Raheem waited for Troy to settle down before continuing. No one bothered to turn their heads to listen to their conversation on the bus. It was all the same news to the Black passengers.
“Troy, man, I told the boy like five times that he could work with me, but he didn’t wanna listen. Then I said that I would get a package for ’im. But naw, he had to get in with these big-time dudes. So he got his shit taken. And he’s lucky that the cops picked ’im up, too, ’cause dem niggas would have been after ’im. I wasn’t about to have no shoot-out when he didn’t listen to me in the first place. He is lucky he younger than us, ’cause he would have been more than sent up to the Mills. That nigga would have been in jail.”
“Yeah, well what about Blue?” Troy asked, changing the subject. He had enough with the negative news already.
“Aw man, Blue is in love and shit, with this badass Puerto Rican freak,” Scooter said.
Raheem smiled. “Yeah, but I’on know what she see in him.”
“She got jet black hair?” Troy asked.
“Naw, man. She got like, orange-colored hair. You know how dem Puerto Ricans is. She got, like, light eyes and shit, and a tough-ass body,” Scooter told him.
“He done messed around and got her pregnant, though,” Raheem added. “Matter of fact, dey talking ’bout getting married, Troy, ’cause her parents like that nigga.”
They all laughed as other passengers joined in, listening.
“You know what I mean, cuz?” Raheem asked, continuing. “Blue ain’t ugly, he’s just darker than the average dark.” They all cracked up again as they neared the last stop, inside Philadelphia’s downtown area.
Nothing had changed physically, Troy was simply changing mentally. Everything had transformed into an uncommon element. He no longer saw the shoppers as plain people in places. He saw them as symbols of a dominant White America.
Blacks were carrying shopping bags full of clothing and consumer goods. White men carried briefcases. Blacks wore loud, bright clothing, blue jeans, and sneakers. White people wore suits and dress shoes.
Blacks flowed in and out of malls. Whites flowed in and out of banks and company buildings. Blacks rode the buses. Whites took taxis home or parked in high-priced parking lots. Troy had a pocketful of money and he was ready to buy. Yet suddenly he had lost his purchasing appetite.
He and his friends walked in and out of stores, owned by Asians, Jews, and Italians. They owned shoe stores, jewelry stores, clothing stores, and radio shops. Troy thought it was amazing; all of the items that Blacks purchased the most were being sold by non-Black opportunists.
Raheem and Scooter put money down on gold chains in a Korean jewelry store. They then bought a couple of rap tapes from an Italian-owned record shop. Both the Asians and the Italians had Blacks and Puerto Ricans working for them inside the larger clothing stores. They always find a Black person to do their dirty work, Troy thought.
“Ay’, Troy, what’s up with you, man? You haven’t bought anything or said shit all day,” Scooter mentioned.
“Yeah, man, I know. I’m just lookin’ at all these Italian, Jewish, and Asian businesses. I mean, their stores may as well be called Nigga Shops, ’cause we look like the only ones who buy shit from ’em.”
Raheem laughed. “Nigga Shops, hunh? Yup, when you think about it, we are the only ones that buy all kinds of shit from these dagos, chinks, and Jews.”
“Yup, cuz. They got every fuckin’ thing,” Scooter added.
Raheem hunched his shoulders. “Yeah, but fuck it, though. Where else we gon’ buy the shit from? They got the cheapest prices.”
“Dig, ’cause I done talked these Italian motherfuckers down plenty of times,” Scooter added.
“I know, cuz. They sell their shit like it didn’t cost them nothin’,” Raheem interjected. “I mean, Troy, that shit is true. But they own all the stores. So what the fuck you want niggas to do?” he asked.
“We gotta own our own stores and shop in ’em,” Troy plainly responded. Raheem looked as though he would respond to him. He decided not to.
They roamed to the Gallery Shopping Mall to eat, passing several Asian street vendors selling cheap watches, bags, hats, and shirts. Troy stopped and picked up a shirt to read aloud.
“Yo, hold up. Check this out,” he said. He lifted the black T-shirt into eye view as the cautious vendor woman watched him. “ ‘Black, and popular by demand,’” he read before smiling. His friends joined him in laughter, not really knowing what was so special about the event.
“Imagine that, Orientals selling us shirts expressing Black pride, while they take our money,” Troy said. “I see why we ‘popular by demand,’” he added. Again Raheem looked to speak, deciding not to. He wanted to tell Troy some things that he had learned, yet he didn’t feel it was time yet.
Inside the Gallery, Troy noticed all of the food stands, racially. The Chinese stands had all Chinese employees working for them. The Italians had all Italians working for their pizza shops. Even the Greeks had other Greeks working with them. Blacks, on the otherhand, worked for corporate-owned chain stores, doughnut shops, and hot dog businesses. The janitors and general-duty workers were always Black. Just like in college, Troy thought. He imagined the head of operations, a White man wearing a suit and a tie. He would sit in an office, spinning left and right in a plush leather swivel chair, a large wooden desk in front of him, displaying his name and position.
Troy, Raheem, and Scooter entered another Italian-owned clothing store and were surrounded by attractive Puerto Rican and Black saleswomen.
“Hey, man, can I help chew wit’ sometin’?” a dark-haired Puerto Rican asked. Troy watched her approach Scooter. She looked as though she was going to hug him. A Black girl approached to help him and Raheem.
“Ay’, what’s up? Y’all brothers lookin’ for anything in particular? We got some new stuff in the back. The new stuff is out and sellin’ fast,” she hinted. Raheem was out of money and Troy didn’t even want to look at clothing.
“Naw, cutey, I already spent my paycheck, unless you got some free shit for me,” Raheem said to her. He smiled while checking out her body.
“What about you, handsome?” she asked, staring at Troy. She seemed to ignore Raheem. He had obviously made the wrong comment.
“Well, I’m just looking today,” Troy said, passing her by.
“OK then, sweetheart.”
“Ay’, Troy, she was on you like a champ, cuz. You better jump on that, man,” Raheem said in a low tone.
“She got a fat-ass nose,” Troy told him.
Raheem frowned. “What? Since when you start worrying about noses? That babe is pretty as hell, cuz. I’d talk to her, if she was on me.”
They walked toward the back to join Scooter with the Puerto Rican. Troy watched her lean up in Scooter’s face every time he would turn to see a new item. She stayed glued to him, waiting on his every move to see what he wanted to purchase. Scooter tried on several pairs of pants and jackets as she tailored to his every move.
“Yo, Carmen, dem jeans look pretty good on you. I wouldn’t mind buying them, and the package,” Troy said, trying to entice her. He figured she would most likely try to correct the name. By using the wrong one, he would spur an automatic conversation piece.
“Oh, you do, do you?” she asked, turning to face him. Troy was stunned, for a second, at how fast she responded. “By the way, my name ain’t Carmen. It’s Joyce.”
He chuckled. “I was just jokin’. I got that shit off that movie,Beat Street. So, what time do you get off work, so I can call you tonight?” Troy was going for the kill, trying to slip one past her.
“I don’t think my boyfriend would like that,” she responded, smiling.
Shit! I’m even losing my touch with the women, Troy thought to himself. “Yeah, well, what would your boyfriend say about you being all over my boy while he tries jeans on?” he snapped at her. Joyce simply walked away from him, unfazed.
Troy walked out ahead, after S
cooter got his bags together. “I’m tired of girls fuckin’ around with people, man. If they don’t want to talk, they should act like it.”
Raheem laughed softly. Scooter was busy counting money. All the Italian owner did was guard the cash register, while the girls worked hard to sell his inventory.
They rode the bus back up to Lancaster Avenue once they had finally left the downtown area. They peeked inside more shops, wondering about better deals. Once again, the Asian-owned stores were everywhere.
The Italians had at least one pizza or jewelry shop on each block. Most of the larger stores were owned by an established White Christian or Jew, who Troy believed hired friendly Black managers as their front men.
Blacks owned barbershops, hair salons, and a few old, small candy stores. They also had a few bookstores on the avenue. But Troy had always told himself, Ain’t no niggas interested in buying books.
He could not manage a wink of sleep that night. Troy tossed and turned for hours, thinking about the predicament in the Black community. His people owned about as much as a baby in diapers. In their own neighborhood, Blacks bought three chicken wings with fries from the Asians. Fried potatoes and chicken wings were supposedly soul food, yet the Asians sold it.
Nearly every Friday, Troy and his crew would buy cheese steaks and sodas from the Italians without even thinking about it. They would spend, on the average, $20 to $30 a week in Gino’s Steak House. Only a few dollars, every once in a blue moon, would be spent inside a Black-owned store.
The night had brought bitter dreams and a harsh awakening. Nevertheless, the new day brought hope. Troy’s grades had finally arrived. His mother was the first to congratulate him.
“Troy, I got it,” she said.
“Got what, Mom?” he asked, from the living room couch. He had slept there for the past couple of nights.
“Your grades. And you got a B in that chemistry class you were struggling with,” she told him.
Troy leaped from his prone position to take a look at it himself. “Aw, bet, Mom!I’m in a good position for some money now. That means that I got somewhere around a three-point-four G.P.A. for the year. That’s aw’ight,” he said, parading around the house again, bragging about how hard he had studied. The excitement made him courageous enough to get dressed, and run to the playground.
It would be his first trip to the playground since he had been home. It looked as though there was a party on the courts, it was so crowded. He watched the many talented players, who all looked like NBA stars to Troy. As he neared the courts and was soon spotted, he began to fear the attention that he would receive. They may have all watched the game in which he had sat on the bench. He felt like he had let the neighborhood down for the first time in his life. His pride began to shrink, step by step, as he approached the courts.
“Yo, dere goes Troy!”a tall young man shouted, catching everyone’s attention. “Yo, what’s up, boah? Come here, man. It’s about time you got home,” he said. Troy walked over, heart filled with anxiety and fear. He knew what was coming. “Yo, man, why you quit?”
He took a deep breath. “Aw, Nate, man, that team is a trip. I was good enough to start, or at least to get in the game. So I said, ‘Ta hell with it, then,’” he responded, still feeling unsure of himself.
His friend looked at him quizzically. “You should have hung in there, though, cuz,” he said. “You only a freshman, right? So you still had more seasons. You act like you was about to graduate or something. You never know what could have happened.” Nate was tall, massive, and a lover of the sport called basketball.
“Naw, man, whenever a person makes you wait for something you should have already had, then most likely they’re using you, or they don’t want you to have it,” Troy said, philosophizing again.
Nate smiled, knowingly. “You never did have any patience. I wish I could have talked to you while you was up there. I damn sure would have told you to hang in there.”
“Troy is a sellout. He sat the bench. Aah,” a T-shirt-wearing kid said, running by and pulling no punches.
Nate shook his head with a grin. “Don’t even worry about it, man, just get your grades together. But you know what? The way people get jerked around in college, it ain’t worth trying sometimes anyway,” Nate explained.
“My cousin had a scholarship to college to play ball, but he hurt his ankle in the second season. They never really gave him another chance after that. So now, he’s back home, working at this recreational center down South Philly. It’s fun and all, ’cause he always liked working with kids, but it don’t pay nothin’. So you make sure you get that education first, man, ’cause too many Black people go away to college and forget what they’re there for.”
After Nate had finished talking to him, one on one, it was open season for questions, answers, and comments. Troy had spoken to people he hadn’t seen since he was a kid, ten years ago. He talked to them about college life. He bragged about the women he had scored with, and then proceeded to talk about the standouts on the basketball and football teams. He got many word-of-mouth invitations to parties, but he remembered that he was back home. He could expect violence afterward. College life had softened him up. He was beginning to fear the dwellers of his neighborhood.
“Yo, Troy, you should go to this party with me on Thirty-sixth Street,” a well-dressed teen said. Hank sported a gold ring with a dollar sign on his left hand. He wore a pair of expensive Alpina sun shades and was known for selling drugs
“Thirty-sixth Street? Next to the projects?” Troy asked him rhetorically. He felt as if he had become an outsider, and he needed to come back to his people. He knew that Thirty-sixth Street was in a bad area. Yet and still, he wanted to convince himself that he was not afraid of anything.
“Yeah, aw’ight then, Hank. I’m down. I can probably get some sex up there tonight, too. The girls haven’t seen me for a while. I know dey gon’ be on me,” he commented, trying to pump himself up.
It was ten o’clock at night. Troy and Hank drove to the party in Hank’s black Jimmy jeep. Troy continued to talk up his confidence by referring to the “good old days.” Yet when they arrived at the door he began to panic. He remembered beating up one of the project’s tenants, and they always hung in groups.
Troy entered the cluttered, smoke-filled party apprehensively. It was nothing like the clear, spacious settings for college parties. He was back home at a common thug jam.
He searched around the basement before walking down all of the stairs. After not seeing the project crew, he decided it was safe. He was not at all interested in dancing. He only wanted to romance a cutey and leave. Troy spotted, and quickly approached, who he thought was the prettiest girl there.
“Ay’, Brenda, long time no see.”
Brenda was light-skinned with straight black hair, smooth and cut short on the sides, long on top. She was short and slender, with keen facial features.
“Hey, Troy, what’s up, honey? I ain’t seen you for the longest time.” Brenda’s big gold earrings shined in Troy’s eyes as he pushed closer to talk through the loud music.
“You still go with Dean?” he asked her.
“Why, does it matter?” she said, smiling. He was back home, realizing there was no longer a need to beat around the bush.
“You down to go chill somewhere, then?” he asked her, feeling that he was in already.
“Yeah, that’s cool. We can go to my girlfriend’s house,” Brenda said, leaning into him. “You gon’ get on with us, Troy? We got some blow,” she told him. Again he was reminded too bluntly that he was back home.
Troy responded in shock. “What, you snort blow, Brenda, as pretty as you are?”
“Damn! I mean, what chew, my guardian now?
Shit. I can do what the fuck I wanna do! It’s my fuckin’ life, right! I’m tired of people talkin’ that shit about me,” she countered radically, sparking unnecessary attention.
“Ay’, yo, Brenda, what’s up?” Troy didn’t recognize him, as
the glaring youth stepped up, surrounded by four others.
“Nothin’. Don’t worry about it,” Brenda told them.
Troy took a deep breath, thanking her, mentally, for letting him off the hook. However, the party had quicky lost its interest. He didn’t seem to be a part of the people he thought he knew. Nevertheless, before he got a chance to leave, another tough youth approached from the smoky crowds.
“Ay’, yo, cuz, did you say something to my girl?” He had a hostile expression, alerting Troy for an attack.
“Naw, man. I don’t even know who your girl is,” Troy responded. He was desperately trying to work his way out of the situation. He began clutching his fist behind his back. Troy had long ago felt that Hank had left him in the party alone.
“Yo, what’s up, man?” his friend Hank asked, seeing that Troy was stationed for a rumble.
“Oh, Hank, I ain’t know this was your boy. I was ready to fuck cuz up. He don’t be comin’ off at my girl and shit,” Troy’s challenger said. Hank looked at Troy, knowing exactly what he was thinking. Troy had long ago learned the survival game. He knew that the only way to resolve the problem was to fight or be disrespected. Disrespect would only lead to more fights.
“Cuz, you ain’t talkin’ ’bout me like that,” Troy told him. “We just gon’ have to get that shit on.”
“So what’s up, then? What chew sayin’, nigga?” Troy’s challenger asked while throwing his hands up.
They went outside, followed by a crowd of instigators. It was nothing new to the neighborhood. Fighting was a way of life.
The air was dry and chilly. Troy was already tired, but alert. His challenger began taking off his jacket. Troy rushed him into a car with a flurry of hard, solid punches to the face and head. He had hurt his hand, punching his challenger in the mouth, his hand catching a broken tooth. The challenger buckled and fell. He got up, bruised, and ready to continue.
Troy was much too sharp and pumped with energy to be hit. He punched the youth in the head, body, and face, spurting blood as the hushed crowd watched.