A dozen feet from them, Snoop began to gag. Rance and the other gangbangers glanced at the dog and then back to Rodney.
“This is your last chance, Rodney,” Rance said in a slow, deep voice.
“But I don’t know nothing!” the old guy wailed. “I swear!”
Crack! The broad-shouldered gangbanger smashed the butt of the gun hard against Rodney’s nose. The old guy clutched his face with his hands, and bright red blood began to seep out between his gnarled fingers. Lightbulb tensed even more. He was breathing so hard, I was afraid he might pass out.
Snoop kept retching and shaking his head as if something was caught in his throat. The gangbangers looked at him again; then Rance kneeled until he was eye level with Rodney and spoke in that calm voice. “You really think this is worth dying for?”
My whole body tensed as I wondered if they’d kill him before our eyes. Again Snoop coughed and gagged like he was choking. At the interruption, Rance turned his head sharply with an annoyed expression. As if taking a cue, the broad-shouldered Gangsta aimed his gun at the little dog.
“Don’t!” Lightbulb screamed. Before I could stop him, he jumped out from behind the Dumpster and ran to his dog.
Startled, Big D quickly pulled his gun, and both he and the broad-shouldered gangbanger aimed at my friend as he knelt beside the choking dog. Afraid that they might shoot both Lightbulb and Snoop, I stepped from behind the Dumpster.
“What the hell!” Rance grumbled.
Now the Gangstas aimed their guns at me. My heart was racing, and I felt my lungs expanding and contracting as if I’d just sprinted a quarter mile. This was the first time anyone had ever aimed a gun at me. The merest movement of a finger could send pieces of lead ripping through my flesh.
Slowly raising my hands to shoulder height, my eyes met Rance’s.
“Anyone else back there?” he asked, almost amused.
I tried to sound calm. “No, sir. Please don’t aim those guns at us. We ain’t done nothing.”
But the guns stayed on Lightbulb and me, as if the gangbangers knew from experience that this was what Rance expected.
“What’re you kids doing back here?” Rance asked.
“J-just getting my dog some food,” Lightbulb sputtered, hugging Snoop and trembling from head to toe. “Please don’t hurt us, please.”
Rance’s gaze returned to me. He had black tear tattoos beside both eyes. Snoop retched loudly and coughed up some chewed chicken and bones. The little dog began whimpering.
“Get lost,” Rance said. Lightbulb picked up Snoop, and we ran all the way home.
HERO
It was the evening before school was supposed to start. Terrell’s punishment for stealing was over, and he and I were in his room playing Grand Theft Auto on his Xbox.
“Terrell!” Mrs. Blake suddenly screamed. We raced into the living room. Laqueta was flat on her back on the floor. Her eyes had rolled up into her head and only the whites showed. Terrell’s momma was straddling her, slapping her face, and crying, “Come on, baby, wake up! Wake up!” When she saw us she yelled, “Call 911!”
Terrell ran into the kitchen. Mrs. Blake kept slapping Laqueta. White foam trickled from the corner of her mouth. When Terrell came back, his momma said, “Go downstairs and wait for the ambulance. Soon as it gets here, bring the men up.”
Terrell and I went down to the yard. It felt like a long time passed before we could hear the sirens. After a while, a boxy, red and white ambulance pulled up to the curb with its lights flashing. The two men inside took their time getting out. One was white, the other black. They looked around warily, as if this project was the last place in the world they wanted to be.
“Come on!” Terrell anxiously pointed back at the building. “My cousin’s out cold. We don’t know if she’s OD’d and passed out or what.”
“She drink? Take drugs?” asked the black ambulance man.
“Both,” said Terrell.
“Better get the stretcher,” the white one said. They went around and opened the back doors, still taking their sweet time. The black ambulance man started to wheel the stretcher toward the building while his partner stayed behind with the truck.
“Maybe you both better come,” I said. “Could take two to carry her down.”
“Or maybe you got friends in there waiting to jump us,” said the white one. “Or we’ll get back here, and the ambulance’ll be ransacked for drugs and needles. So I’ll stay here and keep an eye on the truck.”
There was no use arguing. Terrell and I followed the black ambulance man wheeling the stretcher toward the building. He kept looking around as if he expected at any second to get jumped. We went into the lobby, and he pushed the stretcher toward the elevators.
“The elevator’s broke,” Terrell said, and pointed at the stairwell. “We gotta walk up.”
The ambulance man hesitated. “How far?”
“Sixth floor.”
The man shook his head. “You’ll have to bring her down.”
“You crazy?” Terrell began to bluster, but I grabbed his arm to stop him and asked, “How?”
“Make a sling with a blanket,” he said. “Four of you can do it if each one holds a corner. Won’t take long.”
Halfway up the stairs, Terrell started gasping and had to stop and use his inhaler. By the time we got to the apartment, LaRue and Marcus were there. They’d moved Laqueta to the couch, but she was still limp. More foamy spit dripped from the corner of her mouth. Mrs. Blake carefully dabbed it with a towel.
“Where are the ambulance men?” Marcus asked.
“Wouldn’t climb up the stairs,” I said, and told him about the sling.
Marcus cursed and told Mrs. Blake to find a blanket. When we moved Laqueta, her arms and legs flopped every which way, and her head rolled loosely. Marcus, LaRue, Terrell, and I each picked up a corner. With the four of us lifting her, we went out into the hall and started down the stairs. Marcus and LaRue went first because they were taller and stronger. Even then Terrell and I struggled to hold up our end. Mrs. Blake yelled at us each time we let Laqueta bump against a step.
Pop! Pop! Pop! We were on the fourth floor when the shooting started outside and the sounds of shouting drifted up the stairs.
Marcus momentarily lowered the blanket with Laqueta to the floor, then lifted again. “We gotta get her down. Come on.”
The lobby was full of people who’d run inside to get away from the shooting. Most stayed clear of the doors and were huddled near the stairs. We eased Laqueta down on the lobby floor, and once again Mrs. Blake slapped her face, trying to wake her. Snoop trotted by, sniffing here and there. I found Lightbulb hiding under the stairs with his eyes squeezed tight and his fingers in his ears.
I shook his shoulder. “You see an ambulance man?”
Lightbulb opened his eyes. “He left when the shooting started.”
Jamar came in from outside with a skinny Disciple named Tyrone, who was grimacing and clutching his arm. Blood darkened his shirt and dripped to the floor. Marcus spoke to them, then he, LaRue, and Jamar went back out through the lobby doors, reaching toward their belts to pull guns.
“Come on,” Terrell whispered. He wanted to follow them. I don’t know why I went. It was stupid, but in the excitement, I wanted to see. Outside the night air smelled of burned gunpowder. Terrell and I pressed against the building. The bricks still felt warm from being in the sun all day. In the dark the yard looked empty, but slowly I began to see shapes. A woman cradled a baby behind a tree near an overturned baby stroller. Two old men lay on the ground near a bench, covering their heads with their arms.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
Terrell and I ducked down. The shots were coming from around the corner of the building. Terrell crept to the edge and peeked, then waved for me to join him. I scampered up. Out in the yard, Marcus ducked behind a bench. LaRue crouched behind a metal garbage can.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
They both fired and then moved forward as if driving
the invaders back toward Abernathy Avenue. Jamar followed, reaching each spot only after Marcus or LaRue left it.
Pop! Pop! Pop! More shots, then car doors slammed and car tires screeched. There was silence for a moment. Then the normal sounds of a summer evening—car horns, the rumble of bus engines, music, even voices—began to return.
Out in the yard, Jamar rose to his feet. But where were Marcus and LaRue?
People began to come out like rabbits leaving their holes after the fox goes away—slowly and carefully, stopping and listening before taking another step.
There was still no sign of Marcus or LaRue. Suddenly I felt scared. Marcus wasn’t just the leader of the Disciples. He was the father none of us had. He gave us jobs, issued orders, settled disputes, and kept people in line. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized how people depended on him and needed to know he was there.
Two figures came around the corner. Even in the dark I could see that their clothes were disheveled and their arms hung loosely at their sides. As Marcus passed, he glared at Jamar and spit on the ground. Jamar began to say something, then clammed up and hung his head. We all knew he’d been a coward. Terrell and I followed Marcus back into the building. By now most of the people had left the lobby. A few women were still bent over Laqueta. Someone had rolled up a shawl under her head, and someone else was fanning her with a newspaper while Mrs. Blake dabbed a wet cloth against her forehead.
“DeShawn!” My sister’s anxious voice called from the stairwell. “Anyone seen DeShawn?”
“In the lobby,” I yelled back.
Nia came to the top of the stairs with her hands on her big belly and consternation on her face. “Gramma wants you upstairs right now!”
I could feel people’s eyes on me, and wished she didn’t sound so bossy. Nia came down the stairs, grabbed me by the arm, and squeezed hard. Suddenly I knew it wasn’t just Gramma who wanted me out of harm’s way.
Meanwhile Marcus lifted Laqueta in his arms. Her head rolled back. “We’ll take my car.”
Someone held the door open, and he went through sideways careful not to let his sister bang into the door frame. LaRue, Mrs. Blake, and Terrell followed. Marcus was a gang leader and drug dealer, almost surely a murderer, and as brutal and hard as anyone I’d ever met. But he was the only hero we knew.
JUMPED IN
A few days later I walked home from school with a black cloud over my head. It was Friday and Tanisha wanted us to go to the movies with friends that night, but I had no money and no way to get any. I couldn’t decide which was worse: telling Tanisha we couldn’t go, or going and letting her pay.
“Hey,” someone said.
I looked up. Marcus’s black Mercedes was rolling slowly along the curb beside me. He steered with one hand and leaned his elbow out the open window. “What’s wrong?”
“Who said anything’s wrong?” I said.
“Looks like you got the weight of the world on your shoulders,” he said, pulling the car to the curb. “I been drivin’ alongside you for almost a whole block, and you ain’t looked up once. You got a problem, maybe I can help.”
That reminded me of something. “Laqueta okay?”
“Yeah, she’s back home now.” He gazed at me with steady eyes. “You gonna tell me what’s botherin’ you?”
“I can take care of it,” I said.
If a muscle in Marcus’s face moved, I didn’t see it. “Come over here. What grade you in?”
“Seventh.”
“How you doin’?”
“Okay. I may even go to Hewlett Academy over in Beech Hill.” That very day, Mr. Brand had given me a red folder filled with a dozen pages of words he wanted me to learn for the magnet school entrance exam.
“You gotta take some kind of a test to get in?” Marcus asked.
“Yeah. Vocabulary, math, a lot of stuff.”
“And suppose you get in,” he said. “Then what?”
“I don’t know. Get a better education, I guess.”
Marcus rubbed his chin across his forearm. “So how come you’re mopin’ along like your dog just got run over?”
Suddenly I knew I was going to tell him. It was the kind of thing you wanted to talk about with a guy who had experience. “My girl wants to go on a date tonight, and I’m a little short.”
“That’s messed up,” he said, nodding slowly. “How bad do you want to go?”
“I don’t care,” I said. “But my girl wants to go so bad, she says she’ll even pay.”
“No way.” Marcus shook his head, and I knew he understood. His arm disappeared from the open window. When it reappeared, a bill was folded between his fingers. “Fifty do you?”
I hesitated. “What you want in return?”
“Nothing.”
That night Tanisha and I went to the movies with her friends. It was the first time we’d been alone in the dark—the first time I’d been alone in the dark with any girl—and when the movie was over, my life had changed. I was on my way to becoming a man.
Afterward I walked home. Subwoofers boomed from the slow-moving rides cruising the streets, and styled-up folks waited in lines to get into clubs. It was Friday night, and everyone was trying to get what they’d waited for all week.
In the yard at Douglass, people were having a homecoming party for a guy named Derek who’d just gotten out of the army. Dance music blared from a sound system rigged to a car battery. Jamar was talking to a girl with a big chest and short brown hair pasted tightly to her skull. In the shadows near one of the trees, LaRue was slow dancing with a skanky-looking girl in high heels with bleached-blond pigtails and a short, low-cut dress. I pretended not to see him and hoped nobody told Nia.
I was about to go in when I noticed someone on the bench, bent over with his head on his arms. “Terrell?”
My best friend lifted his head. Even in the dark I could see that one of his eyes was swollen shut and dried blood caked his nose and lips.
“What the hell?” I said.
He made a fist. On the back of his hand were three ugly, reddish cigarette burns. Then he pulled a string of black-and-white beads from under his shirt and gave me the sign of the Disciples. A crooked smile worked its way onto his swollen lips. He was in.
FOURTEEN YEARS OLD
When President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act in January of 2002, he promised that by 2014 the quality of inner-city school education would catch up to that of suburban schools. But by 2007 the gap between black and white eighth graders was worse than ever.
“Struggle is my address, where pain and crack lives,…Born on the Black list, told I’m below average.”—from “A Dream” by Common
23RD PERCENTILE
“I wish we could be alone,” Tanisha whispered in my ear. We were in the hall between classes, pressed against her locker, pressed against each other. We were eighth graders now and sought each other out whenever we could.
“Me too.” I kissed her. She smelled like cocoa butter, and the mixed sensations of pleasure and yearning were enough to make my knees feel weak. But it was nearly impossible for us to be alone. Lately there’d been more and more shooting between the Disciples and the Gangstas. Anyone, not just gangbangers, from Douglass found in Gentry territory was liable to be shot.
“Maybe you could come over after school,” she whispered with closed eyes as I kissed her neck.
Despite the danger, I was seriously tempted.
“My momma’ll be at work, and William’s never around.”
I’d never met her older brother, William, but I knew he was a Gentry Gangsta.
“Let me think about it….” We pressed together, feeling more heat than the friction of our clothes alone could create.
“Enough of that, you two,” someone snapped sharply. It was Ms. Rodriguez, the assistant principal.
I backed slowly away from Tanisha. Past were the days of jumping when some authority figure gave an order.
“I’m getting tired of telling you two to find s
ome place else for that.” The old white-haired woman focused on me. “DeShawn, come to my office.”
“Sorry, Ms. Rodriguez,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”
“This is about something else,” she said.
In her office I sat in an old wooden chair. Ms. Rodriguez pulled a pink sweater over her shoulders. “Now you know why I spend so much time in the halls,” she said with a shiver while she searched through a pile of folders on her desk. “Been years since any heat came out of that radiator. Here we are.” She opened a folder. “Mr. Brand left instructions for you to take the entrance exam for Hewlett Academy.”
“What happened to him, anyway?” I asked. It was November, and I had not yet seen him around school.
“He took a job at one of the suburban schools,” Ms. Rodriguez said. “Too bad. He was one of our better teachers.”
While the assistant principal studied the folder, I watched through the dirty, bar-covered window as a crusty old bum, who looked like he was wearing three coats, trudged past lugging a huge plastic bag filled with empty cans. “Now, you understand, DeShawn, that we’re only allowed to submit a certain number of students for that exam. Have you prepared?”
I shook my head. I’d never gotten around to studying the list of words Mr. Brand had given me.
Mrs. Rodriguez frowned. “Let’s take a look at your transcript anyway.” She turned to her computer and studied the screen, tapping a bony finger against her lower lip. “You are certainly one of the better students, especially among the boys.”
“Mr. Brand said I was reading at grade level,” I said proudly.
“Let’s see your standardized test results.” She typed and a different screen appeared on the computer. Her eyebrows dipped. “City-wide, your test scores are in the twenty-third percentile.”