Darius & Twig (7 page)

Did the boy, swimming farther and farther away from the safety of the shore, think the dolphins would be there for him? Or was he just finding a way to give up?

And why had I given him a bad leg?

“What we need to do,” said Reverend Allen as he stood at the podium at Thursday-night services, “is to show the world that no matter what the world says, there are people in this community who are
still right
with God! Can you
hear
me?”

“
Still
right!” came from the small gathering.

“Who are
still right
with God!” Reverend Allen repeated. “They may not be right with the electric company. They may not be right with the gas company. And they may not be right with their husband or wife, but they are still right with God! And when you're right with God, nothing else matters except for a little inconvenience.

“I remember an elderly sister I went to visit about this time last year. I found her sitting up in her kitchen in the dark because she hadn't been able to pay her light bill. I said, ‘Sister, it's a shame you have to sit up here in the dark. Let me go out and buy you some candles.

“She reached over, put her hand on mine, and said, ‘Reverend Allen, it's just a small bother because my God can see in the dark!'”

“Amen!”

“We got people in this community who will always be right with God and some people who need a little help. That's why I want to get some church members to that party the mayor is throwing this Saturday night. All I want you to do is wear one of the armbands we wear for parades. We have enough of them. And just walk around and let yourself be seen by the young folks. Just let them see that God is making his presence known even at something as light as a little October celebration. We don't want the headlines to read that our community did worse than the community downtown, or that there was any trouble up here in Harlem. From what I hear, they had quite a few young men patrolling the streets during their party downtown to make sure that nothing went wrong. We're going to show up, and show out for God, and ask his holy blessing on our community and on the celebration. Can I get an amen?”

He got several amens and then the choir started singing.

Brian and I didn't usually go to Thursday-night services because it was a school night. I didn't mind going to church, I just didn't want to go all the time, especially at night. Mama had started going when the store cut her Thursday hours.

When services were over, Reverend Allen said, “Anyone who needs to talk, please tarry and pray, please stay.” Mama said she was staying, but that me and Brian could go on home if we wanted.

“She said she keeps falling behind no matter what she does,” Brian said. “I asked her what happened, and she said nothing happened, that she just keeps slipping back all the time. She said she might start looking for an extra job.”

I knew she wouldn't, but I didn't want to say that to Brian. Mom wasn't making it and I knew she wasn't. Brian was beginning to see it, too, but I didn't want to spell it out for him. Not yet.

“We need to hit the lottery,” my brother said.

“You got some money to play the lottery?”

“Okay, first we rob a bank.” My little brother was letting his imagination loose again. “Then we lay low for two weeks, then take all the money we get from the bank and buy a kazillion scratch-off tickets. Then whatever we win with that, we buy two kazillion lotto tickets and hit the lotto and get rich.”

“Suppose we get caught robbing the bank?” I asked.

“Then I say you made me do it and I go free while you go to jail forever,” Brian said.

“Good plan,” I said.

The happiness, and relief, I felt when Twig won the race stayed with me. Brian kidded me about it, and Mom, as she does, began to worry about it.

“You can't live somebody else's life,” she said, frowning.

Okay, I knew that. I knew that Twig's winning wasn't mine to own, or to keep. But it
was
mine to hold up and say, “Hey, this is a win for all of us.”

Brian came with us to Marcus Garvey Park for the party.

We watched people setting up vending stands, and soon smoke and scents from all over the Caribbean competed for air space. There were a few guys, old brown-as-coconut guys, playing chess at some of the concrete tables. Black heavy-chested women found spots on the benches, and the steel band—I was surprised it was all girls and women—set up their instruments on the grass.

The mayor showed. She pulled up in a limousine, dressed in jeans, a bright orange sweater, and heels that made her taller than the black guy I took to be her bodyguard. A sound crew set up a mike, and the mayor said she was glad to see so many people out.

“We've got a lovely, lovely day,” she said. “A
New York
kind of day!”

There was some cheering, and she went to the first vendor she saw and bought a hot dog.

The steel band was good, and I wondered if they were from the neighborhood.

“They sound like professionals!” Twig said.

They played some corny music, make-believe calypso, which everybody seemed to like, and a few couples got up to dance.

“We should have brought some hot dogs and cooked them to sell to people,” Brian said.

“You can't cook,” I said.

“Why you always have to get so technical, man?”

We watched for a while without talking and then Twig told us about a phone call he had received.

“Some racing official dude wants me to run in Delaware,” he said. “I don't think I want to do that. I asked Coach Day about it and he said it was a bad idea, too.”

“He just said it was bad?”

“He said they were trying to build up the Delaware games to rival the Penn relays. But if they bring in a lot of the top runners and I have a bad day and come in fourth or fifth, then it would just look like I couldn't compete against the top guys. But if I just did really well in the high school meets, and added that on to beating Jameson, I would get more attention from colleges.”

“What do you think?”

“I don't know. I like to run, but I don't like to plan strategy and stuff about what I want to get out of it,” he said. “Running should be, like, fun—like the way you look at it. You and me felt the same way when I ran. We were just glad I won. In a way we—I was hoping for somebody to come along and say, ‘Hey, maybe we can get you into a college on a free ride.' But even if that doesn't happen, I still think I'd like to compete. What do you think?”

“I'll go down to Delaware with you,” I said.

“Yeah, man!” Twig put his hand up, palm down, and I put mine out, palm up. He slapped my hand hard. “I knew you were going to say that! I want to run against the good dudes. I do!”

Twig was glad I had understood him. I was glad, too. I could look at him and see what he wanted. Twig wasn't down with college. He would have worked in his uncle's store if he could still train and run. For Twig the race was what it was all about, testing himself and seeing what he could do. That whole bit was so on the money. He didn't have to worry about what anybody else was doing, just himself. Maybe it wasn't ambitious enough for some people, but for Twig, it was life.

A yellow city school bus came and a group of kids—they looked about nine or ten, and all dressed down—got off. They lined up two by two and marched into the park.

“Yo, Brian, here come your peeps!” Twig said to my brother. “Only they got their wives with them.”

“They look Latino,” Brian said. “They must be
your
peeps.”

“You can't be Latino until you're a teenager,” Twig said.

“Twig, that is soooo stupid!” Brian said.

“I know.” Twig smiled.

Some Parks Department people met with the kids and the women with them and spoke for a moment. Then there was a lot of nodding and the women had the kids stand in a circle while they were setting up another sound system.

Three white girls—they looked like high schoolers—were sitting on the grass near us, laughing and drinking sodas. I remembered what some people were saying about white people buying property in Harlem and taking over the community. The girls didn't seem like much of a threat.

I saw a few people from the church, wearing their armbands as Reverend Allen had asked them, just walking around smiling and saying hello to people.

“My uncle thinks I should buy new track shoes,” Twig said. “He doesn't know anything about running, but he just needs to get his mouth into everything.”

“Is he going to buy them?” Brian asked.

“He said he would,” Twig answered. “But he can't tell the difference between a good pair of shoes and a wack pair. You need to find shoes you're comfortable in. If you got to run according to the way the shoe feels, then you got a problem. All he knows is Air Jordans and he saw them on television.”

“That's dumb,” Brian volunteered.

“Yeah, but it's family, too.”

“Let him buy you a pair like the ones you won the race with,” Brian said.

“Yo, check this out!” Twig said. “I think the steel band is going to play for the kids.”

The kids from the school buses, the boys in dark suits and the girls in dresses, gathered in front of the steel band.

“Ladies and gentlemen.” The woman speaking was short, dark, and a little pudgy. “I would like to present to you the young dancers from La Vals de Brindis. Our sound system isn't working today, but the Jamaican Lasses will try to play for us. Thank you.”

A black woman took the microphone and said that the Jamaican Lasses would not just
try
but that they would
play
.

“And our first number will be ‘The Blue Danube Waltz,' by Johann Strauss.”

The band started playing the waltz and the kids started dancing.

“Yo, man, they're great!” Twig said. “I've heard of these kids. They do ballroom dancing and they're, like, eight years old.”

They were frigging great. It was as if a group of very short classical dancers had suddenly appeared from another era. They danced as if no one were there except their partners, as if no one had the right to come between the young boys moving gracefully in a circle they held in their minds and the young girls trusting themselves to their arms.

The kids changed the nature of the party, turning it suddenly into something magical and beautiful.

Pop! Pop! Pop!

A scream!

Down! Down! Everybody down!

Oh my God! Oh my God! They're shooting
.

A gray figure, hood half covering his face, running across the park. He turns, stumbles, lifts his arm
.

Pop! Pop! Pop!

There are people running everywhere. Women are pushing children out of the way
.

The sound of a police siren. A whistle. The kid dancers are crawling on their hands and knees back to their bus. A policeman stops them and boards the bus to check it out. He clears it and then motions the kids on
.

A circle of black women, their arms outstretched, surrounds the children
.

Then, silence
.

Down the street there are guys in hoodies, their pants down around their asses, running
.

People on the ground are beginning to get up
.

The shoot-by is over
.

So is the party in Marcus Garvey Park
.

The falcon soars over the drabness of the city, hardly noticing the occasional bits of color in the streets below, the cars, the dark figures it knows are people. The falcon has no anger, no rage. Anger and rage demand knowing, demand looking into faces and feeling what another creature feels. No one does this in a war. In a war, one finds what one must destroy, and then one swoops down for the kill. There can't be pity, or weighing of arguments, and never understanding. No, never understanding
.

I am the raptor, and you are the prey. I will swoop from the heavens and kill you. As you thrash about in agony, I will eat your flesh, and I will not hear your cries, the feeble beating of your wings against me, the quivering of your legs as I tear at your heart
.

I am the raptor, and you are the prey
.

“So, is she going to be okay?” Mom was carrying a dozen eggs in a plastic shopping bag.

“Yeah, the bullet hit her shoulder, but she's only two—not even two—and the doctors don't even think it'll leave a scar.” Mr. Watson sat on the stoop, his coffee in a cup beside him. “I just wonder what kind of people got to bring a gun to a party.”

“Well, God was looking out for her,” Mom said, adjusting the package in her arms to carry upstairs. “That's a blessing.”

“We need some civilizing!” Mr. Watson said. “We don't need no more blessing and no more scribbling on the walls about how we love another dead black child!”

“Brian home?” Mom to me, avoiding Mr. Watson's anger.

“Yeah.”

“Supper's going to be ready in a half hour,” she said.

I watched as Mom went into the house.

Sammy Hines from the barbershop came over and leaned against the banister. “Hey, Darius, how you doing, youngblood?”

“I'm good,” I answered.

“Did you know that Watson here thinks these steps are going to get up and walk away if he don't sit on them?” Sammy asked. “That's why he's here every day.”

Old friends talking old-friends talk. Sweet.

“I'm sorry if I get so mad,” Mr. Watson said, “but you know how old this mess gets? Was a time an old dude like me could look at his life and think it wasn't so bad, because he had made a little bit of a path for some young folks. Didn't even make a difference if the young folks knew it or not—an old man could remember what he'd been through. You know what I mean?”