Team Seven (21 page)

A flock of geese flew overhead in a sharp V, honking off their clown horns. Ma looked up at the geese and smiled and started drumming the steering wheel as she sang along with the Kirk Franklin playing on the radio, “No more cloudy days, they’re all gone away.”

I sighed as the light turned green. I looked at Nina as we rode whizzing past the seagulls perched on the black steel fence outside Franklin Park Zoo like skulls on sticks. Every couple of houses, little clusters of black kids sat on their stoops hefting Bibles like suitcases, looking spit-shined and pristine in their mini-tuxes and sequined dresses, waiting their turn to get a dose of the Spirit. As we pulled into Grove Hall, a line of suited black men, all dark-shaded wearing black top hats, strolled across the crosswalk to enter the big mosque.

The number 28 bus cut us off as we pulled into a red light, coughing a trail of black smoke. Ma pumped the brakes, unbothered, and kept singing, “I feel like I can make it! The storm is over … now!”

The red light changed to green, and I shook my head as we took off, wishing I believed it was true.

Nana Tanks was asleep when we got to the hospital. Ma talked to the doctor as me and Nina sat quietly beside her bed. The doctor said she’d be released to a rehab facility in a few days and that she’d be able to come back home in a few weeks. After the doctor left the room Ma said a prayer and rubbed some prayer oil on Nana Tanks’s forehead and we left too.

When we got home from the hospital, Ma was still acting
weird. She walked into the living room and turned on the afternoon gospel on WILD AM 1090 and sat on the couch still wearing her hat, coat, and gloves.

Ma sang along with the chorus and I heard a loud thud in the living room. I stood up from the kitchen table and she was on her knees, arms stretched toward the ceiling like she was outside on a cliff welcoming the rain or signaling a plane. Her earrings sparkled in the sunlight and her eyes were closed. I could hear her whispering to herself, “Yes, Lord. Yes, Lord. I receive it. I receive it.”

The song faded out and the radio cut to a commercial. She snapped out of it and stood up. I didn’t even look at her. Every couple of months Ma gets “born again” and charges up on some new divine crusade. She gets her mind set on an idea, any idea, and if you ask her questions about what she’s doing she says, “Being led by the spirit,” and walks away. When she’s like this, there’s no reasoning with her. It makes me want to chew off my own fingers sometimes when all I’m looking for is a straight answer.

The last time she pulled this crap, she started waking me and Nina up at five thirty in the morning to sit in the living room, drinking water and praying as a family while old tapes of Bishop Jackson preached in the background. Her crusades never last. After a few weeks, she tires out and things fizzle back down to normal. It’s weird, I know, but according to her, if God said so then that’s all that matters. Long story short, I could tell she was charging up. With that misty look in her
eyes I knew she was about to start acting all brand-new about some life-changing idea. I just hoped it wasn’t too drastic.

Everyone gets high, it don’t matter the method, one way or another everyone’s gotta ease up the pain some way, and Ma’s fix comes every Sunday at church. I looked up the hallway and Nina rolled her eyes at me and gave me the finger. The family crisis truce from Nana Tanks’s being in the hospital was officially over. We saw her and she was fine. I gave Nina the finger back and she yelled out “Ma!” and I swung my hand down and banged my wrist on the table.

“Yes, Nina?” Ma called back.

Nina laughed and stepped inside her room.

I cradled my forearm between my belly and thigh, and Nina replied, “Never mind.”

Ma shrugged her shoulders. “You know what, Andre?”

“What?”

“You need Bible study, Andre.”

She pointed at me and I didn’t answer her.

“A Friday night Bible study. It’ll be good reason to keep y’all reckless behinds off the streets causing trouble. We’ll host it here in the living room.”

Here she goes talking ’bout “we.” I wanted to shake her. A Friday night Bible study hosted at our house? She’s crazy, with the way roaches graze all over the place like lazy cows and stampede into the walls and the floorboards whenever anyone turns on the lights or steps into a room. I don’t even like having company over. When the house is quiet, sometimes I can hear the mice squeaking in the walls or scurrying around playing jail tag.

I wanted to ask her if she was trying to ruin my rep at school and around the way but I already knew the answer I’d get.

“Don’t worry, Andre, you’ll see.”

Again I didn’t answer her.

She grabbed a staple gun, a stack of rainbow-colored construction paper, and a black marker and went into her room. She came back out an hour later wearing a hoodie, sweatpants, and jogging shoes. A rectangle, clearly the stack of construction paper, bulged from her stomach. She gave me a wide-mouthed drunk-on-Jesus smile and strutted into the hallway. She tilted her head down and glanced up, slowly sliding her sunglasses on all dramatic.

“Going for a walk to cover the neighborhood in prayer. Be back soon.”

She flashed me the peace sign and walked out the door humming an old hymn to herself.

Maybe if our block was a warm circle cake, it would be just as easy as walking around the neighborhood humming a hymn, waving her arms in the air like magic wands, and her prayers would frost over everything and it’d be all good. The beef between me and Nina would be over. I’d be debt-free and we’d all be at peace, drinking lemonade and smiling. One big happy barbeque and nobody would get the stank-eye for wrapping a plate in tinfoil to take home to eat later. It’d be sunny and beautiful, but Ma ain’t dumb, she knows shit don’t work that way. She can feel the beef brewing on the block, heating up the sidewalks, she knows it’s gonna be a hot summer.

After she left I rode my bike to the store to get some munchies. She walked around the neighborhood every day, I knew her route and avoided it. I peeped the first flyer for the “Battel Bible Study” as soon as I hit the parkway on my way back home from the store. Ma must have lost her goddamned mind, putting our house phone number on the flyer too. She’s so
corny, she even drew a little lighthouse under the words “Battel Bible Study: Coming soon … so tell a friend!” She wrote it all in bubble letters. I looked up the block and the flyers rainbowed at me from every telephone pole I could see up the parkway.

I could already hear the words “Church Boy” ringing in my head.

That’s what everyone is going to call me, fucking “Church Boy.” I ripped that sign off the pole and rode home, promising myself that the first person to clown me to my face would get an unholy beat down. There were so many signs. I wanted to pull them all down but the last thing I wanted was to run into Ma and for her to see me touching the signs.

When I got home I dropped my munchies off in the kitchen and headed out to the backyard and ducked off into my burning bush to blaze a little before Ma got home. After Papa Tanks yoked me up inside his toolshed I didn’t smoke in there anymore. On the other side of our backyard there are some tall pea-green hedges, they’re hollow in the middle and at the base there’s smooth dirt. The bush hid me from most of the daylight. It makes a good spot to smoke and chill.

I sat in the cool dirt and rolled my blunt. I could hear the weedwhacker buzz of Reggie and the Team Seven niggas on the corner running dirt bikes and four-wheelers up and down the street, playing cat and mouse with the jakes. I was bumping to my favorite Outkast album,
ATLiens
, on my headphones. I finished rolling my blunt and “Wheelz of Steel” came on. I sparked up, inhaled, and blew my smoke up in the air. Andre 3000 sang the chorus,

For whatever reason the words made me think about Tunnetta. The chorus reminded me of that “Feeling Good” song she sang to me before the first time I kissed her. I still remember it’s by Nina Simone, though I’ve never actually heard it.

No matter how loud I turned up my headphones the buzz from the corner seemed to keep getting louder. I wiggled the cord of my headphones, trying to get the full sound to come through to my right ear, and a fly started bopping in and out of my face. I swung a few times and it went away.

As I smoked, my mind started doing Hula-Hoops. With all these urges boiling up inside me it’s been hard to act decent. There’s so much I used to say I’d never do that I’ve done. Smoke weed. Smack Nina. Play bitches out like I ain’t got a sister of my own. Back then I thought I’d really grow up to be one of the “good niggas” running shit, but I guess we all gotta learn to deal with regrets, don’t we? It’s like the urges consume me and I don’t trust myself not to just act the way I feel. It’s all I’ve been doing lately. No matter how much I tell myself I know better or I’m not going to do something, it’s like in the heat of the moment the urges take over. I know it’s me doing these things, not them, the urges, but sometimes I wonder who or what’s to blame, ’cause what the hell is wrong with me then?

I guess all I’m saying is, I just ain’t been too proud of myself these days.

It’s funny, ’cause Pop and all my ain’t-shit uncles been crossing my mind a lot lately. I wonder if they regret the way they all done fucked over any twinkle of brightness in their dark-ass worlds or if they really just don’t give a damn. For me it’s a mixture of both, because it’s not like I don’t know right from wrong, it’s just when it really comes down to it I feel powerless over myself sometimes. In the heat of the moment
I don’t think too straight and it’s not like I don’t know I been fucking up lately.

I blew a few smoke rings and watched them spin. The fly came back, but there were a couple of them this time, flying in circles around my head. I swung a few times and missed, but finally I smacked one to the ground and it landed in a ray of light breaking through the hedges. I watched the fly’s little legs kicking up at me, begging for a mercy kill. I leaned in closer and wound up my hand to squash it. At this point it sounded like the buzz from the corner was starting to overtake the Outkast. In the little spot of daylight I looked and realized it wasn’t a fly in agony, it was a pissed-off bumblebee. It turned over on its side and darted up and stung my neck. I jumped to my feet and head-butted the entire hive to the ground, gaining the whole swarm’s attention. I dropped the blunt and started running away and swatting at them but they were everywhere.

I tossed my whole hoodie off as I ran through the backyard. When I got inside the bathroom I swatted at the air making sure all the bees were gone, and they were. In the mirror it looked like I was getting the chicken pox. My whole upper half throbbed. I ran some cold water and sat in the tub letting it wash over me until I didn’t feel like I was sitting on a cactus.

Once I gathered myself I moved to the kitchen table with a bag of frozen peaches snugged to the back of my neck, two value-sized packs of pork chops freezing over my chest, and a family-sized bag of steak fries cooling my back.

I was about to read my favorite comic in the Sunday funny papers,
Family Circus
, when Ma got back from her walk and barged straight into the kitchen. She took off her sunglasses and tossed the staple gun on the table. She looked at me and I
looked at her. She was sweating, with that look in her eye like she’s not even inside of herself.

“Fix your face. What happened to you?” I looked away and didn’t answer her. She laughed. “Well, the neighborhood’s covered in prayer.” She chuckled again. “It is done. They’ll come and you will see.”

I kept looking away and didn’t answer.

I rustled the paper and got back into my bag of Doritos and dropped a few Skittles in my mouth. I head-nodded yes, and didn’t speak. She sucked her teeth and walked off to her room. I finished my chips and opened a pack of coffee cakes. Ma called out to me from her room but I didn’t hear what she said.

“Huh?”

She didn’t answer me.

“Ma?”

She said something again but I couldn’t hear her, so I ate the rest of my coffee cakes, then opened up a Mounds and a Twix bar. If you eat them together they taste like them caramel Girl Scout cookies in the purple box.

“Andre, get up from the table and clean your room. And take all that food off your chest and stop being ridiculous.” I heard her this time but I was chewing and opening my Mountain Dew when she said it so I didn’t answer her.

“Andre!” I rustled free some gummy bears.

“Huh?”

“You gon’ stop ignoring me. Now get up from the table and clean your room. Your father gets home soon and we need to start keeping the house clean. And put my damn pork, peaches, and French fries away. What’s wrong with you?”

I said okay and put the food back in the freezer and walked into the hallway feeling the stings pulsing on my neck and
chest. Nina stepped back out of her room in a red skirt and a black tank top.

“Bye, Ma. I’m going to have dinner up at Stanley’s.”

She stepped out in front of me and turned on a dime so her long-weave ponytail could smack me as she walked toward the door. I wanted to snatch it off, but didn’t with Ma nearby.

“Tell Miss Myra I say hello,” Ma said as Nina slammed the door, yelling back, “Okay.”

I walked into my room to take a nap.

That Sunday the Bible and the bees marked the start of a really bad period, only darkness to come.

Lately every day feels the same. I wake up hazy-headed, still riding last night’s high with a clamp of pressure weighing down my eyes. It only takes a few seconds for the gut punch of cloudy-belly to cramp and bite at my sides, forcing me to hold still. My munchies-soured stomach burps and gurgles. It’s always in this lull that I find myself wondering: Andre, who the hell are you becoming? Soon enough the cramps start to loosen and I ask God to help me. I swear to Him that once I get myself out of this mess with Smoke and Reggie I’ll quit everything. I’ll quit smoking, hustling, and even fucking Tunnetta behind Beezy’s back. Not that I feel bad, I’m just saying. Beezy did it to himself.