“Yeah, yeah, that’s her. Well, she was living with her moms and her stepdad,” Rudy said. “Hey, man, ain’t no meat in this pie, John.”
“There’s chicken in that pie, boy,” John said. “Don’t tell me how to run no restaurant!”
“Anyway, she didn’t get along with her stepdad so she moved out. Then she joined a gang because she didn’t want nobody messing with her. And she was supposed to get beat in.”
“Beat in?” John lifted one eyebrow.
“That’s when five people beat on you to see if you tough enough to get into the gang,” Gates said. “If you start crying and ask them to stop then you too weak to get in. So if it’s a girl gang, five girls beat on her until they get tired and then she’s in. Ain’t that right, Rudy?”
“Yeah, just about,” Rudy said. “But Angie is tough so she beat the heck out of the five girls. I was there, man. She was steady kicking butt. She hit like a mule. One girl’s nose was bleeding, one got a black eye, and one was just lying on the ground holding the side of her face.”
“Sure sounds like a lot of fun,” John said. “And y’all young people think that’s cool, huh?”
“That’s the way it goes if you want to get into a gang,” Gates said.
“Anyway, one of the girls she punched out pulled a knife from her sock,” Rudy said.
“That was wrong, right there,” Gates said. “You ain’t supposed to be doing that when you beating somebody into a gang.”
“And the fighting and the black eyes were right?” John asked. “Why don’t you young people just jump off a roof or something? Get it over quick?”
“I knew that wasn’t correct and I called out to Angie— ‘Look out!’ ” Rudy said. “Give me another one of them pies.”
“I thought they didn’t have enough meat in them for you?” John said.
“Yeah, yeah, they okay,” Rudy said, taking out another dollar and flattening it on the countertop. “Anyway, Angie told the girl that if she didn’t put the knife down she was gonna kick her butt again and cut her.
“The girl—her name was Yovani, big cornbread-looking chick—said she was gonna cut Angie. Angie kicked her on the leg and when she stumbled Angie hit her and the girl started swinging the knife. Only, you could tell that she was kind of scared of Angie. Long story short, Angie got the knife from the girl and had her down on the ground. The girl was crying and begging Angie not to cut her.”
“She didn’t cut her, did she?” John asked.
“Yeah, she did, but not bad,” Rudy said. “She just cut her on the leg to let her know what was what.”
“Lord, what is wrong with my people!” John shook his head.
“I think I know the secret to your pies, my man,” Rudy said, putting half of a pie into his mouth. “It’s the sauce. You using that Peri-Peri sauce from Africa. Right?”
“I make my own sauce,” John said. “It ain’t Peri-Peri, it’s very, very hot. Now what does all of this have to do with the Arab selling Lucys?”
“Okay, so after the fight was all over and they had all got up and shook hands and everything—”
“Even the girl that was cut?” John asked.
“Yeah, it was over then, and Angie was in the gang so they all made up,” Rudy said. “Then Angie came over to me and thanked me for warning her about the knife. And, you know, Angie is kind of fine.”
“She’s more than fine,” Gates said, “she’s got it going on!”
“Yeah, and you know I’m steady peeping!” Rudy said. “I told her I had been checking her out anyway, which was true, and I said maybe we could get together sometime if she was down for it. She said that was okay with her and she would see me around. Naturally, I got kind of excited behind that and the schemes and the dreams started flowing.”
“I know what you talking about,” Gates said. “She got a real nice face and a body like a model or something. Not one of them skinny models, either.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“She even got some flow in her walk for a young girl,” Gates said. “She’s about—how old is she?”
“She’s sixteen,” Rudy said.
“So then what happened?” John took some uncooked meat pies out of the refrigerator and started laying them on a baking pan.
“So nothing happened right away because I didn’t want to show up lame and I didn’t have any money. My paper was so light I was down to reading yesterday’s newspaper. You know what I mean?”
“So you’re in your usual condition,” John said.
“Yeah, yeah. But I ran into my homey, Billy Morgan,” Rudy said. “And he told me he was going with his parents down to Howard University for the weekend. You know he’s into books and school and whatnot. Then I remember when him and me were kids sometimes we used to get into his house by going up on the roof and climbing down between the buildings into his room and this idea come to me—”
“If I listen to this part am I aiding and abetting?” John asked.
“No, no, this is swift, man. I knew I couldn’t just ask him could I take Angie up to his place because he wouldn’t go for it. So I told him I wanted to know what Howard looked like and figured he could tell me when he got back. He said he was going to take some flicks with his cell phone and he would show them to me when he got back Monday.”
“You didn’t take that girl up there?” John sprinkled chili sauce from a can onto the meat pies.
“Yeah, man.” Rudy shook his head. “First I called the house to make sure nobody was home. Then I went up to the roof, came down on the fire escape, and tried his bedroom window.”
“They didn’t have the window locked?” Gates asked. “In New York City?”
“Billy’s window has a lock on it but you can jiggle it loose,” Rudy said. “He never told his folks so he could sneak out at night if he wanted to.”
“So you’re checking out your breaking and entering skills …,” John said. “Go on.”
“I’ve been in Billy’s place a lot of times so I knew it pretty good,” Rudy said. “I open the front door and slip a matchbook in the door so it won’t lock. Then I bust over to where Angie lives and see she’s hanging with her homegirls on the stoop. Then I asked her to take a walk with me and she said okay. We walked over to where Billy lives, just chatting and whatnot, and I asked her to come on upstairs.”
“To Billy’s place?” Gates asked.
“ ’Cept I told her it was my crib,” Rudy said.
“And what did she say?”
“Angie dug what was going down right away and said it wasn’t no use because she wasn’t going to do nothing. I made like I was shocked that she thought I was trying to get over with her. ‘All I’m doing is treating you like my homegirl.’
“She kind of went for that but she was keeping her eye on me,” Rudy went on. “I told her I just wanted to talk to her. You know, see where she was coming from. She said okay and we went upstairs. We get to Billy’s place I took my keys out like I was unlocking the door, but it was already open and we went inside.”
“You and this sixteen-year-old young lady?” John asked.
“She likes my pad—Billy’s pad—and starts talking about how she wished she had her own place. So I got my arm around the mama and she’s relaxing a little and I said let’s go into the bedroom and we can just hold each other. I said we didn’t have to take it no further than that. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah, and she do, too,” John said. “Girls ain’t dumb.”
“Yeah, I know that, but she don’t just want to put me down so she goes with me into Billy’s parents’ bedroom,” Rudy said.
“She sitting on the fence!” Gates said. “She don’t know what she wants to do.”
“And Rudy wants to figure out which side of the fence he wants to come down on—felony or misdemeanor!” John said.
“So I’m checking it all out and I see she’s thinking about what she wants to do, just like Gates is saying. On one hand I don’t want to push it too hard because t
hen I’ll blow the whole thing but, on the other hand, you know …”
“You’re not thinking with your head,” John said.
“Yeah. Yeah. So, what I decided to do was to go into Billy’s room and see if he had any protection lying around. I told her to wait for a minute and I’d be right back,” Rudy said. “I go into Billy’s room and I’m looking in his drawers for some protection when I hear some voices coming from the other room. First I thought she had turned the radio on. I’m listening, because if she’s putting some music on I figure maybe she’s made up her mind.”
“Getting in the mood!” Gates added.
“But then it didn’t sound like the radio, it sounded like people talking,” Rudy said. “And I hear this scream!”
“Billy’s back?” John crossed his arms.
“No, just his parents. And his moms walks in on Angie stretched out on the bed,” Rudy said. “You know, it happened so fast I didn’t even have time to think. Later, what I thought I should have done was to tell them that Billy said I could use the place.”
“What did you tell them?” John asked.
“Nothing, man, I just split out the window.”
“You left the girl?” John asked.
“So what she do?” Gates asked.
“Well, what I found out later was after Mrs. Morgan screamed her husband came running into the room and he saw Angie still sitting on the bed. She’s thinking they’re my peeps and trying to explain that everything is cool but Mr. Morgan went right to his closet and got his piece.”
“He got a gun?” Gates asked.
“Yeah, he works security for the airlines,” Rudy said. “Then—and I didn’t realize how some people just don’t want to listen to nothing—they called the police. That’s how Angie got out to Rikers Island.”
“She’s in jail?” John asked as two customers came in. “Hold the story.” He directed the customers to a table and gave them menus.
Rudy pushed all the crumbs together with a fingertip, scooped them up, and popped them into his mouth as John came back.
“Rudy, please don’t tell me you got that girl in trouble and she went to jail?” John said. “I’m an old man and I can’t take too much in one day.”
“Yeah, man. That’s how the Arab got involved,” Rudy said.
“Okay, okay.” Gates put his head down and turned his ear to one side. “Now run that by me real slow.”
“Okay. Angie couldn’t post bail so she got stuck in Rikers,” Rudy said. “But the lawyer the city got for her convinced Mr. Morgan not to press charges and she copped to a misdemeanor of unlawful trespassing. She was only in two weeks and is just waiting for the paperwork to get straight and she’s going to be back in the world.”
“And the Arab is her friend?” John asked.
“No, man, but the word on the street is that she’s going to be looking for me as soon as she gets out,” Rudy said. “And I’m thinking about how she cut that girl just for pulling out that knife.”
“You in a world of trouble,” Gates said. “Angie was trying to get into that girls’ gang, so she was being cool. She ain’t going to be cool with you.”
“I’m hip. That’s why I got desperate,” Rudy said. “You know she could get the whole gang on me. And you don’t want to fight no girl gang, man.”
“So why did you break the Arab’s window?”
“To get myself arrested. I got to get off the street before she gets back to the hood,” Rudy said. “She needs some time to cool down. What I’m going to tell her is that the cops were looking for me on another warrant and that’s why I had to split on her. But she might not buy that too tough because I lied about it being my crib and all.”
“Why didn’t the cops arrest you when you broke the window?”
“That stupid Arab! That’s what I’m telling you!” Rudy sucked his teeth. “Talking about how he don’t want no trouble and he knew I was a good boy and all that kind of BS. Then he ran some of that Rodney King crap about can’t we all just get along. And the cops don’t care, either. When he put on his smiling and grinning and saying everything was all right act they just got back in their car and left.”
“You can’t depend on anybody these days,” Gates said.
“So what are you going to do about the young lady?” John asked.
“In a way, I still got a lot of feeling for her,” Rudy said. “I just need a way of expressing it.”
“If she’s as mad as she should be,” John said, “and if she can fight as well as you say she can, and if she don’t mind cutting no-account, lying lowlifes, you might try explaining yourself in a letter. Mail it from California, or some place like that. And let me ask you, Rudy. You learn anything from all this?”
“Yeah, I did,” Rudy said. “You can’t depend on either the cops or the Arabs to bring law and order to the hood. They unreliable. You should know what’s going to happen if you break the law.”
“Have another meat pie, son,” John said. “Keep your strength up.”
the
man
thing
“Eddie, I’m going downtown.” Moms was standing in the doorway. “There’s some eggs in the refrigerator. You awake?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. I had been awake, but hadn’t got up the courage to start the day yet. “Yo, Mom, I got any shirts?”
“Over the chair in the living room,” she said. “You going out looking today?”
“What else I got to do?”
She came to the doorway and threw me a kiss, which I pretended to catch, and said she would see me later. I listened as she walked toward the kitchen. Her footsteps were off rhythm and I knew her hip was probably bothering her again. When I heard the key turn in the lock I laid back down again. A few minutes later the ticking of the made-in-China clock on my dresser broke through the silence of the apartment. Fifteen past nine.
I got up and looked in my closet. I don’t know why I was checking, I knew the gun was going to be just where I had put it.
“What else I got to do?” I let the words run through my mind again. The answer came through loud and clear. Nothing. I didn’t have a thing to do except to get up, get dressed, and hit the pavement like a hundred other dudes on 138th Street.
It was funny but I couldn’t even remember the days when there was always something to do, school to go to, a ballgame going on somewhere. Then one weekend everything changed. On a Thursday I was walking down the aisle at George Washington, picking up my diploma, beaming at the people who came to see the Class of 2005 graduate.
“Man, you’re only seventeen and you copped your papers already?” My man Calvin Williams slapped me five. “You the man, bro, you definitely the man!”
But I wasn’t the man. I was just another soldier guarding the sidewalks and the garbage cans on the street between Malcolm X and Frederick Douglass. It wasn’t like I wasn’t trying to find something, because I was serious about hooking up a job. A job was something I had taken for granted when I was in school. It was one of those step things. First step, finish school. Second step, nail down some kind of way to support myself. In the back of my mind I was thinking serious about hooking up my own crib, nothing too fancy because I didn’t dig going into no whole lot of debt. Maybe I’d get me one bedroom, with a plasma box in the living room and maybe a DVD player. Yeah, definitely a DVD player.
But things didn’t go smooth like I thought they would.
“So what kind of job are you looking for?” the woman at the State Employment Office had asked.
“Anything,” I had said.
“We don’t have jobs called ‘anything.’ ”
She could sit behind her desk and come up with smart answers. She had her stuff going on, probably had finished college and heavy into a middle-class kick. Being black didn’t even bother her. We danced that dance each week with her checking out her computer once in a while and sending me out one time to unload some trucks and another to do deliveries down in the garment center. Yo, I ain’t p
roud or nothing, but I could tell the difference between a job that could get me started in the right direction and some work where I didn’t count for nothing.
I spent six months staring people in the face and trying not to look too stupid when they asked me what I could do. Did playing ball count for anything? Did standing in the doorway and checking out the scene for three or four hours a day mean anything?
And nobody asked me about my high school diploma, which I carried with me. It was like it didn’t even matter.
Things was getting worse because they weren’t getting any better. I was getting up in the morning and knowing from jump street I wasn’t going to find a job, and I would be coming home with my pockets empty. The routine of it just tired me out.
Then there was Moms. She was righteous. She didn’t put any weight on me, but she was going downtown to Forty-fifth Street to clean in some hotel all day. Her with her hip so bad that some nights she had to sit up in a chair because she couldn’t straighten it out.
I’m as deep as the next brother and I had definitely got down with the whole manhood thing. I thought I knew what it took and I knew I had the heart to play the part. But now I wasn’t sure anymore. I had always thought of being a man as standing up for what you believed and not punking down if somebody got into your face. But even stronger than that was just plain old taking care of business when you needed to do it.
Then there was Little Eddie. Little Eddie is my son, and I always thought that one day I would get my thing together and hook up with him. If his mama was still correct maybe we could hook up, too. What was going to happen between me and her was one thing, but I always wanted to be there for my little man. In a way, he was getting heavy on my mind.
I went to the bathroom and peed. The sink in the bathroom wasn’t working so I washed up in the kitchen. I thought about the eggs Moms talked about and looked in the refrigerator. Two eggs. Had she eaten? Probably not. I left the eggs and put on water for tea. While it was heating I sat at the kitchen table and closed my eyes, thinking about what had went down the day before.