Joshua: A Brooklyn Tale (3 page)

CHAPTER 3
 

Joshua was his Christian name. But on the streets of Bed-Stuy he was called “Peanut,” a title bestowed upon him by “Big Bob,” one of the neighborhood bosses. While “Peanut” was a reference to his having had light brown, peanut butter colored eyes, just being given any street name at all was considered an honor. It was an indication of Big Bob’s admiration for him and his ability to deliver packages quickly and discretely. He had been doing this since he was eight-years-old, and had never inquired about the contents of the bags Big Bob gave him, nor the envelopes he was supposed to bring back in return for them, or why Big Bob needed a young kid to do this sort of thing. Joshua never even peeked. He just did what Big Bob wanted, and gladly accepted his compensation.

“Good job, Peanut, my man,” Big Bob would say whenever Joshua handed him an envelope. “Good job!” he would repeat, holding his free hand out for Joshua to slap him five. Always the same script.

True to his name, Big Bob was big, at least three hundred pounds. His round head had no hair, and his face was mean: wide bloodshot brown eyes, deep pocked skin, and a sharply trimmed goatee. He wore several thick gold bracelets and necklaces, with flashy bright colored shirts and trousers, and a wide-brimmed white hat—straw in summer, felt in winter. Joshua emulated Big Bob, and was naive enough to believe that Big Bob cared about him. He even fantasized from time-to-time that Big Bob might actually be his father.

“You think that fat ugly hoodlum on the street is your daddy,” Loretta reacted when Joshua mentioned the thought. “Your daddy’s bad, but he’s not that bad,” she exclaimed. That was all she ever said on the subject of his father. “And you stay away from that man, Joshua! I best not be hearing you got anything to do with him!”

So Joshua worked for Big Bob just about every day, and hoped his mother wouldn’t find out. He began playing hooky from P.S. 44. A quick buck seemed a lot better than wasting his time with the three R’s.

“Don’t you worry none about school, Peanut, you’ll learn all you need to know right here on the streets,” Big Bob had once said. “You see all the things I got for myself, my man? Well, I didn’t get them studying no science or history. No, I got what I got from the streets.”

And “things” he did have. First, there was his fancy green Cadillac. Then, the jewelry. And of course, the women. Yes, Big Bob, as ugly as he was, had quite a harem. They hung around him day and night, constantly massaging him in one way or another. Joshua watched all this, and couldn’t wait till he grew up, till the time when he could be just like Big Bob.

One day Loretta received a call from the school about Joshua’s truancy. It didn’t take long before she learned what he’d been up to. There was lots of gossip in the old neighborhood, and she had her share of informants.

Joshua was walking along the avenue on his way from making a delivery, with one of Big Bob’s envelopes in his pocket when she came up behind him. “Joshua Eubanks! What in the Lord’s name have you been doing?” she yelled as she grabbed his jacket. She pulled him aside, and held him against the wall of a building.

Perspiration dripped down her face. Saliva appeared in the creases of her mouth. “I hear what’s been going on with you, how you ain’t been going to school, and how you been hanging around that bad man. What have you been thinking? You wanna be a hoodlum like him? Are you that stupid?”

Joshua stood there, mute and paralyzed, his right hand in his jacket pocket, clenching the envelope. “Now, you’re coming straight home with me, and you’re gonna stay there till I tell you!”

“But Mama…”

“Don’t you ‘but Mama’ me! You do what I tell you!”

She took his arm and led him home. His right hand was sweating in his pocket, still grasping the envelope. Soon, Big Bob would begin to wonder where he was. Big Bob didn’t take kindly to anyone being late, especially with business.

They came to the front door of their building, and Loretta dragged him up the stairs to their apartment. When they got inside, she pointed to his bedroom and said, “Now, you go on, and stay there till I tell you.”

“But Mama, I have to…”

“You do what I tell you!” she shouted. “From now on, you’re gonna go to school, do your work, get good grades, and stay outta trouble.”

He stopped and looked at her, afraid to speak.

She pointed toward the room again. “Now go on,” she said.

He obeyed.

From inside his room he heard her make a phone call. He held his ear to the door but couldn’t make out what she was saying. He thought about the envelope in his pocket. There was no window in his room, no escape, no way to get to Big Bob. He thought of telling her about the envelope, but decided it was a bad idea and would only make things worse.
Who
knows
, he figured,
she
might
even
go
to
the
police
. Then he’d be in even deeper. He had to find a way out.

After a few minutes, he heard her hang up the phone. A little while later, it rang. She answered it, talked some more, and hung up again. Then, after a half hour, it rang again. A short conversation. He thought for certain she was calling the police, and could feel his heart racing. If he was right, both their days would be numbered.

He heard her footsteps coming towards his room, and stepped back as she opened the door. “Now you listen here,” she began, “and you best listen good. I want you to get all your clothes and stuff, whatever you got, and put it all in these bags.” She handed him four brown super-market bags—just about enough to fit what he owned. “You do this right now, you hear?”

“Why I gotta do that?” he asked defiantly.

“First, cause I say so. Second, cause I say so.”

“You sending me away someplace?”

“I’m taking you away someplace.”

“Where?”

“That’s none of your concern. You just do what I tell you!”

“Who you been talking to on the phone?” Boldness.

“That is also none of your concern.”

“You ain’t been talking to the police, have you?” Anxiety.

“There some reason I should be?”

He paused. Silence.

“I’m sure there is,” she said confidently. “But I don’t wanna hear about it. I don’t wanna hear nothing right now. You just start packing, that’s all.”

“I don’t wanna go no place else!”

“What you want don’t much matter.” With that, she turned and started walking out.

“When we leaving?” he asked.

“First thing in the morning.”

Oh
shit
, he thought. What was he going to do now?

It was the middle of the night. Loretta was asleep on the sofa-bed in the living room. Joshua got dressed, put on his jacket, and quietly opened the door to his room. Slowly, so the hinges wouldn’t squeak. But they always squeaked, and this time was no exception.

“Who’s there?” Loretta asked from her bed. “Joshua, is that you? What’re you up to?”

“Nothing, Mama, I’m just hungry.”

“This is no time to eat, it’ll be morning soon. Get yourself back to your bed!”

“Yes Ma’am,” he uttered, submissively turning back to his room. He closed his door, reached into his jacket pocket, took out the envelope, and stared at it, wondering what to do next. He would wait another hour, then try again. He had to try again. He was sure Big Bob already had some thugs out looking for him. He had to get the envelope to Big Bob before Big Bob got to him. He had to explain things.

The door burst open. The light went on. Loretta’s voice. “Joshua, what’re you doing sleeping in your clothes like that?”

He looked himself over, barely awake, eyes squinting from the brightness, and suddenly realized he’d fallen asleep. He felt a surge of terror as he frantically started feeling around the bed for the envelope.

“What you looking for, Joshua?”

“Nothing, Mama,” he said, continuing to survey the sheets and blanket. “I just thought I saw a bug.” He started slapping his hands all over the bed. Quick thinking. There were always bugs in this house.

“Well, never mind that. A cab will be here in about fifteen minutes, so get yourself together.”

“Fifteen minutes! We leaving in fifteen minutes?”

“That’s what I said. It’s about time you start hearing me.”

He ran his hand over the outside of his jacket pocket, trying to be inconspicuous, and felt the envelope inside. “Don’t I even get a chance to say good-bye to my friends?”

“You mean those hoodlums? They’re not your friends, and you’ll never be seeing any of them again where you’re going.”

“Where’s that?”

“We’re going to live in one of Mr. Sims’ buildings over in Crown Heights.”

“We’re gonna live with white folk, Mama?”

“Yes we are. And if you’re smart, maybe you’ll learn something from them.”

“But Mama, how they gonna let coloreds like us live over there?”

“Don’t you worry. Mr. Sims has everything arranged. You just get your stuff together and cut this talking.”

“Was that who you were talking to last night, Mr. Sims?”

“If you need to be knowing, yes.”

“And he’s gonna do all this for us? Why he’s gonna do that?”

“Mr. Sims is a good man. And, I keep telling you, this ain’t none of your concern. The car’ll be here in ten minutes. There’s some cereal left on the counter and milk in the ice-box. You best be ready on time.”

Loretta went back into the living room to finish her own packing. Joshua was still sitting up and looked around the bedroom in which he had lived for the past nine years. It was about as modest as a room could be. The walls were bare and the only furniture aside from the bed was a rickety old wooden chair and table that Mrs. Sims had given Loretta when Paul’s room had been redecorated. Joshua’s clothing and belongings were kept in the closet, except for his shoes which were under the bed.

He would miss this place. Perhaps another child might still have harbored hopes of staying. Not him. His mother never wavered.

He removed the envelope from his pocket and stared at it. He had always honored Big Bob’s privacy, but it didn’t seem to matter much now. He would be a marked man anyway, so why not see what for. He stared at it a few more seconds until he heard Loretta yell, “Joshua, what you doing in there? I don’t hear you packing and the cab’s due to be here any minute.”

His heart began to pound as he tore open the flap, removed the contents, and counted five one hundred dollar bills. The pounding intensified. He had never imagined what so much money would even look like, and here he was, holding it in his hands. He heard Loretta coming towards the room again, shoved the money back into the envelope, and stuffed it in his pocket. At that moment, notwithstanding his fear of his mother and Big Bob, he felt a strange surge of power. He was rich; he had five hundred dollars. Little did he know, just how much that would one day cost him.

So they moved to their new home in Crown Heights, only about a mile away from where they had been living, yet worlds apart. Loretta would finally have her own bedroom with a genuine queen size bed provided by none other than Mr. Alfred Sims. No more sleeping on the convertible in the living room for her. And Joshua’s new room was much bigger than the old one, with a window to boot. There was even some furniture: a twin sized bed, a desk, a chair, and even a full mirror attached to the back side of the door.
How
convenient
, Joshua thought, as he looked in the mirror and slid the envelope behind it.

Joshua also started at a new school, P.S. 167, on the corner of Eastern Parkway and Schenectedy Avenue, and was one of six black kids in a class of twenty-five. Jerome Williams, the super’s son, was one of the others. Within no time, the two boys were the best of friends.

Besides their color, however, they had little in common. Jerome had never known the likes of Lewis Avenue, and had grown up accustomed to being a black kid in a white man’s world. His family was from Alabama, and had come north eight years earlier. After staying with relatives in East New York for six months, Mr. Williams found the job as super and the family moved to Crown Heights.

Outwardly, Jerome was soft and refined, always deferential to white people, whether teachers, classmates, or just folks on the streets. Considering Jerome’s father’s position, Joshua understood why he acted that way toward residents of their building, but with strangers, it was another matter. Joshua was perplexed, and suspected that Jerome was more bitter than met the eye.

Jerome was short, fat, and clumsy. The Italian kids ridiculed and beat on him regularly. And he took it. When he came home with a swollen eye, fat lip, or whatever, his father would blame
him
and finish the job. Jerome took that too.

This was how it was, until one brisk fall afternoon. Joshua and Jerome were walking home from school along the east side of Rochester Avenue, and a group of Irish kids were hanging out at the entrance to Lincoln Terrace Park. Joshua counted five of them, and assumed they were probably looking for trouble. Jerome, obviously thinking the same thing, grabbed Joshua’s jacket sleeve to pull him across the street. Joshua resisted.