Wrath White - Yaccub's Curse

Huey was a shy skinny kid who was so pretty you would have thought he was queer if he wasn’t so damned spooky. The kid never smiled. He was like a man trapped inside a boy’s body. Whereas Tank looked like a pro-wrestler in miniature, Huey looked like he should have had a guitar in his hands rather than a knife or a gun. Everyone our age was scared to death of Huey and with good reason.

By the time we all became friends, Huey had already killed another kid in a fight and had just barely avoided juvenile detention, squeaking by on a self-defense plea. His Jui-Jitsu instructor had helped by testifying that Jui-Jitsu was strictly a defensive art and only works to counter attacks. No one else in the courtroom knew enough about Martial Arts to notice that the moves he’d used on the kid had not come from Jui-Jitsu but rather from Muay Thai kickboxing, a brutal offensive art. Luckily, his Muay Thai instructor had not been present to testify.

The more I got to know Huey the more I realized how lucky I had been to have escaped our fight with just a broken jaw. He’d been known to break people’s arms and legs in fights. Who knows what might have happened if I hadn’t run away. The only time I ever saw Huey smile was when I asked him what he might have done to me that day.

I pitied Huey as much as I admired him. He seemed to be perfectly bred for the streets. He was cold and hard, so tormented by the demons in his soul that the horrors on the streets couldn’t phaze him. He walked around like he was just barely aware of the ground under his feet. Even when he was fighting it was like he was barely interested in what he was doing. His eyes always had that far-away look.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen him afraid, but then I can’t ever really remember seeing him happy either. Anger or indifference seemed to be the only emotions he was capable of. Most of my viciousness back then was done mostly just to stay ahead of him. I mean, I couldn’t have fools more afraid of him than me. So, where Huey was fast, clean, and efficient, I was cruel and creative and would brutalize and torture anyone who fucked with me in the most gruesome ways I could think of. Tank once threw up watching me cut the ears off a fifteen year-old boy who had beaten and robbed this little retarded kid named Nate who wasn’t even quite nine yet. I was twelve. That was the same year we met Scratch face to face and also the year my father came back.

— | — | —

Chapter 5

“The poor have become our creators.

The black. The thoroughly ignorant.

Let the combination of morality

And inhumanity begin…”

—Amiri Baraka,

“Short Speech to My Friends”

««—»»

Mom and Grandma were fighting a lot around that time. My mom had started dating again and my Grandma was none too pleased about that. She would call her a slut and say she neglected me. I guess I was partially to blame for it; getting in trouble so much and always bugging my grandmother for snack money, insisting that I was starving. My mom was miserable and I think she went out just to get away from Grandma and maybe even from me too. Whenever she tried to stay home and do what Grandma wanted it was even worse.

“What kind of job you got that you gotta leave heah at six o’clock in the morning and don’t get back ’til six o’clock at night, then still have enough energy to run the streets all night?”

“I don’t run around in the streets all night.”

“Well you damned sure ain’t here taking care of your responsibilities! That boy of yours is half starved all the time. In the streets all hours of the day and night with no supervision. You know what goes on in them streets? If it wasn’t for me you’d probably find him dead somewhere or locked up or on drugs. But I ain’t his mama. That’s your job! People gonna say the boy’s some kind of hoodlum, in the streets all the time, and you know what they gonna say about you. The way you run around it’s no wonder his daddy left.”

“His daddy ain’t leave! You know damn well that I left Darryl and you know why! Malik is well fed and well supervised he just fools you into giving him more money so he can buy junk food that he knows I don’t want him havin’. And the only one who questions my ability to raise a child is you. If it was up to you I’d still be getting my ass kicked by Darryl and then you’d have something to say about that!”

It would go on like that for hours until Mom would finally call one of her boyfriends and disappear for the night. Then one night there was a knock on the door.

“Baby? It’s me. Let me in. We have to talk.”

It was Darryl, my father. He was back and he wanted us back with him. He moved around the corner from us and came by everyday bringing Mom money and flowers and jewelry. He even brought toys for me. Pretty soon, under pressure from Grandma, Mom forgave him and we moved back in with him under promises that there would be no more beatings or drinking. His promises held for about three weeks.

When the beatings started this time they were far more vicious and didn’t just accompany the flashbacks. Anything could bring his rages on. He said that if we tried to leave him this time he would kill us all. Everytime he hit her I would run to get the knife, but I would remember how hard he had struck me last time and fear would sieze me. I would just stand there waving the sharp blade threatening and screaming at the top of my lungs.

“Stop hurtin’ my Momma!”

But I was afraid to attack him. I felt like a coward and could hardly look at either of them in the morning. I couldn’t look at my mom because I had failed her and not at Darryl because I hated him and wished him dead. Huey and Tank knew all about it. They had even been spending the night a couple of times when Darryl had flipped.

Once he kicked both of them out of the house in their pajamas in the dead of winter and their mother had to come pick them up at one o’clock in the morning. She was pissed but knew better than to say anything to Darryl. I never spent the night over at their house because I was afraid to leave Mom alone with Darryl. I was afraid I’d come home to find her tied upside down with her brains leaking out of her ears.

Huey understood. Huey and I used to sit around for hours planning ways to kill the mutherfucker. Huey seemed to take the beatings as hard as I did and was probably the only kid on the block besides myself who didn’t idolize the princely black lion that was my father. Huey and Tank had both begun to look at my mother as if she was their mom too. I guess I looked at Charlotte the same way. We were like siblings and they reacted to me and my mother’s pain as if it were their own.

“I’m glad I don’t have a father.” Huey said to me one day, “No one should have to be forced to grow up with that. It’s a shame that women have to marry men. Men only hurt them. That’s all men are good for is destroying things and hurting people. Us too. That’s all we’re good for and when we get older it will only get worse.”

Huey was always saying deep shit like that. Shit that makes you think, makes you wonder, and, more often than not, makes you sad.

“It doesn’t always have to be like that. You see good dads on TV. I think white kids have good fathers don’t they? Rich kids maybe?”

“Nope. That’s why it’s on TV. Right next to Spiderman and Barney the talking dinosaur. Because that shit is just a fantasy.”

Huey was at my house the day Darryl snapped and tried to murder my mom. It wasn’t another flashback, just a fit of pure meanness. He found some cyanide capsules and tried to force my Mom to take them.

“You gonna try and leave me bitch! I’ve given you everything, you and that bastard kid of yours!”