Insurrections (14 page)

Ain't you a reg duboishead? he replied.

A what?

A regular genius, jack. Keep up, my nig-nig.

You speak fast. It's hard to follow sometimes.

The bald man's eyes danced in disbelief.

I'm not rapping fast, Juba said. I'm just talking a different language than you. When two niggas from El Salvador get together and talk, neither one of them complain that the other is all flashy speaking or whatever. It's just the squares, the outsiders like you—not me, I know Spanish—like you that complain. You a Riverbaby?

I prefer Cross Riverian.

Course you do, he said. Bougie niggas always prefer Cross Riverian.

It's better than being a baby, I replied. The problem is we always infantilize our people. Folks don't want to grow up and be men and women. The world would finally respect us if we'd just be men.

Blah, blah, blah; right and sure. Tell me, if y'all niggas got money and houses and things over there on the Northside, and I can already tell you a Northside nigga, then why y'all so cross? Cross Riverian literally means angry river person, you know that, right?

Looks to me like Southside folks are more angry. That's where people get robbed and shot and stuff like that.

Checkmate. I tell you what. You look like a true. I'll griff you some of that Starr Product if you give me a fumi.

Huh?

Juba sighed. The bald man grunted and crunched peanuts between his teeth.

Riverbabies don't even own their own tongue no more. Nigga, give me a cigarette and I'll sell you some weed. Shit, may even have a story to tell you too.

I handed him a cigarette and he asked me to follow him. Juba and I left the bar; the bald man stayed behind.

Juba took me into a basement apartment so small it seemed like a cell—a spacious cell, but still a cell. A few beams of natural light came in from the streets above. Juba's bed took up most of the space. He had a bookshelf filled with holy books and books about the holy books. In the corner sat a little desk and atop it a thick raggedy Bible with torn pages and Post-It notes sticking out from the edges. It was opened to the first page of the Book of Revelation. Juba had several sentences underlined and notes running up and down the margins in a graphomaniacal frenzy.

Juba rolled a joint, lit it, and offered it to me, but I passed. He sat it
at the right corner of his mouth and blew smoke out of the left. Then he spoke rapidly about the flow of the Cross River for minutes on end, the way a man might speak about a lover he missed.

I got a sale on that Starr Product, he said. Chronic's always a crowd pleaser. I got 'Dro, Purple Haze, but I recommend the Starr Product. Cross Riv's finest. They don't grow that shit nowhere else. Only find that shit in and around Cross River. I'm smoking it now for your sampling pleasure.

I looked around at his cramped apartment.

You don't make a lot off of this, do you? I asked.

Enough to afford this mansion and to keep me in these fancy Armani linens, he said, running his hand along his jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt, both torn and faded from frequent washing. Naw, my man, it's all shorty-cool. Don't need to make a lot. Just enough for rent and books.

I—I heard you were a kingpin.

Yeah, there are competing versions of me out in the world. Damn near heard I popped a Kennedy one day in November.

His words were slightly amusing, but as I watched him, something shocked me so much that my skin tingled. I noticed that he and I did share a slight resemblance. He too had drawn cheeks and big eyes that looked as if they were floating in his head.

Hear the police tell it, I got tons flying in on planes every afternoon. They scared of me 'cause they think I'm getting their little daughters hooked on my jungle weed. He paused. I guess I am. I sell dubs and half-centuries and centuries and sometimes I might sell an LB, but that's as much as I griff. I ain't trying to be their monkey in a cage. That's why I had to come down here until things ain't so radioactive. I found out they were after me. Accused me of doing some apocalyptic shit, of being behind all the tea in Cross River, jackson. You know how many niggas be selling grass? They looking for me back home, they can't even imagine I'm over here. They know how much I love Cross River. They figure I'd never leave my home. Shit, I never thought I'd leave The Riv, myself. Things'll calm down eventually and I'll be back. I don't even like this job.

You don't?

Fuck no, my nig-nig. Been doing this too long. You look cool, so I'll tell you this.

Juba walked over to his desk and picked up a notebook. He flipped through the pages before putting it into my hands. See that? That's my real job. I'm just doing this weed dealer biz until I can finish up this project.

There were strange markings on each page, words I didn't understand, beautiful sketches that had an unfinished quality.

What is this?

Man, can't you read? See, Cross River folks so busy talking like white people, they done lost their tongue. Every strange word you hear in Cross River, every little piece of slang, probably sprang from me. Like seventy-five to eighty-seven percent. I come from a long line . . .

Of weed dealers?

Don't get smart, my nig-nig. You knew I wasn't gonna say that. My dad was an engineer, but that wasn't his main thing. I capture and create the language we speak in Cross River. Just like my daddy before me and my grandfather before that and my great-grandfather who was in the Great Insurrection before there even was a town called Cross River in Maryland. We done lost our tongue. Some shit I got to say to you, I won't even try to say 'cause there ain't no words for it. I got to use more words than I would have to use if we had our language back. I got to speak slowly so you understand me, even though we from the same place. Ridiculous, but it ain't your fault. I'm trying to complete the Cross River tongue.

I flipped through the book. The words started to make sense a little, but there were huge canyons of language I couldn't understand. It's probably the way, with my high school Spanish, I'd look at a book written in that language.

So what is this, a dictionary? I asked.

A dictionary? You niggas in Cross River are more lost than I ever thought. Shit. He stopped speaking for a moment. Naw . . . naw . . . hell naw, this ain't no damn dictionary. The people ain't ready for that. For like twenty years, I been translating the Bible into Cross Riverian, as you bougie niggas like to say. Naw, y'all wouldn't even call it that. Y'all don't think the way we talk is nothing special. At least not special enough to have a name. Y'all spend a lot of time translating from English to Cross Riverian and back in y'all heads. Y'all just don't know it. Niggas ain't slow, they just translating.

I'm gonna do the Koran next, and then the Bhagavad Gita. I already did the Heart Sutra. Did that shit to warm me up. I got a rack of other sutras to do, but that's a ways off. I got a lot of books to translate. It's gonna take a while, though. Once I finish the Bible, everything else should move quickly. I need to capture the language first. It's triply hard now that I ain't in Cross River no more. Got folks mailing me new words in exchange for 'Dro. The police might catch up to me before I'm done.

As he spoke, it was like a spirit moved over the void of the words on the pages, and I started to understand completely what Juba had written. I came to the end of the story of the Great Flood and it was like one of my cousins from the Southside had whispered it into my ear.

I tell you what, brotherman. I've enjoyed this convo with you, Juba said. Take a dub of that Starr Product for the road.

I shook my head. I-I-I can't—

Naw man, you don't know how good this has been for me. I like meeting Riverbabies. I don't hardly get a chance no more since I'm in Port Yooga. Not that I don't like Port Yooga in its own way, but it ain't Cross River.

I pocketed the bag of weed. It was nearly black, and it smelled like all outdoors. One whiff was enough to intoxicate me for precisely fifteen seconds, at least that's what Juba said. I never did smoke it, though. I put it in my basement in a briefcase where I kept things I wanted no one to find. After a while I forgot the code and couldn't even get back into the briefcase if I wanted to. Juba and I stayed in touch, but I never saw him again. I offered him words, phrases, and critiques on his translation of the Bible by mail. Sometimes he'd send me weed as payment, and I always threw it away. As I walked from his house that evening, I had no idea what to make of the afternoon.

When I got onto the bus to Cross River, I sat next to a man from the Southside who spoke to me about his life. His accent was thick, so at times I got lost, but when I was engaged I felt transported to his childhood. As the bus crossed the bridge from Port Yooga into Cross River he said, I know who you are.

Who am I?

He leaned in and whispered, You that dude they call Juba.

I shook my head and smirked a bit. I'm not Juba, I said. I'm not him at all.

It's okay, he said. I ain't a yauper. I can keep it to myself, my nig-nig.

The man pulled out a piece of paper and wrote down some words and phrases. They were things a Cross Riverian might say. He nodded and crinkled the paper into my palm and I accepted it, folding it away in my left breast pocket.

A month after school opened—when the most coveted boys had paired off with the most coveted girls and, for the majority of us, our affections were going tragically unreturned—Mr. Coles, the new art teacher, decided he hated Ezekiel Marcus. It was in the way he shied from addressing Zeke whenever he could, the upturned curve of his lip when he was unable to avoid talking to him, and his clear relief during Zeke's frequent absences. Mr. Coles wasn't like most of the other teachers at Alfred McCoy Middle School; he was essentially a good and decent man, so he would have never admitted what was plain to me. Even to this day—wherever he is, certainly no longer a teacher—I bet if I were to ask him about these old times, he'd deflect with his signature joke,
I hated you all equally
. Then, thinking twice, he'd take the edge off and add,
I loved you all equally, too
.

We called him Mr. Cold. A name, I think, Zeke made up. Anyway, Zeke was the first one I heard say it during third-period art one day, and my laughter turned from tittering to inconsolable, if laughter can be called inconsolable. Mr. Coles had a young, elfin face with tidily groomed hair on his cheeks and chin, none on his upper lip. He was handsome. Impossibly, even freakishly, handsome—strong cheekbones and a smooth dark complexion—a fact I had to reluctantly admit and one that most of the girls never let anyone forget. Hair all black while most of his peers sported grays and bad dye jobs. And Mr. Coles always smiled, even when angry and trying to be stern, especially when angry and trying to be stern.

All of this is why we treated him poorly and why he overcompensated, first attempting to come across as a pal, a trustworthy big brother, and when that failed turning into a hard-ass for a time, though he was a phony hard-ass, one we could see clear through. Rarely, if ever, did we tremble in fear at his silly yelling and stiff pointing finger. Marshall, Mr. Coles called to me as I choked on laughter after he grew upset from Zeke's taunting. Marshall, it's funny, but that's enough. This just caused us to laugh more. The warmest man in the school, Mr. Cold, then sent Ezekiel into the hallway as his mentor, Mr. Drayton, probably advised him to do. Damn, that's cold-blooded, Mr. Cold, a proud and smiling Zeke said on his way out to another rise in laughter.

The next time we saw Mr. Coles, he was stiff and stern. Even his movements changed to reflect the new him. We talked through the roll as usual, and by the fifth name he stopped and looked up. In spite of his contrived scowl, he still managed to appear somehow smiling. He stared at Zeke, though we were all speaking. There were always five of us at the front table: me, Zeke, a Puerto Rican girl with curly hair named Jana, and two jokers named Ernesto and Tommy.

Hey, Zeke, you want to go stand in the hallway again? Mr. Coles asked.

I didn't do nothing, Zeke said. I'm not the only one talking. Why don't you pick on Tommy and Ernesto?

Either you be quiet or go stand in the hall. Those are your two options. I'm not here to argue with you, Ezekiel.

When Zeke kept talking to us, Mr. Coles ordered him into the hallway. Zeke stood swiftly so that his metal stool toppled to the floor. On his way out he said, Man, we were going to stop calling you Mr. Cold, too, but you keep showing us how cold-blooded you are, so you're gonna be Mr. Cold from now until whenever.

Zeke, be quiet or it's the office instead of the hall.

Zeke spent most of the class in the hallway rapping the uncensored version of a dirty song that played every few minutes on the radio stations we all listened to.
Shake that ass buck naked, bitch / don't you fake it, bitch / Shake that ass buck naked, bitch
 . . . Mr. Coles pretended not to hear him, and that's how we all knew that this new Mr. Cold was a put-on. His demeanor was a lie, a desperate one. I could understand, Mr. Coles's true self earned him zero respect, but still, a lie was destined to fail. It
was no wonder he was so adrift in the classroom. Much of his behavior was straight from the manual of so many of our educators, but particularly Mr. Drayton, who was old and stiff and smelled vaguely of urine. I'd often see Mr. Coles sitting in the cafeteria joking with this crumpled old white man. Chatting in the parking lot outside their cars. In each other's classrooms between classes. Mr. Drayton needed an ego stroke and Mr. Cold needed a clue.

Near the end of class, Mr. Coles called Zeke back into the room and asked us all to pay quiet attention.

You may have noticed that I am not as open as I once was, Mr. Coles said. Less apt to listen to excuses. More likely to punish. I never wanted to be this kind of teacher. I figure you've all had enough hard-ass drill sergeants, but you guys have been so damaged by that kind of teaching that you don't respect anything else. Not your fault. And it's not all of you, but enough that I'm forced to change my approach. From now on, if you are not in your seat by the time the bell rings, I am marking you tardy. Too many tardies means you lose credit for the semester. You talk when I am talking, I'm sending your ass out of the classroom. Not to the hallway, but to the office. You don't work on your art, I'm sending you out of class. We can have a good time, but it's something you have to earn now.