The Old Neighborhood (4 page)

They piled into the Lincoln and were gone.

•

I HAD AN IDYLLIC CHILDHOOD.
It wasn't all dark. We had the best block parties in the whole city of Chicago. Da being a precinct captain, we were all kindsa hooked up! The fire engines and the cops on horseback would show up and hang out. The jumping bean would spend the whole afternoon on our block. Hundreds of kids from all over the neighborhood would show up to the 1600 block of Hollywood, and we'd have water fights that lasted the entire day—from dawn to dusk. Ma ran the whole thing, so we had dibs on everything, like the ice cream eating contests and the hundreds of water balloons we had in our little above ground pool.

Parts of the neighborhood were as clean as my brother Blake's Gordon Tech letterman's jacket. There was a tradition of ball hawks in the neighborhood, and Blake brought a group of us down there on the Clark St. bus. We tried to catch the home runs during batting practice and spent a bunch of time chasing the home run balls that bounced up and down Waveland Ave. We played baseball in the lot behind St. Greg's gymnasium with racket balls and metal bats and cranked home runs all the way onto the roof of the gym.

Sometimes, my family would escape the city all altogether. We'd head up to Grand Beach during the summer to the old family vacation home that became the family home after Grandpa Walsh dissolved into alcohol. He passed before I was born, but long before that, my old man became the father figure to his six younger brothers. When they were little, all of 'em slept in bunk beds in one room. Grandma dumped a box of clothes in the center of it every morning, and they fought it out. The loser might be out socks or underwear, or worse. No wonder they all ended up so damn tough. They couldn't make rent a lot of the time, and eventually the landlords got fed up, so the family'd have to up and disappear to the old summer house in Grand Beach. It was a place to escape—you could disappear into its winding roads and walk down its steep shored beach and look out across the lake to the city with all that blue in between you and it and know you were safe.

The drive to Grand Beach was always tough on me. I had a serous fear of heights, and the Skyway Bridge was the most terrifying thing to me as a kid. I'd cry and beg my Dad to turn around, then lay down on the floor of the van underneath the bench seats as my sisters and brothers teased me. When we got to the top, I'd stop crying, get up, and look out at the enormity of the lake and the city behind us. We'd be in Grand Beach within the hour, and we'd fish off the shores of Lake Michigan. We caught lake trout and king salmon, and it was always a blast.

Back in the neighborhood, our block was the kind of block where everybody knew everybody. Gossip ran up and down front porches all day and night, and you couldn't walk very far without someone waving to you and asking about your family. The neighborhood was just a nice place to live in, and I loved being a child of Chicago and growing up in the greatest city in the world.

•

AFTER THE MURDER,
everything changed. In the weeks that followed, I hung out with Ryan more and more. It was a secret, and like most shared secrets, it brought us closer. I started to have this reoccurring nightmare of Lil Pat and Mickey chasing me—their wild, hackling laughter blaring in my mind. Lil Pat brandished a large, cartoonish revolver with his massive, bubble-fingered hand squeezed tight around the grip. I would run through this neighborhood I'd never seen before in the night with its towering streetlamps looming above and emitting a thin glint of foggy, green light. I could never break away from them no matter how hard I tried.

At the end of the dream, the strange neighborhood would suddenly fall away to darkness. Then, the dead Assyrian would appear—just his face floating in a pool of red. When I saw the Assyrian's face at night, I couldn't sleep, and I'd wake with a horrible terror, panting. A cool silence hovered all around and above me. I'd keep my eyes shut because I knew he was there floating in my room. I'd keep my eyes shut because I was afraid to look at him. I'd keep them shut until the coolness dissipated. Then, I'd slide off the bed to my knees and pray. I'd pray for his soul. I'd pray Lil Pat's soul. I never prayed for Mickey because I knew he had no soul to pray for. It happened every now and then. Over the years, it slowly slid and fell away and was overtaken by something even worse.

CHAPTER 3

THE LAKE

THERE WAS A HEAT WAVE
that summer. It was a dry, coarse heat that scorched the lawns yellow and deepened the skin tones of the children. Grandma had told Jan'n'Rose to stay out of the sun so their Afro-Caribbean skin didn't turn black, so they stayed in the house most of the day and walked the neighborhood at night. They'd go over to the apartment building two doors down to hang out with their friend Maria and flirt with the Mexican boys who lived there. They were always on the lookout for Lil Pat, Blake, and Rich, but they didn't mind me tagging along. Maria was tall and thin with long, black, curly hair and thick, purple lips. Sometimes, for a joke, Maria would take me by the hand and lead me into her bedroom. We'd lay together on her bed with the lights off, and she'd moan, calling out my name—loud—so my sisters and the others could hear her in the next room, and I'd kiss her full lips in the dark. She'd gasp quietly with the giggling from the next room flooding in through the thin walls. The scent of her grape lip gloss made my mouth water as it soothed my always-chapped lips. One time, she even let me give her a hickey on the side of her soft, warm neck with the low light of the alley lamps filtering in through her window.

•

I STILL MADE MY WALK
to collect the protection money along Clark for the TJOs every Sunday. Ryan started coming with, and we'd spend the afternoon joking about the things we'd stolen along the way. It was a team action: one of us going up to the manager to collect the envelope and buy something like candy for a quarter, while the other grabbed chips or lighters or anything of value to a kid. Sometimes, Lil Pat and Mickey would pick us up and drive us down to Montrose Beach where we would wade out into the blue and marvel at the clear between our feet like a lie. We'd skip rocks and climb on the huge concrete cubes lining some parts along the shore as the older guys drank beer, smoked joints, counted the money, and laughed at the profile of the city they thought they owned.

Ryan lived at the Dead-End-Docks on Paulina Ave. between Thorndale and Rosehill Ave. Paulina dead-ends at Rosehill into this six-foot, concrete, castle-style wall; the same style wall as the ones that encircle Rosehill Cemetery a few blocks west. His alley butted up against the Clark Street. Ace Hardware's loading docks, which made the alley three-times the width of any in the neighborhood. That drew little knuckleheads from all over. They swarmed around back there incessantly. It was like the United Nations of juvenile delinquents: blacks, Irish, Mexicans, mutt whites, Assyrians, Filipinos, and Puerto Ricans. They shot hoops on a plastic milk crate with the bottom stomped out. Someone just nailed it to a wooden electricity pole, and they played with a mini basketball. The alley ended in a big vacant parking lot. A legion of bold, yellow-headed dandelions sprouted up through the cracks in the old asphalt. Past the lot, across Rosehill Ave., there was a row of small houses with full-leaved trees nestled around them. The immense, tan structure of the hospital leered above them—the only present and capable authority.

I was over there one afternoon that August. It was hot out like the inside of an oven set to bake. Ryan and I leaned against the fence separating the alley from the lot. The top horizontal bar was warped in a low-hung bow from the kids jumping it while running from the cops and each other. Ryan had his shirt off, and his thick shoulders and neck were seared red with chalk-white sunblock slathered over them. The heavy freckles were like brown sugar sprinkled up his arms and across his brow and cheeks. He wore gray sweatpants and black and white Chuck Taylors.

This little runt of a black kid named BB spliced a mini basketball between his legs. He had a missing top-front tooth and crazy graphics etched into his scalp. He was in the middle of a lecture on how ‘mothafuckin' good' he was at basketball to a disinterested audience. BB made up for his small stature and age deficiency by having the loudest mouth for miles around, and he'd have gotten his ass whooped every thirty seconds if it weren't for his brother being a high ranking Black Stone Ranger.

A gangway gate creaked open halfway down the alley, which led to a large, red brick apartment building. A wooden stairwell snaked down the rear of the structure, and two older black kids sauntered out. Everyone's eyes shot towards them. The first out wore a black Starter cap with a large gold “P” above the brim. The other one had on white jogging pants with the left leg rolled up to his knee and a black pick comb jutted upright from the back of his cone-shaped afro. They all flocked over, and Ryan and I trailed in their wake.

“Krazy Crew!” the one with the hat bellowed, elongating the words. He threw up a quick wrist-flicking hand gesture. The mob of kids instantly echoed it. They formed a “C” with the thumb and index fingers and a “K” with the middle, ring, and pinky on the same hand.

“Monteff,” the one with the pick said. “Mama's looking for you, go on inside.”

“Awe, T-Money, come on,” Monteff cried, throwing his head back in agony.

“Aight, it's your ass, nigga… Speaking of ass whoopins, ya'll been holdin' down the set?” His tall, thin body loomed over us. His Adam's apple bulged.

“Hell yeah. Aw hell yeah,” us kids roared urgently.

“We need to hand out any violations?” the one with the hat asked. He mashed his wide fist into his palm high over our heads. “Any mouth shots?”

This sent a shiver of frightened murmurs through the crowd. Even BB got spooked. His eyes bugged, and his bottom lip drooped open.

“Ah, we just fuckin' witcha,” the older boys said, bursting into laughter. A sigh of relief hissed from us kids.

“But ya'll need ta get toughened up,” T-Money said. “So we gonna have us some boxing matches today.”

“How about dangly, old Leroy,” BB shouted. “He ain't never fought nobody.”

“Yeah?” T-Money asked, furrowing his brow. “Come'ere, Leroy.” Leroy sifted to the front. “And who else?” T-Money scanned our faces.

“What about Joe,” BB said. “Dat white boy prolly neva fought nobody.”

“Who's Joe?” T-Money asked.

All the kids turned and shot their index fingers directly at me. A pang singed through my throat. I'd been in plenty of fights. I was the toughest kid in my grade at St. Greg's, but all these kids were from Pierce—the rough public school down the street.

“You wanna fight?” T-Money asked, baring his yellow-white chops.

I nodded and pulled my t-shirt off. The kids oowwwed.

“Hell yeah,” T-Money said. “I like your style boy, you look like you finna whoop ole Leroy.”

The boys formed a shoulder-to-shoulder circle about the size of a boxing ring. I slipped my crucifix off and handed it to Ryan. He slid it over his head without a word.

“Twon, get Leroy's corner,” T-Money directed, motioning to the other big kid.

Leroy was a little taller than me and skinnier. He wore a white t-shirt with grease stains streaked across the belly and some tight cut-off blue jeans. Leroy twirled his finger through his light-brown afro that sprang out puffy and thick like the tips of cauliflower.

T-Money crouched down to my eye level and gripped his jogging pants as he chomped a wad of Juicy Fruit. “You got him, champ. You just gotta go'n whoop his ass... Hit him like dis.” T-Money bobbed on the toes of his black Reeboks. Then, he threw quick-darting punches into the air like he was swatting flies with closed fists. Years later, when I started to box, fighting at park districts around town and then the Golden Gloves, I'd learn that boxing was way more than hitting and getting hit. But I'd always look back at this as my first real bout.

My stomach was uneasy and bloated. The plan was to get him in a headlock, hip-toss him to the ground, and then pound his face with my free hand—a move that had won me most fights. But I was usually angry when I fought. Now, I just felt sick and dizzy as the circle of boys hooted.

“Naw… I betchu Joe's gonna whoop his ass,” Ryan sneered at a mahogany-toned black kid who'd just walked up.

BB solemnly stepped into the center of the circle of boys, announcing, “And in this corner,” BB raised his small palm towards Leroy, “with a record of zera and zera... dangly, old Leroy...” Laughter rippled through the ring.

“And in this corner,” BB said, raising his arm towards me, “also with a record of zera and zera... Whitey Joe...”

Everyone's eyes beat down on me as they giggled and clapped. Mad, eager smiles spread across their faces, and BB waved us both to the center of the ring. Twon loomed behind Leroy, and he glowered down at me. A thin line of peach fuzz undulated above his mouth. T-Money kneaded my traps and shoulders. They walked us up close to each other, and our foreheads almost touched. Leroy and I tried to make mean faces, but they slid from grimaces to grins.

“Rules...” BB said, looking down and scratching his chin. “Fuck... it ain't no rules...” The crowd squealed. “Aight, no bleedin' too much, and no cryin'.”

The boys roared.

“Now go back to your corners, and come on out swingin',” BB declared, placing his hands on his hips. “And don't be swingin' like no girls or nothin'.”

As I walked back to my corner, Ryan rushed up.

“You got him, Joe... You got him.” Ryan's green eyes gleamed. His spiky buzz-cut blazed in the sunlight like a copper crown.

I smirked. My heart pulsed. The yells deafened me. I couldn't think. I just scanned their faces. An obese, light-skinned black kid with a saggy, off-yellow shirt; a little white kid with a blond box cut; a wiry Assyrian kid with a shaggy, loose-curled afro. All of 'em bounced on their toes with the same excited, toothy grins. The ground felt soft and unstable under my sneakers. Their sudden shouts spouted up and swallowed the next.