Authors: M.K. Asante
Buck (9 page)
It’s the fourth quarter and we’re down by three—54 to 57—to our rivals, Hilltop. Big game. Like twenty seconds left. I’m dribbling at the top of the key.
Championship banners hang above my head like quilts on a clothesline. Bleachers full of parents and friends. Nia’s here with one of her girlfriends. Amir’s standing with Ryan near the exit.
Basketball clears my mind, takes me away from the bullshit. On the court, I’m the judge.
I play my heart out.
My Jordans squeaking across the blond wood. It’s like a high-pitched language—call and response—I speak with my sneaks. They’re repeating the lines from a Jordan movie that Uzi got for me a few birthdays ago.
“Once I get the ball, you’re at my mercy. There’s nothing you can say or do about it. I own the ball. I own the game. I own the guy guarding me. I can actually play him like a puppet.” I love Jordan’s heart, his determination. I remember Game 5 of the NBA Finals against the Utah Jazz, he had the flu and he played anyway. During every time-out, every dead ball, you could see the sickness in his eyes. The end of the game, tie game, he hit a three to win it. They had to carry him off the gym floor, he was so weak.
Later, they asked him about it: “I didn’t want to give up. No matter how sick I was, no matter how tired I was, no matter how low on energy I was. I felt an obligation to my teammates and the city of Chicago to go out and give that extra effort.”
I’m dribbling, crossing over, spinning, faking, pumping, passing … I get the ball back—dribble, spin, hesitate, reverse, penetrate … driving hard to the paint.
Foul.
I’m at the line. Season on the line. Everything on the line.
Coach calls a time-out.
“I need you to come through,” he says, both hands on my shoulders. “It’s on you. I know you can handle it.”
I step to the line, my toes kissing the stripe. The ref, whistle hanging out of his mouth like a Marlboro, bounces the rock to me. I spin the ball in my hand. Bounce, spin, bounce-bounce,
spin. Spread my fingers across it like a phat ass. Let my fingertips find the crack, settle in.
The ball leaves my hand
It’s up in the air …
Dear Carole,
I spent the night in my car. It was funny sleeping in Fisher Park. I come home in the morning and see Chaka as he’s leaving for work. He doesn’t speak and neither do I. I think he is ashamed of me. It is hard for me to acknowledge this but it is true. He doesn’t want to be seen with me. He doesn’t say anything but his actions tell me that.
True, I am terribly overweight and I am not the small dancer that he met a long time ago. It is a hell that I seem to have imposed on myself. Why? There are probably many reasons. I resent him for being ashamed and I draw farther away from him. Every houseguest and visitor is my responsibility but our world is a secret. The façade of a marriage and a happy home is just that. Perhaps the houseguests are distractions and keep the attention away from us. I only know that the silence has me basking in invisible rhythms and I have disappeared.
My weight is another mask for the pain. Am I conscious of it? Yes and no. I run away from my image but it follows me, and even when I am not looking, others are looking and sometimes those looks usher in comments. “I didn’t recognize you; how did you gain so much
weight?” “Why did you gain so much weight?” “How in the world does a dancer gain so much weight?” They were questions I had asked myself a thousand times. “Pain” is all I can say. Chaka hates it, I hate it, but we all dance around it.
God, give me strength.
Amina
Midnight Train
The coldest day of the year. That disrespectful
brrr
. Outside it looks like everybody’s blazing big blunts. Swirling dark clouds roll in like waves.
I’m in the living room watching Kung Fu Theater on Channel 48. I hear my mom and dad in the kitchen, their voices rising, falling, crashing like distant thunder.
Maybe all this arguing is good
, I think. Maybe it means they still care. Like, it shows they’re still willing to fight for each other. Maybe not fighting is worse.
This flick is called
Shogun Assassin
. Samurais in straw hats sword-fighting in the desert. A little boy flashes on the screen:
When I was little my father was famous. He was the greatest samurai in the empire and he was the shogun’s decapitator. He cut off the heads of 131 lords. It was a bad time for the empire. The shogun just stayed inside his castle and he never came out. People said his brain
was infected by devils. My father would come home; he would forget about the killings. He wasn’t scared of the shogun, but the shogun was of him. Maybe that was the problem. Then one night the shogun sent his ninja spies to our house. They were supposed to kill my father but they didn’t. That was the night everything changed.
I hear fists slamming on the counter—my cue to see what’s going on.
“He’s leaving,” my mom screams as I walk in the kitchen.
Leaving to go where?
I think.
I see my dad. His face looks cold and tight. He’s wearing a black dashiki with an ankh on it. The ankh symbolizes life in Egyptian mythology. Death in Philly reality.
I remember something my dad said when my grandfather died: “He thought of leaving for good every time he heard the long, mournful whistle of the train.” He told me it’s called “wanderlust”—that need to go, to bounce—and that all the men in my family have it.
My mom hangs on him like a peacoat. He drags her, slow and determined like a wounded soldier. Mom’s tears flowing like the Schuylkill River. I’ve never seen them like this.
“Hold up.” I hold my hand out like a crossing guard. “Where you going?”
“We’ll talk about it later,” he says.
Later? Who does he take me for, hitting me with later, like I’m some little kid? I know later never comes.
“Nah, we gon’ talk about it now!” I get loud. His mind is made up, though.
He’s rushing to the door, whooshing like wind through vents, gripping a beat-up black leather bag. That bag’s been everywhere; it spends more time with Pops than I do.
“How can you? How can you? Leave us … like this?” my mom sobs, looking right at me, her heavy eyes begging me to do something. The movement is moving and there’s nothing I can do.
Fuck am I gonna do?
I jump in front of him, try to block him, but he just steps around me.
“I have to go,” is what he says. “I just have to go.”
“Go where?”
“Just. Go,” he says opening the door. “One day you’ll understand.”
“Fuck one day! Fuck tomorrow!”
Our eyes lock. Tears glisten in his. Rage in mine.
“See?” He looks at my mom, shaking his head. “He has no respect for his father.”
“It’s my fault? He doesn’t respect you because you’re never here.”
He’s at the door now, palming the knob.
I say, “I’ll respect you even less if you walk out that door,” but it’s too late. The door flies open, a cold rush, he’s gone.
I feel my veins turn icy and my soul drift into darkness as he turns his back on us and marches into winter.
Mom falls into me, her wet face against my Hilfiger hoodie. The screen door stutters shut. I lift my mom up under the
arms. She’s deadweight. I hold her tight and feel her back expanding in my palms like dough. I didn’t know she was
this
heavy. You never know how heavy anyone is until you have to carry them.
I wonder if he’s leaving because of her weight.
The other day, looking through her journal, I found this old school photo of her from back in the day. She was a dime. Dancer body, silky skin, the glow of a movie star, Lena Horne or somebody like that. Classic beauty. She’s a dancer that doesn’t dance anymore, not even her eyes. There’s no music, just pain. It’s hard to imagine that the lady in that faded photo is the same woman I’m holding now. She’s all I have.
“Protect me, Malo,” she says through a mouthful of tears.
From what?
I think.
Everything, I guess
.
“I will.” Putting my hand on her shoulder, rubbing the fist-size knots on her back. She’s as fragile as her thin eyelashes.
All night she sobs. I try to comfort her, sitting on her bed, massaging her head. She’s just sobbing. She can’t even look at me. Her eyes are shut with tears. The cries last forever. The whole neighborhood can probably hear her wailing. When I leave the crib, she’s sobbing. When I get back, it’s like I never left.
“You need anything, Ma?”
“To die.”
North of Death
I’m choking this bottle of Henny, taking swigs with Amir and Scoop. The brown burns my whole face up.
“Hennessy make plenty enemies,” Scoop rumbles, slugging the gnac down like it’s water. Sometimes, like now, Scoop reminds me of Uzi, with his wild energy and crazy stories and temper as sudden as gunshots.
She said, Afrocentricity was of the past
so she got into R&B, hip-house, bass, and jazz
*
We’re in the jaws of the night, in front of this row house on a back block in North Philly near Diamond Street.
“North side of death,” Amir says.
Scoop shows us his new gun, a black Desert Eagle. It’s midnight black, fat, and long. “His name is Mr. Nipples,” Scoop
says, Cookie Monster eyes wobbling. “Turning legs into wheels.” It’s huge, with a scope on it like something off
Terminator
.
“Damn, Scoop,” I say, a little scared.
“What? You thought I was playing? You think it’s a game?” We hear police sirens searching in the distance.
“Just don’t get caught with that,” Amir says.
“Rather be caught with it than without it. Rather go to jail than die young.”
A door the color of Pepto-Bismol, manned by some dude in black shades with a Sunni beard. Scoop daps him and we’re in.
Boom boom boom
—the bass from Luke’s “Face Down Ass Up” is beating up the house, pounding, thumping.
Face down ass up
/
That’s the way we like to fuck …
The steps are dark, steep, and sticky with drink. Scoop’s in front walking his superthug walk, fist clenched, marching on some one-two, one-two shit.
Pussy ain’t nuttin but meat on the bone
/
Suck it or fuck it or leave it alone …
Upstairs is crazier than a Luke video.
Girls, naked or in neon G-strings, dancing everywhere. A blur of clapping asses. A buffet of shapes: teardrops, bubbles, apples, cherries, pears, hearts, and straight-up ghetto booties. Instant wood in my Guess jeans.
Smoke swirls through the darkness, curling slow like storm clouds.
We take another shot of Henny.
A bunch of shady nghz in the shadows. Everybody’s way older than us. Me and Amir are fourteen.
The stage is porn.
“Pussy Olympics,” Scoop says.
One girl, legs behind her neck like a pretzel, has three lit candles hanging from her pussy, pushing them in and out like a flamethrower. Two other chicks bumping butts with a purple dildo inside them both. Another jawn upside down on a pole.
There’s a guy with a mic—the host, I guess—giving a play-by-play and encouraging the girls. “This is where the ballers come to play and where the players come to ball.” He’s smoking a Black & Mild. He blows the pussy candles out—“Lights out”—then puts the mouthpiece of his cigar in her pussy. “Smoke that,” he laughs, making faces as the cigar tip glows orange and her pussy puffs.
Shot.
I feel the Henny all through my body like a 12-gauge shotty.
I’m standing next to a couple of thumping Kenwoods, footprint against the wall. The bass owns me.
My eyes lock on this short, bowlegged girl. She shuffles over and poses for me, bending over and touching the floor with her hands. Her thighs, shiny with baby oil, look like glazed hams.
“You dancin or datin?” she asks.
“Huh?”
“Dancin or datin?” she says, rubbing her pussy.
“Datin? You wanna go on a date?” I’m confused.
“Datin means fuckin,” Scoop laughs.
“How much?”
“A buck,” she says, dropping to the floor. She spreads her legs like a peace sign and flicks her pierced tongue at me.
“A hunnit?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m cool.”
Amir jumps in. “We get it for free.”
“Nothing’s free,” Scoop says. “With hoes, somehow you always pay. Always.”
Three folding chairs crash onto the stage.
“Are y’all ready for tonight’s main event?” the host asks.
I’m looking around at the freak show going on everywhere, wondering,
How is this not the main event?
The crowd howls, hoots, and grunts as three strippers climb onstage.
“Y’all not ready for this,” he says, setting the chairs up. “But we gon’ give it to you anyway. Listen, I need three volunteers, three volunteers.”
Amir bolts toward the stage like it’s the halftime shot for a million dollars at the Sixers game. Two more thirsty dudes follow.
“Let’s get this dick-sucking contest started!”
Me and Amir lock eyes, like
What the fuck?
His smile is bright against his black face. Scoop is laughing, nodding, and pulling out wads of cash from different pockets.
“Fellas, take a seat. Ladies, introduce yourselves.”
“Buffy.”
“Honey.”
“Diamond.”
“Ain’t none of them dimes,” Scoop says. “More like fives and sixes with scars and stitches.” Diamond is the one on Amir. She’s old, at least triple his age, with tits that hang like wet socks.
“Make ya bets right here.” The host is taking money.
“A dub on Honey … a buck on Buffy … fifty on Diamond,” different people yell.
Scoop makes his bet and throws a knot down.
It’s like the hood version of the stock market. I see the money flapping, the asses clapping, and think about the power of the dollar.
“Hoes, on your marks.” Pulls off his watch to keep time. They hit their knees.
“Set.” They whip out condoms and roll them on. “Go!”
Everyone in the room is going crazy, screaming and shouting.
