caramel skin and the only pair of green eyes in the projects that LoRina creamed over as he walked her to the Bloomfield Hills bus (the domestic workers express) singing, “The things I am saying are truuu/ And the way I say them to you/Listen to me/Sha la la la la la la la la means I love you....” I didn’t care that I was black and he was tan. We had the same folks, they loved us both, and I ain’t never kdnked my hair. Takes a high yellow fool to do his hair any ole way and think he can go right back out in public. Darrell, I hope you left that brain of yours to science. When he closed the door and saw us he stopped all that talk about fire and told Soldierboy to hush too. Momma wasn’t fooled. Nobody ever fooled her, least of all Darrell and that nocount Soldierboy. How could they with a news flash every hour (what wasn’t burning in Detroit was smoldering) and the two of them reeking of gasoline? From the living room I could see them carrying on in the kitchen. I igged them nonetheless. Why not? They never paid me no mind. Darrell was up under the sink, Soldierboy scouted the counter next to the stove. He was taller than Darrell which is probably why he got to look on the counter (short people always get the shit jobs). Below Soldierboy’s adams apple was a knotted fist of flesh, looked like a clump of dirt stuck to his neck. When he held his head back you could see a blotch of pink, like a burn, that never healed. Only it was too perfect for a burn, diamond shaped, too perfect for fire. Talking bout, Don’t cry Momma please don’t cry, I’ll be the man you watch and see you know I ’ll be the man. Every time I saw that scar I shuddered and remembered my dream. Viet Cong in rice bowl hats rising from the night onto chain link fences, now over, prowling across the playground mute as mice, deadly as dogs, through the front door, up the stairs, now in my bedroom one of them stuffing my jersey into my mouth, one of them holding me down, another.... My throat is slit if first I don’t wake up. When he went to tearing Momma’s good dish cloth, Darrell grabbed him by the wrist and wanted to know if he had lost his mind. If I don’t tear it, Soldierboy said, it won’t fit in the bottles. Darrell stopped cold. I know he was scared of Momma and our company hearing what Soldierboy just said. Though Momma could see them if she turned sideways, she didn’t even bother, didn’t skip a beat of her conversation with her friend. Igged them both, just like I igged them. That made me feel good. She and her friend sat by the picture window that overlooked torn swingset seats and splinter infested teeter- totters on the project’s playground. When the wineheads got rambunctious they took to busting bottles in it till the glass was too small to break. In the morning the sun hit it so hard you’d swear it was a field of precious stones. I caught Soldierboy getting a fork out of the drawer, then he dug into the plate of food that was waiting for me on the stove. Alright, Soldierboy, don’t have me to come in there and do a Viet Cong on you. Any minute now Soldierboy would be finished with my dinner and today there were no seconds. He knew it was mine, I know he did, cause chickpeas and rice was what I liked best and my plate always had the most soy sauce too. But hungry as I was, common sense was talking to me: a fifteen year old dude is no match for an exMarine. My chickpeas and rice died in Soldierboy’s mouth. If there was any left, I wouldn’t have wanted it, not after Soldierboy done picked all over it, not with the kitchen smelling like a filling station. Even the open window with its streets of horns coming home from work, with its sidewalk songs of little girls skipping rope, and a breeze catching the curtain like a skirt, none of that could blow away those fumes. And me, still hungry for my chickpeas, rice and soy sauce. Thank God for Sister Miriam X. A sister in the Nation of Islam, who sat next to Momma with a tray of bean pies. We got to know her best when Papa died. For two weeks she came by. She said, not the swine, Mrs. Blakely, don’t serve these boys the swine. Then she took the pork chops off our forks so fast our mouths closed around stainless steel. My plate had a big ole hole in it where the pork chop used to be. It wouldn’t have even mattered if I owned a soy sauce store, I still wouldn’t have had enough to kill my pork chop jones. And Momma too much in sorrow to tell this woman who’s house it is. And me only seven and Darrell twelve and Momma’s face drawn like leather from two days of tears, all strung out and calling through the crying for her hard-work, sweat-back, done-right husband. And Darrell up on his feet to hold her tight but Momma too healthy | or his arms too small to wrap around her. Talking bout, Don’t cry Momma please don’t cry, I’ll be the man you watch and see you know I’ll be the man. And me stirring chickpea islands in a sea of soy sauce; now I’m crying worse than Momma. I shove back from the table, my chair smacks the floor, I run to get up under her, my face in her lap and little Darrell trying to hold us both. Sister X pried Darrell loose, then with hands slender and soft as the first days of fall she guided us back to the table. The wash of tears slowly dried and my eyes unblurred to a clean plate with a big green salad and cucumber slices the size of giant yo-yos. Darrell had one too. I looked at him to see if we should eat it. He nodded, but I wasn’t so sure. Sister X didn't have no dressing out there, just oil and vinegar, and like some bird of prey she swooped down on the salt shaker and placed it up high just as I reached for it. She dried Momma’s eyes, led her upstairs to bed. When she returned Darrell and me was tearing into that salad. He gave me the evil eye meaning, eat slower so she don’t get the idea we like this stuff. When we finished, Darrell washed and I dried while Sister X had herself a cup of coffee and read us the news, along with excerpts of Elijah’s last sermon, from Mohammed Speaks. \Ne went into the living room, Darrell put on his favorite 45 by Jay and the Techniques. Not too loud, she said, don’t want to wake your Momma. Those Muslims frown on the kind of music that’s best to shake your hips to but Papa had died and Sister X was sensitive to our means of laughter and forgetting. It was her music too before she joined the Nation; it’ll be her music when she wants it back again. She sat by the window and congratulated me as I did round-the-moon and walk-the-dog with my glow-in-the dark yo-yo. I even caught her patting her feet as Darrell curled his hands around a pretend microphone and did his little two step, singing, “Strawberry shortcake with cream on top/Your the one who stole it my poor heart, now/Cutest li’l girl I used to chase around the block/ Don’t you remember/’member pretty baby.” For two weeks she came by, regular as the nightshift punching in down to the Chrysler plant. And each time she brought big green salads and hot plates with meatless meals that all Darrell had to do was slide into a warm oven. When she stopped coming on a daily basis we still missed Papa but we were on the downside of grief and, though we didn’t know it, we were vegetarians. Soldierboy dropped my plate in the sink. I heard it break into bitesized pieces. Momma still igged them. Dawg, what’s she waiting for, Soldierboy to bust up the glasses too? I vowed to do fifty hundred push ups every night for a whole year till I turned sixteen when I would lay Soldierboy out. Darrell was looking for rags in the broom closet, thinking about fire, I know he was thinking about fire. I was thinking about how good Sister X’s pies would soon taste. She smiled at me; a mind reader. She had a warm, patient face, shiny as the moist coffee beans Soldierboy brought back from Nam. Unlike Mz. Jules of the AME Baptist Church, who used to send me from my own living room when discussing the doings of a deacon, Sister Miriam X included me in all her talk of the Temple El Shabazz. I was dying to wolf down those pies, but I knew Momma wouldn’t hear of it. It was Sister X’s Ramadan, which meant a lot I didn’t understand—-didn’t nobody understand but those soft talking Muslims —but I knew that the i sister couldn’t eat till sundown and though you could walk in here as funky as Getty Oil, breaking plates in the sink, tearing good dish cloths for Molotov cocktails, no way could you be rude to company. Sister X spoke to us about the Nation of Islam’s farms in Georgia; how peaceful life is when I knew he wasn ’tfool enough to chase me into the maze of the projects where Darrell’s partners could pull him into the shadows and quietly carve hisface beyond recognition. you’re with your own and you have your own. I copped a lean toward the goodies to see if they had grown cold waiting on her to leave. They sat on our coffee table with little damp spots where the waxpaper stuck to the filling. And the rich aroma was talking to me: “Go head D.B., have yourself one. Whose house is it anyway? Yours or Sister X’s? Reach on ; over here and pick us up. Put us in your mouth, son. You hungry ain’t I you? Well, then. Don’t pay your Mom- । ma no mind. A man’s house is his castle and we bean pies say it’s time for the king to greez. Sister X had just reached the farms in Georgia which meant at least twenty more minutes before the crops would be harvested and sent North to Elijah’s restaurants. I heard Darrell say, OK we got enough, let’s book; and I quietly rejoiced—it had been all I could do to keep their fumes from bogarding the smell of treats on the coffee table. Outside a war was going to start again and more than those bean pies I wanted to follow my brother and fight beside him. But I didn’t get up under him like other boys do with their older brothers. When he met Soldierboy, he made it clear he could live without me. I learned my lesson way back when I was twelve. ...If it wasn’t for Soldierboy, Darrell would be here today. With him thirty-two and me twenty-seven, things would be more even now. We’d sit and talk brother to brother instead of leader to tag along. He’d be surprised to see I still had the magazine he gave me for my tenth birthday. The one with twenty-three full page color photos of Wilt Chamberlain scoring 100points in a single game. Then there’s a lot he wouldn’t be surprised about. Like how many times Bill Russell was voted MVP. Darrell had hit the number right on the head. And how in Memphis, they got King. He said that too. Everything came true fust like Darrell told me. And if he was here I’d be his best buddy. Yes I would. Like I was before Soldierboy came. Or if he said, I got one shadow, D.B., and that’s one too many, now scoot! That would be all right too. Anything to bring him back... .Talking-fast, talking-trash, trying to beat you out of your cash. That was Soldierboy. Up from Chicago all by hisself. Fake ID and a job at the Chrysler plant, he was all set till his number came up. How Darrell met him we never knew. It wasn’t like Darrell to run with the men of the plant. All we knew was that after he came Darrell always had as much money as Soldierboy and Darrell was still in school. Enough money to go down to Good Jimmy’s Good Grooming and have his hair konked several times a month. Met him out doing devilment, is what Mz. Jules said. Momma always replied, There’s no such thing as devilment, not to contradict your Bible, honey. She’d refill Mz. Jules coffee cup to show she didn’t mean to signify when she added, Just that certain problems are larger than certain parents. Soldierboy got no folks, Mz. Jules always came back, that talk bout a home in Chicago, a lie to get in here for a hot meal on Sunday. To which he’s welcome, Momma said with just enough venom to change the subject. Mz. Jules spoke into her coffee cup so as to have something other than Momma’s eyes to look at and let it be known she understood the boy was raised by wolves in upstate Michigan. W hen I was twelve, I followed Darrell to the far edge of the St. Antoine projects. I remember it well because of the chill in the air and the wet soot-peppered snow making like an old man’s toupee on the bumpers of cars. One of the five cold days of limbo between Christmas and New Years. The hawk, having sipped on winos, sent north for his kin to come down and greez on my behind. Slush puddles drowned the white balls on the ankles of my red Pro Keds, chilled and soggied my toes, then washed away “Wilt the Stilt ’65:” An hour’s worth of scrawl when I should have been learning times tables. Each step of the way Darrell kept shooing me back; talking bout how he’d see I got an extension-cord whuppin if I didn’t go home. I wasn’t scared. Momma didn’t give extension-cord whuppins. She believed in the Circle of Respect. When we needed to be fussed at she wouldn’t even fuss at us. Instead we put our chairs in a circle in the living room and didn’t nobody leave until we had talked the problem out and were ready to go back to behaving. He crossed the street; right for the gates of Wayne State University. You know we ain’t allowed in there, I yelled, not daring to cross the street myself. By we I meant the we of St. Antoine projects who were the only we of my world. You mean you ain’t allowed in here, he laughed. When he started to open the gate a gang of campus police vamped on him. Some were on the outside of the gate, some inside. They had their pistols drawn, pointed at Darrell’s head. They closed in on him: Get ’em up! I want to see an eagle on that fence, boy! They pinned him to the tall, wrought-iron fence with dogteeth spikes on top. It ran all the way around the University. Some said it was electrocuted but that was a lie cause if it was how come Darrell wasn’t shocked? They shook him down. Not one of them put their guns in their holsters. I started selling wolf tickets: Y’all best leave my brother alone! Don’t have me to come over there and bust somebody in his head! They looked at me and laughed like I was the best joke someone had told at their favorite bar. They laughed so much —and all the while those guns pointed at Darrell’s head —that I started to cry. To hear Soldierboy tell it, when I was twelve I cried enough to be a girl. One day ahma check Soldierboy into intensive care, but right now I got to whup up the campus police. I dried my eyes with the back of my hands, wiped my nose on the sleeve of my coat, then fired another round: Ahma count three and if my brother ain’t back over here somebody’s getting a billy club up his ass! A tall skinny guard leaned on a parking meter and looked at me like I’d tried his last ounce of patience. He sighed, Nigger, please. I said, Sound just like you mammy, nigga pleez, pleez me. Stop causing so much trouble, he said, it’s our job to detain trespassers. And it’s my job to start counting, I hollered, and then pounce; onne! He knew I wasn’t fool enough to go over there no matter how much I wanted to save Darrell and I knew he wasn’t fool enough to chase me into the maze of the projects where Darrell’s partners could pull him into the shadows and quietly carve his face 30 Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1988
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