If Mrs. Colfax is hating, she keeps it to herself. She tells Mr. Sweren that she will speak to him later and touches me on the arm again. “Remember, Efrain, it’s better to be a big fish in a little bowl rather than a little fish in a big bowl.” I’m mad tempted to tell Mrs. Colfax what she can do with her fishbowls, but I don’t want to shake Mr. Sweren’s image of me as a respectable student.
Once she leaves, he asks me, “What was that all about?” When I explain that Mrs. Colfax thinks it’s a waste of my time to apply to the Ivy League, Mr. Sweren’s bushy eyebrows become one long caterpillar across his forehead. “Look, Efrain, I agree that you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket, but Colfax is an idiot.” After the initial shock, I belt out a whooping laugh. I never had a teacher dis another one in front of me like that. “Seriously, she’s been feeding seniors like you that fishbowl crap for years. Yes, it’s difficult for even the best student at Albizu Campos to get into an Ivy League college, but it has been known to happen.”
“You mean since 1913?” I ask. That’s when Pedro Albizu himself enrolled at Harvard. Eleven years later they opened our high school, although I bet anything it wasn’t named after a Puerto Rican back then.
“Yes, a few times since,” Mr. Sweren laughs. “There are always exceptions, and you won’t ever know if you can be one if you don’t at least aim for it.”
“No doubt,” I say. “Albizu Campos himself was a Harvard man, right?”
“That’s right, Efrain.” Mr. Sweren seems impressed that I know that. Then he says, “Let me guess… Señorita Polanco.”
“All day, every day.” Go to a school named “Washington,” “Roosevelt,” or “Kennedy,” trust you’ll learn all about who the school is named after, but no one taught us who Albizu Campos was until Señorita Polanco returned to teach after graduating in the eighties.
Students start to come into the library, and even though I want to talk more with Mr. Sweren, better to get this over with before Chingy arrives. “Look, I don’t want to do this, but I’m going to have to quit tutoring.”
Mr. Sweren’s caterpillar brow arcs its back. “Why?”
“I didn’t do well on the SATs, so I’m going to retake them in January. But I need more time to study for them. That means giving up my tutoring job.”
Mr. Sweren nods. “I understand. Sounds like you have your priorities in order, Efrain.” He swats me on the back of my shoulder. “You’ll be hard to replace, though. Good luck to you.” Then he opens his folder, and takes out my time sheet. “Sign this before you go so we can make sure you get your last check.” He leaves the sheet on the desk and then starts to mark his attendance book as people roll through the door. Man, that was much easier than I thought it would be. I expected Mr. Sweren to try to convince me to stay or grill me or something. Somehow I don’t feel relieved that he didn’t.
As soon as I sign the time sheet and slip it into Mr. Sweren’s folder, I turn around and bump into Chingy. “What’s up, cuz?” he says as he offers me a pound. “Man, you flew out of physics. Kinematics got you shook?”
“Yeah, man, I had to quit my job.”
“What?”
“Check it.” I motion for him to follow me outside the library. Once we are in the hallway, I say, “Look, Chingy, I told Sweren that I need more time to study for the January SAT. The truth is, though, I took another job that pays better so I can enroll in a prep course at Fordham.”
“Word? That’s what’s up. Where’s your new grind?”
“I was on Southern Boulevard this weekend, and I saw a sign in the window of Jimmy Jazz.” Damn, I shouldn’t have said that. What if Chingy decides to drop by, wanting to say hi or apply for a better-paying job himself? Luckily, I chose a store with locations throughout the city. “But chances are they’re going to assign me to a store downtown.”
“The one on Delancey?”
“Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know yet.” I guess this is good practice for what I’ll tell my moms. I haven’t lied to her since Rubio made me. “Look, I have to bounce. I only dropped by to tell Mr. Sweren….”
“No doubt. Do your thing. How ’bout I drop by afterward so we can chill? Maybe go play some hoops.”
“That would be peace.” Chingy may come over with a thousand and one questions about my new gig, but I really want to hang out with him. I’ll deal with it as it comes like I did just now. Maybe I should pat myself on the back for being able to play this off so lovely, but instead, I really want out of here.
“Watch, I’m going to get stuck tutoring one of your herbs,” says Chingy. “You need to compensate a brother by putting me down with your employee discount.”
“Efrain.”
Candace comes out of the library. Trying to keep my story straight while parlaying with Chingy, I hadn’t even noticed when she arrived. “Hey, Candace.”
Chingy grins, then backs up toward the door. “One, cuz.”
“Peace out.”
Candace waits for Chingy to go into the library and close the door behind him. She looks at me and says, “Mr. Sweren says you quit so you can focus on studying for the SAT.”
“Yeah, something had to give.” She nods but doesn’t say anything. “So …”
“So …”
“So.”
Candace smiles and rolls her eyes at me. “So!”
Now it’s a game. “So!”
“Soooo …” Candace gives a slight shove to my shoulder. Then she smiles and casts her eyes away. “How am I going to return the book I borrowed?”
My heart starts to pound. I say, “Maybe we can hang out sometime.” Studying, slinging … When am I supposed to do this? “You know, like, on the weekend.”
“Like maybe Saturday afternoon.”
I want to suggest Saturday night so it seems more like a date, but I have to grind on that corner so Snipes knows I’m about it. “Yeah, we can meet for lunch and then go to a matinee.” I don’t want Candace to think I’m cheap, so I add, “You know, go early so we can avoid all the ’hood rats who like to talk back at the screen and all that.”
“I hate that!” says Candace. “Why do people pay to get into the movies only to do what they can do at home for free?”
“That’s what I’m always saying.”
We laugh for a moment, and then Candace gets serious. “Yeah, the afternoon is better for me. Ever since we moved to New York, my mother’s been a bit overprotective. She really doesn’t want me out too late at night.”
“Cool.” Right now an overprotective moms is an amateur slinger’s best friend. “Give me your number, and I’ll call you.” I hand her my pen and notebook so she can write down her digits. “What time do you think you’ll be home tonight?”
“On the way home, I pick up my little sister at the community center….”
“St. Mary’s?” When it gets too cold for People’s Park, Chingy and I play hoops there.
“Yeah, so call me after six just to be on the safe side.”
“Okay, I will.”
“Okay.” Candace nods a few times and then tiptoes to peck me on my cheek. “Bye, Efrain.” Then she rushes into the library.
“Bye, Candace.” I stay until the door clicks behind her. Then I practically skip out of the school like a little kid.
Novice (n.) beginner, someone without training or experience
“This is how we do this here, kid,” he says as we hover between the Chinese takeout and the Dominican bakery. We’re practically under the Bruckner Expressway, so we have to yell to hear one another. Sometimes I glance up and watch the truck exhaust gray the air. I pin my chin to my chest and pull my collar over my nose. “First of all, E., don’t just run up on anybody who rolls through with wide eyes and slow feet, you feel me?” says Nestor. “Hunts Point’s hard-core, man.” He points to places as he mentions them. “You got the terminal market down that way, the hookers back here, the jail barge over there….”
“Jail barge?”
“Eight hundred beds just floating on
the water, bro. Remember when we were little how they were building that juvie right across the street from IS 162?”
“Yeah, Horizon.” One day after Rubio got Mandy and me kicked out of St. Gabe’s, he picked me up from 162. No matter how much I begged her not to, Moms told him I was having trouble with some of the other kids. On that walk home, Rubio pointed to my junior high school and said, “You go here,” then he motioned across the street to Horizon, “or you go there.” Like I needed to hear that. Rubio should’ve saved his bad attempt at cleverness for the ruffnecks that were wailing on me.
Nestor says, “While they were building Horizon, they put some kids on that barge.” Nestor’s good for that kind of information. He’s into all kinds of history and even mythology. I bet he watched The Bronx Is Burning and caught inaccuracies. Sometimes he veers into superstitious nonsense, but for the most part, the kid be on point. “With all that’s going on down around here,” he says, “the po patrol this area like you wouldn’t believe.”
Including us, I think. Then I ask, “So, how we go about stacking that paper?”
Nestor grins at me like I’m the Luke Skywalker to his Obi-Wan Kenobi. “Okay, check it. Someone rolls up on you wanting to cop. You see that cat over there leaning up against the lamppost?” Nestor points to this guy ogling a chick who wants nothing to do with him. He wears a golden yellow Yankees cap and matching jersey.
“You mean Frazzle over there?” Why would any major league franchise churn out merchandise that looks manufactured by Garanimals? “Stick to the navy and white, son.”
“For real, kid!” Nestor cackles, laugh dancing and giving me a low five. “Not only is that, like, sacrilege, dude looks like an egg yolk with legs.” We crack up good over that one. Nestor, Chingy, and I, we used to stay laughing. One time we were rolling so much, Moms swore we were sniffing markers or glue or something like that. I’m usually not the funny guy on the set, but hanging out with Nestor and Chingy would bring the jokes out of me. Man, I miss that.
Nestor returns to his businesslike tone. “Okay, first let me say this. Never speak plain ’cause you never know who’s listening besides who you talking to. Don’t worry, though, ’cause I’ma teach you all the codes and signals. So the customer tells you how much he wants, you quote the price, he pays you in full. And I don’t care how well you think you know somebody, E. No pay, no product. If a customer stiffs you, Snipes dips into your pocket, so don’t be getting charitable, you feel me?”
“No problem,” I say. “I’m not here to darle fia’o a nadie.” I have no time, money, or interest in extending credit and collecting debts.
“Then you signal to my man LeRon over there, and your customer swings by LeRon to pick up his package. Got it?”
“Why I can’t I service him directly?” I ask. From what I remember from economics class, middle men cost money.
Nestor smirks at me. “C’mon, valedictorian…. Think about it.”
I get it. “If the customer’s five-oh …” My stomach flips so much, it rattles my rib cage. I remind myself that the guys clocking in front of the bodega across the street from my building are there day and night, week after week, and I’ve never seen the police arrest anyone. Then again, I don’t live in Hunts Point.
Nestor motions for me to follow him. “Let me introduce you to the other guys.” I should know where to steer the dope fiends and crack heads since I’m not trying to sell that mess, but, honestly, I don’t need new friends. I just want to make my ends selling weed and go home to study.
As we make our way to the other end of the block, I see a few brothers hanging out across the street. Nestor stares straight ahead as we walk toward the corner. “And those are Hinckley’s soldiers.”
“Hinckley.” Trace mentioned him the day I met with Snipes. “The competition?”
“That’s another thing, E. We have our turf, and they have theirs. No trespassing.” But there seems to be more to keeping the peace than sticking to our side of the street. My stomach gives another flip. An SUV pulls up to the curb, and LeRon lifts himself off the lamppost and approaches it. Nestor stops walking and signals me to hang back. As we wait for him to finish his transaction, I say, “Yo, Nes, do you ever think about quitting?” Without looking at me, he just shrugs. “C’mon, have you ever met an old corner boy?”
Nestor chuckles. “You right about that.” He kicks at a tuft of grass poking out of two slabs of concrete. “Even a dude that lives for this can have a rough night and get to wondering where else he could be instead.”
“So what crosses your mind on a rough night?”
“That at least I’m not dead. Or in jail.”
I shove him. “You got jokes.”
Nestor laughs and shoves me back. We shove each other all the way to the bodega, where he introduces me to Snipes’s soldiers. But the entire time, I’m chasing a nagging thought around my head. I just let Nestor pull me into the game instead of pushing him out of it.
Chide (v.) to voice disapproval
I creep by the living room, where my mother and sister have fallen asleep in front of the television. Moms must’ve dozed off first because it is way past Mandy’s bedtime. And rather than put herself to bed, Mandy just curled up into my mother’s lap and fell asleep.
Even though I’m dead on my own feet, I remember to lock the door to my room before emptying my pockets on my bed. What do I have to show for my first night on the street? Forty dollars. I check my pockets for another ten-or twenty-dollar bill I might have missed, but there isn’t anything in there but some pennies and the wrapper of a Halls cough drop.
Forty dollars.
Exhausted or not, I quickly do the math and get Nestor on the phone. He sounds all spry, which just annoys me even more. “Yo, Nes!”
“E.? Hey, bro, I think this is the first time you’ve called me in years. What’s up?”
“I just counted my take….”
“Yeah, count that paper.”
“That’s all it is, kid! Paper!” I check myself and lower my voice before I wake up my moms and sister. “Forty dollars ain’t squat. I might as well go back to tutoring.” I swear if I had Mr. Sweren’s home number, I’d call him next.
“But Snipes doesn’t take out taxes,” Nestor laughs.
“Forget this,” I say. “This ain’t worth it.” I don’t need to be standing out on Hunts Point Avenue all hours of the night hoping I don’t get sick. Or worse … busted.
“Wait, E., hold up!” Nestor finally gets serious. “Okay, I’ma be real with you. If you want to make more money, you have to do three things. One, you have to hustle. You’re in sales, bro, and it’s just not enough to wait until a customer approaches you. See how when a car pulls up the way other guys are on it? You want to make serious cash, you better start throwing elbows.”
I don’t like the sound of that. “Two?”
“You need to go harder. All that high and mighty about only selling weed?” Nestor’s tone brims with annoyance so this is how he genuinely feels about my position even though he had pretended to be cool with it. “It might keep your conscience clean, but it’s also going to keep your wallet light.” When I don’t say anything, he continues to lecture me. “Real talk, E. This is business. Supply and demand. If no one wanted coke, dope, crank, whatever, we wouldn’t sell it. Plain and simple. And that’s where the real money’s at, so if you don’t want to make it like that, E., fine. But don’t judge another man who does or whine about being broke. Go punch a clock at Old Navy or Dr. Jay’s or wherever your mother thinks you be at.”
I’m too angry and embarrassed to speak, so Nestor barrels on. “And the third way to make money, E., is to move up. This ain’t no different than corporate America. You start in the rank and file, pay your dues, prove your worth to the firm. You get promoted and make more money. The higher up the rank you climb, the more money you make.”
Nestor finally hears something in my silence and softens his tone. “Look, E., I know you’re on some other trip, and I a
in’t mad at you for that. Why should you be trying to come up under Snipes with what you got going for you in the legitimate world? But you came to me, remember? You asked for an invitation to my neck of the urban jungle. Dudes push up on me all day, every day, son, asking me to hook ’em up, and I tell them to keep it movin’. Not only did I let you in, E., I’m trying to show you around and watch your back. So imagine how it’s going to reflect on me to Snipes and all the other fellas if you quit after one day, especially behind some BS like this.”
We both stay quiet for a minute. Then I finally say, “Let me go. I still have some homework to finish before I turn in, and I have to be up by seven.”
“A’ight.” Nestor hangs up the phone.
I sit on the edge of my bed and pull off my shoes. As I scrape the money off the bedspread, I count it again, still hoping to find another twenty stuck to one of the bills. No dice. I put the money away in a shoebox in my closet and crawl into bed with my clothes on.
The night has a way of raising the volume on the truth. Nestor’s words echo in my head, crowding out my dreams and keeping me awake. In the dark, I take inventory of all that I have going for me in the legitimate world.
A mother who is long on love but short on cash.
A younger sister who used to look up to me but is now chasing her father.
A best friend who has some of the same goals but little of the same drive.
The highest GPA at a high school where the most crowded table at the annual college fair belongs to the U.S. Army.
A college advisor who’s rolling the dice against me.
A few teachers who have my back but can’t give me a leg up.
And a father who counts for so little, he’s the last to come to mind, and only because the dark forces me to reach.
Since I can’t sleep, I decide to get up and study for the SAT. I grab my vocabulary list and cross off the words that I’m confident I know. There are actually quite a few, which gives me a boost, so I work on the rest until the dark gives up on me and crawls away from my window.
Efrain's Secret Page 6
