Show and Prove (6 page)

God willing.

P
op and I head out into the mugginess to the Brook Avenue station. He walks over to the token booth and knocks on the glass. The Hispanic lady looks up and smiles at my father like he's Billy Dee Williams. “Derrick!”

“Hey, Sonia. You're looking lovely today.” It felt weird watching Pop flirt with Mama, never mind some other woman.

Sonia tugs at the collar of her uniform. “This old thing?” They laugh. “Is that the son you're always bragging about?”

“It sure is.” Pop puts his hand on my shoulder. “This is Raymond.”

“I was expecting a little thing, and here he is, this tall, handsome young man.” I flash her a smile, even though she's stating the obvious.

“Had to give the boy something, and we know it wasn't gonna be smarts. Those he got from his mama.” Then Pop launches into his usual spiel whenever he introduces me to someone. “Raymond goes to Dawkins. Full scholarship. They just don't accept anybody. Any school that's good enough for the sons of senators and CEOs is lucky to have my boy.”

“You must be so proud,” says Sonia. Then she says to me, “And you should be proud of your father.”

“Yes, ma'am, I am.” The train's coming, thank God. “You hear that, Pop? We gotta go.”

“Taking my boy to watch the Yankees put them Sox through the wash.”

Sonia laughs. “Have a great time.”

Pop reaches for the gate and pulls it open for me. Whenever I'm with my father, we ride the subway for free. If he doesn't know the token clerk personally, he flashes his MTA ID. Being an elected union officer, though, he's always recognized, and the clerks are grinning and nodding as we enter the system through the exit. But Pop warned me that I'd better not ever jump the turnstile.
You beat the fare, I beat your ass.
Funny thing is Dawkins kids do it for kicks, even though seventy-five cents for a token is chump change to them.

In minutes we get to 125th Street and transfer to the uptown 4 train. When the train elevates, I jump to my feet so I can watch the stadium get closer. “You always did that as a kid,” laughs Pop. “Soon as we got out that tunnel, you'd be on your knees looking out the window. Now you're big enough to just walk to the door.”

At the stadium there are almost as many security guards as there are fans. It takes us a half hour to get through the gate. Pop sprang for some decent terrace-level seats at $8.15 apiece. Then he buys us hot dogs and sodas. “You want a pennant?”

“Pop, I'm too old for that.”

“I'ma get you a pennant,” he says, and walks over to the souvenir booth. When Pop comes back with the pennant and two new baseball caps, I'm glad he insisted. I had no idea how worn and filthy with sweat my old cap was until I held it against the crisp new one. Not ready to give it up, though, I stick it in my book bag.

We join the crowd drifting up the ramp toward the terrace. Pop says, “Maybe before the summer's out, we can go to Shea and catch the Mets, too.”

“That'd be stupid fresh!”

“Say what now?”

“That's good, Pop,” I laugh. “Real good.” I almost don't say what I think next. He'll mention her to people like he just did to Sonia, but we never talk about her. “This reminds me of when Mama took me to see
The Wiz.
You know how in
The Wizard of Oz,
the Wicked Witch sends the flying monkeys after Dorothy and her friends? In
The Wiz,
the flying monkeys are a motorcycle gang, and they chase Dorothy and 'em through Shea.” It was a special day between just Mama and me. She even kept me home from school to take me.

“Had to work that day, but I remember.” Then Pop wanders into a memory of his own that doesn't belong to me. He smiles at me, and I smile back at him. We both hurt, and we both know it. “Did I ever tell you I was covering for a friend at the Coney Island Complex when they were shooting that movie at Astroland?” He chuckles. “Even got a peek at Miss Ross. Almost didn't recognize her without all that hair.”

“You got to see Diana Ross in person?” Nike and I were talking about finding some girls and going to her free concert in Central Park in August. If he's still throwing me shade, maybe Pop can take off from work again. If he's not on strike.

“Just a glimpse. Not that I ever told your mother. She would've given me so much jive, and she might not have taken you to see nothing. You owe me.” Our hurt smiles turn into pained laughs. “Y'all don't say
jive
anymore, do ya?”

“No, that's some ol'
Sanford and Son
stuff.”

“You shut your mouth, boy. That Redd Foxx is a comedic genius. That skinny dude you kids think is so funny? Jerry Murphy? Freddie Murphy?”

“Eddie Murphy, and he's the joint!”

“Your little Eddie Murphy ain't got nothing on no Redd Foxx.”

“Nah, Richard Pryor is the deffest one of all.”

Pop slaps me on the shoulder. “Well, all right now!” He hooks his arm around my shoulder and hugs me. “There's hope for your generation yet.”

We push with the crowd toward our seats, and I get excited when I see the Yankees warming up on the field. “Pop, look, there's Willie Randolph!”

“Yeah, and Dave Winfield's over there.”

“Word? Where?”

“Right there.”

Nike can stay mad at me forever, and the Sox can murder the Yankees. I'm never going to regret this day. “Could we hang out after the game and see if I can get some Yanks to sign my pennant?”

“Whatever you want.”

The announcer asks us to stand for the national anthem. Pop takes off his hat and belts out the words. I just mouth along as Qusay's words about the Black man's plight in this hypocritical country ring in my head. Yet I look at my father singing his heart out, and I wish I could feel that way again. Pop complains about Reagan this and Koch that, but “The Star-Spangled Banner” still means something to him. It would to me, too, if I had never gone to Dawkins, and I don't know if that's a curse or a blessing. Still, today is our day, so I force myself to sing along like I'm a guest star on
Soul Train.

We retake our seats and wolf down those hot dogs in ten seconds flat. Pop says, “I got this feeling, son, that today's game is going to be a big one. Our boys gonna make the play-offs this year.”

“Word.”

“You know that today's Georgie Boy's birthday,” says Pop, pointing at the owner's box. “And Tricky Dick is right up there with 'im.”

“Really?” Not every day the former president comes to the Bronx, never mind Yankee Stadium. “That's why all the security hoopla. I know it's Independence Day and all, but no politics today, OK, Pop?”

“You right, Ray-Ray.” Pop hasn't called me that since my eighth-grade graduation, when I announced I was too grown up for such a baby name. He patted me on the back and said,
All right, my little man,
but Mama told me that even when I had a son of my own entering high school, I'd still be her Ray-Ray of sunshine. Before she let go, the last thing she said to me was
I'll always be with you, Ray-Ray.
“So tell me this. You got a squeeze? What happened to that skinny little Puerto Rican girl who lives next door? Why she don't call or come by anymore?”

“Cookie's not my girlfriend!”

Pop is all teeth. “But you like her.”

“I can't stand that crab.”

“That sweet little girl? Used to clean us out, selling those Girl Scout cookies. Who needed crack with them caramel and coconut ones your mama loved so much?”

“The Samoas.” Those were my favorites, too. “I don't mean crab cranky, I mean…” Knowing that I can talk to my father about these things doesn't make it easy. Since my mother died, we've fallen out of practice.

“Ugly?”

“No.”

“Dumb?”

His guesses make me laugh. “No.”

“Fast?”

“Yeah, that's it! Cookie's kind of fast. Easy.”

“And how do you know that?” Pop's getting salty. “Have you—”

“No!”

“Good. I know you're at that age where the hormones are amok and everything, but let me tell you this. If you get some girl pregnant before you're capable of being a provider so I have to raise that baby, guess what? I'm raising that baby an orphan. Got it?”

“Sheesh.” Pop and I have already had this conversation. I had this conversation with Mama, too. Nana tries to have this conversation with me every time a girl calls, which is why I stopped giving out my number.

“So where'd you get the idea that Cookie's fast? Boy, don't believe everything Nike or any of your buddies tell you about what he did with some girl. Nine times out of ten, he's lying. And that tenth time? He's exaggerating!” Before I can tell Pop about that time in eighth grade when Cookie let Javi walk her home from school and showed up the next day with his hickeys, he says, “Just because a girl shows you interest doesn't mean she's fast.” Then he laughs. “You might not be here right now if your mother hadn't made the first move.”

“What?”

“You don't know that story? OK, your uncle Nathan and I—”

“Not Nathan. Naim. That's what he wants to be called now, Pop.”

“Don't tell me what to call my little brother. He'll always be Nate Baby to me. So anyway, we were playing handball at Clark Playground. They only got that one court over there, right? So your mother and her cousin show up. We're playing, showing out, trying to impress the girls, you know. Eventually, your mama comes up to me and says,
When're you guys gonna cop a breeze, because my cousin and me, we've been waiting for our turn for over an hour, and you dudes don't own the court.
”

“That's cold,” I laugh. I love the expressions my parents used when they were my age in the fifties. “And you guys thought they were checking you out.”

“So you know how we men are,” says Pop. “Got to save face.”

“Play the role.”

“That's what y'all say now? We were playing the role, all right. Nate and I get to talking smack.
Why don't you girls go play double Dutch or Miss Mary Mack or something. Leave the handball to the men.
Bernadette said,
I don't see any men. All I see is two boys making fools of themselves.
So we challenge the girls to a game. Loser can never show their faces at Clark again. I should've known we were in trouble when your mama hands me the Spaldeen and says,
You serve first.
”

“Y'all lost?” I can't believe it. “No, you let them win.”

“As God is my witness, Ray-Ray, your mama and her cousin tanned our hides in front of half the neighborhood.”

“Embarrassin'!”

“Yeah, at first.” Pop grins from ear to ear. “But after the game, your mama says to me,
I'll let you play on my court if you treat me to White Castle.
”

My father and I sip our overpriced sodas and remember Mama the way she would want to be remembered. Not skin and bones lying in bed but caramel and fire in a black leather jacket. “So Mama was the one with all the moves.” Now that I picture her full of life, I'm not surprised.

“And maybe the apple doesn't fall far from the tree,” says Pop.

“What do you mean?” Unlike Nike, I don't really rap to girls. For something that's supposed to be fun, it's too much work. When I like a girl, I just become her friend until something clicks. Sometimes I lose out to Nike this way, but then I figure the girl really wasn't for me in the first place. For the most part, I have no problem with the ladies, and because I'm no playboy like Nike, the ladies never have a problem with me. Except for Cookie, who really isn't a lady, no matter what Pop says.

“Maybe the next Mrs. King is going to be a gal a little ahead of her time.” Then Pop points to the scoreboard. “Look at that, Ray-Ray. Third inning already and Righetti has yet to give up a hit.”