Slam!

  “You had trouble in Mr. Parrish’s class?”

  “Yo, man, he caught me wrong and I blew up,” I said. “It’s not a big deal.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I’m saying so.”

  “Who was right in the class just now?” he asked.

  “I guess he was,” I said. “He’s the teacher and I’m just the student. No matter what he said I can’t do nothing about it.”

  “He’s down in the office now trying to get you suspended,” Goldy said. “A couple of the kids from the class came down and spoke up for you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “They don’t hate you as much as you hate yourself, it seems.” Goldy looked into my soup. “What’s this?”

  “Barley bean soup.”

  “Phew! I thought it was the coffee.”

  I had to smile. It was good hearing that some of the kids went and talked up for me. It was good Goldy came to the restaurant, too.

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “I didn’t, I just looked around for you,” Goldy said. “Tell me, Slam, why do you keep self-destructing? You find a way of making money at it or something?”

  “This going to be one of your lectures?”

  “No, why don’t you make it one of your lectures,” Goldy said. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on? You know, I’m really interested.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s just something I don’t understand,” he said. “It’s not like you’re the first kid that’s been through Latimer who has trouble getting along. It happens once or twice every year. Some black kids, some white kids. Usually with the black kids it happens louder, more obviously, but it happens every year.”

  “Ask the white kids.”

  “I got you here now,” Goldy said. “And I’ll make a deal with you. You tell me what’s going on, and I’ll work with you to get you out of this mess with Mr. Parrish.”

  I looked at the dude. He looked sincere. Two girls came in smoking cigarettes. They saw Goldy and backed out real quick.

  “You want me to cop a plea,” I said, “and I don’t know what to say.”

  “Just tell me what you think is wrong,” he said. “And if you’re not going to eat the soup …”

  “Go ahead.”

  He started eating the soup and the guy behind the counter brought him over some crackers.

  “Hey, how come you didn’t bring me the crackers when I had the soup,” I said. “I paid for it.”

  “You want crackers?”

  “Forget it.”

  “So?” Goldy had a soup mustache.

  “So everybody says I’m wrong, okay? I didn’t do this, and I didn’t do that. I messed up a test. I forgot my homework.” The guy brought the crackers and another bowl of soup.

  “On the house,” he said.

  “You get privileges being with a white guy,” Goldy said.

  “I’m hip.”

  “So go on.”

  “Then they start running this game about how when I get out of school I ain’t going to be into nothing. That’s what Parrish ran down. I was going to be a corner guy, you know, just hanging on the block ’cause I don’t have anything going for me.

  “He acts like I don’t see nothing. You think I don’t see the dudes on my block ain’t doing nothing? He sees it and I see but when he throws it in my face he’s not showing me any respect. Like, if I run up to him and said he’s half bald and all ugly or something like that, then I’m not showing him respect. He knows he’s half bald, and he knows he ain’t no movie star, either. But if I throw that up in his face then everybody is going to say I’m dissing him. When he throws stuff up in my face I’m supposed to act like I’m happy with it. You know, ‘Thank you Mr. Parrish for dissing me in front of the whole class because it’s for my own good and I feel real glad that you did it.’ ”

  “Is he right concerning your schoolwork?” Goldy asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “He’s right.”

  “So, say he was a ballplayer talking trash to you on the court,” Goldy said. “What would you do? Punch him out?”

  “If we were on the court I would have my game with me,” I said. “I don’t have a game off the court.”

  “You still don’t get it, do you?” Goldy finished up his soup and took mine. “The only difference between on the court and off the court is that everybody is in the game off the court. You will play, and you will win or lose. There’s nobody on the bench, nobody sitting it out. You’re in the game, Slam. You’re in it whether you want to be or not. A lot of people fool themselves and say they’re just not going to play. Believe me, it don’t work that way.”

  “How you know so much?”

  “I’m guessing,” Goldy said. “When I come back to life I’m coming back as Michael Jordan and then I’ll try a different theory. Now let’s get back to the school.”

  “You going to talk to Mr. Tate for me?”

  “About what?”

  “You said you would work with me to get me out of trouble,” I said.

  “You’re not in trouble,” Goldy said. “Once the kids took your side Parrish backed off. He’s going to be looking for you to make a mistake, though. You know that, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess I dissed him, too.”

  “You might even be learning something,” Goldy said.

  “Look, thanks for coming by and talking to me.”

  “I just do it for the soup,” Goldy said.

  We got back to the school and a few of the kids got to me and asked me what was going on. I told them it was no big deal. Then I had an idea. Tony said that Mr. Parrish was in the library, and I went there and found him. He had some books in his hands and he put them in front of his chest when I walked up to him.

  “I’m sorry I blew up like that,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”

  He didn’t know what to say. You could see it in his eyes. He was thinking a mile a minute and then he nodded and sort of mumbled “okay” under his breath.

  When I got to math, Mr. Greene was waiting for me. He said he heard I was really a tough guy. There wasn’t any homework due and I was glad, but that didn’t get Mr. Greene off my back. He kept on about how Mr. Parrish was a lot tougher than I even knew about.

  “You tough, too?” I asked him.

  “Tough enough to see that you don’t graduate,” he said. “How’s that for tough?”

  “That’s pretty tough,” I said. “Is that why you’re a teacher, to see who you can stop from graduating?”

  “No, I’m here to maintain standards of excellence,” he came back. “Would you know anything about that?”

  “I thought you were here to teach,” Ducky said.

  “Why don’t you shut up,” Mr. Greene said.

  “You tough enough to keep me from graduating?” Ducky said.

  Mr. Greene turned red and started the lesson.

  He was right, though. He was tough enough to keep me from graduating. He was like Brothers on Trinity’s team. He had a good game and he was talking trash. Goldy had said that there were going to be winners and losers, off the court as well as on, and I knew I didn’t know what winning off the court was. That’s what they should have been teaching us in math — how to win. Maybe that’s why I had a good game on court, I knew how to win there.

  When the last bell rang I felt drained. No way I wanted to go to basketball practice. In the locker room Glen and Trip were playing chess and somebody, probably Trip, had a radio on blasting out some reggae.

  There was some three-inch tape on the table and I took a roll and wrapped my ankles. There was nothing wrong with them but I liked the way they felt when they were wrapped. Ducky was putting on his N.W.A. sweatshirt to practice in. Off the court he was pretty tough, too. You wouldn’t think it looking at him, but he was.

  Practice went good with most of it being about clogging up the middle. Everybody on Carver’s squad could throw the pill down and that was a big part of their game.

&nbs
p; “It’s also a weakness.” The coach was talking to us as we sat on the floor. “They throw away chances by looking for the slam, and looking for the one-on-one. They’re generally a more athletic team than we are, but the points count the same if you do a three-sixty slam or if you hit two foul shots. Nick, I’m putting you on Reese, their best player.”

  “Why don’t you put Slam on him?” Nick said. “He’s the best player we have.”

  “I question whether or not he’s the best player we have,” the coach said. He picked up his clipboard again. “And we don’t want to have this game breaking down into a two man jitterbug contest. We saw what happened against Trinity. We can win because we have the best team effort in the league.”

  I looked over at Goldy and he was looking dead at me.

  We did some curls and half squats and then some wind sprints before the practice ended. Goldy ran some of the wind sprints with us and I asked him why.

  “To show Nipper I’m mad at him for making that crack about jitterbugging,” he said.

  “You have a heart attack and die and he’ll really know you’re mad,” I said.

  When I got home I saw that Derek had picked up some fresh videotape because he wanted to tape himself singing.

  “Yo, man, you can’t sing,” I said.

  “You want to tape me doing push-ups?”

  “No.”

  “What you want to do?”

  “Come on with me and we’ll see what we find,” I said.

  “We’re like the NEWS-4 team, right?”

  “Sure.”

  We walked down to a lot on Malcolm X Boulevard. Some homeless guys were in a vacant lot off 139th Street standing around a fire in a garbage can. I asked them if I could run some tape.

  “Don’t tape this side of me,” the oldest guy said. “This is my bad side.”

  “Both your sides is your bad side.” The tallest guy didn’t have any teeth.

  “You play ball?” the old guy asked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Go on and take your pictures,” the old guy said. He turned his good side to me. “You got any money?”

  “’Bout seventy-five cents,” I said.

  “Well, you keep it because you need it to chase the ladies,” the old guy said.

  “What kind of lady he gonna get for seventy-five cents?” the tall guy asked.

  The fire flared up and lit their faces from underneath and I saw that they were all younger than I thought they were.

  “If he a real man the ladies will give him money,” the old guy said. “Ain’t that right young blood?”

  “You got it,” I said.

  A black cop came along and told them not to let the fire get out of hand. They said they wouldn’t and he nodded and went on about his business. He did what he had to do and they did what they had to do. I guess they were in the game, too.

  I told Derek that he had to carry the camera home because he was my assistant and he dug it. The way he was working his thing he was going to end up being my main man. When I got home I looked through the assignments and found the one I was supposed to do for Mr. Parrish. It was supposed to be a three-page paper showing how something that happened in one of Shakespeare’s plays also happened in our own community. That was easy. I just used that scene in the beginning of Romeo and Juliet when those guys were dissing each other and then the scene where Romeo was talking his stuff to Juliet.

  There was a roach on the wall of my room and I threw a sneaker at him but missed. Then I grabbed the other sneaker and chased him behind the closet. I stood right next to the closet for a while but he came out the other side and ran up the wall near the ceiling where he thought I couldn’t get him. He must have been shocked to see me sky because he didn’t even move. Wham! I didn’t hit him, just gave him a good scare.

  He was probably thinking to himself, Whoa, that dude can get up! But I wonder why they call him Slam?

  I put the tape in the VCR and played it back. The raspy voice of the guy in the lot filled the living room. Derek came in and watched the tape. We didn’t say anything about the guys. They were making jokes and all, but it wasn’t funny.

  I went to school early so I could look over all the tapes. Miss Fowell, the librarian, was in the tape room.

  “You guys have a big game tomorrow,” she said.

  “You watching basketball now?”

  “Hey, I’m hurt,” she said. “I’ve seen all of your home games. I used to play basketball in college.”

  “You?” I looked at her. “You got an athletic scholarship?”

  “I didn’t get a scholarship,” she said. “But I played. St. Joseph’s in Brooklyn.”

  “All right!”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Just some tapes from the neighborhood,” I said.

  “Don Parrish liked it a lot,” she said.

  “He doesn’t like me a lot,” I said. “We had a little run-in.”

  “I know, he was some pissed.” She took a tape from the machine she was near. “But I think he was right. Just because you made a good videotape doesn’t make you a good person.”

  “He still thinks the tape is good?”

  “Yes, and so do I,” she said. “But it won’t do you a bit of good if you don’t keep the rest of your life together.”

  “Yo, Miss Fowell, how come every adult in the world has a lecture they’re just ready to give out?”

  “You hear all of the lectures when you’re young.” She was putting labels on some new tapes. “When you get older you realize how many of them were really a lot more important than you knew.”

  “So you lay it on some kid?”

  “Now you got it,” she said. “So, you guys going to win tomorrow?”

  “It won’t be easy,” I said. “But we’ll do it.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Yo, you coming?” I called after her as she was going out the door.

  She stuck her head back in and put her thumb up.

  I didn’t even know she knew anything about basketball.

  The tapes looked good, or at least I thought they did after what Miss Fowell said. While I was watching them I thought about Mr. Parrish getting on my case, and still saying that I was okay as a moviemaker.

  The tapes didn’t look like a movie to me. What they looked like was just pictures of the block. They made me laugh sometimes when I saw people I know showing out for the camera. Yeah, I dug that.

  Marjorie had nutted up when she saw the first tapes. That was okay, it wasn’t her show. It was my show and my turf and pictures of my homies. The houses only looked bad when you compared them to houses you see on television and whatnot. They weren’t anything grand, and the people weren’t anything grand, but they were okay with me. Square business. It looked like if I put it together and cut it down like Mr. Parrish said, it would definitely be on the money. I was hoping he would still be interested in helping me.

  When I put in the tape of Carver playing Trinity it was just like television. I could follow the ball good and all it needed was for somebody to announce it.

  “Ice puts the ball on the floor, he fakes left, then goes left and leaves Brothers standing in his tracks. He looks away, then goes up and rips the net with a bodacious slam!”

  I watched Ice some more. His game was smoking. Brothers was smiling and laying off him. He didn’t want to look bad when Ice went around him, over him, and just about through him. Brothers should have stayed on Ice and made him bring his weight for the whole game. A little knot grew in my stomach and I knew I was getting an excitement buzz.

  In art we had to do a portrait from memory. I thought about doing a portrait of Ice but instead I did a portrait of Mtisha. I did it with pastel crayons on really good paper Mr. Kenny, the art teacher, brought in.

  “Concentrate on what you notice most about your subject,” Mr. Kenny said.

  What I noticed most about Mtisha was how she made me feel. She made me feel warm so I started off with a warm brown color
even though she was darker than the shade I was using. I got her eyes pretty good and the top of her nose real good. From there it was like just filling out her face. She was wearing her hair in braids but I didn’t want to draw braids so I changed her hairstyle. I didn’t want to draw her smile, either, because I thought I was going to mess that up, but I didn’t.

  When I painted in the curve of her mouth I was surprised how nice her lips were. Then I knew that maybe I wasn’t even seeing the picture, maybe I was just looking at the paper and seeing Mtisha in my mind.

  “This is obviously somebody you like a lot?” Mr. Kenny asked.

  “Yeah, you can say that,” I said.

  “Nice technique,” he said. “Nice feeling to the piece. You need to look at her skin more and see all the other colors in it. Nobody’s skin is just one color. Add any warm color to it and you’ll see what I mean.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  The skin tones were a little flat, but they were good enough to bring my mind big time to Mtisha.

  The rest of the day went by quick and Mr. Tate called a special pep rally at two-thirty for the big game with Carver. The whole school was there and they were getting up for it. We got into our uniforms and threw the ball around the stage a few times and each player was introduced and got a cheer. I was glad when my man Ducky got his cheer.

  “Yesterday Trinity lost.” The coach was talking over the loudspeaker. “What that means is that only Carver is undefeated. But Carver isn’t in a very good position because they have to play us!”

  Everybody got to screaming behind that and the band started playing our school song, which sounded like everybody else’s school song.

  “When they lose to us tomorrow afternoon we will both be five and one, but we will be the conference champions because we will have beaten the second-place team, Carver. We win tomorrow and it’s on to the citywide Tournament of Champions!”

  There were more cheers and the band got louder than I knew it could get. What the coach didn’t say was that if we won and got into the Tournament of Champions the first team we would have to face was Carver, the defending champs.

  When the rally was over we changed into our street clothes and me, Ducky, Nick, and Jimmy stopped for a soda across the street. We didn’t say a whole lot, just some weak stuff about how the game was going to be good and all. What was more important was that we didn’t say anything negative. I thought about saying something about being sorry about the fight before, but figured I would just let it lay.