Show and Prove (19 page)

A
fter work I drop by the storefront and find Qusay, Flex, and this guy named Dougie taping dingy bedsheets to the floor with masking tape. Their presence surprises me. I would've bet that everyone was still headed to the free Diana Ross concert, despite the ugly weather forecast. There are stacks of paint cans, brushes, and rollers in the corner. “Y'all need a hand?” This looks like fun and I'm glad the homies are here instead of Central Park.

“Always,” says Qusay. He points to my Saint Aloysius T-shirt. “You may want to change out of that first.”

“This?” Barbara would rather everyone wear the T-shirt every day—especially the kids—but she knows better than to make that mandatory. I usually do because I own three now, and it makes getting ready a breeze. “Ain't no big thing.” I reach for a roller.

After mixing the off-white paint, Qusay assigns each of us a wall and covers the storefront window with another sheet. As we work, he plays a speech of Clarence 13X's on the boom box. I push the roller to the rhythm of his voice. Glancing around the room, I see we're all in a trance, absorbing his teaching as the walls soak in the paint. We're like a machine, and 13X is our engine.

Fifteen minutes into this flow, Pooh busts through the door carrying a bag from the hardware store. “Why y'all niggas send me to the store if you wasn't gonna wait till I got back?” he asks.

Qusay gives him a stern look. “A quarter in the jar, Parris.” The homeboys made a deal with Q. He was stressing us to shed our “slave names” for Arabic ones, but most of the homeboys weren't down with that. I suggested that we call each other by our given names instead of our tags when we were at the school, if nowhere else. Qusay liked that compromise, saying that if we weren't ready to give up our government names, we could at least address each other with the names of men instead of children. The homeboys liked the sound of that, and we all shook on it. Some of us had to relearn each other's names, but the practice is spilling onto the street. The other day I bumped into Booby as I was coming out the corner bodega. He said,
What's up, Raymond?
I was like,
Peace, Mark.
Junior looked at him like,
Who the hell is Mark?
Back at the storefront, we cracked up over it.

“Sorry,” says Pooh. He digs into his pocket for a coin and drops it into the jar. Knowing Pooh, he paid the fine with Q's own change and kept the rest.

Flex holds out a hand already splattered in paint. “Give those here,” he says, motioning for Pooh's bag. “I can use 'em.”

Pooh reaches into the bag and pulls out a pair of gloves. “Word, put those on now, B,” he teases as he tosses them to Flex. “You know ain't no white boys allowed in here.” We all laugh as he tosses another pair of gloves to Dougie. Then he looks at me and gets hyped. “What you doing here?”

“Same thing you are,” I say, holding out my hand for my gloves.

“Thought you worked for that white woman at the camp.” On no planet is Barb white, but I'm not getting into this with Pooh. He's just mad because she never gave him a job. Barb favored Cookie over me when it came to the promotion, but she still hires plenty of Black kids. Truth is I wouldn't hire Pooh either. Pooh turns to Qusay. “For real, Q? I thought you said this place was for the
real
homeboys.”

Here comes that BS again about my not being down because I don't run the streets robbing and stealing. I look to Q for backup. He says, “This place is for all Gods, and the universal parliaments are for everyone, Gods and Earths alike.” I sigh inside. But then he says, “We should appreciate Brother Raymond for his support. It's not like he has to volunteer his time here.”

“Volunteer?” Pooh and Dougie burst out laughing while Flex looks down at his tattered Pro-Keds. He must've dragged them out the closet to come paint. “What's so funny?”

Qusay says, “Join me outside, brother.”

Pooh snatches the paint roller out of my hand. “Sayonara, sucka.”

“Parris!” Qusay opens the front door and motions for me to follow him. “Raymond…”

As I step outside, Flex mumbles to Pooh to chill out. Qusay waits for the door to close, and déjà vu kicks me in the gut. “Raymond, I'm humbled that a young man such as yourself wants to be a part of the academy. But this first initiative isn't for a brother like you.”

“What do you mean, a brother like me?” I ask. This I got to hear. “What's wrong with a brother like me?”

“Nothing.” Qusay flashes me a smile. At least Barb didn't grin at me like a jack-o'-lantern when she dissed me. “The Bridge is for young Black men who need opportunities because they lack what you have.” Qusay recites them as he counts them off on his paint-speckled fingers. “You already have a job…”

“I can quit.” For this I would. There is more for me to do here than at Saint Aloysius.

“You attend a very good school…”

I laugh and say, “You mean that white man's institution?” How can Qusay preach that the Five Percenters are obligated to enlighten the masses and then fault me for getting the best education I can? You'd think that my going to Dawkins but still wanting to be down with the program literally in my own neighborhood would be a good thing.

“You have a father at home,” says Qusay. “And Derrick is a good man at that.”

Out of respect for my father, I won't argue with the truth, but I'm getting heated. So I can't work for the Bridge because my father isn't in jail and doesn't abuse drugs or liquor or have a bunch of his-and-her kids all over the place that he can't afford? Pop himself would snap all over Qusay if he could hear this. Nothing sets him off quicker than a Black man who expects a pat on his back for doing what he should.

My silence has Qusay thinking he's making headway with me. “I'm sorry, Raymond. Of course there's always a place for you here at the academy. But according to the conditions of my grant, I can't enroll you in the Bridge.”

“That I knew, but—”

“And if I'm going to stay on mission, my first employee has to be one of them.” Qusay motions toward the homeboys and stops to take a deep breath. “I've decided to hire Mark first.”

I throw open the door and head back into the storefront. Dougie, Flex, and Pooh stop painting to watch me march to Q's desk. I grab the flyer that I've been posting all over the neighborhood since he got that grant for the Bridge using the proposal I done vicked Barb for him. “All it says here is that you have to be Black and between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one and live within one of these three zip codes to be in the program.” I hit the mimeograph of Qusay's own handwriting harder with every tap. “But in order for you to pay me for what I've been doing all this time for free, you're telling me I have to be unemployed, go to a wack school, and have a no-account for a daddy?” Outside, a boom of thunder emphasizes my disbelief.

Qusay raises his palms. “Raymond, please lower your voice. Let's speak brotherly to each other, God to God.”

“But you're the only one playing God, Q!” I say. “I helped you create this program.” It didn't end with the proposal or the name of the school. I came up with the name of the program, too. Q wanted to cast a wide net while recruiting and enroll fifty cats in the pilot, but using what Barb taught me, I convinced him to start small and go deep.

But I don't repeat what Qusay already knows. Instead I ask, “Q, if it's a skill-building program, how are you going to hold it against me that I work?”

“We work too, nigga!” yells Pooh.

Qusay barks at him, “Please!” He turns back to me. “This isn't an employment project. It's an entrepreneurship program, one specifically for young brothers in the underground economy, G. Its mission is to take young Black men who are involved in any kind of organized criminal activity and show them how the skills they use on the street can be transferred into a legitimate business. Take Pooh.”

“Nah, you keep Pooh.” Flex and Dougie laugh. Pooh flips me the bird and then goes back to painting.

“We're all family here, so let's not mince words.” Qusay points to Pooh. “He's Junior's biggest seller. He'll use that same salesmanship to sell something that actually benefits the community. All he needs is a structured, guided way to figure out what that something is. Flex? He's Don Silvio's best numbers runner. Keeping all those figures straight without writing them down is a gift. There's no reason why Flex couldn't go into business for himself as an accountant or bookkeeper and make himself an honest living. He'd have to get his GED, at least, but that's one of the requirements since—”

“And Dougie?” I interrupt. Homeboy's just a petty thief who does it for the thrill. When he's not chain-snatching, he boosts penny candy from Woolworth's even when he has the money to pay.

“You heard he got arrested last week for taking a joyride in another man's Coupe de Ville?” says Qusay. “Well, that's another criterion of the program. All those brothers here have been involved in the criminal justice system in the past year. Raymond, you've never seen the inside of the precinct.”

“No,” I bark. “Am I supposed to be embarrassed by that?”

“Not at all! You should be quite proud of all you have and do,” says Qusay. “But that just goes to show you, Raymond, that you don't need the Bridge. You're well on your way to making something of yourself. The program is geared toward your brothers like Doug, Parris, and Frederick, for whom this could be the difference between a life behind bars or death on these streets and being a law-abiding contributor to this community.”

And crazy as it sounds, this just makes me want to work here even more. You'd think Qusay would want me around to be a role model. A poor righteous teacher. Part of the program is to help these guys get their diplomas or GEDs, and I could tutor them. I had to ace an interview as the last step to get into Dawkins, so I could show Pooh and the fellas how to handle a job interview or impress someone at a bank to get a business loan. In exchange for sharing what I already know about how to make something of myself, I could learn how to start my own business or organization. I stop myself, though, from giving Q any more ideas that I won't benefit from.

And I already know what Qusay'll say. He's going to blame the conditions of his grant, just like Barb blamed the cuts to her budget. He'll say that if he doesn't stick to what he promised to deliver in his proposal, they won't fund the Bridge. That I'm taking a job away from Booby when I already have one. That it would be my fault if Pooh ended up in Sing Sing or, worse, dead.

Isn't that some bullshit? First time something positive is going down in the neighborhood, and I'm
too good for it.
Doing everything that I'm supposed to only to get dissed and dismissed. The resources, the experiences, the opportunities, they're never there for someone like me. Only the damn rules and expectations from both sides of the color line.

And here I go, getting all misty-eyed like some punk. I wipe my hands across my face and make for the door. Qusay puts his hand on my shoulder, trying to stop me. “Raymond, don't leave this way,” he says. Then he mutters under his breath, “First that girl, now this.”

“What?” That stops me in my tracks. “What girl?”

At first Qusay chuckles as if he's embarrassed. “Never mind. I just had to explain to a young Earth why the program was only for boys. Let's just say her reaction was less than ladylike.”

“You ain't know, Q?” says Pooh. “That Puerto Rican girl with the mouth on her is Smiles's girlfriend. Surprise, surprise.”

“Your homegirl came in here talking a mile a minute about an idea she had about teaching these hoes out here about self-respect, women's empowerment, and all that jazz,” says Flex. “Q was real nice. You know how he is.
Oh, sister, I'm sorry, but we first have to address the Black man's crisis, and then we'll reach out to the young Earths in the community.
” The homeboys and even Qusay laugh at Flex's dead-on imitation. “Man, ya girl was livid, screaming about sexism, discrimination, the whole nine. And when Q tried to break down how the young Black male was endangered, she told him to step off.”