Hood (2 page)

It’s priceless, never felt love like this,

Only you can bring light to my crisis,

Life just ain’t worth it at all without you, swear,

I don’t wanna do it at all without you, true…

“I’M COLD,” MONROE
complained for the hundredth time. The streets were deserted and his breath came out smoky in the night air. “I’m so so
so
cold, Lamont. My feet not even there no more.”

It was one of the bitterest nights of the year. The young boys had been chased out of the abandoned building they’d been living in and the police were sweeping the streets and forcing the homeless into heated shelters.

Inside the torn, wet mitten they shared Lamont entwined their fingers, gripping his baby brother’s hand real tight. They’d been walking the dark streets of Central Brooklyn for hours and he was frozen too. Lamont had already given Moo one of the two thin jackets he’d worn. Now he took off his skully and pushed it down on Monroe’s head, but the cold was so bad that even five knit hats wouldn’t have mattered.

“Just keep your other hand in your pocket, Moo,” he told him, guiding the four-year-old across the ice-covered pavement. He looked down, trying hard not to slip in the frozen footprints left by pedestrians before him. His raggedy sneakers were like thin pieces of cloth. He removed his left hand from his jacket pocket and immediately regretted it. Throbbing pain stiffened his fingers as the bitter cold gripped him.

“This better?” he asked as he pulled the knit hat down lower on Moo’s forehead. His little brother coughed deeply. His nose was running and his lips were cracked and dry.

Moo nodded. He was cold but he was trying hard to be brave. He saw how red Lamont’s ears were as he tried to hunch his skinny shoulders and duck his bare head against the biting wind. Somehow Moo had lost his mittens so it was his fault they only had one glove to share, but Mont didn’t even get mad about it.

“I’m so hungry,” Moo said softly.

Lamont closed his hand around the softening brown lump in his pocket. It was supposed to be Moo’s breakfast for tomorrow, but neither of them had eaten in hours and he was gonna have to give it to him tonight. They stopped and leaned against an ice-covered Mazda.

“Here.” Lamont took his hand from his pocket again, ignoring the stiffening cold. He held the small potato out to Moo. “Take a couple of bites.”

As hungry as he was, Moo looked at the potato and shook his head.

“C’mon, man,” Lamont urged. He’d found the potato in an almost-fresh bag of trash and it was the only thing in the whole pile that the rats hadn’t already either shit on or gnawed on.

Moo stared at the spindly white buds that were growing out of the skin.

“Man, them just the eyes,” Lamont said, breaking off the buds and tossing them down to the ice. He wiped a fuzzy sheen of mold from the potato’s skin and waited while Moo bit into it hesitantly and then chewed.

“Act like it’s like a apple, man,” Lamont told him. “Eat it just like a apple.”

Moo ate the mushy potato quickly and the brothers walked on, this time down the middle of the street. It was safer that way. Lamont had already stuck his knife into a fiend who tried to snatch Moo from a doorway the night before, and the piss-soaked abandoned car they had been sleeping in for the last few nights was also a bust. Some fool had kicked all the windows out and crackheads had been sleeping all up in it. Pissing it up some more.

“M-m-my legs cold, Mont. My toes feel funny too.”

Chin down against the ice-flecked wind, Lamont moved onward.

Monroe started to whine. “Mont, when Mama coming to get us, huh? Maybe she ain’t never coming, right? She don’t even come see us no more. Is the police gone shoot her like they did Daddy, Monty? Huh?”

Then Moo got real quiet like he was thinking. The moon was full. Long minutes passed where there was nothing but the whistling wind and the sounds of their small feet crunching through the ice.

Then he said softly, “Prob’bly you gone die too, huh, Monty. That would scare me real bad. You think you gone get dead one day and I’ma have to walk around out here by myself?”

“No,” Lamont said quietly. The wind took his answer and tossed it toward the north. Theirs was a straight up hard-knock life. They’d slept in concrete barrels on the project playground, down a garbage ramp in Tilden, and snuck on the train and rode all the way to the Bronx and back. Twice they ran from transit cops, jumping off at one stop and crossing over and catching a train going in the opposite direction. Damn right Moo was scared.

Hood had his fears too, but they were not of anything on the streets. His greatest nightmare was that his mind might one day slip off, just like his mother’s had, and so he conditioned himself to use the words in his head every single day. And even though he always looked calm and fearless on the outside, his brain was constantly on whirl: spittin lyrics, building bridges, stacking verses, humming hooks, and composing street songs that overflowed with metaphors and similes.

“Mama crazy ain’t she, Mont? That’s why we ain’t got no house no more. Gramma said Mama buggy. Done lost her mind. Is that why Daddy’s friends shot him up, Monty? Cause Mama lost all the words out her head and got crazy?”

Lamont ducked his head against the freezing ice that was starting to fall. He tried not to think about his parents as tiny shards bit into his skin and he trembled inside the Members Only windbreaker he’d gotten from the Salvation Army.

“Mama got her words back now, and Gramma don’t know shit, Moo. Especially about Mama.”

“But w-w-why we can’t go to Gramma house? Or what about Miss Baker, Monty? Huh? Why we always walkin around so much? Miss Baker always real nice to us. Why we can’t go get warm over there?”

Lamont stopped and looked at his little brother. The cold wind shoved them around and their feet slid across the ice as they struggled to remain upright. He broke it down to Monroe for the umpteenth time. “I told you, Moo. Miss Baker is sick in the hospital right now. And you already know why we can’t go to Gramma’s. Aunt Pat don’t like us. She ain’t let us in last night, and she ain’t gone let us in tonight neither.”

“Then we can go back to the empty house, right? Them guys with the fire cans probably gone somewhere else by now, huh?”

“No,” Lamont said firmly. It had been two days since the pair of crackheads had run them into the streets and Lamont was still mad about it. Head up and toe-to-toe, he could have given them some fight with his knife. But those fiends had gotten real stupid and started pouring gasoline everywhere, threatening to roast Lamont and Moo while they slept unless the two boys un-assed the premises.

They’d spent the next four nights sleeping on the floor in his friend Reem’s bedroom. Their mothers had been friends back in the day, and Jareem and Lamont had been tight since the sandbox. Reem’s mom worked two jobs and left him home alone a lot. Reem was a generous kid and a loyal friend. He let Mont and Moo in the crib and snuck them as much food as he could, and whenever his moms was home he made sure the coast was clear so they could use the bathroom.

But Moo was sick, and the cement-tiled floors of the projects were hard and cold. Reem let Moo have his bed while he toughed it out with Mont on a thin blanket they spread on the floor. Reem cut school every day while they were there, so they could plan their future as moguls in the music industry. They swore they’d cut a string of platinum albums one day, and both had verbal skills that were far superior to their ages and their environment. So the moment Reem’s mother left for work he doubled back to the crib, and the three boys spent the cold days watching karate movies, playing video games, and spittin endless battle raps.

“Check it,” Reem said as they looked out the window one morning. The cold was brutal, but the corner action was still rolling heavy outside of his building. Them trap boys was bundled up in layers as they ran back and forth between a steady stream of customers.

“That guy is a jake,” he said pointing to a cat in a red SUV. “Them traps better shake them lookout boys up and get in they asses because somebody’s about to get knocked.” Reem grinned at Hood, then with a challenging look in his eyes, he started spittin.

Them boys standin on the corner,

Heavy on the grind,

Clientele swarming, demand and supply

Business booming, real good line

That’s when I seen out the corner of my eye

Dude by the bus stop—undercover on watch,

Kept talking into…a cigarette box

That’s the third time that Suburban rolled by…

I’m lookin up and it’s a full moon in the sky…

“That’s tight as hell!” Hood said dapping Reem hard. He nodded his head and let his creativity flow. Then he cut in with his own phat lyrics and got some too.

Something don’t feel right and I ain’t trippin,

Say what you wanna but it’s street intuition!

So much heat feels like we in a kitchen,

So keep ya eyes peeled and listen…

Cuz its about to be a showdown, whoa-down

Ya better throw y’all stash on the ground!

Cause I got a strange feeling…

Something’s bout to happen

And I aint tryna get caught out!

The three boys were real comfortable up in that small room together, and they would have stayed there rapping and making up karate moves even longer but Moo’s cough was so loud it got them busted. Reem’s mom found them hiding in his closet and made them come out.

“Now Lamont,” she said gently. She’d made them take a hot bath and fixed each of them a big plate of food. “You know I love you and Moo, and if there was somebody here to watch y’all while I worked I’d keep you both forever. But your Aunt Pat ain’t nothing but trouble. If she found out I had y’all up in here without no papers she would do her best to see me in jail.”

Mont knew Reem’s mom cared about them but he wasn’t just gonna sit there while she called Social Services to come pick them up. He had grabbed Moo and made a run for the door the minute her back was turned, and ever since then they’d been right back out in the cold, walking the streets.

“Well, w-w-what about the staircase then?” Monroe asked, stomping his numb feet. His big brown eyes were desperate as his small body jerked and shuddered with the penetrating cold. “We slept on the stairs before and we was okay, right?”

“Can’t,” Lamont said shaking his head. “Winos already got the stairs. X-fiends and crackheads got the porches and the doorways. It ain’t safe, Moo. We just gotta keep moving, man. Okay?”

“B-b-but we already walked this way before! Two times! Where we gone go, Lamont? Huh? Where we gone go?” Moo was cranky and crazy tired. Not only was he way too cold, his head hurt and his throat burned. Moving his small legs quickly to keep up with his brother, all he could do was whimper softly because he was too cold and too sick to cry any real tears.

Lamont felt for his brother as he looked around at the deserted streets. Moo had it right. They’d already walked from one side of town to the other. Twice. He knew they couldn’t last much longer out here. They’d both probably die. But he also couldn’t decide which was worse: walking the evil streets of Brownsville on the coldest night of the year, sneaking into one of the crack houses that were all around him and getting killed, or running into the police and getting separated from his brother. He shook his head at that last thought.

“Okay,” he said, turning around and pulling Moo in the direction they’d just left. “Let’s go to Gramma’s. Maybe Aunt Pat’ll change her mind. Maybe she’ll let you in for a few minutes to use the bathroom or something. We’ll try, okay?”

Moo nodded and a tear made its way down his frozen cheek.

Lamont wiped it away, his bare fingers grazing the reddish mole under Moo’s left eye. Not even the burning cold could match the pain in Lamont’s eleven-year-old heart. He pulled the skully completely down over Monroe’s face, covering his eyes and snotty nose.

“Hey!” Moo complained. He stopped walking and slid along, pulled by his brother’s momentum. “I can’t see nothing, Mont. How I’ma walk if I can’t see?”

Lamont squeezed his brother’s hand and pulled him again. “You ain’t gotta see nothing, Moo. You gone be straight lil man. I promise. All you gotta do is follow me.”

The moon shone brightly as the two boys walked hand in hand down Rockaway Avenue. They cut across the street on Dumont and struggled along the ice until they reached Van Dyke projects. Lamont paused outside of the Brownsville branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. A sign said it was closed for renovations. He pulled Moo further down the street and they entered the back of building 345 and slipped into the dark stairwell. It was just as cold inside as it was outside. Every light bulb and window had been broken out and the slippery steps were caked up with icy piss. Winos huddled around their bottles sipping liquid heat. Lamont guided Moo around a needle fiend and they climbed up to the fourth floor. The exit door squealed loudly as Lamont pulled it open, startling them. They walked down to the end of the hallway. Lamont dragged his wet feet. They stopped outside the last door on the left and he just stood there. Looking at the door and shivering.