Show and Prove (2 page)

T
hat rooftop scene in
Five Deadly Venoms
got me inspired, and I've been stifled in this hot apartment waiting on Smiles too long again. Junior and the Barbarians are probably dealing at the park anyways, so better to stay clear of there. I grab my boom box and linoleum and pray there isn't anybody shooting up on the roof of my building.

As usual, Gloria's in the hallway running her mouth on the phone. “When will it end?” I say, imitating Ma Chow, the Scorpion. As I walk past her, I give her a soft kung fu kick to the back of her knee. “She goes on forever.”

My sister dips, her bony knees bumping the table. “Stop, Willie!” she whines. “Can't you see I'm on the phone?”

“No crap, Dick Tracy. When aren't you?”

Gloria shoves the receiver in my face. “Nessa wants to talk to you.”

Figures she'd be talking to my ex. I debate whether I should speak to her. I put down my radio and mat, then take the receiver. “Yo, when are you giving me back my buckle?”

“That's all you have to say to me, Nike?
Where's my buckle?
You're so rude.”

“Why I'ma ask you where my buckle is when I know you got it? You best be taking care of it. Don't be cleaning it with no Brillo pad and scratching it all up or you gonna have to buy me a new one.”

Before I can add
Call off your brother already,
she yells, “Just put Gloria back on!”

Instead I press the hook, hanging up on Vanessa, and dial Smiles's number. Wonder what excuse he's got this time for leaving me flat. While the phone rings, Gloria curses at me and punches me in the back. “Stop or I'll tell Ma you were acting up while I was on the phone with Smiley's nana. Geez, I'm only gonna be a minute.” When Smiles's grandmother answers, I pretend to be some white boy from his bougie school. “Good afternoon. May I please speak to Raymond?”

“Raymond is not here. I expect him soon. Would you like to leave a message?”

She never be that nice to me, man. “No, thank you. Good day.” I slam down the phone and grab my stuff. “It's all yours, acheface. Go to town.”

“What Ma told you about calling me names?”

“I'm so scared.”

When I get to the roof, no one's there, thank God, so I set down my radio and mat and look over the edge. Sure enough, Ma's on the stoop playing dominoes with the rest of the bochincheras. Today's victim is Dee Dee, my ex-ex's mother. Word is she's a crackhead now, thanks to Junior. Ma's going on about how sorry she feels for Blue Eyes and her sister, Sandy, and Sandy's new baby. I almost yell,
Like you Mother of the Year.

I stretch while rewinding the mastermix I recorded from WBLS last Saturday night.
Hip hop, be bop, don't stop.
I flip the cassette over and over, practicing the new flare I learned on my last trip to the Roxy and building a routine around it. Time disappears, and night comes.

Just when I finally master transitioning from the flare into a headstand, Jerry Del Valle races past me, hitting me with his telescope. I crumple to the linoleum. “Get lost, Professor!” I like having the roof to myself, and I'm not sharing it with a ten-year-old know-it-all. I'll snatch him and Donkey Kong his ass down the fire escape if I have to.

But Jerry's soon followed by half the block, including Gloria and Vanessa. I get stupid nervous waiting for Junior and the Barbarians to bust through the door. Then I see that people in other buildings are rushing to their rooftops and fire escapes, pointing at the sky. Finally, I notice the moon. Tonight it looks like someone sliced the head off a quarter and it's bleeding. It reminds me of what Smiles told me about his mother's illness, and I kiss my crucifix in memory of Mrs. King.

“Let me see, Jerry,” says Vanessa. The Professor be crushin' on her, so he forks over his precious telescope. You'd think it was official NASA property instead of a plastic toy. Nobody around here who can afford the real thing would spend money on something like that anyways. Even the neighborhood nerd spends his money on fake Pumas with the panther on the logo looking more like a hedgehog and whatnot Vanessa peers through the lens. “Wow, imagine,” she says. “Everybody all over the world is watching this right now.” She's pretty when she contemplates like that. I move behind her as close as I can without touching her. She rolls her eyes but doesn't move away, because I still got it like that.

But leave it to the Professor to rain on the parade by dropping science. Literally. “No, it's just going to be a partial eclipse,” he huffs, all condescending. “And it can only be seen wherever it's night. If it's night over here, it can't be night in, like, Lebanon.”

I suck my teeth. “Them A-rab terrorists don't deserve to see no eclipse anyways.” I hold out my hand and stare into Vanessa's eyes, hoping she'll give me the telescope—and maybe more when everyone clears out of here.

She gives me a dirty look. “Don't even try it.” She slaps the telescope against the Professor's chest. “I'll push you over that ledge.”

“It's nighttime in Puerto Rico, too,” says Gloria. “So they can see it there, right?”

“The eclipse can be seen all throughout North and South America,” says the Professor. “But we have the best view.”

“About time the South Bronx got the best of something,” I say.

Down on the street, Mister Softee turns the corner playing his song, and folks scatter like roaches in sudden light. Some people can't appreciate anything. On the other side of the world, they can't see this beautiful moon, but these suckers are worried about catching the ice cream man who rolls through here several times a day, every single day. Guess that jingle beats gunshots. Still, these pooh-butts plan on living in this tenement building their whole lives. Not me. Say no go.

“Yo, Professor, lend me your telescope.” I snatch it from him anyways and peer at the moon.

“Any babies conceived tonight are going to be born with demons in them,” says the Professor. He doesn't sound too scared, though. In fact, he sounds pretty excited by the prospect.

“They in the right neighborhood.” These days everywhere you turn, somebody is having a crack baby. That's why no one runs over to coo at some newborn no more. You might go there to find claws hanging outside the crib like in that movie
It's Alive.

“And did you hear what Columbus did to the natives in Jamaica?”

I didn't even know he went to Jamaica. “Me and history don't mix. I'm a man of the future.” I scan the telescope around the block, hoping to catch some chick undressing in front of her window like those frat boys did in
Animal House.
I bite, though, because I bet Smiles don't know that, even though he's part Jamaican and goes to Dawkins and all. “OK, what he do?”

“Columbus got marooned in Jamaica for a few months, and at first, the natives were quite hospitable. They brought his crew food while they waited to be rescued. But Columbus was a jerk, so they stopped helping him.”

And then I find what I've been looking for. The prettiest girl I have ever seen is sitting on a fire escape on the third floor of a building across the street and a few doors down from mine. At her bare feet is an open newspaper, but she is looking up at the eclipse as if it is breaking sad news to her.

“So Columbus and his crew are about to starve when he gets an idea. He found an almanac on his ship and realized that a lunar eclipse was going to take place. Columbus told the natives that God would punish them if they didn't feed him and his men, and that there would be an omen in the sky.”

She has on a long, dark skirt that grazes her ankles and a sailor blouse with long sleeves. At one point, the girl seems to look directly into my lens. She has the darkest almond-shaped eyes. Where did she come from? Probably visiting from Puerto Rico for the summer. Or maybe she moved here for good. All that time messing around with the likes of Vanessa, I missed this new girl.

“Sure enough, the moon went dark, and Columbus went into his cabin, ignoring the natives as they begged him to save them. He waited for an hour and then came back out like,
OK, God said he'll fix it if you keep giving us everything we ask for.
The chief agreed, and lo and behold, the moon emerged from the shadow.”

“Yo, that's wack,” I say. “If I was the chief, I would've told Codumbus,
Nah, I think God would like it more if we sacrificed your ass instead.
Just call homeboy's bluff. The moon would've reappeared, and I would've had more juice with the tribe than ever!”

“No,” says the Professor with that condescending attitude again. “The Taino Indians were peaceful.”

“Whatever, clever. Yo, Jerry, who's that girl over there?” I hand him the telescope and point. “The one sitting on the fire escape across the street.”

“I don't see anybody.”

I snatch back the telescope and look for her, but he's right. She's gone. That's OK. I've got all summer to find her.

I
'm so deep in sorrow I almost don't hear Qusay call my name. I turn, and he's waving at me while standing outside a storefront. “G, can you help a brother out?” When I reach him, Qusay points to the emblem he has hung in the window. “Is it straight?”

The symbol is a number 7 between a star and a crescent moon against a seven-pointed star surrounded by the words
IN THE NAME OF ALLAH
.
I point and say, “Nah, man, you need to lift it just a little higher on the left.”

Qusay gestures for me to stay put, runs inside, and adjusts the sign. When he nails it, I give him the thumbs-up and enter the storefront. There's nothing more than a single filing cabinet, a small desk, a handful of folding chairs, and several boxes of books.

“Why the number seven?” I ask.

“It's the number of perfection. The seventh letter of the alphabet is
G. G
stands for God. And that's what we mean when we greet each other with
What's up, G?
”

“Word?” I never knew that. “I thought it meant gangster.”

Qusay shakes his head. “Unfortunately, you are not the first.”

I give it some more thought. Seven is a prime number. Indivisible. There are seven notes on the musical scale. Seven colors in a rainbow. Seven days in the week. Seven continents. Even W.E.B. Du Bois referred to the Black man as the seventh son. “Then why do you call yourselves Five Percenters?”

“Because eighty-five percent of the population has no knowledge of self. They are ignorant of the truth and, as such, are sheep. Another ten percent are evildoers with some knowledge of truth, which they use to control the majority. The remaining five percent—the Nation of Gods and Earths—we are the poor righteous teachers. We know the truth and commit ourselves to liberating the eighty-five by sharing this knowledge with them. What more would you like to know, G?”

The next thing I know, two hours pass as I help Q file papers, unpack books, and give him feedback on his ideas for the neighborhood program he wants to start. He says, “I really want to continue teaching the Universal Language and holding parliaments here, where it's much safer than the park or the streets, but you know no one is going to give me money for speaking the truth.” He finishes taping up a poster of Stokely Carmichael shouting before a knot of microphones.

“So how'd you afford this place?”

“The community board gave me enough money for a six-month lease, on the promise of working with the young brothers in the community,” Q explains. “You know the saying.
Sell them what they want, but give them what they need.
”

I had never heard of that before, but it reminded me of something my mother once said. She took me to spend the day with her at the agency where she worked. She had a few clients come in to get help with their applications for welfare, housing, Medicaid, whatever. It wouldn't take all that long to complete the applications, but Mama would keep them a half hour, politicking with them. Or more like
to
them. If they came in to apply for Section 8 housing, for example, she'd also tell them about the neighborhood housing coalition and hand them the brochure. If she was helping them get food stamps, Mama would talk about the impact that fast food had on their health as well as their wallet. I couldn't see why Mama wouldn't just zip off the paperwork and send them on their way, especially since I was starving and craving a Happy Meal myself. Mama said,
Meet people where they are and take them someplace better.
Now that I'm older and politicking with Qusay, I get it.

He sighs. “Still, if I want to raise more money to actually do anything, I have to write a full-fledged proposal with a detailed budget. To be honest, G, I don't know where to start. I've gone to one library after the other, and I can't find any examples.”

The answer comes to me quickly. “You should talk to my boss Barb,” I say. “That's how she started the summer day camp and after-school program at Saint Aloysius.”

Qusay snickers. “That's not going to happen.”

“Why not?”

“Let's just say Miss Diaz and I have a checkered past,” Q says. “I mean Mrs. Cuevas. She's still Mrs. Cuevas, isn't she?”

“Yup.” I smile for the first time all day. “And Big Lou is bigger than ever. Dish, Q. Between you, me, and our man Stokely here.”

“Now where did you learn who this brother was?” Qusay asks.

Obviously, he's trying to change the subject, but since I'm happy that he's impressed, I go with the flow. “On my own. You think they're going to teach me about Black Power at a school like Dawkins?” Actually, they did. In the five minutes my history teacher spent on the Black Panthers, he drove home that they were extremists.
How ironic that their violent radicalism helped sell Martin Luther King Jr.'s better alternative of nonviolent disobedience to white America,
he said, and everyone in the class nodded except me.

“Dawkins that school by the Hub off Third Avenue?”

One moment I'm explaining to Qusay what Dawkins is and how I got there. The next I'm telling him what I have had no one to tell. From the first time a teacher called me eloquent but I couldn't get souped up because it felt more like a dis than a compliment to the debate that made me realize that Eric Grey and Sean Donovan were not my friends. “I had headed back into the locker room to get my books. That's when I overheard this kid Eric complaining to this other guy Sean that it was unfair that I had won.” I grab a poster of Marcus Garvey and a chair to put it up on the wall across from Stokely. “Then Sean said,
Yeah, and how's it going to look if the only Black guy on the team doesn't win the debate on whether W.E.B. Du Bois or Booker T. Washington has been proven right?
” This is the first time I ever told the truth about what it's like for me at Dawkins. I tried calling Russell—the Black alum who recruited me—a few times but never heard from him.

I don't want to worry Pop and Nana, and I'm certainly not trying to hear Nike's
I told you so
s.

“Wow,” says Q. “Clearly, you could've taken those white boys to task, G. Why didn't you?” His voice has no judgment.

“I promised my mother I would graduate from Dawkins and go on to college.” I shrug. “Two years down, one to go.”

Qusay points at my face. “That's how you looked when I first saw you out there. And then when you came in and we were building, you lit up like the Empire State Building. And now there you are again.”

“Today would've been my mom's birthday.” I keep to myself that Pop, Nana, and I have just come from visiting her grave, never saying a word the entire time. It makes losing her that much worse, because if I had my way, I would always talk about her. I'd repeat Mama's jokes, imitate her laugh, and otherwise keep the best of her alive. I joined the debate team at Dawkins because I miss the push-pull of our conversations. She helps me prepare my arguments as I imagine what she might say to propositions and rebuttals. At the end of the debate in my mind, instead of shaking my hand, Mama wraps her arms around me and tells me how proud she is of me.

“Your mom was one of a kind,” Qusay says. “You know the moment I knew it?” I shake my head, eager to hear. The pain of listening to people praise my mother is always worth it. “When I asked her out and she said hell no.” I laugh so hard I almost fall off the chair. “Be careful, G! And you know who shares a birthday with your mother?” Qusay points to Stokely Carmichael. “Mr. Kwame Ture himself.”

“Who?”

“He no longer goes by Stokely Carmichael. He's Kwame Ture now.”

“Really? I didn't know that. Why?”

And then Qusay and I continue to build way after the sun goes down.