“J.J.!” Brother John has grabbed my arm. “Open your eyes! Let the turtle go! You’re going to squeeze him to death! What’s wrong with you!”
Confused, I look up at Brother John and open my hand. Omar is making little circles with his finger and pointing to his head.
“I . . . I was just holding him.”
“So tight!”
“I didn’t know I was holding him so tight.”
“Why did you close your eyes?”
“My ear was hurting me—”
“J.J.!”
“Huh?”
“Huh! We’re waiting for you, and you’re daydreaming!”
I look up and Brother John is tapping a piece of chalk on the board beneath where he’s written The Four Branches of Earth Science. OK, OK, I get it.
“Oceanography, geography, meteorology, and astronomy,” I snap.
“And describe two events that occur in each branch.”
In the seat in front of me, Bobby Jackson looks at the clock, shifts in his seat, and closes his book. What he do that for?
Brother John looks at him nasty and mean. “Well, Mr Jackson, since you seem so impatient today, perhaps you can answer the other half of the question.”
Bobby looks at him, real pain on his face, he is not faking. He couldn’t answer the question even if he had been listening, he’s like, DUH, stupid for real. The silence Bobby should be filling with the answer gets big. Way past big. But I ain’t gonna say anything, I ain’t gonna dis Bobby.
“Well, Mr Jackson, let me ask you where it is you’re in such a hurry to go to.”
“The bathroom,” Bobby says. Everybody laughs.
“While you’re there, read chapters one, two, and three and have the answer Wednesday when I call on you. Class dismissed!”
On my way out the door, Brother John asks me to stop by his office before I go out to next period.
THE PICTURES HANGING in the halls here is mostly dead niggers or faggots like Martin Luther King and astronauts and shit. But Brother John’s office got pictures of Alonzo Mourning, Shaq O’Neal, Dikembe, Michael Jordan, Dennis Rodman, Magic, Kareem, and some other back-in-the-day dudes I can’t name, motherfuckers way way before my time. For a fraction of a second, a thousandth, no, a millionth of a second, I see Brother John’s pale pink penis shining in the fluorescent light coming from the window over my bed. It’s the only window in the whole room, only thing it looks out onto is the parking lot. He’s sitting on my bunk and someone who looks like me is on his knees in front of him. “Gimme some luv,” he’s saying. I exhale hard, nothing like that could happen in front of everybody, why asinine shit like that is even in my head to think.
Brother John is supposed to be a special guy. He was abandoned at birth and raised by a black foster mother in Harlem. La-di-da, how about that! He get up, cock his head to the side in assembly, and say shit like, “I know these mean streets.” To himself he sounds like a nigger, to me he just sounds wacko. I don’t hate him like I do Brother Samuel, but I don’t like him either. Sixteen, I’m outta here if I make St Ailanthus Boys’ Prep Program upstate. Brother John said I probably would. Five from out each junior class from each school in the diocese get picked. I’m gonna be one of them, I think.
Brother John is sitting at his desk in his maroon leather chair. He has a collection of jazz and hip-hop CDs lined up on one side of the little ledge by his window. I look out his window at a wall of nothing but bricks. What does this chump want with me?
“Have a seat, J.J.” I sink down on the sofa facing his desk. The sofa is the same color as the chair. I get my own pad, I’m gonna hook it up like this. I look over Brother John’s head and below Jesus on the cross is a picture of Dennis Rodman in leather pants sitting on a motorcycle. You know like I repeat what does this chump have to say to me.
“How are things?”
“Cool.”
“Cool?” He echoing me or mimicking me? I can’t tell. I realize I have no fear of this freak. Freak? Why is he a freak—’cause he got Dennis on the wall? He has Dennis and them guys on the wall ’cause he’s black inside, right? He know these mean streets, right? Gimme a break!
“Um hum.” I nod. “Cool.”
“Well, your class work is outstanding so far. Good things, man, I’m hearing really good things about you. So you dig Shakespeare, huh?”
“I read ’im,” I say cool.
“Mrs Washington is very pleased with the work you’re doing in that class. Ah—I told her when I recommended you for accelerated English studies you’d be great. You like your math class?”
“Yeah, I like it a lot. I wish I could get into the Computer Programming I, though.”
He gets up from behind his desk and comes over to the sofa and sits down. I can smell Irish Spring, the soap the whole school uses.
“Well, that class is packed and is reserved for the 8A students. Don’t worry, you’ll be right in there come January.” He presses his knee against my knee. I look at him. He’s looking at our knees touching.
“What’s this about Jaime?”
“What do you mean?”
“I know,” he says in a voice more colored than usual. “It’s all a m-f-ing lie. I know that. Just a little asshole of a kid trying to get some attention. But I had to tell them that I talked to you. Be careful.” He squeezes my knee. “It’s so easy for a little . . . I don’t know, a little-little kindness, a little luv to be taken the wrong way.”
“I didn’t do nothing.”
“I know you didn’t.” He takes his hand off my knee. “Well, you’ve read Hamlet. What does Mrs Washington have lined up next for you guys, Macbeth?”
“Yeah.”
“That should be fun,” he says.
I get up.
He looks at me funny, then says, “Yes, J.J., you can go now.”
GO WHERE? Next class has already started, and they know I was in there with Brother John, so I’m marked Excused, not Absent, and next period is lunch. So where? The park? Naw. Maybe 125th Street, over the bridge to the Bronx? Go where, do what? It bugs me about Jaime. I don’t want no weird shit on the wire about me. I ain’ did nothin’ to that stupid kid.
Go to the library, get started on Macbeth. Like shock Mrs Washington. What had happened in Hamlet? How come he stuck ol’ Polonius like that? For nothing, really, and he ended up not really killing the king, or did he stick the king? His moms drank the poison. But everybody ended up dead? He just shoulda took ol’ Uncle Kingie out when his father first came to visit him. He should have believed his dad’s ghost right from the start.
Where’s my father? Dead? I don’t even know who he is, so how I know if he’s dead? My mother said she didn’t know who my father was. What kinda shit is that? You don’t even know who the father of your child is. I ever have a kid I’m gonna be there, hang out with my kid. But shit, I ain’t never gonna have no motherfucking kids, least not none I know about. If I pop one of these hos from the neighborhood, it’ll be hit-and-run. Maybe my father was like a basketball coach that cared about kids. Naw, that can’t be true or I wouldn’t of got put in an orphanage when my mother died. But maybe my mother had me and didn’t like my father so she never told him I was born and he don’t even know I exist? That’s what happened to one kid whose father came and got him.
Ophelia lost it ’cause of her father being killt? The sun is the cause of rivers, all moving water, really, Brother John had said. I could go to Countee Cullen on 136th Street, but I actually like 124th Street library better, plus it’s close to the park. I’m gonna major in computers when I get in high school, get a job with some real ducats. I like Mrs Washington, but I can’t see being no English major like she suggest. I don’t need to think about that shit now. What I need to think about is Jaime’s ass, man. What that motherfucker go stupid on me and he know I ain’ did nothin’ to him. I’m gonna go to the dorms.
We ain’ spozed to be in the dorms before bedtime, but fuck that, because ain’ nobody spozed to be there, it’s where
I can be alone. It’s three big rooms on the same floor, one for the little kids, one for the eight- to eleven-year-olds, and then one for us, the big kids. Two rows of beds in each dorm, feets facing the center aisle, heads toward the wall. Lotta space between the beds, wide aisle between the two rows. The main thing you feel here is loneliness. Separated in your bed by yourself. Before you was here you was together, and after you leave, when you are grown, you know, you will be together always like on TV or in the movies. When I think of being a little kid, it’s like I’m in a dream in a dark room with a big table and on the table is a bunch of pictures, I hear some music or smell something and a light comes on and the picture comes alive like a movie, like life, and I see myself in my life before and it hurts me even if the picture is a happy picture, so I look around for the light and smash it. The dark feels good. I’ve never been afraid of the dark like some kids. But the whole thing, the pictures, the light, makes me mad. Thinking about Jaime right now makes me mad. Tonight I’ll be waiting on him. No, he’ll be waiting on me. The return of J.J. He knows he likes it.
Underneath our beds we have chests for our clothes and stuff. Then behind the cafeteria room we have a locker we can lock. They’re small and the brothers have all the combinations and can go in them if they want, and they do if someone has something stolen or if there’s rumors of someone with drugs, or a knife, or nasty pictures. But you can keep stuff in there and it won’t get stolen. Guys keep stuff like letters, awards, jewelry, and stuff in their lockers. I don’t have no jewelry, but I have my kaleidoscope which no one else at school has, some of these guys didn’t even know what one was. I have a picture of people at a party or something after my mother’s funeral, ain’t none of them her of course. I don’t get no letters. I waited a long time for a letter. I have two letters in my locker now. I took them. One is in Spanish. The other ain’t about nothin’, a lie, some grown-up talking about they gonna come get the kid. They always say that. I ask guys, “What your letter say?” It’s always the same shit, We love you, be good, we gonna come get you as soon as Mommy gets out of the hospital, we gonna come get you. But they don’t, it be a lie. It was nice to open the envelope, take the letter out. Sitting watching other people open their mail and stuff made me wanna do it too. That’s all I got in my locker—my letters, kaleidoscope, spelling award and science team award, two rocks and some shells I got at the beach. The rocks look beautiful wet. Really, I could keep my things in my chest under my bed, don’t nobody mess with my stuff, really. Some guys here, even in Dorm Three, the big-kids’ dorm, our dorm, look like they six years old. I guess they gonna grow later. I’m six feet. How scared other boys are of you is demonstrated by your chest. I mean if you are bad, don’t no one rip you off. They don’t want no type of retaliation if you see them with your shit. Most of the time, that is, ’cause some of these little kids got larceny in their hearts. They will steal even though they know when you catch them with your shit you are going to beat them to death! They can’t help it. It’s like trying to stop a cell from undergoing mitosis or stop a cat from climbing on shit, it can’t not do it, that’s its trip—to climb, it’s inherent! Some kids born to steal. That’s why I lock up my shit. Me, J.J., I’m no thief. I’m a lover, I guess. A born lover. I feel warm, good, when I think that shit! J.J. and Jaime, J.J. and that girl look at me in the park, J.J. and lots of people. Then a main-squeeze girl I’m gonna marry. After dinner we do cleanup, study, and then go to the lounge and watch TV till ten minutes before lights-out, then ten minutes before lights-out we run to our room, change into our pajamas, line up in the bathroom, brush our teeth, hit our knees, pray all of us real loud:
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
God bless our parents, here or departed,
God bless the Brothers of St Ailanthus,
God bless all the children of the world,
including myself, God’s dearest lamb,
and God bless the sweet little Lord Baby Jesus.
In the name of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
AAAhhMMMmen!
“God”—one of the brothers stand at the end of the room, his fingers on the light switch, reciting same time as we praying—“author of all heavenly gifts. You gave St Ailanthus both a wonderful reverence of life and a deep spirit of compassion. Through his merits, grant that we may imitate his sympathy. Amen.” When we say, “Ahh,” he flicks the lights off, by the time we got “men” out, he turn in his robes and is gone. That’s when the promises and shit start: “I’m gonna get you tomorrow, motherfucker!” “On the court, nigger.” “Say some shit to me again in history and I’ll knock your eyes out your head!” Don’t nothin’ ever really start or get too loud ’cause Mr Lee right down the hall if shit do, and he run his old ass in, throw on the lights, and blink ’em till the brothers bust in like police in long robes.
After the lights go out, I lay there, I’m thinking, why shouldn’t I? I mean, it’s not wrong. I’m no faggot. I just wanna do this, have fun for now. The sheets feel like concrete laying up on top of me. How I feel is like a basketball after it hits the ground and is flying up! But I’m laying here trying to pretend I’m asleep. I shift under the covers. I don’t know what I know. It’s wrong? It’s how we live, whether anybody talk about it or not, man! This shit common as H2O, man. Don’t make you no freak. His hair is like the collie dog’s hair I had at the foster home once. His eyes is like that too, big and brown. But he moves like a little kitten skittering down the hall with his backpack bouncing over his butt.
I’m pulling the covers back now. The only relief from darkness at his end of the dorm is the glow from the exit sign, the clock face, and a crack of light from under the door. I grab him in my arms. He’s like a little child. I’m like the big father. He’s such a small boy, a faggot child, I guess. Jaime, what kind of name is that? I’m hard. I hold him in my lap, put my hand on his chest, his heart is beating, beating.
“Don’t,” he says.
That makes me sad. “OK.” I feel bad I just sit there. I don’t know why, but tears well up in my eyes, fall, drop off my cheek onto his chest. He touches my cheek.
“I won’t hurt you, OK?” I say. “OK.” I ease him out of my arms back onto the bed. Brother John’s voice is in me now saying, Show him some luv, show him a little luv. I open his pajamas and kiss him there. His skin is like a baby, he smells like the spaghetti we had for dinner and a little like pee. I’m like in earth science, the gentle winds caressing the earth’s surface. I want him to love me. I take his penis in my mouth. He’s like a little boy, but I know he’s not. He’s thirteen, his thing is as big as mine. I go round him with my tongue, then suck and suck like I’m going to die if I stop. He comes in my mouth. I swallow him, he’s mine now. I get up, fly down the aisle. I didn’t hurt nobody, do nothing bad. I’m not bad. I’m a good king. I think about flying out the window over my bed, but it’s too high up. The light breaks in through cracks in the curtains and slashes me.
The night sounds are like zeros that add up to nothing. Silence. I like that. And the dark. I slide quiet back to my own bed. We have a test in earth science tomorrow. See can I hand Jaime some answers. Tired of seeing my boy fail. He’s the same as me even though we look different. We are both boys, thirteen years old. I know what he feels. Only our skins, our hair, and our sizes are different. I’m six feet, he’s four feet, I’m dark brown, the mountain, and he is the color of sand on the beach with curly hair like a doll’s. I never played with dolls, I never will. I stretch out my feet and they touch the metal bar at the end of the bed. I wonder where he’s from, the Dominican Republic, I think. His father got killed in a taxicab accident? His mother, it’s weird to ask about people’s mother, but if he’s at St Allie’s he probably ain’t got one. I dream about birds flying over water, water, water that don’t end.
SCHOOL IS OVER, we’re on our way to the swimming pool, the 135 City-Rec, following behind Brother Samuel. Me and Jai
me are bringing up the back of the line. I ain’t said nothing to him. He ain’t said nothing to me. Brother Samuel done turned and looked back at us a couple of times. Good, bear ass, see, ain’t nothing going on. Lies, you done heard.
“How’d you do on the earth science test?” I ask.
“A lot better’n I been doing, thanks.”
We turn the corner on 135th Street. I look over at the blood-red brick projects.
“You from the Dominican Republic?”
“No, man, I’m from here. My parents and shit was from the Dominican Republic.”
Was. I look at him and ask, “You like me?” I’m scared what he’s gonna say.
“Yeah, man, but you come on so loco and shit at first, what’s with you?”
“I’m sorry, you know, I jus’ couldn’t help myself.”
“Why you couldn’t?”
“I don’t know, man, I just, you know, feel you that much.”
“When I get grown, I’m gonna go with girls,” he says.
“Of course,” I say. “Don’t all guys unless they’re gay or some shit? We’re friends, ain’t no one gonna fuck with you, ever.”
We at the door of the 135 City-Rec, everyone else has gone in. “Let’s go over to Vee-O-Game on Fifth Avenue!” I say, and dash down the steps and head toward the street, waving for Jaime to follow.
He’s panting. “We spozed to go upstairs with Brother Samuel if we wanna be on the swim team!”
“You wanna be on the fucking swim team?”