Response (2 page)

“My boy's uncle owns a car dealership,” I said. “We're gonna do some construction work on the lot for him at night—sharpen up on my building skills. That's where I'm headed now. If it goes smooth, I'll be able to triple the money I been giving you and treat you to Red Lobster for your b-day, too, boo.”

“I know lately you been tryin' extra hard to do your share, Noah,” she said, melting down. “I see it. Even my dad's off your case some. I really do love you.”

“I feel you,” I answered.

I met up with Asa and Bonds at nine o'clock sharp. They were strapped down with the other tools we needed— wire cutters, flashlight, and a Slim Jim. Then we crossed Decatur Avenue into Hillsboro and kept our heads on a swivel.

After about a half hour, we spotted a Lex on a dark side street, parked in the driveway of a private house. We walked around the block twice just to check things out. Then we crouched down low by the gate, waiting for the courage to move.

Bonds took the Slim Jim out from under his shirt, whispering, “I'm ready to do my thing.”

But as soon as Bonds started fishing for the latch to open the driver's door, there was a noise from across the street and we just froze up solid, like stone statues.

An old lady dragged her trash can all the way to the curb, with a little yappy dog barking its head off behind her—
Yappp! Yappp! Yappp!

Finally, they disappeared inside a house, and Bonds got back to business.

I heard the latch on the car door spring open.

That's when a light on the second floor of that crib, over the driveway where we were, came on. I'm not sure who, but one us screamed soft,
“Go! Go!”

We shot out of that yard quick, and our feet didn't stop moving till we were two blocks down and an avenue over.

“Niggas can't get jumpy over every little shit,” complained Asa, breathing hard. “There's gonna be some risk.”

“Noah, wasn't this boy the first one hauling ass?” Bonds asked between breaths, annoyed as anything.

But the bottom of my kicks had burned rubber, too, and I wasn't about to front over having nerves of steel.

“We
all
looked like kindergarten crooks,” I said flat-out.

Mario's Pizza came up on the other side of the street, so we cooled our jets and went inside for a slice. There was a map of Italy, looking like a boot, painted up on the wall. A rotating floor fan was blowing hard, and a little red-white-and-green flag taped to the cash register flapped in that breeze.

Two Guido kids with slicked-back hair and gold chains were sitting at a side table, giving us the evil eye. And the chain on the one who had a goatee was thick enough to get us nearly as much cheddar as a hot car.

But I'd have rather made him eat it, instead, for giving us that look.

We each ordered a slice and a soda, and the dude behind the counter smirked. “Is that order to go?”

“Nah, too much heat out there,” Asa answered with some attitude.

The goateed kid yelled out to that dude, “Hey, Sal! Make me an order of eggplant Parmesan—moolie style!”

That's what Italian assholes called us, “moolies.”

I heard that in their tongue,
moolinyan
meant eggplant. That was their code word for
nigger
, because we were black like eggplants.

Asa stared that kid down fierce, drawing the bottom half of a circle under his neck with a finger to show that Guido's gold chain could have been ours if we wanted it. But we finished our food and got out of there without any trouble.

Our stomachs were heavy by then, so we gave up on the idea of boosting a Lex that night.

There wasn't a dark cloud I could see anywhere, but streaks of heat lightning kept crackling across the sky as we headed back towards East Franklin. We even walked the long way around, steering clear of Columbus Park—the place almost everybody called “Spaghetti Park,” the Guidos' main turf.

We were just three blocks from Decatur Ave. when those two dudes from the pizza parlor and that fat kid swinging the baseball bat jumped out of the Land Rover screaming, “Niggers!”

Chapter
TWO

I REMEMBERED BONDS AND ASA BEING there with the cops and EMS. I couldn't get up off the concrete, or even move without mad pains shooting through my entire body. My head was killing me, and it hurt to keep my eyes open. So I tried to hold them shut.

“Who beat you, son? What did they look like? Why do you think they jumped you?” the cops were asking.

More than anything, I wanted to nail the fat fuck swinging that bat, and see those bastards do the perpwalk in cuffs. But I'd been through shit with police before and arrested twice—once for a stupid fight and another time for beating the fare on a city bus. And my whole family was just starting to trust me again.

I knew some of those white cops in Hillsboro weren't any better than the kids who'd beat me. They'd kick your ass, too. Only the cops had badges to make it
legal
, and could turn anything you said against them into an automatic lie.

“Bat! Bat!” I kept yelling. “Hurts too much to think!”

I was scared to death the cops would arrest us for trying to boost that car. I was the one who'd fucked up and tripped, and maybe that was going to land the three of us in central booking.

Then a cop asked, “You want to explain about this screwdriver in your pocket?”

After that, I wouldn't say another word, and kept my mouth and eyes shut. Bonds and Asa clammed up tight, too. I remember EMS lifting me into the ambulance on a stretcher, and the sound of that siren pounded inside my skull all the way to the hospital.

That's when it hit me for real. The fat kid could have killed me with that damn bat. I'd have never held Destiny Love in my arms again or been there the first time she said “Daddy” for real. He almost stole everything from me, just because my skin was a different color than his.

Bonds told me later how some black cop pulled him and Asa off to the side.

“You going to let these white punks draw a line with a bat, sayin' where you can't be? Let them shit all over you like that?” the black cop railed on them. “And that's your
friend
—the young brother on the stretcher? Why don't you boys just crawl home from here if you ain't got the bellies to stand up for him or yourselves?”

Maybe it was seeing me leave with my skull split open, or maybe it was that speech, but Bonds and Asa agreed to ride in the back of a squad car, searching for those bastards who busted me up. They spotted that black Land Rover parked on the same block as Mario's Pizza. But as soon as the cops pulled up behind it, those three white dudes got out cool as ice, pointing at Asa and Bonds in the police car.

“That's them, officers!” the fat kid shouted, clapping his hands. “The ones that tried to rob my friends! Lock 'em up!”

Then Asa said half of the 14th Precinct showed up. He said one of the white cops must have tipped them dudes off about the screwdriver, because that's what they started saying—that we tried to rob them for a gold chain using a screwdriver like a knife.

But not every cop had their backs. And after a search, other officers found the bat and my sneakers inside the Land Rover, and my diamond stud in the tall kid's pocket.

Bonds and Asa had to come clean to explain about that screwdriver, and told the cops how we went into Hillsboro to heist a car. To prove it, they took the cops back to the spot where they'd ditched the Slim Jim, wire cutters, and flashlight—inside some Dumpster on the street, after Bonds had called 911.

Finally, the three of those racist bastards got arrested. That was probably about the same time the doctors were bringing me into surgery for my skull. The same time Dad, Mom, and Grandma were praying to God with every breath they took that I'd be all right. The same time that Destiny Love was sound asleep in her crib at Deshawna's house.

The cops let Bonds and Asa skate that night, but everything was about to blow up huge. The next day, the mayor and police commissioner came to Hillsboro and a special squad of detectives got called in to investigate, to see if what happened was just a regular robbery and beat-down by those dudes, or something much bigger—a hate crime.

 

EMS brought me to the closest hospital—St. Luke's in Hillsboro. When I woke up from my operation the next morning, the first thing I saw was the white ceiling of that room. Then my eyes started to focus, and I saw Mom's face lean in. For a second, I dreamed I was at home and had overslept for school. So I tried to jerk myself up fast. That's when the pain in my head hit hard.

“Ooow!” I cried out as that nightmare with the bat ripped through my brain in fast-forward.

“Thank you, Jesus!” boomed Grandma's voice. “Thank
you
!”

Mom broke down bawling on my chest, and Dad put his arms around us both.

“Noah, whatever your mother and me done wrong in our lives couldn't have been so bad,” my father said, with his face looking older and more tired than I'd ever seen it. “'Cause when you just opened your eyes, God answered all our prayers.”

The surgeon who'd operated on me was from India, and his skin was nearly as dark as mine.

“The fracture was serious enough that I couldn't take a conservative approach and let it heal on its own. I put some fragments of loose skull back into place and secured them with a small titanium plate and screws,” he told us. “We'll keep monitoring Noah for any signs of infection or intracranial hemorrhaging—bleeding on the brain. But other than some potential headaches and bruising around the eyes, which I see has begun already, he should be all right to go home in about a week or so.”

Mom looked like she was about to drown that doctor in hugs. But Dad stepped to him first and shook his hand. So that's what Mom and Grandma did, too, clasping both of their hands around his.

I wanted to argue about having to stay in the hospital so long, but what came out instead was, “Thanks for what you did, Doc.”

Then he reached down and touched me on the left shoulder, I guess before I messed up any of the tubes in my arms, trying to reach across to shake his hand.

There were three nurses at the station outside my door—one was black and the other two were white. And any time one of those whites nurses came at me with a needle to take blood, every muscle in my body would pull tight till the veins in my arms popped out on their own.

That night, Mom apologized to those two white nurses after they heard her call the bastards who'd beat me “no good crackers” and “white trash.”

“Nobody needs to say they're sorry for the truth!” Grandma exploded after those nurses left the room.

“I feel they're the ones caring for my boy,” Mom argued back. “So I don't want to insult them.”

“They've heard it before—seen it, too,” said Dad. “Noah ain't the first one to catch a beating on those streets.”

“Pray he's the last,” said Grandma. “Pray
Noah's
the last! ”

Then my father said, “I remember how that man—Sheffield—they killed, got brought to this same hospital before he died.”

That happened almost twenty years ago. I wasn't even born yet. But people around my way still talked about it plenty, and I knew every word of that story by heart.

These four black dudes from Centreville, just one neighborhood over from East Franklin, had their car break down on the highway at the far edge of Hillsboro. Back then, everybody didn't have cell phones like now, so they started walking. Only they picked the wrong direction to go in. Those brothers wound up over by Spaghetti Park. It was on a weekend night in the summer, and the park was really popping. Just for showing up there, a pack of white thugs chased them down Decatur. One of the black dudes, Michael Sheffield, got run off into traffic and was clipped and killed by a car. Something like fifty people saw it, but nobody from Hillsboro would be a witness at the trial. That's why just three thugs out of that whole mob got convicted.