Show and Prove (5 page)

I
've been sitting on this stoop angry, hot, and hungry like some pooh-butt because Smiles left me flat and I want my belt buckle back from Vanessa and she won't just give it to Gloria. If I stood on my rooftop and yelled through a megaphone,
Vanessa and I are quits!
she'd just turn to the chick next to her and say,
Why I still got his buckle then?
As long as Vanessa has my buckle, I got no rap around these parts. She'll run around the neighborhood with it convincing her friends
and
enemies that we're still together until I even believe it. Say no go.

We've been running messages through Gloria for days now. I call them Laverne and Shirley, but truth is they both Laverne-like, all loud and fre'ca. Neither one of 'em perky and sweet like Shirley. Finally, Glo made it sound like she cut a plea bargain for me, like I'm guilty of something and she's that public defender chick on
Hill Street Blues.

If I turn the corner and don't see your brother waiting for me, I'm going back home, and he'll never see his buckle again,
Vanessa told my sister. I almost said forget it just to spite her, but that buckle cost me eleven bucks. The chinos down the block had
WILLIE
already made for five dollars, but I wanted
NIKE
.
That's five dollars for the frame and then a buck fifty for each letter. I'm getting that sucker back. And Vanessa had better kept the chrome clean with a soft toothbrush like I taught her.

“ ‘We gonna rock down to Electric Avenue.' ” Across the street, Cutter stumbles down the block in an ashy Armani suit. It must've cost him at least a grand when he bought it, but now it looks like some polyester rag falling off the hanger at Alexander's. “ ‘And then we'll take it higher!' ” Wish I had my boom box to drown out his pathetic ass, but I couldn't risk bringing it down. If Vanessa turns the corner with Junior, I need to book!

I try not to think of all the fun Smiles is having while I just sit here. If I had a father who took a day off to take me to a game, you bet I'd go, and I don't give a damn about baseball anymore. But if I had a homeboy whose father was scarce, I'd ask my pop if we could bring him along. That's the kind of friend I am. I would've bought my own ticket if I had to, but Smiles ain't even think to invite me, and that's the kind of friend he's been.

I check my Swatch. Girls always play this game with me, and the only reason I give 'em one fifteen-minute grace period is because they're usually getting fly for me. But once those fifteen minutes are done, I'm out. My patience is rewarded, because when Vanessa's fourth grace period ends, the Eclipse Cutie suddenly appears. When she walks into Elsie's bodega, I dodge traffic to race across the street.

Inside the bodega Cutter's tapping two quarters on the counter. “More sugar, please. More sugar.”

“Ay, bendito, Antonio,” says Elsie as she drops another heaping scoop of sugar into a paper cup of coffee. She puts a plastic lid on it and slides it across the counter. Cutter tries to slide over his quarters, but Elsie refuses to accept them.

Cutter looks my way. I suck my teeth and shake my head at him before diddy-bopping down the aisle to look for the Eclipse Cutie. Elsie done made a big mistake letting him have that coffee for free. Cutter's just going to waste the money on dope. The heroin is what makes him crave all that sugar. Over my shoulder, I call, “Mira, Elsie, quiero un sándwich de spiced ham and cheese.”

“¿En un rolo?” Elsie pulls out the log of spiced ham from the refrigerator beneath the counter. “¿O quieres un hero?”

“A hero, man. I'm starvin' like Marvin.” I swing around the bread rack and crash into her, knocking all the groceries she had in her arms onto the floor. “I'm so sorry!”

“It's OK.” We both bend down to pick up her things. “I wasn't looking where I was going.”

We carry her groceries to the counter. “Hey, I've seen you before. Just not a lot. You new around here?” What's wrong with me? I'm usually way smoother than this.

“I've seen you before, too,” she says, her eyes avoiding mine. I don't hear a Spanish accent, so she's not off the boat from PR. There's something in her voice, though, not from around here. “You were on the roof watching the eclipse through your telescope.”

“Yeah!” She noticed me, yo. “I dabble in astronomy.”

“That's so cool,” she says. “Me, too, because I'm into mythology, and they kind of go together.”

In other words,
we
can go together if I rap to her just right. “Yeah, I'm a worldly kinda dude.” I stack her groceries onto the counter. Two cans of garbanzo beans, a bag of almonds, and some bottles of spices I've never heard of before called cumin and turmeric. “Your mom's making something special for Independence Day?” How def would it be to get invited to a barbecue or party somewhere. I hope there's plenty of good music and space to break.

“I'm cooking. Nothing special, though. Some fish.” Then she remembers something. “And I need rice!”

“Lemme get it,” I say as I rush down the aisle. “It be heavy. What kind you want? They got Carolina, Vitarroz…”

“Just white rice, right? It's all the same to me. Bring me whatever.”

I say, “You should get Vitarroz, though.” I like the commercial, and I don't have to bend down to pick it up. I grab a bag, lug it over to the front, and heave it on the counter. “My sister can't cook to save her life,” I say. Vanessa can cook, she just won't. Not for me, anyways. Obviously, I don't say that to this girl, seeing as I'm trying to rap to her. “Her rice be like Styrofoam, word.”

She laughs. That's good. “Let's see if mine turns out any better.” Then she lowers her voice so Elsie can't hear her. “They never have the ingredients I want, so I always have to make substitutions. I hope it comes out OK.”

Wow, this girl's a Shirley. How sweet that she didn't want Elsie to hear her complaining about her wack inventory. And so she knows that it's no big thing, I say, “The A&P got everything you need. There's a whole Goya aisle with recaito, sofrito, sazón…” She looks like I just spoke Japanese. “I'm sorry.”
Damn, Nike, stop doing shit you have to apologize for. You sound like a doofus. Just chill out.
“I forget that not all Puerto Ricans grow up speaking Spanish, you know.”

She drops her eyes and opens her purse. “Yeah, I only know a few words here and there.” She then asks Elsie how much she owes her and places the exact amount on the counter, down to the penny.

“Don't be embarrassed,” I say. “Truth is I don't speak that much of it either.” I know all the nasty words, but of course I'm not going to tell her that. “I speak food real good.” This time when she laughs, she looks me in the eye. “So what's your name?”

“Sara.”

“¡Muchacho, búscame el pan!” Elsie reminds me.

I just snatch a roll and hand it to her. “Y no tan finito.”

“Sí, sí, sí.” She holds up the roll. “No hero?”

Why couldn't she just play it off? I motion for Elsie to give back the roll, swap it for a hero, and hand it to her. She just snickers, then puts it aside to finish bagging Sara's groceries. Elsie thinks she knows what time it is, since every other week I'm in here trying to rap to some girl. What she doesn't understand is that this Sara is special. I'd pay for her groceries if I hadn't used my last five at JD's to put those Sergios on layaway.

When Elsie slides the bag across the counter toward her, I reach in to grab it. “I got it.”

“No, that's OK.”

“No, really.” I start to follow Sara out of the bodega, calling over my shoulder, “Elsie, revuelvo.”

“T'espero, Starvin' Marvin.” Then she puts the spiced ham log back into the refrigerator. Everybody's a comedian these days.

As we walk toward her building, Sara says, “Thank you…” Her voice gets lost in her embarrassment again. She doesn't know my name.

At first, I'm like,
Ouch.
Girls usually know who I am before we meet. Still, I play it off. I have to get that buckle back from Vanessa if it's the last thing I do, I swear. “Nike,” I say. “That's my tag—”

“I get it!” Sara interrupts. “Because you like to win.”

I have no idea what she's talking about. All I can do is just nod and smile, she's so pretty. “Exactly,” I say. “I got Pumas, Adidas, Converse, but Nikes are the best kicks.”

“And they're named after the goddess of strength and speed.”

“Exactly, 'cause I'm athletic and I break and all that.” Sara has this smile in her eyes that tells me she knows I'm frontin'. Vanessa would've snapped all over me and told anyone who would listen,
Oh my God, can you believe Nike tagged hisself after a girl?
Instead Sara schooled me without embarrassing me, and if I really were that ignorant, I never would've even known it. “Nike Fresh,” I play along. “The original b-girl.”

Sara laughs as we pause in front of a building. “This is me.” She reaches for the bag.

“I can take this up for you.”

“No, you don't have to do that.”

“I already walked you all this way, so what's a few flights of stairs?”

She grasps the bag, and her wrist grazes the back of my hand. “My mother would just—” Before she can finish, some kids down the block set off an M-80.
BOOM!
Sara screams and jumps and would've dropped her groceries had I not been holding them, too. Another explosive blows, and Sara throws her hands to her ears and runs up to her steps.

I run behind her, lugging her bag. “Sara, it's OK. They just loud.” She's shaking in front of her door, fumbling for her keys. I don't like M-80s either, but they have her trembling so she can barely slip the key into the lock and turn the knob. “Let me do it for you.” I take the key from her and unlock the door. Sara rushes into the lobby, her hands pressed to her mouth as she forces back tears. “You OK?” It's like I'm not even there. She leans against the mailboxes. “Can I do something?”

Sara finally looks at me. “I'm so embarrassed.”

“Nah, don't be embarrassed. Them M-80s are annoying. Can't stand 'em either.” I lift her bag. “You want me to take this upstairs for you?”

“No, no, no!” She reaches for the bag. “Thank you, though.”

“Ain't nothing.” I watch her go up the stairs. “Sara, listen.” She turns around. I don't know what to say. I want to invite her to come to the T-Connection with me, but I already know the answer to that. If she's this sensitive about fireworks, she probably wouldn't care for a hip-hop concert. “Don't be embarrassed—we all afraid of something. And them M-80s are the worst. Whoever got the idea that fun sounds like a big obnoxious
BOOM
must've been some kind of doofus.”

“I don't think the guy who invented them was really thinking anyone would use them to celebrate anything,” Sara says. “I'll be so glad when this weekend's over.”

She seems to want to say more. I'm hoping
Will I see you around?
I wait, but she just hugs her groceries to her chest and starts again up the stairs. So I say it. “See you around?”

“God willing.” Then Sara smiles. I can't beat that with a baseball bat. As I diddybop home, I sing “Candy Girl.” This must be what Cutter feels like when he's walking the streets high.

When I get to my building, Gloria is on our fire escape. “You're a jerk, Willie!” she yells. “Vanessa saw you with that girl. She says she's going to the Willis Avenue Bridge to throw your buckle into the East River. I said,
Bet. Do it. He deserves it.
”

“Ask me if I care.” And I don't. Well, maybe a little, but only because I'm imagining myself walking down the street holding Sara's hand while she's rocking my buckle.