When I Was the Greatest (2 page)

“Yeah, I live on the second too,” he said with a straight face. “Over there.” He nodded his head to the house next door. The death trap.

I was stunned, but I knew better than to make it weird.

“So what you doing over here?” I asked, putting the grocery bag down on the steps.

“Sitting,” he muttered, staring at the next step down. “Would you sit on that stoop if you was me?”

Hell no, I thought. Noodles explained that he couldn't stay all cooped up in that place, so he came outside to get some fresh air. But then he realized he also didn't want nobody to think he lived there, so his plan was to sit on my stoop until it got dark, and then slip back into his own building. I wasn't sure what to say. I didn't want to start nothing because he seemed tough, and I didn't know him yet. He looked mad, and I couldn't help but think that wherever he came from was much better than this place. Had to be.

“I'm Ali,” I said to him, holding my hand out for dap.

He looked at it as if he was trying to figure out if he wanted to give me five or not. Then he reached out and grabbed it, our palms making that popping sound.

“Word. Roland.”

“It's cool if you chill out here,” I said, like I owned the building or something. As if I could stop him from sitting on the concrete stairs.

The two of us sat on the stoop for a while. I wanted to ask him what comic he was reading, but judging by how fast he folded it up, that didn't seem like a good idea. I don't think we talked about anything in particular. I just remember acting like a tour guide, pointing out who was who and what was what on the block. I figured it was the least I could do, since
he was new around here. The hard part was trying not to point to his house and say, “And that's where all the junkies stay.”

The sun had gone almost all the way down, and the streetlights were flickering, when my mother poked her head out the window to call me up for dinner.

“Who's that, Ali?” she asked, sort of harsh.

“This is Roland. Just moved in . . . next door,” I said, looking up at her, trying to drop a hint without being too obvious. Roland turned around and leaned his head back so he could see her too.

“Hi, son,” my mother said, the tone of her voice softening. I could tell that she was as surprised as I was to know that he was living in the slum building.

“Hello,” he said sadly.

Doris looked at him for a moment, sizing him up. Then she shot her eyes back toward me.

“Ali, can you bring my bread inside!”—I totally forgot!—“And come on and eat before this food gets cold,” she said in her usual gruff tone, but then turned toward Noodles, and said all nice and kind, “and you're welcome to come eat too, sweetheart.”

• • •

As we ate, my mother asked him where he was from, but he avoided answering. Then Jazz, who at the time was only six, picked up where Doris left off and started interrogating him, asking him all kinds of crazy stuff.

“Your mom don't cook?” she asked. My mother shot her
a look, and before Noodles even had a chance to answer, Jazz changed the question.

“I mean, I mean,” she stumbled while looking at Doris out the corner of her eye, “you like SpongeBob?”

“Yeah.” The first time he smiled all day.

“Dora?” Jazz questioned.

“Yep.”

“
The Young and the Restless
?”

“Of course,” Noodles said, unfazed. Then he broke out laughing. He was obviously joking, but Jazz decided right then and there that she liked him.

After dinner he helped me wash dishes and thanked my mother for letting him come up and eat. Before he left, he pulled out his tiny notebook and scribbled a sketch of SpongeBob, that kinda looked like him, and kinda not, but it was still pretty good just from memory. Jazz had already left the table and was washing up for bed, so he told me to give it to her. And once it got dark enough outside, and quiet enough on the block, he made a dash into his apartment.

Though we weren't really friends yet, he was the first person I ever had come over to hang out. I don't really have any homeboys in the neighborhood, just because a lot of teenagers around here are messed up these days. Either they're selling or using, and the ones that aren't are pretending to, or have overprotective mothers like Doris who don't want their kids hanging with nobody around here either. I have a few dudes I chill with at school, but I never really get to see them too much during the summer, just because most of them live
in Harlem and I almost never go there. And they definitely don't come to Brooklyn. So I had no choice but to keep the friends to a minimum—until Noodles.

The next morning I looked out the window, and sure enough, Noodles was sitting out there on my stoop. I remember watching him pop his head up from a different torn comic-book page, and his notepad, to watch the kids play in the hydrant. I got dressed fast and ran out to see what was up.

I guess he didn't hear me open the door, because he flinched, big-time, when I said, “Yo, man.”

“Yo, you scared me. Don't be creeping up on folks like that. Get you messed up, man.” He didn't laugh, but I did. But once I realized he didn't, I stopped. Then he laughed.

“What's that?” I looked at the comic and the small piece of line paper covered in blue ink.

“Oh. Incredible Hulk,” he murmured while folding it up in the mini pad.

I could tell he was a little embarrassed about the comic thing—maybe he thought I would think he was some kind of geek or something. I didn't really see what the big deal was. If you into comics, you into comics. And even though I wasn't, I knew who Incredible Hulk was. Who didn't?

“Aw, man, Bruce Banner a bad dude,” I said.

He opened the notepad and handed it to me.

It was one of the scenes where Bruce was upset and was turning green and becoming the Hulk. Noodles had literally redrawn the whole thing perfectly, every muscle, every hair. The only difference was he drew a Yankees hat on the Hulk,
but it looked like it belonged there. The kid could really draw! Noodles said it was one of his favorites, but when I tried to give it back to him, he ripped the page out and told me I could have them both, the comic and the sketch.

He was on my stoop every single day after that, sunup to sundown. Noodles probably wouldn't have been the friend my mom would've picked for me, but she felt sorry for him, plus Jazz liked him, so Mom made sure there was always extra food for him every night.

Luckily, a couple weeks later the dude who owned that building finally straightened up the outside of the apartment. A new door and some new windows. Everybody in the hood was talking about how the inside was probably still a piss pot, but at least it didn't look as bad from the outside. At least Noodles could sit on his own stoop without feeling some kind of shame. Plus, I could sit with him, which was cool because I was getting tired of always sitting on my stoop all the time.

• • •

I bet you're wondering how he started getting called Noodles. Well, if you ask him, he'll say he was given that name by the hood, just because he always tries to be hard. But the truth is, it came from Jazz, who's pretty much the master of nicknames. As a matter of fact, she's the person who started calling me Ali. My real name is Allen, but that's not where Ali comes from. Jazz gave me Ali after one of my boxing lessons from old man Malloy, who I'll tell you about later. I remember leaving Malloy's house, running down the block, busting
into our apartment all gassed up, excited to show Jazz what I learned. I was bouncing around the living room, bobbing and weaving, punching the air all silly. I think Malloy had just taught me the left hook, and I hadn't really got it down yet, so my arms were flying all over the place. Jazz laughed her head off, and made some joke about how I could be the next Muhammad Ali, as long as I keep fighting air and not real people. I won't lie, that stung a little bit, especially since she knew I was kinda scared to have any real matches. But whatever. From then on, that's what she called me, Ali, and then everybody else started to, too.

Noodles's nickname story is better than mine, though. Jazz liked him a lot, especially after
The Young and the Restless
joke, and the SpongeBob drawing, which she had taped to her wall. Every time they saw each other after that, which was pretty much every day, they would crack jokes and tease. One day she found the perfect ammunition. She saw Noodles out the window kissing some butt-ugly girl on the stoop—Jazz's words, not mine. She told me that the girl was twice Noodles's size and looked like she was trying to eat his face, and she couldn't tell if the girl was our age, or if she was an old lady, dressed like a girl our age. She said Noodles looked so scared, and that his lips were poking out and puckered so tight that it looked like he was slurping spaghetti. The next time Jazz saw him, she rode him hard about it, squeezing her lips up like a fish. At first Noodles tried to deny it. Then he said it was one of his mother's friends, and that it was more like a family-type kiss. Whatever it was, I wasn't about to ask
no questions. I could tell he was pissed, and I was starting to figure out that he didn't take embarrassment too well.

I was worried that he would stop being cool with me. I mean, I still didn't know him that well for Jazz to be clowning him so bad. But I guess he had a soft spot for her, and if not her, a soft spot for dinner at my house. Either way, Jazz promised to never let it go, calling him “noodle slurper,” and stuff like that, and after a while he ended up just getting over it. And that's how he got the name Noodles. Before that, he was just Roland James. That name is nowhere near as cool as Noodles, and even though he never gives my little sister credit, we all know he's thankful for it now, even if it is a funny story.

Okay, so as for Needles, he's only technically been called Needles for about a year, and his nickname story is nowhere near as funny as Noodles's and mine, but it is way more interesting. But in order for it to make any sense, I have to start at the beginning.

I didn't even meet Needles until about three months after I met Noodles, which I thought was weird. I mean, I knew Noodles had a brother, but I never saw him. I always wondered if he was forced to stay in the house, if he wanted to stay in the house, or if he was just someplace else, like with his father or something. All Noodles ever said about him was that he was kind of wild, which is pretty much what everybody always says about their brothers and sisters, so that wasn't a big deal.

When I finally met him, he was with Noodles. They were walking down the block, coming from the corner store,
Noodles ripping paper off cheap dime candy and tossing it on the sidewalk. I first gave Noodles some dap because I already knew him, and as soon as I reached for Needles's hand to introduce myself, he basically started cussing me out. Scared me half to death, I swear. I couldn't tell if this was some sort of joke, or if he just didn't like me, but I couldn't understand how he could not like me when we didn't even know each other yet. But after he finished dogging me, he said, “Wassup, man” in a superquiet voice like he was scared but cool. He also apologized for coming at me that way. That really confused me. And then, to top it all off, Noodles slapped him in the back of the head. I didn't think that was cool, but I didn't know them well enough to be standing up for nobody.

So yeah, I thought Needles was a little bit weird, but when I told my mom about it, she made it clear, and I do mean clear, that there was nothing funny about Needles's condition. She said the proper term for it is Tourette syndrome. So I guess it's a syndrome and not a condition. She said that what happens is he blurts out all kinds of words whenever his brain tells him to. Not regular words like “run” or “yo” but crazy stuff like “buttface” and “fat ass.” I figured that's what Noodles meant when he told me that Needles was “wild.”

My mother told me she had a girl on her caseload who suffered from it, and that once people learn to manage it, they can usually live normal enough lives. But judging by the way Needles acted when he spoke, and how Noodles slapped him around, I could see it being tough to, especially since it had to be pretty embarrassing.

As the months turned to years, everybody pretty much got used to Needles and Noodles, especially me. I would say we were like the three musketeers, or the three amigos, but that's so played and has been said a million times. My mother said we were the three stooges, and Jazz said we were the three blind mice, but whatever. The point is, we were almost always together. Every holiday, they would come over for dinner. Every birthday, we'd dish out birthday punches (mine always hurt the most). And every regular day, we would just hang on the stoop. When school was in, I had to be upstairs by the time the streetlights came on, but summer, I could hang pretty late as long as I was out front. They never had a curfew, so they were always down to kick it. We would play “Would you rather,” talk trash about girls, and I would talk about sports, but neither of them knew anything about athletes, so I spent a lot of time just schooling them. Noodles would read his comics and draw in his book, and Needles, who at the time was still known as Ricky, would kick freestyle raps about whatever he saw on the street. Like, if it was a bottle on the sidewalk, he would rap about it. Or if it was a girl walking by, he would rhyme about her. And believe it or not, he was pretty good, even with the occasional outbursts that, for me, had become so normal that it was like they weren't even happening. One rap I always remember is, “Chillin' on the stoop, flyer than a coop, stay off the sidewalk, 'cuz there's too much dog poop.” And then, out of nowhere, he screamed, “Shithead!”

Even when we weren't together, we were. See—and this
is gonna sound weird—but our bathrooms shared a wall, and I don't know if it was because of water damage or what, but the wall was superthin. You could hear straight through it, and it wasn't like we were spying on each other using the bathroom—that wouldn't be cool—but sometimes we'd talk to each other through the wall whenever we were washing up. When it was Noodles, we wouldn't really be saying too much, just asking if the other person was there. I don't know why. It was just always cool knowing someone else was there, I guess. And I always knew when it was Needles, because I could hear him in there rapping and talking all kinds of crazy stuff, cussing and whatnot. Whenever he was rapping, I'd make a beat by knocking on the wall, until Doris or Jazz came banging on the bathroom door, telling me to cut it out. The point is, we were always, always, always together. That's just the way it was.