Show and Prove (26 page)

“Or killing anyone.”

“Yeah.” Ma finally turns around to look at me. “So I thought,
I can do this myself.
I'd make it look like an accident. Maybe if I set it in the living room instead of the kitchen, it would be bad enough to get us out of there but not hurt anyone.”

“Like you were smoking out the window like you always do. Left your ashtray on the sill. Thought you put out the cigarette.”

Ma puts her hand to her mouth, nodding and crying. “Those first two nights, I couldn't do it. I'd put the cigarette in the ashtray and then push it
this
close to the curtain, but I couldn't go through with it. That third night, I could hear the rats scratching around in the bathroom, and I finally did it. And you know what, Willie? I'd do it all over again. If you finish school, find a job, and make a better life for yourself far away from all this shit, it'll all be worth it to me. You never have to come back, and I won't blame you. No matter how much you hate me for what I did, I'll never regret it and always love you.”

She's waiting for me to say that I don't hate her, that I love her back, that I wouldn't leave and never come back. I can't bring myself to do it. The truth is both too much and not enough for me right now. I can only hope that having cocoa and cheese with Ma at the kitchen table will do for now.

M
ost rain days have more drama than
General Hospital.
Gossip spills over like Mount Saint Helens, and tempers are short because there's only so much room. But not today.

I bounce around the basement for something to do. Some of the other counselors invite me to join their pickup game, but I'm not in the mood for basketball. Some Rookies are playing skully, so I teach them a few tricks, then wander around again.

I tap Pedro on the shoulder. “¿Quiere practicar un poquito de inglés?”

Pedro shrugs me off and goes running over to Cookie. “Enséñame a bailar.”

Cookie looks at me as if to ask my permission. Not like I can say no, so I just walk off. Besides, I shouldn't take this personally. I mean, if Nike had won, Pedro would be attached to him like a tail, right?

Without even thinking about it, I find myself standing in the doorway of Barb's office. “Smiles, hey…I mean, Raymond.”

“Hey, Barb.”

“Something I can do for you?”

“Just checking to see if you have anything needs doing. You know, filing, running errands, or whatever.”

Barb smiles. “Thanks, but I've got everything under control.” She laughs. “I should by now, seeing as the summer's almost over.”

“Word.” I pretend to wipe sweat off my brow. “OK.” I start to leave.

“Smiles?”

“Yeah.”

“You all right?”

“Sure.”

“Anytime you want to talk, my door's always open,” she says. “Anytime about anything. Even once camp's over.”

I know she means it. I'd take her up on it if I knew what was bugging me exactly. “Just bored.”

“How're things with Qusay? I hear he's got a couple more weeks before they'll let him go home.”

“I heard so, too.” The bullet caught Q in the back of his right shoulder, piercing his clavicle. Then the poor guy experienced some complications after surgery. Qusay's looking at three months of recovery, and he's still likely to be disabled for the rest of his life. And yet despite all that, Q's one lucky dude. He's alive. “Haven't seen him yet.”

“When you do, tell him I said hello.” Barb looks how I feel—guilty for not making the time to visit Qusay at Bronx-Lebanon. Or more like for not finding the guts.

“Word.” And just like that, I walk out of Barb's office. Funny thing is I do feel a little better than I did a minute ago. What is up with me today?

I go back into the gym and look for Pedro. He may be attached to Cookie's hip, but he's still my responsibility. She's showing Pedro and Stevie how to donkey. And where's Nike? On the other side of the gym between two girls talking his ears off, and for once Nike looks like he couldn't care less. He'd rather be home alone in his room listening to sad love songs on his boom box, but then it would look like he quit because Cookie showed him up. I understand that kind of pride.

I climb to the top of the bleachers and scan the gym the way a lifeguard watches the beach. The place is alive. Double Dutch on one side, marbles on the other. Chinese jump rope to the left and skully to the right. Basketball in the center and backspins and six-steps around the edges. Still, I pay attention like at the no-hitter Pop and I watched on the Fourth of July. Just like in a baseball game, even when nothing is happening, something is happening. Blink an eye, and miss a critical play that can change the game.

I may not agree with all her decisions, but Barb's done a good thing here. Sad that she can't herself enjoy all the fun she made possible. Barb wrote the proposal, manages the funds, and hires and supervises the staff but doesn't go on any of the trips. Sometimes I don't think she even gets a free lunch. Instead Barb sits in the office shuffling papers, and no one comes to see her unless there's a problem.

Qusay wasn't selling anything some brothers weren't interested in buying, but I can't imagine I can work for him and teach what I want. I don't know where the Five Percenters stand on learning a foreign language that isn't Arabic or some other language spoken in Africa. If I told him I wanted to teach Spanish so homeboys could get further in this country, would he let me? Or would he rage against it as just another one of the white devil's languages?

“Smiley!” I look down, and Pedro is at the foot of the bleachers. “Smiley, look.” And he busts out some b-boy moves starting with an uprock and ending with a backspin.

I laugh and applaud. “That's super-duper funky fresh!” Pedro starts to run back to Cookie. “Where you going? Come back here for a sec!” I look over at Cookie, and she motions for Pedro to go back to me.

I take a seat on the last bench and pat it beside me. Pedro sits down next to me. “Quiero decir que siento mucho lo que pasó el otra dia en el…” Damn, what's the word for
alley
? Having a gut feeling that Pedro can catch my drift if I speak with sincerity, I switch to English. “I'm sorry for what I said in the alley after the last bus trip. Am I still down with you?” I hold out my palm.

“I'm still down with you,” Pedro says, and he slaps me a hard five.

“And you still down with me?”

“You still down with me.”

“We're homies?”

“We homies.”

“OK, go play.” Of course, he runs back off to Cookie. She bends down to hear what he has to say about our conversation and then looks over at me with a smile. She was the one who sent Pedro over to show me his new moves.

I pull the schedule out of my back pocket to find that our next-to-last bus trip, to Bear Mountain, is actually this week. Next Friday is the bus trip to Coney Island and the last day of camp. Summer flew by and is almost over. I could come back next year, and I bet Barb would make me senior counselor. But I don't want that anymore. I turn the schedule around, pull out a pen, and scrawl a list.
Black history. Spanish. Logic and debate. Hip-hop.

And those are the first of dozens of ideas for a fresh program of my own someday. A mix of meeting kids where they're at and taking them someplace better. Like Mama used to say. And do.

A
fter being cooped up inside all day, Smiles and I sit on the church steps waiting for people to pick up their Garanimals since it's stopped raining for a spell. Still, I check my Swatch, then look up at the sky. Stevie's grandfather better get here before these angry clouds open up on us. Then again, a good dousing from Mother Nature might make an improvement. I haven't blown out my hair since Sara told me she preferred to run her fingers through my soft curls, so I just wet them a little and add a little baby oil.

We still have almost two weeks until school starts, and already Smiles is doing homework. You'd think they was paying him by the word the way he's scribbling all over the schedule. Man, I'm glad I don't go to a school like Dawkins, no matter how high post it's supposed to be.

I watch Cookie hand off the twins to their older sister. Sister kind of cute, but she's no Sara. Cookie returns to the church steps and sits down next to me. “She's not coming back, is she?” I say.

Cookie shakes her head. “Too much going on. Family stuff. You know.”

No, I don't know squat. She knows I have a bratty younger sister named Gloria and has figured out that my mother and I don't get along too tough. Sara mentioned her brothers to me that one time at the roller rink, but I couldn't tell you their names or ages. Obviously, she's no orphan, since Sara's mother and father's mission in life seems to be to keep their daughter from me.

Wait.

Scratch that.

I don't even exist to them people.

Sara said she would call me to explain, but she hasn't. No
Sorry,
no
Happy belated birthday,
no
Here's the deal.
No phone calls or letters or even messages through Cookie. I'm out here risking my life on these streets looking for her—Junior or no Junior—but she doesn't have the decency to just give Cookie permission to fill me in. The opposite—Sara's dodging me like I'm Jason Voorhees.

“At least tell me this, Cookie,” I say. “She ever ask about me? No, you know,
How's Willie?
”

Cookie sighs, and her eyes go heavy. “Of course she does.”

“Does she ever ask if I'm rappin' to someone?” Cookie doesn't answer, but her expression gives me hope. “Did you tell her I'm not out here trying to mess with anybody else?”

Cookie finally throws me a bone. “I do! And I can tell that it cheers her up.” And then a big
But
comes over Cookie's face.

“What?”

“Damn, Nike, give Cooks a break already,” says Smiles, barely glancing at me. He flips over the schedule, lumpy with Bic blue and his heavy handwriting. “And keep an eye on your kid.”

When did Cookie and Smiles become ace coom booms? “I know where he's at.” I sneak a quick scan up the street. Shorty's playing asses up with Pedro and some other kids. As long as he's with Smiles's kid, everything's copacetic, because Smiles always knows where Pedro's at. “So Sara has said something. What did she say I do? 'Cause I ain't do nothing, I swear.”

Cookie puts her hand on my shoulder and pity in her voice. “We know.”

We? I wipe Cookie's hand off me. “This is wack! If Sara's going through something, and I'm not the one putting her through it, why does everyone know the scoop but me?” Later for all of 'em. I tighten the laces of my green suede Pumas and hop to my feet. If I don't go over to Sara's right now, I'll lose my nerve, and we may never be together again.

Cookie stands, too. “Where are you going?” She chases after me. “Willie, stop. Don't go over there!” She reaches for my arm, and I twist out of her reach.

Smiles gets up and in between Cookie and me. “Let him go. Ain't nothing you can do to stop him. Besides, he has a right to know, and it should come from her.”

As I make my way down the avenue, I brace myself. Maybe she heard some rumors about me from the girls on the block. That's the most obvious thing, but it doesn't explain why she wouldn't come to work. Maybe she's sick. Last year some guy at my school caught mono and was out for two weeks, but then why all the hush-hush? Well, they do call it the kissing disease, and maybe Sara doesn't want the other people at camp to think she's fast. But that makes no sense, because mono is supposed to be supercontagious and I'm just fine.

What if Sara's dying?

What if she has some incurable disease?

What if it's something like AIDS?

What if Vanessa threatened her?

Or Junior?

I march up the steps to her building and read the names by the intercom. All this time, and I still don't know Sara's last name. She lives on the third floor, and five of the six apartments have labels.

3
A
RODRIGUEZ

3
B
MILLER

3
C
GARCIA

3
D
JABIR

3
E

3
F
MARTINEZ

Miller's probably a Black name, and I don't know what the heck Jabir is. It sounds kind of Muslim, so I'm guessing those are Black people, too, who converted like Smiles's uncle Naim. I take a chance and buzz 3E. No one answers. I buzz two more times and still no response.

I start at the top and buzz 3A. An old lady answers in Spanish. “¿Quién es?”

“¿Se encuentra Sara?”

“Ay, no, m'ijo, t'equivoca'te.”

“¿Sabes en qué apartamento ella vive?”

“No, lo siento.” And before I can thank her, she disconnects. I move on to Garcia in 3C, and again no answer. She must be Sara Martinez and live in 3F.

Some smart-ass kid imitating Boom Boom Washington from
Welcome Back, Kotter
breathes into the intercom, “Hi there.” I can hear other kids snickering behind him. Damn, did I sound that corny when I did that?

“Yo, Sara there?”

“Who this?”

“Tell her it's Nike.”

“Mikey?” Another brat in the background jokes,
Hey, Mikey likes it!

“No!” Even when I break out of camp, I can't get away from these wiseass kids. “Nike!”

“Puma? Adidas?” More stupid giggles. “Converse.”

“Stop playin', yo, and tell Sara that Nike's looking for her.”

“There ain't no Sara here, homeslice.” I can picture the little jokers, cracking up and rolling all over the floor. I hope they wet themselves.

God punishes me for that thought, because it starts to rain again. One of those deceptive drizzles that make you think you have a shot at getting home only to blow into a full-fledged storm when you're inches from your stoop. Still, I bang on the intercom a few times, but the kids don't answer. I lean on the buzzer and yell, “I'ma come back and tell your mother you be playin' with strangers on the intercom…. ” I'm so loud they must hear me from wherever their apartment is.

I run to the corner, praying that the pay phone works. Just when I think that at least I can chill in the booth until the storm passes, the stink of piss and alcohol slaps me in the face. Even though I should clear out of this one-man-sized petri dish, I call the camp office. Big Lou answers. “Good afternoon, Saint Aloysius's Day Camp.”

“Hi, Lou, it's Nike.”

“Hello, Guillermo.” I can't catch a break today. “Where you calling from? I thought you were outside with Smiles and Cookie.”

“I had an emergency. Look, Lou, what's Sara's last name? Garcia or Martinez?” Those smart alecks could've been her brothers.

Big Lou laughs. “Neither. Sara's last name is Jabir.”

“Ha-beer?” I say, pronouncing it in Spanish. “Or Javier?”

“No. Jabir. Just the way it's spelled.”

“What kinda Spanish name is that?”

“It's
not
Spanish, knucklehead. It's Arabic.”

“This is the first time I ever heard of a Puerto Rican whose last name was Arabic,” I say. I've known a few Boricuas whose names were not Spanish. Like that kid in junior high school, Herman Wu, whose parents owned a hardware store on Third Avenue. They were Cubans who fled to Puerto Rico when Castro took over and then eventually wound up in the Bronx. But they were straight-up Chinese! And I once had a girlfriend whose last name was Laporte or LaCourt or something like that, but she wasn't French or Haitian or nothing. But this Arabic thing's a first. That's not even a Latin language. Is it? Where's Smiles when you need him?

“Puerto Rican? Sara isn't Puerto Rican. She's Palestinian. From Lebanon, to be exact.” Now Big Lou laughs even harder. “Yo, Guillermo, as bad as Port Morris might be, stay your ass in school.”

Despite the cramped quarters and awful smell, I stand in the phone booth for a long time with the dead receiver to my sweaty ear. That cloudy day where I went off on Arabs, and Sara got so upset, haunts me as I head back to her building and stare at the intercom:
3D JABIR.
The cold raindrops cut into me, each a reminder of all the nasty things I said about Sara's people. And she gave me so many hints and clues.

But she never came straight out and told me. Only when I remember how each time she had the chance she never chose to tell me the truth do I hit the button. No answer. I reach for it again when static comes through the grate. “Who?”

Through the scratching I can't tell if it's her or not. “My name's…Guillermo,” I say. “Is Sara home?” Silence. I know better than to buzz again, but I won't give up. If Sara doesn't want to speak to me anymore, then let that be the last thing she ever tells me.

I run down the steps and look up at her window. A light flickers behind the closed pane. Is she looking at me through the curtains? If I call her, will she answer? Will she at least give me a chance to say I'm sorry?

Out of control.
Cookie's voice rings in my head.
Creepy.

I dig into the front pocket of my Lees for change. I've got three coins—a quarter, a dime, and a nickel. Three chances. First, I have to get her attention. Then I have to get her permission. Finally, I might be able to get Sara's forgiveness.

I take a few steps back, rolling the nickel between my fingers and praying everything I learned in Little League comes back to me. I wind up and pitch the nickel at Sara's window. It hits and bounces back down to the street. This time I toss the dime, nailing the pane once more. Nothing. “C'mon, Cutter,” I say to one of the thunderclouds. “Be my backup.” I make the sign of the cross with the quarter and fire it at the window. It clanks against the pane, and I run to catch it as it falls back toward me. Just as I do, a shadow moves behind the curtains.
Please be Sara, please be Sara, please be Sara…

It's Sara.

Between the rain in my face and the drops on her glass, I can't see her expression. I make a receiver out of one hand and point to the pay phone with the other. Then I drop to my knees right into the middle of the wet street, clasp my hands together, and plead. A moment later Sara disappears from the window.

Where did she go? Is she coming back? Is it OK to call?

The only way I can find out is to take that chance.

I head back to the pay phone, drop the quarter into the slot, and dial Sara's number. If no one answers, that means it's over for me. “Hello.”

It's Sara!

“Sara, thank God!”

“May I ask who's calling?”

She's covering up. “Look, if you can't talk on the phone right now, just hit a button. Not the hook, though!”

Beep!

“So somebody's home.”

Beep!
“Mr. Jabir's not available. Would you like me to take a message?”

“Sara, I know the truth. You're an Arab, and I'm an idiot. If you never want to go out with me again, I won't hold it against you, but please, please, please, talk to me at least one last time so I can tell you how sorry I am to your face. You deserve that.”