Stateway's Garden Page 10

  “You did a very good job with this one, son,” she said again, boosting my young ego.

  “Really, Mother?” I asked, pleading for more. She wasn’t the complimenting type; you had to drink all you could while the faucet was running.

  “Yeah, I’m impressed.”

  She handed the clothing back to me gently, a truly soft exchange, then turned her back and fell onto the bed from exhaustion. Her eyes closed like curtains being released. In a way, I felt a little sad once the whole thing was over, like I’d lost something. I was holding on to the idea of trying to pick out something she’d agree with. Was one of the few times she was paying attention to me and not asking, “Where is your brother?”

  And when I woke for the actual first day at the new school, the sun was bright, peeking through our wide windows.

  The alarm on my silver clock radio had woken me. I’d gotten it the year before as a birthday present from my uncle who lived in Englewood.

  The radio blasted away once I turned the dial.

  I turned the music up even more and sang along ’cause that was one of my favorite songs. Bobby Brown singing “Girlfriend.” I know, I shouldn’t have been belting that first thing in the morning, shouldn’t have been singing it at all ’cause I was much too young, but it was Bobby Brown as a teenager, when he was hot and not on too many drugs, when the gap in his teeth hadn’t grown intolerable, him before Whitney. I tried to think about the music and not how scared I was. Hadn’t slept much the night before and going to this new school made me terribly uncomfortable.

  That morning I stood in the center of the floor looking back at my bed with no headboard like it was the last time I’d see it. Things were going be different after that day because this new school was supposedly different.

  White people went there.

  Going to school with the white kids was my mother’s idea, said it would be better for me, that it would be the beginning of my learning how to get out of Stateway and get some money.

  Since she hadn’t come home the night before my first day of school, nor that morning, she didn’t get to do the breath test. Maybe I was even hoping I’d get the attention of her checking the clothes again. It was quiet and Jacob was gone already. At the end of the bed Mother had left my outfit, terribly ironed with dandruff flakes of starch staining the jeans. I began looking around the corners of the kitchen for her. She wasn’t hiding in our cabinet that contained a forty-two-pack of chicken and beef ramen noodles, nor was she under the beige kitchen table with food remaining in cracks you couldn’t clean. I even went in the bathroom, expecting her to sneak out from around the toilet. I just wanted to hear her ask if I’d combed my hair, if I’d eaten cereal, if I’d changed underwear.

  She’d left sixty-five cents on the bed next to my clothing, money I’d have to use for lunch. The coins sat there, somewhat rusty, two quarters, a dime, a nickel, spaced evenly apart, a single door key keeping them company, all reminding me of the inevitable: I now had to be responsible. I snatched the change up and pushed it deep into my left pocket. Couldn’t afford to lose it. I also grabbed one of my Transformers—Optimus Prime—because I didn’t want to feel all alone. I stuck it in the large pocket of the book bag, clutched my jacket, put the key inside.

  I made sure to lock the front door and looked from our ramp to see if the bus was already waiting in the parking lot. It wasn’t. I then hit the front hallway—there were two—and went down one million flights of stairs with chipped paint not even considering waiting for any elevators. Took only three minutes to get down to the lobby. And there I was, standing in that moment, the stroll each kid takes on the first day of school, glancing left then right slightly trying to assess who was fly in new school clothes and, more important, who was checking back. But I had to avoid this. Had to. I was still wearing stuff from the summer and everyone would know. Just picture it: I’m standing in a project building’s lobby with beat-up shoes I tried to polish, a pair of used pants holding a deep cut below the knee, and the wind blowing through a cowboy shirt even Tonto wouldn’t have agreed with. Just had to wait everyone out and make it to this bus.

  And this was going to be my first time riding a school bus and I wasn’t all that excited. Riding the school bus had a shame that went with it. Surely didn’t mean you were one of the smart boys.

  Me and the other kids from my building would sit in front all the time, right by the building’s handicapped persons’ slope that led to the garbage dumpster, pretending to be rocking back and forth and slobbering at the mouth to make fun of kids on a short yellow bus. Now I’d have to be called one of those kids.

  I saw it from a distance, pulling up to Federal Street. Right around the corner but in plain view was Denner School, which was a pretty and maroon-colored building. All my friends went there. Denner was surrounded by the biggest gate you’ve ever seen.

  The sun really started to shine brightly by the time I got to where the bus was. I was afraid it’d stop right where other kids could see me getting on. They didn’t. I kept my head low, eyes to the concrete like I was sniffing at loose change, and none of the other kids I hung with every day knew I had been standing there all along.

  I saw Kevin and Stacy walking to the front door of the school. They walked right past. Later, I told my mother I’d done all this. She laughed and said I was acting more grown by the day. I didn’t have a clue why she said that.

  The bus pulled up, slowly, the door lining itself exactly with my body. This bus was a lot longer than I expected, not the Short Bus for “special kids” but so long you needed to turn your head all the way around to see its end. The bus driver had to pull out really far into the street just to make a right turn. And there, on the side, it read: Smeck’s Bus Line.

  I got on and grabbed the first low-key seat I found, anyplace that made me less noticeable. I chose one of the last rows, all the way in the back. Before I could even wiggle from the straps of my bag, I was immediately instructed to remove my body.

  A tall kid with a Dr. J–thick Afro stood above me, his shadow so large it was petrifying.

  “This my seat, man!” he yelled.

  His voice was deep enough to make the leather of the seats vibrate. Had to be at least thirteen or fourteen and was already a man. I instantly gripped my book bag, holding the zipper tight. I knew how older boys were; they would try and take stuff from you. I wanted to get tough with him so bad, tell him to get the fuck away from me, even give him a flimsy shove or something. It wouldn’t happen. I was much too soft at the time to do that. So we stood there. Well, I sat. He stood and reached for my shirt to move me. I pulled away, clenching the bag again. Didn’t know what to protect, my toy or my money or my clothes. There was no way I was going to let him mess up that cowboy shirt. He had no idea what I went through to wear it. But then the driver put the bus in park. Her stumpy legs and black shoes moved her to the rear where the other boy towered over me.

  “Leave that boy alone, Greg!” she yelled from the aisle. I was relieved and my small ribs expanded, taking in the air of safety. It lasted only a second. “You’re the new boy, right?” she asked.

  “Uhhh, yeah,” I responded, hoping I wasn’t the only person whose first day was today.

  Her face was a warmed taffy apple. “What’s your name again?”

  “It’s Tracy.”

  “Yeah, thaaaaaaat’s right,” she said, walking to the front of the bus. She came back with a clipboard, papers hanging all around it, using her pointing finger to go up and down a list. She looked above my seat. I followed her gaze. There, in bold and bright print, was a name: GREG WATERS. I definitely was in the wrong seat. As I kept looking at the name of the big kid, I noticed that every seat had a name and by the time I found mine, the bus driver was already standing there, waiting.

  “Here you are, Tracy,” she called out to me, sounding so comfortable it seemed as though she’
d known me for years. She pointed to the top of the seat, right above the window that could only come down halfway, her fingers tracing the tag’s letters. “Here’s your seat right here, honey.” I wasn’t used to anyone talking to me nicely. So I hopped up quickly, hypnotized by that kind way she spoke. The bus driver smiled at me, those rosy cheeks sent such a good vibe.

  “You’re cute,” she said, which was obviously a lie. “And you have to wear your seat belt, Tracy.” I looked left to right, scrambling anxiously to find pieces of the thing I went out of my way to dodge when I got in the car with my uncle heading to Englewood.

  He came by once every two months, mostly only wanted Jacob to go back with him, so I didn’t have to worry about seat belts often. He bought a fast Camaro with a sparkly blue color that reminded me of fresh Crystal Light. He’d talk the entire car ride about how my mother was terrible at taking care of me. He was a bad driver, too, because when he pulled up to a stop sign or into busy streets, yelling the entire time about how retarded everyone else drove, I knew at that moment what seat belts were for: to keep little kids from sliding to the floor.

  Click. I found that belt and looked up at the bus driver for another reward. She reached around, grazing my waist in a few places, tightening the seat belt as best she could. There were those warm apples. She then walked back to the front, sat down. We were off again. I glanced back at our big Stateway Gardens buildings, those wide and false skyscrapers, at their fifty million windows with mazes of parking lots surrounding them, all standing at attention in a straight line. As we got farther away they looked more like those large condo buildings downtown that I could see from the porch on a clear day. They shrank in the distance with each block the bus traveled.

  Riding the bus was weird at first, the way gears would shift hard when the driver started, how every time we came to a stop you heard this squealing noise that took some getting used to. It was a stepping-on-a-mouse-while-twisting-a-rusty-doorknob kind of sound that made cavities tingle. The bus never moved very fast either. Maybe they did that on purpose for kids like me who liked to look out the window and check out the scenery. I really thought I was going far away when I saw the green street signs of Western Avenue and California and then some street I’d never heard of before called Kedzie. It looked clean over in that area but I didn’t get to scout much because I had a seat partner named Sherard James.

  “I’m always gonna sit by the window,” he said. “I get on before you.”

  “I don’t care,” I replied.

  Sherard was one of the first to be picked up, and was from way south in the city, somewhere I’d never been, I think like Seventy-ninth Street or something.

  “You in my grade?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You look way too short to be in my class.” He was only a bit taller than I was, maybe a half inch or so, and right then he did the look-over-your-head, cheap-ass, shoulder-to-shoulder measurement to prove it. “See?” He held out his hand as though the proof was there. “You always gonna be too short.” I hated him so much because he was the bigger kid, even if everyone was the big kid compared to me at the time. Sherard was truly larger than all other fifth graders, more in width than height. He had this big bubble booty that spread across the seat, some hungover shoulders—the kind you saw on old ladies—and arms trailed with stretch marks.

  “Hey, Sherard,” a soft voice came from around the seat.

  “Hi, Lynia,” Sherard replied. He turned and then looked past me.

  Lynia’s head was pressing against my arm as she peered around me. She was dark and absolutely beautiful. “Show me your dimple,” she said to him.

  “I showed you it already,” he replied without looking away from her.

  “It’s cute.” Her large brown eyes squinted as she smiled. “It’s really cute.”

  “Okay, here it is…” Sherard held the words as though there was a drumroll. He turned his head farther, which gave full view of the left side of his face. He then smirked and a small space in the upper part of his left cheek formed.

  “It’s soooooo cute,” Lynia said as her eyes widened. She was still using my arm to prop her head.

  “I told you how I got it, right?” he asked her, holding the smirk.

  “Nope.”

  “It was when I was littler. Me and my brother was running in the alley and I fell. The sharp glass got in there.”

  “That sounds like it hurt.” Lynia’s voice softened even more.

  “It don’t look like so much to me,” I interjected. I then moved forward to block his view of Lynia. “It’s just a cut.”

  “It did hurt. My brother said I’m real tough.”

  I quickly reached into my bag and put on my glasses, the ones I tried not to wear at all in the three weeks I’d had them. Since I was changing schools, leaving the one I loved by the buildings, my mother finally had taken me to the eye doctor. In my bag were the goofiest, widest-framed, and most reflective glasses in the world. I needed two noses and four ears to keep those packages on my face, and they surely didn’t make me cute. The kids, my friend Kevin especially, called them “bottles,” but they weren’t even thick. They were just one of the reasons Stacy—the finest girl in our building—gave for not wanting to be my girlfriend. But I thought they would make me look smart and get me some of Lynia’s attention.

  Lynia just pushed me back in the seat. She was as strong as a boy. She then looked closer at Sherard’s dimple as if the glass were still there. “Well, I really do like it.” She disappeared around the corner of the seat.

  The bus must have been stopped at a light because the sound of those shifting gears came back loudly. The driver seemed to be driving faster and we bounced up and down on our seats as we crossed bumps and holes in the concrete.

  Sherard’s elbow had a sharp point and kept stabbing me on the ride. “Scoot over!” he yelled. I was almost falling out of the long bench seat. He looked closely at me and just knew I was some sort of nerd. I remember him putting his feet on the back of the seat in front of us, extending those stubbly legs completely so I could see his shoes. He had the new Jordans, the red-and-white ones with the wing on the side. Things like that made you instantly cool, no matter what else was going on. I was so impressed and wanted to congratulate him, admire him, maybe even feel the material of the red shoestrings. But then he put his hand on my book bag, noticing the outline of the action figure I’d hidden.

  “What’s this?” he asked, gripping the bulge.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  I didn’t even give him a look. He immediately reached for the zipper and tried to dig his hand into the bag, knowing there had to be something good in there. I pushed away again, but all my might moved his body only a tiny bit. I even grunted loudly for effect. His revenge, though, was good. Sherard rolled his eyes and kept putting those new shoes in my face. After a while that got really irritating, and the moment he put them on the floor I stepped on his right foot.

  “It was an accident!” I said before he could speak, yet he kept reaching for the book bag.

  “Hey, man, what’s that?” he continued asking. I needed something to compete with his new shoes, so I opened it and showed him Optimus Prime. I even stupidly allowed him to play with it. “I got Soundwave,” he said, alerting me that he was familiar with Transformers.

  “Optimus Prime is better than Soundwave,” I stated, feeling proud. He looked at me, eyes painfully using a butter knife to slit my throat and continuing to play with the toy. Snap! One of the arms was broken. My eyes grew. “What you doin’ man?” I screamed at him, wanting to cry.

  “Shut up,” he returned. “I ain’t do it on purpose. I’ll fix it.” He made a couple of moves with the toy, both pieces in hand, and the next thing I knew I couldn’t see it anymore.

  “Yo, man, give it back!” I yelled.

  “I ain�
��t givin’ you nothin’.” He then smashed me in the face, what people from our buildings called a muff. His Vienna-sausaged fingers spread from the top of my forehead to somewhere around my mouth.

  My glasses hit the floor so fast I didn’t see where they went. The sound of the plastic clanging against the floor made me desperate. He had taken more than my eyesight. I gave him one quick push back, openhanded, in the chest, almost like a girl would. He looked at me, confused. Maybe he thought I’d hit harder than that. Then there was a punch from him that landed clean on my top lip. The boy had good aim. His cold hand blasted my face like Chicago wind. He pushed me while in the seat, hit his belt in a quick motion, stood up, landed another. By the time I got free and to my feet his punch count had reached three. I gave him one back, on the side of the neck, and it made the dangling toy fall from his pocket. I brainlessly reached for it. I never even thought about finding the glasses, yet within seconds he planted another blow upside my head. I didn’t want to cry. I certainly didn’t want to cry. Dammit, I started to cry. I came to my feet after stuffing the toy in my bag, and launched my entire body into his chest. He fell into the seat directly across from where we were, landing on two girls, who started screaming. Everyone was screaming, now that I think about it. I could hear Greg’s deep voice in the background cheering Sherard on: “Whip his ass! He can’t fight! He should’ve never sat in my seat!”

  Everything was flashing. The only thing I remember was my face pressed to the dark green of vinyl seats and the filthy tint of Sherard’s skin. The sunlight blurred my vision even more, mixed with salty tears and the rage I felt toward Sherard.

  The bus came to a halt. There was that noise that crushed teeth again. Me and Sherard had about two more minutes of wrestling on the floor before being pried apart by the bus driver. I still can hear the other kids’ voices blurting curse words above us. They were so close I could feel specks of spit from their mouths.