel. ’Course, if Mr. Goody Two-shoes ain’t no angel, what does that make me? Never mind.