Victor Lavalle - Slapboxing with Jesus

Ahead, Mark was screaming. For us. Chuckie too. We got closer quickly. Beyond them all the setting sun’s flames were running down to an orange gasp on the horizon. Two sweaty boys gripped one set of handlebars each. They were old enough to buy beer. Smiling and Laughing, that might as well have been their names. One said, — Come on, let us ride them once.

Mark said, — I gotta get home, man. He sounded like he was going to cry.

— Me and my friend just want to ride around the corner, said the other one. Smiling.

— We gotta help them, Jung pleaded. He had invited them along so what else could he say? We weren’t fifteen feet off. The two thieves hadn’t noticed us, didn’t look even as we crossed the street: moving away. Chuckie and Mark were on their own.

The trees all around had been season-stripped of every leaf; pulsing winds made the branches crash and shake like hands applauding. Mark turned to us, then Chuckie, they took a moment to stare. Only the arms of the older duo moved as they tugged and jerked the bikes. We heard yelling. The chain-link fence surrounding an old home swayed loosely, its rattle a language. — Guys, Jung tried again. We should really go over and help.

— Will you shut the fuck up, I said. I was afraid the way people must be during a hurricane, thinking, Will it come for me? I had seen fights, started and lost them, I wasn’t a novice. But this was a beating.

Mark was thrown off his bike. Next Chuckie. Then the tall one was kicking Chuckie in the head. Mark got up and ran — not toward us, just away. I couldn’t tell you how long those guys worked on Chuckie. It was a few minutes. Even one or two are very long. The blood started coming. I didn’t know a face had so much. Helping was still an option for the others, but not me; it could have been Jung getting beat, my own father; many people would call me the betrayer, often, but that was because they’d mistaken me for a friend when I was just hanging around. There was only one kid I ever cared for and his name wasn’t Chuckie. It wasn’t any of these guys.

When a loud — pop- echoed from across the street I didn’t flinch, wasn’t even sure it had come from nearby.

Ten is too young to learn how you are. That you wouldn’t run for the ambulance, as all my friends did, while Chuckie clutched at his eye like his very own soul was in danger of escaping. Booth Memorial didn’t send an ambulance quickly. To the right, in the park, squirrels appeared, ruthlessly picking at the ground for food; from where I stood their quick little hops were even more graceful; when they ate energetically they seemed to be on their knees, paws forward in a frantic prayer.

Of the four of us I was the yellow one, getting closer and closer to brown; sunlight burned down so hot I wasn’t sure if it was a punishment or a blessing.

Vaughn was a coolie and that red-brown skin of his matched his bright new bike; the one saying, My mummy has money, every time a wind blew and sent the rainbow-colored tassels on his handlebars flying. Orpheus had called it a bitchy bike when we’d first witnessed it, but what he’d meant to say was, I wish it was mine. Those two were the same age as me; our last member was Orpheus’s little brother, Caesar, who rode far back, two years behind us; he was eight. Caesar pumped his skinny little legs harder to catch up, as though he could pedal his way to our maturity.

My bike was new too, but not as fancy. Back in New York I would have beat up kids who rode things as nice as what I now had. Me and my boys would have kicked his ass twice. But in Trinidad it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t about my mother the secretary who couldn’t afford much. Here it was Aunty Barbara who paid; she had all that loot from the dead doctor, a husband who had insured that money would never be the problem. Orpheus and Caesar had bikes like the one leaning behind my couch in Flushing, Queens. Their mother, Lucille, cleaned house for my Aunty, Vaughn’s mom and others. The four of us had met on Aunty Barbara’s front porch, an evening planned by three kinds of mothers: by birth — Orpheus and Caesar; by law — Vaughn was adopted; and by substitution — that would be mine.

We stopped pedaling when Orpheus complained that his seat was loose. I flopped down in grass beside the dirt road that would lead to the fulfillment of a promise: the best homemade curry goat on the island. Lucille was going to do the cooking. I was anticipatory. — Fix it quick.

— Shut up New York, Orpheus said, both hands on the bike seat, working his weight down. We watched as it sank some, but not enough.

Vaughn’s mother spent money and expected things to last. She hadn’t married a doctor but became one; there were only about ten black women in Trinidad who could say this. Vaughn had to bring his bike home dirt-free and shiny-shiny; even grass trapped in the chain could get him in trouble. His bike stood like it was still in a shop window between mine and Caesar’s, the ones flat on their sides.

We three, on our backs, looked at the sky, thinking our privacies.

Orpheus said, — I’m ready. But no moves were made, doing nothing felt too good. I had known only New York sun my whole life, the one spectacular in the way it erases winter, but I had hardly ever had grass and dirt beneath me, air empty of a million other people’s breaths. The grass rubbed at my back, coarse and half dead from all that light and no rain. Bugs landed on our motionless knees and explored. They attacked the skin, but their bites were still gentler than what I was used to.

Me and Malik had been tight for years. But I had never met his father until that Saturday. Malik and I were nine, lived at the same address. When he’d asked, — You want to meet my father? I’d said, — Sure.

In the lobby, going from my side of the building to his, we passed the old women who got together in groups to cackle. If it was warmer they’d have been on the sidewalk in their lawn chairs. When me and Malik walked through that afternoon they had been there for hours. They wore loose house dresses and, most often, slippers. They pulled back their lips as we passed, ready to talk more shit as soon as we were gone. The long wall to our right had this huge picture of a sunrise, but it never made warmth. In the elevator I asked Malik, — Where’s your dad been?

— I don’t know. He showed up.

I nodded. I hadn’t seen my father my whole life. When I saw some white dude I resembled coming down the block I would ask my mother, — Is that him? She would laugh and say, — Do you see my black ass running? No, she wouldn’t have said the curse, but it was there in the intonation.

At the door to his apartment Malik turned to me. — Call him Mr. Stewart.

— Is that your last name? He looked at me like I wasn’t serious, but I was.

Their apartment was like mine: living room, kitchen, bathroom, one bedroom he shared with his mother like I did mine. There was a second bedroom, but his was always locked; in my apartment, D23, my grandmother slept there, all on her own like a queen. Malik’s place was always dark, his moms had sensitive eyes, a medical condition, kept the curtains drawn. There were safety pins running up them like a stitch. I thought I was in the wrong place for a second because it was full of light. His father sat on the couch. This man said, — Your mother’s taking a nap.

— Okay.

— Who’s this?

— Anthony, I said. Hello, Mr. Stewart.

We shook. — I like that. Malik, go find me some beer.

Malik nodded and disappeared. — Sit down. Mr. Stewart motioned to the couch with his chin. So how old are you?