The Old Neighborhood (34 page)

I closed my eyes and prayed again for Jo
s
é
. Suddenly, I realized his body was probably just across Bryn Mawr—right there over the Rose Hill Cemetery walls that stood 30 feet high like concrete prison walls. His body buried six feet deep and rotting in his best suit—a suit his family probably got from a thrift shop or handed down through generations. Lost in this daydream, I saw him there in the darkness behind my eyelids—the bruises and lacerations remained along his emaciated face.
I'm sorry for what happened to him, may he rest in peace.
Then, his eyes opened and stared at me blank and awake and startled.

I opened my eyes. Monteff stood before me. The orange light from the streetlamps below struck his face even with the large hood pulled low. His swollen lips and nose had crusted dry.

“Let's step, man,” he said, cold and resolved.

I couldn't have known then what he'd resolved himself to do, and even if I had, I couldn't have helped him, saved him. There are some actions that are made well before they're actually carried out. Sometimes, you're as much a passenger as a driver, and I could see the momentum building in him heavy and leaden. All there was to do was stand by and watch.

The next day, he walked into school with a 4-inch buck knife—one of the ones we'd been trading around and playing with for years. The gnarly, bowed oak handle with the brass ends and the fold-out blade with that cut-in at the tip like a flame. Monteff encountered six PG3 Cobras in the bustling halls between first and second period. He let 'em pass, then turned and started with the ones trailing in back. He stabbed each in the face, throat, or both. Monteff got one bad enough that they rushed him into emergency surgery at Weiss Memorial and had to bring him back from the other side. The rest of 'em just scarred for life. It took Senn's entire in-house police department to pry the buck knife from his hand. He didn't cry, didn't make a peep. The guys who seen him in first period said he wouldn't even look at 'em, let alone talk to 'em. Guess he was done talking. We thought we'd see him again on the block when he turned 18, but he hung himself a few months later with a white towel at the Audy Home over on Western and Roosevelt.

I remember watching him walk away that night—I'd stopped at my corner at Hermitage for some reason. His black hood up, his narrow frame. The hoodie too big for his slinking blue jeans as he headed north past Edgewater Ave. He walked slowly but with so much inertia. Then, his form melded into the shadows and that was it. The last time I saw him.

•

WITH THE SHIT AS HOT AS IT WAS,
we knew we needed a piece. Ryan asked Mickey, and he said no—said we'd end up shooting our fucking dicks off by accident. This may have seemed like a ridiculous joke, but that exact thing actually happened in the bathroom at Senn a few years before. A guy ran up to a urinal in a hurry trying to unzip and
‘
POP!' The revolver went off and so did his prick. I asked Rich if he still had the .25. I had $200 bucks saved up, and he threw in a box of rounds he had laying around. The gun was even smaller than I'd remembered it—now it fit perfectly into my 14-year-old hand. The chalk-white grip was scratched and worn smooth, and the glossy, nickel-plated barrel had a small notch at the tip for aiming, but I figured there wouldn't be much aiming—this was close-range shit, but who knows.

I lifted up my hoodie and slipped the barrel into the front waistband of my crisp, beige Dickies. I glanced at myself in the mirror in my closet. My hair spliced back tight to my scalp and sprayed stiff. The light-brown freckles on my cheeks. I checked to see how visible the bulge was—nothing, especially if I put my hands in my hoodie's pockets. I stepped out of my bedroom and started down the stairs slowly, afraid it'd come loose and rattle down my pant leg. Then suddenly, I remembered the guy who'd shot his dick off.

“Joseph, I need you to take the garbage out…” Ma's voice rose from the kitchen.

I froze and wanted to run back upstairs and switch the gun to my back waistband, or just hide the fucking thing under my mattress.

“I gotta go Ma,” I said as I opened the front door. “I'll do it when I get home.”

Once outside, I took a deep breath of the dry, cool fall air. The gun seemed heavy and loose, and I put my hand inside my muffer pocket and pressed it against my waist. I stepped down the porch stairs slowly.

“Hey, Joey…”

I looked up and saw Mrs. Thompson. She sat on her porch with a button-down gray sweater over her house dress. She smiled down at me as she pulled on her cigarette.

I waved back with my free hand, giddy with the rush of my deception. I walked on down the sidewalk towards the sills. The pistol now felt snug in my waistband, so I took my hands out of my pockets. The muscles of my cheeks froze into a wide grin. I saw Ryan and Angel down at the sills, lounging and bullshitting. I couldn't wait to show 'em. The excitement had my heart pattering in my throat.

An Ashland bus creaked to a halt at a red light, and an un-marked, dark-blue Caprice squad car coasted through it. Two plain-clothed white cops sat in front in ball caps and black shirts over their bulletproof vests. The one in the passenger seat must have felt my gaze 'cause he turned and locked eyes on me. His face smiled as he shook his head 'no' like he'd heard something funny. Then, they were past the intersection and gone—not even enough time for me to get scared.

I stepped up to Ryan and Angel. We shook, and Angel sat back in his sill disinterested and puffing a Winston. Ryan eyed me suspiciously and bare his crooked teeth.

“What's up with you, fucker?” Ryan said, tilting his head to the side.

A warm swell rushed up my neck and face. I smiled so hard it almost hurt.

“Whatcha mean?” I said and shrugged.

“Well, you got that retarded, shit-eating grin smeared all over your face for one thing,” Angel said, looking down towards Ashland as some cars swept past.

“Better watch how you talk to me, motherfucker, or I'll pop your ass,” I said, then I lifted my hoodie at the waist and gripped the white handle.

Angel shot up from his concrete ledge, stupefied. His mouth hung open in a long, quivering “O.”

“Oh, shit!” Ryan's said with his eyes bugging out. “Is dat real!” We huddled together. Our shoulders created a triangle that blocked any view from the street.

“It's Rich's .25,” I said, holding it in my open palm. We all leered down at it. The silhouettes of our heads shadowed it from the streetlights and made the chalk-white grip look gray.

“Let me see dat shit!” Ryan said and snatched it from my palm.

“You got any bullets?” Angel asked.

I started to say 'yeah, it's loaded' as a sudden flash ignited in the shade created by our bowed heads. It was followed by a hard
‘
POP!' and a searing burn in my abdomen. Then, the pistol clattered to the sidewalk. It spun flat on its side to a rattling halt and pointed right between Angel's black Pumas with the fat white laces. A small tuft of smoke floated up from the fabric of my muffler pocket, and I slipped my hand under and froze in scorching pain. I brought my fingertips up—no blood. Angel bent down and scooped up the gun, then jogged towards our arterial alley.

“Come on!” he shouted to us over his shoulder. He stuffed the gun in his coat pocket, and his shiny ponytail whipped around as he went. Ryan and I chased after him.

We hid in my garage. Angel and I panted as we slouched on the couch. Ryan scowled on a low wooden stool across the room. I pulled up my hoodie and looked down at the light-red smudge—it was the size of a thumb print, just to the side and below my belly button. It slowly fogged white. The thin film atop it wrinkled, and the cool garage air soothed the burn. I fingered through the folds of my hoodie, and sure enough, two pinky diameter-sized holes in the fabric. I looked over at Ryan.

“You shot me, motherfucker,” I said.

“I didn't even touch THE FUCKING TRIGGER!” he shot back, scowling. His face glowed red.

I had this rumble in my chest that grew, then erupted as laughter—heavy laughter. Angel took the .25 out and placed it on the mangled little table in front of us, between the screwdrivers and wrenches, then he sat back and stared at it. He turned to me with his eyes wide-open and his lips sealed shut, then his long teeth emerged between them. He cracked up with me, and I really let loose then. I bent over and brushed my hoodie against the burn and instantly squealed. Then, I shot back to my reclined posture and let the burn air out.

“You shot me, motherfucker!” I shouted. Ryan still stared out into the darkness in the corner. His forehead folded up on itself, and his eyes turned into squinting black slits.

“What the fuck you laughing about!?” he yelled.

“You shot me, Ry Ry… You shot me!” I joked.

“No, I didn't!” he barked and flashed his eyes to mine—they were puffy, wet, and glossy, barely holding it back. Then, his forehead unfolded. His grimace morphed into a chubby grin, and his torso started to rock on the small, creaky stool.

“I try an' tell motherfuckers not to fuck wit' me; they just don't listen,” Ryan said. We roared.

We split the $200 three ways. It was the crew's gun—that's the way I wanted it to be anyway. We kept the clip out from then on. I didn't remember sliding the swing barrel to register a round in the chamber. Fucking Rich must've handed it to me like that. But at least we knew it worked now. Even though it was a small caliber, we could pop any PG3 that came our way in search of revenge. We kept it in the stash with the weed—figured we could get to it quick enough if shit jumped off. And that way, no cop could lay it on any of us if they came down on the sills. Looking back on it now, I can't believe it—how I'd come so close to getting shot for real, and by my best fucking friend, of all people. Years later, I was out on a job site with Blake when he was getting in a few hours with us as a carpenter. We were doing this pin-and-link bridge job way out in Aurora, and he told me how common it was for shit-bag gangbangers to shoot themselves with their own guns. He'd constantly come across 16-year-old kids with bullet wounds in the thigh that had incredibly steep downward trajectories—hundreds of 'em every-year in Chicago alone. I remember laughing—laughing hard—as we slathered white primer on those metal-finished links but keeping that one to myself.

•

I LOST MY VIRGINITY
on a Thursday. I was out in the garage with this old scratched-up girls' Schwinn frame clamped tight on the rusted iron vice. Struggling, I cranked the Crescent wrench down on the neck, trying to turn the bolt without stripping it. Then, I hear this light tap at the garage door. I walked over and lifted it up, and there's Gabby. Her jet-black bob cut framed her round face, and those double-D breasts that everybody'd been blabbing about for weeks strained at her white t-shirt. She had this shy smirk on her lips as she twirled her finger in her hair.

I closed the door behind her, and we sat down on the old couch and started small talking. Before I knew it, we were kissing, and I'd clasped my hand onto her large, firm breasts. Hyacinth was my girl—my love really—this was a compulsion. I knew I could get her, but it wasn't that simple. There was this pulsing mystery in those monstrous breasts, and the desire of all the guys my age in the whole neighborhood compelled me. Images flashed in my head—all of the immense tits that'd bombarded me over the years. The enormous jugs that bounced across the TV screen on Baywatch; Dolly Parton's giant knockers; Jenny McCarthy's immense levitating melons. I found myself kissing her neck, and I pawed and gripped her breasts like two large bags of hot dough. Then, my hand was under her shirt, and I pulled down the cups of her tan bra and pinched the fat, dark nipples. Gabby's face was dull and unresponsive as she sighed. I licked and sucked them. I gripped them. My fingers stretched to reach around their balloon-like circumference. There were purple stretch marks near her shoulders. She had her large shirt crumpled up along her collar bone, and her chin pinched it against her throat. She smirked her buck teeth down at me, and the harder I squeezed, the harder my prick got. Finally, I stood up and gripped the top of the couch's seatback. Then, I leaned over her and rubbed my hard on through my jeans against her naked tits. She squeezed them together against it, and her eyes gazed up at me as she panted. Then, I moved up and rubbed it against her face, and she puckered her thin lips. These cold-metal rushes flowed up and down my legs and back. Suddenly, Kelly rippled a short series of vicious barks that boomed through the thin walls separating the garage from the gangway. I froze like I'd had a spotlight shone dead on me. I was horrified. Maybe it was Hyacinth just about to knock on the garage door to surprise me and say 'hi.' She'd heard us through the door and burst into tears. She was outside that door, trembling, knowing everything—that it'd never be the same; that it was over. It couldn't be. I got up and looked out the window; the babysitting kids played noisily in the backyard. Then, I went to the garage door and opened it. The alley was empty. An old gray Ford slowly turned into the mouth at Hermitage.

“What's up?” Gabby said.

“Nothin'. Come on, let's get outta here,” I said as I adjusted my dying hard on.

Gabby was taller than me, which made it seem worse and odd as she followed me down the sidewalk. Guilt slid into my stomach, and I nipped at her as we walked to the sills. A few potheads milled around by the hospital.

It was disastrous. The realization of what I'd done and the panging guilt was amplified by Gabby's presence, her bug-eyed daze. She slouched and pouted, then she folded her arms over her stomach. Her mountainous breasts hovered above. I ditched her with the potheads. They gawked at her large tits with my saliva still fresh on them.

I found myself hurrying down the sidewalk to Hyacinth's house. The chatter of sparrows skipped in the branches above. How could I have done it?! How could I have been so damn stupid?! Guilt fluttered in my chest. All the eyes on the block shot accusation at me: Mrs. Simon getting out of her brown station wagon; Mrs. Sanchez reclining in her folding chair on her small front porch. They peered at me, and I wanted to scream 'I'm sorry!!!' My eyes pleaded at them for forgiveness, and I rushed to her, racing the rumors, racing the truth, and begging for just one more moment of that purity we had together. The true ache of love convulsed in my chest.