Authors: Laurie Jean Cannady
About four months before we moved to Lincoln Park, Aunt Angie's second oldest son, Fred, was hit by a truck around the corner from my house. I wasn't there to see it, but Champ described the accident in as gruesome a way as he could. They were riding junk bikes they'd pieced together from parts discovered on walks and journeys in unmanned backyards. Fred rolled down the street on a bike that didn't have working brakes and the truck, which came barreling around the corner, hit him square in the back, vaulting his body into the air, causing his arms to flail, then straighten, and his legs to stiffen against the wind. He must have looked like a skydiver careening toward the asphalt, waiting patiently for his descent.
Fred, at fourteen, had broken his back and would spend the rest of the year in a body cast that covered the terrain of him, all except the toes of his left foot, his right arm, and everything from his neck up. Momma took us to the hospital to see him because doctors weren't sure he would make it. I remember walking the halls of the hospital, blinded by the bright, sterile walls, and the shine of the tiled floors. Momma would have loved it if we could have gotten our bathroom and kitchen floors as shiny as the halls of the hospital.
We made our way to Fred's room, where Aunt Angie sat beside his broken body. She wore a look of relief and worry all in the same face. She jumped up, hugged Momma and thanked her, thanked us all for coming.
Out of all of Momma's brothers and sisters, Aunt Angie and Momma looked the least alike. The large breasts that were a Boone female trademark had skipped Aunt Angie. She was a tall, lean, Boone girl, with a long torso and slow walk that made her look as if she were wading through water with each step she took. If the amount of children a woman bore was an indication of her attractiveness, Aunt Angie was the most beautiful of the Boone
girls. She had seven living kids and two baby girls that died soon after childbirth. The ones that lived had done so by combating the effects of alcohol, so they came into the world rough, fighting for their lives. For that reason, I was afraid for Fred, but I knew he would be strong enough to pull through.
When I walked into the room, I expected to see Fred's light-skinned nose, cheeks, and chin, enveloped in the bush of curls that framed his face and I expected to see the smile that always met me when I went to Aunt Angie's or passed him on the way to Tricia's, but that Fred wasn't there anymore. His face was ashen, and he lay with tubes coming out of his nose, attached to his head, coming out of his one exposed arm, and protruding from his mouth. The curly mass I'd often run my hand through, when he'd let me, was shaven on one side and tubes were worming their way out of him there too. A cylinder contraption pumped air into him, and I only knew that because of the way his shoulders pressed deeper into the hospital bed each time the accordion-like contraption contracted and released. His eyes were slightly opened, but there was no seeing to be done. He lay immobile throughout our visit, never twitching a finger, even when I held his hand, even when Champ talked to him about Transformers, and even when Momma bent to kiss him and mouthed a silent prayer while she palmed his forehead.
After seeing him, I feared death was waiting close by for Fred. Beneath the white plaster covering all of him, I could see no breathing. Just the suck and push of that contraption. I began to panic, stifling tears, as I watched life pushed in and sucked out of my cousin. What if he didn't make it? What would the next day, week, month, and year be like with a bone of the Boone Clan cracked, maybe even missing? I felt helpless, useless, and selfish because I stood with a working body, with air pushing, effortlessly, in and out of me, while my cousin lay, living no longer attached to his body.
It was then I knew how much power I did not possess. I could one day be on that bed, fighting for life in the way Fred was. I could be straddling the line of living and not-living with one wrong step
off of a curve, with one fall too many. Four months later, as Fred recuperated, I hadn't felt that type of loss of control again. That was until I sat in the back of Uncle Bruce's truck and we made that final turn onto Lexington Drive. Then I felt something pop within myself, a snap, a breaking of more than bone, more than skin. I knew as we pulled up to our new house, as the prying eyes of the Lincoln Park projects stared us down, this new fracture would require more than months to mend.
The rows of homes on Lexington Drive looked like the curb between sewage drains. Lines of three to six linked homes were strewn across the park like Legos, separated by alleyways at the start and end of each row. Houses had joined yards, banisters, and I would later learn, walls. Each home had two windows, set apart like eyes on the top floor, and a row of windows, which looked like a grimace, on the bottom. House after house held a face, watching, and I felt each gaze, those ambivalent smirks following me to 21 Lexington Drive.
Shirtless boys, men anchored to corners, and women in shorts tight enough to cause yeast infections cluttered the roadway. From the back of Uncle Bruce's truck, I couldn't see the end of the road we were traveling. It appeared the park had only one way in and one way out.
The dusty air, hovering outside of the truck, burned the back of my throat. The sting of urine filled my nostrils and taste buds as I inhaled before releasing a cough. My body bounced back and forth as Uncle Bruce pulled into the front of our house. It was just thatâa house. I had no feelings of home for that small square structure sandwiched between two other squares.
There were patches of green peeking out of a pond of dirt, which looked as if it would ripple if I stepped into it. The porch held a wide concrete banister shaped more like a kitchen island than the front of a porch, and a rusted metal beam sat perched on the front corner of the porch, fragilely holding all parts of the structure together. I thought about my yellow house with the sun on the inside and I ached for its familiarity. I didn't care if I had to share a bedroom with my brothers, even if they farted all night, and I didn't care if I had to always take a bath standing up. I just wanted to be where I felt safe and where brick, dirt, and dust didn't equal home.
As we walked to the house, three boys ran to us, shoeless and wearing frayed shorts that used to be pants. They didn't even let us get onto the porch before asking Dathan and Tom-Tom if they wanted to play. Momma told them they could go, so they jetted off before she changed her mind. The rest of us unloaded the truck. Because we didn't have couches, a kitchen table, or dressers, moving our things didn't take long. Champ helped Momma with the mattresses while I carried the bed frames. There were dishes, pots, and pans that needed to be transported, but Momma forbid me and Champ from lifting those. All we had left were our clothes, which were stuffed in large, black trash bags we flung over our shoulders and carried into the house. The neighbors watched as we moved our things. I felt embarrassment because we had no furniture, all things a normal family would have possessed when moving into a new home. I wanted to tell the staring eyes the good stuff would be coming in the moving truck and we hadn't moved our most expensive things because we didn't want the project pirates to see how much money we really had, but I kept quiet, counting the patches of green each time I walked the cracked, concrete sidewalk. After we moved the beds into the bedrooms, Momma said she'd take the room on the first floor and put all of us kids upstairs.
Since we only had three beds, Champ had to stay in the room with Dathan and Tom-Tom. Mary and I got the room in the front of the house, while the boys got the bigger room in the back. When I looked out of my window, all I could see were leaves from the large tree planted in front of our house. No rays of sun streamed into my room. The walls were cinderblock, painted in an eggshell white, which gave them the appearance of petrified cottage-cheese. I wondered why there was no drywall, no carpet, no wood. Did the builders think us so destructive that they opted for durability rather than comfort? I lay on my mattress and looked up at the cement ceiling. With slits of gray peeking through the window, cold cement walls on all sides, and hard cafeteria-tan tiled floors, I felt as if I were in prison. I closed my lids, so my eyes wouldn't cry as I wondered how I'd break out.
Our first night in Lincoln Park began with Momma cooking a fried shrimp and potato log dinner. Since it was the best meal we'd had in a long time, it was supposed to prove things were getting better. Champ, Mary, Dathan, and Tom-Tom may have been fooled by the warm saltiness of the shrimp and the way the logs crunched, giving way to the soft, warm innards, but I was not. I forced the hot meat of the potato past the lump in my throat. The oceany smell of shrimp nauseated me and tasted of stagnant water, held still in an ocean that had stopped producing waves.
As we got ready for bed, Momma instructed us to say our prayers and thank the Lord for our new house. I couldn't bring myself to be thankful. I prayed I could enjoy the new house like everybody else. I lay in the bed beside Mary, noticing how big the room felt without my brothers. I listened to Mary's calm breathing and waited for sleep to capture me as it had done her. Instead, I heard three loud pops and I shot to attention in bed. There followed screeching tires and two more pops. I jumped to the window, trying to find where the noise had originated. Then, I heard Momma running up the stairs.
“Get away from that window” she barked as she made her way to it.
I lay back on the bed as Champ rushed into the room.
“Momma, what was that?” he asked.
“You get down, too,” she ordered. “Somebody's shooting.” She whispered those last words to both of us.
Momma slowly stuck her head out of the window as I heard sirens and saw red lights bouncing off the walls.
“Did anybody get shot, Ma?” I asked.
“I can't see anything. The tree is in the way,” she said.
She and Champ went into the empty bedroom, which provided an unobstructed view to the space where the cops and ambulances were parked. I rolled out of bed, followed them, and we three looked out of the window at the unfolding drama. A circle of people clamored around a void where I imagined the victim was.
I heard a man yell. “It's Jermaine. He's shot in the head,” and then a woman's scream cut through the thick of the night. I didn't
know who Jermaine was, but I felt his pain, feared for his life as if he were my Jermaine.
“What have I brought my kids to?” Momma asked as she lowered her forehead to hands gripping the windowsill.
We three stood in the window and watched blurs running around the dark figure on the ground. Everything was blurry, so I couldn't see faces, but I imagined Jermaine on the ground, bleeding from his head, knowing he was dying. I saw him gasping for air and light, only to feel his chest closing and to see nothing but the darkness that surrounded us all. I didn't want him to die without a face, so I gave him one. He was brown-skinned with dark, sparkling eyes and wavy hair. He was eighteen, with muscles and strong legs. I imagined he was someone I would have dated if I had been allowed to. He had a dimple that only showed if he smiled shyly and he didn't have a girlfriend because he was waiting for me.
That night, I watched as he was wrapped in sheets, lifted into an ambulance, and raced away. Someone later said Jermaine had stolen somebody's money and that was why he had been shot. Rumors traveled through the Park that he'd died. Despite those reports, I believed he had lived, and he had gotten out of Lincoln Park, just as I intended to.
I'd never been a fan of rain. In my youth, sun meant clear, crisp days that allowed for excursions away from Pee Wee's panting, Mr. Todd's dead eyes, and my father's absence. Then, the sun equaled freedom and so the rain equaled confinement. But in Lincoln Park, things were reversed. So, I hated sunny days, days when mornings welcomed 90 degrees by 10:00 a.m., days when dust swirled in mini tornadoes, forewarning heat that would slap my face as soon as I stepped outside. The sun's heat never offered solace, never warmed my skin. It opened the park grounds for winos hanging on wooden fences, for bass-filled cars double-parked in lots, for men shooting dice, grabbing crotches, catcalling women and me as I traveled from one place to another. Sunny days meant short tempers, sweat running down naked backs, the possibility of confrontation perched at the tip of each word. People died on sunny days because tempers ran as hot as freshly paved asphalt against exposed feet.
For that reason, I welcomed the day's darkness, which beamed from clouds. When drops poured from Heaven, I imagined God had placed a blanket over the park, as if He had restricted us all to our brick cells and there we remained until He'd washed every crack of every home, street, and sidewalk. I often peered out of my window, counting the raindrops, watching as they clung to the tree in front of my home, wondering if they tickled the leaves as they ran across green skin. Even when the rain held heavy in the clouds above, even when it would gaze down at me, teasing, taunting in its unwillingness to release, the pouring became something to look forward to.
Since rainy days were not as frequent as I would have liked, I found peace in other things, in other people in Lincoln Park. For that refuge, I only needed to look next door, where I found my new best friend, Angela. At twelve, Angela was the pretend Pepa to my pretend Salt of the rap group Salt-N-Pepa. We often sat on
the banisters of our porches, rapping songs like “Push it,” “I'll Take Your Man,” and “My Mic Sounds Nice.” We'd work to perfect the group's moves we'd seen on BET. The Whop, Running Man, and Prep were all dances we mastered in front of my house. Angela and I would bop around in my dirt-filled yard, one which never grew grass no matter how many times Momma made us turn it over and plant seeds. We rapped and danced until one of our mothers told us it was time to go into the house.
There were many reasons for Angela and me to become friends: we were the same age, we both had little sisters, and we went to the same school; but our real connection was our mothers. Unlike some mothers in the park, those who allowed daughters to be out at night and hang on corners in short-shorts and tight shirts, our mothers held on tightly. Sometimes, too tightly.
Angela was a pretty, cherry-brown girl, with hair that stopped abruptly at the nape of her neck. While I had grown more opinionated, becoming fascinated with the anger I could evoke in my voice, Angela was soft-spokenânot entirely shy, but not as loud as I had grown to be. We were the same size and often talked about borrowing each other's clothes, but our mothers weren't having that. They had both instructed Angela and me to stay to ourselves, to mind our own business, but we became fast friends anyway.
Initially, our friendship was uneventful. We sat on our porches talking about boys we liked, giggling whenever one of them looked our way. Mary and Shameka, Angela's younger sister, also became close friends, so we didn't have the interruption of baby sisters we'd grown accustomed to. In each other we were whole, a yin and yang fashioned out of Lincoln Park's concrete walls, but there was a bit of a problem. Miss Betty, Angela's mother, never liked me. Now, I know she never liked anyone, but at twelve, I sensed her disdain each time I walked out of my house and felt her eyes following me. The first time she saw me, I was met with a curt “Hello” as the top of her lip curled under her nose.
Like Momma, Miss Betty was beautiful. She had a small, solid body that swished like a washing machine when she walked. Her
face, an auburn brown, was free of blemishes, and a border made of gray curls lined her forehead. The rest of her hair was dark, dyed black some days and honey blond on others, and it was curled so closely to her head I could see her scalp if I stared long enough. But, I dared not stare at Miss Betty. If I could help it, I never even looked her way.
Despite the cinder blocks that separated my bedroom wall from Angela's, I could hear Miss Betty screaming at her and Shameka at all times of the night. I could sometimes hear the same clamoring against the walls I'd experienced when Momma whipped me. Miss Betty not only screamed, she cursed, and as I listened, I flinched with each “shit,” “fuck,” and “damn.” And when Miss Betty left, when her voice ceased to bang against the walls in my room, I waited patiently for what would follow, a small knock on the wall, beckoning me to listen. Our voices were not thick enough to travel through the cinder, so our knocks became our language. One knock meant “Hello.” Two knocks in a row meant, “Go to the window,” and three knocks meant, “Meet me outside.” I always waited for Angela's taps because I didn't want to make the mistake of knocking when Miss Betty was in the room. I imagined if we were discovered, those curse words, those angry eyes would be focused on me and that, I feared, would crack me in half. But when all went well, and our knocking accurately translated our thoughts, we met at our windows, each hanging onto the sill, talking, sharing, in ways we couldn't in front of the rest of the world.
Since my last name began with a “C” and Angela's with a “G,” we didn't get to spend much time together in school; however, we made opportunities where they did not exist. Sometimes, we intentionally missed the bus from school and walked the three-mile trek from Wilson to Lincoln Park together, traveling through the Jeffrey Wilson projects, the train tracks, and the Dale Homes projects. One such day, we stopped at Mid City, one of the premier shopping centers in Portsmouth, second only to Tower Mall. I had no money and I didn't believe Angela had any either. Still, I was excited about walking into the Bradlees store, one where clothes
and shoes were new, not used and weathered like the ones Momma bought us from Salvation Army.
As soon as I stepped on the rubber gray mat and the automatic doors slid open, the smell of perfume and pinecones massaged my nostrils. When I walked in, I felt as if spotlights focused on my every move. The bright heat made me feel naked. I knew immediately I didn't belong there.
Well-dressed older women, some with blue and some with pink hair, sauntered from aisle to aisle, carefully inspecting earrings lying out in the open, twinkling on the jewelry counter. Jeans hung from hangers and weren't bunched on wooden tables, messily folded into one another as they were at Salvation Army. I eyed the tags on the shirts, skirts, pants, and dressesâprices attached to material acting as barriers between my wants and my haves.
Angela walked in front of me, proud and strong, as if she belonged there next to the biddies inspecting clothes. We made our way to the juniors' department. Once there, I wanted to scream in delight. There were clothes everywhere. Polka dot shirts like the ones rapper Kwame wore, biking shorts with green and neon stripes running down the side of the legs, and Daisy Dukes I'd dreamed of wearing so boys in Lincoln Park would notice me, all hung from walls and racks. Every piece of clothes I'd ever wanted sat in front of me and I could afford none of them. I felt deflated and began to wonder why Angela had insisted we go to Bradlees.
I followed Angela as she walked to the middle of the sea of clothes. We stopped in front of some miniskirts. They weren't like the balloon skirts that obscured my body, which hung in my closet at home. Bradlees's skirts were a tight but stretchy denim, and they came in a myriad of colors. Some were teal green, and some were neon yellow, but the one I set my sights on was hot pink. I ran my hand across the front of it, admired the crisp newness of the material, and looked at the tag, which read $19.99. I let out a long sigh as my shoulders deflated around my frame.
“You want it?” Angela asked. All I could do was nod, paralyzed by the immense longing within me. “Then, let's take it.”
I gasped. Momma had taught me never to steal and that God would get me if I ever took anything that wasn't mine. I'd always believed her because when she caught me stealing, she beat me for God. But, as Angela stood there looking at me, my new best friend with such an encouraging smile, I wanted that skirt more than I feared Momma's words.
I asked, “How are we going to take it without getting caught?” With that question, she grinned, pulled one of the teal skirts off of the hanger and stuffed it under her shirt, patted it flat, and pulled her shirt back down. She continued grinning, continued looking at me as if power exerted between both of us somehow made her invisible. Then she nodded her head at me, “Your turn.”
I grabbed the skirt, pressed it close to me, stuffed it into the waist of my pants and smoothed it against my torso. The cold skirt stuck to my skin and sopped up the sweat that was running from the elastic of my bra. I looked around, waiting to see someone jump from behind one of the racks and yell, “Gotcha.”
“Come on,” Angela said, and I quickly followed. I walked so closely to her I almost stepped on the back of her shoes. We rushed out the front of the store. My body jumped once the doors slid sharply open, ushering us out of the bright store into the bright day. I looked behind me, waiting to see two or three white men chasing us, yelling, “Stop,” but no one came. We kept walking as I looked back, until Angela said, “We're out. If they haven't come yet, they won't come.”
I looked as she, with satisfaction in her eyes, pulled her skirt from under her shirt, unfolded it and began ironing out the wrinkles with her hands. “I'm gonna wear this with that flower shirt I got,” she said. I pulled my skirt out, too.
I'd gotten new clothes before, but that was usually at the beginning of the school year after Momma got her welfare check. After that, we'd visit the Salvation Army or I'd wait until a friend or older cousin passed some of their old clothes down to me. But I'd never had anything new I'd gotten for myself.
Part of me was embarrassed, ashamed for stealing from an invisible victim. I felt like a criminal, running from the law, but excitement commingled with my shame. I felt a hint of pride, a level of power I hadn't felt before. I had a skirt I wanted, one I would have gone into the store, taken up to the counter, and paid for if I'd had the money to do so. But my reality was I did not have that money. Looking at Momma as an example, there was no guarantee I would ever have that type of money, that I would ever be able to do that for myself. What I knew then was I could take what I wanted, have what I wanted, without any real consequences. That dulled the shame I'd initially felt.
After our day at Bradlees, Angela and I became inseparable. We both got boyfriends. I dated thirteen-year-old Kenny, a handsome boy with thick eyebrows and luscious lips who lived in Lee Hall. Angela began dating Charlie. Charlie was older than both of us. At thirteen, sixteen and seventeen year olds were real men; Angela had been the first of us to catch one. I secretly crushed on Charlie, wishing he would choose me over Angela. It wasn't that he was attractive or that he had the El DeBarge look I'd always adored. I wanted him because he didn't live in Lincoln Park. He lived on Frederick Boulevard in a real house that I often passed when I rolled our dirty clothes in a wagon to the Laundromat behind Charles Peete field.
He was black like we were, but he wasn't poor, two characteristics in my mind that had become synonymous. I often imagined lounging the days away in Charlie's home instead of on my porch looking out onto the grassless yard in front of my house. But Charlie loved Angela and he loved her harder than I'd ever seen a man or boy love a girl. She began sneaking out of the house in order to be with him. Miss Betty's tirades grew louder and longer when she'd catch Angela sneaking in or out of the house.
It was then my knocks went unanswered and I'd wait, wondering what she was doing on the other side of the cinderblock. When I spoke with Angela, she always had some adventure, some excitement
to relay to meâwhether it was Charlie pressuring her to have sex or the fact that they were arguing because there was another girl that liked him. Angela seemed more like an adult to me than my own mother, so I began learning from her what it meant to be a woman.
And then the day came when she described, in detail, the loss of her virginity. Angela had proclaimed her love for Charlie as he had for her, and that meant he should have all of her. “It hurt,” she said, “But, it felt good too.” I couldn't imagine those two descriptions residing in the same experience, but I listened, sitting on my side of the porch as she explained the night she shared with Charlie. “He pushed in hard and there was a little blood, but I didn't cry.”
I was proud of her even though I hadn't been there to witness her accomplishment. “I think I'm gonna be with him forever,” she said. Because of the fortitude in her eyes, I had no reason to believe she wouldn't. I wanted the adult love Angela had with Charlie and not the kiddy love, the grinding, the shy kisses, and the heavy petting I shared with Kenny. But Kenny and I didn't have the same opportunities. Kenny lived too far away. Whatever intimacy we shared was limited to hugs in the gym or “feeling” sessions in the back of the classroom. Angela was getting real kisses, real embraces. I envied most the escape Charlie's home had become for Angela. She was away from home, which was what I wanted to be.
Soon after Angela lost her virginity, her relationship with Charlie changed. She began to change too. She was faster, always having somewhere to go, someone to see, and that someone wasn't always Charlie. They often argued and at times came to blows. Angela found new boys and some men to occupy her time. Charlie would find his way from his two story home, with flowers in the front, to my dirt yard, inquiring about Angela, trying to find where she was and whom she was with. I remained tight-lipped, whether I knew where she was or not, whether it was her mother or Charlie asking.