Show and Prove (29 page)

T
he second we get back from Bear Mountain—fifteen minutes late and to a crowd of worried relatives—Big Lou hauls the three of us into Barb's office. “What happened?” she asks, her voice already assuming trouble.

“Once again, this knucklehead wasn't watching his kid.” Big Lou swats Nike's baseball cap off his head. “This time when Stevie wandered off, he took Smiles's kid with him and got hurt.”

“Please don't tell me that,” says Barb. “I don't want to hear that.” She looks at me, hoping I can explain how Big Lou got it all wrong.

With my eyes fixed on my shell-toes, I say, “Shorty, I mean Stevie, must have tripped and fell, because when we found them, his ankle was sprained or something.”

“Oh, shit.” Barb puts her fist to her mouth. After a few seconds of silence, she begs for another explanation. “We sent this kid home hurt?”

Nike blurts, “You should've seen him, though. Once we got back to the Bronx, he was laughing and jumping around like nothing happened. He's OK, Barb.”

“But something did happen,” yells Cookie. “And just because he's bouncing around doesn't mean he isn't really hurt.”

Nike is about to sass back at her, but Big Lou says, “If I were you, I'd keep my mouth shut.”

“You know what?” says Barb. “He can tell his story walking.”

“I'm way ahead of you, Barb. Knucklehead already knows not to expect a full paycheck next week.”

“A full check next week? I'm talking don't bother coming in Monday.” Barb turns to Nike and says, “You're fired.”

That doesn't surprise me, but I had hoped it wouldn't come down to that. A sprained ankle isn't just a sprained ankle. A sprained ankle is a potential lawsuit. A sprained ankle can make the city decide to pull the Summer Youth Employment Program from Saint Aloysius, costing all of us our jobs. A sprained ankle can shut down the camp and leave the kids in this neighborhood on the streets. Like Qusay said,
This is not Mecca.

What does surprise me is that Nike doesn't fuss about it. Instead, he hangs his head and says, “Sorry.” And I know I won't hear any rants from him later blaming Shorty Rock or about suing Barb. He means it. “Can I go?”

“No,” says Barb. “I'm not done with you. Go outside and wait until I deal with these two.” Nike leaves, and then Barb turns to me. “So Pedro took off with Stevie, is that right?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“That means had you been watching him, this might not have happened.”

If I had been watching Pedro, it definitely would not have happened. Those two are thick as thieves. A month ago Stevie might've taken off on his own, but now Pedro and he are inseparable, the way Nike and I used to be. They're homeboys, and where one goes, the other follows. “Yes, ma'am.”

Barb turns to Cookie. “And your involvement in all this?”

“I just helped Smiles look for them, that's all.”

And that's the shocker of the day. Here's Cookie's chance to rub in the fact that not only did we lose our kids but she was the one who found them, and she doesn't take it.

Big Lou isn't about to let her off the hook, though. “Don't fall for it, Barb. She was in cahoots with Frick and Frack.”

“No, she wasn't,” I say. “She wasn't even with us when the kids got lost.”

“I don't believe that,” says Big Lou.

“Don't then.” I don't mean to disrespect him, but now he's busting chops for kicks. “But it's the truth.”

“She didn't try to help you cover it up?”

“No, she didn't,” I say. “She just went with me to look for them. It was Cookie's idea to go to the lake, which is how we found them.”

“You realize how bad this could've turned out, Raymond?” Barb stands up and points her finger at me. “Those kids could've drowned.”

“I know,” I say. “And I'm sorry.” I almost wish she would fire me already. I couldn't possibly feel worse. Getting my just deserts might actually make me feel a tiny bit better about the whole fiasco.

“You're both docked for the entire week.” Barb retakes her seat. “Now get out of here.”

Cookie is too ready to leave, but I say, “She didn't do anything wrong, Barb. Why dock her?”

Barb straightens up. “Are you talking back to me?”

“No disrespect. I've got it coming, but Cookie didn't do anything but help us. She doesn't deserve to lose a week's pay.” At twenty-five cents more an hour, she would pay a lot more for doing a lot less than I did.

Big Lou says, “She does deserve something, because as senior counselor, her job is to help me make sure the counselors are doing their jobs. I don't know where she was at when y'all were acting the fool on the mountain, but obviously it wasn't where she was supposed to be. Probably playing around with some kids.” Cookie drops her head and sniffs hard.
Don't cry, Cookie,
I say to myself as if she can hear me.
Stay tough or they'll fire you.
Her biggest mistake was wanting to prove herself to Nike and me.

“I told you, Barb, anybody who's young enough to qualify for SYEP is too young to be a senior counselor,” says Big Lou. “It's a job for some college kid.”

Cookie sniffs again, and I tug at the hem of her shorts to get her attention. She glances toward me, and I give her a slight nod.
Don't cry.

Barb finally says, “Two days, because I'm not buying you weren't involved in the attempt to cover it up.” She motions for us to leave, but just as we're halfway out the door, she mutters to Big Lou, “I should just close down this damn camp. Too much responsibility, too little money, no respect, no appreciation. What's the point?”

Cookie and I walk out of the church basement and onto the street without saying a word. Nike's sitting there on the church steps, waiting for us. “You still here, B?” Not like him to stick around to take any more licks from Barb since he doesn't work for her anymore, but I'm glad he stayed and lower myself beside him. “Better break out while you can. Barb's fixing to yank Jesus down off the cross so Lou can crucify you instead.”

“Ha.” Nike pulls off his cap and wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. He glances at the church and starts to make his way back. “Let me get this over with.”

“We'll wait.”

“Good luck, Willie,” says Cookie. She plants herself on my other side. I bet it makes her feel good to be included, even if she's in deep trouble. On the one hand, she showed and proved. On the other hand, Cookie's a dummy for wanting to be down with two suckers like us. The Mod Squad: Bronx Division? More like the Three Stooges. That cracks me up.

“Man, you laugh at everything,” Cookie says. “That's why we call you Smiles.”

I
've been reading the newspapers and watching the news for a few days now, and I still don't get it. When I ask Smiles to help me understand, he goes off on one of his Black militant tears, talking about
occupation
and
oppression,
confusing me some more and scaring me to boot.

“Smiles, not for nothin', do you even know everything you're saying?”

“You cold, B.”

“Not to dis”—yes, just a little—“you be sounding like a Qusay Jr.”

Smiles laughs. “Call me Smiley X.”

That got me dyin' like old times. Then I ask, “Yo, what went down between y'all, anyways?”

Smiles pauses. “We were both at fault. I was looking for a way to make a bigger difference in the neighborhood, I guess. Like what we do at camp is medicine, but I wanted to find a cure. And to some extent, Qusay took advantage of that, but that's because he wanted to do the same thing.

“And you know what?” Smiles says. “Maybe I don't get everything. But if anybody did, all the problems would be solved, right?” Then he adds, “Here's the thing, though. A lot of folks don't want to get it. We confuse complaining about things with really wanting to change them. The reality is we're more comfortable with the evil we know.”

Smiles didn't do squat to help me understand what's going down in the Middle East, so while he made me feel a little better, he made me feel a little worse, too, to be honest. On the one hand, I'm not an exception. On the other, I'm part of the problem.

Then I call Cookie. “You know how not all Muslims are Arabs, right?” she says. “Well, not all Arabs are Muslims. Some are Christians like Sara. And you know how during the Holocaust in Europe, Jews either fled or were expelled? The same thing happened to Palestinian Christians during the Arab-Israeli War a few years later.”

“Yo, how do people who got that much in common beef so much?” Confusion makes my head pound. “And if Sara's Greek Orthodox, that's something completely different than Roman Catholic, right? Is she Palestinian or Lebanese?”

Cookie exhales. “Willie, why don't you just ask Sara? There's so much history involved here. No one is going to know it better than she does.”

“ 'Cause…”
How much more ignorant do I have to look in front of this girl?
“Forget it.”

“C'mon, don't be like that.”

“Nah, it's all right.”

“I feel for you, Willie. For serious I do. You always be trying so hard, just in all the wrong ways.”

“So what's the right way?” I say, all frustrated. “At least tell me that.”

“Just listen, Guillermo.”

I hang up the phone. Then I smack all the newspapers off my bed and stare at the cracks in my ceiling until my room grows pitch-black. I must've fallen asleep, because I don't even hear the phone ring. Gloria knocks on my door, and a beam of light from the hallway cuts into the darkness.

“Oh, wait, he is here,” she says into the phone. Gloria carries it over to the bed as I squint so my eyes can adjust to the sudden light. “It's Sara.”

And for once I'm glad Cooks meddled. No way Sara would be calling me if she hadn't pushed her. I take the phone. “Hi, Sara.”

“Hey, Willie.”

“How you doin'?”

“Not so good.”

I remember what Cookie says. “You want to talk about it?”

“You wouldn't understand.”

“Try me. Keep it basic, though. You know I ain't some foreign correspondent.”

A whisper of a smile flows through the receiver. “OK, let me think.” I let Sara take her time. She finally says, “So you have this home, right? This beautiful place where you have always lived. In fact, your family has been there for centuries. It's full of traditions and memories for you. This place is a major part of who you are. Then one day, Javi moves in across the street—”

“Uh-oh…” I know I'm supposed to be listening, but I can't help myself.

“It's not bad off the bat. Although he's been around to other parts of the world, he's got ties to the land, too. Javi and his people come back because things were horrible for them everywhere else.”

Something clicks. “You're talking about the Jews in Europe. The Nazis and the Holocaust and all that.” Reading the paper and watching the news is paying off. Only one or two things I took in referred to that history, but I got the gist.

“Right. Javi's people were running for their lives. The United Nations decides,
OK, since they have ties to Willie's land, let them return there. In fact, we'll give them more. This one block. And that one. Oh, and this one, too.
Next thing you know, Javi is at your doorstep, telling you,
Get out. This is my house now.
All that you have ever known he is now claiming is his for the taking.”

“I wish he would try it.”

“So you would defend your home.”

“Hell, yeah!”

“Remember when we first met, how Javi and his buddies were chasing you? How it wasn't safe for you to go home? Remember how you said to me that you could take them in a fair fight but they like to gang up on you?”

“Yeah.” My body tightens as if I'm wedged between Pac-Man and the wall again. I have this sinking feeling that no matter how much time passes, it's always going to feel like it happened yesterday. In the middle of all this tightness, though, is an oasis of light because Sara remembered, too. She felt for me in that moment. She still does.

“Whether you want to talk things out peacefully and come to some kind of compromise or just duke it out and let the strongest man win, it's not just Javi you have to face down. It's Javi and his friends.”

“Junior. The Barbarians.”

“And they have friends. Or at least people who are afraid of them because they have money and guns. You don't have the same things at your disposal.” Sara's voice cracks. “They come push you out of your home and force you into camps. You fight back, but they have money and weapons and allies…. It's just not right. It's not fair.”

Then it clicks.

Junior and the Barbarians aren't some foreigners. He's our president. The Barbarians are our government, army, and all that.

I would accuse Smiles of being Qusay's parrot, but every time I boasted about being patriotic without knowing the whole deal, I was cheating and acting like a Barbarian, too.

This is devastating.

And confusing. The news is filled with stories about terrorists killing innocent people and sometimes even suicide bombers who check themselves out in the process. They're so big and bad that they've started bringing their fight here. We supposed to just let them do that?

Before I can find the right words to ask that without further upsetting her, Sara continues. “The news keeps calling this a conflict or a war, but that's a lie,” she says. “How is this a war when one side has no army, no navy, no air force?” She breaks down sobbing. “This is a genocide. They're wiping us off the face of the earth.”

Somehow I understand that Sara doesn't mean to throw my words back at me to make me feel guilty. Still, that's the moment I realize that there's no winning her back. Even if I understood and agreed with everything she said—which I'm not too sure I would—I could never give Sara what she wants most in the world.

Sara doesn't want my buckle or the latest fashions or a night out at a hot spot.

She wants to go home.

She wants to be safe.

She wants her people to be saved. Or at the very least to not be labeled criminals for doing whatever they can to save themselves.

But I can't give Sara what I myself never experienced.

I never really had a place that I could call home. I've never felt safe. And while I know I'm part of a people, I've been so disconnected from them I had to be told that they may need to be saved, too.

I stay losing for not having.

Right now I do the only thing I can. I stay on the phone and listen to Sara cry. She wails with a grief a lot older than she is, and a few times I think I won't make it. I have to fight the urge to, for the first time ever, be like,
OK, Sara, I got to go.
My love and sympathy for this girl help me to hang on the line for her. I stay on the phone with Sara until she cries herself to sleep. It was my way to, for once in my life, do good and throw it into the sea.

“Bye, Sara,” I say for what I know will be the last time, and then I hang up.