Victor Lavalle - Slapboxing with Jesus

Malik and me with five dollars to spend was a wonderful, wonderful thing. Malik revealed that Lincoln occasionally on the way to the store; I was young enough to believe that it alone was the source of a certain freedom. That five hundred pennies made us affluent.

I told him, — At Manaro’s they got Now & Laters for cheap.

He had almost no eyebrows. He frowned often. He asked, — What the fuck you want to go out there for?

— I just told you. Now & Laters. Cheap.

Malik waited on the corner. Down the block was GinaRose, where candy was higher priced but safe to buy. Six blocks to Manaro’s. I could convince that kid to do anything if I smiled enough. I was persuasive.

The Italian kids ran blocks as well as the rest of us. Manaro’s was theirs; a place that sold candy, magazines, deli food and drinks, most neighborhoods have a few. But in Flushing everything was tightly packed so that from the air you’d think integration, but down at sidewalk level, segregated was the rule. No one complained about borders except when they were crossed. That shit was suicide.

So me and Malik were suicidal over candy.

We passed the little businesses: pastry shops and liquor stores. Old women paced the blocks in groups of two to four, staring at us in simple amazement because everyone knew the general rules. By the time we reached Manaro’s we were moving at a slow jog.

Inside, old men were talking in their various native tongues; only the trained ear could detect the momentary pause and assessment when Malik and I entered. We proceeded to fill our hands. The man behind the counter counted what we gave him, told us a price. I put some of the candy in my pockets. Malik knew the routine: put the five in the man’s hand, forget reciprocal courtesy and pick up the change dropped on the countertop. This shit had been the practice since my Aunty Pecola was a girl. The store smelled of the egg-plants being cooked in the back. The gathered men talked louder and we were reminded, in this way, to go.

We were out man, ghost.

Everything would have been fine, we’d have been back on our street laughing at how simple it had been if they hadn’t opened a comic-book shop.

— Fuck.

Who said it first? I don’t know, but there we were, pressed to the front window, chins against the light splotches of dirt that had not been washed away. Malik had three dollars left. His face, reflected in the glass, was as happy as mine. The kind behind us were less cheerful.

I turned. Malik turned. One of these boys started talking shit. I knew him. From school. We were better friends there than on the street, most of us were. This kid had very short arms, a face like the back of a fridge; he did book reports that made teachers cry — with illustrations and legible handwriting. Danny.

We got running.

We ran.

Fast.

Them catching me was the sensation where you feel the pain before it gets there. These kids who were all boredom or brainlessness had me around the neck, on my legs. They led me and Malik down the streets like we were trophies. We passed the GreenPoint Savings Bank where my mother often did transactions. When with her, I was safe; adults were your traveling papers, signed, the only way you were going to fly out of Casablanca.

As we came to Flushing Meadows Park it seemed, in my limited vision, that their numbers had doubled. I had been trying to escape, but the kid with his limb around my throat only held tighter when I moved. More when I screamed. It was the same for my boy, so eventually we lay in their arms limp and silent.

You could look forward to a specialized torment depending on who got their hands on you. If you were on our block, the Universal Beatdown was the practice: seven-on-one, thirteen-on-three; fair fights had gone out of style in ’78, when I was six. By ’82 we had all developed, grown. And these kids, the Italians, had the pole.

It wasn’t a specific one, any basketball court had the proper equipment. Some silver twelve-foot monster. This bunch was talking but I was not eavesdropping. I was hearing only me and my concerns: those Now & Laters spilling from my pockets, their light taps on the concrete almost lost in all the footsteps.

So we got the poling. The whole thing: legs spread, a guy at either foot, pulling; another boy lifting your shoulders, pushing; the pole and nuts connecting. The pain. The screaming. The more pain as pole and balls were reintroduced. The crying.

They left.

On my back the world above seemed infinite. I lay there understanding how I might exist as an eight-inch man: the planet would not be big, it would be colossal; there would be no exploration of the outer atmospheres, the tops of trees might suffice. From here I could see out of the park, to the intersection nearby — to the arm of that pole reaching out over the road and at its tip the traffic light shining like a terrific gold medallion.

My face was under tears; I managed to roll left, see Malik, who was similar. His eyes were closed. My dick was so full of heat I thought it might be bleeding. The throbbing attacked my stomach, the tops of my legs. I tried to explain this to Malik for some reason, but couldn’t find any words. I had lost my breath.

This was the give and take of all our ethnic wars. We were the future janitors and supermarket managers, plumber’s assistants and deliverymen of the United States. Flushing is not like this anymore. A civilization has been lost. Minor Herodotus I will be, in remembering it all; our lives, to me, are important artifacts.

My mother walked in on us rubbing each other on my tenth birthday. I was supposed to see a movie with my uncle. There was no party because it was a weekday. To her it must have looked like Malik and I were dancing, his back against the wall. We weren’t touching, not most of us. That’s what it was like.

When the door opened I didn’t hear it. The sound the carpet made brushing up against the door bottom didn’t warn me of anything. There had never been a lock, but when my mother pulled at my arm I fell onto my bed, thinking, How did she get in here? Malik stood against the wall with his eyes closed and his lip bit. Like silent movie reels, scenes skipped by: my mother putting her arm around Malik’s neck, my mother and Malik leaving the bedroom, me following them; my mother slamming the front door and locking it, pushing me into the bedroom and pulling the door closed from the outside. — Stay in there, she said woodenly through the wall; I crawled backward, wrapping my sheets around me.

I didn’t realize I had fallen asleep until Uncle Isaac was shaking me awake.

He sat on the edge of my bed with his back to me. He turned and looked over his shoulder. — Your mother tells me something happened today.

I stared at his short afro my mom said all jobs found acceptable. He moved like he was going to face me but then he wouldn’t. I wished I had heat vision so I could burn a hole through his skull and all the things he’d been told could leak out onto my bedspread. Then I could soak it all up and throw the cover out the window, out of our lives forever and he wouldn’t have to look at me the way he did when he finally turned around. — Instead of a movie, he said, let’s go play some basketball.

I nodded, tied sneakers in silence; he watched me.

Outside, my uncle bounced the ball like a pro. He wore his loafers, slacks, a button-down shirt, but he moved like a kid.

— Anthony!

My friends were climbing the parking lot fence across the street. It was the place kids could go to do football or stickball without having to stop every time a car came crawling down the block. I waved. They forgot about me as they disappeared over the chain-link. I looked up at my uncle, thought of asking him if I could go with them, but I was afraid of this motherfucker when he was in a good mood. It seemed like the same fat garbage floated before all the apartment buildings; in snowy winters when the mounds were covered in white, we’d scale them like tiny Matterhorns. I waved away some flies.