Chameleon (22 page)

“Twenty bucks? You jiving me.”

“No, not just this, he had a big wad of bills rubber-banded together, and this was the smallest.” Lorenzo stared at the bill. “I got it ’cause we were hungry and broke. One of the Pirus took the roll and said something like ‘Wasn’t gonna be no poaching goin’ on.’ Then . . .”— Lorenzo hesitated —“he stomped on my brother’s wrist.”

Herbert flinched. ’Zo continued: “That’s why he was holding his hand like that.”

What do you say after that? The only sound to be heard was our heavy breathing as we tended to one wound or another, seen or unseen.

“You boys gonna be all right?” Herbert asked, shattering the silence.

“Yeah . . . I think so. They weren’t after us, but we each took a hit. Lorenzo took one to the gut. Andre took a punch to the face, and I got clubbed on the back,” Trent said, then nodded in my direction. “But Shawn got it the worst; he took a fist right in the eye and a club to the stomach.”

Trent paused. “You all right, Shawn?”

All eyes zoomed in on me. I felt like crap. My eye hurt like crazy, I was hungry, and whenever my stomach growled, the pain got worse. “Yeah . . . I’m cool,” I said, hiding the pain.

And for the most part, I was. Considering that four fourteen-year-olds stepped into what looked like World War III, and survived, was big. We didn’t want to go in, but we did and we lived to tell about it. I guess that’s the bright side — we survived.

“You guys had each other’s back. That’s good. That’s what friends do: they look out for each other. Big man here saw his brother getting beat down, so he jumped in. Y’all didn’t want big man to get beat down, so y’all jumped in too.” Herb scratched his beard and looked at me. “You lucky it wasn’t worse.” He glanced down at his watch. “I gotta go. It looks like you guys gonna be fine, but try to stay out of the middle of all that nonsense. That’s a place you definitely don’t wanna be. You made it through this time, but next time might be a different story,” Herb said. His long, brown frame disappeared into the park, getting smaller with each step.

“You should have seen the look on your face, Trent, when you got clubbed. I thought you were gonna scream like a baby,” Lorenzo taunted.

Here we go.

“Look who’s talking! Who’s the one that dropped like a brick with one hit? Huh? One hit!”

“What about you, Andre? You looked like you were about to cry when you got tagged in the eye!” Lorenzo said.

“I know you ain’t talking to me, mister one-hit-and-then-play-dead. I saw you lying on the ground with your eyes all closed, peeking one eye open every once in a while to see if they were gone,” Andre said, reaching for the ball.

“I wasn’t playing dead. My stomach hurt so bad, I had a hard time keeping my eyes open.” Lorenzo rushed Andre and got in his face. “You callin’ me a punk, Andre? ’Cause I’m the one that jumped in first anyway while y’all stayed behind, remember?”

I jumped up in his face. “That’s right, Lorenzo.
You
jumped in first, and look what happened.” I shoved my blind, swollen eye in his face so he could see it wasn’t no joke. “You see that? It feels like my eye got pushed into my skull, and what’s worse . . . I can’t see NOTHING out of it. Is that funny? Huh?” I pushed him.

“Don’t be pushing up on me, Shawn!” He pushed back.

Trent stepped between us, crossing out the sun and providing much-needed shade for my eye. He threw an arm over each of our shoulders and said, “Come on, young bloods, y’all heard what Black — I mean Herb — said. Friends look out for each other.”

Me and Lorenzo backed off.

“That’s why we still in one piece. ’Cause we stuck together this time. But next time,” Trent said, eyeballing each of us, “might be a different story.”

Each of us looked at the other.

Yeah . . . next time.

I REPLAYED THE BATTLE (if you wanna call the four of us getting beat up an actual battle) in my head over and over, changing the ending each time. In one ending I kicked butt like Bruce Lee. In another I picked off Pirus and Crips with a gun like Clint Eastwood. In yet another I chopped off heads from about a football field away with my flying guillotine. That was the fantasy. The reality was I couldn’t do much of anything except take a punch to the eye and a club to the stomach. No kicks, no guns, and no guillotine were available to save me, so I took my punishment and licked my wounds. The fellas must have been doing the same, because everybody had the same blank stare on their face as we baked on the grass in the hot sun. I turned my attention from the green blades of grass to my watch.

“Shoot, it’s already five o’clock. I gotta go!” I said hopping up.

The fellas stood. “We’ll go with you,” Trent said.

“I’ll be cool. I gotta rush home to clean up and figure out what I’m gonna tell Mama. She’s gonna kill me when she sees my eye like this!”

“Shoot, when my pop finds out about this . . .”

Lorenzo didn’t have to finish his sentence because after this morning, we knew exactly how his father would react.

Our sneakers were back on autopilot, carrying us out of the park. A bounce of the ball from Andre got us chattering again.

Trent started with “Man, that was something, wasn’t it? We got into it with the Crips
and
the Pirus!”

The way he said it, you would think he was talking about a vacation at Disneyland or something.

“And here we are. Still standing,” he said, before cupping his hands around his mouth to shout to the sky: “I’m still standing! What y’all think about that, blue and red?”

Andre whacked him on his head. “What’s wrong with you, man?”

“Ay . . . like Herb said, we was in the mix and here we are,” Trent said, thrusting his arms out and dusting himself off like he just survived a major earthquake without a scratch.

That got the three of them talking, or shall I say bragging, about being in the mix. Talking about who took the hardest hit or who did what when they got hit. Like Trent said before, I got it the worst, but it was nothing to brag about. Especially since I now had to explain to Mama how I got a big ol’ black eye. She’s always talking about how bad the fellas are, and this is just the excuse she needs to keep me from hanging out with them. My ears popped back into reality when I heard, “Ain’t that right, Shawn?”

“What?”

“At least we got a good story for when we start school,” Lorenzo said.

Is he serious?

“Yeah, Lorenzo, we can tell everybody how we each took one hit and then hit the ground,” I said, with some laughter flowing into me.

“No, no, no, Shawn. See you looking at it all wrong. Nobody saw it but us and the red and blue. We can be as bad as we wanna be. I think I’m gonna say I nailed a Piru in his eye before he punched me in the gut,” Lorenzo said, but then he paused. “You know what? I don’t have to say I got hit at all. Yeah, I’ll leave that out. Maybe I’ll even add that I beat up a couple of Pirus. That might sound good.”

Andre and Trent started forming their versions of what happened, and I worked on my story for the only person who mattered: Mama.

“What you gonna tell your Mama, Shawn?” Trent asked.

“I don’t know, but I know I gotta make it good. Otherwise, y’all may not be seeing too much more of me this summer.” I wanted to laugh, but I couldn’t. It was the truth.

Their heads dropped for a hot second, knowing it could happen. Andre shook the ball at me. “We ain’t going nowhere, Shawnie-Shawn. We’ll be right here. I know we gonna see you Monday, so don’t even sweat it.”

Lorenzo slapped me on the back and whispered, “Thanks for having my back. You still my brutha from another mother.” He spun me around to inspect my eye. “Put a steak on that — it’ll help. My brother’s had a few of those, and that’s what he always does.”

I looked at him sideways. “I know you love food and everything, ’Zo, but . . . a steak?”

“I’m serious, Shawn. You ain’t heard that?”

Trent and Andre nodded in agreement, Trent saying he’d seen that in the movies and Andre saying his brother did the same thing.

We gave each other soul claps and said good-bye as we left MLK behind.

“Have fun with your dad this weekend. We’ll see you on Monday,” Trent said, “same bat-time, same bat-channel.”

Lorenzo called out as I stepped away, “Don’t forget about the steak. I’m serious, Shawn. . . . It works!”

We scattered in four different directions. I rushed off to clean myself and come up with a believable story. Mama would be home any minute. It was already after five. She usually worked later on Fridays, but, still, she would be at Auntie’s soon. Speaking of Auntie, what am I gonna find when I step through her door today? She said she had a lot to do this morning. That don’t matter, though — she always has time to drink.

Before I knew it, I was on her block, waving “hi” to Miss Johnston while hiding my eye and ignoring Miss Bricknell. I stepped through Auntie’s door and was greeted by the scent of gumbo. My stomach grumbled in hunger and pain. I needed some food. Bathroom first, food second. I glided past the blaring TV and Auntie’s empty spot on the couch to look at my eye. I stepped in front of the mirror and heard, “Shawn . . . is that you?”

“Yeah,” I shouted, and got to work. Dang . . . I looked like the creature from the black lagoon. A puffy, purple ring surrounded my half-shut eye. I grabbed a washcloth and dabbed it at the raw meat, flinching each time cold water touched it. Blood dripped from my hands, and dirt and blacktop pieces fell from my face, spinning down the drain with any confidence I had of explaining this to Mama. A torn sneaker was one thing, but a black eye was something else.

I gotta hurry. Shoot, what am I gonna tell her? Think about that later. First, I gotta find a steak. I headed to the kitchen. Still no sign of Auntie. Where is she? I heard her stirring around the house, but I haven’t seen her. I cracked open the fridge, found some half-thawed meat on a plate, and ripped open the packaging. The slab of flesh was slick with blood, but I stabbed it onto my eye anyway, dripping meat blood on the floor in the process. The fellas were right: the steak felt good.

“Boy . . . what you doing with my cube steak? And what happened to your eye?”

Auntie! Shoot. Think fast. Keep it simple. Be cool. Basketball . . . “Ummm, it happened during a basketball game. I went up for a rebound and somebody elbowed me in the eye.”

Yeah, that sounded good and believable.

“Boy, put my steak down and put some ice on that. You ruining my dinner for tomorrow,” she screamed, adding, “And clean up that mess,” on her way to the living room.

It figures; the one time I hoped Auntie would be passed out, she’s wide awake. That don’t ever happen. She run out of “juice” or something?

I stood there for a few minutes, pressing the meat to my eye, letting the cold of the flesh seep in. With both eyes closed, I almost drifted off to sleep until I heard
beep-beep!

Shoot . . .
Mama’s here
!

I put the steak back on the plate, tossed it in the fridge, and headed to the sink to clean the blood off my face. Be cool. Stick to the story. If she finds out everything, you can kiss your summer good-bye, Shawnie-Shawn.

Mama’s jangling keys announced her presence as she stepped through the door to kiss Auntie hello. “Shawn . . .” she called in her usual voice. Auntie whispered something to her, and she called again in a voice I haven’t heard since my last whipping a couple of years ago, loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear: “Shawn Christopher Williams . . . get yo’ behind in here RIGHT NOW!”

“YOU TRYING TO TELL ME you got that black eye playing basketball? You expect me to believe that?”

Mama stood just inside the doorway with her arms folded and her right foot stuck out at me. I stood a few feet away between her and the TV. Her head cocked to the side and her eyes focused on mine. Hard.

I know that look. The one that said she didn’t believe me. But instead of talking my way out of it, I stayed quiet. It’s hard to beat Mama at that game, though, ’cause she’ll just stand there and eyeball you until you talk — which, I did.

“Yeah. I told you — we were playing ball with some older guys at MLK and there was a lot of bangin’ goin’ on when I went up for a rebound. I reached in for the ball as this big dude tried to protect the ball by swinging his elbows out. One of ’em caught me dead in the eye and knocked me to the ground.”