When I Was the Greatest (23 page)

I took the bowls we used for lunch to the sink, then
popped into the bathroom to pick something out of my teeth. I examined my mouth, as well as the rest of my face. I noticed the swelling was just about all gone, and the bruises were disappearing. The blue under my eye was turning back to brown.

I heard a thump. But I didn't pay it any mind because this is Brooklyn. You hear lots of things. Then I heard a voice. It was coming from the shower wall, which means it was coming from the apartment next door. Needles and Noodles's place.

I sat on the edge of the tub like I used to, like a fisherman sitting on the edge of his boat, waiting for something good to bite the line. I just listened, wondering who was there. I wanted to say something or do something. Maybe tap on the wall—that way if it was Needles, he would know it was me and maybe say something. But I didn't. I couldn't. The bath faucet dripped slowly, ringing as each drip splashed against the drain. I sat staring at the blue tile on the wall, wishing I had some sort of X-ray vision to see through to the other side. See if Needles was still bruised up bad. See if he was bent over, limping, or if his ribs had healed any so he could at least stand up straight. I wanted to make sure he still had his wrist wrapped up tight and that after he left the bathroom, he went right back to bed to rest up.

I also wished I could see Noodles. Just to see if he was okay, is all. When Kim told me that he apologized to her about how he acted at Black's house, I couldn't help but feel bad. Not that he didn't owe her an apology, but if he humbled himself enough to actually say he was sorry, then he must really be flipping on the inside. I mean, both me and his brother had
lost faith in him, so everything had to be finally starting to get to him. And even though he had every bit of what he was going through coming to him, he was still my best friend. He was still my homeboy. My road dog. My dude. So I couldn't help but worry, even when I felt like he didn't deserve my worry anymore.

“Ali, you okay?” Jazz's voice snapped me out of my trance. She tapped on the door lightly. “Ali?”

A drop of water hit the drain.

“Yeah, I'm cool, Jazz. Coming out in a second,” I said. I tried to put some smile in my voice so that she didn't worry or ask any questions. I could tell that she could sense something, though. That's the only reason she came and knocked on the door. Any other time she would've just assumed that I was using the bathroom, maybe going number two. But this time she came looking for me.

“Stupid orange stuff,” I said, opening the door.

“Pulp.”

“Yeah, pulp,” I said, smirking. “Stuck all in my teeth.”

Jazz looked at me and twisted her mouth up. I knew she didn't believe me, but I also knew she knew that whatever I wasn't telling her, I wasn't telling her for a reason.

• • •

A few hours later Jazz was taking her usual midday nap, the scandal of soap opera playing in the background, probably providing her with dreams no eleven-year-old should ever have, and I was sitting on the couch just waiting for something to happen. I didn't know what that something was
going to be. Maybe a devastating phone call from my mother saying she got word my father was dead, killed by some punks in Brownsville. Or maybe Black would come by and tell me that my father was down at the precinct, arrested for attempted murder or something like that. I don't know, but I knew something was coming, and I was waiting for it.

Somewhere between the television saying “I thought you died in the car crash” and “I love you too much to let you marry him,” I heard a key being pushed into the deadbolt. I turned the TV off and sprung up as the knob turned and the door opened.

I didn't know I was holding my breath until I saw him—my dad. Thank God! He stood in the doorway, filling up the space like a broken-down grim reaper. He held the bottom of his shirt up to his nose, using it to plug his left nostril to stop blood from pouring from it. He limped inside, wincing, with a duffel bag hiked up on his shoulder. Jazz twitched, reacting to whatever dream she may have been having. Afraid to wake her and have her freak out, my dad put a finger up to his lips, mouthed,
Be quiet
, and walked lightly to the kitchen sink. I met him there, grabbed the hand towel we dry dishes with, wet it with cold water, and gave it to him. He pressed it against his nose and leaned against the kitchen counter, his head tilted back, his eyes teary. I stood in front of him, staring at him as if he wasn't real. Looking at his hands, thinking that they were now the hands of a murderer. Looking at his nose, wondering which guy hit him before he blew them all away.

As happy as I was to see him here, alive, I'd never, ever,
ever in my whole life felt worse about the fact that he had to do what he did for me. To protect me. Because I had to protect Needles since Noodles wouldn't. But then again, it was me who pressed for Needles to go with us to that stupid party in the first place! Not Noodles. It was me. So it was just as much my fault as anyone's. I just couldn't believe that any of this was happening. Everything had come undone. And I had no idea what to say to my dad, or what he would say to me.

Once he finally got his nose to stop bleeding, he motioned toward my room. We tiptoed down the hall, my knees barely bending, my ankles mushy and loose. I felt like I was going to pass out or something. The hallway seemed longer than usual, and even though it was the middle of the afternoon, it felt like midnight. We slipped in and closed the door, slowly turning the knob to make sure it didn't click and wake up Jazz.

John sighed a long drawn-out sigh, like a heavy load had just come out of him and was now floating around the room. It sort of felt like it came out of his mouth, bounced around the walls for a moment, and then landed right on my shoulder. Or right on top of my head. The heaviness of the room, the tension, the fact that John hadn't said nothing about anything yet, broke me. I threw myself at him just because I was so scared and confused, I didn't know what else to do. He wrapped his arms around me as I sobbed. My shoulders were like bouncing all over the place as I hiccuped and snorted—just ugly. This was the kind of cry that could get you laughed at forever if the wrong dude saw you. Lucky it was my dad, and though I had never really cried in front of him before, he
was cool about it. He didn't say stop crying, or toughen up. He just said to let it out.

“It's okay, Ali. It's all over now. I took care of it like I said I would,” John said, his voice trembling.

“What you mean?” I snuffed out.

“What you mean, what I mean? I took care of it. You don't gotta worry about nobody coming to get you,” he said, his arms pushing me away from him so he could see my face. “You understand? I handled it. Needles and Noodles are safe too. It's over.” He spoke like he was sure. Like he did something to permanently prevent them from coming after me. I knew what that something was, but I still had to make sure. There was something about hearing it that made it real, and even though I really didn't want to hear it, I kind of did.

“Can I ask you something?” I said, wiping my face, easing down onto the bed. “What was it like?”

“What was what like?” John asked, still standing, leaning against the wall, Muhammad Ali posed behind him, taped to the wall with a big cheese on his face.

“Pulling the trigger.”

“Pulling the . . .” John stopped midsentence. “Wait,” he said, walking over to the bed. He sat down beside me and went through a quick series of motions, from glancing at the ceiling, to wiping his face with his hands, to patting my back before continuing, “You think I shot them? You think I went over to Brownsville and killed those dudes, Ali?”

My confusion reached an all-time high.

“Yeah. Ain't that what you did? Took care of it?”

John sat silent for a second.

“Yeah, I took care of it, Ali, but I ain't kill nobody! Why you even think something like that? You ain't never known me to be wild like that, have you?”

“No, but I saw that gun in your car, and I know back in the day, you—”

“I shot a man at a bodega, and you thought I was gonna shoot them fools, too. Right,” John said, suddenly piecing it all together. I could tell he felt bad about me thinking that, but it's not like I was just coming from left field with this whole thing.

“Son, I ain't shoot nobody today, and I won't shoot nobody ever again. Trust me. That gun don't even got no bullets in it, and to be honest, my ass can't afford to buy none.” John smirked. “I'm sorry you even had to see that.”

I straightened up.

“So how you take care of it, then?” I asked.

John stood up and stuck his thumbs in his pockets like he always used to make me do when my mother made me tuck my shirt in. “Slouch your pants down a little, boy. You look crazy with your pants all up on your chest like that,” he'd joke.

He resumed his position in front of the poster of the champ. “I went over there, to the corner Brother said they hang on. I pulled right up to them and jumped out the car. It was two of them, and they both looked pretty rough, but the biggest one looked real bad. And by bad, I don't mean mean, I mean bad. Like somebody whooped up on him, bad. So I figured I would just flat-out come at him. I said, ‘Yo, man, you
know a cat in Bed-Stuy name MoMo,' and he ain't say nothing, probably because he thought I was the feds or something like that. So then I said, ‘Yo, I don't want no trouble or nothing, and it ain't even like that.' And then big man was like, ‘Why you askin' 'bout MoMo?' which let me know that he did know MoMo and that he was probably one of your victims, Ali. The dude looked horrible. He had some lumps, but the worst part was he had a missing tooth! You really gave that brother the business.”

John gave me a proud look and continued, “So then I just came out with it. I just said, ‘Look, man, you, or some of your boys, came around Bed-Stuy looking for a kid y'all got in a fight with at MoMo's party Wednesday night.” Man, as soon as I said that, they got even more serious, chests all poked out, hands reaching under their shirts, thinking I came to bring the heat. So I told them quickly, again, that it wasn't like that.

“Then one of them was like, ‘You know him? You know where he at?' and I was like, yeah. And they told me to tell them and that they would break me off something if I did. One of them flashed some cash, and the other one flashed some coke. Then I told them I was your father.”

“And what did they say to that?” I asked, listening to the story like it was one of Noodles's comics. My father just stood there, all cool, telling the story with his thumbs tucked in like a ghetto cowboy. He could have told the story wearing sunglasses, but then none of it would've been believable, even though he definitely was sounding cool enough to pull it off.

“What did they say?” John repeated. “What did they say? Man, they started trippin'. The big one yoked me all up, and before I knew it, the other dude came and popped me in the nose. Then a sucker punch to the gut knocked all the wind out of me. Then they started talking about how I shouldn't be trying to play hero, and that they were gonna find you and handle you, and all that kinda stuff. And that's when I told them that I ain't come for no beef, but that I came to talk. To negotiate.”

Negotiate?

“And what you negotiate?” I asked.

John took his thumbs from his pockets and folded his arms.

“Everything, son.” His eyes suddenly filled with water. “I negotiated everything. I told them that I had a car full of expensive clothes. At least ten grand worth. And they could have it all. Hell, I even told them they could have the damn car. But I made sure they knew that the catch is, they gotta leave you and your homeboys alone. They agreed, we shook on it, and I grabbed my bag out the passenger seat and dropped the keys in the big guy's hand. They made me wait while they searched the car and checked out all the merchandise. They couldn't believe what they were seeing and what I was offering. One of them mentioned something about how they wish they had a father like me, or whatever. Next thing I knew, they hopped in my car and took off.”

My dad's cool was now overflowing and running down the side of his face and neck. I sat on the bed, uncomfortable,
weird, unsure of what to say or do. He had sacrificed everything for me.

“What you gonna do now?” I asked.

“You know me, Ali. I'll figure something out, man.” John forced a half smile and wiped his face with the palm of his hand. I wanted to ask him where he was going to stay, but I didn't want him to know that I knew he lived in his car. I just couldn't say anything that might embarrass him. After what he did for me—no way.

16