Buck Read online

  How are you? Anaheim is okay but I still want to move out of California. The people in California are very mean to me and the police are everywhere and the KKK and the racists are all harassing me and threatening me and they want to take me to jail and kill me … and I’m mixed! So this is going to be a very depressing and not good summer! But when it’s not summer I feel happy, not scared and depressed! But what’s really hurtful is that Mom and Dad don’t believe me about the police and racists are after me in California trying to kill me and put me in jail or a mental institution or hospital!! :-( And I didn’t do anything. I’m innocent! I definitely don’t want to go to jail because jail is the end of the world! And they would keep me there till the end of time. So pray for me! Nobody believes me. Mom and Dad don’t believe me. Well just wait until they see what I do to them! Ha-ha.

  Tomorrow I’ll call a place I saw on TV for my inventions. I invent things or just think of inventions. Anyway pray that they go well.

  I’ve still been doing our genealogy! I found out on my mom’s side not only do I have English and Welsh royalty, I have French royalty too! Told Dad too! I’m related to the Earl of Sydney (1055–1088). His name was William de Wanenne. And we’re from the Wanenne family who settled in New England in the early 1600s. As well as being related to Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin, and President Ulysses S. Grant. Isn’t that cool? I think it’s way cool!

  On Dad’s side we’re Spanish and Irish, from the Wilkins family, and we’re related to Hernando de Soto. We’re also related to the Kennedys from Boston. What a shocker! But I’m happy that I’m Irish.

  Well, gotta go, bye!

  P.S. The KKK bring their dogs down my street so that they can bite me on purpose. I gotta get out of the USA and move to another country, and I gotta get out before I get bitten and die. They don’t want to see me rich either.

  P.S.S. The reason why my mom doesn’t believe me is because her mom didn’t believe her!

  “My sister’s not around,” is all I tell Roach. That’s the most he deserves.

  “And what about your mom?” He already knows where she is. The other day my dad got in touch with my school and told them what’s going on. Now he’s playing dumb, trying to embarrass me.

  “Where is she, huh? Where’s your mom?”

  “Fuck you,” I say, looking forward to suspension.

  * * *

  * “Fuck tha Police,” N.W.A, 1988.

  5

  Open Secrets

  They steal my mom away on the same day Tupac dies. It’s the middle of the night when I hear the back door slam hard. I look out the window. I can’t believe he’s dead. The greatest rapper ever, dead at twenty-five. Midnight downpour. I watch the lines of rain streak across the angelic glow of street lights. Flecks of rain dot the window.

  My mom is wearing the flowy cream nightgown she sleeps in. My dad eases her into the passenger seat of his two-door Nissan and sprints around to the driver’s side. The headlights pop up like goggles and the coupe skids off into the wet night.

  I heard a rumor I died, murdered in cold blood dramatized

  Pictures of me in my final stages, you know mama cried*

  The next morning, I see my dad on my way to school. He’s got bags in both hands, on his way somewhere, someplace.

  “Your mother’s in the hospital.”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “She’s … sick.”

  “Well, can I see her?”

  “Not yet.”

  “How long is she going to be there for?”

  “I don’t know. Until she gets better.”

  “But what’s wrong with her? Like exactly?”

  “It’s up here,” he says, fingering his temple, “and right here,” touching his heart.

  “What hospital?”

  “One you’ve never heard of,” he says. He tells me that he has to bounce for a few days and that my cousin Kianna is coming to stay with me. Then he gives me the phone number to the hospital.

  I call … “Philadelphia Psychiatric Center.” I hang up—fuck.

  Kianna tells me that my mom tried to kill herself.

  And through all the motherfuckin pain

  They done drove my moms in-sane†

  When my dad is gone, I snoop through their room. I pull out his double-barreled shotgun. Load it. Feels way heavier loaded. In the mirror hanging on the closest door, I point the 12-gauge right at my face. I wonder what would happen if I pulled the trigger? If I killed my reflection?

  I move to my mom’s stuff, find her journal.

  I think about how much I love her, but how we don’t really speak. I come in when I come in. She’s in her chair with the TV on, watching Cops or Murder, She Wrote, with her pills and her water and empty ice cream containers and folded newspapers. She reads four newspapers every day: Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, Philadelphia Tribune, and New York Times.

  The journal is heavy to be so little. Does ink weigh that much? Can ink weigh that much?

  “Letters to Carole” is written on the cover. Carole was her name before Amina.

  I open it and see names everywhere: mine, my dad’s, Uzi’s. My heart speeds and sinks. I close it fast, scared of what it might say.

  I want to open it again. I know it’s wrong, I know I shouldn’t, but I have to. She never tells me what’s up with her, so now the matter’s in my hands. Maybe this is our chance, my chance … I open it and hear my mom’s voice for the first time in a long time: My first attempt at suicide was at twelve. I tried to overdose … My scars are symbols of a terrible beauty that speaks to life … Malo will leave soon, like I did, and never come back …

  These are her private thoughts. Close it. I miss her voice, though. Miss her.

  Open …

  Dear Carole,

  I never took drugs even though they were all around me. I don’t really count smoking weed as a drug but Bob was a heroin addict and my brother, Jabbar, has been a crack addict on and off, so I know drugs. But the drugs prescribed for my depression are a different story. They serve the same purpose as crack or heroin, a way of escaping, of turning away from the pain and an excuse to leave the planet momentarily. My drugs are legal but the result, the high, feels the same. It doesn’t make much sense to me that a doctor could know what medicine to give someone for depression anyway. Depression is so specific, so historical and so particular, how could a pill deal with all that? The pills don’t deal with any of that.

  All they do is make the time go by dulling my senses and making me sleep. Taking my meds is like putting a sign on my door that says Unavailable. It works. The only person to ignore the sign is Malo. At least when he was younger, he ignored the sign, but now, as a teenager, he keeps his distance and tells other people, “Mom don’t feel well.” Malo is staring at a woman who doesn’t seem herself. It’s not that I’m not myself, but I have buried myself so that I don’t feel any pain. Daudi doesn’t get it and it makes him angry. Malo accepts it even if he doesn’t get it. I’m in my bedroom, either in bed or in my chair, but always out of commission. I’m in a fog and I prefer it that way.

  There are moments when I can function but the point is I don’t want to function. I want no part of this life. The pills aid my escape. Sometimes I take more than I’m supposed to.

  No one knows what I’m taking, just the doctor. I keep stockpiles, always making allowances for that day when I might need to permanently “leave.” “Leaving” has been on my mind most of my life. My first attempt at suicide was at twelve. I tried to overdose on aspirins. I was eighteen when I tried again. I took an overdose of pills. I was hospitalized. I didn’t tell my family. So now I have my stash just in case I need to permanently check out.

  Chaka believes that medicine can cure anything, I know better. He’s always so encouraged every time the doctor prescribes a new medicine. “This will work” is his mantra, and so off I go into another world until I tire of the charade and stop taking the medication. It isn’t that the
medication doesn’t work, but it doesn’t work the way that Chaka wants it to work. It doesn’t work the way that I want it to work. He wants magic, a pill that can make me new again. But just like me, that pill doesn’t exist.

  Sitting in my chair in my bedroom, the world comes and goes. Malo comes and goes, often without stopping by my bedroom or saying a word. Chaka comes and goes, making sure he leaves in the morning when I’m asleep and comes home so late at night when I’m sure to be asleep. What he doesn’t know is that I’m not asleep. Knowing that he wants me to be asleep, I pretend to be asleep. It makes things easier for both of us.

  If my family knows that I’m on medication, they don’t say anything. The only thing that they know is that I don’t come up to the Bronx anymore or talk to anyone. There is no intervention, nor does anyone say, “What the hell is going on?” That would be comforting. It would mean that someone is looking out for me, willing to stand up for me and perhaps even go to bat for me. Who do I go to when I’m tired or needy? I can nuzzle my face in Malo’s chest, and that always makes me feel a little better, but I can’t talk to him. I can’t talk to Chaka unless it’s about Afrocentricity or The Movement or telling him I’m getting better.

  What does “better” mean, anyway? Does it mean healed? Does it mean changed? Better doesn’t mean anything, and if better came through the door, no one would recognize it—and worse, it would be unwelcome.

  The escape I yearn for is real. I want to escape the harsh upbringing of my childhood and a mother who blamed me for our poverty. I want to escape a husband who promised to take care of me and instead I was taking care of him. I want to escape a world that seemed to have broken every promise made in my dreams.

  God, give me strength.

  Amina

  * * *

  * “Ain’t Hard to Find,” 2Pac, 1996.

  † “Streiht Up Menace,” MC Eiht, 1993.

  6

  Ginga

  I’m at Broad and Olney, the station where I catch the bus and the sub, after school with Amir and my two other boys, Kam and Ryan. We’re posted up in front of Mickey D’s, thumbs in backpack straps, inhaling the scene. I’m cracking up because Amir and Ryan are busting on each other, tit for tat.

  “Ya mom so stupid it took her five hours to watch 60 Minutes.”

  “Ya mom so short she poses for trophies.”

  We bust on each other because we fucks with each other, ’cause we love each other. It’s just like how Joey Merlino and the Italian mob in South Philly slap each other’s faces—La Cosa Nostra, crew love. Amir is the reigning bust champion, he’s slap-your-thighs-tilt-ya-head-back-make-ya-stomach-hurt funny.

  Kam puts his hands up to me and we slap-box. I catch him, he catches me, our hands flicking out fast at each other like snake tongues.

  Broad and Olney has everything and everybody happening at the same time.

  “Ya mom so dumb she thought a quarterback was a refund.”

  “Ya mom so dumb she thought St. Ides was a church.”

  You got the Hebrew Israelites on soapboxes with bullhorns, dressed like low-budget pharaohs, Bibles flapping in the wind like flags, screaming about how the original Jews are blacks and disciples and prophets and whatever.

  “Ya mom feet so big her sneaks need license plates.”

  “Ya mom so stupid I told her it was chilly outside … she grabbed a spoon.”

  The hack cab guys—old heads with windbreakers and Kangols and canes and chew sticks—posted up, saying “Hack cab, hack cab, hack cab” to everyone that walks by. The people at the top of the escalator passing out flyers and pamphlets to anybody who’ll take one.

  “Ya mom so fat she sweat gravy.”

  “Ya mom so fat she got baptized at Sea World.”

  The tired sighs of Septa buses, here, there, all around, braking and letting people out—pshhhhhh. Music floating from the cars stopped at the light, from the urban wear spots with their iron-bar doors opening and closing, from this lady with the headphones who just got off work humming to Keith Sweat, and from the music already in my head.

  “Ya mom so black she sweat Pepsi … She fart smoke … She go to funerals naked … Lightning bugs follow her during the day.”

  “Ya mom so black she sweat Yoo-hoo … She pee coffee … She bleed oil … She goes to night school and gets marked absent.”

  The hustlemans trying to sell everything, anything: black soap, white tees, incense, bootleg movies, weed, kufis, socks, watches and sunglasses from China, noni juice, Omar Tyree paperbacks, bean pies, pretzels, body oils, whatever moves, whatever flips. Dirty fat pigeons flapping above us all.

  And B & O is full of girls, jawns. Our game is to see who can pull the most numbers. Girls gloss by. I love them all. Each girl, like her own planet, with her own orbit, moon, sun, rotation. Sometimes they throw me a little rhythm. Gravitational pull.

  “Would you hit it?” Amir asks, pointing with his head. She’s got on skintight Guess jeans and a leather bomber. From the side, her ass looks like a capital C.

  “Dayum,” Ryan says as she walks by, “I’d tear it up.”

  “Excuse me? Tear what up?” She stops, spins. Ryan just stands there, shook. “You wouldn’t know what to do with this, little boy,” she cracks, sizing him up, laughing as she swishes away. We all bust out laughing.

  “Little boy? I got your little boy, all right. Got your little boy right here,” he yells, grabbing his sack. But he knows she can’t hear him or see him.

  “She played you,” I say.

  “Man, I’d have that jawn screaming my name, calling me daddy and everything.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Fucking real.” He faces the wall and acts like he’s fucking her against it. He folds his arms and lets his fingers crawl up his back as if they were hers. “Have her like, ‘Oooh, ah, oooh, papi chulo, give me that big dick, this is your pussy, daddy.’ ”

  “Look, look, look,” Kam says under his breath, pointing where I’m already looking.

  I spot her getting off the bus. Her skin glitters in the after-school sun. Gentle eyes—I catch them.

  “Holla at her.” He nudges me.

  “Who, her?” I say like I can’t see her. But she’s all I see.

  “Yeah … with the uniform.”

  Her face is soft, round and golden like my grandma’s pancakes. I glance down at my sneaks. Jawns always peep your footwear first; Kianna taught me that. A few scuffs on my Timbs ain’t stopping this train.

  Feel the good vibrations

  So many females, so much inspiration*

  I’m learning how to talk to girls. There’s an art to it. It’s not about spitting some recycled lines. Philly girls hear the same lines all day like the chorus from a radio single:

  Shawty, let me holla at you for a minute …

  How you doin’, baby?…

  What’s up with me and you, sweetheart?…

  Let me get them digits, yo …

  What’s good, ma?… What’s really good, ma?… What’s really really good?…

  I’m saying, though, I’m tryna see you like that …

  Excuse me, miss. Let me whisper in your ear.

  All that shit is dead. Getting girls is really about Ginga.

  Ginga is what separates the Brazilians from the rest of the world in soccer. Uzi broke it down for me one day when we were watching SportsCenter. They were showing highlights of Brazil’s team.

  “Peep the way they play, peep their rhythm. That’s Ginga! It’s an attitude, a way of life, like soul, style, and swag all rolled into one. It’s not just how you move, it’s when you move, where you move, and why you move. Ging-ga! Nig-ga!”

  When it comes to girls, you gotta have Ginga. Ginga gives you that bop in your step. Uzi told me: “Approach everything—the way you walk, talk, dance—with the right combination of toes, heels, and hips and you’ll be in there like swimwear.”

  She floats down into the subway tunnel.

  “Ging-ga,” I say to myself as I jog down
the stairs after her. As I approach, we catch eyes and suddenly I’m nervous.

  “Hey, what’s up,” I say, my voice cracking like a piano. I can feel my homies peering from above, waiting to see if I’ll be shot down.

  “Hi … and bye,” she says as the southbound Orange Line rumbles in. “This is my train.” She swipes her TransPass and keeps moving.

  I look up and see my boys laughing, pointing at me. I see the girl getting away, boarding the sub. What if I never see her again? I flash my homies the peace sign and hop the turnstile …

  “This is my train too,” I say, sitting next to her. “What’s your name?”

  “Nia. You?”

  “Malo,” I tell her as the train kicks, bucks, and clacks over the tracks.

  “Malo?” she says, surprised. “I’m taking Spanish … You know what your name means in Spanish?”

  “Nah, what?”

  “Erie Avenue,” the conductor’s voice crackles through the speakers. “Erie Avenue.”

  My full name—Khumalo—means “prince” in Zulu. My parents changed their names back in the day.

  “We didn’t want slave names anymore,” is how my dad explains it. “When black people came to America, we didn’t have names like John and Bill and all that. They sold us like beasts, counting our teeth, feeling our testicles, testing the luster or dullness of our skin, changing our names, our religions, customs. Carrying the names of those who enslaved your ancestors is a constant reminder of a lack of self-determination, a badge of conquest. Having an English name and not looking like an English person plagued me most of my early life. I resented it since I can remember. Mature people give themselves names from their history and culture; others are like pets that are given names. We can name ourselves.” So they went from Arthur Lee Smith and Carole Ann Welsh to Chaka and Amina Asante. And just like they chose their name, I choose mine—Malo.

  “It means ‘bad,’ ” she says. “Are you bad?” She laughs. I just look at her.