When I got into the low post, King Kong kept coming over to me and leaning his body against mine like he was digging me or something. I put my elbow in his chest a couple of times and told him to back off. He knocked Toon down a couple of times even when Toon didn’t have the ball. He wouldn’t mess with Play and he tried to goof on Mr. Pugh, but Mr. Pugh was so busy with whatever he thought he was doing he didn’t even dig it.
When it went wrong I didn’t even notice it right away. All I know was that King Kong gave Toon an elbow to the back of his head and I automatically did what we did in the hood when some big jokey fool started hitting people on the court. I stomped down on the top of his foot near the ankle.
He grabbed at his leg, then he jumped up and came toward me. I thought he was going to chest me up but he didn’t. The sucker lit me up! He was throwing a lot of punches but he really wasn’t hitting all that hard.
Mr. Pugh grabbed him around the waist and pulled him off me. I put my hand on my mouth and saw my lip or something was bleeding.
“Calm down! Calm down!” Mr. Pugh was yelling. “This is only a freaking basketball game! Calm down!”
I looked over at King Kong, and he was breathing hard and running me up and down with his eyes like he was ready to kill me.
“Are you calm now?” Mr. Pugh had both arms around King Kong and was yelling into his ear.
“Yeah, yeah!” King Kong said.
It wasn’t really me, but it was somebody in my skin taking a step forward and hammering that fool in his temple with the side of my fist.
Sucker’s arms went up into the air and he flopped down on the ground.
“Everybody here is on report! Everybody here is on report!” Mr. Pugh was screaming.
Okay, so what happened was that Miss Dodson was only there for the day and we were supposed to have group. Mr. Pugh and Mr. Wilson wanted us all back in our cells and locked in, and they were going to figure out if anybody had to go to detention. But Miss Rossetti came up with the idea that this was a perfect opportunity to teach us something in group.
The story was that everything was up to Mr. Pugh and Mr. Wilson. I figured Mr. Pugh didn’t care one way or the other and would follow whatever Mr. Wilson wanted to do. If Mr. Wilson was mad, then me and King Kong would probably be written up and both of us on our way to 23-7. If I went to 23-7, then Mr. Cintron would definitely tear me up. If Miss Rossetti could get Mr. Wilson over his mad, I had a shot.
We were lined up and taken to the dorm hall, where we had to stand at attention with our hands in the “perp” position, behind our backs as if we were cuffed, for fifteen minutes. Then Mr. Wilson came and got me and King Kong and took us into one of the 23-7 rooms.
“What you guys need to learn?” he asked. “That these steel bars will keep your dumb butts calm if you can’t control your dumb-ass minds? That’s what you need to learn? Or if the steel bars don’t slow you morons down, you know what will? That little chalk mark they put around your body in the street. What’s your pleasure, girls?”
“He started it,” King Kong said.
“I didn’t mean to start nothing,” I said. “I was just having fun.”
Mr. Wilson leaned close enough to me so I could actually smell him and spoke softly into my ear. “Your life ain’t about fun,” he said. “It’s about holding enough of your ass together to walk free again. You understand that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If either of you so much as cross your eyes in group, I’m going to nail you to a wall just like they do those bear skins,” Mr. Wilson said. “We’re trying to give you a chance to make something of your ugly selves because that’s our job, and we’d like to turn you around so you don’t mess up our lives with your bullshit. But don’t think for a minute that it’s personal, because it’s not. Any of you mess up, we’ll nail you, send you to the next lockup, and move on with our lives and the routine here like you never even existed. Do I make myself clear, Mr. Anderson?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do I make myself clear to you, Mr. Sanders?”
King Kong said he understood.
But when we were leaving, King Kong gave me a look and screwed up his face. Sucker didn’t understand nothing.
CHAPTER 16
“So why do you think I put the chairs in a circle?” Miss Rossetti asked.
“So we can check out the girls?” Diego asked.
There were two girls at the group session, Kat and Eileen, a black girl who worked in the nurse’s office sometimes.
“Because circles are nonthreatening,” Miss Rossetti said. “And the girls aren’t here to be ‘checked out.’ At this session we’re going to see how brave everyone is. What I want us to do is for anyone to start, and tell us two things that they’re afraid of.”
“What’s brave about that?” Play asked.
“Well, let’s find out,” Miss Rossetti said. “Would you like to start?”
“I ain’t afraid of nothing,” Play said.
“Everybody has fears,” Miss Rossetti said. “I think we can all agree to that. Anybody else want to give it a try?”
“I’m afraid anytime I leave Alphabet City,” Diego said. “You can let your mind wander—you know, thinking about your woman or something—and step into another gang’s turf. Then you end up getting shot or stabbed or beat down just for not paying attention. That’s one thing I’m scared of.”
“So you’re afraid of street violence,” Miss Rossetti said. “Would you like to say anything more about street violence? Are you only afraid when you leave your neighborhood?”
“Yeah, more or less,” Diego said. “When I’m on my block, my boys got my back and I know I’m cool.”
“If your boys really had your back, you could walk anyplace you wanted to and nobody would mess with you because they’d know there would be some comeback.” King Kong was looking smug.
“Comeback ain’t doing me no good if I’m being wrecked,” Diego said. “You thinking I’m going to be up in heaven looking down and getting happy over some comeback?”
“Diego, if you die you ain’t going to heaven,” Play said. “Suckers like you die and go to Walmart. They got a storage area in the back for dead punkeros.”
“We don’t need to make this personal,” Miss Rossetti said. “And we won’t. I think that neighborhood violence is something to be afraid of, especially when you’re young.”
“Another thing I’m afraid of is getting caught up in a stickup or a drive-by with some fool who don’t know how to use a gun just popping off caps and killing everybody,” Diego said.
“More neighborhood violence,” Miss Rossetti said. “And the thing to remember is that violence doesn’t stop affecting us when we get behind closed doors. The threat is always there in our subconscious. Do you agree?”
“Not really,” I said. “Unless some dudes are outside your door and trying to get in.”
“That doesn’t hold true for everyone,” Miss Rossetti said. “And people do handle their fears differently. How about you, Deepak?”
Toon looked up when he heard his name. He smiled, shrugged, and folded his hands. “I’m afraid…sometimes I’m afraid, but not all the time….” He looked around and sort of half smiled. “Sometimes I’m afraid that my father will be disappointed in me.”
We waited for him to go on, but he didn’t.
“We have expectations of ourselves,” Miss Rossetti said. “And people have expectations of us and sometimes we worry, as Deepak said, about how we measure up.”
“You got a little saying for everything we’re afraid of?” Play asked.
“Well, I’ve been thinking about this for a long time and a lot of people have done studies on adolescent fears,” Miss Rossetti said. “And although I have some insights, I think we all can look at the problem of fear and come to some conclusions. Don’t you think so?”
“I guess,” Play answered.
“Anything else, Deepak?” Miss Rossetti asked.
“Sometimes I t
hink my mother will be mad at me,” Toon said.
Miss Rossetti nodded slowly. She looked around the room and then held out her hand toward King Kong.
“Mr. Sanders?”
“I ain’t afraid of nothing,” King Kong said. “I can handle my business and everybody knows that. Anybody even act like they want to mess with me, I’ll go to work on their ass.”
“So you’re afraid that people might mess with you?” Miss Rossetti said.
“No, I ain’t.”
“Ladies?”
“I’m afraid of losing my child,” Eileen said. “When I come up here, my case manager was talking about how she didn’t know if I could be a good mother and then she was talking about how my baby could be put with a responsible family. I had a girl friend who went away for eighteen months and…”
Eileen started crying and turned her head away. We waited a few minutes for her to get herself together, but she didn’t say anything else. Miss Rossetti looked at me and gave me a little smile.
“I don’t know what I’m afraid of,” I said. “You know, like you say, everybody’s afraid of something and I guess I’m afraid of something too, but I don’t know what it is. Maybe getting old and dying. That don’t look cool.”
“I’m a little afraid of that myself,” Miss Rossetti said. “My mother lost her memory when she got up in years and, quite frankly, that frightened me a lot. I even dreamed that I was losing my memory.”
“So they put her baby with this couple—they were like black middle class”—Eileen had started again—“and then when my friend came home they didn’t want to give the baby up. She said that Family Services put pressure on her too.”
“Was she working when she came home?” Miss Rossetti asked.
“No, she was having some trouble. She was using again, but all she needed was some time,” Eileen said. “I don’t want to lose my little girl. She’s all I got.”
“I can understand that,” Miss Rossetti said.
“You got kids?” Eileen asked.
“No, I don’t,” Miss Rossetti answered. “But I can imagine how it must be to have someone in your life you love and then have them taken away.”
“Another thing I’m afraid of,” Eileen said, “is being in a fire. I’d rather be in a drive-by than in a fire.”
“Have you ever seen anyone who was injured in a fire?” Miss Rossetti asked.
“No. I don’t want to see it either,” Eileen said.
“How about you, Miss Bauer?”
“I’m not afraid of anything,” Kat said. “The only thing you have to be afraid of is people, and I’m not afraid of people because I don’t care about dying.”
“I think everyone has a secret fear of dying,” Miss Rossetti said. “We imagine—”
“I’m not afraid of dying!” Kat cut Miss Rossetti off. “The guy that got me in here thought he could threaten me and tell me what he was going to do to me, but where is he?”
“I think we need to take a deep breath, Miss Bauer,” Miss Rossetti said.
“He’s dead because he tried to use me like he wanted to use me, and that wasn’t going to happen!” Kat was looking fierce with her mouth all tight and going pale. “If you’re not afraid of dying, then you’re not afraid of anything! And I don’t need to take no deep breaths because I’m not afraid of restraints, either.”
That was the end of group because everybody saw that Kat was going off big-time. Miss Rossetti broke us down and she went with the boys back to our dorm, and Mr. Wilson and the lady guard went with Kat and Eileen back to the girls’ wing.
CHAPTER 17
Our cook, Griffin, gave us broiled franks, sauerkraut, mashed potatoes, peas, juice, ice cream, cookies, and fruit for lunch. Broiled franks are like a hundred percent better than boiled franks. It was like we were at a ballpark or something and having real life instead of prison life.
“Griffin must have hit the lottery or something!” Diego said.
“Maybe they’re going to execute us this afternoon and this is our last meal,” Leon said.
I wished I had said that.
Play said when he got out he was never going to have franks again.
“Every time I look at a frank it reminds me of my life,” he said. “Ain’t nothing to it.”
I knew how he felt and I told myself that I wasn’t going to have franks again either.
In the afternoon the maintenance crew was cutting down some trees and we tried to have a class but it didn’t work. With the windows open it was too noisy, and with the windows closed everybody was falling asleep. Mr. Wilson wanted to know if we wanted to play ball or just hang out in the dayroom until supper. I didn’t want to do either, but I ended up in the dayroom watching television.
I was checking out what was on the tube, but my mind was back in the group thing we had had. People were talking about what they were scared of and I knew that it wasn’t for real. You didn’t just come out and start laying out your program to people like that. You had to say something cool, which everybody did. Except for Toon. Toon was afraid that his parents weren’t going to like him. I remember them yelling at him on visiting day, and when I played it back in my head I remembered they were looking around to see who was checking them out. They wanted everybody to know that they were better than Toon. I wondered if my moms thought she was better than me.
I was most afraid that my whole life was going to be about being in places like Progress. I had heard about people going to jail, getting out for a minute, then just going back. One teacher told us that for some people, being in jail was better than being free because you got “three hots and a cot.” That was bull, but I could see how easy it would be to mess up again. Willis was on the street. I knew he could get caught doing something any day. On the street, you did anything to get over. If you had something going on, maybe some college or if your family had a lot of money, then maybe you could follow a good path. But if you didn’t have nothing going on, then it was going to be hard just to squeeze yourself from one day into the next.
Mr. Pugh said that most guys ended up coming back. I didn’t like his ass, but I thought he was probably right. My bid wasn’t too heavy, but I knew how easy it was to get a ton of time if I blew it again.
Play came over and sat near me. He was looking across the room and shaking his head like he does sometimes when he’s mad.
“Yo, Reese, Diego and Sanders are getting their heads together,” Play said. “I think they planning on starting something.”
I scoped out King Kong and Diego talking. Diego lifted his head, like he could feel my eyes on him or something, and stared at me. I gave him the finger and looked away.
“If they start something, I got your back, man,” Play said.
Play talked hard, but I had never seen him do anything. I thought he was in my corner, but that didn’t mean anything unless he was going to stand up when the bell rang.
Mr. Wilson came over and sat near us.
Me and Play bumped fists and went back to watching some girl on television saying that her ex-boyfriend was her baby’s father.
“Now why would she get on television and lay out her business like that?” Mr. Wilson asked. “I think that’s stupid and demeaning.”
“And what?” I asked. “It’s stupid and what?”
“Demeaning,” Mr. Wilson said. “That means it makes you look bad. Don’t you think she looks bad talking about how she’s going with one guy now but she went with this guy a year ago and he’s the baby’s father?”
“Yeah,” Play said.
“But the guy running around the stage like he did something to be proud of,” I said. “He’s smiling and going on.”
The guy was saying the baby couldn’t be his because he had a big head and the baby had a little head and his nose wasn’t right. The whole thing was sick, but it came to me that it wasn’t real, either. It was like they were putting on a play and everybody was supposed to be entertained.
Play laughed at the guy and the
girl, and Mr. Wilson laid out his serious lines as usual. I was just thinking that I had to sit and watch this crap because I didn’t have anything else to do in Progress but watch the time go by. My life wasn’t any more real than those clowns on television.
My lights were still going out at eight thirty, and I was lying on my bed when Diego came to my door.
“You hear the news?” he asked. “Deepak is going to fight Sanders this weekend. It’s all arranged. That little Indian is going to be killed.”
They were setting me up. Diego knew I had defended Toon before when Cobo got on him. Now he was fixing it up between me and King Kong.
I told myself I didn’t care. If Toon couldn’t handle his business, that was on him.
I thought about telling Play to see what he would do, but in my heart I knew Play had to be pushed too hard to make a move. I couldn’t get to her, but Kat was the person I really needed.
Really, Toon needed Kat.
CHAPTER 18
When I got to Evergreen Mr. Hooft was sitting in his room. A mask covered his nose and mouth. He looked at me and didn’t say nothing and I didn’t say nothing. Something had happened and I guessed he needed help breathing. The mask was attached by a tube to a little machine sitting on the table next to his bed. The machine made a low hissing noise that was louder when Mr. Hooft was breathing. Sounded like Darth Vader.
I sat in the corner and didn’t stare at him or anything.
There were some magazines on the end of his bed and I wished I had one, but I didn’t want to just ignore Mr. Hooft or act like I didn’t care what was happening to him. I also had a letter that Mr. Cintron gave me in the morning just before I left for Evergreen. The letter was from K-Man. I had had time to read it before I left, but then I got worried that K-Man was going to say he wasn’t my friend anymore and just put the letter in my pocket.
After twenty minutes or so Nancy Opara came into the room and took the mask off Mr. Hooft and asked him how he was feeling.
Walter Dean Myers Page 7
