If I Grow Up

  “What’s that mean?” I asked, although I could tell by her expression that it wasn’t good.

  “Compared to students from all the other schools, you’re in the bottom quarter.”

  The radiator made a faint gurgling sound, as if water was struggling to get through.

  “It’s not your fault, DeShawn,” Ms. Rodriguez said. “Many children get private tutoring or special preparation for these entrance exams. Things we can’t give students here.”

  Secretly, I felt relief. I didn’t want to leave Tanisha and take a bus every day to Beech Hill. And now I didn’t have to feel bad about letting Mr. Brand down, because he could have come back to Washington Carver if he’d really cared.

  Ms. Rodriguez tapped the bottom of the folder against the desk. “All right?” She had other things to do. I got up and started to leave.

  “DeShawn?” she said. “One other thing. Your friend Raydale Diggs.”

  “Who?”

  “I believe you call him Lightbulb?”

  It had been so long since I had heard his real name, I’d forgotten it.

  “Maybe you could do us a favor,” Ms. Rodriguez said. “He’s one of the brightest children we’ve ever seen here, and we would like him to apply to Hewlett Academy, but he seems reluctant. Perhaps you’d talk to him? You’re a friend, so he might listen to you.”

  DEALER

  Nia had twins—a boy named Xavier and a girl named Jayda—and the population in our apartment increased by three, not two, because LaRue moved in. Gramma gave her bedroom to the new family. Now she slept on the couch, and I slept on the floor on a small mattress that we hid behind the curtains during the day. In no time it felt like those babies took over the whole apartment. The kitchen counter was covered with plastic baby bottles and cans of baby formula, and the garbage can was a heap of stinky Pampers. Hand-washed baby clothes and maternity bras hung in the bathroom. I spent as much time as I could outside.

  Terrell and I were hanging around the bench talking to Precious and listening to 50 Cent on Terrell’s boom box. He was wearing his black Disciples colors, his cap turned to the right, and his sleeves rolled up to show off his new tattoos. Precious wore a lot of eye makeup, and her fingernails were long and painted blue. Her tight, white T-shirt said SO MANY BOYZ, SO LITTLE TIME. The material was so thin that you could see the pink bra underneath.

  “Your daddy see you dress like that?” Terrell asked.

  Precious’s face hardened. “He ain’t around no more.” When she talked, you saw the stud in her tongue.

  “What happened?” Terrell asked.

  “What do you think happened?” she shot back, as if it were obvious. She glanced at the boom box balanced on Terrell’s knees. “Why you got that hunk of junk? Can’t you afford an iPod?”

  “What’s the point?” Terrell asked, slightly annoyed.

  “Get a lot more songs than those cheap bootleg CDs you play.” Precious spoke in a taunting, angry way, as if challenging his manhood. So different from that cute little girl in the pink jacket a few years back who was so proud that her daddy lived with her.

  Terrell played it slow and cool, like he had nothing to prove. “Trouble with that iPod is you can’t listen with your peeps,” he said, gesturing toward me. But the truth was, putting music on an iPod required a computer, and neither Terrell nor I had one.

  “Want to go out sometime?” Terrell asked her.

  “With who?” Precious asked haughtily, and pretended to look around for someone worthy of her.

  “Who do you think?” Terrell asked.

  She gave him a cool appraisal. “You? You ain’t nothing but a two-bit crack dealer. Where we gonna go? You got money? You got a car? You even old enough to drive? ’Cause I ain’t going on no bus date.”

  “I can get a car if I want,” Terrell said.

  “Uh-huh. Sure you can.”

  A hype came up, all ashy skin and bones, missing teeth and wearing filthy, ragged clothes. We called them “the walking dead.” She handed Terrell some money, and he pointed at a shorty leaning against a wall, head bent, thumbs flying over the controls of a PSP. The kid couldn’t have been more than nine years old. He led the hype inside the building.

  Dealers used shorties to hold their crack, weed, and pills because the worst thing the cops could do was confiscate the drugs and take the kid home to his momma. Everyone knew the courts wouldn’t put eight-and nine-year olds in juvie for drugs. The mothers knew it too. Some of them waited until the cops left and then sent their kids back out to work.

  “So maybe you got some money,” Precious said, but what she didn’t know was that almost every penny Terrell earned went to the Disciples, not Terrell. She took a compact out of her bag and checked her makeup.

  Terrell cleared his throat. “So? Wanna go out?”

  Precious gazed up over the compact at him. “You better have a car, and you better take me some place nice.” She snapped the compact shut, spun on her toes, and walked away.

  Terrell grinned and held out his palm for me to slap. “Friday night’s starting to look good.”

  The day drifted past. I hung around the bench with Terrell. Girls played jump rope. Young mothers pushed babies in strollers, and old folks hobbled past on canes. No one else came by for drugs, and after a while Terrell’s shorty said he had to go.

  Then Bublz showed up. “Look what I got.” He fanned out a bunch of King Chicken coupons. “Buy one, get one free.”

  I was hungry. Most of the food stamps and welfare money that month had gone toward baby formula and Pampers. Terrell hadn’t left the bench in hours. He had to be hungry too.

  “Can’t,” said Terrell.

  Bublz looked around. “Come on. You’ll be back in twenty minutes. No one’ll know you was gone.”

  On the way to King Chicken we ran into Lightbulb being pulled by Snoop, who’d grown to be a medium-size dog but was still as wild as a pup.

  “You gotta train that dog, Bulb,” Terrell said.

  “He’s trained,” Lightbulb insisted.

  “Hey,” I said. “Ms. Rodriguez wants to know why you won’t apply for that Hewlett Acdemy.”

  “My momma can’t pay for no bus,” Lightbulb said.

  “Maybe Bulb ain’t smart enough,” Terrell said.

  “Ms. Rodriguez says he’s one of the smartest they’ve ever seen.”

  “Him?” Terrell pointed at our friend. “No way.”

  Lightbulb hung his head.

  “You guys go ahead,” I said to Terrell and Bublz. “I’ll catch up.”

  When they were out of earshot, Lightbulb scuffed his foot against the ground. “I don’t want to go, DeShawn. Just want to stay where I am.”

  “But this is nowhere.”

  Lines appeared in his brow. “I’m happy here.”

  “For now. But then what? You gonna be a gangbanger?”

  Lightbulb shook his head. “No. What are you gonna do?”

  I didn’t answer because I didn’t know. We watched the cars pass on Abernathy. All those people with places to go.

  And we had nowhere to go.

  Snoop started to tug on the leash again. “See you,” Lightbulb said, and let Snoop drag him away.

  A few minutes later I joined Terrell and Bublz in a booth at King Chicken. They were working through a bucket of legs and breasts and slurping from big cups of soda.

  “I’m takin’ out Precious Friday night,” Terrell announced.

  “I thought she only dates older guys,” said Bublz.

  Terrell grinned. “Older guys…and me.”

  “She said you had to drive,” I reminded him.

  “I’ll get a car,” Terrell replied, as if it were as easy as buying a candy bar. “Jamar showed me how.”

  “Just because you learned how to steal one doesn’t mean you know how to drive one,” I said.

  “How hard could it be?” Terrell waved at the traffic outside. “Look at those dumb asses driving around.”

  The door to King Chi
cken swung open, and Marcus marched in. Terrell and Bublz had their backs to the door and didn’t see him. But Terrell must’ve seen it in my face because he started to turn around.

  Wham! Marcus smacked him on the side of the head. In the next booth a lady with two small kids screamed. Bublz cowered in the corner of the booth, his eyes squeezed shut and his arms covering his head. I jumped up, my lap dark with spilled soda. Terrell was too stunned by the blow to move.

  Wham! Marcus smacked him again. Everyone in King Chicken stopped eating. Some people hurried for the door. Terrell huddled against Bublz, who was still cowering in the corner. Marcus raised his open hand again. “I say you could leave that bench?”

  “Wasn’t nothing happening,” Terrell stammered.

  Marcus grabbed him by the collar and yanked him up with one hand until they were practically nose to nose. “You don’t decide that, understand? You don’t decide nothing. You just do what I tell you.”

  “I’m telling you,” Terrell said in a quavering voice. “Wasn’t no one buying nothing.”

  Marcus flinched and glanced around. He grabbed Terrell by the hair and hauled him out of the booth.

  “Ow! Ow! Man, stop it!” Terrell wailed as Marcus dragged him out of King Chicken. “Ow! Let go, man, I’ll go! I’ll go!”

  But Marcus didn’t let go. He dragged Terrell into the parking lot. I followed, keeping my distance. Bublz took off down the sidewalk as fast as his big, bouncing gut would allow. Still holding Terrell by the hair, Marcus backed him against the wall.

  “Mistake number one,” Marcus growled in a low, ominous voice. “You don’t leave that bench unless I tell you to. Ever. Understand?”

  Terrell stared at the ground, unwilling to look the gang leader in the eye. Marcus yanked his head up until they were eyeball to eyeball. Terrell’s were wet with tears. “I understand,” he sniffed.

  “Mistake number two,” Marcus continued. “You don’t talk business when anyone else can hear. Understand?”

  Terrell nodded, blinking rapidly. Tears ran down his cheeks. He started to wheeze and quickly dug out his inhaler. Marcus let him go but held his hand close to Terrell’s face. My friend winced as if expecting another blow. But instead, Marcus patted his cheek.

  “Hey,” he said gently. “Everybody makes a mistake.”

  Terrell looked up at him with reddened eyes and sniffed. “It ain’t fair. I sit all day on that bench. Most days I don’t even sell fifty dollars worth of rock. Then I got to give all the money to you. I’d make more working here.” He nodded toward King Chicken.

  “I told you it takes time,” Marcus said. “You gotta work your way up. Pay your dues. A year from now you’ll be making more in a day than you could make at this place in a month.”

  Terrell nodded and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. Marcus looked at me. “Both of you in the car.”

  Being a Disciple, Terrell rode in the front while I sat in the back. Back at Douglass, Marcus parked on Abernathy and turned to Terrell. “Do your job. And don’t let me ever see you leave that bench again.”

  Terrell got out. I slid across the backseat to get out too, but Marcus looked over the seat at me. “Hold on.”

  I stopped.

  “How’s them little babies doing?” he asked.

  “Okay.”

  “LaRue move in?”

  I nodded.

  “Must be getting kind of crowded in there.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Ever think that someday you could have a place of your own?” he said. “A place to bring that cute girlfriend of yours.”

  Tanisha had spent enough time around Douglass for just about everyone to know she was my girl, but it still surprised me that Marcus paid attention to things like that. I glanced out the window at Terrell, who’d gotten back up on the bench.

  “That won’t be you,” Marcus said.

  I swiveled my head toward him. “How come?”

  “Still got that envelope I gave you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Ever tell anyone?”

  I shook my head.

  “See, DeShawn, the Disciples is like a company,” Marcus said. “Different guys get different jobs. All depends on what the boss thinks you’re good for. Right now Terrell’s on that bench because that’s what he’s good for. You’d be good for other things. Things that pay a lot better.”

  I gazed at the teardrop tattoo at the corner of his eye. Maybe I should have been afraid, but I wasn’t. I’d noticed something about Marcus. He could get really mad when you did something wrong, but he also listened when you spoke your mind. “I think you forgot to tell Terrell that there’s a chance in a year he’ll be making good money, but there’s a better chance that he’ll be dead or in jail.”

  “He knows that,” said Marcus. “He’d have to be stupid not to.”

  It got quiet in the car as if Marcus was thinking. Then he said, “Listen, DeShawn, you don’t have to worry about being jumped in. You’ll get blessed in. No one’ll touch you.”

  I tried to hide my surprise that he was so eager for me to join the Disciples. Marcus leaned closer. “You’re a smart kid. Not school smart; street smart. It ain’t something they give grades for. It’s just something you’re born with.”

  “Something I got from my momma?”

  “That’s right.”

  “If she was so smart, how come she’s dead?”

  Marcus gazed at me thoughtfully with his small, deep-set eyes. “Bad luck. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Could have been anyone.”

  “Not me,” I said.

  “Even you.” He gazed past me and suddenly his face hardened. I turned and saw that Officer Patterson had pulled to the curb behind us in his police cruiser. Marcus tilted his head toward the door. I got out and he drove away, but Officer Patterson didn’t. He just sat in his car, watching me.

  WILLIAM

  Rain swept down in sheets. Tanisha and I pulled our hoodies up and jogged along the sidewalk, sometimes ducking into doorways when the downpour got too hard.

  We were in the Gentry Project where the buildings weren’t tall like at Douglass. They were newer and mostly four stories, set in circles with walkways like spokes meeting in a central courtyard. On the outside they looked nicer, but in the lobby of Tanisha’s building the mailboxes were smashed just like the ones in my building. Tanisha pulled back her dripping hood and shook out her hair. I wanted to pull off my wet hood too, but I didn’t dare.

  Her apartment was dark and quiet. Instead of a sheet and blanket, the couch in the living room was covered with clear plastic. Tanisha led me down the hall and into her room. The bed had a flowery pink and white cover and some stuffed animals. A big poster of Will Smith hung on the wall along with sketches of women in dresses and skirts. Tanisha wanted to be a fashion designer, and there were sketch pads on the floor beside neat piles of fashion magazines. On the small makeup table were bottles of perfume and makeup and a small radio/CD player.

  She sat on the bed and pulled me down next to her, then leaned her head on my shoulder. For a while we just sat with our legs hanging over the edge, catching our breath after running. The idea that I was in Gentry territory, in the home of an actual Gentry Gangsta, was stuck in my head, making me tense and uncomfortable.

  Tanisha pulled off her hoodie. “You gonna take off yours?” she asked, teasing.

  “Oh, yeah.” I pulled it over my head and let it fall to the floor. Tanisha kissed my neck and then my ear, but I was having a hard time relaxing.

  She backed off. “What’s wrong?”

  “Sorry, Tani. It’s just being here.”

  “My momma won’t be home for at least an hour and a half.”

  “And your brother?”

  “I told you. He’s never home.” She leaned close and started to kiss my neck and ears again, and slowly tingling promises of pleasure took over.

  Bang! A door closed hard. I sat up straight and exchanged a wide-eyed look with Tanisha.

&nbs
p; “It must be him,” she gasped.

  My heart began hammering.

  She squeezed my hand. “Maybe he’ll go.”

  Maybe…or maybe not. Meanwhile I was trapped in Tanisha’s bedroom. The window had bars across it. If I got caught under her bed, I’d be defenseless. I rose and stood by the closet, ready to disappear inside.

  From the kitchen came the sound of the refrigerator door opening and closing. The TV went on.

  “Doesn’t sound like he’s leaving,” I whispered.

  Tanisha bit her lip and looked at the clock on her night table. “Momma’s gonna be home in an hour.”

  “What are we gonna do?” I asked.

  “You gotta sneak out,” Tanisha said. “I’ll unlock the front door, then go talk to William. You wait here. When I ask him if it’s supposed to keep raining, that means the coast is clear. You tiptoe down the hall and let yourself out. Okay?”

  I don’t know why we smiled at each other, but we did. Tanisha kissed me quickly and left the room. I pulled my damp hoodie back on and stood in the doorway, listening. But the TV was loud, and it was hard to tell whether I was hearing Tanisha and William, or the people on the TV.

  I stepped quietly into the hall. The living room was on the left, and I stopped just before it and listened again. Now all I heard was the TV. Then Tanisha said loudly, “So is it gonna keep raining or not?”

  “What are you hollering for?” an annoyed male voice asked. “And why’re you asking me that when you just asked me a minute ago? What’re you looking at anyway?”

  “Nothing!” Tanisha answered with a frightened gasp.

  I heard shifting sounds and plastic squeak as if someone had just risen from the couch.

  “You don’t have to get up!” Tanisha protested.

  Her brother’s answer came in footsteps. Out in the hall, I considered dashing back into Tanisha’s room, but there wasn’t time. Instead I raised my hands to shoulder height so that William would see that I wasn’t carrying. He stepped out into the hall and started when he saw me. He was wearing a green jersey and black, baggy jeans. I didn’t get a good look at his face. I was too busy watching his hand reach toward his belt.