Show and Prove (14 page)

“T
u no puedes usar esa palabra,” I say, doing my best not to raise my voice. One, I don't want anyone to hear what we're talking about. Two, it's not Pedro's fault he's confused, so I don't want him to think that I'm upset with him. Damn, everyone does say it, but the second that word comes out of Pedro's mouth in front of the wrong people, it'll be open season on the poor kid. And three, if I overreact, he'll want to say it even more. “Es una mala palabra.”

Pedro pouts. “¡Pero todo mundo lo dice!”

“No todo el mundo.” I search for words to explain. “Eso es una palabra solamente por la gente negra.” No matter my debate chops, this is a hard case to make in English to someone my own age, never mind to a ten-year-old who only understands Spanish.

At the storefront, Qusay put a price on the word. If you say it, you have to put a quarter in the jar on his desk. If you actually call another person it instead of referring to him as God or G, it's fifty cents. Once Booby said,
C'mon, Q, niggas don't mean nothing by it. 'Sides, I've heard other Five Percenters use it. Even Malcolm said it once in a while. Nigga, nigga, nigga…ain't no big deal.
Q held out the jar and said,
That'll be a dollar, G.

Pedro shakes his head so hard you'd think it'd pop off and roll across the floor. “Stevie siempre lo usa. Y Nike a veces también.”

“¡Porque ellos están estúpidos!”

“Son estúpidos,” Pedro corrects me. At least the kid's laughing.

Me, I'm frustrated as all get-out, and not because I screwed up my verbs again. “Damn. I mean, son estúpidos.” I look across the cafeteria toward Barb's office. The door's open, and Cookie is sitting at Barb's desk, calling kids who haven't been to camp in a while. She punches the keypad with her middle finger as if she doesn't want to smudge her nail polish. Once in a while, Barb crosses the doorway, reading a file and blocking my view. Each time, she glances outside the door to survey the cafeteria. At one point Barb and I catch eyes, and I look away from her and turn my attention back to Pedro.

I should ask for help on this one. My first resort—Nike—is useless. Plus I don't trust homeboy not to tell Pedro a whole bunch of stuff that I don't understand and would never ask him to say. Just like Nike to say something like
Do as I say, not as I do
and then stick me with a rebellious kid while he goes and chases after Sara.

Cookie finally gets up from Barb's desk. Just as she reaches the door, she stops, turns around, and smiles. Barb must have said something to her. I could ask Cookie. As much as she never misses a chance to show me up, she's not going to say anything to Pedro that might get him into trouble just to mess with me.

I decide on another tactic. “Por favor no dice esa palabra,” I say. I finally remember a phrase that's useful, although inaccurate. “Porque me duele.”

Pedro's smile melts, and it makes me feel good that he cares about my feelings. I hate being a hypocrite. The other day I found my dad's Redd Foxx album on my bed. Had to dig out my old Mickey Mouse record player to listen to it. Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Redd Foxx—they all say the word. Come to think of it, I remember Pop using it, too, so long as Mama wasn't in earshot. She hated the word, and he would avoid it out of respect for her. Then Nana came to live with us to help care for Mama and stayed after she passed, and that word became null and void in my house. Only now do I realize how little I say it, even when I'm chillin' with the guys on the block. Maybe it's Dawkins, maybe it's Qusay, maybe it's Mama, but I have no use for it, nor do I miss it. If Pedro says it again, it
would
hurt me. “Me duele mucho.”

Pedro pouts. “Stooooop beggin'!” He throws his arms across his chest, b-boy style. Before I can react, he rushes to add, “Psych!”

I laugh. “You're a trip.” He already knows what that means, so I don't have to explain it. “Give me five.” Pedro slaps my hand, and I flip it over. “On the Black hand side.” He slides the back of his hand across the back of mine.

Cookie pops up in front of us. “Smiles, Barb wants to speak with you.”

My heart pounds. I have to return that damn proposal. “ 'Bout what?”

“I don't know. Go find out.”

I turn back to Pedro. “Get out my face.” The translation comes in a heartbeat, given all the times I've heard Nike use it with Gloria. “Salte de mi cara.”

“Don't talk to him like that!”

“I'm only messin' with him, and he knows it, so shut up.” I point to Pedro's jack-o'-lantern grin. “See? Mind your business.”

As I walk toward Barb's office, Cookie shouts, “Forget you, forgot you, never thought about you!”

“Nice comeback for a third grader.” I peek through the doorway of Barb's office and find her sitting at her desk. “You wanted to see me?”

“Have a seat and give me a sec,” she says. Before I sit, I glance at the green-and-white-lined computer printout on Barb's desk. I jiggle my knee, and my eyes flit across her desk for other clues as to what this conversation is about. To think that two months ago I would've been chomping at the bit to brag that I was in the House That Ruth Built when Rags pitched the no-hitter, and Barb would've hung on my every word.

Barb finally exhales and puts aside the printout. She twists her wedding band, a surefire sign that something is weighing on her mind. It hits me that maybe between the budget cuts and my feud with Cookie, she has decided to fire me. On the one hand, I don't want to get fired. That'd be crazy humiliating, and I don't deserve it. On the other hand, I'm tired of it all. Camp used to be fun, even when there was work to do. Nike and I would bug out, flirt with the girl counselors, and teach the kids who were afraid of the water how to swim.

But besides suffering Nike's moods, taking orders from Cookie, and getting reprimanded by Barb, why am I here? Nike'll keep fighting with Stevie, chasing Sara, and getting docked. Cookie'll keep ordering people around as if the camp were called Saint Carolina's. I keep coming because I need the money for Dawkins, and I like the kids, and mine's the best. I'd like to think Pedro would miss me, but now that Stevie and he are as thick as thieves, who knows?

“So, Smiles, how've you been?”

She called me Smiles. Maybe this isn't that serious after all. I just shrug. “What's up?”

“This bickering between Cookie and you. It's gotta stop. Now.”

“Talk to her then.”

“I have talked to her. Know what Cookie said?” She actually waits for me to answer.

“I don't know.” She probably kissed her behind. “
Yes, ma'am
?”

“She said,
OK, Barb. You're right.
”

Same thing. “Figures.”

“The point is Cookie didn't say,
Talk to Smiles.
She took responsibility for her part in whatever problem you two are having and agreed to put the kibosh on it.” Barb pauses to let that sink into my head. “If you're still wondering why I chose her for senior counselor, that's one reason right there.”

Before I can even think about it, I snap. “You made Cookie senior counselor 'cause she's Puerto Rican!” It jets from my gut out of my mouth, bypassing my brain like a blocked exit. Saying it made me feel strong and scared at the same time. I wait for Barb to deny it and fire me, and for a moment, I don't care. The next second I start to worry and wish I could take it back.

“Let's talk hypothetically here, Smiles,” says Barb. “You yourself told me that you could just leave the church and work for Qusay. You know why that's an option for you? Because he's a Black man who cares about Black boys. If there's one thing I'll give that man, for all the mistakes he's made in his life, Q always cared about the young men in this community. He didn't learn that in jail, and no Five Percenter taught him that. Even when Qusay was Kevin, that's the kind of man he was.” Something in Barb's voice tells me she misses Kevin even if he was a Pretty Boy Floyd who hot-wired cars and broke her heart.

Barb rolls her chair toward the file cabinet, and when she opens the bottom drawer, a nervous sweat bubbles up on the back of my neck. She pulls out a manila folder and hands it to me across her desk. In her blocky print, the tab says
LETTERS OF SUPPORT.
I swallow down a sigh of relief as I open it, finding a stack of letters, each on different letterhead and filled with paragraphs saying that we needed an after-school program and summer camp in Mott Haven and that Barbara Cuevas was the right person to create one.

“There are ten letters of support in there that I asked different community leaders to give me so I could raise money for these programs seven years ago. I must've solicited about thirty. Do you want to know how many of them came from Black organizations? Only two, including the one from Father Davis here at the church, which obviously gets the rent it otherwise wouldn't if I had the programs somewhere else.” You would think that Barbara would be telling me this with crazy attitude, but her eyes are on her hands folded in front of her on the desk as if she were a kid in detention. “It had crossed my mind to create a program just for Hispanic kids, you know. I mean, it's ridiculous that Black History Month is the shortest month of the year, but at least you get those twenty-eight days of recognition. We only get a week, and it's not even official.”

My mixed feelings grow tighter in my stomach like a knot. On the one hand, I understand what Barb's saying. If I were in her shoes, I might feel the same way. On the other hand, I want to grab the
I LOVE NEW YORK
apple-shaped pencil holder on her desk and smash it on the floor, because if I were in her shoes, I wouldn't take it out on me or any other Black person. We're not the problem. The white devil is.

“But I said,
No, I'm not going to do that,
” Barb continues. “Black, Puerto Rican, white—any kid who lives in this neighborhood needs all the services she can get.” Barb laughs. “The year we opened, my husband and I went door to door with flyers. I'm stuffing one in this mailbox labeled
PINE,
and he says,
Honey, what're you doing? Those folks are Jewish. We don't have that many flyers, so that's a waste.
I say,
I don't want them to think that because we're at Aloysius, their kids can't register. This isn't a Catholic camp. It's not even a Christian camp.
It's a neighborhood camp.
Lou says,
They're not going to send their kids to us
.
They have their own programs.
He even takes the flyer out the mailbox, but I stuff another one right back in. I say,
These folks didn't run out of here the second the Blacks and Puerto Ricans moved in. If they don't have a problem being our neighbors, I've got no problem looking after their kids.
And you should know by now, Smiles, not to argue with a Puerto Rican woman.”

I just stare at Barb as she laughs at her own joke. This isn't
The Magic Garden,
and I didn't come in here for story time. I say, “So I'm supposed to just suck it up and take shit from Cookie, that what you're telling me?”

Barb stops midlaugh and clears her throat. “Raymond, I know one of these days you want to have a program of your own. You're old enough now to understand some of the politics that are involved in making that happen. No matter how you feel about me, I still want to mentor you, and that means making you hip to how these things go down. I wish I could tell you that as long as you want to do something positive, people will line up to support you, but that's not true. When push comes to shove, everyone has an agenda. Some of the people who didn't come through for me I'd known for years. I gave time and money to their causes, treated their kids like they were my own, and otherwise gave them my support, never thinking,
I should look out for my own.
But when I needed their support—even when what I was trying to create benefited them, too—they didn't give it to me, for no other reason than I wasn't Black. When the recent budget cuts came down, it was Black folks on the community board who voted to cut this program to have seed money to give to Qusay, who has no experience creating and running an organization.”