Playground

by 50 Cent

  “Yeah, right.”

  Soon enough Liz took another approach. “You like going to the movies, don’t you?” she asked. “You said that’s the thing you enjoy doing most with your dad?”

  “What’s so wacked about that? Lots of kids like going to the movies.”

  “Nothing at all,” Liz said. “It was just a question. So what’s your favorite movie, would you say?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I like a lot of the comic-book adaptations they’ve been doing lately, like with special effects but not only special effects, also real actors. You know what I mean?”

  “I think so. Is there any reason those movies have a special appeal, do you think?”

  “Does there always have to be a reason for shit?” I asked. I was glad I hadn’t told Liz about the other movies I was into—the foreign, artsy shit. It wasn’t that I was embarrassed or anything like that, just that Liz was a classic give-an-inch-take-a-mile type, and I didn’t want to give her any extra openings. “I mean, why can’t I ever just like what I like? I like comic books and graphic novels and shit like that, too, though I’d never really gotten into them until . . .” Until I got to know Maurice, but I saw no reason to go into all that detail. “Anyway, I like reading all that stuff and trying to figure out how it’d work on the screen, know what I’m saying?”

  I felt a little more chill now. Movies, that was a safe topic for me, comfortable territory. “I still remember the first movie I ever saw in a theater,” I told Liz. “I was like six or seven, I think, and my parents and I—they were still together back then, you know. Anyway, we’d gone down to Philly to visit my grandma, who was already pretty sick, and one night when the whole apartment was filled up with people, my mom just decided to take me out, just for the hell of it. I don’t know where my dad was or why he didn’t come, but yeah. It was real cool of her—she never does shit like that.” Especially not anymore, I didn’t add.

  “The movie was Batman Begins, and man, I couldn’t even believe how much I loved that shit, like every second of it. I still remember sitting in the dark like that, and thinking how cool it was that no one could see me or tell what I was thinking or even who I was, which I still think is just the coolest feeling in the world. Like I could be anyone, you know? If I stayed in the dark long enough or concentrated hard enough, I could be up there on that screen, too. To be able to make someone else feel that way, I mean, it just blew my mind.”

  “So that’s what you want to do then?” Liz said. “Make movies?”

  I grunted for like the tenth time that hour. “Yeah, and I’d also like to go swimming on Jupiter,” I said, “but that don’t mean either of those things is ever gonna happen.”

  “Oh, now, Butterball, I wouldn’t say that,” Liz said. “If you believe in yourself, you know . . .”

  “Later on,” I went on, cutting Liz off, “when I was at the library at school, I looked Batman up and ended up finding out a bunch of shit about the guy who’d made the latest adaptation. Christopher Nolan, that’s his name. I was interested, you know? He was like my opposite in every way—from England, and rich and snooty and all the shit you’d expect, the kind of guy who’d cross to the other side of the street if he saw me coming. But one thing really stuck out for me, and that was that this cat made his first movie when he was seven years old. Isn’t that crazy? I mean it was the same age I was then, and that brother had already made a movie? Man. He’d found some camera in his dad’s garage and just gone to town with it, and from that point on he always knew he’d make movies one day. Cool, isn’t it, knowing something like that?”

  “It is cool,” Liz said, but I barely knew she was there anymore.

  “My parents didn’t have jack shit in their garage because they didn’t even have a garage, but my birthday was coming up. So I worked up the courage to ask them for help getting a little camera of my own. My mom said yes, I could have one, but I’d have to earn it. Typical of my mom, but I wanted it so bad that I agreed to everything she said. She’d started this little system where I’d get a quarter every time I made my bed in the morning or cleaned up the plates after breakfast or whatever. I put all the money in this old lunch box I kept on the bureau in my bedroom, and at the end of every week I’d count up what I’d earned and try to figure out how much longer I’d have to wait before I could score a movie camera of my own.”

  Liz was no longer trying to interrupt, and that was just fine by me. Man, it seemed like forever ago when I first started stashing quarters in that old Batman lunchbox of mine, which I’d had since kindergarten.

  “I’d saved up almost a hundred bucks—it was eighty-nine dollars, to be exact—when one afternoon, my dad came home from work with a brand-new flip cam for me. My mom was so pissed off and went off on him for refusing to teach me the value of hard work, blah, blah, blah, but for once I didn’t care. I was just the happiest fool in the whole world that day, you know? I mean, I think it was probably the best day of my life when I held that camera in my hands for the first time. I had my very own movie-making machine and a drawer full of quarters that added up to almost a hundred bucks, you know? Just try and stop me. But anyway, I never ended up spending that money, or not for a long time. I just kept on saving it up, and two years later, when my flip cam got jacked on the 2 train, I didn’t even care. It was a piece of shit, anyway, and by that point I’d saved enough quarters to hit J&R and get any damn camera I wanted. That’s the camera I have now—a Panasonic ultrathin pocket camcorder. I paid for it with my own money, and it still works great. You can, like, edit right on it and everything, don’t even need a computer or anything, not that I’d mind having a computer, of course.”

  When I finally broke off talking, I saw that Liz had a totally stoked look on her face. Oh, man, I’d done it again, hadn’t I? She’d tricked me twice in one session. “What time is it now?” I asked suddenly. “You said twenty minutes had passed like three hours ago. It’s gotta be jailbreak time by now, huh?”

  Liz looked at her watch and gave a little jump. “Oh, my, you’re right! We’ve gone about twenty minutes over. I hope this doesn’t affect your afternoon.”

  “Nah, it’s cool,” I said, but damn was I relieved to be getting to my feet. Liz got up with me. I already knew I was her last appointment of the day.

  17

  When I opened the door of Liz’s office, Mom was standing right there out in the dark little hall, so close she might’ve been eavesdropping.

  “Hi there, Bunny,” she said in a kinda bashful tone—the opposite of the whole ball-busting routine she’d been giving me just the day before. Definitely something suspicious going on.

  I winced. Why’d my mom always have to be flip-flopping between such extremes like that?

  “You ran over quite a bit in there, didn’t you?” she said, but her voice wasn’t accusatory like it usually was when I was making her late. “Not that it’s a problem. I mean, I got here a little late myself, and I was just a little worried out there in the parking lot. But then I came inside and heard your voices and figured I’d better not disturb you.”

  “Thanks,” I said sarcastically, still trying to figure out how much my mom had heard. “I owe you big time for that because you know there’s nothing I’d rather be doing on my Monday afternoon than rapping with old Liz in there. Now c’mon, let’s go. No reason to make you any later than you already are.”

  We were just about at the stairwell when Liz appeared at the door of her office. “Oh, Mrs. King?” she said, patting her hair down like my mom was some kind of VIP guest or something. “Hi there, hi there, it’s great to see you,” Liz continued when my mom stopped and turned around. She sounded all formal, like a politician or someone on TV. She’d never been that way with me, not even at our first session. “I’m so sorry we ran over like that, but we were having such a productive session that I hated to cut it short. I hope it won’t cause any problems for you.”

  My mom looked from me to Liz, then decided it was all right for her t
o smile. “No, not at all, not at all, and I’m very happy to hear that,” she said. “It certainly sounded productive in there. Not, of course, that I could make out any words. I just meant, you know, from all the talk going on.”

  My mom was nervous, and I felt uncomfortable watching her. I wished Liz would just let us take off, but I already knew that wasn’t Liz’s style. “Mrs. King,” she said, “I’m really glad we ran into each other because I was going to call you tomorrow to tell you that I think we can scale back the sessions to just once a week from now on. Your son seems to be . . .” she paused to weigh her words “. . . out of the danger zone.”

  “Well, I’m very happy to hear that,” my mom said again. “That’s really wonderful.”

  And I know, for my cheap-ass mom, it was. We’re talking about a woman whose whole day gets made when the rotisserie chickens go on sale for $4.99 at Key Food. My mom hated spending her hard-earned money on anything, and now Liz was telling her the cost of her screwed-up son’s therapy sessions was about to be cut in half. Oh, happy day! That was my mom’s version of winning the lottery.

  “So I’ll see you next Monday then?” Liz said to me.

  “Sure, whatever.” I shrugged. “All right, Ma, let’s go, aight? I’m sure you’ve gotta a real long to-do list right now and I don’t wanna be the one stopping you.” I took a step, then another, down the stairs.

  “Well, thank you so much, Ms. Jenner,” my mom said, and as she followed me down, I caught the heavy-duty look she and Liz exchanged. Man, adults were always doing that kind of shit, like we didn’t notice or something, and I was getting sick of it.

  When we walked outside, clouds had swept over the sky, obscuring what little light had been peeking down earlier. It was cold and dark, like it was the middle of the night and not just a few hours after school had let out.

  My mom didn’t say anything on the drive home—no big surprise there—but then I wasn’t complaining. I’d take silence over the previous afternoon’s blowup anytime. But then, right after she’d pulled into the little parking lot behind our building, she turned off the ignition and looked over at me. “Honey?” she said, quiet and still nervous. “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”

  My mom had had more shit she wanted to talk about in the last twenty-four hours than in the last two years, it felt like. But she was being real nice still, probably gloating over all the Liz-money she’d be saving, so I figured I might as well ride it out for a while. I kept my mouth shut.

  “I’m . . . I’m proud of you,” my mom said after what felt like a two-hour pause. “I wouldn’t have believed it myself, but you’ve really been giving your all to that social worker, haven’t you? And I just—well, I just really appreciate that. It’s helping us all out a lot.”

  I didn’t want to know what “us” she was referring to, so I said, all sharp and sarcastic, “Pick up a lot of tasty morsels when you press your ear to the door, don’t you, Ma?”

  I saw her flinch and wished I could’ve taken back my words. I knew how hard it was for my mom to have conversations like this—almost as hard as it was for me.

  “No, of course not!” my mom said. “Ms. Jenner sends progress reports on you to the school, and I get copied in—you know that was the deal from the beginning. And, well, I just have to say, they’re getting more and more positive and ... hopeful. Now if you could only transfer that progress to the classroom, we’d all be in good shape, wouldn’t we?”

  I gotta say, I was impressed Liz was holding up her end of the deal. If she kept that shit up, I’d have my academic probation lifted in no time flat, and life might even return to normal one day.

  “Sweetie,” Mom said, and she actually reached across the car to put her hand on my wrist. I shook it off, remembering how she’d gone off on me yesterday.

  Mom flinched a little again and pulled her hand back toward her chest. “All I was going to say is that we’ve—I’ve decided it’s all right for you to go to that girl’s party on Saturday. As long as her mother knows you’re coming, I won’t stand in your way. To tell the truth, I’m pleased, sweetie, I really am, that you seem to be making some friends out here.”

  I was too busy processing the first part of what my mom had said to react all the way. So I could go to the party without trying any complicated shit on the fire escape? I couldn’t believe it. I thought of Nia’s face, her gentle smile, and my stomach tossed around like it did when I’d had too many cheese fries.

  “Thanks, Mom,” I said, and I smiled at her for the first time since I could remember. She smiled back, which was almost as weird.

  18

  The week flew by, and that Friday after school I stood at my locker wondering what I was going to do with myself for the next hour. In a way, much as I hated my forty-five-minute sessions with Liz, they at least gave my Monday and Friday afternoons a nice structure. Like I sorta enjoyed having a certain place to be at a certain time: Math lets out, I get my books, I walk to Liz’s, I go home. Done and done. I understood better how all those white kids who went to all their clarinet l essons and Cub Scout crap still managed to get better grades than the rest of us poor assholes who don’t have all those extra activities. It’s because structure just makes life easier somehow. Maybe that was my mom’s secret?

  I was just slamming my locker shut when I caught sight of Nia walking down the hall from the direction of the gym. I still wasn’t sure where I stood with her, but when she saw me, her face broke into a smile and she actually waved at me. My chest clenched up a little as I waved back. Had Nia decided to forgive me, finally, for that whole stupid Maurice showdown?

  I felt even more sure of it as she walked right toward me as if there were no other kids in the hall and just said, “Hey, Butterball, how’s it going?”

  Now, I know this might sound pretty tweaked coming from me, since it’s my official nickname and all—and if I’m being perfectly straight, it’s probably the nicest one I’ve ever had—but for some reason I didn’t love when Nia called me Butterball. I can’t explain why exactly; the word just didn’t sound right coming from her lips somehow. I wondered for a second if she even knew what my real name was. By now, even the teachers called me Butterball.

  But all I said was “I’m cool. How’s it going with you?” It was really crazy, how nice she was being, but maybe that’s just how Nia was: too nice to stay mad at anyone for long.

  “Okay, I guess,” Nia said. “So whatcha doing now?”

  “Uh—I’m, um, heading over to the OfficeMax on Franklin,” I said, thinking fast. “I’m outta notebooks and shit, and I gotta get some special paper for this stupid life sciences report I’m supposed to do.”

  I gotta say, I was pretty damn impressed with myself for coming up with such a smooth lie, and without hardly a pause. It was smart for two totally different reasons: one, because Nia was a crack student, almost as much of a nerd as Maurice had been, especially in science. Reason number two was that I happened to know—and not because I’m some sort of crazy-ass stalker, but because the black population of Garden City isn’t exactly extensive, and we all live at the same half-a-dozen addresses—that Nia lived in that tall brown-brick building just past the shopping center on Franklin where the biggest office-supply store in Garden City happened to be located. It was the exact opposite direction from my apartment, but I didn’t have anywhere particular to be right then.

  Nia, innocent girl that she was, clapped her hands together. “Hey, that’s lucky!” she said. “That’s right near where I live, and I gotta go right home to look after my baby brother. Wanna walk over there together?”

  “Yeah, that’d work,” I said, my voice all casual and cool so Nia wouldn’t be able to tell how OD excited I was.

  One thing I’ll say about being fat: It does have a couple of advantages. Most girls ignore you or laugh in your face, but the nice ones, the girls like Nia, they’re real friendly to you, even if it’s probably just because they don’t see you as a threat like other guys.
They’ll talk to you about shit they’d never say in front of guys they want to get with. Sure, I’d still rather look like Darrell, but it wasn’t the worst thing in the world, walking down Franklin Avenue with a girl like Nia at my side, that’s all I’m saying.

  We exited on the west side of the school, the side that connects to the elementary school that most of my current classmates had gone to since kindergarten. As we walked down the street, neither of us said much, but it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence like when I was with my mom, or an angry silence like with Evelyn. We were both just kinda walking along, thinking our thoughts, smiling over at the little kids who were playing on the banged-up graffitied playground.

  I realized, as we made our way down the street, that I’d never really been alone with Nia before. And even if it was the middle of the afternoon and on the main drag of Garden City, our walking together like that felt real private in a way, almost intimate.

  After a couple of blocks, Nia broke the silence. “Hey, Butterball, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure,” I said. I was just as happy to talk as not to talk. With Nia at my side, I was just plain happy, end of story.

  “You know the party I’m having tomorrow night?”

  I nodded: Every black kid in Garden City knew about Nia’s party, but this was the first time she’d brought it up directly with me.

  “It’s actually at my Aunt Cora’s house,” she said.

  “She’s throwing it for my fourteenth birthday since my mom’s place is so small and full up with little kids all the time.”

  I nodded again, though I hadn’t actually known about the aunt. Andres had made the scene sound a little less family-oriented than that.

  As if reading my thoughts, Nia went on, “Cora’s real young—she just turned twenty-two a few weeks ago. She’s like fifteen years younger than my mom, so the two of them were never close as kids, you know? But Cora’s always been real sweet to me, taken me under her wing and stuff.”