Darius & Twig

  “I thought the city paid part of the rent,” Mom says. “That these apartments were part of a program—”

  “That pays part of the rental fees, as you say,” the agent goes on. “But there are minimum incomes required as a means to keep the apartments stable and on the market. . . .”

  The rental agent drones on and on. But the tone says enough, the words don’t matter, we won’t get the apartment Mom has applied for. Even though she has prayed over it, even though she has costumed herself in her best dress and smeared shea butter over Brian’s face, and has straightened the tie she asked me to wear, we won’t be getting a new apartment.

  Why don’t people understand that the words don’t matter? Why do they fill their mouths with syllables when the words never mean anything? If they say them softly (Why are you boys always fighting?) or if they shout them (I DON’T GIVE A FUCK!), they are empty.

  Mom is quiet on the way home, but I know she is hurting. That’s one thing we learn to be good at, be quiet when we are hurt.

  I think of doing something to the rental agent, as if anything were his fault alone. It’s not, but I still think of doing something to him. I imagine Fury, his dark feathers like a black cape of darkness, my alter ego, predator. Twig thinks I am growing dark and he is right. He wants me to live through the pain. I don’t think I can.

  chapter nine

  “Mama, what’s a prose?” Brian was smearing butter on his toast.

  “Don’t start it, birdbrain!” I said.

  “What’s what?” Mama asked.

  “A prose.” Brian looked over at me. “Darius said he was writing a poem, but I thought he was writing a prose, and then he said there was nothing called a prose.”

  “Prose is like . . . when it’s not poetry,” Mama said. “It doesn’t rhyme or anything.”

  “That’s what I told him, but he said I was wrong.” Brian wiggled his shoulders the way he always does when he’s feeling smug.

  “Poetry doesn’t have to rhyme,” I said. “Some poetry rhymes and some doesn’t.”

  “How are you going to tell a poem from a prose if it doesn’t rhyme?” Brian was into his argument and feeling confident. “If it don’t rhyme, the poem’s a crime.”

  “Brian, why are you so stupid in the mornings?” I asked.

  “He’s not stupid,” Mama said. “He’s just . . .”

  I gave it a minute before I said, “I agree!”

  “She didn’t say anything!” Brian said.

  “Will you two quit it!” Mama said. “Look, it’s almost time for you to go to school. Let’s say a quick prayer, and then off you go.”

  “Is something wrong?” I asked.

  “Like what?” Mom asked.

  “’Cause we’re praying and it’s not even Sunday,” Brian said.

  “Have we slipped that far from God?” Mama asked, holding out her hands to us.

  Brian took Mama’s hand, and she quickly moved it away and wiped the butter from her fingers. Then she bowed her head.

  “Lord, look after my family today,” she said. “Keep them safe and happy. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, amen.”

  Brian and I both said amens and then we started to get ourselves ready for school. We were just about out the door when Mom said there had been a call for me.

  “Twig called last night,” she said. “He sounded a little upset, but he said he was okay.”

  “You asked him if he was upset?”

  “Yes, I asked him,” Mom said. “I like that boy.”

  Brian goes to the Harlem School of the Arts and met up with two girls from his school on the corner. I told him I’d see him later.

  “I’ll write you another poem, before I come ho-em,” he said.

  I didn’t find Twig until noon. He was sitting near the window in the lunchroom and I asked him what was up.

  “I got something called broccoli and cheese casserole and it looks nasty,” he said, pushing his lunch around on the plate.

  “Why did you get it?”

  “It sounds healthy,” he said.

  “If food doesn’t look healthy, it’s not healthy,” I said. “That’s direct from the Darius School of Nutrition!”

  “What did you get?”

  “Swiss steak, rice, and green beans,” I said. “Now, that looks healthy.”

  “How’s your story coming along?” Twig asked. “You started revising it yet?”

  “Not yet,” I answered.

  “You remember that part where the kid is swimming out from the shore and there are clouds in the sky and you said—or the kid was thinking—that maybe the clouds were an omen?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What did you mean by that?”

  I didn’t expect Twig to bring up my story, or even to be thinking about it. “He hadn’t seen any clouds when he was swimming on the other days,” I said. “On that day he saw some black clouds and was thinking it might mean something. How come you’re asking about the story?”

  “I was talking to my uncle Ernesto yesterday.” Twig’s voice lowered. “He asked me to come into the kitchen and sit at the table with him, which right away is a bad sign. But then he was playing with a pencil, real casual like, you know, twisting it between his fingers, stuff like that. So I’m saying he’s going to drop something on me. I could feel it. It was like an omen. And I thought about your story.”

  “He drop something on you?”

  “He wants me to work in his bodega after school,” Twig said. “He said I’m the oldest boy and he’s thinking of leaving the bodega to me when he dies.”

  “He’s going to pay you?”

  “Twenty dollars a week. But I’ll be like his slave,” Twig said. “He’ll be sitting on a crate of Corona and playing dominoes all day and I’ll be hauling boxes around. No way.”

  “How old is he?”

  “He’s only thirty-three,” Twig said. “He’ll probably live until he’s fifty-three or something. I don’t want to work in no bodega for twenty years. And anyway, I can’t be on the track team and work in the bodega the way he wants.”

  “You tell him that?”

  “Yeah, but he doesn’t care. And my mom is on the fence,” Twig said. “She’s talking about how family has to stick together and everything. Me being a slave is not about family sticking together.”

  “How about your grandmother?”

  “She wants me to do what I want to do,” Twig said. “But it’s my mom I’m worried about. She’s, like, halfway between we have to do what my uncle says because he’s family, and halfway between we’re poor and it’s a business, and halfway to wanting to see me happy.”

  “That’s three halfways,” I said.

  “That’s what we got,” Twig said. “My grandmother, my mother, my uncle, and me. I don’t want to go against my mom, though. That’s why I thought you should come over to my uncle’s bodega and say something.”

  “Me?” I asked. “Like what?”

  “My mom likes you and my grandma likes you,” Twig said. “And you talk really good, like you know something. They’ll listen to you, man. You got to come up with something. Maybe come and see me run. That might be cool if I do all right.”

  “I’ll come up with something,” I said.

  “Yo, Darius, can I ask you another question about your story?”

  “Sure.”

  “In your story the kid is swimming, but he’s got a messed-up leg so it’s got to be hard for him, right?”

  “Go on.”

  “Why did you give him a messed-up leg?” Twig asked. “Your legs are all right, aren’t they?”

  “I just did,” I said. “No particular reason.”

  “Oh.”

  I watched as Twig walked down the hall to his next class, my stomach already churning.

  chapter ten

  Panic. My stomach turning, the palms of my hands growing clammy.

  I didn’t want Twig to have problems. I wanted him to find the races and run them and win
them. I wanted it all to be simple for him even though it wasn’t simple for me. What I wanted for my friend was a clear path around the track. What I wanted for me was a way through all the truths that people were laying on me.

  Mr. Ramey was saying that my grades weren’t good enough for a scholarship, and that was true in his world. But did he know what I could do, what I could accomplish?

  Midnight was saying that I was too soft, too much of a punk to make it in his world. And that was true, but did he know what I could do if I could get into my world? How far I could go?

  The chorus in school was that if you did the right thing, that if you worked hard, you would succeed. And how many worlds was that true in? Was it true in my mother’s world? Was it true in my father’s world?

  “You can be anything you want to be!” Not true. Did crackheads really want to be crackheads? Did homeless people really want to live on rooftops?

  When he runs, it is only Twig. No one has to approve him, no one can dismiss what he accomplishes on the track. When the pain comes, he is ready to fight it, to overcome it.

  What do I do when the pain comes?

  chapter eleven

  I had met Twig’s uncle before. He is short, thin, and aggressive. He is the color of sand, except for his jaws, which are stubbly with a two-day beard. He leans back when he sees me so he can look down his nose. I have heard his stories about how he spent two years in the air force as a military policeman, and how he could disable a person in a flash, all told with a sinister stare and a snap of the fingers.

  “What are you, Haitian?” he asked me, knowing I’m not Haitian.

  “American,” I answered.

  “American.” He said the word as if it were something vulgar, as if I were something vulgar.

  Twig’s mother and grandmother were at the bodega as well. His grandmother sat on a cane chair with matching seat cushion and chair back cover.

  Twig’s mother sipped dark coffee from a cup.

  “Black people think life is about being athletes,” his uncle said. “They’re not smart.” He tapped his forefinger against the side of his skull to show where the brain was.

  He had reminded me that I am black. Or, rather, he had reminded me that he considers me inferior.

  “Everybody is smart,” Twig’s mother said.

  “If he’s smart, he can answer my questions,” the uncle said. Then, turning to me and pointing one finger, he asked me again if I was smart.

  “He’s smart,” Twig said.

  “Then you tell me this, my smart friend.” He crossed his arms over his chest and turned his head slightly sideways. Confident. “You go to school to get an education and then that’s supposed to help you get a good job, right?”

  “Yes,” I said, knowing it was a trap.

  “And if you are lucky, maybe you can get your own business and not have to work for somebody else for the rest of your life, right?”

  “Could be,” I said, feeling the noose tighten.

  “It’s not ‘could be,’” he said. “It’s either right or it’s not right. Which is it? You’re supposed to be smart.”

  “It’s right,” I said.

  “So if you can get your own business when you are young, without wasting your time in college chasing Anglo girls, and you can get a good start in life, and you can help your family, that would be the best thing to do, right?”

  “Depends on what the business is,” I said. “If the business isn’t good, you’re better off going to college.”

  “Business isn’t good or bad,” his uncle said. “It’s what you make it. If you’re willing to work hard, it’s good. If you’re lazy, like some black people, then every business is bad.”

  “If Twig can go to college, he’ll be better off than working in a bodega,” I said. “You work in a bodega and you’re not lazy and it’s not much, right?”

  “Twig? What kind of name is Twig? That’s a black name. What you think is so smart is only smart for black people. So in your head, you think you got something. You got nada! Now it’s time for you to leave, because you don’t know anything.”

  “His father was Tree and so he is Twig,” the mother said. “What do you have better than that? Eh?”

  “Why don’t you come and see him run one day?” I said, feeling defeated.

  “Because I am a businessman,” Twig’s uncle said. “Businessmen don’t take days away from their business to see some boys running around in short pants.”

  He turned away from me. Not halfway, but completely so that his back was to me, as if he had dismissed me entirely.

  “Margarita, as the senior man in the family, as the patriarch, I am offering the boy a chance to do something with his life. If you are smart, you will tell him to take this offer. And it’s up to you, of course, but I think you should not have him running around with Haitians. They’re no good on the island, and they’re no good here.”

  “Are you afraid to see how good Twig is?” I asked.

  Slowly he turned to me. He looked me up and down. “Don’t you ever say that I’m afraid of anybody! I could break you in a minute. Less than a minute! Do you hear that? Do you hear that?”

  “Ernesto.” Twig’s grandmother spoke up. “He didn’t ask you if you were afraid of him. He asked if you were afraid to see the boy run.”

  “Go outside,” Twig’s uncle said, smiling. “Run up and down the street. I’ll watch you.”

  “Come see him race,” Twig’s mother said softly. “Then we’ll decide.”

  “I’m not going to keep this job open forever,” his uncle said. “By the time you race, it might be gone.”

  “You’re afraid,” I said. “You don’t want to know how good he is.”

  He jumped from the stool and put his left hand against my right shoulder and pushed hard. As I turned, he got behind me and put his arm around my neck and pulled me back.

  “Ernesto!” Twig’s mother pushed her arms between us. “If this is how you treat young people, then I don’t want my son anywhere near you!”

  He held me for a moment longer, squeezing my neck so I would react.

  “Yo, man, let him go!” Twig spoke up. “What’s wrong with you? You loco or something?”

  I twisted away from his uncle.

  “I’ll be there to see him race,” Twig’s uncle said, sneering at me. “I’ll be there.”

  chapter twelve

  “Darius, I know you mean well, but you’re putting too much pressure on your friend,” Mom said.

  “He said he liked the pressure,” I said.

  “What’s he going to say? His best friend is bringing his family to see him run in a race, and maybe change his young life, and it’s up to him to do well. How old is he, anyway?”

  “Sixteen,” Brian piped up. “He just made it, too.”

  “Sixteen-year-olds shouldn’t have that kind of pressure on them,” Mom went on.

  “I just want him to do well,” I said.

  “Boy, you are smart and you have a good heart, but you shouldn’t put pressure on other people if you can’t do anything to help them,” Mom said. “I don’t think that’s right.”

  “You think I should tell him not to run?”

  “You can’t do that now,” Mom said.

  “So you’re just putting pressure on me, and you can’t do anything about it, right?”

  “No, I can do something about you,” Mom said. “I can teach you something that you need to know, and that’s what I’m doing. You love your friends and you give them the benefit of the doubt, but you don’t put them out there by themselves to do your work. And don’t be getting into my face, boy.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  What did she know? She was so busy with her own problems, she couldn’t see anything else. She didn’t know what running meant to Twig, or what his succeeding meant to me. What she was doing was drifting into our problems for the moment, and then she would drift out again. The way she always does.

  “Mom, how come Twig is D
arius’s best friend, and not me?” Brian asked.

  “Because brothers are different than friends,” Mom said.

  “Why?” Brian asked.

  “Because they are,” Mom said.

  “Why?”

  “So his mother and grandmother are coming?” Mom took the last piece of toast, then offered it to me, and I shook my head.

  “They want to see how he does,” I said.

  “Well, me and Brian will come down, too,” Mom said. “Just to give him some support.”

  I didn’t want Mom to watch Twig run, and I didn’t want to tell her to stay away. I wanted to find my own way of handling things, tell her how I was going to do it, and just go about my business. Instead, I grabbed my notebook and told her I had to go to the library.

  The Countee Cullen Library was fairly full for a week night. I found a copy of Cane by Jean Toomer and read it in a corner. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but I liked the mix of prose and poetry. I liked even more the way it took me away from the thoughts buzzing around my head.

  The Saturday sky was bright gray, threatening to rain. The track team arrived in the bus provided by the city, and I helped unload the equipment.

  “Everybody, compete within yourselves,” the coach was saying to the athletes as they gathered before him. “You know your times, you know your distances, and you know your bodies. If each of you achieves his best time, we have a good chance of winning this meet.”

  Warm-ups. Runners eyeing one another, some talking, trying to sound confident to an opponent who was trying just as hard. Judges going around checking rosters, asking questions about eligibility. With everything in place, I sat on the sideline, in front of Twig’s family. Mom and Brian came over and nodded, then sat next to me.

  I watched as Twig’s uncle looked at Mom and then turned away. Asshole.

  Twig’s grandmother got up and sat next to Mom.

  There were a handful of reporters and they were talking to one of the other coaches. Then they called a runner over. He was a tall kid, thin, loose. A photographer was shooting pictures of him as the other reporters interviewed him. All the way through the interview, he was moving, stretching, touching his toes. Pulling his feet up behind him.