Robert Tanenbaum: Outrage

“I… I… I…”

“‘I… I…’ nothin’, motherfucker, you’re trying to hook up with my woman, ain’t that right?”

Frightened and under pressure, Felix did what he always did. He agreed. “Yes. I was trying to hook up with Maria Elena.”

“Why, Felix…,” Maria started to say with a smile.

But the black man’s eyes widened and his lip curled up in a sneer. He shoved Felix backward. “Why, you little…”

Whatever he was going to say was cut off when someone grabbed his arm and spun him around. That someone was Alejandro Garcia, who, although six inches shorter than the other man and forty pounds lighter, looked like he was going to go for the bigger man’s throat.

“You got a problem?” Garcia snarled, his eyes fierce.

“Yeah, this joker was messin’ with my girlfriend,” the man said, trying to sound tough, but his voice was guarded.

Garcia looked at Maria Elena. “Was Felix bothering you?”

Maria Elena shook her head. “No, we was just talking.”

The rapper turned to the other man. “They were talking,” he repeated. “No law against that. Now get the fuck out of here.”

“Why should I?” The black man was looking around for support without seeing any.

“Two reasons, pendejo,” Garcia said, moving forward until he was only a few inches from the other man. “One, you pushed and insulted my friend for no reason. Two, if you don’t, I’m going to kick your ass up around your ears. Comprende?”

The black man scowled down at his smaller opponent but made no move. “Fuck this place anyway,” he said. “Come on, Maria, we’re leaving. You don’t need this job.”

“Screw that,” she replied, shaking her head. “I ain’t quittin’ nothing but you, Perry. I’m tired of the macho bullshit.”

Alejandro cocked his head and smiled a most unfriendly smile. “Guess you heard the lady; now get your ass out of here.”

“Yeah,” Felix added. “Guh… guh… get your ass out of here.”

Garcia and Maria both looked at Felix in surprise. Then they both laughed as Perry turned and pushed his way out the front door.

“Watch out, Maria,” Garcia said. “I think Felix is going gangsta on us.”

“I don’t know,” Maria replied with a wink at Felix, who was blushing, grinning, and shifting back and forth from one foot to the other. “I like the new Felix. He’s kind of sexy.”

Garcia looked at his friend and was going to add to the teasing. But Felix had already spun on his heel and was racing for the men’s restroom.

“I think we need to say something to dad.”

“Yeah, right, he’ll go ballistic, heads will roll, and then everybody on the team, including the coach, will hate us. You don’t have to worry about it because you’re riding the pine anyway, but I’m a starter and I’ll never get to play again.”

“I got to play in the last game,” Giancarlo said to his twin, Isaac, who was scowling at him from across the room they shared as they sat on their beds.

“We were ahead twelve-nothing in the bottom of the eighth,” Isaac replied. Bigger, stronger, and faster than Giancarlo, “Zak” hated it when his deep-thinking sibling tweaked his conscience, which just made him get his back up and lash out. “Coach Newell felt sorry for you. And I was pitching a no-hitter… But the point is that if we say something, it’s all going to come crashing down-the team, our run at a state title, my stellar freshman year as the number two pitcher. My whole life will be ruined.”

“You’re being overly dramatic; your ‘whole life’ wouldn’t be ruined,” Giancarlo said, scoffing. “It’s not like you’re going to make the pros anyway.”

“I might,” Zak argued, “but not if I don’t play every year just because some kid is getting a little shit from some of the guys. Most of us have been together as a team since elementary school. He’s a new guy, and he doesn’t fit in very well. They’ll get tired of it. Just wait.”

“They’re making his life miserable because he’s from Mexico,” Giancarlo shot back. “And because he can play. You’ve seen him, he’s good. He’d make a better shortstop than Max Weller, and Max knows it. But Max is Coach Newell’s little pet, so Coach sits Esteban on the bench and then looks the other way while the team bullies the poor guy, trying to get him to quit.”

“Not everybody,” Zak replied sullenly. “I don’t do nothing to him-”

“You mean ‘I don’t do anything to him.’” His twin was genuinely bighearted and fair, but Giancarlo knew that he sometimes needed a little prodding when wrestling with the devil of self-interest.

“Whatever, Miss Molly,” Zak retorted. “But as I was saying, I don’t do nothin’ to him and neither do you. Lots of guys on the team aren’t bothering him.”

“But enough are, and the thing is, none of the rest of us are saying anything about it. I feel guilty, but I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to screw up your dreams, and if I say something on my own, everybody will deny it and I’ll just end up sitting with Esteban on the end of the bench-and probably getting the shit kicked out of me by Max and his sycophants.”

“Well, thanks,” Zak said grudgingly. “And I wouldn’t let Max and these sick whatever-they-ares kick the shit out of you. They’d have to go through me first, and that ain’t going to happen. I’m already taller than Max and I weigh almost as much.”

“Nice to know you got my back,” Giancarlo said, “but not even Super Zak can take on six other guys at the same time. So I hope it doesn’t come to that… I’d hate to see you get the shit kicked out of you to save this pretty face. But the point is, what do we do about the guys bullying Esteban? It’s not just words anymore. Max tripped him as he was going down the stairs to the field on Friday. And Chris Worley threw that beanball at him the other day in batting practice on purpose. He’s going to get hurt.”

“Then maybe he should quit the team,” Zak said, lying back so he wouldn’t have to look at his twin. He stared instead at a poster on the ceiling of legendary Yankee pitcher Whitey Ford. “Or maybe he should transfer to another high school where he’d be more accepted.”

“You mean a low-income, Spanish-speaking, public school,” Giancarlo retorted, shaking his head. “Jesus, Zak, you’re starting to sound like Coach Newell, who’s just a racist with a whistle and a clipboard.”

“We have black guys on the team,” Zak said.

“Because they come from wealthy families with a lot of pull at the school,” Giancarlo retorted, “and we wouldn’t be vying for the state private school title without them. And they’re outfielders and not a threat to Max. But Esteban’s a scholarship student from Brooklyn, takes the train into the city every day just to attend Hudson; nobody’s going to stick up for him.”

“Look, I don’t like it either, but it’s not my job to protect him,” Zak said.

“Then whose job is it?”

Zak’s response was cut short by a knock on the door, which opened to reveal their father.

“Hey, boys,” Karp said to his sons, “lights out pretty soon. Moishe’s coming over tomorrow to talk to you about your project and I want you bright eyed and bushy tailed. Are you guys ready?”

Karp paused. His father sense detected the charged field of tension between his sons. That in itself was nothing new. The boys were identical twins mostly in name only. They shared some physical traits, such as the dark, wavy hair; beautiful, doelike brown eyes; and general Mediterranean facial features of their mother’s Italian heritage. And since they were already more than six feet tall in their freshman year of high school, it looked like they might attain their father’s height. But even the physical similarities went only so far. With his finer features, porcelain skin, and slighter build, Giancarlo was like a more polished version of his more masculine and athletic brother, Isaac.