Show and Prove
Authors: Sofia Quintero
Efrain's Secret
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2015 by Sofia Quintero
Jacket art copyright © 2015 by Getty Images
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children's Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Quintero, Sofia.
Show and prove / Sofia Quintero. â First edition.
p. cm.
Summary: “Friends Smiles and Nike spend the summer of 1983 in the South Bronx working a job at a summer camp, chasing girls, and breakdancing.”âProvided by publisher
ISBN 978-0-375-84707-3 (trade) â ISBN 978-0-375-94707-0 (lib. bdg.) â ISBN 978-0-375-89777-1 (ebook)
[1. Summer employmentâFiction. 2. CampsâFiction. 3. FriendshipâFiction. 4. Dating (Social customs)âFiction. 5. Hispanic AmericansâFiction. 6. Bronx (New York, N.Y.)âHistoryâ20th centuryâFiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.Q44Sho 2015
[Fic]âdc23
2014042544
eBook ISBNâ9780375897771
Random House Children's Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v4.1
ep
For all the young people everywhere creating something from nothing
T
he vintage postcard with the photograph of the Champs-Elysées is wedged between Pop's union newsletter and a bill from Bronx-Lebanon Hospital addressed to Mama. I flip it over and read it.
Dear Ray,
This is the view from my window. Impressed? Don't be. I'm bored out of my skull. I racked up some cool points though playing that tape you made me, since kids here hadn't heard of Run-D.M.C. yet. How's your summer going? Write me back at this address. Maybe I'll bring you back a French girlfriend, ha, ha, ha.
Eric G.
Eric said he would write me from Paris, but I never believed he would. Not after what I overheard him telling Sean Donovan when he lost that final debate to me. Maybe I should write him back, and perpetrate a fraud like everything is copacetic. Like Don Corleone in
The Godfather
said:
Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.
I tuck the postcard into my back pocket and head out the building to Nike's to listen to Eddie Murphy's album again.
On my stoop rocking his white kufi and flowing like Kool Moe Dee, KevinâI mean, Qusay is politicking with Booby, Pooh, and some other homeboys while they follow along with carbon copies in their hands. Save a few wrinkles about his eyes, you'd think Q was an older brother even though he came up with Pop. The man's the epitome of
Black don't crack.
“What's up, y'all?” I say. I lower myself onto the step beside Pooh to put on my roller skates and sneak peeks at his sheet, glimpsing a word here and there.
Knowledge. Wisdom. Freedom.
Funny how it feels like home to sit here when it's been months since I hung out with these cats. I used to chill with them all the time, but then Nike moved to the neighborhood, I enrolled at Dawkins, and Mama died. Even if Booby and Pooh be frontin' to impress Junior, who's got beef with Nike, I miss hanging out with them on the stoop like this.
Q says, “Peace, G.” Everyone else welcomes me to the cipher with a nod. He offers me a carbon copy.
Before I can tell him I can't stay long, my grandmother throws open the kitchen window of our fifth-floor apartment. “Raymond!” I swear Nana must've been a bat in a previous life and is gonna be a dolphin in the next.
Qusay looks up and waves to her. “Good afternoon, Queen Beatrice.”
“That's Mrs. Hastings to you!” Then Nana looks back to me and busts out with the patois. “Raymond, tek weh yuh self.”
The homeboys laugh, and I can't blame them. “Nana.” I shrug, playing the role. “No ting nah gwan!” But she has already slammed the window shut.
“The Nana has spoken,” says Boob. I laugh along with the homeboys. No static so long that's
all
he says about my grandmother.
I say to Q, “Sorry 'bout that.”
“Ain't no thing but a chicken wing.” Just like Nana with her patois, Qusay sometimes breaks out with slang to prove that despite his conversion to Islam, he's no stick-in-the-mud.
“Now wait a minute. You might want to hold on to that wing.” I'm not going to be outdone on my own stoop. “Seeing as Allah forbids you to dine on the swine and all.”
Qusay and the homeboys laugh. “That's a good one, G. You inherited your mother's good looks and your father's quick wit. Do me a favor and give Derrick my regards, will you?”
“Will do, Q.”
Nana throws open the window again. “Raymond!” She flings her gold, black, and green coin purse through the window guard. “Go to see Father Davis now.” The purse hits the pavement with a loud slap. With only one skate on, I hobble to pick it up. In the purse is a folded check made out to St. Aloysius. On the memo line it says “Ethiopian children.” Nana done just concocted an errand to get me away from Q. The lecture she's going to give me when I come back from the church is already running through my head.
That Qusay can tun duck off a nest,
Nana'll say.
When that man come roun', you see and blin', hear and deaf. Understand?
She'll get over it, though. What Nana says about Five Percenters she used to say about b-boys. She swore Nike was a thug and that Rock Steady, the Dynamic Rockers, and all the b-boy crews were just gangs in disguise. I thought that was hilarious and made the mistake of telling Nike, underestimating how sensitive he still is about his so-called image. Was he POed! Then I started imitating a b-boy uprocking his way through a bodega robbery and sticking up people while rhyming,
What people do for moneeey?
Once I had him rolling on the floor, Nike forgot all about my grandmother's cockamamie theories.
I had explained to Nana that Afrika Bambaataa was a former Black Spade who left the gang after making his own pilgrimage to Africa. “He's like a hip-hop Malcolm,” I had said. “And now he throws jams to bring gangs together in peace. They battle now with their feet instead of their fists.” Trying to build my case, I almost told her about the time that Nike and I went to a party at the Fever and some Five Percenters broke up a fight. Lucky I came to my senses.
Nana stopped fussing for a while, but now she's anti-Nike again. I never should've told her about the crack he made about Dawkins, but just like Mama, my grandmother has a way of getting things out of me. At least Mama liked Nike. She understood that even though he's “status conscious”âone of her social-worker terms, I guessâhe's no Savage Nomad.
Qusay asks, “What's the word on the strike, G?”
I shrug and plop onto the ground to put on my other skate. Nana and I follow the news on the negotiations between Pop's union and the MTA, but he won't talk about the possible transit strike. Last week the Con Ed workers went out on strike, and we're all waiting to see how that pans out. You'd think not talking about it is going to prevent it, but that tactic didn't save Mama.
Qusay motions for me to retake my seat beside Pooh on the step. “Stay and build with us a little.”
“Thanks, Q. Some other time.” I tie my sneakers together, hang them around my neck, and kick off. Before I hit the curb, however, I think,
Why not ask?
I turn and skate back toward the group. “Actually, I have a question. The men who killed Malcolm were down with the Nation of Islam, right?” With all eyes on me, I choose my next words carefully. “What would you say to those people who believe his killers were also Five Percenters?” I leave out that “those people” also believe Five Percenters are a street gang so no Qusay fanatics bum-rush my grandmother after bingo. If they try it, I'm going to have to fly their heads, and I'm too good-looking to die so young. “Were they?”
“That's a bold question, Mr. King.” Qusay motions toward the steps, directing me to have a seat. “Bold but fair.” After sneaking a quick glance toward my kitchen window, I skate to the stoop. Qusay says, “Not only was the man who founded the Nation of Gods and Earths himself a pupil of Brother Malcolm, he was excommunicated from the NOI almost two years prior to the assassination.” He's back to speaking like a rapper. “Clarence 13X greatly upset the NOI for teaching the people exactly what I'm sharing with the brothers today.”
“Word?” I've read everything I can find about Malcolm, but none of the libraries have anything on the Five Percenters. Teaching myself about Black activists from W.E.B. Du Bois to the Black Panther Party left me feeling like I was born too late until Q returned from Sing Sing and started having parliaments around the block. I have to learn more about the Five Percenters, and what little I've learned so far, I heard on the streets. You know that don't mean squat.
“Furthermore, G, the Nation of Gods and Earths does not preach a doctrine of violence. To have a hand in the assassination of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz would be the height of hypocrisy. We can hardly call others to righteousness if we ourselves are not righteous.”
“Well, now you sound like Martin Luther King.” I didn't mean to crack a joke, but the other guys laugh. I lower myself onto the stoop as Pooh scoots over so I can sit beside him, and just like that, the homeboys accept me into the cipher. No need to fake the funk to fit in, like with the rich white boys at Dawkins, only to find out that they front, too. “C'mon, Q. Make up your mind. The ballot or the bullet.”
Qusay laughs and gives me a handout for the lesson. Across the top it reads
SUPREME MATHEMATICS
.
Down the sheet are the numbers one through nine, then a zero. Next to each number is a word followed by a definition. One is
knowledge,
two is
wisdom,
and so on. As I scan the page, Qusay says, “Along with the supreme alphabet, these numbers and the concepts they represent unlock the keys to the universe.”
How many times can Nike and I listen to the same comedy album? It won't kill him if I show up a little late. I flip the page over, looking for English translations of the Arabic letters. “Where's the alphabet?”
“One lesson at a time, Brother Raymond,” says Qusay, smiling. “Although these are urgent times, one must approach the one hundred and twenty lessons as one would a marathon, not a race. In order to gain knowledge of self, we must master each lesson, one at a time.”