You were supposed to jump out on the month of your birthday, but I guess since they didn’t know how to jump in and out, they just kept going through all the months until they finally messed up.
Jayjones came running up the stoop all out of breath. He sat down and put his head between his legs, taking some deep breaths before lifting it again.
“What’s wrong with you,Jay?” Neeka asked.
Jayjones looked off down the block, then shook his head.
“Cops be trying to pull a brother down,” he said. “I’m coming from the park just now, trying to get home, and this cop just stopsme!” He pointed up the block. “Right up there on the corner and my house not even two minutes away! Talking about What you running from, man?” Jayjones took some more deep breaths. Even though it was cold out, there was sweat on his forehead and across his nose.
“I was like, I ain’t running from, I’m running to. Going home to see my family.Some days I’m thinking why God gave me these legs to run if it’s gonna mean getting stopped by some cop every time I try to do so.”
Jayjones put his head between his legs again. I could hear him breathing real hard.
“That’s why you need to stay your behind in school and figure out a way to get a job where you wear a suit every day,” Neeka said. “Nobody be messing with a brother wearing a suit.”
Jayjones raised his head and looked up the block again. He shivered, blew into his hands and sniffed.
“Brother in a suit is just a brother in a suit,” he said. “His black head still sticking out the neck hole. And where you think I be going every day?”
“You cut class sometimes. I know that,” Neeka said. She yanked the comb through my hair and I screamed. “Sorry, girl. You should have combed it out.”
Jayjones gave her a look. “Then how come colleges are already writing to me? Asking me to think about coming?”
Neeka went back to combing. “ ’Cause you over six feet tall and can throw a ball in a basket, that’s why. But they see those D’s you be pulling down, they gonna say never mind.”
Jayjones flicked his hand at her. “You’re just being a parrot. Mama say it, then you say it. Mama say it again, then you say it again. Maybe when you grow up, you’ll have a few thoughts of your own, little girl.”
“You’re gonna freeze your behind off out here,” I said.
“My moms always tell him to put on a hat, but he act like he don’t hear anybody,” Neeka said. “Pneumonia ain’t cute.” She shivered and pulled her scarf tighter around her neck. “And why you running up on us like that, anyway? If I was a cop, I would’ve stopped you too.”
“Where’s your ball?” I asked him because he never walked down the street without it.
“Left it at school.” He looked at Neeka. “Where I was today—for all my classes.”
The little girls came over and gave us our rope back. They started to sit down on the stoop, but Neeka stopped them.
“Uh-uh,” she said. “Shoo! You all don’t need to be over here in grown folks’ business.”
“Grown folks?!” one of the girls said, putting her hands on her hips. “Y’all ain’t grown.”
“We growner than you,” Neeka said.
The girl stuck her tongue out at Neeka and then she and the others ran down the block and around the corner.
Neeka stopped combing again. “They did notjust leave this block,” she said.
Jayjones threw his head back and laughed. Me and D smiled.
“Guess they are growner than you,” Jayjones said. Neeka popped him with the comb.
CHAPTER SIX
One day I came home from school to find Mama sitting at the table reading about Tupac in the Daily News.
“This is a shame,” she said, her hand wrapped around her coffee mug. “The only thing that boy’s on trial for is so people can make some kind of example out of him.”
I sat down across from her—reached for her coffee and took a sip. It was bitter and sweet at the same time.
“No other evidence,” Mama said. “But what that girl’s saying he did and what’s written on his stomach.”
“Tell that to the people that be hating on him—saying he’s a disgrace and all that junk,” I said.
The picture in the paper showed Tupac with his shirt raised, showing off the tattoo on his belly: THUG LIFE.
Mama shook her head. “They say the judge didn’t like the tattoo—didn’t think it was something a person should write on themselves.” Mama looked up at me. “That’s that boy’s own body. It’s not the judge’s business.”
I stared at the newspaper for a long time. It was starting to seem like Tupac was actually going to do time.
“He ain’t a thug,” I said. “That’s just his . . . his persona. The way he acts so people think he’s a true gangsta.”
Mama looked at me. “Wouldn’t matter if he was,” she said. “First Amendment says people got a right to freedom of expression without government interfering—everybody knows that. Judge doesn’t like the way he looks, didn’t like the way he is in the world, what he talks about, what’s on his stomach . . . that’s the crime here.”
I nodded. Mama wasn’t a big Tupac fan, but she was a big fan of justice.
“Guess that’s why they’re called judges,” I said. “They get to judge people.”
Mama shook her head, still looking down at the paper. “This world gets crazier and crazier,” she said.
“You think the judge is really gonna make him do time, Ma?”
Mama rubbed her forehead with her palm, her eyes shut tight. When she opened them again, they were sadder than I’d seen them in a long time.
“Yeah, baby,” Mama said softly.
That evening, the three of us—me, Neeka and D—sat on my stairs, until we were too cold to even shiver anymore. This numbnesscame over us, and we didn’t even have to talk or curse or cry. Me, Neeka and D knew what we felt—way deep past all the cold. Past the coming darkness.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The next morning, me and Neeka walked into the kitchen already dressed for school to find Mama sitting with her head bowed toward the radio. There was a Tupac song playing and me and Neeka stopped dead in our tracks when the announcer came on and said the name of the song and told us Tupac had been shot five times the night before.
“They shot him?” Neeka whispered.
“News is saying somebody robbed him at some recording studio. Took forty thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry from him and shot him up like that. I don’t know what this world is coming to.”
Mama put her hand over her mouth and shook her head real slow.
I sat down at the table, my body feeling heavy and old. Mama had made some bacon and eggs for us and the bacon was draining on a brown paper bag. I stared at the bacon—at the way the grease made dark stains on the paper—and felt some part of me get numb and still.
Neeka looked at me and her face didn’t look familiar—it looked like it was falling all over itself to understand.
“They shot Pac?” she whispered again.
“Shhhh,” I said because the newscaster was speaking again.
He said it was serious. He said one of the bullets landed somewhere near a lung. He said they were trying to stabilize Tupac. His voice went on and on.
Mama took a deep breath and got up. On her way over to the counter, she brushed her hand over my head. I grabbed her hand before she could pull it away, held it real tight and kept holding it as I let my head drop to the table, my tears like one long scream inside my throat.
“It’s gonna be okay, y’all,” Mama whispered. “It’s gonna be okay.”
I could hear Neeka crying. And someplace far away, I could have sworn I heard D’s tears.
CHAPTER EIGHT
After school, D showed up, her eyes red and swollen, her hands cracked and cold from spending the morning roaming.
She took her coat off and sat on my couch rubbing the oil I’d given her into her hands.
“
They hurt,” she said. “I’ve walked through so much cold weather all my life and this is the first time my hands hurt like this.” She put her head down on her lap and cried and then we all cried.
When we couldn’t cry anymore, we took the boom box out onto my stairs.
Me and D was wearing our down coats and now D had gotten one somewhere but it looked old. We all had on gloves and hats and scarves and probably looked like crazy winter people. It was the first day of December and all over the block, people had started putting Christmas lights up on their windows. Across the street, in Neeka’s house, the lights her father had put up blinked on and off—all green and blue and red and yellow. If you looked at them long enough, you’d probably lose your mind. I didn’t know how Neeka lived in that house every year with those blinking lights. Ours were up too but they just stayed still.
The boom box was right next to us and every now and then D would try to flick it to a station with some news. With no sun shining, the wind picked up and had us shivering, but we didn’t go inside. Something about the cold. It hurt like Tupac was probably hurting.
Jayjones came running up to us just as the sun was going down. He was out of breath by the time he got to the stoop, tiny puffs of cold air coming fast out of his mouth.
“Y’all hear about Pac?” Jayjones said, still catching his breath.
We all nodded and D pointed to the radio. “Been trying to keep up with the four-one-one all day long.”
“They were trying to rob him,” Jayjones said. “Sounds like a setup.”
“You hear anything else?” I asked.
Jayjones shook his head.
“He’s gonna be all right,” D said, her voice real calm.
“Hope so,” Jayjones said. He was wearing a heavy brown jacket with leather letters on it and some baggy jeans but no gloves or hat or anything. He blew into his hands and sat down across from D on the stair. After a moment, he said It’s crazyso softly, you could barely hear it.
He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “I can’t even imagine Pac being dead. How come it’s like that? How come I don’t even know him and he be feeling like a brother to me?”
He wasn’t talking to us. Wasn’t really talking to anybody. It’s like we could have all disappeared and Jayjones would’ve just kept on talking.
“First time I heard Tupac, I was real young and he was with Digital Underground—dancing and getting a few lyrics in and whatnot. Even back in the day, it was like, Yo! He’s gonna blow up.”
“And then he was in that movie,” I said. “Where he acted all crazy.”
“Juice,”D said.
“Saw the bootleg,” Neeka said. “Tash brought it home and we all watched it.”
Jayjones looked at her and smiled. “I remember that.”
“Yeah,” D said. “But even before that—when he dropped his first album and that song ‘If My Homie Calls’—that was the Itright there.”
“All through high school, girls by the dozens, sayin we cousins . . .” Jayjones sang.
“I’m down for y’all, when my homies call,”D sang. “I was just a shorty,” she said. “But that song, to me, it was all about having good friends.” She looked at me and Neeka and, for the first time that day, she smiled. “I was doing all that moving around and I didn’t ever think I’d have some homies like y’all be calling me.”
“It was like he’d taken the crap I’d been going through,” Jayjones said, “and spun it into this . . . these lyrics that just broke it all down. You know, he . . .” Jayjones looked at me.
“Clarified it,” I said.
“Yeah,” Jayjones continued. “He clarifiedit. And here I was, this kid up here in Queens trying to shoot a few baskets and get through the day—brother ain’t know me from a can of paint.”
D nodded.
Jayjones turned to Neeka. “You walk off this block and there ain’t love like it is on these stairs. Brothers on the court be saying things about Tash make you want to holler. Tupac comes on and starts blasting them in the face about the hating and they can’t do nothing but shut the hell up. ’Cause he’s regular but he ain’t regular. Gets big respect from people.”
“Keep it real now, Jayjones,” Neeka said, rolling her eyes. “Pac’s lyrics ain’t always cute when it comes to people like Tash. And anyway, tell me about what these chumps on the court be saying about my brother?”
Tash was a true-blue sissy and wasn’t afraid to let the world know it. Look at me,he always used to say. I can walk in heels better than any of these real girls out here, so if somebody wants to holler about it, I ain’t gonna deny.Even though he didn’t really wear heels, everything about him said Queen—from his whispery way of talking to his swishy walk to his beautifully shaped eyebrows.
Jayjones just shook his head. “See, you just a little girl. Don’t know what’s up in the world.”
“What I do know is if I catch somebody talking junk, it ain’t gonna be pretty for them. And I also know this shooting is probably some more of that gangsta nonsense,” Neeka said.
“It’s black,” I said.
The wind had died down again and our street was so quiet now. The air felt so cold and everything seemed to just be waiting for the next thing.
“It’s because we black and we kids and he’s black and he’s just a kid—even though he’s twenty-three—and every single song he be singing is telling us a little bit more about what could happen to us and how the world don’t really care . . .”
“My mama cares,” Neeka said.
I rolled my eyes. “I knowyour mama cares. Everybody’s mama cares. It’s not our mamas. It’s the world. That place you gonna go to when you leave this block! Like Jayjones is saying.”
“Neeka ain’t never leaving this block,” Jayjones said. “She’s gonna walk around the corner and come screaming back.”
Neeka started to say something, but D cut her off with a look.
I wanted to tell Jayjones we could stay on these stairs for the rest of our lives, but we was already halfway gone. But Jayjones and everybody else would just look at me. Look at me like I was some crazy brainiac—who didn’t know what I was talking about.
“When I listen to Tupac, “ D said softly, “I be thinking about the way my life could’ve been, you know. Like he sings about being in his mama’s belly when she was in jail and then when his mama started doing drugs and stuff and then when his mama’s boyfriends was beating on him and all that crazy nonsense. Before I got to Flo’s house, I’d seen all kinds of whacked stuff like that. I was at this one foster home and the lady would take the checks they sent her to buy us kids food and she’d be doing crack and stuff with it and we’d be sitting there hungry.” She stared at her fingernails. Her right leg was jiggling. I wanted to put my hand on it, to stop it, to let that leg know everything was gonna be all right. “Some days I was so hungry, I couldn’t even hardly move.”
Neeka looked at me. I started to say something, but she put her finger to her lips. D never talked about her life and it was strange to hear her talking about it now.
“I don’t care if I don’t have cute clothes or if some days my hair be looking messed up—I just don’t never want to be hungry like that again.”
There were tears in her eyes but they weren’t spilling down, just sitting there all shiny.
“I see Tupac rapping and I see he got that same look that I got—like we both know what it feels like to be that hungry, to want to eat something that bad. And then when you finally get something to eat, your stomach gets all cramped up around it and you can’t even keep it down. Can’t even keep it inside you.”
“You know my mama ain’t never gonna let you be hungry no more,” Neeka said. “She ain’t the best cook in the world, but there’s always gonna be a plate for you.”
“You my girls,” D said back, her voice all choked up and hoarse.
I put my hand on D’s head and slowly stroked her hair. After a few moments, she put her head down on her lap and started crying
. Then we all just sat there, looking out over the street, crying quietly, for D, for Tupac, for our own selves.
“He ain’t gonna die,” D said.
“What makes you so sure?” Neeka asked. I wiped my eyes and took a deep breath.
“It ain’t his time. I don’t feel it.”
“So you all psychic now.”
“All day long I been thinking about it, you know.” She looked at Neeka. Watch him come back stronger. Shot like that—you either say ‘I’m out’ and you die, or you hold on real hard. And come back stronger.
“I know it sounds whack,” she said, so softly it sounded like she was talking to herself almost. “But when I see him on TV, I be thinking about the way his life was all crazy. And my life is all crazy. And we both all sad about it and stuff. But we ain’t trying to let the sad feelings get us down. We ain’t trying to give up.”
We all got real quiet. I wanted D to just keep on going but she didn’t. She just sat there a few minutes, looking up at the streetlight. Then, without saying anything, she got up, waved without even looking at us and started heading down the block. After a minute passed, Jayjones jumped up and ran up to her. He put his arm around her shoulder—not like a boy-friend but like a big brother—the way he did sometimes with me and Neeka. D walked with her head down, her hands inside her coat pockets.
“May as well sleep over at your house again tonight,” Neeka said, wiping the snow from her face and getting up. “So we can keep up with this craziness.”
“Neeka,” I said as we headed into my house. “You think we the lucky ones?”
Neeka stopped at the bottom stair leading up to my apartment. It was warm in our hallway. Someone had baked something sweet and the smell made me hungry.
“Like how?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. When I heard D talking about her life like that . . . when she was saying about being hungry and—”
“If we so lucky, how come she’s the one get to take the bus all over the city by herselfand don’t have to worry about being home until nine o’clock?”
After Tupac & D Foster Page 4
