Midnight (40 page)

I walked over to the pharmacy. I planned to do everything the right way. Yet, there’s no excuse for being unprepared. I knew that.

I stood in the section with the condoms. Of course I had seen the boxes before, although I had never purchased one and never even seen a condom outside of a sealed wrapper. I bugged out when I seen they had flavors, sizes, and styles. I began picking up different styles and types and reading the boxes. I probably looked stupid reading over everything trying to figure it all out. I didn’t care. No one around here knew me. This wasn’t my neighborhood.

“Supastar!” a female voice yelled. It was the running girl who up until now, I never saw except in the dark of the late night. She was standing over at the pharmacist’s counter. I eased away from the condoms and walked over to her.

“What’s up?” I asked her casually.

“You’re too cool for me,” she said. “Here I am, picking up my grandmother’s medicine. I’m trying to hurry up all worried that I might be missing your phone call. And you walk over here like it ain’t nothing.”

“You’re crazy,” I said to her, smiling because she really was funny to me.

She put both of her hands over her eyes like she was shielding them from a bright light. Then she placed one hand over her heart.

“Ooh ooh, now you’re killing me with that smile of yours. Stop it! I can’t stand it!” she dramatized, which only made me smile some more and laugh too.

“Am I supposed to believe that every time you see me, you go crazy like that?” I asked her.

“You can believe whatever you want. But every time I see you my heart starts thumping like this,” she patted her hand against her left titty real fast. I cracked up.

She slid the pharmacist her card and some money. He passed off a white bag stapled shut, sealed with a prescription paper.

“Come on, walk me home,” she said touching my arm. “C’mon,” she added. I extended my hand to carry her books. Easily, she handed me her book bag. I threw it over my shoulder and walked out with her.

It was a nice day. She wore tight pants and a yellow V-neck. I could see her clearly now. She was all curves. There was not one ounce of fat. I took a closer look at her face as she spoke to me. She had pretty lips and deep-dish dimples. In fact, her face was all dimples because she couldn’t keep herself from smiling, and the dimples popped up every time she smiled. Plus she was hyper, swinging her arms, moving all around and even fidgeting while walking.

In the sunlight I saw that she was a natural beauty, no makeup, just grease shining on her combed down swirling bangs.

“I can’t believe I saw you today. Got you all to myself, walking around my way!” she said, celebrating.

“I’ll walk you home but I can’t stay,” I told her in advance.

“Why, because you got a girlfriend?” she asked again, still playfully.

“What does that have to do with anything?” I asked her.

“Okay, so that means yes,” she said. “That’s all right, because we can be friends, right?” she asked. I wondered if
she even needed me to participate in this conversation. It seemed like she could ask me all the questions but was too jumpy to listen for my answers. Or maybe she really didn’t want any answers, I don’t know.

“What were you buying in the pharmacy? It looked like you was about to get into a little something,” she accused, then cracked up laughing, entertaining herself.

“Anyway, now that you know the way to my house in the daylight, you can stop by and see me. You already have my phone number. Or should I give it to you again? Come on, say it with me now.” She started reciting her phone number like it was a song. I couldn’t really do anything but laugh again. This girl was straight comedy. She turned into a stoop with stairs leading into a brownstone row house.

“We walked the long way home ’cause I wanted it to last,” she confessed. “What do you think my name should be?” she asked me, another crazy question that no one ever asked me before. “C’mon, look at me, then make something up. Whatever you say, that’s what you can call me from now on,” she pushed.

I looked at her closely, thought to myself, she could be called, Crazy, Curves, Jokes, Pretty, or the most obvious name, Dimples. I didn’t tell her all that. I just looked at her hair and answered, “Bangs.”

“Bangs?” she asked. “Now that’s wild!” she said. “Okay, only you could call me Bangs.”

I handed her the book bag. She said “Ooh, thank you!” I laughed.

“How old are you?” I asked her.

“Fourteen,” she said. “But I can be older.” She gave me her first serious look.

“Is your father home?” I asked her.

“Why you say that?” she asked me.

“Say what?” I asked her. It was getting confusing.

“I live with my grandmother,” she said.

I didn’t want to ask anything else about her family. It seemed like that changed her happy mood, which so far was the best thing about her.

“Want to come inside?” she asked me.

“Might as well. You two been standing outside not caring if my kidney falls out,” another voice said. I stepped back to trace it. It was a much older woman. I assumed it was her grandmother posted in their front window. The window was positioned at the top of the stairs, so the grandmother could use it to see anyone who was entering their home, no surprises.

“See now you have to come in and meet my grandmother,” she whispered while pushing open her door. We went in.

It was a big but narrow house. There were no lights on inside. The blinds were drawn and shutters closed. Everything on the inside seemed old. It had probably belonged to the grandmother for many years. We walked into the living room. The grandmother appeared out of what I assumed was her bedroom. She closed the door behind herself and stuck her finger up to her mouth as if to ask us to be quiet even though we weren’t saying nothing.

“Grandma, I want you to meet my friend Supastar!” Bangs said.

“Jesus Christ! You kids and these names,” her grandmother complained. Bangs ran out of the room.

“Nice to meet you, Grandma,” I said.

“Oh, you can call me Ms. Kelly. Cut out all this grandma stuff,” she said.

“Pleased to meet you, Ms. Kelly,” I corrected myself.

“Oh, I like you already. Got you some manners. More than I can say for the rest of them,” she said. Her every word sounded tired and heavy, like a complaint.

“The rest of who?” I asked.

“The teens your age, that’s who. The ones I watch running up and down the block acting nutty all day, that’s who,” she explained. I was glad she made herself clear because I was about to dash out of there if what I thought she was saying about her granddaughter was true.

Bangs returned with a tall glass of water and three different pills in her hand. The grandmother grabbed up the pills, threw them all into her mouth at once and gobbled down the water.

I thought it was nice of Bangs to care for her grandmother. Then I remembered that each time I saw her, she always mentioned her grandmother. I erased some of my suspicions and distrust about her and told myself, she’s probably a decent female.

“I guess I’d better go lay down,” the grandmother announced. Then she went straight back to her room and closed the door.

“C’mon in. I stay in there,” Bangs said, pointing and walking over towards a different room across the hall from her grandmother.

Standing in the middle of the living room, I looked around and noticed every door leading anywhere in this house was closed. There were also some steps that led to the upstairs.

“Who stays up there?” I asked.

“No one,” she said casually. “Sometimes my uncle visits but that’s it. No brothers or sisters living here.”

A house with no men, I thought to myself. Here’s a real pretty girl, living alone with a really old and sickly lady. How could this ever be good?

“I gotta go,” I told her. She collapsed on an old dusty couch and began shaking.

“Please don’t go,” she said.

“I definitely gotta go.” I turned and walked right through the door. I swung a sharp left and headed out through that side alley I used before. She cranked her bedroom window open before I could walk past it. She must’ve ran through her house, I thought. She’s always running.

“This is my secret pathway. Who gave you permission to come through?” She was smiling, her chin resting in her hand. I thought it was nuts, a bedroom window facing a brick wall and nothing else, no sky or direct sunlight or trees or flowers or grass. Just a couple of metal trash cans.

“Now climb up and pay the toll,” she demanded, closing her eyes and sticking her lips out.

“You’re crazy, Bangs, for real,” I said walking off through the narrow path, another narrow escape.

“Hey! Catch!” she yelled. I looked back to something hurled flying a crooked path through the air down the alley. I caught it and took a look. It was a box of Magnum condoms.

“You looked like you was about to get into something back there in the pharmacy. Maybe you ought to take these with you. Ya know?” She smiled, pushing her head out of her window as far as it could go without her losing her balance and falling down.

I walked back to her window, probably what she wanted anyway. She pulled back a little, relaxed now, seated in her window, still staring at me.

Her condom box was opened. I didn’t know if it was before she threw it or not. I turned it sideways and dumped the packs into my hand and counted, fifteen condoms. I flipped the box around. It read on front, fifteen condoms. I stuffed the packs back into the box and I handed the box back to her.

“You take it easy, Bangs.” I smiled. She dropped out of the window and onto her bedroom floor, I guessed. Then
she jumped back up immediately and screamed, “You got that killer smile. C’mon say my name one more time,” she begged.

I was already gone.

She wanted me to know that she’s fucking. Now I knew.

I walked straight over to the high school for the scheduled outdoor basketball practice.

Wednesday after situating Naja, Umma and I went on a house search. There were four properties lined up for us to check out. We were smarter now, she and I, than when we first got duped into renting out our apartment in the fucked-up hood we still lived in.

The Bronx house we went to see had stairs that were caving in. The owner described it as a “fixer-upper.” The Brooklyn house wasn’t too bad construction-wise, but it was situated next to an active weed spot, so many different faces kept moving in and out just in the half an hour we were there. The Harlem house was across the street from the projects. Strangely, it was the only house next door to so many buildings. The last house was sturdy but was attached to three gutted-out buildings, no good.

These were the places that listed the prices that we could afford. Umma was disgusted. We both agreed that there was no reason for us to move out of a horrible place into a terrible place. If we were gonna make a move, it needed to be a real improvement or else what’s the point of parting with our hard-earned capital? I was feeling kind of low.

Still, I picked up a new issue of the New York
Daily News
and
The Amsterdam News
as well. In a random bodega on the side of the Bon-Ton bin, I picked up a pamphlet listing “Houses For Sale By Owner,” throughout the State of New York.

I marked down the most decent possibilities presented in those papers.

We sat silently on the floor with all of the other fighters at the dojo. Sensei was up front setting up the class, then walking down the rows of his students, various ages, young and old. Sometimes us young ones were more advanced in skill than the few eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds. But the two old guys who showed up to the dojo regularly, they were not to be slept on.

Ameer was seated one row across from me and one row back. I saw he had a cut on his face, but I could also tell the two-inch wound running vertically under his left eye and beside his nose was in the beginning phase of healing. He had his hands on his knees and they were all scratched up. He had a fight with his girl, I figured, some next, stupid new shit.

Chris tried to gesture something to me but Sensei’s eyes were swift, so he pulled back and waited until class was over.

“What happened, one of them girls flipped out on you? All three of them girls is fucking crazy,” I said to Ameer, referring to Redbone and them.

“Where you been?” he asked me. “You missed dojo Monday night, first time!” he said.

“I had to do something for my moms,” I said.

“I got your money, the twenty-five you lent me last week. And I got some money for Chris to hold towards our car fund,” Ameer said, pulling out a small stack of singles. He counted out twenty-five dollars and handed it to me. He counted out a hundred dollars and handed it to Chris.

“Now what y’all got. I know y’all ain’t stop hooping for paper just ’cause we in the league now, right?” he asked me and Chris.

“We could head to the park right now and hustle something up, but I been mad busy for the past week,” I told both of them.

“We better do that ’cause I ain’t got nothing to put in this week either,” Chris added.

“
Yo, the red team is crazy,
” Ameer said with emphasis, us three walking.

“That’s your team,” I said.

Chris laughed.

“The coach didn’t show up for practice the other night. So as a team we agreed, ‘Fuck it. Let’s run it anyway.’ ” Ameer began telling his new story from the red team.

“So I told everybody, ‘Let’s just run it the same way we been running it when Coach is here.’ So the Red Hook nigga on the team was like ‘Nah, fuck that.’ I was like ‘Fuck what?’ Because he didn’t have no reason to disagree. He just wanted to disagree and shit. So he said, ‘You ain’t the coach and you ain’t team captain.’ So I told him, ‘We about to vote for team captain tonight after practice like Coach said.’

“So he said, ‘Fuck it, let’s vote right now.’ So this nigga asked, ‘Who don’t want me to be the captain?’ So nobody answered ’cause of how he asked the question. So he said, ‘Good then, I’m the captain.’