Sometimes when something good happens to me I can’t wait to get off by myself so I can think about it. Goldy came up to me after the game and hugged me, the coach hugged me, teachers were hugging the whole team. It was like a fantasy trip. Moms had went to visit Grandma but Pops and Derek were there.
“Man, you guys played up some ball!” Pops said. He was looking around at everybody congratulating me and I knew he was digging it. I was digging him digging it, too.
Then Derek grabbed me and took me over to some of his friends to show off and I was high-fiving some little dudes with stick hands.
The locker room was crazy good. The smell of sweat and funky socks was all over the place and guys were screaming just to hear themselves screaming. Nick grabbed me around the neck and I held his hand up and pointed to him.
“Here he is!”
“Here we are!” the coach said. “Here we are!”
I hung out for a while, soaking it all up, and then I went on home. Moms was watching television and Derek was trying to get the wheel of his bicycle straight.
“Hi, star!” Moms said. “I heard you won.”
“On the money,” I said. “Anything around to eat?”
“The food’s on the stove,” Moms said. “I’ll fix you a plate.”
“How’s Grandma?” I said.
“She’s looking good,” Moms said. “Being out of the hospital has done her good.”
Pops ran down his version of the game as I ate. Dude didn’t know nothing about ball, but he meant well.
I went and laid across my bed. The day came down on me hard. My legs felt like stone and my shoulders were aching. The game was still running through my mind, almost slipping into a real dream, when Moms came to the door.
“Mtisha’s on the phone,” she said.
Derek had his wheel all apart again, and I had to step over it. He needed to take the wheel to the bicycle shop and get it aligned with the machine they had down there.
“What’s happening?” I asked when I picked up the phone.
She said that Bianca was inviting us to Ice’s house to a party. “Come on over,” Mtisha said. “And don’t wear your sneakers.”
“Why she invite me to go with you?” I asked. “She don’t know who I want to bring to the party.”
What did I say that for? She came on with I didn’t have to take her to a party and how she could find someone to go with if she did want to go.
“Hey, I didn’t mean anything,” I said. “I’m playing around, that’s all.” Then I told her to lighten up and she told me she would see me when she saw me and just because I won a basketball game didn’t mean I had the right to go around hurting people.
After she hung up I called her back and told her I was sorry, even though I really didn’t think I did anything wrong.
“I’ll see you over at Ice’s place,” I said. “And no matter what you say I still love you.”
“You better be ready to prove it,” she said, and hung up.
What did she mean by that? What was she going to do? I imagined her whispering some nice little things in my ear. Supposed she told me to go back to her house with her? Suppose she even asked me to marry her? I didn’t think she would go that far, but how far would she go?
When I got to Ice’s house the place was jumping. There were at least thirty people there, including some really fly women. They had a deejay with one of those twin turntables playing some tough sides. Ice and Bianca saw me and came over.
“You know you got to face us again in the Tournament of Champions, right?” he said.
“Yeah, I know,” I said.
“So that’s why we giving this party,” he said. “So you can enjoy yourself one last time before the slaughter.”
“I’m giving this jam because I needed to bring my good friends together,” Bianca said. “But you guys can talk all the basketball you want just as long as you don’t bring my party down. Mtisha said she’d be here soon.”
Basketball’s my game but I can rock a dance session. Bianca gave me a little kiss on the cheek and introduced me to some folk. There weren’t any hip-hoppers on the set and nobody wearing gang colors. I dig a conservative set and I was doing my thing on the floor when Mtisha showed. She was wearing white pants and a soft white sweater that was just a stone killer outfit and she knew it. She looked at me and she had to smile because she knew she was making my mind go soft around the edges.
Mtisha showed cool and me and her and Ice and Bianca got out on the floor and improvised a little four-way number. If it was as good to see as it was to feel we would have got a Grammy Award or something. Then everybody was on the floor and the beat got as righteous as it could get. That’s when I remembered about Mtisha saying that I had better be ready to prove my love. I decided then and there to make a serious move on the girl.
Ice’s mama, Mrs. Reese, had a bag and was on her way out. She told us all to be good. She was going to stay at her cousin’s house.
“I can’t stand all that noise you children make,” she said.
You could see that she was happy that Ice was having the party at home. She had probably spent all day cleaning the place so it would look nice.
Ice had a big corn-bread-and-collard-greens dude named Latin on the door to keep out the crashers. Everybody knew Latin was gay, but he played on Carver’s football team and nobody was going to mess with him.
“So what I need to do to prove my love to you?” I asked Mtisha during a slow jam.
“I don’t know,” Mtisha said, sliding against me. “Slay some dragons or something.”
“I think you’re already in love with me,” I whispered in her ear.
“I’m a little light-headed but I think it’s a touch of the flu,” she said. “Put your lips on my neck and see if I have a fever.”
Latin brushed by and I saw him say something to Ice. The two of them started making their way through the party toward the front door. Bianca dug what was going down and you could see her face working like something was trying to get out. I pushed my mind away from it.
“What you want to do after the party?” I asked Mtisha.
“I told you I’m sick,” she said. She didn’t see what was going on. “I need to be taken care of.”
“Whoa, look … ”
We heard a banging against the door and everybody turned to look. Bianca turned the jam off and we heard scuffling outside the door.
“It’s a fight!” somebody said.
Latin come in and he was waving that everything was cool.
“Some girl got drunk,” he said. “She come off the street drunk and wanted to get into the party. No sweat.”
The guy put the record back on and people started dancing again. I looked over to Bianca and her eyes was like wild panic. I knew what she was thinking.
“I got to find Ice,” I told Mtisha.
Latin was getting a drink and nobody was on the door when I went out. In the hallway there were doors open and faces looking out to see what had happened. One guy in his bathrobe was on a cellular phone and I figured he was talking to the police.
The stairs were wide and I could see down the stairwell pretty good. It looked empty so I started down. I got all the way to the first floor and I didn’t see anything. I looked out in the street and there were a few people standing around, but no big deal.
I raced back upstairs where Bianca was out in the hallway.
“Ice down there?” she asked.
“I didn’t see him,” I said. “Stay with the party, I’ll find him.”
Where was Ice? We were on the fourth floor and there were only five floors. I went up to the next landing and there wasn’t anybody there either.
The roof door was open and I went outside. The cool breeze felt good. Ice was standing near the little wall that divided one roof from the other. On the edge of the roof, overlooking the street, was this chick.
“She’s on the pipe!” Ice said.
The girl looked at me. In the rooftop d
arkness I couldn’t see her good but I could see she was brown-skinned and skinny. Her eyes were shiny and desperate and her lips was drawn back from her teeth.
“Can you help me?” she asked.
“What you want?”
“She want some rocks,” Ice said, before the girl could speak. “I don’t know why she come here.”
“Why you so near the edge?” I asked her.
“I just need to get straight tonight,” she said. “I got a job in the morning.”
For a minute I thought she might have been the girl I had seen on the subway, but I knew they all looked the same, scary and dried up and thrown away. She wavered on the edge of the roof and I thought she might fall, or even jump.
“I got a few dollars,” I said. I started going through my pockets looking for money to give to her.
Ice held out his hand to her and opened it, palm up. I saw two plastic vials, the kind I had seen a hundred times in the gutter, in the park, in the bathrooms in school, everywhere in my life. The girl came away from the edge and grabbed the vials from Ice. She brushed past me as she went toward the door to the stairway.
“I don’t know why she come to my party …” Ice come to me and put his arm around my shoulders.
I pushed him away hard.
“What’s your problem?” he asked.
“Get away from me.” I went to walk away from him and he jumped in front of me again.
“What’s your problem?” he shouted the words at me.
“What don’t you know? You dealing ain’t you? You part of the life ain’t you?” I could feel my neck swelling up with anger. “What don’t you know?”
“Man, I can’t help it if she’s on the pipe,” he said.
I didn’t want him in my face and I pushed him away hard. He pushed me back and I swung on him. Ice fell back and then came after me.
“Punk!”
He had quick hands and went upside my head. I grabbed him around his waist, lifted him off the ground and threw him down. He got up as I tried to get past him and grabbed my shirt. I lifted my arm in time to stop him from hitting me again and he grabbed me around the neck.
He kept calling me a punk and tried to get me down. I wasn’t going down. No way. I got my hand around his leg and lifted him again. There were some other people on the roof and I heard them yelling. They were pulling us apart and Ice tried to kick me. Latin picked me up and carried me off.
“Punk!” Ice called after me.
“What they fighting for?” somebody was asking.
“Slam, what’s happening, man?” It was Billy from the bike shop.
“Nothing,” I said.
I turned back to where Ice stood. He looked at me and I could see the anger in his face. I had peeped him. I had peeped him and it had messed with him good.
“You a punk!” he said. His voice was hoarse and cracking. “You a punk!”
“Yeah, man.” I said. “That’s me.”
“Yo, Slam.” Latin was by my side. “Y’all friends, man. Peace out. Both of you be cool in the morning.”
Bianca was standing near the door of the roof and she touched me on the arm as I went by her. I went on downstairs and I heard Mtisha calling after me. There were some bloods standing around, doing nothing as usual, and I just went on by them. My legs were trembling and I sat on the curb to get myself together.
“Bianca and I saw the girl,” Mtisha said, sitting next to me.
“Yeah.”
“Ice hurt you?” she asked.
“No, I’m okay. Just tired.”
She moved closer and held my arm. “I know he hurt you,” she said. She was crying softly.
Mtisha cried for a long time. She was right. Ice had hurt me. We had been aces for so long, had been playing ball and running the streets for so long that we knew each other’s moves. We knew what we could do, and where we were going, and in a way, even how much we were hurting. Ice had hurt me, and he knew it. That’s why he was hurting so much himself up there on the roof.
Mtisha had some money and we flagged down a cab.
“I just can’t go home, right now,” I told her.
“Baby, you need some rest,” she said. “We can talk tomorrow.”
We got to her house and I walked her upstairs. Her mother got upset when she saw that Mtisha had been crying but she was glad to see her safe.
I started down the stairs when Mtisha called me. She come down a flight of stairs to me. She give me a kiss and five dollars.
“Get a cab,” she said. “Be safe, baby.”
When I got home it was like my whole head was going to explode. Moms wanted me to talk about it, but I didn’t have enough words to say how I felt. Bad wasn’t enough. Terrible wasn’t even enough.
When I got to the school the next day the first thing I saw was a big banner that said CHAMPS. Some kids in the hallway started clapping and I wondered what was going on.
“Slam, I didn’t see the game, but I heard you guys were great,” Linda Yu said.
“The game?”
Mr. Tate came over. He stopped in front of me and put both hands on my shoulders. “I’m proud of you,” he said. “The whole school is proud of you.”
They were talking about the basketball game. Ice wasn’t even in their world. People who didn’t know nothing about no ball were up in my face saying how good it was that Latimer had won. When I got to math it was the same game. We were winners. Carver was a loser. That’s all they were talking about.
The day dragged on. Once in a while I thought about trying to tell somebody about Ice, that he had been my friend, and that he was dealing. I remembered something I had heard about Malcolm X. He had said that when he was preaching on the corners in Harlem he was fishing for the dead. As far as I was concerned that’s what Ice was, one of Harlem’s dead. Even with his beeper which let him know who was trying to contact him, and his wheels which let him style around, he was in a kind of grave.
I didn’t really think anybody else was going to understand what had went down except to say it was a ghetto thing. Like, you live there and you got roaches and you got crack and you got streets that don’t get cleaned up and you got people giving up on life and that’s what it’s all about.
The coach called us together and told us that we’d be starting the citywide tournament during February.
“We can’t live in the past,” he said. “You all showed a lot of heart last night, but that win won’t help us tomorrow. All that showed us is what we can do if we put our hearts and minds to it. The first practice will be Monday afternoon. And guys, be ready to do some serious work.”
Yeah.
During the day the left side of my face swoll up. That was where Ice had hit me. I had a few daydreams about punching him out, but I let it go pretty quick.
I told Ducky about the fight. I didn’t tell him about Ice dealing. Maybe he would have understood it, but I felt ashamed to even say it. He knew I was upset about the fight and said that everything would probably turn out all right.
“Things have a way of working themselves out,” he said. He was still wearing that stupid scarf.
When I got home there was a message on the refrigerator to call Mtisha. There was a can of soda in the fridge and I grabbed it before calling.
“Bianca came to my house talking about how Ice is giving up messing with crack,” Mtisha said. “She was saying we could all meet and talk it out.”
“What you think?”
“What you think?” she came back.
“It don’t matter what he says,” I said. “We’ll see what he’s going to do. And the way I feel I don’t want to hang with him to find out. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah, I’m mixed,” Mtisha said. “Bianca is messed around bad because Ice is her old man and she wants to stick with him.”
“So she wants to believe him when he says he’s through?”
“Yeah. You want to believe but it’s hard,” Mtisha’s voice was soft on the phone. “Sometimes I think all
you guys are just heartbreaks waiting to happen. It’s scary.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But ain’t nothing to do but deal with it.”
“You going to call him?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think I’d have anything to say.”
In school Mr. Parrish asked me to show my video one day after school. I said yes and asked Mtisha to come and she said she would.
Marjorie had helped me edit the tape and it didn’t jerk around as much as it did before. On the tape the buildings looked more crowded than they did when you actually saw them. There was the whole hood. The Gates of Prayer church, Sam’s Fish Box, Ed’s Armature, Akbar’s, and Carl’s Curio. There were all the people I had known most of my life, smiling in front of the camera because they knew I wouldn’t diss them.
It was dark in the Media Center and Mtisha moved closer to me when the first shot of Ice came on. He was standing on the corner near the beauty shop, his arm around Mtisha, looking cool. I had to turn away from the screen when he was on. I knew the tape ended with the kids from the hood, some boys playing ball, some babies playing on the stoop, a long shot of some young girls jumping rope in front of the bicycle shop. I remembered looking down at them from the edge of the roof.
The coach was calling me Slam in practice and he was working us all hard. I was pushing it, too, dealing as hard as I could. I felt comfortable in the gym, safe. Basketball was my game. On the court I was good, maybe not as good as Ice, but I was getting there. I wondered how it would be to go up against him again. In my mind he was different, he had laid down when it was time to get up. He had his game, the same game I had, and I had thought the game would make us all right. It hadn’t.
What I wished was that things would stop for a while and maybe we could all catch a breath and check out the score or something. That wasn’t happening. What was happening was that the clock was still running, like Goldy had said it would, and we had to keep on keeping on the best way we could.
The coach ran a play where I was supposed to run Nick into a pick and then I would be free down the left side of the lane. The ball came to me and I put a head fake on Nick, did a stutter step, switched the ball to my left hand, and ran him toward the pick. Nick fought through and had his hand on my waist. He was on me until I went up, until I could feel the seams of the ball on my fingertips, until I could see the hoop in front of me and my wrist snapping the ball through the net and my fingers sliding off the smoothness of the rim.