The Old Neighborhood (40 page)

As he swayed back for balance, an electric pulse ignited in my chest that sent both my arms reaching out as if to grab him in a bear hug. Instead, I brought up my hands, fingers spread, and slammed them simultaneously around the soft tissue of his throat. I clasped and squeezed with all my might. His eyes bulged like two mouths screaming. I bent my knees deeply and drove forward. My uncut toenails scraped and dug into the blacktop. I slammed him right into the side of my ma's parked van. His head cracked against the thick glass of the tinted side window; the warped, dark glass reflected the whole block in crisp blacks and yellows all stretched and distorted like a funhouse mirror.

I heard these pounding footsteps. Samson squeezed his hands around my forearms—they enveloped them. But his hands felt weak, like they were just made of water wrapped with skin. His chapped, gray lips gaped, and two lines of frothy drool spanned the distance near the creases. Suddenly, two fists boomed into his forehead, then another and another. It was both of my sisters. Rose stretched and leapt over my back, and Jan had emerged from the side. Both slammed their loose, wild fists into his face. His eyes started to bob and bounce like pinballs in their sockets, and he began to go again. His knees collapsed like the floors of a building giving way as he grasped at my forearms. I pressed him with everything I had against the van's side window and squeezed so hard that there was no chance his windpipe was open. His neck seemed like it was made of several loose tubes, and I felt like I was deflating them all. Rose leapt over my back so violently that I lost balance and released my grip. Samson stumbled and then rose to his full height again.

I'd decided I was gonna kill this motherfucker—I just didn't know how yet. I thought of the bike chain I had hidden under my bed with the half-roll of duct tape wrapped around one end to make the handle. I leapt between the narrow space in front of the van, sprinted to the house, and bounded the porch steps. Jan's fianc
é
, DeWayne, burst through the screen door holding a kitchen stool upside-down by one of the foot rungs. His gray-green eyes gleamed out behind his spectacles. I slipped past him. His eyes bugged out as he looked behind me. I turned to see Samson bear-crawling up the steps of the porch. His eyes glowed yellow and black. I stopped and watched.

“Ahh, hell naw, NIGGA! Step off!” DeWayne shouted in his giant baritone voice that dwarfed his medium body frame. He slammed the circular wood seat of the stool directly into Samson's chest. The collision toppled Samson down the front steps. The only thing that saved him was when he grabbed hold of the railing and his torso swung around and bounced off the support bars.

I grinned and sprinted up the stairs to my room. I dove my arm under my bed, and instead of the bike chain, I found a smooth, rounded wood handle. I pulled it out and saw a long, heavy lead file I didn't even remember putting there. I grinned again and got to my feet. I turned and saw my Dad standing in my doorway with his V-neck white t-shirt, yellowed at the creases of his armpits, and his saggy whitey tighties. His eyes were fogged over, and I knew he'd already taken his sleeping medication. He ripped the file from my grasp.

“That's my file,” he said, looking at it as he ground his teeth. “Where the hell're you going with this?” he spat.

“There's a guy fighting Rose out front!” I shouted. He grimaced, reached up, and pulled a neon-orange foam earplug from one of his ears. “What?” he said, glaring at me.

“Nowhere.” I looked down.

“Well, this is mine. You're not going anywhere with this,” he said, turning and rolling the earplug in his fingertips. He walked back toward his room still grasping the file. Then he popped the earplug back in as I walked toward the steps behind him. Ma called out from the bedroom, “What's going on?”

I tried not to run, then ran down the steps, through the hall, and into the kitchen. Rich sat at the old wood table with his hands folded over one another and resting atop the glossy surface. I ran up to the wooden knife rack and blindly grabbed at the many protruding wooden handles. I pulled two out. The cold, steel-gray blade of a foot-long butcher's knife was in my left hand, and a steak knife with a symmetrical point like a dagger was in the other. I could still hear the shouts of the girls and the clatter of the scuffle out front. I sensed Rich's footsteps behind me. I turned and saw him standing before me in the narrow passage into the hallway. He smirked through his full, bristly, unkempt beard.

“Where you going with those?” he asked, grinning.

“There's a guy out there beating on Rose,” I roared urgently. ”Come on!”

“You're not going out there.” He folded his arms over his chest. “Those two got to learn.” He put a knowing emphasis on the 'learn.'

“What?” I spat, disgusted.

He just stood there, arms folded over his chest, and laughed with his imbecilic face creased up like some evil clown. I leaned back and bent my knees slightly, then gathered my weight and drove my shoulder into the center of his chest. He gave way like he'd been standing atop a patch of ice. His arms and legs flung out, and he landed flat on his back in one solid thud.

I leapt over him and ran down the hall as Ma stepped down to the landing at the base of the stairs near the front door.

“Joseph! What's happening!” She tried to grab my shoulder, but I tore past her and rushed through the screen door. I stopped on the porch, then spread my arms—blades in both hands. Down on the sidewalk, DeWayne stood in his extra-large Dago T. The stool was broken, but he still clutched its mangled, dangling parts by the end of one of the legs. With his other hand, he held onto Jan's wrist as she slapped her fist into Samson's face for the last time. Rose pulled and finally ripped loose his shirtsleeve. I leapt the full flight of porch steps and ran right up to Samson. He'd gotten hold of a handful of Rose's wild Caribbean hair as she tried to twist away from him. I dug the butcher's knife into the base of his extended shoulder right where the muscle connects to the chest. It only went in a few inches, but it must have struck bone 'cause it ripped from my grasp as he twisted away and fell onto Mrs. Thompson's front lawn. He screamed out. My mother's voice rang clear like a siren over everything and froze us all in mid-motion.

“Joseph!!!” she screamed. I turned and saw her barefoot in her simple, ankle-length white night gown. She tried to step down the front stairs fast with her bad knee and lost her balance, then gripped the railing and just sat on the steps. “Oh, Joseph. What did you do?” she moaned. Her steel-blue eyes pleaded as her mouth hung open. I had such an instant, sharp regret spear into my stomach that I almost cried out in pain. I lowered my head in shame and turned away from Samson as he shouted out and gripped the blade. Blood bubbled up on his hand. Jan suddenly sobered, grabbed my hand, and looked me in the eyes. Her small, round face and button nose were now sullen. She pulled me toward her Tempo parked down the block.

“You got your keys?” she asked to DeWayne.

He nodded.

“Come on,” she said as DeWayne glanced down at the mangled stool like he was surprised to see it there. Then, he dropped it to the sidewalk. When we got to the car, I looked back as Rose hovered over Samson. She wept and touched his cheek with her hand as he laid on his back and strained his neck upward. He held her arm. It had all turned so fast, so quick. I wanted to cry; I'm not sure if it was out of regret, fear, or rage. “That motherfucker punched her in face,” I spat, looking at them looking at Rose and knowing that she loved him. “Come on, Joe. We gotta getchu outta here man,” DeWayne said. I got into the back seat of their small car.

•

WE DROVE AROUND
for a while in silence. The hot buzz of the adrenaline faded to a small, hollow tremor. The rush of that instant revenge slowly simmered into the horror of the unknown. How bad was it? The blade had to've gone in four inches. I didn't know what organs it could have hit—lungs, an artery? Hopefully, something not so vital. Some blood had splashed on my hand, and I was shocked at how dark it had turned—like tar there on the trembling creases of my knuckles. I wanted to take it all back, but how? There's something so final about going-to-town on somebody with a weapon. The stakes are forever raised, and with a guy like Samson, they'd be lining up to do a deed on me if he so much as mentioned it. D-Ray would probably walk right through my front door in broad daylight just to light me up. But fuck it, that motherfucker had hit her right in front a me. Stakes had already been raised when I shanked him. And the guns would pour out in my name, too, soon as Lil Pat got word. But I didn't want no one to know. Nobody. I guess I didn't want to make it all even worse for Rose. You can't choose the people you love. As much as I knew, she needed to choose to get the fuck away from that piece of shit and the Juneway Jungle all together.

My love for Rose formed into this warm ball in my stomach, and the fear poked at it like sharp hooks, then the rage twisted wires around it that coiled up into my heart. Then, it slid up my spine and strung taut loops around my mind, which tightened with thoughts of killing Samson.
Just kill him now before he can retaliate.

We ended up out west by Humboldt Park, passing under those crazy, 50-foot iron Puerto Rican flags frozen in a red, white, and blue flutter. We circled the dark wooded park for a while, then turned south into the neighborhood and passed a few sets that were just ridiculously hot—thirty heads lounging and drinking outside a building on a corner; a dude at the intersection on a GT dirt bike rode in circles through the tight traffic, representing to each and every car; maniac Latin Disciples throwing down the Crown to frightened faces. I just kept my head low, trembling and shivering in my boxers. Jan was steadily wiping tears from behind her glasses, and DeWayne rubbed her neck as she drove.

“We should just take him to Grand Beach,” she said. No one replied.

We finally stopped at an Amco station by Western and Augusta. Swarms of crackheads milled about in that brittle, hollow stupor. She pulled up near a payphone with a drippy, blue pitchfork spray painted on the side of the metal housing and got out. She called home, shivering in her pajamas.

DeWayne and I watched her silently.

“Thanks, man, for stepping up like that,” I said.

“Hey, Joe, I woulda been there quicker, I just didn't know what was going on 'til den.” DeWayne turned his head and reached his large hand to me. We shook.

Jan came back, got in, and shut the door. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. My heart plunged into my abdomen thinking she'd turn around and tell me he was dead or something, or that the cops had my name and were looking for me. She didn't turn at all—just started talking looking straight ahead at the passing traffic on Western.

“Samson's OK. No serious internal injuries or anything, and Rose said he didn't tell the police who did it, and they finally left him alone. They're about to release him from the hospital.” She twisted and looked back at me. Her eyes were all puffy behind her clear-framed glasses. “Dad says we should come home.” She sniffled and wiped it quickly with her pajama sleeve. “But, Joe, you gotta hear this: I know you love Rosie, but those two are just drama queens. They're so frickin
'
stupid. But, Joe, you gotta stop it with all that anger. You're gonna kill somebody with that temper one day. You're gonna go away like Patrick, except longer.” She turned back forward and started the car up. “You gotta cool it, little brotha…”

“I know,” I said, leaning my head back in the cushion and closing my eyes. I thought about getting thrown in like Monteff, about the caged wars raging in all those institutions. My hands stopped trembling, and this grateful joy pattered in my chest like a little hummingbird. I reached down and took my crucifix in my fingers and kissed the cool gold. We drove home in silence except for V103 playing low on the radio with the dreary streetlamps easing past my window. I wondered who I was now after all a that? How the monster inside me just leapt out and unleashed its wrath. How maybe I had some a
'
Mickey and Pistol Pat inside me, and that shit scared me, to tell you the truth.

There was an ominous silence on the block as we stepped up the front porch stairs. I could see a dark patch on the neighbor's dry, dead grass where the blood had congealed and crusted.

We stepped in and shut the door behind us.

I heard Ma's tired voice call to me from the kitchen. “Joseph, come in here a minute.”

My back tightened, and just then, Jan reached up and squeezed my traps. The tension burst into a thousand percolating prickles.

“Good luck,” Jan whispered as her and DeWayne started up the stairs.

I walked down the hall into the kitchen. Dad sat at the head of the table; the veins in his eyes swollen and red. His gnarly, puffy hair was all sprung up in the back. It was cloudy and whitish-gray with only a little bit of black twisted in. He slowly spun a half-empty, white coffee cup that read
Gone Fishin'
in black cursive.

Ma sat at the foot of the table in her white night gown and rested her large leg up on the long bench. It was hugely swollen and reddish-purple with varicose veins stretching and straining against the shiny skin like mangled tree roots. She watched the old man, waiting for him to say something. I stood there across the kitchen from them with my arms wrapped around my stomach.

“Honey, what you did tonight…,” she sputtered, still looking at my father, “I know you just wanted to protect Rose, but you didn't have to…” She slid her hand over her glossy, pulled-back hair. Then, looked at me, but only at my legs—afraid to look into my eyes, I guess. “You can't go around stabbing people. We don't… You don't have to live like that…” She finally looked me in the eyes; hers were steel-gray, sad, and hurt. “This is a safe neighborhood. We could have called the police. You should have just called the police and got Rosie inside.” She looked to Dad and raised her eyebrows. Something pierced my liver and sent a sudden rage through me. Cops were nothing but record takers tallying up crimes, taking down stats, and filing reports; they never got there in time to help anybody.