“All this stuff for me?”
The Buick smelled like a bordello.
“You shootin’ with Juice, you gotta look fly. You already white, and you no Vanilla Ice, so we gotsta, like, do what we got- sta, like, do to make Toby Dick funky fresh on the playground!”
“Gifts make slaves.”
“Said the whitey to the fly. And ya know, senior prom—that’s on me, too, Tobias. In exchange for favors rendered.”
“What favors?
“The other night.”
“Oh, Jesus!”
“Don’t play me! You good at hoops, Toby?”
I was trying on the new gear. I was totally naked. Juice looked at my equipment, then he mashed the brakes and screamed: “You got the smallest jimmy, like, I have ever seen!”
“I shoot okay, boyeee.”
“Shoot what?”
“Shoot hoops. Where’s my designer jockstrap?”
Juice nodded at my penis.
“Honey, you doan’ need one,” Juice said, and pulled away.
The basketball courts were behind a baseball diamond in a city park littered with crack pipes and graffiti. The clothes Juice had bought me were fashionably baggy, and I slouched along like a hiphop Snuffalupagus, my body submerged in a swamp of pricy labels. Juice wore a loose-fitting Chicago Bulls outfit that hid the muscularity of his running back’s body, and he wore a floppy hat in Mother Africa colors tilted down across his forehead, so you couldn’t see his face. We looked like a P.C. crime-fighting duo. We were incognito, no doubt about it. And as we crossed the weedy outfield and hopped the peeling billboards that advertised bail bonds and Unitarian churches, Juice moved away from where the pickup games were raging and approached a rusty swing set opposite the courts. Somebody waved at him and Juice waved back; then he donned his Wayfarers and crashed on a swing, the metal chains groaning, and he asked me would I push him.
“This be my playground, Toby Sligh,” Juice said. He cast a cool patch for my body to stand in. “You got a playground?”
I told him I had. But it had been purchased by a bunch of Scientologists who rode matching Schwinns and spoke in monosyllables and dressed like Kmart mannequins and frightened little children.
“That’s America,” Juice said. “We a shadow nation. Yesterday’s playground is tomorrow’s cult compound. Everything you see is on its way to somewhere else.”
Juice’s bulky body was hard to push at first, but it got lighter the higher it got. “I learned a lot here. How to scope, how to scrap, how to dress full a’ flavor, and how to shoot hoops. But one thing I learned—somebody taught it to me—never just walk onto a basketball court. Check out the players. Scope out the competition.” On the courts were a total of ten, fifteen fellas, shirts untucked and dripping, making fancy shots. Far away were two white men. They looked out of place. Something about them attracted my attention. “That nigger in the Hawks cap? His name is Parrish. And that kid in the Jordans? ’At’s his brother Trixter. Those two can whoop anybody on the court. But you wouldn’t know now, ’cause them boys be jess messin’.” I craned my head around as Juice’s body swung toward me and saw the two black guys Juice was talking about. They were walking toward the white men who were playing one-on-one at the hoop near the parking lot, the farthest hoop away. “They hustlin’ those crackers in a little two-on-two. Ten, twenty dollars. Gonna get they asses popped!” I was pushing Juice hard; I didn’t realize how hard; I was trying to get a better look at the white guys. “My eardrums is bleeding! You pushin’ too high!” Juice let his Air Icarus scud into the dirt, and then he staggered off. I got on and he pushed me. “Word up,” Juice said, when I sat down on the swing. “Wanna have some fun? Finna set on it backwards I took his advice and sat facing him, then I leaned back in the swing until the world was upside down. “Just watch yo’ head when you come down, Toby.” He was pushing on my feet, and the inverted world was reeling. “It’s a parallel universe!” Juice said, like a Martian. “Cars, trees, everything’s wicked whack, boyeee!” “I feel like a kid!” “You are a kid, Tobias!” Juice yelled and pushed me. I was soaring upside down. “You ain’t gettin” sick?” Juice asked. “Not yet!” My arms were extended, like an angel flying backwards. “Keep yo’ eyes on the white boys on the basketball court. The one’s gettin’ hustled.” I tried, but it was tough. They’d moved closer to us on the ceiling of concrete and were playing two-on-two against Parrish and Trixter. The guys were my dad’s age. They were built like my father. It was funny; upside down, they even looked like my dad. “Catch that foul, Toby? That white boy fouled Trixter!” Parrish was helping Trixter up off the ground. One white player held the other one back; even upside down, the game was getting nasty. “They come to our courts, and then they play dirty!” Juice hocked some phlegm. He was pushing me slower. “Those two boys be comin’ here last coupla days.” The world was slowing down; it was coming into focus. “Come here and shoot hoops, just like they own the playground!” Trixter had fouled the white guy flagrantly, and the white guy was bleeding. He looked like my dad. “I’m feelin’ sick, Leonard.” “You want I should stop you?” I nodded sorta queasily; Juice caught my legs. Suddenly, as the world came skidding to a halt, my legs braced and scissored around Juice’s waist, a parallel universe revealed itself to me, and I recognized my dad teamed up with Det. Thomas. Juice let me go, and I righted my body, and the trees and the concrete and the cars slid back to earth, and then I could see, not fifty yards from me, Thomas and my father in a game of two-on-two getting slaughtered by Parrish and Trixter, who were hot. “Boy looks like your father, don’t he, Tobias?” “That boy is my father.” “Unh-unh, the other one.” Trixter fouled Thomas and left the guy reeling. “They been playin’ here, you know, last coupla days. You see Parrish clock him? He yo’ dad’s friend?” “His name’s Det. Thomas.” When I said that, Juice cursed; then he sat laughing on the swing next to mine. “ ‘Det. Thomas,’ huh?” Juice couldn’t stop laughing. “His name is Thomas, but he ain’t no detective.” Again, as I was watching, Trixter threw a subtle elbow that sent Thomas sprawling; my father helped him up. “They’s gonna be a fight!” Thomas took a swing at Trixter; Trixter shoved Thomas; Dad and Parrish held them back. “He isn’t a detective?” I asked. Juice was laughing. “That boy?” Juice said. “He’s the biggest punk in town!”
I watched as Dad led Det. Thomas off the courts into a white Plymouth. The white Plymouth pulled away.
“What’s your dad doin’ with a drug dealer, Toby?”
‘What am I doin’ with …”
I let the sentence fizzle.
“Go and call the precinct downtown, you don’t believe me. You ever see his badge?”
It was true: I never had.
“And he owns the white Plymouth?”
“His man owns it, Toby. His man, Toby Sligh—he own everybody here.”
Juice’s arm swept out to include the whole neighborhood—a girl on a manhole, her ass stopping traffic, skinny guys on milkcrates smoking crack beneath the sun.
“Det. Thomas is a dealer?”
“He’s the fuckin’ competition.”
“So he’s just as bad as you are.”
Juice spat into the dirt.
“Ain’t hearin’ that, Tobe. Ain’t tryin’ to hear that.”
We watched the white Plymouth as it rounded a corner.
“Be cool, Tobias.”
Juice held on to my arm. The Plymouth rolled toward us and stopped suddenly.
“My dad is in there.”
“Chilly chill, Toby Sligh.”
“But Juice, that’s my father.”
The white Plymouth peeled away.
I was shaking. I took off my shades and my cap. Parrish and Trixter were loping toward us.
“The Bruthas Kareem-Azov!” Juice cried.
“ ’Sup, Leon?”
Juice gave them fifty dollars.
“This is Tobe. Let’s shoot some hoops.”
Artremease Gray, Juice’s auntie-in-law, lived in a
shotgun ten blocks from the park where we had played basketball with Parrish and Trixter. Her apartment had impressive-looking bars on all the windows and a coat of pink paint like a Candyland cottage. Across the street from her were the Paxton Place Projects, an enormous brick fortress that resembled the Pentagon and looked as forbidding and corroded and impregnable. Artremease Gray—a shy lady in her forties—sat on a glider flipping through TV Guide, children’s blocks and blankets scattered underneath her feet. A cat was busy licking its butt in a corner, and when we approached, it got up and stalked away.
“Hi, Leonard,” she said, as we passed through the gate.
She put down her TV Guide and let her nephew kiss her.
“Hi, Auntie,” Juice mumbled. He said ahntie, not anty. “Is Anquanna here?”
“Well, I think you know she is.”
Straightening her skirt, Artremease cleared her throat and worked on a crossword while Juice headed in. I introduced myself, and Aunt Artremease smiled. Inside I heard Anquanna and a child giggling.
“Is the prom tomorrow night?” Aunt Artremease asked me.
I told her it was.
“I’m going with Juice.”
“Thought Juice was going with my daughter, Anquanna.”
I laughed, and she smiled.
“But I know what you mean.”
Inside, Anquanna was suddenly shouting, then Juice said something, then they quieted down.
“What do you think of my nephew, Tobias?” Aunt Artremease asked me, working on her crossword.
“He’s probably my best friend,” I said to her, honestly: Ian Lamb was somewhere a million miles away.
“Leonard’s a good boy,” Artremease agreed. “But he has this awful habit of getting folks in trouble. Look at Anquanna, what happened to her… .”
“What did happen to her?”
“You didn’t see her face?”
Aunt Artremease set her crossword down on the glider, then moved slightly over, motioning for me to sit. A helicopter passed and Aunt Artremease watched it, then she turned toward me. Her eyes were in mine.
“You look like a good boy, Toby,” she said. “Your last name is … ?”
“Sligh.”
She bowed and laughed slightly. “You look more Toby than Sligh,” she said wryly. Windowpanes chattered as a second copter passed. “Leonard means well. Remember that, Toby. But don’t let him take you anywhere you shouldn’t go to. His mom’s a good woman, but his daddy is trouble. Eddy married my sister LaShonda, and he killed her …”
I tried to brace myself against Juice’s family history.
“Those two had a boy who was bad as his daddy. Juice loved his brother, Eddy’s first boy, Eddy, Jr.—”
“And where is he now?”
“Doesn’t matter where he is… . But Leonard’ll do anything to be just like him. Eddy, Jr., he went with a girl named Jackie Nivens, and he killed that poor girl like his daddy killed my sister. And if you’ve seen my daughter, my baby girl, Anquanna—”
“She’s beautiful.”
“And she got a beautiful soul. So when I saw her last week, those bruises on her face, I called Leonard’s mama and I ask her, did he do it? She said Leonard couldn’t. And you know? I believed her. You think he did it, Toby?”
I said I didn’t know.
“I know he isn’t like that. Leonard, he’s a good boy. Still, you grow older, sometimes you get wild. His brother was the nicest boy until he started dealing. Does Leonard deal, Toby?”
I didn’t say a word.
“ ’Cause if he does, Toby, it’ll just kill his mama. Valilian, like a fool, she married Juice’s daddy when my sister, LaShonda, he laid her in her grave; and Lily didn’t have to, but she raised LaShonda’s baby, she raised that Eddy, Jr. as if he was her own. Those boys was like brothers, and she raised ’em like sons. Then the drugs got Eddy, Jr. Cut him down dead. And now Leonard’s daddy—he’s the poorest kinda crackhead. So if Leonard is dealing … You understand, Toby?”
I was staring at the children’s toys discarded on the porch. Inside, I could hear Juice pleading with Anquanna.
“Drugs are poison, baby. They’re absolute poison. The only things more dangerous than drugs,” she said, “are lies. Would you tell me, Tobias, if Leonard was a dealer? I’ve been talking to his mama. That woman’s broke in two.”
A kid passed by, and he waved at Artremease. She waved back at him, and a smile hid his face.
“These projects,” she said, nodding once across the street. “These bars on the window—they don’t have to be. You listen to how Leonard Compton talks around you—so nigger, so stupid. Like he’s ashamed of being bright! Only boy I ever seen brighter than Leonard was his brother, Eddy, Jr., and they got it from their daddy. Now look at those two! What a waste, Toby Sligh! What a waste of God’s gifts! Is he dealing?”
I was silent.
“Is he using?”
I was silent.
“You can tell me, Toby Sligh.”
But I didn’t say a word. Another helicopter passed.
Artremease bowed and opened up her TV Guide and did her crossword puzzle, pointing at a missing word.
“ ‘Silence equals …?’”
“ Death.”
“I heard a’ that, Toby. Who says that?”
“Dunno.”
“It’s the gay people do.”
We sat there awhile on the glider, just gliding, watching police helicopters floating by. At last Artremease stood up and
said, “Well … I’ll get you a Pepsi,” and she disappeared inside.
But she didn’t come out. Juice did, with the Pepsi. And in his other hand he held the hand of his niece—his half brother’s girl, whom Aunt Artremease was raising. It was Donna, the girl in the back of Peach’s cab.
“ Jacaranda!” she screamed, and ran straight toward me.
“It’s like the Smurf knows you!” Juice cried and clapped his hands. “Go get her some Kisses!” he called to Anquanna.
“You get ’em yourself!” Anquanna called from inside.
“ Jacaranda!” Donna shouted.
She was giggling in my arms.
And through the bars on the window, I could see Aunt Artremease. She was looking at me softly, helicopters in her eyes.
We took Donna for a ride in Juice’s shit-Buick. We were old pals already. Juice couldn’t believe it.
“If I’d a’ known you was, like, so down with the Smurf, I’d a’ getchoo to sit for Anquanna an’ me!”
When his beeper went off, Juice said, “That’s my pops,” and slapped the beeper quiet, and Donna slugged his shoulder. “Easy there, Smurf!”
“Why is Donna called Smurf?”
“Because she so ugly!” Juice said and made a face.
Donna started laughing and I tickled her lightly. She wriggled in my arms and she shouted, “Jacaranda!”
“She don’t even see purple trees, an’ she say that! Donna, she’s crazy! Sees purple trees everywhere!”
We were driving in circles round the Paxton Place Projects. Now and then Juice would toot the horn at folks he knew. “Who’s Donna’s mother?”
“Bitch name-a’ Nivens. Cunt killed herself. Donna be my brother’s kid.”
“Didn’t know you had a brother.”
“Jus’ my half brother.”
“Where is he?”
“Gone.”
Juice’s hand was trembling.
We passed a row of tenements beside the Paxton Projects. They were yellow. They were where Leonard Compton’s father lived.
“You stay here a minute with Donna,” Juice told me, and reached into the glovebox, and removed a plastic bag. Then he disappeared inside, walking slowly, like a prisoner; he disappeared like he’d been disappearing all his life.
“Donna,” I began. “Detective Toby’s got some questions. Nod yes, like this, if the answer is yes. Go no, like this, if the answer is no. Do you understand, Donna?”
She was staring out the window.
/> “Donna? Donna Compton? Yes or no, kiddo?”
“No!”
“Is Det. Thomas a dealer?”
Donna Compton shook her head.
“Is Det. Thomas a detective?”
Donna Compton shook her head.
“Is Ian Lamb sleeping with my mother? Does he love me?” Donna rolled her head in one great circular motion.
“Is Fr. Scarcross honest?”
Donna stared out the window.
“Is he gay, like me?”
Donna whirled around and grinned.
“Is your uncle my friend?”
Donna wouldn’t look at me.
“Is he setting me up?”
Donna nodded her head.
“ Jacaranda!” she screamed.
She was pointing out the window—at a Plymouth, a white one. It was cruising toward us.
I bolted from the car with Donna bobbing in my arms and bounded up the stairwell to Juice’s dad’s apartment. The stairs smelled like urine and unlaundered laundry, and two girls in a corner were playing jacks for penny candy. On the second floor I knocked on the first door I came to and a man with a gold tooth emerged and looked at me.
“Whatchoo want?”
“Edward Compton.”
“He down at the end!”
The door slammed shut as I hurried down the hall.
From the second-floor balcony I spied the white Plymouth idling by the Buick like a sleepy barracuda. I got to Juice’s father’s door and banged on it loudly. There wasn’t any answer, so I opened it and—
“Toby!”
Juice was on the sofa, sitting by his father. His father had a hypodermic sticking in his arm.
“The Plymouth, Juice!”
“Damn it! Git outta here, Toby!’
Donna was crying.
I stood where I was.
Juice’s father was gray and impossibly thin. He looked more like a used pipe cleaner than a man. He wasn’t very old, but his frame was devastated. He slumped to the floor with the needle in his skin.
“Fuck you, Toby!” Juice removed the dirty needle. He was crying so hard now that he could barely speak. “Fuck you, Toby!”
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