Pride

by Ibi Zoboi

  I sigh and roll my eyes. “I guess you did fool me. But you really didn’t have to get into a fight with Warren.”

  “Yes I did. I’ve been waiting for another reason to bust him in his face.”

  “Oh, so it wasn’t about looking out for my sister?”

  “It was. I wouldn’t want what happened to Georgia to happen to Layla,” he says.

  “Layla?” I ask. “What about me? He could’ve pulled that shit with me. I wouldn’t let him, but still.”

  He bites his busted bottom lip and hangs his head down. “I didn’t think of that. You were so . . .” He inhales.

  “So what? So tough? So bitchy?” I smile. “And too what? Too stuck-up? Too conceited?”

  “All of the above.” He cocks his head back a little bit when he says this. But his eyes are soft, as if he’s owning up to everything that he is.

  Or everything I thought he was.

  “What are you saying? I was right about you? I thought you fooled me,” I say, looking down at my own hands and not at his soft eyes.

  “I thought I was trying to fool you.” He inhales and leans in a little bit. “Zuri, you don’t think I know that this is the hood and guys around here would be messing with me and my brother? You don’t think I knew that I’d have a reputation as soon as I stepped out of that car? And I knew it wouldn’t be street rep, either. I saw it all over your face, Zuri. You couldn’t stand me. And according to you, Warren was your boy in the hood. Who was I to mess that up for you?”

  I bite the inside of my cheek, still not looking at Darius. There’s some old blue nail polish left on my thumbnail, and I pick at that.

  “Hey?” Darius says, lowering his head to make eye contact with me.

  My body starts to feel weird. And I know this feeling. My insides are melting into sweet, gooey, sticky honey. So I quickly stand up from his bed. “I should check on Layla.”

  “Give her a few minutes,” he says, while trying to get up too. He scrunches his face and holds the side of his belly.

  I reach for his hand and help him up. When he does, we’re standing face-to-face. Sort of, because he’s taller than me. His lips are where my forehead is, so he quickly kisses it, as if that’s what I was asking him to do.

  I step back.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to . . .”

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I can’t be in here.”

  He grabs my hand. “I get it. It’s cool. Let me show you something.”

  I give him a surprised look as he pulls me out of his bedroom, past a sleeping Layla, and up the stairs leading out of the basement. He turns around and places his finger over his lips, as if I would dare say anything now.

  The house is dark, but there are tiny dim lights all over that are enough for us to tiptoe our way up two flights of stairs. My heart is racing and my hand starts to sweat in his hand. My mind is racing with all kinds of thoughts about how this is not a good idea. But my insides seem to have taken over my brain, and in seconds, we’re walking up a short flight of concrete steps to the roof of his house.

  There’s no ladder, no rusty metal door, no tar or blue tarp here. It’s as if this is a whole backyard, complete with a wide canopy, outdoor furniture, plants, and string of gold and silver Christmas lights that Darius turns on from some hidden spot. It all takes my breath away.

  “Wow,” I whisper. “I didn’t know all this was up here.”

  “You thought you knew everything, huh?” Darius says. He sits down on a wicker couch in the middle of the roof. There’s also a rug and wicker coffee table. It’s a straight-up whole other apartment on his roof!

  “Yeah,” I say, nodding. “I did.”

  He laughs and motions with his head for me to join him. I don’t think twice about it, because the sky here seems wider. And maybe there are more stars from this view. And maybe the moon shines brighter. Maybe everything is better from the roof of the Darcy house.

  He eases closer to me when I sit down. We’re quiet for a long moment, and I realize I can see the top of my building from here. “Did you ever see . . . ,” I start to ask.

  “Yep,” he says. “You and Janae would just sit there and laugh and probably talk about me and Ainsley. . . .”

  “No, we weren’t talking about you,” I lie.

  “You were trying to throw tiny meatballs at this house.”

  “You saw that?” I laugh and cover my mouth.

  “I saw you,” he says quietly.

  I just stare at him when he says this, and he stares back. Neither of us looks away.

  “ZZ. Girl in the hood,” he says.

  “Darius Dorky,” I say.

  He laughs. “Dorky? I’m dorky?”

  “Yes, you are.” I laugh.

  I’m fidgeting with my hands again, and he takes one of them.

  “Zuri, I’m not going to try to be hard or pretend I’m from the hood. My parents protected us from all that. They raised us how they were raised. I mean, you met my grandmother. She has big dreams for me and Ainsley. I can’t help that, and I can’t change that.” He slips his fingers in between mine, and I let him.

  It’s as if I’ve been holding a weapon all this time, ready to defend myself if he said anything wrong, and he just pulled it out of my hand, disarming me.

  “I don’t know about that life, Darius. That run-down building over there has been my home since forever. My parents work hard too, and they do not treat people like shit. Nobody on my block does, and if they do, there’s somebody to call them out on it. We’re like family. You treated me and my sisters like shit, and I needed to call you out on it. And I can’t help that or change that.”

  “But I wasn’t . . .” He pulls my hand toward him a little bit.

  “Darius.”

  “You judged me too. You treated me and my brother like shit too.” Now he places his other hand over mine.

  “No, I wasn’t . . .”

  “Zuri.”

  “Okay. Fine,” I say.

  “Can we start over?” he asks. Then he brings my hand to his lips and kisses it.

  My insides turn warm, and there’s nothing left to do but close my eyes and let my whole self melt in his hands, against his lips. “No, we cannot,” I whisper. “We’re not gonna just throw away the past as if it meant nothing. See? That’s what happens to whole neighborhoods. We built something, it was messy, but we’re not gonna throw it away.”

  “Touché. I like that analogy.” He squeezes my hand a little.

  “I wasn’t trying to impress you,” I say.

  “Well, I’ve been impressed. From day one.” He turns his whole body to me now, still with my hand in his.

  I slowly pull my hand away from his.

  “But I live in your neighborhood. I haven’t thrown anything or anyone away.”

  I close my eyes for a moment and inhale. “Do you see that rent is going up all over the place and people are not getting paid more? Schools are shitty because teachers think we’re a lost cause. I’m trying to get into college, but I need financial aid and scholarships ’cause I have three more sisters who want to go to college too, and my parents have always been broke. That’s why I had a wall up with you. You were moving into my hood from what seemed like a whole different world.”

  We’re both quiet for a long minute before he says, “I understand. But it’s not like I have it easy, either.”

  “Darius, if my family had your kind of money and this kind of house, my whole life would’ve been different.”

  After what feels like forever, he says, “I never told you this, but we left our old apartment on the Upper East Side because the neighbors had concerns about me and Ainsley. We had lived there since we were toddlers. Everybody thought we were cute when we were in the third grade. But once we got taller and got some bass in our voices, they decided that they didn’t recognize us anymore. So we decided to move. But I dunno, sometimes I still feel like I don’t belong in Bushwick, either. I don’t fit in anywhere.”


  “But I don’t want you to, Darius. I just want you to be you and me to be me.” I wrap my fingers through his.

  He smiles, just a little bit. “If you say so,” he says.

  “What do we do now, then?” I ask.

  “I have an idea,” he says. He’s closer to me now. Our legs are touching.

  And finally he leans in and kisses me. He eases his fingers across my cheek, up around my neck, toward the back of my head, and through the tight coils of my hair. He cradles my head in his hand as he kisses me deep, deep. I am honey again.

  It all feels like the end of a game that we didn’t even know we were playing. And we’ve both had the ball stolen and thrown back, played defense and offense. And from the way he kisses me—easing his bruised hand around my body and pulling me in close, almost swallowing me with his whole self—I know that I’ve won this game. And he’s won too.

  I almost fall asleep in Darius’s arms, on this roof, across the street from my own building. The nearby sirens will put me into an even a deeper sleep if I let them, but it’s the flashing lights behind my closed eyelids that make me pull away from Darius’s warmth and slow-beating heart.

  He’s awake too, squinting. “I think there’s an ambulance in front of your building,” he says.

  “Oh, shit!” I say, and I’m on my feet and ready to rush down from the roof. But he quickly gets in front of me to open the door.

  “Darius? Is that you?” his mother calls out from a nearby room when we reach the second floor.

  “Yeah, Mom,” he says. “Was just hanging out on the roof for a bit. Going to bed.”

  His mother says good night, and we tiptoe back down to the basement, where Layla is just starting to toss about.

  “Layla, we gotta go,” I say, nudging her.

  She gets up groggy and confused, but Darius helps us up the stairs and out the door. We have to decide in a split second whether or not he’ll walk me across the street.

  “I’m coming with you,” he says.

  I nod and swallow hard.

  Just as we come around his house, I spot Mama and Papi in our open doorway as two EMT workers bring a stretcher down the front stoop. There’s a body on that stretcher. I look at Mama and Papi, and it takes me a second to make sure that they’re both standing there and not on that stretcher.

  My heart sinks, and I’m frozen where I stand, with Layla leaning her head on my shoulder.

  “What’s going on?” she asks, slowly pulling away from me. Then it hits her. “Oh my god, no!”

  She rushes across the street, and it takes me a while to follow her, because my legs feel like tree trunks. I can’t move them.

  Marisol, Kayla, and Janae come out of the building. Janae is the first to spot me across the street, and she motions for me to hurry up.

  I once asked Madrina how she knows so much about the strangers who come down to the basement for her love consultations. She told me that thoughts and feelings are vibrations. They move the air like a light breeze, and if I pay close enough attention, I can feel those thoughts in my own body. So even with the white sheet covering her whole body and her face, I already know. And I’m the first to fall to my knees and start crying.

  Never in my life have I wanted to disappear into thin air as I do now. But not because Papi’s eyes have disappointment written all over them. Not because Mama’s eyes are red and teary and she doesn’t even look at me or Darius. Not because my sisters try to console me and even Janae comes down to the ground with me and hugs me tight.

  I was on the roof with Darius when Madrina’s spirit left the world. Our bodies were glued together and I was happy for a little while, but I didn’t know that this deep sadness was waiting for me like an open door.

  And then I think that it was maybe Madrina, priestess of the love goddess Ochún, who made it so. She gave me that little bit of happiness.

  Twenty-Seven

  Elegy for Paola Esperanza Negrón

  or

  ¡Ay Madrina! ¡Mi madrina!

  ¡Ay Madrina! ¡Mi madrina!

  The very last drumbeat has left its mark.

  Its pulsing rhythm leaves no sound,

  like blown-out candles in the dark.

  The singing voices muted,

  the quiet prayers unheard,

  the orishas have retreated,

  your shining light now blurred.

  ¡Pero mi corazón! ¡Mi corazón!

  The only music left

  against the melody of my own song,

  to my sweet Ochún, of love, bereft.

  ¡Ay Madrina! ¡Mi madrina!

  Who will clear these lovers’ paths

  to walk these noisy streets

  where toppled buildings unearth our wrath?

  Newcomers fill these spaces

  with shiny jewels and polished stone.

  We blacks and browns have surrendered,

  while our memory stands alone.

  ¡Ahora, Madrina! ¡Querida abuela!

  This is the greatest theft.

  Los antepasados have stolen you

  from my sweet Ochún, of love, bereft.

  I get applause after reading my poem, the loudest from Colin, who gives a whistle. Every word rolled out of my mouth heavy and hard like the round red-and-white mint candies Madrina used to give me. I take my seat in the front-row pew.

  There’s standing room only at St. Martin of Tours Roman Catholic church on Hancock Street, and it’s a sea of all shades of brown people wearing either black or white. The ones who wear black are just following the Catholic tradition. The ones who wear white are following the Santería tradition. But everyone’s here to celebrate Madrina in their own special way.

  I too am dressed in all white from head to toe, and Madrina would’ve liked that. My hair is wrapped beneath one of her head scarves. And even though I’m not supposed to wear them because a santera or santero hasn’t blessed them and I haven’t made ocha, her colorful elekes hang long around my neck. Every single one of them. And I’ll cut my eyes at any santero who questions me.

  I know almost everybody who’s come to her funeral, including Darius, who walked in while I was reciting my poem. I had to pause for a long second, almost forgetting the words that were right there on the page.

  Afterward, Mama opens up our apartment and the whole building for the repast. She’s been cooking for three days, and my sisters and I have been helping her. And when the church doors open so everyone can make their way to our building, I hear the congas. My heart leaps. Bobbito, Manny, and Wayne have gathered about a dozen drummers to play outside the church.

  I take Darius’s hand so everyone around can see that we’re together, and we walk toward the drums. The santeras do a little two-step as they lead the procession from the church to our building. They smile at me and Darius as we walk hand in hand.

  “Paola has blessed you before she left this side, I see,” one of them says to me. I only smile and glance at Darius.

  Janae is waiting for me at the corner on Knickerbocker. She looks at both of our faces, and I can’t tell if she’s happy for us or not. But still, she smiles big and wide when I get closer to her. I let go of Darius’s hand so my sister and I can hug.

  Practically the whole neighborhood has come out to celebrate Madrina’s life. And this is almost like a parade for her.

  “How you holding up, sis?” Charlise asks when she joins us. “I know Colin is taking it rough. Madrina was like his real mom. I can’t believe she left him the building! And for her to go—” She snaps her fingers. “Just like that.”

  I shrug and twist my mouth and look around for Colin. I spot him and Papi having a conversation. Papi’s body language is telling a story. He’s talking with his hands, something he only does when he’s really pissed, and he rarely gets really pissed.

  Colin hangs his head low, a stance I’ve never seen him take before. Then Papi reaches out and touches his shoulder in a father-son way. Without thinking twice about it, I start to make my way over
there, leaving Darius with Charlise. But by the time I reach them, the conversation is already over.

  “Hey” is all I say to Colin.

  He’s got a look on his face I’ve never seen before. His brows are furrowed and his arms are crossed. “Hey, Zuri,” he almost whispers. Then he flashes me a half smile and walks away.

  “Papi, what happened between you and Colin?” I ask.

  He’s running his hands through his thick, curly hair and he sighs deeply. “It’s okay, Zuri. Go be with your friends.”

  He takes a look around at all the people gathered on the sidewalk in front of our building and the people walking down from Bushwick Avenue and Jefferson. He rubs his graying beard and sighs again.

  “Papi, I know when you’re not okay,” I say.

  “Ah, my Zuri Luz, always watching out for your papi, huh?” he says, giving my shoulder a squeeze.

  “What are you talking about? What just happened?”

  “Let’s go for a walk,” he says, motioning for me to follow him. Suddenly I’m nervous. Papi is not the kind of man to just go for a stroll. We walk down Jefferson as he waves and says hi to neighbors and friends. “She’s singing and dancing in heaven, now,” he says when they give him their condolences for Madrina. We weren’t her family, but besides Colin, we were the closest thing she had.

  When we’re past Broadway, Papi sighs for the umpteenth time and says, “Colin’s selling the building. A developer offered him a lot of money.”

  I quickly look up. “What?” I don’t understand what he’s saying.

  “We have to move, Zuri.”

  “Move? We can’t just leave!” My stomach twists as the words come tumbling out of my mouth. Warm tears sting my eyes. I’ve lost my madrina and now I’m going to lose my home?

  “Mija, don’t get emotional on me, Zuri. I agreed to the buyout. We need it.”

  I gasp and stop walking. Out of all the things Papi could have said, I never imagined those words. A developer? A buyout? Of course, after Madrina died, I wondered who would take care of the building. But I thought Colin would just be our landlord. Not that he’d sell to an outsider.

  “Buyout? You sold us out, Papi?”