by Dwayne Reed
Ms. Estelle carefully locks the gate behind me while she watches me walk up the stairs to our apartment, even though the Notorious D.O.G. don’t need anybody watching his every move. Before I go inside, I see her look over her shoulder at Sunny as he keeps singing some song that sounds like it was written one thousand years ago but is still his favorite. He stops sweeping and looks up at me from the street while he weaves my name into the lyrics and bows.
Told Rhymin’ Simon, don’t you worry ’bout this and that!
I clap inside.
CHAPTER 6
“I JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW YOU CAN play yourself like that. We all know they fake!” Aaron hovers above the three of us with his hands raised in the air the way he does whenever an argument gets serious.
“Not everybody. If you get them from the right store, it’s like getting the real thing without having to spend all your allowance money.” Markus tries to convince him.
“We don’t get no allowance money, fool,” DeShawn points out. True.
“Exactly. If you already broke, why spend your little money on some busted sneakers that ain’t even the real thing? You just asking for somebody to make fun of you, man.” While Moms and Dad are in the back of the house after dinner, my brothers argue like they always seem to do when we’re all in the same room. This time it’s about sneakers. Ever since Aaron got his first real job cleaning the floors at Mr. Ray’s, he acts like he’s better than everybody. And his first pair of Jordan 11s went straight to his head.
“Bruh, you was just wearing the fakes last year,” Markus points out with a sneaky smirk. “Why you actin’ like them Air BALLS wasn’t your favorite sneakers before you got rich?” DeShawn busts out laughing so hard apple juice sprays from his mouth water hose–style, soaking the front of Aaron’s T-shirt.
“You lucky I don’t like this shirt and Mama’s close enough to hear you scream, Shawn.” I watch all three of them laugh at Aaron’s words, knowing he would never actually beat any of us up. Even if he wasn’t in his new school clothes and new sneakers. Even if our parents weren’t home. A question pops into my mind that flies out of my mouth before I can stop it.
“What about the people who don’t have any jobs and no house and not many clothes but they wanna look nice like everybody else?” Everybody gets quiet. Aaron starts to answer right when Moms walks in with a look we’re all scared of. We turned on the TV when she went back to her and Dad’s room and forgot to turn it off before she came back out. We didn’t hear her coming up the hall like we usually can always hear. None of us knows why we have an extra TV in the kitchen if she almost never lets us watch it.
“All of y’all are some fools if you think you gon’ have this TV on right now,” she says in the calm, scary way she says things when she wants us to know she’s serious. Grabbing the remote, without even really looking down, she turns it off. Mom sorcery. “Rooms, homework, now.” On his way out, Aaron tosses Moms an annoyed look that he knows she won’t see. Markus poses behind her with his hand on his hip, trying to look just like she did when she walked into the kitchen. He stops and runs down the hall in just enough time for her to not catch him. DeShawn don’t want no problems, so he’s back in our room before both of them. Being the youngest means I can’t get away that easy, and before I can get back there, too, I have to stick around to tell Moms about my first day. “And Aaron!”
“Yes, Ma?”
“My sweet, growing boy… please make sure you get in the tub. You smell like rotten apples, son. And you look like you been sweating for hours. Take care of that.” Markus snickers from down the hall just before closing our bedroom door. “You too, Markus! You don’t smell so clean, neither! That deodorant I bought y’all ain’t for decoration. You supposed to use it. Y’all act like you can learn everything from YouTube but ain’t tryna learn that,” she screams behind them, knowing Markus can still hear her through the door. We can always hear Moms no matter where she is in our apartment.
I’m afraid she’s going to ask me too much about my teachers and my classes and then—gag—about homework. And I can’t just lie and pretend that my teacher didn’t hop on his desk, rap about Chicago, and then give us an assignment that’s gonna have the whole school making fun of me next week. Moms knows my nostrils get all big when I’m telling a lie. So I decide to be helpful and take the garbage out to the big dumpster near the back alley before she can even try to get me to spill.
DON’T GET ME WRONG… I LOVE MY MOMS,
BUT I’M REALLY TIGHT WITH AARON, MARK, AND SHAWN.
WE ALWAYS BE ARGUING AND JOKING, TOO,
TALKING ABOUT SPORTS, AND EVEN FAKE SHOES.
BEING THE YOUNGEST CAN BE HARD SOMETIMES,
BUT THEY ALL LOOK AFTER ME TO SEE IF I’M FINE.
BETWEEN THE JOKES WE BE CRACKIN’, THE LAUGHS WE BE LAUGHIN’,
THE LOVE WE ALL HAVE, YO, THAT’S NEVER LACKIN’,
THEM THE BROS!
I plop the heavy bag into the almost-full metal dumpster and stand on my tiptoes while I cram the top down onto it. Sometimes being size extra small really stinks.
Ha ha, stinks… garbage. You get it?
Our apartment doesn’t really have much of a backyard, but there’s this little wooden deck thing that’s got a big pile of bikes and old sports equipment left behind by my brothers. I halfheartedly kick a deflated football that has MARKUS BARNES written in faded Sharpie on its side. Markus, DeShawn, and Aaron have no problem getting out in front of crowds of people to play sports, and Aaron is on his high school’s debate team, meaning he gets extra credit basically for fighting with people on a stage. So why can’t I get up and talk in front of anybody?
“My maaaaan,” Dad says, walking around from the side door. “Are you really out here taking out the trash in this creepy ol’ alley?” Dad gives me a look like somebody switched his son out for somebody else. “You also didn’t have your usual second helping of your mama’s lasagna. What’s goin’ on, son? Wanna talk about it?”
Most of the time Dad is pretty busy with work, keeping things together around the house, and volunteering around Creighton Park, but he always seems to know when something’s up with me. Back when I was in the third grade, he once knew I was nervous about a test that was coming up because he saw me wiping off the kitchen table. None of us ever clean up stuff in the kitchen unless it’s our turn. And wiping down the table after my brothers made a mess of it is the worst.
“Something happen at school today?”
“Something like that.”
“Got a mean teacher? I need to roll up to the school and check somebody?”
“Nothing like that, Dad,” I say, laughing a little at the thought of Dad coming up to my school to yell at my new teacher. For one, my dad’s the nicest dude in the whole neighborhood. He’s even super serious about how we catch mice and bugs around us and won’t let any of us kill them if we can help it. Secondly, imagining Dad rolling up on the rapping teacher makes me think about when rappers battle each other. He’d definitely lose to Mr. James.
WELCOME TO THE BATTLE CALLED PARENTS VS. TEACHERS,
KIDS IN THE CROWD, SHOUTIN’ LOUD FROM THE BLEACHERS.
THERE’S MR. JAMES, WITH HIS TIE AND HIS SNEAKERS,
WHILE DAD WORE HIS WORK BOOTS, THAT COULDN’T BE WEAKER!
JAMES STRIKES FIRST WITH A JOKE IN HIS VERSE.
HE CALLS DAD OLD, AND OHHHH, THAT ONE HURTS!
BUT DAD COMES BACK WITH A PUNCH JUST THE SAME
WHEN HE CALLS MR. JAMES REAL CORNY AND LAME.
THE CROWD GOES WILD—SO DAD’S FEELIN’ PROUD,
BUT JAMES HAS A LINE THAT’LL TAKE HIM OFF HIS CLOUD.
THE SCORE’S TIED NOW, BUT IT’S COMIN’ TO AN END,
SO WHOEVER MAKES THE FANS GO CRAZY NEXT, WINS.
LET’S JUST SAY, MR. JAMES DOESN’T PLAY
WHEN HE DROPS THE NEXT BOMB ON MY DAD THAT DAY!
THE CROWD GOES CRAY! AND MY DAD SAYS, “HEY,
THIS WAS A GREAT BATTLE THAT WE HAD, MR
. J!”
“I—I got all these raps and rhymes and things to say in my head, Dad. But when it comes time to talk out loud, like at school and stuff, I get too nervous. Like, I-might-throw-up-on-somebody-type nervous. And my hands get gross and sweaty and I feel kind of dizzy and all the other kids start giving me the side-eye, and…” Dad raises his hands like he’s trying to stop traffic in the middle of a super-busy street. Maybe he really is. I feel like I’m in a car speeding down a highway headed for a crash next week.
“Whoa, Simon, whoa! Hold up and breathe, son,” Dad says, smiling and putting his arm around my shoulder. It makes me feel the same way when Moms squeezes my hand. Not in public, obviously. And this time we aren’t in the school parking lot. We’re alone in the alley by ourselves. So I guess Notorious D.O.G. can let this slide.
“What’s this all about? Y’all already got some kind of show comin’ up at Booker T.? It’s only y’all’s first day!”
“No, Dad. But my new teacher, Mr. James, is making us do these oral presentation things. And I got picked to go first,” I tell him, feeling like this is partially his fault. It’s because of you that my last name is Barnes. Forever cursed to be called first. Ha! That rhymed.
“Aw, snap. And what’s it got to be on?”
“He said something timely. Something important going on in Creighton Park.” This is already getting old. I shrug and shake my head, looking away, half wishing how sad I look would make Dad feel sorry enough to do my assignment for me. I lay on the Simon Sad Face extra thick.
“And you get to pick your topic?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“That’s tight!” Sometimes Dad tries to be cool and uses slang when I just want him to save me from school.
“Dad!”
“Did I ever tell you about my eighth-grade talent show?”
“You were in a talent show?” My dad’s great, but he’s not exactly the talent show type. He’s a mechanic who repairs air-conditioning and heating systems around the city. If anybody asked any of us, we’d all say his greatest talent is fixing anything broken around the house. But getting up onstage to sing or dance? Nah. Not Dad.
“Yup. Me and your uncle Richie decided we’d sing the song from this popular TV show The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air—you ever seen it?”
“Yeah, Mom makes me watch it with her sometimes. He’s the one with all the funny hats who went to live with his rich uncle, right? He had to wear one of those nerdy uniforms to school and he turned the jacket inside out, right?” The more I think about it, the more I remember how cool I thought the theme song was, wishing I could rhyme like that.
“That’s right, that’s the one! Your uncle Richie was supposed to handle the singing, and I was going to do some kind of crazy basketball tricks, Harlem Globetrotter–style, you know?” Dad laughs. I knew he didn’t get up there to sing. That would have been tragic. Still, imagining Dad onstage spinning multiple basketballs at the same time the way he once told me that group did still seems like a bad joke.
“Are you serious right now, Dad?”
“Oh yeah. We had these matching tracksuits and everything. Thought we were fly and were gon’ impress all the ladies.” The thought of Dad trying to impress all the ladies is the weirdest thing. Gag.
“Move along, Dad.”
“Hey, hey, I got your mom, didn’t I?”
“Come on!”
“All right, all right. Anyway, long story short, the talent show was a mess. Richie forgot the words to the song, even though he had sung it a million times. I dropped two basketballs off the stage, one of which hit our principal in the face and broke her glasses.” Hilarious. Ms. Berry would throw a whole fit if somebody hit her in the face with a basketball. Dad puts his hand over his forehead, like he can still feel the embarrassment.
“For real? So what happened then?”
“Nothing. And that’s my point, Simon. Richie and I got up there and embarrassed ourselves, but nobody cared. By a few days later, everybody at school was already talking about something else. So you see, there’s nothing to be scared of, son. You’ll get up in front of the class and you’ll do your thing. You’ll be okay.” Dad puts his hand out to shake my hand.
“Yeah, maybe you’re right, I guess.” I’m not sure if I really mean it or not, but Dad has a way of, at least, making me feel like I won’t be the first person in history to embarrass myself. I still can’t believe he and Uncle Richie actually tried something like that in front of the whole school—never mind their class. Maybe I have some of that in me.
“So, what’s your topic gon’ be? Your mom told me to ask you about all this, but don’t tell her I told you,” he says, as he eyeballs me so I don’t rat him out. He’s always on a mission for my mom, and a lot of times it kinda works.
“Well, you know Sunny, the guy who’s always sweeping our street? I don’t think he has any real place to live. He got me thinking about all the homeless people in Creighton Park,” I say. But that’s as far as I’ve gotten. All the people without homes in Creighton Park.
“You might be onto something, son,” Dad says, patting my back and looking up into the sky. “You might be onto something big.”
CHAPTER 7
THE NEXT DAY, MR. JAMES COLLECTS THE work sheets he gave us at the end of class yesterday, describing the topics we’ve each picked for our presentations. I scribbled down the thought I shared with Dad, still not feeling like I know enough to talk about it in front of my class. But I can’t start off on the wrong foot by not doing this first assignment, so I did what Moms always says when she tells me Go with your gut, baby. Minus the baby part.
“Homelessness. Wow, Simon. That’s major.” I secretly wish people would stop saying that. It doesn’t feel good, and the thought of how major it is gives me the bubble guts. “Looking forward to Monday.” Gurgle. Mr. James smiles as he runs his eyes up and down my work sheet before moving on to the next kid. He seems excited and looks like he really believes I could do a good job, but all I hear is the word Monday. Monday! As in six days away Monday. There’s only been one Monday so far, and that was just yesterday. I still don’t see why any kid has to present the second week of school. Aren’t we supposed to be doing fun stuff like playing games to get to know each other and talking about what we did all summer? But I have to be ready. What would Notorious D.O.G. do?
I NEED TO BE CONFIDENT, I NEED TO BE BOLD,
I NEED TO SHOW THE WORLD THAT MY STYLE IS COLD.
IT’S THE D.O.G., THEY GON’ HEAR ME BARK.
NOT THE SIZE OF THE DOG, IT’S ABOUT THE HEART.
SEE, I KNOW I’M SMART, AND MY RHYMES ARE SICK,
AND I KNOW PEOPLE GON’ LISTEN WHEN I SPIT.
SO I NEED TO BE CONFIDENT, NEED TO BE BOLD,
NEED TO SHOW THE WHOLE WORLD THAT MY STYLE IS COLD.
WOOF WOOF!
At lunch, Maria is telling me and C.J. about her hundred-year-old cat, Diego Rivera. He seems like a regular old cat to me, but Maria thinks he has some kind of special powers or something. Her eyes get all big, poking like they’re gonna pop right out of her head as she explains his “powers” and tries to convince me and C.J. that he worked magic right in front of her one day before church.
“Anyway, right when it was time for us to go, I couldn’t find the shiny black shoes Tía Laura bought for me anywhere. I looked under my bed, in the closet, and even in the trash can just in case somebody was playing games with me.” Maria always thinks this. “Then I hear a meow-meow-meow coming from the couch. I got down on my hands and knees and he was sitting there licking my shoes! Isn’t that craaazy?” Ri-Ri smiles and bites into a carrot stick, waiting for us to react. I’m waiting for the rest of the story, but it never comes.
“Mmm, yeah, craaazy,” C.J. says back right before he lets out a classic C.J. yawn that sounds like a bear who’s just waking up from hibernation. “I wonder what else he can do. Maybe ol’ Diego can make my homework magically disappear? Everybody says their dog ate their homework, but what if your
cat’s breath could turn mine into dust?”
“You think you’re so funny, C.J. But Diego doesn’t help lazy kids,” Maria says, rolling her eyes. We both pass our milks over to C.J. even though me and him don’t have fruit to exchange with Maria. Today’s menu is hard slices of sausage pizza, a chocolate milk, and a crusty oatmeal raisin cookie. Of course the food makes Maria go off about how that has to be what she talks about for her oral presentation. She starts telling us her idea, and C.J.’s eyes get big for real this time, looking behind me. I turn to see what he’s looking at and see Bobby Sanchez flop around into the backs of a few kids just before landing on me, spilling his carton of chocolate milk onto my tray. Instead of him trying to stop it, he turns to look at me while he holds the carton upside down over my food until nothing but drops comes out.
“Oops, sorry, Barnes,” Bobby says, in a way that means he isn’t even a little bit sorry. “Saw you handing your milk over to CiCi over here so I thought you might need some more.”
“It’s C.J., bruh,” C.J. jabs back, looking at Bobby as if he smells funny.
“Whatever.” He kind of does.
“Got enough milk now, baby Simon?” Bobby laughs and high-fives Victor, his forever sidekick, who always laughs at Bobby’s jokes even when they aren’t that funny. Even though the joke was majorly corny, my face feels hot and I get so mad I can’t even move. Bobby stands there for a minute waiting for me to maybe scream or cry in front of everybody, but I just sit there feeling my cold, stained T-shirt stick to my chest and goose bumps rising all over me. I stare at my tray and the slice of pizza I was gonna eat just before Bobby turned it into a muddy flood in a mushy pizza yard. Under the table, Maria kicks my shoe and waits for me to say something back. I open my mouth, ready to ask Bobby if that was the same shirt he had on last year. Then I open it again, ready to tell him he shouldn’t have skipped his shower this morning. All the perfect comebacks are in my head. I just have to… I just have to…
