“It’s not tired,” Yusef whispered. He took the standard deep breath that preceded all of his infamous lectures. Then he continued. “Butterflies ain’t never tired. They always flying. That’s it. That’s what they do. Like how fish is always swimming and trees is always growing. Things in nature ain’t never tired. They always doing what they do.”
“How you know?” said Xamir, his mother’s Spanish accent always coming out when he asked a question.
“Cause that’s how nature is,” said Yusef. “It goes. Like your heart. Living don’t stop.”
“Abraham,” said Leroy, squinting harder than he’d ever squinted before and standing on his tiptoes as if the few inches he rose actually gave him the chance to see. “What you think?”
Because I helped them cheat on tests, and my friends knew I wrote my grandma’s letters to Roosevelt, and because Yusef had me write love letters to Beany’s sister Cecily and Xamir relied on me for what to say when breaking up or wooing a new girl, I was considered the genius of our crew. Of course, I didn’t believe in my intelligence. The ease with which I retained information and presented it was no more or less defining a characteristic than my outie belly button. I looked at the butterfly. I understood it was what Leroy was asking me about. But I could not help thinking about Lindbergh. I wondered what he thought, wished to say, or might mumble to himself about the butterfly later. In the years since he had come back to Ever, in the years since I first understood who and what he was, Lindbergh had descended further into degradation and madness. He was so thin his body appeared to be haphazardly pounded out of rusty tin. No rhyme or reason remained in his mind. And no longer were only his hands and feet calloused; his elbows were calloused and hard too. His cheeks were sunken. His ears were full of coarse hair. He no longer wore fatigues or had the mental stability to work for anyone else but himself. So he collected cans. Occasionally he built a helicopter here and there. But the helicopters he built were more desperate than they were previously, more ramshackle so not just without the chance, but also without a hope of flying. Lindbergh wore stained jeans many sizes too big for him that he cinched tight with a woman’s lavender belt he must have found in some bag or pile of trash. The jeans hung low, revealing the crack of his ass. He pulled them up and cinched the belt tighter as if the act enhanced his hygiene and appearance. He watched the butterfly with all of his might and faculties. What did he see? What did I think? I thought many things, all of them a swirl in my head, each thought a wing, a fluttering body. I had never seen a butterfly before. I had never heard someone else say they saw a butterfly in Ever. I wanted to touch it, hold it. What did it smell like? What did it feel like to be so, to fly so free?
But before I spoke, the butterfly rose from the rim and flew away. We shielded our eyes from the sun and watched it become a black speck in the sky. Then Lindbergh reached his hand up, waved, and shrieked like one of the seagulls that picked through the Dumpsters behind Ever.
“Cawww! Caww!” he called out. He waved more vigorously. “Caww! Caww!”
First, they were stunned. Then my friends burst with laughter.
“Nigga’s crazy!” howled Titty, holding his stomach. “I’m gonna piss. I swear this nigga is gonna make me shit myself!”
“Oh my god!” Kitchen exploded, twisting and turning with laughter and then grabbing on to both Cleveland and Jefferson so he wouldn’t fall down. “Oh my god! Nigga thinks he can communicate with it!”
As if he were deaf, Lindbergh calmly returned to sitting beneath his lean-to.
“That’s a butterfly!” Yusef shouted at him. “They don’t speak bird!”
Truth be told I broke up with laughter too. But it wasn’t just Lindbergh that made me laugh or the fact that the deep, wholehearted laughter of my friends was inescapably contagious. It was the whole scene and scenario. It was the previous impossibility of it. I would have never guessed. I would have never supposed. Not even in my wildest fantasy. What a relief, a butterfly had come and gone from Ever.
Of course, because we were still children, because we could be momentarily affected and then disaffected, we played basketball again as if nothing had happened. We banged and bumped. We chased and ran. The sound of the ball, its bounce and bump off the backboard and around the netless rim was our wind. It lifted us. It carried us away.
At four, the heat began to ease and young men began to gather on the sidelines. Then when there were ten, they kicked us off the court so they could play a full-court game. My friends and I hung around and watched them play for a while, marveling at the way Julius, a young dark-skinned man with veins rippling his calves and shins, handled the basketball like it was a yo-yo he threw around and between his legs and all over the place in front of himself; and the way Malik, his dreadlocks bundled in an old stocking and a tattoo of a horse across the span of his fan-shaped back, snatched rebounds from a foot above the rim. Eventually, one by one, and in small groups, my friends went home until I, the one who was never satisfied, the one who craved more as if there might not be another day, was the only one left.
I had nowhere to go and there was no set time I had to be in. My grandma was working the overnight shift and I was of the age and at a time in my life when I thought as long as I came home alive, my mother was satisfied. I sat against the fence on the side of the court and watched the game. I studied every move so later I could practice what I saw. Lindbergh broke down his lean-to, packed it into his shopping cart, and putting on his battered, mismatched shoes, he pushed his cart away. Then he stopped, looked up, and pointing at the sky, he scratched his face and mumbled something that made him look down and shake his head in disbelief. Then he started walking away again, the wheels of his shopping cart rattling and squeaking.
I grew hungry. Rather, my stomach realized I was no longer running and jumping and it began to churn and groan. I had not eaten since the pack of cookies I had for breakfast. I tied my shirt around my head like a turban, a style I was convinced looked good, and I rose to my feet. My left leg, from my hamstring to the tip of my big toe, was asleep, so I held on to the fence and waited for the feeling to come back to it.
“What’s wrong with you?” said Alton Johnson, standing on the side of the court with the steadily increasing gathering of men, some of whom had been my uncle’s friends.
“My leg’s asleep,” I said.
“Shit.” Alton laughed, looking at the men standing to his right to make sure he had their attention. “That’s cause you jerk off too much.” He pointed at Elijah Treadwell, who was just about to light a cigarette. “Tell ’em, E., tell this little nigga how jerk’n off makes you addicted to cigarettes. Tell him to leave that shit alone. Just say no. Go get some young pussy or something.”
“Jerk’n off don’t make you addicted to cigarettes,” Elijah countered, blowing the smoke of his first inhale into the air through the hole where a front tooth used to be. “It makes your hands hairy.”
“Abraham,” Alton said, swinging his eyes back to me. “Come here. Let me see your hands. Come on. Hold ’em out!”
The men laughed and continued to tell jokes about masturbating and me, but I didn’t move or speak. Some men came to the court to play. Others came to laugh and tease. And some came because they wanted to disappear, to forget adulthood, to rekindle that carefree camaraderie they had when they were teenagers, to forget their job or lack of one, to avoid the nagging of their mothers if they still lived with their mothers, the ailments of their grandmothers if they still lived with their grandmothers, and the inherent responsibilities related to having a wife, a girlfriend, and kids. As for Alton, he had a daughter my age named Virginia who fucked twenty-year-olds and stripped for me and my friends just two days before for ten dollars. Of course, I knew better than to say anything about it. I’d seen Alton angry and the sight was violent enough to let me know Alton was not the type of brother who would deal well with his daughter’s truths. Once, I’d seen him snatch a revolver out of the back of his pants, cock its hammer, and jam its barrel thr
ough a man’s clenched teeth. I didn’t want to die. And I sort of liked my smile. So, without so much as blinking, I stood there and took Alton’s jokes, thinking, Nigga, your daughter has got nice tits, nipples the size of dimes, and a constellation of freckles she must have inherited from you on her ass, until my leg came around and I started walking.
“You better wrap your shit,” Alton called out from behind me. “Use a condom. Shit, the last thing I need to see is another nigga catch AIDS and walk around Ever dying.”
I dribbled my basketball along Columbus Avenue. It was crowded. But its crowd wasn’t a crowd because it was a crowd I knew the moment I opened my eyes on the world. So everyone on the sidewalk; everyone talking in groups of twos, fews, and half dozens; everyone holding hands of little ones and leaning on walkers; everyone listening to headphones, sipping straws from beers in paper bags, and smoking cigarettes; those kissing; those reading books; the children drawing chalk rainbows between the litter and broken glass on the sidewalk; every man and woman and child was first and foremost my intimate environment. Some were just getting home from work. Children were just getting out of summer camp. Some had the stains of their lunch on their faces and shirts.
Traffic was heavy and I waited for it to break so I could cross the avenue. I looked across the street at where we lived, Ever Park. The two forty-two-floor redbrick buildings, tower A and tower B, were in an area of Queens where there was no commerce or train transportation, and all of the streets were named after dead presidents, New World discoverers, and trees that had never been seen in the neighborhood. Pine Street, Locust Street, Maple and Dogwood Avenues. Willow Street intersected with Eisenhower. Elm Street and Oak Street ran parallel with Lewis and Clark. There were twelve apartments on each floor of Ever Park, six on one side, six on the other. Five hundred and four windows faced Columbus Avenue. From some windows, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Haitian, and Jamaican flags clung limply, tied to the child guard or the rusted fire escape, the summer heat strangling their wave. From some windows curtains hung and drooped like sad sails; from a few, air conditioners teetered. Between the towers was a concrete courtyard with concrete benches and a rusted jungle gym. Surrounding Ever like a moat, running between the buildings and the avenue, was a large parking lot with potholes, yellowed weeds bursting from cracks in the concrete, and a collection of cars, some working, some not; some to be proud of, some the dilapidated chariots of those who were just happy to have a ride.
From my left came a group of girls, ranging in age from a five-year-old to a thirteen-year-old with a woman’s figure and the innocent disposition of a puppy. They weaved through the crowd and ran past me laughing and shouting, “Go!” “Run!” “Hurry!” Behind them, plodding, red faced and wheezing in failing hot pursuit, came Latricia Bowers, a heavyset girl too knock-kneed to ever catch even the smallest and slowest of the girls.
“Hey, Abraham,” she gasped, greeting me with a flaccid wave as she lumbered by.
“Hey,” I said, wondering what determination possessed her to keep running when she was so far behind.
Waiting for the bus and sucking on neon-colored Flavos, Arthur Winfield, Laurence Matthews, and Delonte Henry, three fourteen-year-olds who had played basketball with me earlier in the day, took turns dribbling a ball, its hollow thud lending the evening a heartbeat.
“Good playing today, A,” said Arthur, never quite sure of himself yet always speaking with the calm grace his father demanded of him.
“Damn, look how fine Carmela is,” interrupted Delonte, taking his headphones from his ears, always weary eyed, always with shoulders held firmly back and straight, and always good for switching the topic of any conversation to the topic of a beautiful woman, be she thirty or ten.
Across the street, Hector Mendez, one my uncle’s old friends, washed his white Toyota Camry, turquoise racing stripes on its sides, with a bucket of soapy water and a sponge while his wife, Carmela, cradled their newborn son and talked to Hector in half English and half Spanish, occasionally making him laugh and stop what he was doing to gaze adoringly at her, his wife carrying his son.
“Man, I’m telling you,” Delonte continued. “That’s exactly how my lady is gonna be. Sexy as shit.”
“Nigga,” cracked Arthur, “You ain’t even kissed a girl.”
“So what?” said Delonte. “Plus, I ain’t talk’n about kissing.”
“Then what you saying?” said Laurence.
“I’m saying love,” said Delonte.
“Love?” laughed Arthur. “Nigga, what you know about love?”
“I know it’s strong,” Delonte said. He was serious. He stared straight ahead, studied Carmela and Hector. He held the basketball and bounced it once.
“That’s it?” said Arthur. “That’s all you got to say?”
“What else is there?” said Delonte.
Traffic ceased. I crossed the street. Hector saw me coming, tipped his chin, smiled wider than he was already smiling, and pointed the sponge at me.
“You was practicing?” he asked.
“We played all day,” I said.
“That’s good,” Hector said. “Keep you out of trouble. Stop you from being like me when I was your age.”
Hector laughed because shortly after my uncle got locked up Hector went upstate for forging a check to pay for his mother’s medical bills, and he’d come home grateful for everything, for the fact that he hadn’t had his gun on him when the cops picked him up so he only served three years; for his car and his beautiful Carmela; for his son Junior; for every morning, every night, and the chance to rectify his wrongs by offering advice and belief to young men like me. Hector worked as a youth counselor in an Alternatives to Incarceration program, and every evening he bought Carmela flowers on his way home. He plunged the sponge back into the bucket and began to wash the side of his car again. He was wearing a tank top and as his hand circled, the muscles in his arms and shoulders rolled beneath his skin.
“You know something?” he said. “One day you gonna make it all the way to the NBA and give me front row seats. I swear it. A star. I seen it in a dream.”
Hector stood tall and pointed his sponge at Carmela and his son. “I’ll bring Junior,” he said. “And by then your uncle will be home and…”
“Conio!” Carmela snapped. “What about me? You ain’t gonna bring me to the game?”
Hector smiled, his left eye tilting, his right opening slightly wider, both shining a playfulness that indicated Carmela’s scolding tickled him. He opened his arms wide and stepped to her. She sucked her teeth. He gently wrapped his arms around her waist. He kissed her neck, then the wisps of hair on the crown of Junior’s head.
“Tranquilo,” he said, soothing her in an easy, deep rumbling tone warmed and emanating from the base of his neck. “We all go. Mi familia. We take a family trip. Maybe we go see Abraham, then go to Paris. How ’bout that? Drink some of that good-ass white people wine. Anything you want. Anything for my wife and son.”
Holding towels and wearing shorts and bathing suits, Taquanna James and Kaya King, both my age and best friends with mothers who were best friends too, walked toward us.
“Abraham,” Taquanna whined, stretching my name out and pointing at me just as she and Kaya reached us. “Why you got your shirt tied around your head?”
Taquanna was contentious, rail thin, with a mischievous grin and the disposition of a peeved middle-aged woman. She was always on the edge of something, be it finding out a secret or having sex with someone older than us. She talked with her hands, wagging them above heads and in faces, and when she laughed she clapped and stuck her tongue out and hollered about how she couldn’t take it anymore.
“What, you think you got a good body?” she cracked. “Cause you don’t.”
I glanced at Hector, hoping to convey the sense that he need not worry; I had the situation in control, which was, of course, not the truth. Then I looked back at Taquanna.
“Don’t play yourself,” I said.
; “Play myself?” Taquanna shot back. “Shit, you the nigga with a shirt on his head and the body of a piece of paper.”
“Just last week you said I was fine,” I countered because it was the truth, or at least that was what Titty told me.
“That was before I saw you with your shirt off.” She pointed at my belly button and went in for the kill. “Kaya,” she said. “Don’t you think Abraham should get that thing cut off? It looks like he got a nose in the middle of his stomach!”
I had so hoped Taquanna wouldn’t drag Kaya into the conversation that I’d blocked out the fact that she was there, as beautiful as she was the day before, the day to come, forever. I glanced at her. Then my eyes fell to the concrete. No matter if a girl was fat and ugly or so beautiful she was too beautiful, I was quiet around her. My grandma said it was because I was shy. But the truth is I was quiet around girls for two reasons. First, I believed my uncle—both the man who had been in my life until I was nine and the even more fantastical version of him his absence and time built in my head—was the only way one could and should be a man and such a thing felt impossible for me. Second, I had witnessed the damage other men caused and I didn’t want any part of being like the others, not their presence or absence. So it was not that I was shy and quiet around girls. Rather, I was insufficient and apologetic because I wished to be great but had come to a place in my life where I was sure that my mother would have found greatness and joy if it had not been for my father and what he begat. That is, me.
Yet, there was something different, something more about Kaya. So I was more than just quiet around her. I lost all sense of self. I became nothing but breath. Kaya was a diminutive brown girl with copper tones in her cheeks and forehead and with eyes so gentle they made even the loudest, most caustic man whisper. She was soft-spoken. She did well in school. She possessed a strength that was an inherent fact so it did not need to be demonstrated, bragged about, or manifested in defiance. If I’d had the courage I would’ve done what I imagined dozens of men had already done and asked Kaya to spend the rest of her life with me, right there and then, beginning that evening, or, at least, first thing the following morning. But I couldn’t do that. And not just because I was twelve and unable to confront how I felt about her. Because I could. I just couldn’t speak it, deal with it face to face. I could write it though. Lord, how I’d spent hours writing about Kaya. In my room, on the floor, on my bed, in the kitchen at the kitchen table, even in the bathroom while I sat on the toilet, writing. Of course, I didn’t give her anything I wrote and my loving her didn’t make me unique. Everyone either loved Kaya or planned to. So she was flooded with smiles and hellos, and men, ranging in age from eight to forty and riding fleeting surges of courage and testosterone, always stepped to her, telling her not just that she was beautiful but so beautiful she was that thing they had to possess.
Hold Love Strong Page 11
