When I Was the Greatest (24 page)

I heard my mother's footsteps before I saw her face. It was a little after five, and the door downstairs, the one that lets you into our building, opened, followed by the sound of the fastest feet I've ever heard rushing up the steps. When she opened the door, John, Jazz, and I were all sitting on the couch chitchatting. John turned to her, and even though I couldn't see his face, I knew he gave her a big smile, a stupid funny one, because her eyes instantly bugged out and her hand flew over her mouth as if she wanted to scream, or maybe smile. Or maybe both. But like a parent, she knew not to make a scene. Not with Jazz right there. So she quickly shook off her shock and tried to act normal.

“Turn that damn TV down! What's wrong with y'all?” she snapped, stepping over John and kissing Jazz and me on the head. “Um, John, can I see you for a second?” she asked as she continued on to the bedroom, dropping her bag at the beginning of the hallway.

“Uh-oh,” Jazz said, teasing. “You in trouble. I ain't even
know the TV was that loud.” Jazz shook her head like an old lady as my father headed to the bedroom. Judging from my mother's reaction when she came in the door, I figured that John must have told her the same thing he told me, which was that he was going to go “handle it.” So my mother, I suspected, thought the same thing I did, that history was going to repeat itself, and John was going to shoot somebody and wind up in jail. Again. Or maybe worse—dead. So the fact that he made it home alive made her happy but also worried her because she knew, or at least she thought she knew, what he had done. After about twenty-five minutes my parents came from the room, my mother patting a tissue against her eyes, my father's hand on her back. She picked her bag back up and got ready to head to her second job, but before she left, she made me and Jazz stand up to hug her. She hugged us for a crazy long time.

“Will you be here when I get back?” she asked John, who was leaning on the kitchen counter, watching.

“I'll be here,” he said, his voice deep, low, honest.

The next day, Saturday, might have been one of the best days of my life, and the funniest part about it is, nothing really happened. At least nothing superwild, like Doris winning the Mega Millions lottery. Nothing like that. It was actually a pretty simple day, but still one of the best I've ever had, and I bet Jazz would say the same thing. We—all of us—got up around nine. I got to watch Doris call in to her job and pretend to be sick, which is something she never did. She put on some fake scratchy “I'm about to die” voice, while John and I
made funny faces and joked her. She finished the call from her bedroom to keep from laughing. Plus, she didn't want Jazz to see her lying, even though something told me that Jazz already knew about calling out sick, and how most people aren't really sick.

Then John and I cooked the ladies breakfast. Pancakes, eggs, sausage, and orange juice. John insisted that I learn his pancake technique. By the way, he still calls pancakes “flapjacks,” which is hilarious. He's got a whole thing when it comes to flipping them. He counts to eighty-seven, and then he flips the pancake by tossing it in the pan. He said eighty-seven seconds got them to be perfect golden brown, and I must admit, most of them were perfect. The only thing is, most of them also ended up on the floor, on the counter, in the sink, everywhere but back in the pan. After a while he got frustrated and a little embarrassed, and just started using a spatula like everyone else. Jazz and Doris nearly passed out from laughing so hard, but as the chef's assistant, I did my best to keep a straight face.

The rest of the day we all just loafed around, talking trash and flipping through page after page of Jazz's scrapbook. Even Doris looked at them. It was cool to see all the images Jazz had created, from Mom and Dad standing on top of a whale in the middle of the ocean, to all of us standing in front of the pyramids in Egypt.

“What's this one?” Doris asked, studying a page that looked way different from the rest.

Jazz leaned over. “Oh, that's you and Dad on the moon.”

Mom smiled and yelped, “The moon?” and held the book up so we all could get a better look. It definitely was a strange picture. You couldn't really tell it was Doris and John at all. It just looked like four arms and four legs, connected to one big astronaut helmet. Doris continued, “Well, why do we look like that?”

I almost snotted trying to hold in a laugh.

Jazz rolled her eyes at me and explained, “See, when I was making this one, I realized that y'all wouldn't be able to breathe on the moon. So I needed to find pictures of astronaut helmets to give you. But I could only find one. So I had to make y'all share it.” Jazz examined the page. “Didn't come out perfect, but—”

“Yes, it did, sweetie,” Doris said, nodding. “It's perfect. The only thing is, your daddy got a big ol' head, so I don't know if mine could really squeeze in there with his.”

We all laughed, except John, who reached over and turned to the next page.

Later my mother surprised all of us by announcing that she was cooking dinner. Though we had already spent most of the day snacking, it was still a pretty awesome announcement, and we all were shocked by it. It's not that she couldn't cook. As a matter of fact, she could whip up some of the best food anybody on earth ever had, with any kind of meat, a can of chicken broth, a head of lettuce, some olive oil, and some Season-All. But she was out of practice. She never cooked. She was always working, and when she wasn't, Sundays, she was too busy resting to worry about making us food. That's
why she taught Jazz how to cook so young. But on this day, a Saturday, a “sick day,” she decided that she would cook dinner, but she wouldn't tell us what she was going to make. We all took guesses, but she wouldn't crack. She wanted it to be a surprise.

Me, Jazz, and John sat outside on the stoop, while my mother walked around the corner to the store to buy whatever she needed for the special dinner. The sun was coming down and had just tucked itself behind the brownstones. It was a beautiful Brooklyn summer evening, the hydrant spraying water all over everything, the sidewalk, the cars, the kids. All the little girls, hair dripping, poofed up and frizzy. The boys were soaked, their jean shorts now baggier than normal. The ice-cream truck was parked in the middle of the block, engine off, annoying song chiming over and over again, as babies jumped off the bottom step of their stoops and ran over with their change to bargain for a Rocket Pop.

It was so hot that it seemed like the air was sweating. But it was still a perfect time to be outside. It was like watching our neighborhood tick for the first time. It's funny, I think that may have been Jazz's first time ever sitting on the stoop with me. And I know for sure it was our father's first time sitting on the stoop with us. Doesn't seem like it would be a big deal, but I know that to all three of us it was the biggest deal ever.

A door slammed.

I turned to my left, and there was Noodles standing at the top of his stoop. He squinted and put his hand up to his forehead like an army salute, to block the sun. He looked out onto
our block, the kids, the elders, the craziness and the strange calm of it all. He glanced over at me and noticed Jazz and our dad sitting one step down. He looked at us with a weird expression on his face, but it wasn't the usual “I hate my life and I wish I was you” look. This time it was more of a look of embarrassment. Like we had caught him stealing.

We caught eyes as he struggled to get one of his folded-up comics out of his pocket. I wasn't necessarily angry anymore, and honestly, I admit that I was actually kinda glad to see him, even though it was mad awkward. I just didn't know what to say to him. It had been a few days since everything went down, and when you're used to hanging out with a person every single day, a few days off can sometimes seem more like a few months. It felt like in those two or three days I had changed, or at least part of me had changed, somehow. Like, I knew more than I had before, in a lot of ways. All I could do was hope the same was happening to him. But there was no way to tell, and I wasn't really in the mood to talk about none of it. I was having the best day ever and wasn't in the mood for no drama.

But my dad, as cool as he can be, is still a dad. And he does what dads do.

“Roland?” John said. It cracked me up when people called Noodles by his government name. John didn't even call him that normally, but that day he decided to. Maybe it was some sort of, like, symbolic thing he was trying to do. Maybe he was making the point that he was talking to him as John the adult, an elder, not as a friend or coolish kind-of-father dude.

“How you doing, son?” he continued.

Noodles took a seat on the step, second to the top. Needles's seat.

“Fine,” he said softly.

“Good, good.”

Thick silence.

A door opened, this time behind me.

“Look at y'all, looking like a perfect scene from a Spike Lee movie.” It was Ms. Brenda, dressed all up in her Saturday's best, which was the same as her Friday's best, except on Saturday she wore sandals with a heel. Fridays, no heel. Oh, and Saturdays was always red lipstick day, and for some reason that kinda made sense to me.

“Hi, Ms. Brenda!” Jazz said, excited to see her.

“Jazmine, honey, how are you?” Ms. Brenda asked. She was always so sweet.

“Fine,” Jazz said.

“You looking after these three boys?”

“Yes,” Jazz said, her face all proud.

“Good, 'cause Lord knows they need it!” Ms. Brenda laughed.

My dad laughed too.

“Come on, Brenda, we ain't that bad, are we?”

Ms. Brenda looked at him like he had a third eye and a third lip.

“Dang. You tough!”

Ms. Brenda smiled, chuckling to herself, while squeezing past us.

The sun was sinking down a little more, and the streetlights started to buzz and fade in. I guess my father could sense the tension between Noodles and me. We all could probably feel it. So, John did what parents do—he minded my business. Which normally would've pissed me off, but how could I really be mad after he “minded my business” the day before?

“Come here, Roland,” he said, stretching to see over the stone stoop banister. Noodles sat slumped like a defeated king on a broken throne. When my father called him, he slowly stood. I didn't look over at him, but I could tell he was moving slowly. I was focused on the back of my father's head. I was probably trying to see if I could get a glimpse of what in the world was on his mind, even though I already knew. He was about to try to play Mr. Fix-a-Friendship, which I wasn't really down with. I just felt like maybe it would fix itself over time, and that there was no need for my father to stick his nose in it.

I caught Noodles in the corner of my eye as he sort of limped down the steps.

“Sit down,” my father demanded, bumping Jazz over to make more space beside him on the step.

Noodles eased down onto the concrete slab.

“How's he doing, your brother?”

“He's okay. Better.”

“Did you do everything Kim said? Keep his bandages clean and all that stuff? She wrote you a list, right?”

“Yeah, I stuck to it.”

“Good.”

Noodles glanced up at me. I looked down at him.

Thick silence, again.

A few minutes later my mother came bopping down the street, trying her best to steer a shopping cart with a wobbly wheel. My father looked at her with squinted eyes, then shook his head.

“That's Ma?” Jazz said, standing up to get a better look.

“Yeah, that's her.”

My mother pushed the cart like she was walking a big dog, a Rottweiler. She was all over the sidewalk, swerving and yanking every which way, the plastic bag handles flapping in the wind like white flags. It was quite a scene.

“Hey, y'all,” she said, out of breath. “I had too much stuff to try to carry it all home, so Manu, you know, Manu who be outside straightening up the carts? He told me to just take one and bring it back.”

Then my mother looked at Noodles.

“Hey, Noodles.” She smiled.

“Hi, Ms. Doris.”

“How you, son?”

“Fine.”

My mother looked at my father and communicated something to him without speaking. Some secret ESP parent thing. Then she turned back to Noodles. “Good. Come up for some dinner later, if you want. I'll make your brother a plate too,” she added, stepping past him and patting him on the head. The pat was harder than a “cute little kid” pat. It was more
jokey. More of a “You better come to dinner” type of thing, which I definitely wasn't expecting. It was like my parents had turned on me.

Noodles managed a little smile and scooted over to let her pass. When she got to the door, she asked John to bring the bags up, and told Jazz to help.

“And Ali, you and Noodles take that cart back around to the store. I told Manu I would bring it right back.” Doris smirked and turned toward the door. Just before she went in, she turned back around. “By the way, it's barbecue chicken tonight.”

John literally jumped up in the air, he was so happy. I was pretty happy too. It was my favorite, and I had no idea until right then that it was his favorite too.

I pushed the wobbly cart up the block. By now it was dark, and the streetlights were like spotlights highlighting fire hydrants, and kids out after curfew. Noodles walked a few feet away from me. I could tell he didn't want to be doing this, but no way was he saying no to Doris. We didn't say nothing to each other until we got to the top of the block, and we waited for the light to change.

“Stupid wheel,” I said, giving the cart a shake. I had to say something.

“Yeah, Manu should go ahead and trash this one,” Noodles agreed.

“Right.”

The light changed.

We headed for the supermarket and didn't say another word to each other until we started walking back.