Fire in the Streets (8 page)

He rubs his hands on his white uniform apron. “What can I get for you ladies? Ice cream?”

Emmalee spills the coins onto the counter. “Three single scoops, please,” she says. She smiles and there's this pause while he stares at her like a little puppy.

Patrice and I hang back, let her do her thing. So far, so good. Sometimes she's too shy and we have to swoop in and help out.

“Sure, sure,” Jimmy says after a minute, fumbling for the scooper. “What flavor?”

“Mint,” I call.

“Vanilla,” says Patrice.

“Strawberry. Can you put mine in a sugar cone?” Emmalee says.

Patrice nudges me, but I'm already grinning. Really, really good.

Jimmy takes a sugar cone and leans into the freezer. “A sweet cone for a sweet girl” is what I think he says, though I'm not sure he meant us to hear it.

I bite my tongue, elbow Patrice.

Jimmy scoops the strawberry first. He gives her a big double scoop, despite the fact that we only paid for singles. Like usual.

“You look pretty today, Emmalee.”

“Really?” she says. Her fingers touch the edges of the freezer glass.

“Yeah. Real pretty.”

“Thanks, Jimmy.” She reaches out for the cone. It's a slow exchange, fingers brush. Her cheeks are flushed. You can't tell on him, but I'm betting it's the same.

He lets go, finally, and scoops the mint and the vanilla into regular cones for us. Double scoops. Not as big, but we don't begrudge.

We hop forward to grab them. “Thanks.” Fast grab, quick retreat. Handful of napkins and we are out the door.

“Bye, Jimmy.” I use my sweetest, drippiest voice.

“Yeah, bye, Jimmy,” Patrice echoes in kind. It appears he barely hears us. Half laughing, we retreat to the street, perching on the bench against the window, while Emmalee lingers by the counter, licking her cone.

L
ET'S GO BACK TO THE OFFICE,” I SAY,
once Emmalee finally leaves Jimmy to his job and we've wiped our fingers clean.

“I don't wanna work,” says Patrice.

“It's important,” I tell her.

“I know,” she says, “but we never get to do anything fun anymore.”

“We just had ice cream.”

Patrice rolls her eyes. “But we spent two hours
working
in order to get it.”

“School's starting so soon,” I say. “We're not going to be able to go there as much.”

“Yeah, we'll just be all cooped up indoors someplace else.”

“Not the same.”

“Yeah-huh. Plus we have PE class tonight. What, do you want us to be all Panthers, all the time?” Patrice knows perfectly well that's what I want.

Emmalee butts in. “Okay, let's go to the park, but while we're there I'll quiz you on the platform. Good enough?”

Patrice shrugs. I put my hands on my hips. “Fine.”

We accept Emmalee's compromise by spending the afternoon in the park, working on memorizing the Black Panther Party's Ten-Point Platform and Program. When we become full members, we have to be able to recite it at will, so we figure we should get a jump on it.

“What we want. What we believe,” Emmalee prompts. “Number one?”

“‘We want freedom,'” I quote. “‘We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community.'”

“‘We believe that black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny,'” Patrice says.

“Good. Number two?”

“‘We want full employment for our people.'” I like this point especially, because it means Mama would always have a job. The second half is trickier, but I take a deep breath and do my best to say it. “‘We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the white American businessman will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community
can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.'”

“You got it, word for word,” Emmalee says, sounding impressed.

I smile. We already talked about this one, what it means. I remember, because I want it most. A “high standard of living” means always having food and shelter and a warm coat in the winter. The whole paragraph together means that instead of having a bunch of rich white bosses who hire and fire people and make all the money, big businesses should be owned by the people and everyone should share the profits. Raheem says this would be hard to make work in America, but the Panthers want us to try anyway.

“Number three?” Emmalee says.

Patrice pipes in. “‘We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our Black Community.' But I forget the second half. . . .”

“It's long,” Emmalee says. “It says America owes black people money because of slavery. Let's do number four.” She already has the platform memorized, 'cause things like that come easy to her.

“‘We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.'” That means good apartment buildings like the one Patrice lives in, or a real house like Sam's. Not like the stinking projects where we live.

“Number five?”

Patrice and I glance at each other. “Um . . .”

“‘We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society.'” We all know this is Emmalee's favorite. Anything to do with books.

“Right. Number six is: ‘We want all black men to be exempt from military service,'” I recall. It's easy to remember the ones that would change things the most for me.

It makes me shiver when I think about the brothers from the block who went to Vietnam. Some of them come back looking like they got ghosts in their eyes. The rest come back in boxes. We have older guys on the block who were in the black regiments in the world war, right on the front lines of everything. One guy in our building is missing a leg, got it blown off in Omaha, which sounds like it might be in Nebraska but is actually a beach in France. I don't want Raheem to be like that.

Plus, it's like Raheem says, we're fighting a war right here, too. For every foreign war wound I can think of around the neighborhood, there's at least one guy got beat down or shot up by a cop or jailed for doing nothing. “‘We believe that black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us,'” I whisper.

“Number seven: ‘We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people,'” Patrice says.

I go straight into, “Number eight: ‘We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county, and city prisons and jails.'”

“I don't know,” Patrice jokes. “Some brothers need to be locked up.” We laugh, but it's only kind of funny, because the ones who go to jail aren't always the ones who deserve it.

“But . . .” Emmalee nudges us, through her smile.

“‘We believe that all black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.'”

I think about Bucky again, remembering how I took one look at that all-white jury and felt so sure Bucky was a goner, no matter how I testified. We fought for him 'cause it was right, but no one really thought he'd get off. How wrong is that? For the system to be so messed up that we were all sure Bucky was going down even when we knew he didn't deserve it.

“Almost there,” Emmalee says. “Finish it out, girls.”

“Number nine,” Patrice recites. “‘We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.'”

It's true. If Bucky had had an all-black jury, I wouldn't have worried about a thing. Because they would know how it is. White folks, even the nice ones, don't always want to believe how bad it really gets for us.

This is why I believe in the Panthers, from my blood and from my soul. Because they know how I feel and they say it out loud.

“Number ten: ‘We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, and peace.'” I put my fist in the air, the Panther salute.

P
OLITICAL EDUCATION CLASS IS CROWDED
this week. I'm sure Leroy, up at the front, is happy about that. The room is hot as a boiler, so it's surprising that people are staying.

After the stifling air, and the crowd, the first thing that gets my attention is Sam. Of course he's here, he's always here. He raises a hand to wave at me. I wave back. Patrice grabs my elbow. “Oh, no, no, no,” she says. “Don't start.”

“Don't make us read you the list,” Emmalee whispers.

“Read it to me,” I say, because I see empty chairs near where Sam is sitting.

“You have to give him time to be sad,” Patrice says. But it's been four months.

“When you were seeing him every day, you always came home crying,” Emmalee says. That's because I was sad, too, over Steve. I still am.

“When you got too close he just got mad,” Patrice adds.
It's true. There were some very bad days between us. Days when he yelled at me or ran away. He was no kind of boyfriend for a while there.

“There are lots of better boys out there.” That one is just not true. I have a feeling it will never be true.

But I let the girls win me over with the list. We sit at the opposite side of the room from Sam, an unfortunate by-product of which is I can still see him. Sitting there folded into his jacket, despite the heat, with his head bowed, listening.

Leroy takes the stage, which really just means he stands at the front of the community room, but this presence comes over him right when he's about to speak that makes wherever he's standing seem like a stage.

First he talks about membership, for anyone who's new. “The rules for membership are posted in the back,” he begins.

I've read the rules. It took me a long time, because there are twenty-six of them. Things like: Panthers cannot drink on duty, or while armed. People who use drugs will be expelled from the party. Panthers cannot harm or take anything from members of the community. Panthers must participate in political education classes. Panthers must never resist arrest, but must know their rights under the law so the police can't take advantage.

“When you join, you will be trained to load, handle, and fire weapons,” Leroy says. “This is a serious responsibility of membership—to defend your home and family, as well as the community, against assault from the police. It's an executive mandate from our minister of defense, Huey, remember.”

The crowd is listening, but rumbles go up at different points throughout his speech. At the mention of Huey there is a bit of a swell. I find my glance cutting over to Sam, again and again.

“You will swear an oath of commitment to the party and to the people. This means promising to live a life of service and sacrifice, pushing past personal considerations for the benefit of all. Whether you die tomorrow or a hundred years from now, this is a lifelong oath.” Leroy pauses, letting the weight of that pronouncement settle over the room. I've heard him say it before, and you can tell by the completeness of the silence that follows that everyone is thinking hard about what it all means.

“Also, the neighborhood free health clinic is now up and running,” Leroy announces. People clap and cheer. “Get your checkups there. Get your kids tested for sickle-cell. Get your medicine there. If you're sick, go there.

“Everything's free, but if and when you can chip in, do that so we can keep it going, you dig?”

Murmurs throughout the crowd.

“All right, let's get started with the class. Tonight we'll talk about freeing our minds from the way white people have trained us to think since slavery. We'll talk about different ways of seeing the world, and how we as a community can start to change the way we are viewed as Americans, as black citizens, as Panthers. . . .”

I'm supposed to be listening, but what I'm thinking about is Sam. And the girls' list. And how all the points on it seem to grow less and less important every day.

A
FTER ALL THE PANTHER CLASSES AND
work this summer, regular school seems doubly boring. I'm not loving how I have to fill my head with this white man's history. Now I know the truth. Makes it hard not to shout out in class, hard to keep my fist out of the sky, with them talking about how Christopher Columbus “discovered” America and how all the blacks were written into the laws as two-thirds of a person. Well, they've stuck to that story but good.

I'd rather drop out and be a full-time Panther, but Jolene says I got to keep on. Get good grades and a diploma, go to college, land a good-paying job so I can take care of myself and never have to worry about nothing. “And donate to the Panthers,” I say, and she laughs. “Right on.”

Plus, she says learning the wrong makes you know right better when you see it. I don't know about that. I think I already know the wrong; something new is what I'm craving.