Show and Prove (4 page)

Moncho finally comes back from his office, magazine in hand. “Willie, where you going?”

“He was trying to skip outta here without paying you, but I stopped his ass,” says Booby.

“Yo, stop playing, man,” I pretend to joke. I want to say,
Quit instigatin',
but you don't play a Barbarian close like that, even if he's lying like a rug. “Here you go, Moncho,” I say as I hold out the cash. He accepts it with one hand while offering me the magazine with the other. I grab it and hightail it out of there.

I'm three steps out the barbershop when Pooh's right on my heels singing “Beat it, beat it…” He's scrawny as he is klutzy, so I can take him in a fair fight, but what's to stop Booby from jumping in? I double up and look over my shoulder. Pooh's on the pay phone, and I know what time it is. Junior and the rest of the Barbarians will be waiting for me in front of my building if I go straight home.

I take the long way, past JD's store, and he waves me inside. Even though I've got no money, I can't resist—he always has the freshest gear. Those Sergio Valentes that JD has in the window would look so def with my shell-toe red-on-white Adidas and my striped Izod shirt.

“ 'Member you asked me about the new colors in Lee twills?” He folds a stack of Polo shirts. “They just came in yesterday. Three new shades of blue—sky blue, turquoise, and teal. You a thirty-four, right?”

“Not today, man.” I flip through some other designer jeans on a rack. “Definitely next Friday, though.” I move on to a rack of mesh shirts. They seem kind of fruity to me, but I may have to get at least one 'cause I got nice arms. It's too hot for sweatshirts, and I don't want to cut off the sleeves on mine after spending fifteen cents a letter to have
NIKE
, the Playboy bunny, and then
FRESH
ironed in Gothic letters down one arm and
LEO
down the other. Now that I think about it, Vanessa still has my sweatshirt, too. Damn, I gave that girl everything! I peep through the window for Junior or any of his hoods.

“Gonna be a tough summer, man,” says JD. “Lot of my regulars telling me they've lost their jobs or can't find one. Money problems for y'all means money problems for me.”

“I got money.” Just never as much as I want. I give in to temptation and cross the store to the Sergios and look through the stack for my size.

“And you should see the folks that be comin' in here. If they're not tryin' to boost my gear, they're tryin' to sell me whatever they stole from elsewhere.” JD shakes his head as he walks to the register. “Remember the real pretty lady with the beauty mark on her cheek? Got the Farrah Fawcett hair and the daughters with the pretty eyes?”

“Dee Dee?” That's Blue Eyes and Sandy's mother, and she was so fine she made Farrah look like Miss Piggy. I tried rapping to Dee Dee, but she called me jailbait. I said she can't get in no trouble because she's a woman. It ain't like that pervert who was flashing his thing at the girls on the playground. Cookie done said something to Mrs. King, and she rounded up the grown-ups into a manhunt to find the jerk. Cutter's the one who cornered the sicko under the Willis Avenue Bridge with an aluminum bat. He would've housed that fool, too, if Smiles's mother hadn't talked him out of it while somebody called the cops. Anyways, Dee Dee told me to take a hike, so I ended up with Blue Eyes. “I used to mess with her daughter. The younger one. A long time ago, though.”

“When you see Dee Dee, it's gonna break your heart, man. She's like this now.” JD holds up his pinkie finger. “And all those pretty white teeth look like rotting corn.”

Ain't gonna break my heart nothing. No one told her to mess with that stuff. Just like no one told Cutter to become a dope fiend. “That's nasty.”

“Dee Dee came in here trying to sell me a stack of brand-new baby clothes. She was all,
Oh, I know you have a little boy,
and I was like,
My son's three now,
but she said,
But look, Papa, they brand-new. See how they got the tags from Youngland still? I give you all of 'em for just five dollars.
I had to chase her ass out of here.”

“That's messed up, JD. How you gonna steal from your own grandson like that?”

“That's what that crack does to you. Let me catch you messin' with that stuff. I'll clock you so hard you won't land till Wednesday.”

I snicker. JD don't care like that, but nice of him to pretend. Mrs. King liked to say that it takes a village to raise a child, but it ain't like that around here no more, if it ever was. Folks too focused on their own survival. “In fact, put these on layaway for me.” I bring the jeans to the counter, give JD my last five dollars as a deposit, and break out of the store.

By the time my birthday comes, I'll take the Sergios out of layaway and rock them. And if I get back my buckle and sweatshirt from Vanessa? Yo, whoever's my girl come August is going to be one lucky biddy. I'm going to take her to the Roxy, dust that toy Hazardiss in the tournament, and finally get my due.

I get so lost in my plans sometimes. Only when I reach my building and find no one on the stoop do I remember about Junior. I make the sign of the cross with my rosary and kiss the crucifix to the sky.

S
weat and bacon wake me up. I go to the kitchen and poke my head into the refrigerator. “Mornin', Nana.” The Tang is centimeters from my mouth when a hand snatches the pitcher from me.

“Boy, what's wrong with you?” my father yells. He's holding a lardy spatula in one hand and setting the pitcher on the kitchen table with the other. “We raisin' you better than that. Get a glass!”

“What you doing here?” My stomach grinds from a mix of hunger and worry. Pop is only home during the day for two reasons: vacations and strikes. “Y'all stage a walkout?”

That's what happened three years ago. April Fools' Day, to be exact. Except Local 100 was no joke. I was home from school for Easter break, watching the news and hoping to spot my dad in the sea of workers marching across the Brooklyn Bridge. Nana and I cheered the union while Mama paced the living room. Pop was losing two days' pay for every day of the strike because New York has this stupid law that makes it illegal for government workers to walk off the job. He insisted that the union had no choice because the pay increase the MTA offered was an insult, inflation had caused the cost of living in the city to double.

Pop made me too proud to worry. People dropped by the apartment with hot plates and high praises. I'd go to the bodega and strangers would say,
Raymond, tell your father we stand by him.
Even Nike was like,
Yo, your pop's like Martin Luther King Jr. or some shit.
Folks including Cutter and Naim would be in my living room politicking and trading car-pool stories.

Koch can go straight to hell for all I care….

…And Reagan can show 'im the shortcut.

Modern-day slavery. That's all these antilabor laws are.

I done lost ten pounds biking to work.

Y'all still on strike come September, my kid's walking to school. He needs to learn how good he got it. Appreciate things.

Whenever someone asked,
Where's Bernadette?
Pop would say,
Somebody around here got to work!
And they'd all bust out laughing because we all knew how much Mama loved her job at the multiservice agency, as thankless as it seemed to most. Although she wasn't a fan, Mama likened her passion for social work to baseball.
You only have to hit it three out of ten times to be considered good, and when you knock it out of the park
—
help that person everyone wrote off as helpless
—
there's nothing like it, Ray-Ray.
Pop and his friends laughed that day because they understood—when Mama was healthy, the community was healthy.

“No, no, no,” Pop says, placing his hand on my shoulder. “I just decided to take the day off so I can spend the Fourth of July with my better half.” Funny—he used to call Mama that. Pop turns off the flame on the stove and slides the bacon onto a plate covered with a paper towel. “I know you want some of this.”

“Word.” I pull out a chair and flop into a seat.

“Get your ass up and set the table.” I jump to my feet and head to the sink. “Boy, this ain't no diner.”

I salute and start yanking pairs of utensils out of the dish rack. “Yes, sir!” Pop has a way of busting my chops that cracks me up. He gives it to me straight, no chaser, and sometimes that's the only way to get it.

“Where's Nana?” I lay everything across the kitchen table. “Still asleep?” I go back to the sink for two glasses.

“I fixed her something, then walked her over to the community center. Right now some ol' fool is losing this month's pension check.”

“Cool, 'cause I need to rent a tux for the prom.” It just comes out my mouth, despite the fact that I've been thinking about not going. Not the senior trip, not the prom, none of it, even if I got the money. But Pop's laughing, so I laugh along with him as we sit to eat. After the first bite, I say, “Man, Pop, this isn't half bad. You could—” Then I clutch my throat and pretend to keel over.

“Smart-ass. You always was a smart-ass, you know that, right? Stop playing around and eat your food before it gets cold. We got things to do today.”

Here we go. “Like what? Caulking the bathtub? Roach-bombing the kitchen?” Whatever Pop's scheming, I have to be done in time to go with Nike to the FDR to watch the Macy's fireworks, or he'll never let me hear the end of it.

“Like this.” Pop reaches into his pocket and pulls out Yankees tickets. “Your ol' man come through big or what?”

“Yo, that's fresh, Pop!” I grab the tickets, and just like that, I'm eight years old again, like the last time we caught a game together. Then I jump from my seat. “I gotta make a phone call.” Nike won't like this, so the sooner I tell him, the quicker he can get over it.

“You can do that later,” says Pop. “Finish your breakfast first.”

“It'll only take a second, I promise.” I dial the number and hope Gloria answers. If I leave a message with her, Nike can't say I just stood him up and I won't have to deal with his whining.

Just my luck, though, he picks up. “Hi, there,” he says in the Boom Boom Washington voice he uses in case a girl is on the other end.

“Yo, Nike…”

“Smiley Smiles, what's up?” Before I can say anything else, he says, “Yo, man, I was thinking let's skip going downtown today.”

“Word?” It can't be this easy. He must have gotten back with Vanessa or the dog already met somebody new.

“Yeah, there's this hip-hop concert over on White Plains Road.”

“OK, but depends when it is.”

Suddenly Nike yells into the phone. “I knew you was gonna flake!” Pop shoots a look over his shoulder before downing another forkful of scrambled eggs.

“Listen to me, B.” I step into the hallway for whatever privacy I can get. “My pop surprised me this morning by taking the day off and getting us tickets to the Yankees game. You know I never see that man in the light of day. I'm the son of Blacula.”

Nike calms down some. “So we'll hang out before y'all have to leave.” He's stupid excited now, and I can't get a word in edgewise. “Yo, why didn't I think of this before? We can go to Orchard Beach!”

“Orchard Beach?” It's nasty over there! And not nasty-fresh-nasty either. I mean dirty-syringes-and-used-diapers-in-the-water nasty! “You out your mind?”

“Not to swim, dummy! What you take me for? To listen to some fresh music and to rap to the fly girls and all that.”

That actually does sound like fun. Then I look down at the tickets. “Nah, I can't go, B. Game starts at two.”

“Oh. OK. So how 'bout we check out a concert when you get back. A game's only a couple of hours, right? Guess who's going to be at the T-Connection?”

“Look, man, that sounds def, but I can't make you any promises 'cause you never know when a ball game's gonna end.”

“Yeah, you and promises don't mix.”

When Nike gets like this, I can't deal with him, and he makes it easy not to. “I'll just call you when we get back,” I say, already knowing I won't. “We'll figure it out then.”

I hang up on him, any guilt long gone. Like Run-D.M.C. says,
It's like that, and that's the way it is.
I head back to the kitchen, take my seat, and ask Pop, “So who's pitching today?”