Efrain's Secret (8 page)

Nestor says, “Trace, this is my boy Efrain. E., Trace.”

I offer Trace a pound. “Peace.”

Ignoring my hand, he says, “Assume the position, yo.”

Nestor gives a nervous laugh and flattens his palms against the wall as if he were just arrested. “Business precaution, man.”

“Yeah, Snipes don’t know you,” says Trace as he pats down Nestor for God knows what. “You could be a snitch for Hinckley.”

I don’t even know who that is, but I mimic Nestor. Trace moves over to frisk me, patting me so hard on the crotch, I have to catch my breath and suck down the pain.

Finally, Trace backs off of us and says to Nestor, “You know where he is.” Then he steps aside. Nestor leads me inside and into an office where a bald Latino guy in his late twenties pours himself a glass of rum and watches
SportsCenter
. Nestor says, “Snipes, this is my boy Efrain. The one I was telling you about.”

Man, I feel like a fool. I had the entire stereotype in my mind, expecting Wesley Snipes in that movie
Sugar Hill
or
New Jack City
. I hold out my hand to him and say, “Pleased to meet you, sir. My name is Efrain Rodriguez,” like Mrs. Colfax taught me in her professional development course.

Snipes takes one look at me, then says to Nestor, “Take off.”
Nestor hesitates, then tells me he’ll wait for me outside. As soon as the door closes, Snipes motions for me to take a seat and turns off the television. He rises from his chair and takes a sip of his rum, never pulling his gaze from me. Finally, he scoffs, “Get the fuck out of here. This ain’t for you.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me, Scout. I told you to get the fuck on up out of here! You ain’t trying to work for me.”

I know this is a test. I ace tests. I have to. “Yes, I am.”

“What for?”

“Because I need the money.”

“Who the hell doesn’t?”

“But I’m the one who’s here.”

Snipes squints as if he wants to like my answer. “You in some kind of trouble?”

“No, sir.”

“You owe anybody any money?”

“No.” Then I come clean. “Not yet. Not if I can help it.”

“Oh, I get it. You got some nasty habits. Gambling, drugs, or some shit.”

“Not at all.” Chingy pops into my mind. “I stay shy.”

Snipes laughs. “You stay shy? Okay, Scout. Here you go.” He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a wad of bills. He peels off one hundred-dollar bill after the other, tossing them into a stack on the table. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. “Is that enough for you?”

I should take the money, say peace out, and never show my face around these parts again, but there’s more at stake now than money. “Hardly.” This man doesn’t know me to rate my needs so damned cheaply.

Snipes bends down and hollers in my face, “How much is enough, then?”

“Thirty!” I yell back.

“For what?”

“College!”

“College?” He laughs like my name is Ernie and I want to buy a truckload of rubber ducks. “College?”

“I didn’t stutter.” I’m not two feet from Cerebus, and I unleash this pent-up bravado. Who is this guy, and why is he trying to get me killed?

“What freakin’ college costs thirty grand?”

“The best.”

“Oh, is that right?” Snipes laughs again. “What do they teach for thirty G’s that you can’t learn at the College of Mount Okey-doke?”

“How to run the world.” It may sound like a slick response, but that’s real talk. “And that’s thirty G’s
per year
and
not
including room and board.”

Snipes finally straightens up. He finishes off his rum and sits back down beside me. “You really out there slinging so you can afford to go to some rich White boys’ college? Da Man’s University.” He laughs at his own joke. I neither laugh nor answer. “You think a nickel bag here, a white top there is enough to take you where you trying to go?”

“With all due respect, why does it matter why I want to do this?” I ask. “So long as my incentives fuel my hustle and move your product, we’re both good.”

He leans over and scoops the money off the table. “You want Da Man’s U that bad?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I see you there,” he says. “Not on no sellout shit either. I see you keeping it real. Representing. You gonna become one of my good friends in high places, aren’t you, E.?”

I swallow. “Damn straight.”

Conciliatory
(adj.)
friendly, agreeable

On Monday, when I rush out of physics to speak to Mr. Sweren before everyone else arrives, who’s there with him but Mrs. Colfax. On another day, I would have held back and waited for her to bounce, but today I’m on a mission. “Excuse me, Mr. Sweren, but I need to speak to you about something important.”

Mrs. Colfax puts her hand on my arm. “So, how are your college applications going, Efrain?” she asks.

Like you really care
. I step out of her reach. “Fine.”

She says to Mr. Sweren, “Efrain’s intent on going Ivy League.”

“Good for you,” he says, not sounding the least concerned about my being overwhelmed.

Mrs. Colfax fidgets. “But don’t you think Efrain should apply to a range of schools?” Her tone makes it obvious that Mr. Sweren should back her up.

He says, “That’s right, Efrain, you want to apply to three types of schools. One, apply to a few dream schools. You know, the ones that seem like long shots for whatever reason. Then you want to apply to a few safe schools. Those are ones that you can afford and know you can get into with no problem. And then you want to have a few schools in between those two extremes. This way you’re neither shooting too high nor aiming too low.”

“Thanks, Mr. Sweren. I’ll do that.” I appreciate Mr. Sweren schooling me. I haven’t applied yet to any schools in the middle,
only concentrating on my dream and safe schools. He did more for me in one conversation than Mrs. Colfax ever did.

If Mrs. Colfax is hating, she keeps it to herself. She tells Mr. Sweren that she will speak to him later and touches me on the arm again. “Remember, Efrain, it’s better to be a big fish in a little bowl rather than a little fish in a big bowl.” I’m mad tempted to tell Mrs. Colfax what she can do with her fishbowls, but I don’t want to shake Mr. Sweren’s image of me as a respectable student.

Once she leaves, he asks me, “What was that all about?” When I explain that Mrs. Colfax thinks it’s a waste of my time to apply to the Ivy League, Mr. Sweren’s bushy eyebrows become one long caterpillar across his forehead. “Look, Efrain, I agree that you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket, but Colfax is an idiot.” After the initial shock, I belt out a whooping laugh. I never had a teacher dis another one in front of me like that. “Seriously, she’s been feeding seniors like you that fishbowl crap for years. Yes, it’s difficult for even the best student at Albizu Campos to get into an Ivy League college, but it has been known to happen.”

“You mean since 1913?” I ask. That’s when Pedro Albizu himself enrolled at Harvard. Eleven years later they opened our high school, although I bet anything it wasn’t named after a Puerto Rican back then.

“Yes, a few times since,” Mr. Sweren laughs. “There are always exceptions, and you won’t ever know if you can be one if you don’t at least aim for it.”

“No doubt,” I say. “Albizu Campos himself was a Harvard man, right?”

“That’s right, Efrain.” Mr. Sweren seems impressed that I know that. Then he says, “Let me guess… Señorita Polanco.”

“All day, every day.” Go to a school named “Washington,” “Roosevelt,” or “Kennedy,” trust you’ll learn all about who the school is named after, but no one taught us who Albizu Campos
was until Señorita Polanco returned to teach after graduating in the eighties.

Students start to come into the library, and even though I want to talk more with Mr. Sweren, better to get this over with before Chingy arrives. “Look, I don’t want to do this, but I’m going to have to quit tutoring.”

Mr. Sweren’s caterpillar brow arcs its back. “Why?”

“I didn’t do well on the SATs, so I’m going to retake them in January. But I need more time to study for them. That means giving up my tutoring job.”

Mr. Sweren nods. “I understand. Sounds like you have your priorities in order, Efrain.” He swats me on the back of my shoulder. “You’ll be hard to replace, though. Good luck to you.” Then he opens his folder, and takes out my time sheet. “Sign this before you go so we can make sure you get your last check.” He leaves the sheet on the desk and then starts to mark his attendance book as people roll through the door. Man, that was much easier than I thought it would be. I expected Mr. Sweren to try to convince me to stay or grill me or something. Somehow I don’t feel relieved that he didn’t.

As soon as I sign the time sheet and slip it into Mr. Sweren’s folder, I turn around and bump into Chingy. “What’s up, cuz?” he says as he offers me a pound. “Man, you flew out of physics. Kinematics got you shook?”

“Yeah, man, I had to quit my job.”

“What?”

“Check it.” I motion for him to follow me outside the library. Once we are in the hallway, I say, “Look, Chingy, I told Sweren that I need more time to study for the January SAT. The truth is, though, I took another job that pays better so I can enroll in a prep course at Fordham.”

“Word? That’s what’s up. Where’s your new grind?”

“I was on Southern Boulevard this weekend, and I saw a sign in the window of Jimmy Jazz.” Damn, I shouldn’t have said that. What if Chingy decides to drop by, wanting to say hi or apply for a better-paying job himself? Luckily, I chose a store with locations throughout the city. “But chances are they’re going to assign me to a store downtown.”

“The one on Delancey?”

“Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know yet.” I guess this is good practice for what I’ll tell my moms. I haven’t lied to her since Rubio made me. “Look, I have to bounce. I only dropped by to tell Mr. Sweren….”

“No doubt. Do your thing. How ’bout I drop by afterward so we can chill? Maybe go play some hoops.”

“That would be peace.” Chingy may come over with a thousand and one questions about my new gig, but I really want to hang out with him. I’ll deal with it as it comes like I did just now. Maybe I should pat myself on the back for being able to play this off so lovely, but instead, I really want out of here.

“Watch, I’m going to get stuck tutoring one of your herbs,” says Chingy. “You need to compensate a brother by putting me down with your employee discount.”

“Efrain.”

Candace comes out of the library. Trying to keep my story straight while parlaying with Chingy, I hadn’t even noticed when she arrived. “Hey, Candace.”

Chingy grins, then backs up toward the door. “One, cuz.”

“Peace out.”

Candace waits for Chingy to go into the library and close the door behind him. She looks at me and says, “Mr. Sweren says you quit so you can focus on studying for the SAT.”

“Yeah, something had to give.” She nods but doesn’t say anything. “So …”

“So …”

“So.”

Candace smiles and rolls her eyes at me. “So!”

Now it’s a game. “So!”

“Soooo …” Candace gives a slight shove to my shoulder. Then she smiles and casts her eyes away. “How am I going to return the book I borrowed?”

My heart starts to pound. I say, “Maybe we can hang out sometime.” Studying, slinging … When am I supposed to do this? “You know, like, on the weekend.”

“Like maybe Saturday afternoon.”

I want to suggest Saturday night so it seems more like a date, but I have to grind on that corner so Snipes knows I’m about it. “Yeah, we can meet for lunch and then go to a matinee.” I don’t want Candace to think I’m cheap, so I add, “You know, go early so we can avoid all the ’hood rats who like to talk back at the screen and all that.”

“I hate that!” says Candace. “Why do people pay to get into the movies only to do what they can do at home for free?”

“That’s what I’m always saying.”

We laugh for a moment, and then Candace gets serious. “Yeah, the afternoon is better for me. Ever since we moved to New York, my mother’s been a bit overprotective. She really doesn’t want me out too late at night.”

“Cool.” Right now an overprotective moms is an amateur slinger’s best friend. “Give me your number, and I’ll call you.” I hand her my pen and notebook so she can write down her digits. “What time do you think you’ll be home tonight?”

“On the way home, I pick up my little sister at the community center….”

“St. Mary’s?” When it gets too cold for People’s Park, Chingy and I play hoops there.

“Yeah, so call me after six just to be on the safe side.”

“Okay, I will.”

“Okay.” Candace nods a few times and then tiptoes to peck me on my cheek. “Bye, Efrain.” Then she rushes into the library.

“Bye, Candace.” I stay until the door clicks behind her. Then I practically skip out of the school like a little kid.

Novice
(n.)
beginner, someone without training or experience