Chameleon (32 page)

“Could?” Dad said.

I rolled my eyes. “
Will
affect my future.”

Mama got up. She opened the oven to check on the roast, and the scent of seasoned meat snaked up my nose. She stirred the potatoes, carrots, and peas around and closed the oven door. Ohh, that smelled too good.

“When we gonna eat?”

“In a few minutes. You want to stay for dinner, Shawn?”

Dad paused to finish chewing his chips, then said, “Thanks, but I gotta run. I gotta catch up on some work before tomorrow.”

Chips crunched around the table until Mama said, “I’m glad to see you taking this decision seriously.”

Yvonne snapped into my head. If only Mama knew about the conversation me and Dad had about Miss Thing, aka Burger Queen.

“So how long do I have to make it?”

I looked at the two of them. Dad looked at Mama.

“Well, I was going through your registration papers for Marshall, and final registration is about two weeks before school starts. That’s about a month away.”

She dusted her hands off. “So I would say a month from today. That should give you plenty of time to figure it out.”

A month? I guess that’s not too bad.

“There you go. One month. That’s four weeks to decide where you wanna spend the next four years of your life,” Dad said.

Dang. Why he say it like that? A month sounded much longer than four weeks. It’s gonna be here before I know it.

Dad stood. “I gotta run, but I’ll see you in a couple of weeks, all right?”

I stood and we gave each other a hug and slaps on the back. Dad whispered in my ear as Mama pulled the roast out of the oven, “Remember what I said? You control
it
— don’t let
it
control you.”

Yvonne popped into my head. Mama wiped away the image of Yvonne leaning on the counter with “Dinner’s ready.”

I loved hanging at Dad’s, but I was glad to be eating Mama’s home cooking again. Most of the stuff Auntie makes Mama makes too, but Mama gets a little exotic sometimes, making stuff like Japanese sukiyaki, enchiladas, Chinese food, Italian food, and all kinds of other stuff. Dad makes great tacos and . . . well, he makes great tacos. I’m glad I can eat whatever I want when I’m at his house, but Dad doesn’t cook much, so by the time I see Mama on Sunday, I’m ready for some real food.

And that’s what Mama made: real food. A typical Sunday dinner: pot roast with carrots, potatoes, peas, and hot rolls. The rolls were my favorite. I took the bread, split it open, spread butter inside, and jammed it with wedges of tender pot roast, eating it like a sandwich. My mouth exploded with flavor as Mama spoke.

“So . . . did your father talk to you about anything in particular?”

My mouth chewed the mini sandwich until I was able to speak.

“Yeah. A few things.”

She scratched her fork across her plate.

“You talk about your eye?”

“Yeah, we talked about it,” I said before plunging a forkful of carrots in my mouth.

“And?”

I put my fork down and took a sip of water.

“
And
what? We talked about it, and that was the end of it.”

“The end of it?” She put her fork down and brought her hands up to rest her chin on them. I felt her eyes on me as I mashed the peas on my plate. I hate peas.

“I mean . . . we talked about other stuff related to that too.”

She ripped into a fresh roll. “What kind of other stuff?”

“Oh . . . you know . . . how it’ll affect my decision.”

She sawed into her meat. “I see.”

We sawed and chewed in belly-filling silence for a good couple of minutes. I hadn’t eaten anything except chips since Fatburger, and this was hitting the spot. Hard to believe that was just this afternoon; it felt like years ago now.

“Dad got to see how good I am at basketball today,” I said.

“Did he think you weren’t good?” She rubbed her roll around her empty plate, sopping up the gravy.

“He knows I can play, but he hasn’t seen me in a while. He was surprised at how good I got in such a short time.” I bit into my potatoes and smacked. “I’m pretty good, you know.”

“You better be, as much as you play.”

I pointed a forkful of meat at her. “So what about you, Mama? Please tell me you did something else besides clean the house this weekend.”

Her plate was empty, so she sat back.

“As a matter of fact, I did.”

I stabbed more meat to work on.

“You gonna tell me, or you gonna leave me hangin’?”

She hesitated.

“I went on a date.”

I dropped my fork and drank some water.

“A date? With who?”

She spun her plate around.

“Professor Hopkins . . . from school.”

“I knew it! I thought you said there wasn’t anything going on between you two?”

“There wasn’t — until Friday. He asked me to a jazz festival this weekend, so I said why not?”

She got up and scratched her slippers toward the sink.

“I wouldn’t even call it a date.”

I finished my food and carried my plate over. “I would.”

“Oh, hush, boy. It was a nice day, so we had a picnic and listened to some jazz. He dropped me off when it was over and that was it. We didn’t even talk about going out again.”

“Why? You scare him away?”

She flicked water my direction as she rinsed the plates off.

“No . . . we had a good time.”

She paused and put her head down. “He just didn’t ask me.”

Did she wanna go out with him again? Maybe that would mellow her out. All she really has is me and Auntie to hang with. And she don’t hang with Auntie. Maybe Dad was right. If I left . . .

“Well, I’m sure he’ll ask you again.” I slung my arm around her and got in her face. “I mean, who can resist this face?”

I grabbed her cheeks and stretched them like taffy.

“Shawn, stop!” She aimed the sprayer at my face and squeezed.

I ducked and dodged and did what I could, but she got me good.

“Come on, Mama. My shirt is getting soaked.”

“All right, all right. I’m done anyway. Why don’t you go put your stuff in your room?”

I headed to my room as she called out, “And clean it while you’re in there.”

I peeled off my soaked shirt, threw it to the floor, then plopped on my bed and stretched out. So Mama had a date this weekend? Good for her. For real. I couldn’t be here by myself all weekend — alone — with nothing to do but clean the house. I wonder what this “Professor Hopkins” dude is like. Is he black? White? Tall? Short? What? I bet he’s black. All the books he’s recommended so far have been by black authors. I wonder what he looks like. Hopkins. Sounds like a nerd. Hop . . . kins. I bet he wears glasses. I can just see him in one of them brown tweed jackets with the patches on the sleeves, puffing on a pipe. Wearing his glasses. Big, thick, Coke-bottle glasses that you can see China with.

I got up. What time is it? Seven thirty. Still early. Dang! My room
was
a mess. I might as well clean it. It’ll give me something to do and give a fresh start to the week.

I unpacked my bag and unfolded my crunchy shorts. Ughh. I almost forgot about them. I grabbed my wet shirt off the floor and rolled it into the shorts so they would both be moist. I’m sure she knows “my accident” is gonna happen again, but at least she won’t know it happened this weekend at Dad’s.

I stepped around the room, plucking piles of clothes from the floor and furniture. A white T-shirt here. A gray T-shirt there. Black shorts here. More black shorts there. It wasn’t until I peeled a pair of purple shorts off my bed did I realize I didn’t have much color in my wardrobe. That wasn’t necessarily by accident. Whenever we went shopping and Mama held up anything blue or red, the only thing I could think of was the Crips and Pirus, so I always passed on what she picked out.

I sat down on my bed. Exhale. I’m tired of thinking about them. I’m tired of thinking about what colors I can and can’t wear. I’m tired of always trying to figure out which park I can or can’t play ball at. My heart began to race. Now I know the anger Malcolm felt. The Crips and Pirus are black just like me, but they might as well be white and I might as well be living in the segregated South, because as far as I’m concerned, if you can’t wear what you want or go where you want, when you want, then you ain’t free. Plain and simple. In Compton you gotta watch your back, because if you young like me, at any moment you can find yourself facedown with a mouthful of dirt and a foot pushing you down simply because a bunch of ’bangers are bored.

My anger pulsed through my blood and brought me to my feet. I put it to use by finishing my room. Every plain white T-shirt and basic black pair of shorts I picked up added fuel to my fire. No red clothes. No blue clothes. No color. No control. No freedom.

The safest I ever felt was with my boys. And even that was starting to change, with Dayshaun getting his wrist crushed. Who knows what’ll happen next, now that we mixed it up with the knuckleheads. If Dayshaun’s dad ever found out about that, he might not even let ’Zo hang with us anymore; he already thinks the four of us are a gang. Most people do. They think I don’t see them watching us. I know what they see — they see what they wanna see. They see four of us walking down the street and think we wanna rob them. They think we want what they have when we not even thinking about them at all. Why can’t we just be four young black kids? Better yet, why can’t we just be four teenagers? Not four suspicious characters. We aren’t characters. We real — I’m real. Flesh-and-bone real. Having-two-parents real. Basketball-playing real. Book-reading real. Cracking-jokes real. Stealing-pomegranates real. Kung-fu movie–watching real. Daydreaming real. Girl-watching real. Bikini-loving real. Untrusted real. Getting-smacked-with-fists-and-clubs real . . .

“I’M REAL!”

I slammed my clothes against the wall like paint splashing a blank canvas.

My chest pumped anger through my nose as my heart slowed its beat. I stared through the wall in front of me, then at it like I had never seen it before.

My green T-shirt from junior high dangled from my Bruce Lee poster. All my other clothes lay in a big pile against the wall. I reached out for the shirt. And thought of Marisol. And her smile — bright as the sun, soft as green grass.

The sun of her smile blew my blues away.

She made my heart race. She made my palms sweat. She made my nerves buzz. She made my nose twitch. She made my mouth water. She made my tongue twist. She made my eyes wide. She made me look to the sky. She made me dream. She made me see the beauty of life. She . . .

She made me feel real.

MONDAY CAME and I hit the ground running. When me and the fellas met in front of Pop’s, they all got a kick out of my new haircut and sideburns — especially my sideburns.

“I didn’t even know you had sideburn hair,” Trent said, inspecting them up close.

“Neither did I,” I replied.

Lorenzo told us Dayshaun had a huge cast on his wrist, and as far as his dad knew, it happened playing basketball.

I told them about Yvonne, and Lorenzo said, “See, Shawn, you ain’t ready for that. I should’ve been there. I would’ve handled that like a real man.”

To which Trent replied, “You ain’t no man.”

“I see your black eye is almost all gone too,” Andre said, inspecting my eye.

“Yeah, I did the steak thing when I got to my Auntie’s on Friday, and it did feel good, but mostly I just kept putting ice on it over the weekend.”

“I told you steak works,” Lorenzo said.

“Dang, Shawn . . . sideburns, almost no black eye — it’s like you a whole new man,” Trent said.

“HAH!” Lorenzo burst. “Like Trent said, ‘He ain’t no man.’”

We teased as usual. Joked as usual. Laughed as usual. Messed around as usual. And played ball as usual. But I never mentioned the decision I had to make. I would tell them only if I decided to go to Carson; no use in saying anything unless I had to.

The days ran into each other as summer tumbled faster toward the first day of school. Our basketball games ran longer. Our movie watching became more frequent. And Auntie made more bottles crack open and disappear. Mama went out with Professor Hopkins a few more times and loosened up on me a bit. Dad cut short a visit because he got called away to a major earthquake. I wanted to go with him, but he said natural disasters are great for pictures but not much else. It was just as well because a weekend at home gave me a chance to pick Brian’s brain on my possible future high school in Carson.

“How many people go there?”

“About five hundred per grade, so . . . about two thousand.”

“How many lunch periods you have?”

“Two.”

“You guys have a pink slip?”

“A what?”

I broke down the pink slip and, just like Mama, he didn’t believe me, so I said, “That’s what I’ve heard.”

“Nahhh, we don’t have anything like that because we don’t need it. I can’t believe they let him do that.”

“The Crips and Pirus do much worse.”

He nodded. “I guess so.”

“You got a school paper or anything like that?”

“Yeah. A good one too. There’s also the yearbook.”

“What about sports? How you guys do in sports?”