Growing Pains (3 page)
Authors: Dwayne S. Joseph
4
After eating the pizza, Tyrel went back to his grandmother's house while Brian went home. His mother had left him a list of things she wanted him to take care of for the weekend. To save himself the drama and headache, he wanted to get a good head start on the list and knock out as many things as he could. That would keep her off of his backâat least a little bit.
His mother had sacrificed a lot to provide a home and stable life for him, and for that, Brian would forever be grateful. Her presence in his life was one of the reasons he did well in school. Quite simply, she wouldn't allow him to fail. But she could only be on him so much, and because she spent the majority of her days going between two jobs, she wasn't able to police his extracurricular activities. She had no clue about the li'l somethin's he got into, or the crimes he committed with Tyrel and Will, and if she were to find out, Brian knew that she'd, first, be devastated, and then, second, flip out and go ballistic.
Although he still considered her to be his truest best friend, his relationship with his mother had become strained as he'd grown closer to adulthood. To her, he would always be that little boy she used to take to the park and push on the swing. Brian understood this, but had trouble accepting it nonetheless.
After completing at least half of the items on the listâcleaning the bathroom and his room, doing the dishes in the sink and the vacuuming (which he knew he would have to do again before the weekend was out anyway)âBrian lay down for a quick nap, his mind on Carla.
Just as Will was stuck on Shauntel, Brian was completely into Carla Quinones. However, unlike his boy, who just couldn't get past second base no matter how hard he tried, Brian had hit home runs with Carla many times.
Carla was the half Brian seemed to need to complete him. With his mother being from Trinidad, Brian grew up deeply rooted in his Caribbean culture. The air with which he carried himself was different, and although the way he talked and expressed himself was similar to his boys, there was still something that had always been different about him. A pride that only those of Caribbean background could fully understand. Brian loved his heritage. He loved the food, and the rhythmic rise and tones in the accent of his mother and relatives (an accent that he carried traces of) that misinformed people wrongly confused with being Jamaican.
But the music.
While he did enjoy soca and chutney music, Brian had always had more of a connection with Latin music, especially salsa, and now reggaeton. He could go to a Caribbean party and wine up on someone all night long, but the music still didn't send chills through him the way the salsa did.
He'd often wondered why that had been the case, especially since his mother didn't listen to it, save for the few commercial artists everyone enjoyed: Marc Anthony, some Shakira, and a little Ricky Martin, whom Brian just couldn't get into. The only thing Brian could surmise was that his love had come from the little bit of exposure he'd gotten as cars passed by in his neighborhood, or from some of the homes playing it. Or maybe the love ran deeper than that. Maybe the love had come from the Venezuelan father he'd never known.
Salsa, reggaeton, and merengue when he was at a clubâmusic that moved him.
Music that moved Carla less.
Born from both a Dominican mother and father, Carla's backstory was similar to Brian's. She too had grown embedded in her culture. She loved everything about being a
Dominicana,
but just as Brian had love for music from another culture, so did she.
Dominicana,
but just as Brian had love for music from another culture, so did she.
Soca, chutney, reggae.
These were the sounds that moved her, and ran like fire through her veins.
Before Carla, Brian had dated only American black females. Things were always great with them, or as great as it could have been for his adolescent age, but the one barrier that remained a constant problem was his love for music. The females could deal with reggae and some of the soca, but they could never get into the Latin rhythm.
And then Carla came along.
He'd been into her since the tenth grade, but had never gone after her. But during his junior year, he found out that her favorite music was socaâsomething he'd discovered during ninth period study hall, as he eavesdropped on her conversation with her girlfriend about her then-boyfriend's reluctance to even try to dance or listen to itâBrian decided right then and there that she had to be his.
Very smoothly, he began a conversation with her about music, and before the period had ended, he had her phone number. Two weeks later, Carla broke up with her boyfriend. And two weeks after that, Brian had what he'd wanted.
Carla did it for him. He hadn't admitted it to anyone, but he loved her. He didn't know what was going to happen when they finished high school next year, but if he had his way, they were going to leave Jamaica Avenue behind together.
Carla.
It was cliché, but she just seemed to complete him. The nagging feeling that something bad was coming stirred deep within the pit of his stomach as he lay in his bed, and before drifting off to sleep, he resigned himself to hitting the Laundromat with his boys. But this would have to be his last job with them, because he didn't want anything happening to take him away from her.
Mr. White had talked to him about seeing, believing, and attaining. Maybe it was time to share what it was that he saw in his future.
“My nigga! What up, son. We was just wonderin' where you was at.”
Brian looked at his boy, Will, and gave him a pound. At twenty going on forty, Will was the third and oldest member of the crew. He had been in sixth grade when Tyrel and Brian were in third. They met Will as he was being beaten on by a boy-girl tandem behind the school. The girl, upset at Will for touching her where he shouldn't have, had called on her brother to help her defend her honor. Because they felt sorry for the short, overweight kid with glasses, Tyrel and Brian got Will out of that jam by doing a little beating of their own. Will had been down with them since then.
With his doughboy frame, Will was the weakest of the three, but he had an ugly side to him that, when unleashed, could be very nasty. Like Tyrel and Brian, he had no male presence in his life, but unlike them, his father had been around in his life until he passed away from lung cancer when he was only thirteen. Unable to deal with the loss of her husband, his mother sought heroin to sooth her pain, and became addicted. No longer living at home, his mother could often be seen roaming around in the seedier parts of the neighborhood, doing whatever she had to, to score a hit.
Thrust into becoming a parent for his younger brother and sister at home, Will did whatever he had to do to hold things down. His day job was delivering soda and beer to the corner stores along Jamaica Avenue and Cross Bay Boulevard every day, but the money he made was minimal at best. He wanted more, but he'd had to drop out of school during his sophomore year, so without his diploma, his options were limited. When Tyrel first brought up the idea of forming the three-man clique, Will, desperate for just having the chance of getting more money, didn't hesitate.
“My bad,” Brian said, stepping past him. “I had some shit to do for my mom and then I crashed.” He walked into the living room, where Tyrel and Heavy D lookâalike, Big Mike, were sitting on the couch, playing
Madden NFL
on the Xbox 360.
Madden NFL
on the Xbox 360.
Brian looked at Big Mike and thought about the secret Tyrel had revealed to him. Although what had happened to him had been no laughing matter, Brian still had to stifle a laugh.
Tyrel looked up at him. “You awake now, right, son?”
Brian nodded. “I'm awake.”
Tyrel dropped his controller and stood up. “A'ight, cool. Let's formulate this shit then.”
“Yo, son, what about the game?” Big Mike asked.
Tyrel looked down at him. “Nigga, I'm up by thirty-five points. What game?” He walked away from Big Mike, who frowned, and, without a reply, ended the game and went back to the main menu to start a new one against the computer.
Will and Brian followed Tyrel to Will's bedroom, where his brother and sister were boxing on the Nintendo Wii.
“Yo, you two gotta be out,” Will said to his siblings.
His eleven-year-old brother groaned. “Aw, man. Come on, Will. I'm kickin' her ass right now.”
“Whatever, Marcus,” Will's ten-year-old sister said. “I was lettin' you win 'cause I kicked your ass in all our other fights.”
Will, Tyrel, and Brian laughed as Marcus's lips got tight.
Will said to Marcus, “I told your ass to practice before you stepped to her again.”
Marcus sucked his teeth. “Man, she be cheatin'.”
“Whatever, Marcus,” his sister said, curling her lips. “You just suck, that's all.”
“I suck like your mother be suckin',” Marcus said.
Tyrel threw a closed fist over his mouth while Brian whispered, “Damn.”
“Whatever, Marcus. She's your stank-ass mother too,” his sister shot back.
Another “damn” from Brian, while Tyrel turned and laughed.
“A'ight,” Will said, turning off the game. “Be out.”
Both siblings groaned, put their controllers down, and walked out of the room.
Before she walked through the door, Will's little sister looked at Brian. “Hi, Brian,” she said, her voice singsong.
“Sup, Charmaine,” Brian said.
“You look nice,” Charmaine said.
“Charmaine, get your ass out of the fuckin' room!” Will said sternly.
With that Charmaine hustled out.
Will slammed the door shut. “Fuckin' fast ass, yo. I swear she gonna be pregnant by the time she hits fifteen.”
“Just keep her away from Brian and she might be a'ight,” Tyrel said, plopping down on the bed.
“Yeah, a'ight,” Brian said, sitting beside him.
Will grabbed a chair from a desk by the window and sat down. “Yo, Brian, stop acknowledging her ass when she talk to you. You be sendin' her in heat and shit.”
“Yeah, OK,” Brian replied.
The friends laughed for a few seconds, and then Tyrel cleared his throat. “A'ight, let's get this shit over with. I got shit to do tonight.”
“Yeah, me too,” Will said. “Shauntel's gonna meet me at Shawn's joint.”
Brian and Tyrel looked at one another. Then Tyrel looked at Will and said, “You hit that shit yet, nigga?”
“Nah,” Will said, the tone in his voice flat.
Tyrel laughed and gave Brian five. “Nigga, I told you, if you wanna lose your virginity, then you need to let that bitch's tight ass go.”
Brian looked at his heavyset friend. “Yo, son, you a virgin for real?”
“Fuck no, I ain't a virgin,” Will said, his beige-colored face turning a shade of red.
“Yeah, a'ight,” Tyrel said.
Will clenched his jaw. “Man, I ain't no virgin,” he insisted again.
Brian and Tyrel laughed while Will stewed in his chair. After a few more seconds of laughter at their friend's expense, they got down to the business at hand.
“A'ight, you niggas ready to do this shit?” Tyrel asked Brian and Will.
Will nodded. “More than ready, son.”
Brian nodded, and took a deep breath and held it. No matter how many times they'd done this, he'd always gotten butterflies in the pit of his stomach. He was especially nervous this time, because of the .45s they each held, which he still didn't agree with, but Tyrel demanded they use. The knowledge that they weren't loaded was the only thing easing his mind. But still, if something went wrong and cops showed up and saw the guns . . . He quickly put his attention back on the matter at hand and shook that thought from his mind.
The three of them waited in the shadows across the street from the Laundromat. Waited and watched. After the last customerâa womanâstruggled through the front door with a cart full of folded clothes, and headed down the block, the Laundromat's owner, a man Brian knew very well, Mr. Patel, moved to the front and pulled the shade down in front of the window.
Tyrel looked at his boys. “Showtime, niggas,” he said, pulling his black ski mask down over his face. “We do this shit right, we'll be out in five minutes, a'ight?”
Will pulled his mask down, and said, “Cool.”
Brian pulled his down also, but said nothing.
Tyrel took a quick glance up and down the block, then said, “Let's move!” and ran across the street, Will and Brian on his heels, and rushed into the cleaners before the owner could lock the doors.
“Get the fuck to the register and get the fuckin' money!” he ordered, pushing Mr. Patel backward.
Brian locked the door, and then stayed just off to the left, peeking through the side of the window shade, keeping watch for the police or any witnesses.
Five minutes,
he thought, his heart beating heavily.
Five minutes,
he thought, his heart beating heavily.
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