Playground

by 50 Cent

  Of course I wanted to hit another movie, but I didn’t want to push it, not when I had a much bigger favor to ask of my dad that weekend. “You’re sure you’re not too tired?”

  “Nah, boy, you know I can sleep anywhere.”

  After a quick shower and change of clothes, my dad and I headed back downstairs. It was totally dark by the time we made it outside. Before getting on the train, we stopped off for some pizza.

  We were waiting on the downtown platform, both of us with a slice of pepperoni in each hand, when I decided to ask my dad about the sneakers. “Hey, Dad?” I asked, and he nodded between chews. “Can I ask you a big favor, do you mind? And you can say no; I swear I won’t care. It’s just, well ... You see these shoes I’m wearing? Well, they’re sort of old and shit, and I don’t know . . .”

  I’d had a whole speech prepared, but it turned out I didn’t need it. “You want some new kicks, my man, is that what you’re getting at? Hell, yes, those there are looking nasty. I’ll hook you up. We’ll hit the shops tomorrow—you want to swing by Atmos first, don’t you?”

  The whole ride down to 125th Street, I felt like my face was going to split in two from grinning. I couldn’t believe I was finally getting me some new shoes! My dad really was the bomb. Man, Andres and Darrell and Bobbie have probably never seen the kind of merchandise they sell at Atmos. Not even the most tripped-out store in the suburbs could touch that shit.

  When we were in line for the tickets, my dad must’ve seen me tapping my feet and staring down at my raggedy X Series because he said, “Oh, but one thing, boy. I’ll only get you the shoes under one condition.”

  My heart sank right through the shredded-up soles of my shoes. “Yeah, what’s that, Dad?”

  “Your mom called me in the middle of the night last night, at God knows what time—doesn’t that woman know some of us work for a living? I think that’s why I forgot you were coming today because I was damn near dead asleep when she called. Anyway, she filled me in on some of the shit that’s been going down with you at school. I knew you’d been suspended and shit, but this was the first time she took it upon herself to really acquaint me with all the dirty details.”

  “Ah,” I said, or maybe I just thought it. I’d been wondering when Mom would get around to this. She was too shy to come right out and confront me about the whole Maurice situation, but she knew my dad wouldn’t mind kicking my ass hard.

  I was scrambling to come up with some excuse for why I’d done what I’d done. But how could I defend myself without getting into the real nitty-gritty? My dad was the last person on the planet I wanted knowing my business. I mean, he’d just lose it completely.

  “Here’s the thing, man,” my dad was saying. “It’s cool what you did, you know? A man has his reasons and I respect that. In fact, I was kind of proud of you when she told me—maybe you’re not such a worthless fatass after all, you know? But there’s just one problem, my brother, and it’s a big one.”

  He paused; I tried to catch my breath. It was taking me a while to process what my dad was saying. What exactly was he saying?

  “You shouldn’t have gotten caught, Butterball, man. I mean, what were you thinking?”

  “What?” My head snapped up. “What does that mean?”

  “Like I said, it’s fine to settle scores, but you can’t do that shit on the playground with your gym coach and great-aunt Liza watching and shit. I mean, what the hell? That’s a good guarantee of getting stopped before you finish the job, you know what I’m saying? You want respect, you write your own rules. That’s why you gotta go a little incognito from time to time, know what I mean?”

  I thought of Nia’s party, just a week away now. With her mom gone for the night, some crazy shit was gonna go down whether I showed up or not. “You mean like at a party?” I asked carefully.

  “That’s what I’m talking about. That’s where you can get the respect without the restraints.”

  “But what if . . .” I hesitated, then went ahead and explained the whole complicated Bobbie-Terrence situation to my dad. “. . . So yeah, he took this friend of mine’s girl, but that was a while ago. And now it sounds like he’s got this other chick in his sights—this girl Nia, who’s always been real nice to me. So Andres and the other guys, they all say I should punish Terrence for messing with women that don’t belong to him.”

  “Well, shit yeah, you should. No mofo can expect to take another man’s lady from him and just get away with that shit. That just ain’t how the world works.”

  I guess I hadn’t explained myself right. “But—but I don’t even know the guy,” I said. “I’ve never even laid eyes on him. He took this friend of mine’s girl, not mine.”

  “So? A guy stealing someone else’s girl—that just ain’t cool. You and your friend, you’ve got a responsibility to show that dude what’s what.”

  “Yeah, but, I mean, shouldn’t Bobbie be the one who does it? I mean, he’s the one whose girl got stolen, not mine.”

  “Depends,” my dad said. “Depends who wants the respect more, and who needs it more. You show people you’re a force to reckon with, and I promise you shit’ll start falling into place for you. Who knows—you might even get yourself a girl, and any brother with titties like yours is gonna need as much help as he can get in that department.” My dad thought this was pretty funny.

  My cheeks were burning, and I decided to let the subject drop. I looked around me. The line was taking forever, but I guess that’s what you get for showing up at nine P.M. on a Friday without tickets. I shifted from one foot to the other and wished I’d never mentioned Bobbie and Terrence to my dad. But at least he hadn’t said anything more about not getting me the shoes.

  “Here, I’ll show you what I mean, boy. You want the world to treat you like a man, you gotta start acting like one. It’s really just a question of getting what you want in your sights and just grabbing it. Now just watch and learn.”

  With that, my dad stepped out of the line and strolled right past the eight or so people who were waiting between us and the ticket counter. At the very front of the line, he edged past a young guy and his girlfriend and said to the woman, “We’ll have two tickets for”—then, turning back to me, he shouted—“what was it you wanted to see, B-Ball?”

  “Uh—Source Code,” I squeaked out. All the people between me and the front of the line were grumbling and squawking and turning around to glare at me, but I just kept my eyes on my nasty old shoes.

  “Hey, what’s up with that?” the guy who’d been at the very front of the line protested, tapping my dad on the shoulder. “That’s not cool, man. You just took our place in line.”

  My dad whipped around and stuck his face right up close to the guy’s. He flinched and took a step back.

  “Oh, yeah?” Dad said threateningly. “Well, looks like it’s my place now, don’t it?”

  “That’ll be twenty-one dollars,” the woman in the ticket booth said, and my dad had the cash ready. He took the tickets and—after giving the guy who’d yelled at him a little shove—walked back to where I still stood frozen in place.

  “See what I’m talking about, B-ball? Now that’s how a man gets it done.”

  12

  Around four p.m. the next day—my dad had never been much of an early riser—we finally rolled out of the apartment to get some grub. I couldn’t decide whether I should mention the shoes again. My dad always had good intentions, and when he made a promise he stuck to it. But he could also be pretty forgetful, especially when he was working a lot and tired all the time like he was now.

  But as it turned out, my dad hadn’t forgotten his promise at all. “You still want to get some new lugs?” he asked me only about a block south of his apartment.

  “Yeah!” I said. “Yeah, Dad, that’d be so cool! I need’em so bad, you really don’t even know!”

  “Calm down, calm down, boy, we’re going.”

  And so after grabbing some more pizza, we caught the train down to 125th Stree
t, then walked the half-block to Atmos, which was like a giant cathedral filled top to bottom with the coolest sneakers on earth.

  We hadn’t walked two steps into the store before my eyes landed right on the Air Foamposites display, arranged in a tall pyramid at the center of the room. They even had them in cobalt blue. They were the most beautiful shoes I’d ever seen and then some. I swear if I were rich, I’d own a different color for every day of the week.

  “So which ones you like, B-Ball?” my dad asked, following my eyes to the Foamposites. We walked over to the pyramid, and he pointed to the cobalt shoes at the very top. “These?”

  “Yeah, but . . . There are a lot of cool shoes in here,” I said, quickly scrambling to come up with less pricey alternatives. My dad wasn’t a cheap-ass like my mom, but the man wasn’t made of money, either. I knew those Foamposites could run upward of three hundred dollars, and even more for the limited-edition colors like the cobalt. There were tons of other cool shoes I’d be happy to wear, like the Air Jordan XIs in red or the all-black Lebron VIIIs. Even the cheapest shoe in the store would look better than my old X Series.

  “Yeah, but why settle?” my dad asked. “Remember what I said last night? You get what you want in your sights, and you go for it. You don’t let nothing get in your way.”

  “Uh-huh, but I can always—”

  My dad was already shouting at a kid in an Atmos T-shirt. “Hey, c’mere! You work here? We want to try us on some of these shoes.”

  The kid nodded approvingly, then asked me my size. I had no idea, I told him; I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually tried on new shoes.

  So while my dad cruised around the store, pulling shoes off their display shelves and not always returning them, the boy—his name tag said Rodney—sat me down and measured my foot real methodically.

  I was a size 10½, which meant I’d grown two whole sizes since I’d bought my X Series. So yeah, I wasn’t being a brat or anything. It really was time I got myself some new shoes. The knock-offs my mom was always trying to buy me at Payless didn’t count.

  The kid picked up the shoes I’d just taken off, their leather worn so thin on the sides it was almost see-through in places, and grinned appreciatively. “These shoes are classics, man,” he said, trying not to notice how worn-down they were on the bottom. “I can see why you’d want to hang onto them.”

  I grinned back. This guy was pretty cool.

  “You got any color preferences for the Foamposites?” he asked as he got up.

  “Whatever you got,” I said, “but I sure wouldn’t mind looking at the cobalts.”

  He came back with the cobalt box open on top of the stack, so of course I couldn’t help trying those on first. They fit me perfectly. I took a few steps around the store, and I swear it felt like walking on a mattress. Everything was so squishy and soft and cushioned.

  “These the ones?” my dad said, coming over to me as I pulled the shoes off and sifted through the boxes for a more basic color.

  “I like them, sure, but there are a lot of other cool ones around,” I said. “I saw some nice Air Jordans over there.” Those might not be limited-edition, but they couldn’t possibly cost more than $150.

  “You want to try those, too?” my dad said.

  “Yeah, sure,” I said, gazing down at the Foamposites on the bench. It sounds crazy to say this about a pair of shoes, but they really were just incredibly beautiful—the way a sunset or the last shot of Planet of the Apes, the original I mean, not that remake shit, the way it cuts from the beach to that wide shot of the Statue of Liberty, that’s beautiful.

  “All right, go bring us some of the Air Jordans, too,” my dad told Rodney.

  As soon as Rodney disappeared behind the velvet curtain, my dad leaned down toward me and said in a low voice, “Remember what I told you last night? About deciding what you want and just going for it?” I nodded, and he went on, “You act like you’re in charge, then you’re in charge. It’s as simple as that. Now I’ll see you back at home, sound good?”

  As he spoke, my dad stooped down even more, plucked up the shoes I’d just tried on, and just like that he walked calmly out of the store. What the—?

  I figured it out just about two seconds before Rodney came out of the storeroom, which didn’t give me much of a headstart. The next few seconds are a blur in my memory. Rodney looked at my face, then at the empty spot on the bench where the shoes had been, and then out the plate-glass front of the store. My dad was nowhere to be seen, and just as Rodney let out a shout, my panic button went off. I jumped off that bench and—despite the fact that I had only old socks on my feet—I hauled ass right on out of there.

  By now an alarm bell was buzzing, and Rodney was hurling himself at me as if in slow motion. But for the first time in my life, I was faster than anyone, and I streaked up 125th Street like my survival depended on it. And maybe it did. Even barefoot like I was, I ran uptown as fast as I’d ever run in my life, but still it was seven whole blocks before I caught up with my dad. I was panting and sweating and as close as I’ve ever been to a heart attack, but by then I was safe. I’d beat Rodney and all the rest of them, and no one could ever take those shoes off me again. They were mine. I’d earned them fair and square.

  13

  That Monday, I sat at Andres’s table for the first time. “You have fun in the city?” Darrell asked me, and instead of answering I just stuck out my feet.

  “Whoa, those are nice!” Everyone gathered around to admire my Foamposites; a couple of guys even got up to inspect them up close. I had the whole table’s attention, and I remembered what my dad had said about getting what I wanted in my sights and then just going for it. He could be wise sometimes, my dad.

  Bobbie let out a whistle. “Oh, man, and you got them in the cobalt, too? Aren’t those, like, limited edition and shit?”

  “Sure are. Like I said, I’ve just been waiting for them to come out. Not just any shoes are good enough for these feet.”

  I didn’t see any reason to mention the blaring security alarm and all the sweat dripping down my face by the time I finally spotted the backside of my dad strolling casually up Seventh Avenue. I didn’t stop running until I was right up there next to him, panting like I was on the verge of a heart attack, every inch of me stinky and sore.

  When he saw me, dad clapped me on the back and told me he was proud of me for making it out of there alive: “Very nice work, boy, and I mean no disrespect, but no kid your age should be panting like a dog after running half a block.” And then, before he even handed over the shoes, he just broke out laughing. “Oh, man, look at you! If you could only see yourself, boy, goddamn!”

  “Your pops must have some deep pockets,” Darrell said.

  “He does all right for himself,” I said with a shrug.

  I didn’t feel any need to describe the look on that nice salesguy Rodney’s face when, a little too late, he figured out what my dad had done, or how my heart seemed to stop beating for a full minute as I jumped to my feet and made tracks out of that store as fast as these piggy legs could carry me.

  Nah, I just shoved another chicken tender into my mouth, stuck my feet out, and said, “Check ’em out, right. Only two stores in the whole country carry these shoes. The rest are all in Japan.”

  None of the boys could see the thousands of little cuts and blisters covering the bottoms of my feet from running over all those ripped sidewalks and tramping over broken bottles and stray twigs and sharp little pebbles. No one could see the little circles of blood on the insole of my brand-new Foamposites from the fifteen-block walk back to dad’s place once he finally handed over my new shoes. Nobody needed to hear about how my dad couldn’t stop cracking up the whole way home, saying, “Oh, man, you should’ve seen the look on your face when I walked on out of there. Man, I’d do it all over again just to get a picture of that shit. I’m telling you, it was classic. And then to see your blubbery ass jiggling all the way up Seventh Avenue like that! Man, maybe I should�
��ve borrowed your video camera to make some cinema out of that shit!”

  After a few minutes of ooh-ing and ah-ing, I put my feet under the table and finished up my lunch. “I think next time I’m getting them in that ice-silver color they’ve got,” I said, and Andres and the rest of them looked at me with real respect.

  “You’re sure gonna tear it up at Nia’s place on Saturday,” Andres said with a smile. “No shorty can resist shoes like that.” I shrugged but didn’t say anything.

  After lunch I stopped off at the bathroom on my way to math class. I almost never came to this bathroom anymore, but I’d stayed at lunch too long and was in a hurry. Mrs. Fleming was real anal about tardiness, and I didn’t want to make my whole academic probation situation any worse than necessary.

  The bathroom was in the same hall as my seventh-grade homeroom, a smelly-ass reminder of all those hours I’d spent locked inside the handicapped stall the year before, just counting down the minutes till lunch period was up. That was before I got comfortable around good ol’ J. Watkins.

  I was at the urinal, just about finished with my business, when these two little kids who were always trying to take over my lunch table walked in. They looked scared when they saw me, and they damn well should’ve been. I zipped up and clapped my hands together nice and loud as the two of them backed toward the door.

  “What’s the problem, guys?” I asked, and before they could escape back into the hall, I crossed the room real fast and shoved myself right up into their faces. I don’t know why seeing them made me so angry all of a sudden. Maybe it was because they reminded me of what Maurice and I had been like the year before: pathetic losers. Or maybe it was because I had the shoes now—and the status that went with them. Or maybe I didn’t need any damn reason.

  “You guys following me around or something?” I asked when neither of them answered. Jamal looked like he was about to piss himself right through his pants. Shit was mad funny.