Darius & Twig (2 page)

The library is where I live, really live. On 145th Street, I eat and sleep and go to the toilet, but it is only in that library, among the books, that I feel comfortable. I go inside, climb the steep steps, find a book, and lose myself for hours. I feel safe—as when I imagine myself flying over the square and rectangular Harlem rooftops, a predator looking for something evil to consume. But if the demons have been too much with me, even the books can't shelter me completely and I stop my reading to fight against them. It is always the same fight: I am the predator, they are the lowly tormentors, and in the end, I destroy them.

Sitting in Mr. Ramey's office, knowing what he was going to say long before the words fell between us, I could feel my balls shrivel up and my throat go dry. I wanted to plead my case to him, to say that if I didn't get a scholarship, it would mean taking my place with all the other guys on the block who look like me. Young, black, dangerous unless proven otherwise.

Twig rarely reads. But he told me that when the demons bother him, he puts them on a track. He watches them run ahead of him and then slowly and surely runs them down, catches up with them, and then speeds past, imagining how they feel knowing that they are losers. I think Twig is at his best when he is running, when he is dreaming of being in races, when he dreams of winning, when he dreams of holding a trophy above his head.

In a sane world, we would be heroes. Teachers would applaud as we walked into the school. There is the smart one, the one who wants to be a writer. And there is the runner.

But we have enemies. In our separate ways, we have moved away from the mob. They have settled for less and we are still hoping to be more. We haven't created a huge space, and we haven't escaped the huge shadow they cast. Our scent is no different from theirs, but we have separated ourselves. I think Twig is on the brink of being a great runner. One day, I hope, I will write a poem, or an essay, or a novel, that will change hearts. But the mob doesn't want us to be different. They want us to find our spots on the corner, or on a stoop. They beckon to us and tell us that everything will be okay.

But I'm terrified to be like them, to drift off into a world that is so unreal. I watched too many times as my father slurred his words and mumbled about the life he had once hoped for. I see my mom sitting in the darkness wondering what has gone wrong with her life.

“You've got a good head on your shoulders, Darius,” Mr. Ramey said. “But you haven't really been doing the work, have you?”

I didn't answer. What did he want, an admission? Should I have bowed my head and said, “Oh, I know I don't deserve anything, sir”?

“And why do you have to go away to college?” he went on. “You could work during the day and go to school at night for a while.”

“No,” I wanted to say. “I can't take care of myself and my mother and my brother and still wrap my head around the books. I'm not that strong. The only thing I have is a mind, and some writing ability. Shouldn't that be enough?”

When I left Mr. Ramey's office, I saw Midnight and Tall Boy down the hall. Put faces to my misery and they would have them.

Midnight, from his incredibly stupid heart to his heavy-legged walk, more stumble than stride, is garbage. He is slow, mean, a bully. If he can make anyone's life miserable, even for a few minutes, he jumps at the chance. The teachers hate him but give him as much room as they can so they don't have to deal with him. They look away when he hits a smaller kid in the hallway or takes someone's money. His eyes, almost the same color as his skin, make him look like a child's drawing of a “brown” teenager.

Tall Boy is his homey. Dull-faced, slow, with light, mottled skin that looks like he might have some kind of sickness, he has only his record of being in juvenile detention to brag about.

“I been in jail in Jersey City,
and
in the Bronx!”

Idiots don't know they're idiots, which is unfortunate.

Tall Boy is crappy, a follower, but nobody is as much of a shithead as Midnight.

The bell rang and the juniors were going to have an assembly. The auditorium was noisy as we shuffled in. I didn't want to sit with Twig because I felt so bad, so close to crying. I sat a few rows behind him.

I watched as Midnight and Tall Boy looked around for a place and then settled behind Twig. We had just finished saying the Pledge of Allegiance when Midnight started kicking the back of Twig's chair. I knew he would do it all through the assembly. Twig turned once and Midnight mean mugged him. That's the kind of stuff he does. Just bother people. Just add some annoyance to another person's life. Just remind Twig that there's nothing he can do about it.

Midnight's name is Ronald Brown. He calls himself Midnight because, he says, that's when they execute people on death row. You're supposed to fall out over that little piece of crap. I didn't fall out.

Tall Boy's real name is Lawrence Lester. He's a fairly good basketball player but doesn't have the discipline to play on a team. Everybody keeps talking about how much potential he has, but I don't think he has anything going on except a lousy attitude.

Both of them add up to nothing.

Twig's real name is Manuel Fernandez, but his grandfather gave him the nickname Twig. When we were in the fourth grade, Twig and I discovered that we did stuff. A lot of people do one thing or another, but Twig was interesting because he did a
lot
of stuff. We both played ball, he liked to draw, I liked writing, and we both tried out for the tennis team. Twig made the team and I didn't, but I practiced with him. We were nine when we met and now we're both sixteen and we're still best friends.

Twig can run. He isn't much of a sprinter, but he started running the 800 in middle school and moved up to the mile and cross-country in high school. He can run really long distances, and over the summer he ran an open cross-country race against people of all ages. He came in third even though some of the men in the race were in college. Mr. Day, Phoenix's track coach, was knocked out by Twig's running and asked him to join the track team. They were going to mention him at the assembly, and I was happy about that.

“Before I begin talking about our expectations for the new year,” Mrs. Nixon, our principal, started, “I would like Mr. Day, our athletic director, to say a few words.”

Mr. Day was about fifty, balding, and walked with his shoulders hunched. He was supposed to be half black and half white, but he just talked and acted like a black dude. He came out and started talking about how good the Frederick Douglass Academy teams were and everybody started booing. Frederick Douglass Academy, or FDA, was our biggest rival in just about everything. The fact was, they had got some kind of athletic grant from the city and thought they were special. Anyway, after the booing died down, Mr. Day spoke.

“We've always done well against FDA in track and field,” he said. “We were always neck and neck with them in total point scores, but in the years we were edged out, it was always in the distance races. This year, we are adding a very good young distance runner to our squad, Manuel Fernandez. Manuel, please stand up.”

Twig stood up and almost everybody gave him a hand. Everybody but Midnight and Tall Boy. Both of them put their hands over their mouths and laughed.

Why does laughing replace so much for some people? If something wasn't funny, why were they laughing? It was as if they could somehow make things less important, or people less important, by just laughing at them. Could I write a poem about Tall Boy? How would I avoid the clichés? How would I avoid such adjectives as
stupid
and
gross
? What could I say on Tall Boy's level that he would understand?

When Twig sat down, Midnight started kicking the back of his chair again. It really made me mad, but I knew I couldn't beat Midnight in a fight. Neither could Twig.

Mrs. Nixon's talk was all right—how she expected each of us to do our best and how she knew how good our best was. I was just happy with Mr. Day for having Twig stand up.

If you knew Twig, you would like him. Even if you just met him, you would think he was okay. He looks like an average kid until he smiles, and then his whole face lights up and you just want to smile with him. Twig is two inches shorter than me. He's five eight and a half and I'm five ten and a half. He's thin, with light tan skin, dark hair and eyes, and a wide smile that makes him seem always pleased with something. My mom says he would have made a pretty girl. He told me that when he was born, he was premature.

“My mom said she was expecting me in October and I came along in August,” he said. “I guess I couldn't wait.”

“You didn't have anything to do with it,” I said. “It's like . . . nature or something.”

“Too many people are born in October, anyway,” Twig said. “You don't hear about a lot of people being born in August.”

“I saw Midnight and Tall Boy kicking your chair in assembly,” I said.

“They don't bother me.” Twig's voice was low as he looked away.

“They bother me,” I said.

“Yeah, they're like a blister on your foot,” he said. “Even if they don't hurt when you start a race, you know that sooner or later they're going to show up.”

Peregrines hunt live birds, diving from great heights to strike prey with their talons. Sometimes the peregrine bites the neck of its victim to ensure death. Although usually found in the wild, many peregrines now live in cities
.

“So what we need to do,” Twig said, “is get Midnight and Tall Boy outside in the playground and have a shootout. We'll be space invaders or something, and we'll challenge them to a duel.”

“I'll shoot Midnight first,” I said. “And then Tall Boy will panic and start moving away.”

“Right,” Twig said, “and then I'll shoot Tall Boy in his knees and he'll fall to the ground. But first you see his shadow kind of folding up, and then you see him reaching for his knees as he falls.”

“Yeah, he's in a lot of pain, but he thinks he's going to make it,” I said. “He's figuring out how to make a comeback, but then, way up on the top of a tree,
Fury
sees him.

“That's the name I'm going to give my peregrine falcon,” I said. “I like that name. There's a lot of
emotion
in it.”

“
Fury
with cold eyes and talons of steel!” Twig said.

“With no mercy in his heart!” I said.

“He swoops down and snatches out Midnight's eyeballs in one pass!”

“Midnight's blind and reaching around for something to hold on to, but he finds nothing,” I said.

“Did you see he pushed something down the back of my collar today?” Twig asked.

“What?”

Twig took a small piece of paper from his pocket and showed it to me. It had one word on it:
Faggot!

The falcon rests
.

“Aunt Dotty was over.” My eleven-year-old brother, Brian, was lying on his stomach across the bed, moving checkers on the board on the floor.

“What did she want?”

“To see me,” he said. “She had some money to give me.”

“She gave you some money?”

“That's private information.” He pushed a checker across the board with his forefinger.

“If she gave you money, then she must have left some for me, too,” I said. “She doesn't just give one of us money.”

“What you need money for?”

I went over to the bed and sat on him.

“Get up, Darius.” Brian started trying to push me off. “You could kill me like this!”

“How?” I asked, bouncing.

“You could bust my heart, man!”

“How much did Aunt Dot give you?” I asked.

“Ten dollars, fool—now get off of me!”

“So I'm supposed to get five, right?”

“You were, but I spent it.” Brian rolled over, holding his chest. “I needed some oil sticks.”

“And you spent the whole ten dollars on your art supplies?”

“No, I only spent five, but then I noticed it was
your
five.”

I jumped on him again and started bouncing on his back.

The thing with Brian is that he likes to wrestle around but sometimes he gets too much into it and then he starts to cry and Mama gets mad at me. She knows I probably didn't hurt the tadpole, but she just gets upset if one of us cries.

I finally got my brother to rescue my five dollars from his closet and hand it over. Then I wondered if there had been more money.

“If Aunt Dot left more than five for me, I will personally snatch your heart out of your chubby brown body and beat it with a hammer.”

“You want to go to Mickey D's?” Brian asked.

“No, I'm going downtown with Twig,” I said. “He's going to run all the way from 59th to 110th Street.”

“I can do that,” he said. “If I didn't have to wait for Mama to get home, I'd go with you guys and beat both of you uptown.”

“You couldn't beat your shadow if you were running toward the sun,” I said.

“What's that mean?” he asked.

“Figure it out,” I answered.

I took my bike out of the corner of the kitchen, where my uncle Jimmy had put up a hook that kept it off the floor. “Tell Mama I won't be late,” I said.

“She said
she
was going to be late,” Brian said. He was looking under the cushions on the sofa, probably for the remote. “Home Depot is having an inventory night. Or maybe it was an inventory sale—I don't know, something. Tell Twig I said hello and that I could beat him any day of the week.”

I hoped she wasn't going to lose another job.

As I locked the door, I thought about Brian racing Twig. Brian couldn't beat anybody running. My brother is just barely five foot five without shoes, with short little legs and toes that point out when he walks. I even started calling him the Penguin for a while, but Mama said it made him feel bad. There are a lot of things in our family that I think could make him feel bad, especially her drinking and crying jags, but I don't say anything to her about it. He spends too much time by himself playing video games, I know.