Slam!

  “I probably got some parts right,” I said.

  “You’re lucky I’m not your teacher. Look, if you don’t want to deal with the tutor from the school why don’t you get some guys from the basketball team to help you? Any homeboys on the team?”

  “I can’t ask some strange dudes for help like I’m some lame,” I said. “Anyway I just had a fight with the one black dude on the team.”

  “Why don’t you come to my house every day and we can do the homework together?”

  “You know how to do these problems?”

  “I can deal with them,” she said. “We can start tomorrow. Today I have to find some books on black soldiers in the Civil War. You going to help me?”

  “Sure.”

  We went to the computer and Mtisha started searching for black soldiers. She was racing through the files so fast I could hardly keep up with what she was doing. She made out a slip for the books she wanted and then started reading a magazine article that the librarian gave her about the Civil War.

  She made me feel good in a way, all serious and everything. But in another way she made me nervous because I kept wondering if one day she was going to look at me and think she had to cut me loose because I wasn’t smart enough, or I didn’t make enough money. If we did hook up and we had a kid she could help him with his math, but if she didn’t have time or something then what would happen? I looked over the math test again. I didn’t even want her to know how much I didn’t know. That was wrong, but that was where I was.

  I knew if I went home after we left the library I wouldn’t call Ice, so after I dropped Mtisha off I cut toward where he hung. All the time I’m walking down to his crib I’m thinking how I know I should talk to him because he’s my ace and then I don’t want to talk to him for the same reason.

  V. J. Records is right next to Ice’s crib and he was standing out in front of it. Soon as I saw him I got uptight. My stomach felt funny, like I was going to throw up.

  Ice was wearing a tan Kangol to one side of his head. There were snowflakes falling and a few landed on his hat and turned to water. We talked about the Knicks and how we were going to cop some tickets for the Garden when the Chicago Bulls came in.

  It was just light stuff, like the snow, falling around our heads and not sticking and I knew I wasn’t going anywhere with the conversation.

  Two street dudes came by, and one of them came over to us while the other one stood near the curb.

  “What you want?” There was an angry edge to Ice’s voice.

  “Just looking to get right,” the guy said. He looked old, a ghost with eyes that shone from the shadows of his face.

  “I don’t know what you talking about,” Ice said. He looked away from the guy, down the avenue.

  “I need a dime, man.” The ghost’s eyes were wide, desperate.

  Ice shook his head and the thin man at his side rubbed his hands together, nodded, and walked away.

  The two guys hooked up at the curb and put their heads together, looked back at Ice, then moved on.

  “If you look like you got something going on, everybody think you got a pocket full of reefer or something,” Ice said. “Look, you want to run over to Sylvia’s for some pie?”

  “No, I got to get back uptown,” I said. “What you doing tomorrow? Maybe we can find some hangout time.”

  “Bet,” he said. “I’ll call you.”

  I started walking uptown as Ice headed toward V. J.’s. The two guys I had seen before were on the corner. I turned away from them as I passed.

  Ice was dressed down and he had his cellular phone and his beeper working. I wasn’t sure if he was using, but I knew the brother was dealing.

  I wondered if Carl was right, that we were all getting so upright about dope that anytime a brother dressed good we automatically put him in the life. It could have been like when somebody lost a lot of weight. They could have been on a dynamite diet but the first thing that came to mind was they got AIDS.

  All the way home I was having a conversation with myself, saying how I had to give Ice his propers and not be laying nothing on him that wasn’t for real. That’s what happened to brothers in the hood. People check us out and ran down who we was without even seriously checking us out. I wouldn’t play that game on Ice.

  For a while I thought something was following me, but when I turned around there wasn’t nothing there. Still I couldn’t shake the feeling and kept looking over my shoulder. Maybe it was the way that people turned into shadows as it got darker or maybe it was just the wind at my back, blowing through the hood like it owned it, making things colder, reminding me that it owned the streets.

  When Nick Young came over to me in the lunch room I didn’t know what he was going to do. I was pretty sure I could beat him in a fight, but I didn’t really want to fight him. He had a sandwich that he had picked up outside and he sat down and took it out.

  “So, you want to fight, or what?” he asked.

  “Up to you,” I said. “Don’t make no difference to me.”

  “You think everybody’s scared of you because you’re black?” he asked.

  Karen started to sit with us and Nick waved her off.

  “You can be scared of me or not scared of me,” I said. “But you’re not going to mess with me. And if we need to go to war for you to understand that then we have to go to war.”

  “You started up with Jimmy when it wasn’t anything really going on,” Nick said. “He was trying to school you on how to get along.”

  “Yo, you better check your dance card again,” I said. “Because I don’t need to dance with you or Jimmy. And as far as I’m concerned the whole thing is that you don’t dig my game. That’s not my problem.”

  “I dig your game but I don’t dig your attitude,” Nick said. “You’re one of these people who thinks the world owes you a living. Nobody owes you so much you can go around pushing people around. “

  “But Jimmy can push Ducky around, huh?”

  “Wasn’t anything happening there,” Nick said. “That was light. You made it heavy.”

  “It was light because Ducky is weak,” I said. “When I stepped up Jimmy ran like a punk. Ain’t that right?”

  Nick looked away. “Maybe,” he said, “but nobody owes you a living. Your game’s not that tough.”

  We had two games in two days. Friday we were going to play Country Day, then on Saturday afternoon we were going to play Trinity. Mr. Greene gave us a lot of homework over the weekend and Glen told him that he wouldn’t have a chance to get it done because of the ball game.

  “Then you’ll probably have a lot more time when you take math over the summer,” Mr. Greene said.

  That was cold.

  Country Day had some nice uniforms but they didn’t have anybody on their team who was all that. All they did was to pass the ball around the outside and look for an open jumper. Nick was scrambling all over the place on defense and Jimmy was steady giving him high fives like they were doing something. I dug Nick was trying to show me that he had as much game as I did. Country Day was so used to not getting rebounds that as soon as one of them shot the rest of them started going downcourt. I didn’t start again but I was in the game during the first half. By the end of the half we were up 32-22 but it wasn’t really that close.

  Goldy told Ducky he was starting the second half and Ducky looked over at me. I gave him a wink and told him to kick butt. You could tell after two minutes that Ducky didn’t want to be out there. He was in the backcourt with Trip and every time Trip passed him the ball he passed it right back or threw it in to Jose, who was playing center.

  They set up a play for Ducky where he was supposed to move off a pick at the top of the key and cut across the lane. If everything worked the way it was supposed to, Ducky would be free for a layup. If their center left Jose and cut over and picked Ducky up then he was supposed to dish the ball back over to Jose. Either way we get the layup.

  Glen comes out and sets the pick and Ducky ran his
man into it like he was supposed to. Jose had moved out from the basket and then turned in toward the hoop, leaving a path for Ducky. Ducky got the pass from Trip and went toward the basket. It was about four steps to the basket and he must have taken three before he realized he hadn’t dribbled. He had this pitiful look on his face as the ref blew the whistle and made the signal for traveling.

  The guys on the bench cracked up and Ducky looked miserable.

  We won the game easy but after the game I found Ducky in the bathroom crying.

  “Everybody blows sometimes,” I told him.

  “I’m quitting the team,” he said.

  “Why?”

  He didn’t answer. I put my arm around him just as Nick came in. He saw what was happening and turned around and left right away.

  When Ducky finished dressing we walked to the bus stop together. I asked him why he didn’t want to play anymore.

  “Because I suck,” he said.

  “You ain’t that bad,” I lied. “Anyway, if you like doing it, why stop?”

  “I’m just messing up the team,” he said.

  “No, you just don’t want to look bad,” I said. “But, hey, nothing wrong with that. Nobody wants to go out there and think people are cracking on them. But you got to just go for it, man. You got the heart to back me up against Nick then you got the heart to go out and play ball.”

  He had his head down and I felt sorry for him. Some other kids came and started talking to us about the game. Light stuff, mostly.

  When the bus came I held his sleeve until the other kids got in. “Don’t quit the team,” I said. “The next time we play I’ll get your back. You’re going to be okay.”

  He kind of nodded, but his head was still down.

  I was supposed to get over to Mtisha’s house to do the homework and I called her just to make sure it was still on. She said I sounded glad to be doing my homework. The truth was I was glad to be seeing her.

  First thing I had to do was to get home and get a clean shirt. A guy named Cobby was on the stoop showing off his new puppy and another guy was pretending like he wanted to buy it to feed to his pit bull. I listened to them for a while and then went on upstairs.

  “Derek!”

  “What?”

  “We won today,” I said.

  “Who you play?”

  “Country Day School from Riverdale,” I said.

  “They any good?” He was talking in this little voice he used when something was wrong.

  “Naw.” There were some cookies on the table and I took one. “How you doing?”

  The water was cold, as usual. I checked out my pop’s shaving stuff and copped some of his after shave lotion. I put a little on my face and some on my chest in case Mtisha was snuggling up or something.

  Derek hadn’t said anything and I figured he was in a bad mood or something so I left him alone. It was bad enough dealing with Ducky. Maybe I could deal with Derek later.

  “You need some money?” I asked him.

  He shook his head no.

  So there I am with my books, busting over to Mtisha’s house feeling like my love had come down over me like butter coming down over popcorn. When I thought about Mtisha I could hook up some pictures of us getting married, going shopping in a mall, the whole thing. I wasn’t just sweating the chick I was dripping pure unadulterated love.

  Got down to where Mtisha lived in a heartbeat. Her mama opened the door and gave me one of those looks that would have killed a little dude.

  “Hello, Mr. Harris,” she let the words kind of drip out her mouth.

  “Good afternoon,” I said, sliding by her.

  Mtisha’s mother was strict but they had a nice pad and a dynamite play room, including a nice stereo with a CD player.

  I knocked and Mtisha opened the door. She was wearing white shorts and a soft pink sweater. Sweet as she wanted to be.

  We got to the books and she told me to do a problem out loud so she could see how I was doing it.

  “I really don’t know how to do this one,” I said. It looked hard. “That’s the same kind of problem they had on the test and you know what I did on that.”

  “Do the problem,” she said.

  I looked at it. It was X plus 2 over 5 equals X minus 1 over 2.

  “So I looked at it.”

  “So try it.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Try working it out,” she said, sounding like she was getting an attitude.

  “What I got to tell you for you to believe I can’t do it?”

  “You scared of math?” she said. “I mean, like when you go to sleep at night you got to put your math book out the room and lock the door so it won’t get you?”

  “Don’t be messing with me, Mtisha.”

  “Why are you scared to try it?”

  I looked at the problem again. Then I looked at Mtisha. “I thought you wanted to help me?”

  “I do,” she said. “But I can’t help you if you’re scared to even try. I’m not going to do it for you. You go on and do it and I’ll tell you what you’re doing wrong.”

  “How can I do it when I don’t know how?”

  “Maybe we can try it another day,” she said.

  I was watching myself catching an attitude. I was feeling like a fool when I had come over to Mtisha’s house feeling good. She was serious so I went on home.

  Derek was watching television on the couch and I sat on the other end. We didn’t talk, we just sat there and watched some stupid program.

  Being mad at Mtisha messed with my mind. No matter what went down I knew she was in my corner, which hurt. Why was I mad at her when she was in my corner like that? But then why did she have to just sit there and make me do the problem?

  The books were in the back of the closet where I threw them and I got them out. I looked at the problem again and thought about doing a few things. Maybe I could cross multiply or something. I thought about calling Mtisha and asking her if I should cross multiply, but I didn’t want to hear her mouth if she had an attitude.

  For supper we had spaghetti and meatballs, which I like. Derek wasn’t eating and Moms asked him how he felt and he said depressed.

  “What’s wrong, honey?”

  He mumbled something into his plate which we couldn’t hear.

  Moms lifted his chin and asked what was wrong again. “You are here with your family, baby,” she said.

  “What’s wrong, boy?” Pops spoke up.

  “I lost Slam’s video camera.”

  I just started laughing. You either had to scream and cry or laugh and I started laughing. Then Derek started laughing and I got mad at him for laughing but I couldn’t stop laughing.

  Moms thought that everybody was going crazy.

  “Who got to pay for the video camera?” Pops asked.

  “I guess I have to pay for it,” I said.

  “How did you lose it?” Moms asked Derek.

  “I put it down on the stoop and told Darnell to watch it while I went into the store to get some cookies,” Derek said. “Then I was looking at the cookies to see which ones I wanted to buy and then I turned around and saw Darnell was there. I asked him who was watching the camera and he said he came to tell me that his mother said he had to go home. So I bought the cookies and then I went back and the camera was gone.”

  I didn’t know what to do. Moms told us to go out and look for the camera, like it might have been a dog or something that would try to find its way back home. What I did was to go down to Carl’s.

  Carl was my man. People came into his shop to have things fixed, or to buy records or tapes or whatever else he had for sale. Kids bought game cartridges from him or borrowed his tools to fix their bikes. Mostly, though, he dealt with this army of guys who combed the neighborhoods looking through garbage and stuff people had thrown out that might have some value. Then they would line up outside his shop and bring the stuff like they were bringing offerings to a king and he would give them what he thought it was wo
rth.

  He also dealt with a bunch of crack heads who sold stuff to help them get the rent, or some food, or just through the day.

  “If anybody shows up with a video camera, it’s mine,” I said.

  “That’s the camera you had the other day?” he asked.

  “Yeah, Derek had it and left it on the stoop.”

  “Your brother Derek?”

  “Yeah. And he didn’t even say anything until about three hours after it was gone,” I said.

  A woman came in and asked about a lamp that Carl had out in front of the store.

  “Five dollars,” Carl said.

  “Does it work?”

  “Yeah, I think it works,” he said.

  “I don’t want no lamp that doesn’t work,” the woman said. “Why don’t you check it out for me.”

  “If I check it out and it works then it’s going to be eight dollars,” Carl said, messing with the lady.

  “How are you going to sell a lamp that doesn’t work?” she asked as she started out the door. “You must be out of your head!”

  She walked out and down the street.

  “Yo, Carl, if you come across the camera, will you look out for me?” I asked.

  “Yeah, but if somebody stole it I don’t think they’ll bring it here,” Carl said. “People around here know I don’t take stolen stuff. But I’ll keep an eye out for it.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  When I got back home Moms was having a fit and getting ready to go to the hospital to see Grandma. She was mad at Derek, and at Pops. Her lipstick was smeared and she was close to tears. I was thinking about asking her if she wanted me to go with her, but I didn’t want to go.

  “Greg, come on and go with me.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  On the way to the hospital Moms was quiet.

  “How’s Grandma doing?” I asked.

  “Day to day,” she answered. “I just feel like she’s sinking fast.”

  “That’s what the doctor said?”

  “That’s what my heart says,” Moms said.

  We got the train downtown to the hospital and Moms wasn’t talking much. We got into the lobby and there was a guy standing there with no shirt on and blood dripping down the front of his chest and onto his stomach and the front of his pants. Two cops had him by the arms, holding them out so he wouldn’t bleed on them.