Leaving: A Novel (12 page)

“Yee-eh, boy,” he yelled. He jumped into the air, spun almost 360 degrees, and shot it in the crate, leaving the ball bouncing on the pavement.

“Now!” he said, strutting back to Li’l Pit. “Can you say J-o-r-d-a-n?”

Li’l Pit chased the ball down and dribbled it with both hands.

“What’s up with that? That’s double dribble. Give me that.” But Li’l Pit kept dribbling, looking at the ball closely like he wasn’t sure if it would bounce straight back up. Love ran to him and swiped it away.

“Do it like this.” He bounced the ball with one hand by his side, waist high, nice and basic. But then he couldn’t help show off: he bounced it between his legs faster and faster and then went in for a layup. Li’l Pit smiled and chased the ball again. He tried bouncing it with one hand but hit his foot and the ball rolled away.

“I don’t want to play. I’m tired,” he said.

“You sure is. You the most tired hoopster I ever seen. I’m gonna teach you something. Back in the day, I couldn’t do none of this.” Love shot the ball into the basket. “But now I’m all that. And I didn’t have anyone to show me, like you’ve got now, see. So you’ve got to take advantage.” He shot a three-pointer from behind a chalk line drawn on the pavement. When he turned around, Li’l Pit was pulling a box of Chinese food from a black garbage bag.

“What you doing?”

“It’s for later.”

“Put that nasty stuff down. You don’t know what kinda AIDS that got.” Love snatched the box from him and threw it on the bag. “You’ve got to have some hygiene. You can’t just eat anything. We’ve got more food inside.”

“Hey, hey, nice shoes, punk.” The crew from the corner liquor store was upon them without a moment to think, six guys, all bigger and older, including the guy in the wheelchair. A thin stick of a guy punched the ball out of Love’s arms and dribbled in for a layup.

“What you doin with our ball and hoop?” said the man standing out in front of the crew. He towered above them with square shoulders and a brow that stuck out over his eyes by an inch, giving him a natural shade without sunglasses. Love recognized him from looking out the window on his first day at Ruby’s. He had a long braid of hair down his back, which, Love had heard, was because his father was Japanese.

“Hey Freight Train,” the stick boy called to the man. “Watch this.” He shot from behind the three-point line but missed. “Man, you-know-what-I’m-sayin, this ball is junk.”

The guy in the wheelchair with the boa constrictor around his shoulders rolled up to Love.

“What’s up, niggah? You ain’t got no tongue?” Love still didn’t say anything. He kept his eyes level, staring forward into nothing, as though the crew weren’t even there.

“Damn, bro,” Li’l Pit said, his body working from side to side as he walked up to the wheelchair. “That’s a tight snake.”

“Shut up,” Love said flatly to his brother.

“Listen here, niggah,” the man in the chair said to Love. “You ain’t got no bidness talking to a little brother that way.”

“What kinda snake this is?” Li’l Pit asked.

“This the kinda snake that eat bitches for lunch.”

“Watch this, Curse,” the stick boy yelled to the man in the chair. He walked up behind Love and threw the basketball at his head. It hit Love in the ear. Love turned and glared at the boy.

“What you lookin at, niggah?”

It was clear now who they wanted him to take on. This chump in the alley was definitely just a punk who’d be nothing without the crew. He had to stand up for the OGs, but they might not stand up for him because he might still have to prove himself. Love saw no way to leave this alley without a beating. Either he fought and they beat him up but respected him, or he didn’t fight and they beat him up every time they saw him. It was going to come down anyway, so Love had to do it while he still had some dignity. He blocked out the pain in his head and ran at the guy.

As he’d expected, the rest of the crew stood and watched while he and this stick boy went at it. They were both good with their hands and got in a few punches before it appeared Love would win, but then the stick boy pulled out a .22. He pointed it right at Love’s forehead.

Love closed his eyes. He’d been in this situation before. Closing his eyes helped him keep calm; when he couldn’t see the gun and its hole of death, it was like it wasn’t there.

“I guess you can’t take me with your hands,” Love said, loud enough for the crew to hear.

“I could take you with my finger right now, niggah.”

Love turned around and looked at Freight Train and the rest of the crew. They waited to see what their homie would do. He hit Love in the temple with the gun and knocked him to the ground. Love put his hand to his head and felt the blood. He spit on the ground as if this would somehow keep his poise, but he couldn’t stand up again.

Freight walked over and put his hand out for the gun. The stick boy handed it over immediately. Freight aimed the gun back at him.

“What you doin, Freight?”

Freight didn’t answer.

“I had to. You-know-what-I’m-sayin. I had to, ’cause he was dissin us, you-know-what-I’m-sayin.” He backed up, and when he’d gotten five feet away, he turned and ran up the alley. Freight shot at him and missed, but the boy fell to the ground and covered his head. He screamed out, practically crying.

“Fuck, Freight, what you shoot at me for?”

“Get up,” Freight said in an even tone.

The boy slowly raised himself with his head turned away.

“Come here.”

Stick boy walked slowly toward Freight, who held the gun straight at him. Love watched from the ground and Li’l Pit watched from the side of Curse’s chair. Nothing moved in the alley but the snake’s black tongue, shooting out and quivering, silently smelling the air. The stick boy’s chest heaved, but he walked right up to the nose of the gun.

“Would I ever hurt you?” Freight asked him.

The boy shook his head but didn’t look convinced.

“When’s the only time I’d ever hurt you?”

The boy had a hard time making the sound come to his mouth, but after a few swallows, he said: “If I ever leave you.”

“That’s right. That’s why I shot at you. I love you too much, man, to let your ass go. That would hurt my heart. I was testing you. And now you’ve come back. So you ain’t got nothing to fear.” He lowered the gun and grabbed the boy in a long, hard hug that seemed to take the breath out of him. When Freight stepped back, he held out the gun for the boy. “Take it.”

He took it and put it back in his pants. Curse wheeled over to the basketball, picked it up and put it in his lap. He rolled very close to Love’s fingers and then back to Li’l Pit.

“Here you go, little brother. You can play with our ball for a while.” Li’l Pit took the ball and nodded as if he’d been given a special assignment.

Freight turned, and the rest of the crew followed him out of the alley and back up Cranston.

*   *   *

LOVE BROUGHT LI’L
Pit inside for breakfast again the next day after Ruby had gone to work. When they’d cleaned up, Love took him outside and walked back around the block to get to San Pablo, instead of going up Cranston and passing the liquor store where the crew always hung out.

“Now I know what we’ve got to do,” Love said.

“Where we going?”

“Prescott.”

“Nuh-uh.” Li’l Pit stopped. “I ain’t, and you can’t make me.”

“All right. You don’t have to.” Love turned around and walked past his brother. “Just thought you wanted to come live with us.”

“I do.”

“Then you’ve got to go to school. You gonna get Nanna put in jail if you’re not in school. And they feed you tacos in school and you get to draw and there are other kids you can hang with. But if you don’t want to, then we’ll just go on back to your cardboard box and see if there’s some more of that Chinese food left in the trash.”

“How come you ain’t got to go to school?”

“I can’t. Got to have somebody working.”

“I want to work.”

“You will. But now you got to go to school first, and then you can make a lot of money working on computers. You get some of those tight Penny Hardaways and a red Impala. Yee-eh, boy.” Love held his fist out, and Li’l Pit tapped it and smiled. They walked toward Prescott and Li’l Pit rapped, his hand waving in the air:

See ya homies later

’Cause I got to go to school

Gonna eat a taco sandwich

Gonna spit it up and drool.

When they arrived at the administration building with all the adults around, they got very quiet and serious. They walked down the hallway and looked for an office where a lot of people went in and out. Li’l Pit stayed by the door as Love went up to the long counter. The woman at the desk did not look up at first. She was typing a letter and had to Wite-Out something on it. Without turning to see who it was, she spoke to him.

“Can I help you?”

“I need to know what class to put my brother in.”

“What’s his name?” She rolled the paper down and began to type again. Love looked at Li’l Pit and motioned him to come to the counter. “She wants to know your name. Your real name.”

“Paul LeRoy.”

“Who’s your teacher, hun?”

“I don’t know.”

The woman let out a deep breath and took off her half-frame glasses. “What does she look like?”

“You don’t know what you’re saying, lady,” Love said. “He isn’t in school yet.”

“You want to register him?”

“Yes please.”

She stood up and came to the counter. Now that she was looking at them, she didn’t have an altogether unpleasant face. Her hair was braided with gold extentions and tied in the back. When she saw Li’l Pit, she smiled.

“How old are you, hun?”

“Ten.”

She looked at Love and shook her head, still smiling a little. “You have to have an adult register him, and it has to be his legal guardian. You’ve got to have proof. And you’ve got to have his birth certificate, or some sort of medical record from the hospital he was born in.” She turned back to Li’l Pit. “Were you born near here?”

“Highland.”

“And you’ll need to get a physical and have your immunization papers. We can’t let anyone in until we know you’re not going to make the other kids sick.”

“I’m not gonna make them sick.”

“I know, hun, but we have to make sure. There’s a place at the district downtown called Student Services,” the woman continued. “Have your mother go there and they’ll help her get everything you need. Okay?”

Love had stopped paying attention. He was staring out the window behind the desk into the bright light and the elevated BART tracks above Seventh. This feeling had often come over him at school, and he was surprised to see how quickly it came back. He closed his eyes and then looked back at the woman.

“Can’t he just start until we get all that other stuff done?”

“No, I’m sorry. Will it be difficult for you to get the paperwork?”

He shook his head.

“They’ll help you pay if you can’t afford it,” she said.

“That’s not it.” Love said. Li’l Pit went over to the magazines on a table.

“Does your mother work?”

Love nodded.

“What about your father?” Love looked down at the counter and saw his own reflection in the waxy surface. Li’l Pit turned through the pages of a
Sports Illustrated.

“Can any adult come in with him?” she asked.

“My grandmother.”

“Is she his legal guardian?” Love had enough experience with custody issues to know that it was complicated and that she probably wasn’t since Li’l Pit had been living on the street with their mother. But he shrugged his shoulders just to see where it might lead.

“Well, have her come in and then we’ll know what to do next, okay, hun?”

He nodded. When Love turned away to go, he noticed a sign on the inside door that read
MRS. PIKE, PRINCIPAL.
He left and Li’l Pit ran out behind him. When they got to the outside of the school, Love kicked the gate.

“What did she say?” his brother asked.

“I’m going to take you to the room and you just sit in there and be good and then the teacher will let you stay. Once I tell Nanna about you and she knows you’re in school, then she won’t mind you stayin overnight. What grade you suppose to be in?”

Li’l Pit shrugged. Love thought back to the last time he was in a public school. When he was eight, he’d been in third grade.

“You should be in fifth now, but we’ll say fourth since you’ve been out so long. No, we better say third. You’re kinda small.”

“No I ain’t.”

Love took his brother’s hand and pulled him back into the schoolyard. They walked past the administration building and down each hall until they came to a room with a plaque on the door that said
MRS. TERRY, THIRD GRADE.

Love opened the heavy door and stuck his head in. The room was filled with Native American artifacts, kachina dolls on the shelves, painted cardboard drums hanging from the walls with names on them, and a large photograph of an Indian warrior. Mrs. Terry stopped talking and the whole class looked at Love.

“Yes?”

“Mrs. Pike says he’s supposed to be in your class.” He pulled Li’l Pit into the room.

“Another one? I already have thirty-two.” She took a deep breath. “What’s your name?”

Li’l Pit didn’t answer.

“His name is Paul,” Love said.

“Okay, Apaches,” said Mrs. Terry. “Let’s all give Paul a warriors’ welcome.” All the kids howled and paddled their mouths.

“Sit over there, Paul, by Jesse.”

Love pushed his brother forward and then left. Li’l Pit sauntered to the seat at the far end of the room, his right arm trailing behind his back. He sat next to a kid with freckles on his coffee-brown cheeks who smiled at his new neighbor.

“What you lookin at?” Li’l Pit said. The boy looked down, and a few other kids giggled.

“All right, Paul,” said Mrs. Terry. “You have to learn the Apache good-neighbor rules we’ve written here on the wall. Why don’t you read them to us.”

Li’l Pit stared at the poster. He began breathing loudly through his nose like a bull. He looked around the room, and every time he met another kid’s eyes they hung their heads, but one boy kept looking at him.