Bronxwood (22 page)

It’s after two in the morning and I been helping my
pops DJ his party all night. He probably got three-hundred-something people here in the basement of a out-of-business lumber store, and course, just like all the rest of my pops parties, all kinds of illegal shit is going on all ’round me.

Regg over by the door taking money and making sure nothing too wild go down. When we all first got here, I ain’t say a word to him, not after the way he treated me yesterday. He always telling me to call him if I need something, then the first time I do that, he tell me he can’t do shit for me. Cool. Least I know for a fact now that the only person that’s gonna look out for me is me.

While my pops do the DJing, I’m helping him with the records, which ain’t enough work to keep my mind here where I’m at. Matter of fact, it’s like I ain’t even here. My mind pulling me in all different directions, and I’m just going through the motions behind this DJ table. Straight up, I’m fucking depressed, thinking ’bout everything that
happened with Jasmine and Cal and Andre. And I’m trying to figure out what I’ma do next, where I’m s’posed to move to. ’Cause Andre come by the apartment on Saturdays a lot, and I ain’t looking to get into nothing with him. Soon as this party over, I need to get back to Bronxwood and pack some shit and go. Just don’t know where I’ma go to.

Before he let me do my own DJing, my pops get on the mic and go, “I’m gonna let my son take over for a while so I can come out there and dance with some of you beautiful ladies.”

A lot of the ladies smile and cheer, ’specially the fugly ones that ain’t come with no man.

My pops smile. “I know Tyrell gonna turn this party out, but just remember, I taught him everything he know.” He laugh and step away from the table.

I think ’bout getting on the mic after him and telling these people the truth, that, yeah, he taught me a lot, but I know a whole lot more than that now. That he can’t even keep up with my skills now. But nah, I don’t say nothing. A man don’t gotta always tell people everything. He just gotta show them. So that’s what I do. Not only show them, but show my pops that I’m good enough to do this for real now.

Playing music work for a while to take my mind off my problems. The music take over everything. I’m in it. The party turning out so good, my pops and some of his friends
go into one of the back rooms and I don’t see him for a while. But it’s okay ’cause I’m holding it down while he do his thing.

I’m up there ’bout a hour ’til my pops come back and dance with some of the females. And another hour ’til he take back over at the table. By then it’s after four and the party starting to slow down. Some folks is leaving, but a lot still trying to keep partying.

Me, now that I’m back to just helping my pops again, my mind fast-forwarding to what I’ma do next. Yeah, I could do what everybody want me to do and ask my pops if I could come and stay with them for a while. I mean, I’ma be over there in a couple hours anyway for Troy visit.

But I don’t know. My pops changed so much since he went away that I’m standing, like, a foot away from the man, but I ain’t trying to ask him nothing. Why would I? So he could tell me I’m a child that can’t make it on my own? That I need his ass to save me from the streets?

Shit, I don’t need to hear none of that.

Thinking ’bout everything make me wanna leave outta here right now, but I gotta wait ’til it’s over, ’til when my pops pay everybody. I don’t know what he gonna give me, but it should be alright, ’specially since I just played for two hours while he went and had fun. He need to remember that when he start handing out the cash.

My pops get on the mic and start talking over the music. He laughing and pointing out females in the crowd and
talking ’bout how good they look in whatever they wearing. And that just get them all excited and they trying to get his attention so he could talk ’bout they outfit. “Short mama in the red skirt,” my pops say, still laughing. “You killin’ me, girl.”

He in a mad good mood since he came back to the table. He all happy and shit. While a song is playing, he take off his headphones and lean over to me and go, “The girl in the black skirt and silver top, young girl, standing over there, she been checking you out all night.”

I look to where his eyes is and just like he say, a girl that’s ’bout twenty, twenty-one or something, looking right at me. She cute and everything but, I don’t know. “She too old,” I tell my pops.

He laugh. “Older women is where it’s at. Go dance with her.”

I shake my head. I ain’t thinkin’ ’bout no other female other than Jasmine. So I tell my pops, “I was with a girl all day. I don’t got nothing left.”

He bust out laughing and I laugh with him. “You making sure there ain’t gonna be no little Tyrell juniors running around the Bronx, right?”

“Course.”

He slap me on the back. “Alright, then.”

He still smiling, and I’m thinking, maybe this is a good time to ask him, as good as any other time. But how I’ma do it? And what he gonna say?

But before I can figure out a way to ask him anything, I see Dante coming ’cross the room, coming right in our direction. I can’t believe this shit. Why he gonna come now, when the party almost over?

Dante don’t just come over to the table, he come behind it like he working this party with us. Him and my pops do a guy hug and Dante say over the music, “Sorry I’m late, man. I was with a woman….” He shake his head. “The lonely ones, they don’t never let you leave.” They both laugh.

“Hang around,” my pops go. “We gonna go to the Black Rock.”

My pops put his headphones on and get on the mic to tell everybody that this the last song. He start playing “Before I Let Go.”

While he doing that, Dante come up to me and go, “Your moms, man. She didn’t want me to leave, you know.” He flash me this crooked-ass smile. “She don’t like being there all alone in that big, new apartment.”

I stare him down for a second. I don’t believe him, but at the same time, I can’t have this nigga talkin’ ’bout my moms like that and getting away with it. I move closer to him and just ’cause I can, I trip his ass, and on his way down, he hit up against the DJ table and the music just stop. I don’t care though. I’m ’bout to jump on him and punch him in the face, but before I could, my
pops pull me away, saying, “What you doing, Ty? What’s going on?”

I get away from my pops and kick Dante down there on the floor. Can’t help myself if I wanted to, that’s how pissed I am. Then Regg come over, grab me, and hold me back like it’s nothing, and I watch my pops help Dante up and look back over at me like I’m the one he don’t get, like I’m the one that did something wrong.

The room kinda quiet now and everybody standing round watching us. My pops start walking away with Dante, like he making sure he okay or something, but I can’t take it no more. “You think he your friend, but he ain’t,” I yell to my pops. “You don’t know what—”

“Don’t say no more,” Regg say to me, looking me in my eyes, warning me. “Don’t say nothing, Ty. Don’t say it.”

But my heart is pumping hard and even though I hear him, it’s hard to stop myself. I wanna tell my pops how stupid he looking right now. How he getting played by that asshole who claim to be his friend.

“Ty, listen to me, man,” Regg say, leaning in closer to me. “You tell your pops and he gonna kill that man and where that gonna leave your moms and Troy, Ty? You listening to me?”

I nod, but still, I can’t calm myself down. I can’t.

Regg grab up my backpack and hand it to me. “Leave,” he say. “Just go.”

He put his arm ’round my back and get me to walk a couple steps with him toward the door. But I break away from him. I ain’t done yet.

I go back to the table and search through the deck for the songs I got loaded on there. I look right at my pops on the other side of the room, standing there with Dante, looking at me, pissed.

Fuck him.

I get on the mic and go, “This one for you.” I start playing “Papa’z Song” by Tupac and over the music I say, “So you know the truth.”

As I walk to the door with Regg, I hear the song start playing:

I don’t wait ’round for the part where Wycked talk ’bout how his moms had to have all kinds of men in and outta they house just to help out with the rent and shit, but my pops know the song and I know he gonna put together
what the lyrics is telling him, and he gonna find out what that dude he think is his friend been up to with his wife while he was gone.

And when he do, Dante gonna be worse off than what I was gonna do to him.

Good.

When I leave the party, I’m so pissed off and pumped
up that I walk, like, fifteen blocks before getting on the train. By the time I get back to Bronxwood, it’s probably something after six in the morning and the sun is just starting to come out. I walk ’round the corner and before I even get close to my building I see a bunch of people out in front of it, standing ’round. And there’s two cop cars with flashing lights, and I can tell something went down and I know it got something to do with Cal and them. I can feel it.

I stop walking and stand there on the sidewalk for a minute just watching. All these people from my building is standing ’round talking, shaking they head. I feel the breath leave outta my body. Something musta happened to Cal again. Somebody musta hurt him worse this time. Somebody musta—

“Ty.” Keith come ’cross the street on his scooter. What
the fuck he doing out here this time of the morning? “You wasn’t home?”

“Nah,” I tell him. “What’s going on? Is Cal—?”

“You missed a lot,” he say.

“C’mon, Keith. What the fuck happened?” Can’t believe I’m looking for answers from a thirteen-year-old on a scooter.

“Cal got arrested,” he say. “He shot some dude that I think was trying to rob him or something.”

“Shot?” Nothing making sense no more. “Cal don’t got no—”

Gun.

Shit. That’s why he left outta Bronxwood, to go to Willis Avenue by hisself. That’s what he had to go get. I wasn’t even hardly paying no attention to him.

I look through the whole crowd and I’m like, what these people still standing ’round for? “The guy he shot, he alive?”

Keith shrug. “I seen an ambulance come and take him away, but I don’t know.”

“And Cal was
arrested
?” I can’t believe this.

Keith nod. “About two hours ago, I think.”

Cops is still walking ’round outside the building and in the lobby, like they trying to find something. They got yellow tape up ’round the front door and there’s a female cop standing there, looking like she making sure nobody get underneath that tape.

I look ’round to see who I know out here, somebody that could give me more information. Only one I kinda know is this guy Evan that live on my floor. He tell me that the dude Cal shot ain’t dead, but they don’t think he gonna make it. “They investigating it like a homicide,” he say, shaking his head.

Homicide.
Cal mighta
killed
somebody. He musta been scared out his mind to do something like that. “Damn,” I say. “Damn.”

“You can’t go upstairs, Ty. The cops is in y’all’s apartment now.”

“You know if Greg there?”

“Yeah, he there. Cal went up there after he shot the guy and that’s where the cops found him. Now they searching the place with a warrant.”

I stand there for another couple minutes knowing they gonna arrest Greg soon as they find what he got up there. Least Cal ain’t the only one going down for the shit his brothers got him into. Wouldn’t mind seeing the cops drag Greg ass outta there. But, nah. I ain’t gonna give Greg the chance to try and drag me into they shit.

All my stuff is upstairs, all my clothes and my equipment. Everything. All I got is the clothes on my back, my backpack, and the money I got left over from what Emiliano paid me last week.

Everything going on is fucked up and it kill me what Cal probably going through right now. But I knew something
like this was gonna go down one day. I’m just lucky I wasn’t ’round when it did.

So I tell Evan I’ma see him ’round, and I turn and walk back down the block, back toward the train station. I don’t know where I’m going, but I leave outta Bronxwood and don’t look back.

’Cause I’m tired and ’cause I don’t got nowhere else to go,
I take the train to Jerome Avenue, and walk down Mosholu to my moms and pops apartment. I was gonna end up there anyway for Troy visit, but the real truth is, I don’t got no other choice. I’ma hafta ask my pops if I could stay there for a while, least ’til I get my equipment outta Cal and them apartment, play some parties, and save up enough money for my own place.

Then I’ma be on my own for real. ’Cause what I was doing at Cal apartment all this time wasn’t being no man. All I was doing was playing.

It’s Saturday morning and people is starting to come out already. I don’t even know what time it is. As I walk, I dig ’round at the bottom of my backpack and find my cell. I turned it off before my pops party and forgot ’bout it. I put it on and it’s 7:40. And I got four texts. The first two is from Cal. The first one say: call me

Then the next one just say: 911

The other two is from Patrick trying to find out where I am, and if I was home when everything went down with Cal.

Thinking ’bout Cal texting me after everything that happened and me not calling him back, that hurt. He shot that guy and ain’t know what to do, and where was I? And why he ain’t even tell me he was gonna get that gun? Me and him used to talk ’bout everything.

Now he going through something nobody should hafta. And his freedom is gone. He through.

I’m ’bout to put the cell in my pocket when I see I got a voicemail too. It’s Troy first foster mom. “I’m still out of town, Tyrell,” she say, “but Ms. Thomas called and said Troy wants to come back and stay with me. And that’s fine by me. That little boy wasn’t a problem at all.” She say more, ’bout how she coming back from vacation after Labor Day, but I don’t need to know all that. I’m just glad that Troy gonna be somewhere where he happy. ’Til they let him come back home for real.

Knowing that make it easy to go back home and deal with my pops. Nothing he tell me could fuck this feeling up for me.

When I get upstairs to they floor, I knock, but nobody answer. I know my pops was gonna go to the Black Rock, but where my moms at? She s’posed to be home waiting for
Troy to get here. I don’t got no key, but I try turning the knob and it’s open. I’m like, what’s up? Why the door ain’t locked?

When I go inside, I see my pops sitting in the kitchen. He drinking a beer this early in the morning and he look so pissed, I don’t even think he see me come in.

That’s when I hear crying coming from the back of the apartment and I know what’s up already. Damn. Fuck.

I run down the hall to my moms and pops room, but she ain’t in there. She in the bathroom, on the floor, and I can’t believe what I’m seeing. My pops fucked her up real bad this time. For a second, I just stand there in the door looking at her ’cause I don’t know what to do.

My moms ain’t wearing nothing but her panties, and she curled up in a ball on the floor between the sink and the tub, like she hiding. Her mouth is bleeding and I can see that one of her front teeth is knocked out. And there’s blood all over her face and her hair and her neck. It’s crazy.

But the crying is the thing that get me. She look and sound like a little girl. I get down on the floor next to her and try to help her up, but she ain’t moving. She shake her head and say, “I can’t. I can’t.”

“You need a ambulance?” I ask her. “You want me to—”

“No, no, no,” she say. “No, don’t call nobody. I don’t want—”

“You hurt,” I say. I snatch a towel off the rack and start to wipe her face with it. I wanna see how bad he beat her. But every time I touch her face with the towel, she let out
a high-pitched cry, ’specially when I get to the left side of her forehead. She got a cut that’s real deep, like maybe where my pops ring dug into her. “Stop, Ty. Stop, I’m okay. I’m—”

“You need stitches,” I tell her. “And you need to go see a dentist or something.”

“I can’t. I can’t. They gonna arrest him and then what I’m gonna do? What can I—?”

“You can leave his ass,” I tell her, but watching her sitting there, shaking her head, I know it ain’t gonna happen. Never did before, no matter how bad he beat her. Ain’t gonna happen now.

While I clean her up the best I can with warm water on a towel, I listen while she talk on and on ’bout why did she wait for him to get outta prison when she coulda found somebody else to be with, and why she gotta live like this, and why, why, why? This ain’t the first time I’m hearing her say shit like this. It’s what she do.

But what she say next is new. “We was trying to have another baby, you know, your pops and me. We wanted to have us one more baby, maybe a little girl this time. We was trying to give Troy a little sister.”

I close my eyes for a second. Damn. That’s what they was up to. Trying to make another baby that would end up in foster care too the next time my pops get locked up. What the fuck is wrong with them?

It take a while to get my moms up off the floor, but I don’t let her see herself in the mirror ’cause she look that
bad. She scary-looking. Not one, but two teeth is knocked out and they still on the bathroom floor, and the cut over her forehead still gushing blood. The washcloth I gave her to hold against it is already soaked.

It’s hard, trying to get her to walk too, she in so much pain. But I get her back to her room, help her put on a T-shirt, and get her to lay down in bed. Then I leave outta there, even though she still crying, still talking to herself ’bout how she deserve to be treated better than this.

This whole thing my fault.

My pops still sitting in the kitchen. Nigga ain’t even move to help his wife, ain’t even see if she alright. “What the fuck you had to do that for? Why you—”

“You know I’m all about respect, Ty.” My pops voice is calm, like he ain’t just wild out on my moms a little while ago. “I can’t have nobody disrespecting me like that, not even my wife.”

“But she—”

“You gotta demand respect from people!” He look at me hard. He mad at me. “I taught you that, Ty.”

“I know. Didn’t you say you taught me everything I know?” I stare back at him now.

“I did!” Now he outright yelling at me.

“You wrong. Only thing you did was teach me everything
you
know. What, you don’t think I learned nothing else all this time you was locked up?”

He stand up. “What you learned? You a man now?”

I move closer to him and we standing, like, two inches away from each other. “I am.”

He try and do that thing again where he grab me by the throat, but I don’t let it happen. I been letting him do that shit to me all this time but not no more. Never again.

This time I push him back and, I don’t know if he wasn’t expecting it or what, but I catch him off guard and he fall back against the counter. Then without even thinking ’bout what I’m ’bout to do, I punch him in the face as hard as I can, just to make him feel some of the pain my moms felt.

Just like I knew he would, he come back at me and, next thing I know, we fighting. It don’t last long, but this a first for me and him. It used to be just him hitting me, and me not doing nothing back, but not this time. This time we like two men fighting. For real.

By the time my moms make it out there and get us to stop, the kitchen is jacked up. Broken glass is all over the floor ’cause the table got knocked over and the vase and some glasses that was on it got smashed. My pops lip is bleeding and I got cut on the hand, but that’s it. We done.

Before I leave, I go back down the hall to find my backpack in my moms and pops room. My pops wallet is on the dresser. I open it up fast and grab a handful of bills. I don’t
count it, but the way I feel, it’s what he owe me for helping him DJ.

Then, before I leave, I look ’round and know for a fact, with the way the apartment look and how beat up my moms is, ain’t no way Ms. Thomas gonna leave Troy there. He ain’t coming home no time soon.

And I can’t be here when Troy find that out. I can’t take the look on that kid face.

I leave out the apartment and go down in the elevator, not knowing where to go or what to do. I walk outside and more people is out there now. It’s a nice sunny morning, but everything in my life is so fucked up I can’t even think straight.

My cell ring and I pull it out my pocket. It’s Novisha. “Hello.” I sound mad tired.

She sigh. “Oh, my God. I’m so glad to hear your voice. I thought … I was worried about—”

“I’m okay, Novisha.”

“Good. When I heard about Cal, I prayed you weren’t—”

“I wasn’t home. I’m a’ight.”

“Good,” she say again. Then she stop talking and I keep walking, not knowing what to say to her neither. After everything that just happened with my moms and pops, and everything that happened between me and Novisha in the past, I don’t know. It’s hard to know what I’m s’posed to say to her no more.

Finally, she say, “Ty? You still there?”

“Yeah. I’m here.” I get to Jerome and stand there waiting for the light to change.

“Ty, I know you were mad at me for what I did and I understand that. I know I messed up. But I’m always gonna want you to be okay. I’m always gonna want you to be happy, even if it’s not with me.”

What come out my mouth next surprise the shit outta me. But I’m too tired to lie to her. “It’s the same with me, Novisha, you know what I’m saying? No matter who you with and who I’m with, you was the first girl I had feelings for, for real.”

She quiet again.

“Me and you, Novisha, right now, we cool. We friends, a’ight?”

“Alright, Ty.”

“I gotta go now, okay?”

“Okay. Bye.”

We hang up and, I gotta be honest, that felt alright, ’specially after the shit that just went down. Yeah, Novisha disrespected me, but why I gotta stay mad at her for? I ain’t my pops.

I cross the street, and it ain’t ’til I’m on Grand Concourse that I even notice where I’m walking to. The cell is still in my hand and all I gotta do is go through my contacts real fast and hit the talk button.

“Tyrell?”

“You still sleeping?” I ask.

“No,” Jasmine say. “I’m waiting for Emil to get back from the car wash place. We’re leaving in a little while. What — what’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you everything when I see you.” I start walking faster.

“Ty, I told you. I’m leaving.”

“Tell me this. You wanna go or not?”

She sigh. “You know I don’t, but—”

“Then come downstairs. And bring some stuff with you, what you think you gonna need.”

“What, where are we—?”

“I don’t know. But I wanna be with you. That’s all I want.”

“Me too,” she say, “but—”

“Come with me, then.”

Jasmine don’t say nothing for a long time and I’m walking to her apartment, hoping she don’t say no ’cause right now it feel like she all I got. “Jasmine, you with me or what? ’Cause I—”

“Then stop talking and get here already,” she say. “And hurry up.”

“A’ight.” I smile. “I’ma be there in a minute.”