Efrain's Secret (12 page)

Her answer surprises me. “To who?”

“My group.”

Here it comes. “I didn’t know you were part of a group.”

“It’s not something I tell just anyone. The few people outside my family who know either had to know or …” Candace finally looks me in the eye. “… I decided to trust them.” Like I told Chingy, I’m trying to know this girl. I mean,
know her
, know her. So I take her hand, and Candace squeezes it as if to transfer the truth without words. PE to KE. “It’s a support group for kids like me, you know, teenagers who survived Katrina. And Rita, too. Anyway, the doctor my bigmouth aunt told you about?” I laugh as she rolls her eyes, and the tension between us bends. “She runs the group. I meet with her one-on-one every Wednesday after school, and on Saturday mornings, we have group …” She hesitates to finish her sentence, and I squeeze her hand. “… therapy.”

Candace waits for me to say something. My girlfriend is in therapy. She sees a psychologist, psychiatrist, or whatever. Her problems are serious enough that the doctor needs to meet with her alone in private. I remember the rumor about why Candace transferred from Mott Haven to AC. I just shrug and say, “It’s all good.” What a stupid thing to say, E.! “I mean, not the reason why you have to go, obviously! Just the fact that you
do
go.” Man, I’m making a lot of assumptions. I ask, “Do you feel like it helps you?”

Candace nods. “My doctor says that she wishes I would talk more during group, but it helps me a lot to just listen. To know that I’m not alone. But today I talked a little.” And the way she looks at me says that even though I’m not a part of the group, I’m part of the therapy.

“Can I ask you something?”

Candace sighs with relief. “Please!”

“You promise you won’t get mad?”

“No, but ask me anyway.”

“It’s something I heard, and I just want to know what’s true.” I throw my hands up ready to block blows. “It’s not like I already believe it or anything like that.”

“Will you ask me already? And will you please put your hands down, Efrain? Everyone’s staring at us like a bad reality show couple.”

“My bad.” I drop my guard. “Okay … Is it true that …” I can’t keep it that real. How do I repeat the hurtful gossip about her now that I know she trusts me? “… you got expelled from Mott Haven for stabbing some girl and burying her under the football field?”

Candace hits me in the arm. “Shut up!” We laugh a bit, and then she says, “I was taking an elective in environmental justice, and I did my final presentation on New Orleans since Katrina. I knew things were bad at home, but, man …” She looks away from me, and I follow her eyes to the MTA’s Train of Thought ad across the car. In silence, we both read it.

Candace smiles at the ad, then turns back to me. “The school system in New Orleans was always bad, but now it’s worse. The crime rate’s off the meter…. Anyway, I finish my presentation, and the teacher asks if anyone has any questions. I’m one of the last people to go, and nobody’s been asking anybody questions all week. Then this girl Dacia yells, ‘You one of them refugees?’ And everybody starts laughing at me. Well, maybe some people were just laughing ’cause Dacia was supposed to present next if there was time left in the period.”

“Yeah, she was just asking questions to waste time.”

Candace shrugs. “Anyway, I say, no, I’m not a refugee, but the girl is like, ‘You kept saying how New Orleans is the City That Care Forgot and how the Black folks there were treated in an un-American way or whatever and that things are so bad that you had to leave and you can’t go back. That means you a refugee!’”

“And the teacher didn’t shut her down?”

“She tried. She explained that a refugee is a person who flees a foreign country to escape danger or persecution. Then the teacher asks me if there’s anything I want to add. I say, ‘Yes,’ and I look straight at Dacia and say, ‘Don’t call me a refugee.’ Then the teacher says it’s her turn, and I can go back to my seat. Then she starts clapping, and everybody else claps, too, but as I pass Dacia’s desk, she says, ‘Nice job, refugee.’ So I threw my notebook at her.” I start laughing. “That’s not funny, Efrain!”

“Did you break her jaw so the doctor had to wire it shut?”

“No!” But her eyes flash with horror.

“You hit her, though.” I can’t stop laughing. “You connected, didn’t you?”

“I would’ve missed her except she kind of walked into it so the edge of my book caught her in the nose.” A lot of girls I know would be bragging about that, but Candace sounds embarrassed. “Her nose bled a little, but I didn’t break anything, I swear.”

I stay laughing. “I believe you,
mami.”

“What do they say about me at school?”

“That you hung some dude from the bleachers.” Before she can answer, I add, “And there’s another one that goes
Candace snuck an AK-47 into the school and shot up her gym class.”

She finally smiles. “Uh-huh, I did that.” Candace no longer cares about the hurtful rumors, and that’s all that matters to me. “And you fixin’ to be next, so keep it up.”

“There’s one more story about you that they used for an episode of
Law & Order.”

“Efrain, stop exaggerating!” Candace leans into me giggling.

Her touch pumps the idea into me like a transfusion. PE to KE. “I’m taking this year-long civil rights class and have to do a senior thesis,” I say. “Would you mind if I did something related to Hurricane Katrina and, you know, used your presentation as part of my research? Don’t worry, I won’t plagiarize.”

Candace glows. “You’d never do anything like that.” Then she kisses my temple. “You’re the best guy in the whole school.”

Inimical
(adj.)
unfriendly, hostile, having the disposition of an enemy

The block’s poppin’ more than usual even for a Thursday night. “It’s warm for November, the city workers got paid today …,” says Nestor. “I smell cheddar.” We had to re-up an hour earlier than usual, and I make money hand over fist. It’s dope to not grind for pennies. If every night were like this, I can see how dudes get caught up.

I only break for dinner, treating myself to
un biftec empaniza’o
with yellow rice and black beans at Floridita’s, a Puerto Rican restaurant across the street. When I walk out of Floridita’s, a disheveled guy wearing a week’s funk bops up to me.

“You got?”

“What you need?”

“I heard those white tops be whispering sweet nothings in a nigga’s ear,” he says.

It still bothers me to sell crack. The money is usually too good to resist, but I don’t need the extra sale tonight. “I’m out,” I lie, “but let me introduce you to my man over here.”

The throwback shakes his head. “Nah, man, never mind. My cash has to go long this weekend. You got any weed?”

“No doubt.”

“Hit me up with a nickel, then.” He gives me a ten-dollar bill, and I pocket it. I start to signal LeRon when I feel a hard yank on the hood of my jacket. I fly backward until I crash against the
brick wall of the restaurant. A forearm slams across my throat, and my Adam’s apple reaches for my eyebrows.

Then milky dark eyes breathe the tang of stale endo into my face. “What the fuck you think you doing?”

With both hands, I grab at the arm and try to pry it off my neck. “Get the fuck off me, yo!”

“You run with Snipes!” The stench of old reefer invades my nostrils again, followed by another thrust of the forearm to my throat. “You one of Snipes’s boys, right?”

I close my eyes and brace myself for the blow. But then the forearm whips off my neck as if someone was rewinding a video. Then all I hear is a bunch of guys cursing, feet pounding, jackets chafing. I finally open my eyes to catch boys from my crew pulling back Nestor while some guys from Hinckley’s posse restrain one of their own. I run into the middle of the drama. “What the hell’s going on, man?”

“How you gonna try to hustle on this corner?” says this Latino kid I’ve never seen before. “All in our face like we ain’t shit.”

“You got it twisted,” says Nestor. “That’s all I was trying to explain, man. It’s just a misunderstanding ’cause my boy’s new, that’s all.”

“New, my ass!” shouts Reefer Breath. He’s a skinny, yellow-skinned dude with a knotty Afro and pointed jaw. “He’s been out here slinging long enough to not even be thinking about plying no trade on this side of the street.” He jabs his finger toward my face. “You finna get smoked?”

Nestor reaches into his pocket and moves toward Reefer. His boys crowd around him so our crew closes ranks around Nestor. Nestor takes a few steps back and raises his hands in the air, waving a fifty-dollar bill. “Look, let’s squash this before someone calls the po and we all get knocked, okay?” Soldiers on both sides
mutter
Word
and
For real
. “Just consider this compensation for any inconvenience.”

Reefer Breath paces in a small circle like a mutt about to settle on a rug. He starts toward Nestor, but the Latino kid in his crew clamps a hand on his shoulder. “C’mon, Julian, squash it.”

Julian knocks off his friend’s hand. Eventually, he faces off with Nestor, but homeboy doesn’t blink. He just raises the bill and dangles it in front of Julian. They stare each other down for a few seconds with both posses set to jump. Finally, Julian snatches the fifty out of Nestor’s hand and walks around him to me. He points in my face and says, “This time it was a mistake. Next time …” His boys follow him, mean-mugging as they bop past me.

My crew makes its way across the street while Nestor hangs back. “What were you thinking, bro?” he asks.

“I wasn’t, man. I came out of the restaurant, this guy steps to me, and without thinking twice about it—”

“Damn, E.—”

“I know. I’m sorry. Trust me, it’ll never happen again.”

“No worries.” Nestor slaps me on the shoulder. “Just to be on the safe side, don’t even cross the street.” And with that, he motions us to head back to our side. “For real. This is Hunts Point, kid. You can get your
empaniza’o
on anywhere you look.”

I snicker as I dodge through the oncoming traffic. “No, nope, sorry. I’m not giving up Floridita’s
empaniza’o
for nobody.”

I’m just joking, but Nestor looks mad serious. “I’m not trying to son you, E., but these streets are on some other shit, okay?” When we reach the other side, and I try to bounce, he grabs my arm to pull me back. “It’s not like you, Chingy, and me scrapping with those kids from Cypress Avenue on the court after a hard foul, ya feel me?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I shrug him off me. Like I don’t feel enough like an herb.

He takes a deep breath. “Look, bro, I saw how that punk Julian just yoked you from behind. That you didn’t even see him coming.”

My cheeks grow hot. “Let it go already.”

But Nestor gets in my face. “You better listen to me but good, E. Compared to cats who’ve been hustling since they were yea high, you
are
a Boy Scout. Just because I have your back out here doesn’t mean you can skip down Hunts Point Avenue like it’s the Yellow Brick Road, got it?”

I get it. Still, I say, “Whatever.”

Nestor shakes his head at me. His cell phone rings, and he fishes it out of his pocket. He reads the screen, taps out a text message, then puts his cell away. “Snipes wants to see you.”

“What?”

Nestor shrugs. “Hey, when you don’t make friends and influence people, trust that some kiss-ass is going to run tell when you have drama. Heads be griping that you punch in and clock out without ever stopping to chitchat by the water cooler, you feel me? Saying
That new kid Scout, he’s just a schoolboy playing gangster until Mommy calls him home for supper
. When Julian rushed you tonight, the brothers fell in for me. For Snipes. Not you, and you better take that shit personally.”

I know he’s right, but I can’t do a thing about it except hope that Snipes dismisses it as just another day on the grind. Worse things have happened, haven’t they? Thinking about that makes me shudder.

“Don’t get shook, E.,” says Nestor. “I’m responsible for you. I’ll go talk to Snipes.”

“Look, man, thanks for having my back. As always.” My shame just isn’t deep enough to man up and face Snipes myself.

“No doubt, bro.”

“And before I forget.” I reach into my pocket, peel off fifty dollars, and hand it to Nestor. Ouch. But it’s the least I can do.

He backs away from the money. “C’mon, it ain’t like that. Not between us.”

“Take it anyway.” Nestor pockets the cash, and we get back to work. Although the tide is still strong, I have no swagger. Customers approach me, but because I’m slow on the take, other cats in my crew muscle in on the sale. Now every time somebody beats me to a customer, LeRon yells out something like, “Uh-oh, Scout, he’s gunning for your badge.” I consider quitting, but pride won’t let me. Instead, I stay longer than I ordinarily do. I even borrow Nestor’s cell phone, take a walk over to Jimmy Jazz, and give my mother a story about overtime as if standing by a display of sweaters makes it less of a lie.