Riot Baby Page 2

  “Seandel!” someone in the surging crowd calls out. They move like a wave toward the cops. “Seandel!” And terror spikes through Ella’s heart. Somebody in the thick of it pulls out a camcorder and hunches his back to start filming.

  Ella looks over her shoulder again as she runs with Grandma, and she sees the tsunami of black folks swarm toward the officers, and she wants to be home more than anything else in the world.

  Car wheels squeal and rubber burns nearby and a familiar voice shouts from out a window, “Ella! Mrs. Jones!”

  Brother Harvey. Sweat beads his brow and darkens the collar of his button-down shirt, and his suspenders are loose and his shirtsleeves rolled up, but something firms up in him at the sight of Ella and the elderly woman walking her home.

  “Hey! Get inside!”

  And it’s almost as though Grandma whisks Ella away in her arms, and car doors fly open then slam shut and Brother Harvey is speeding off again with Ella in the backseat and Grandma in the front.

  “We gotta get to the hospital. It’s Lanie.”

  “Oh no, Steven. Please tell me she ain’t get caught in this.” Grandma’s voice loses its straightness, starts to warble.

  “No, it’s her contractions. The baby’s coming.”

  Ella in the backseat wants to say something, but she’s balled up like the fetus in Mama’s belly, her skin on fire and her head a-thunder, and she can barely speak for the pain, can barely hear anything through it. The smash of glass bottles breaking, the sound of gunshots, the crackle of fire, the honking of horns, the cheers, the wails, all of it comes through muffled by the pain cottoning her ears. The bad thing is happening. It’s happening, because Mama’s gonna have a boy, and she’s gonna have it here, and when Ella starts crying and Grandma reaches back to soothe her, anger wraps itself around her, and she wants to shake off Grandma’s hand and tell her she’s not crying because she’s scared, she’s crying because she’s angry.

  “Steven, what happened? What’s going on?”

  For a long time, he’s silent. The hurt that has its jaws around Ella’s temples lifts just enough for her to hear him say, “Those cops got off. They ain’t gonna go to jail for what they did,” and for Grandma to whisper, “God in heaven.”

  She counts her Mississippis, struggles past four, doesn’t get to six.

  She passes out and doesn’t wake until they bring her to Mama’s room at Centinela Hospital in Inglewood.

  * * *

  It’s Monday when they finally leave the hospital, and some of the people leaving with them come out, injured and maimed by what happened, to find what Ella and Mama and Brother Harvey and Grandma and now Kev find. Everything has been burned down.

  II

  HARLEM

  STIFLING, suffocating. Even with the windows open, sweat pours, pools, soaks bedsheets through to the mattress to leave stains that Ella’s gonna say is just me peeing the bed again. A rat scurries. KEEEVVV! KEVIN DUQUAN RAY MOTHERFUCKIN’ JACKSON like an alarm clock. And me stirring on the other side of the room, my fugitive big toe tickling Ella’s ear, and Ella swats me away, and it’s this and not Mama that wakes her. The rat skitches and skitters. I open my eyes, catch a glimpse, and shriek.

  “Ella,” I whisper, “the rat.”

  Ella knows instantly where to look. Without a frown or a squint or even a smirk, she stands, arms tensed at her sides. Then, the soft puff of an animal head exploding. Trails of red spurt out from the shadows. The door creaks open just as the rat’s brain erupts, so Mama doesn’t hear it; one sound covers the other, but she sees the blood and knows instantly that it’ll be another mess for her to clean up but at least Ella didn’t do her Thing out of the house.

  Rats don’t scare Mama, but folks catching Ella doing her Thing scares her, what they’d do if they found out she could do things like make a rat’s head explode without touching, that scares her, so she smacks her upside the back of the head anyway. A just-in-case.

  Mama shakes her head back and forth but is relieved at least she didn’t have to deal with the animal herself, that I screamed only the once and didn’t risk waking up the rest of the apartment. Ella catches my look, and conspiracy rides the rails between us. I turn out of habit, so that she can change into her day clothes and I won’t see her shame.

  * * *

  Some of the older kids outside the bodega talk about Regents like it’s some sort of monster they can’t ever hope to beat while the others just shrug it off. And it’s this second group that talks the loudest as me and Malik join them. Malik’s quiet and confident the way a lot of the older kids are, and maybe that’s why Ella likes him so much, and I’m starting to think “quiet” is the most attractive thing in the world, because the girl who sometimes works the counter of the bodega barely says two words to me when everybody’s hanging out in the hallways between classes. Ella doesn’t tell me why she has Malik walk me back from school every day, but I figure it’s because summer’s coming and even though gang shit never really stops the heat starts it back up again, like the motors we learned about in science class. Kinetic energy. Thermodynamics.

  Somebody’s blasting “Dipset Anthem” so loud through their speakers that I feel the crackling bass in my sternum.

  “Ay, lil nigga,” one of the older cats with Adidas sweats and Tims hollers while the others dap up Malik and talk softly about stuff I’m not supposed to know about. Malik gets me in with this crew, and I don’t mind too much, but my bag’s heavy with homework I gotta get done before dinner.

  “Hey,” I say back, wishing my voice wasn’t so small.

  “Whatchu learn about today?” Adidas asks me. “See this kid?” he tells the others. “Smartest fuckin’ kid in the hood, yo. He a cyborg or something. Could fix any computer on the block. I’m tellin’ you, this nigga goin’ to Harvard on some shit. That’s facts.”

  “In history, we learned about George Washington Carver.”

  Adidas holds in his weed smoke. “Word?” Then he looks to the others. “Yo, fam, George Washington Carver woulda been that nigga in jail.”

  A chorus of “What!” and “Who. You. Tellin” thickens the air, then they’re all doubled over with laughter, and even Malik’s chuckling.

  “Nigga was the chef up north, woulda got left up north,” says a light-skinned cat everyone calls Havoc after the rapper from Mobb Deep.

  “He woulda made C-4 outta peanuts. Nigga would throw down a peanut, it turns into a ladder like fuckin’ Inspector Gadget!”

  They laugh until pain scrunches up their faces.

  “They woulda had the wild Peanut Break,” Arian says, coughing after taking a puff of the blunt Adidas passed him. “Like, they get to a dead end. And George Washington Carver takes off his shirt, he’s got a map of the prison on his back, and it’s just the wild allergic reaction to peanuts!”

  Adidas: “The COs is chasin’ after him, he spreads the wild peanut oil on the floor, they start slippin’.”

  Everybody mimes a Looney Toon stepping on a banana peel: “WHOA WHOA WHOA!”

  Havoc waves his arms to get everyone’s attention. “His old lady like, ‘George, you fuckin’ with them peanuts again?!’ and he’s like, ‘Ma, you don’t understand my vision!’ You know the scene in Do the Right Thing when Spike Lee puts the ice cube over Rosie Perez’s nipples?”

  Arian jumps in. “HE DOIN’ THAT WITH A PEANUT!” And that destroys everybody, even Malik.

  While everyone’s distracted, I sneak into the cool air of the air-conditioned bodega and nod a hello to the bodega cat on the plastic-wrapped rolls of toilet paper by the far wall. It’s safe in here, and when I see Jamila behind the counter, the sleeves of her sweatshirt rolled to the elbows resting on the glass with a magazine splayed out in front of her, I know nothing bad can ever reach me here.

  “Whatchu buyin’?” she asks without looking up.

  “It’s me,” I tell her, which breaks her away from her photo spread.

  “Your friends are loud.” And the disapproval is thick
in her voice. Her curls seem to hang everywhere except over her face, and she’s got those wide brown eyes that make people forget that she can frown straight through you.

  “They not my friends.”

  And Jamila smirks. She folds up her magazine and crosses her arms over the counter. “Ahmed’s not here but he’ll be back soon. You tutoring tonight?”

  “I mean … I could, but I wasn’t—”

  Ahmed walks in, all harried and bothered. “Ugh, I hate when they just hang out there without buying nothing,” he mutters.

  “That’s the neighborhood,” Jamila tells him with an accent that’s already thick with uptown, even though they moved here not long ago.

  “Hey, Kev,” Ahmed says before disappearing in the back. “How’s Ella?”

  Ella’s last episode had her falling off the couch and onto the floor, her left arm limp while the rest of her seized up, and wind that came out of nowhere started flinging everything around, the furniture rising like it was being pulled on a string and Ella’s eyes rolling up into the back of her head while she convulsed. Then there was Ella coming back to us, just as Mama had finished soaking the blanket in the bathwater, getting it ready for us to wrap Ella in and cool her down while she got herself better.

  “She’s good,” I say back.

  Commotion outside. Someone says, “Ayo, put it out put it out!” And someone else mutters, “I ain’t puttin’ out shit.” Then the smack of flesh against flesh, “Fuck you talmbout, toss it. I can’t get jammed up again, you know a nigga out on parole right now.” Then low, familiar voices. Cops. Through the glass, I see the crew all spread out in a line with their hands up against the walls and the windows, legs spread too far apart, then I hear the click of handcuffs closing around wrists and cries of protest and “Officer, we ain’t do nothin’” and I wonder who’s going to jail this time, but the cops just wait around while one of the guys lies face-first on the sidewalk, hands cuffed behind his back. Ahmed’s watching too, and I see the emotions play across his face: vindication that the loiterers are getting what they deserve, guilt that maybe he’s the cause of this, anger that the police are going this far when they don’t need to. Somebody calls a cop “Jackie Chan,” then there’s a thud, and more handcuffs.

  “What, you goin’ pull out your gun? Pull out your gun!” It’s Adidas. “You scared?”

  “Ahmed, quick, go in the back,” Jamila whispers, then reaches underneath the counter for what I know is a gun.

  “You was about to, Officer. You feel threatened?”

  I remember there’s like eight of them out there, and there might not be as many cops, but some of the cops are laughing.

  “Get the fuck outta here, bruh!” shouts Havoc, and I can tell from the muffle in his voice that he’s the one on the ground.

  “See them laughin’?” This from Arian. “See your partners laughin’ at you gettin’ straight cooked right now, my nigga? They ain’t your homies.”

  More yelling, shouting, but this time, more laughter. And I sneak a little closer to the door to see a crowd gathered outside. Backup.

  “Kevin, what are you doing?” Jamila in that harsh whisper. “Get the fuck away from the door!”

  But I can’t get enough of what’s going on outside. My body warms with it, like a space heater in my bones. One of the cops reaches down and uncuffs the guys on the ground, and Havoc gets back up as the cops back away, shouting, “You see the address! Come back later, pussy!” And it’s not this, but the growing crowd, some of them with cameras, that makes the cops shuffle away. And it feels like victory.

  Still feels like victory afterward when Malik comes in to fetch me, says an apologetic hi to Jamila and Ahmed, then walks me back to Ella. The look on her face, that’s what tells me today wasn’t no kind of victory. That when people joke and call me Riot Baby for being born when I was, it ain’t with any kind of affection, but something more complicated. The type of thing old heads and Mama and other people’s parents tell you you won’t understand till you get older.

  * * *

  We’re playing on a wooden floor in the apartment. Hot outside becomes suffocating inside. No drapes on the living room window eight floors up, so the sun blasts unabated onto the floor, rectangular hell right in the center, and the room is so small you can’t get away from it. Mama cooking in the kitchen and the smoke and smell drift in, so you really can’t breathe, but Mama doesn’t want me and Ella outside. The heat turns kids violent and she doesn’t need a lot of time for her imagination to get to the place where someone shoots and Ella does her Thing, yet uncontrolled, and more people are dead than need to be and Ella’s unveiled, or even unveiled and dead, and Mama’s left with the pieces and her guilt at not being able to protect her kids. So we’re stuck in the apartment: Ella and me, both still kids. I’m sitting across from Ella as she balances a ball of light on her palm, and I stare at it with wide eyes, and neither of us knows yet that to stare at the thing will ruin our vision forever. It glows and black tendrils of smoke surround it, wind around its belly, and steam up into the ceiling.

  “Make it cooler, Ella,” I ask her, three steps away from begging, and she tries and the temp drops a little bit, just enough to feel relief in our sweat.

  I sniff at the food Mama’s making and curl my face. “Nigga, did I just catch you havin’ fun?” I ask in my best fifth-grade schoolteacher impression, which isn’t much of an impression at all, just me throwing some rasp and bass into my tinny voice.

  We giggle.

  “Nigga, did I just catch you tryna make the room colder?”

  More giggling.

  “Nigga, did I just catch you tryna make my life worth living?”

  Giggling, but I hit something serious and sad and Ella stops.

  The room gets hot and suffocating again, and we wait a little bit to see what Ella will do with her Thing, but Mama calls us into the kitchen to tell us food’s ready and we don’t get a chance. Except, on the way in, I see Ella’s got one hand behind her back, the ball of light having turned solid and fluffy and cold, something her eyes tell me she’s gonna try to hit me with: a snowball.

  * * *

  “Yo, this bud got me smizz off the bliggedy, y’heard?”

  I hear the voices before I get to my floor, and I know from the jump that’s Havoc and some other cat from my building in the stairwell. I’m two floors below them before I smell it. I hate when the elevator’s out, because it means I gotta walk through weedsmoke that fogs the whole place up. You can’t even see out the window when they get going.

  It’s a colder autumn than we’ve been getting, and who wants to freeze their fingers off while getting high?

  “Yo, pass the blunt, though,” says the other cat.

  And when I get to their landing, I see through the haze that he’s got on a Nike Tech hoodie.

  “It’s poppin’ in Brooklyn tonight, they’s gonna be mad bitches there.”

  Havoc doesn’t see me coming, but I try to play it like I’m not scared of them. I don’t have Malik with me, and even though Havoc has no reason to, he’s still the type to sniff fear through the smoke and pounce. They’re all like that. Suddenly, my book bag’s the heaviest thing in the world.

  “Nah, bro,” says Havoc. “We got beef in Brooklyn. It’s slow.”

  “Then we out uptown, then.”

  “Nah, nigga. We got static up there, too.”

  The other cat’s sounding more desperate. “Dawg, let’s hop out to the city then. If your hoodie got a check on the left, and it’s a Tech, they give you neck, bro.”

  I can see Havoc shaking his head. “We not vegetarians when it comes to the beef, bro.”

  Can’t stop, can’t slow down. So, I walk like I don’t even hear them. The other cat, when he sees my silhouette, reaches for something at his waist, but Havoc puts a hand out to stop him. If I was Housing Police, I wouldn’t be moving this slow.

  “It’s just me,” I manage to get out.

  And Havoc chuckles, though I can see th
e other cat ice-grilling me like I’m from the wrong set.

  “It’s cool, it’s cool,” Havoc murmurs. Then to me, “You smoke?”

  I shake my head. “If I smoke, I’m homeless. Mom ain’t got that kind of energy.” Also, Malik would kill this nigga if he ever found out I got offered weed when I’m supposed to be on my “stay in school” shit.

  “Yo, lil nigga.” This from the other cat. “What’s it like outside?”

  For some reason, his voice paralyzes me. I don’t know why I’m so scared of him, but everything just feels ominous. Like the feeling you get when you’re about to get into a fight, when all the blood rushes to your face and time runs and crawls at the same time. “What, you mean like cops? Couple outside the building, but—”

  “Nah, the weather.” What I said makes him chuckle, and he loosens up. Like he knows I’m cool now. “What’s the weather outside?”

  “It’s mad brick out there. I think it’s starting to snow.”

  The other cat rolls his shoulders. “I’m good, I don’t get cold.”

  Havoc raises an eyebrow. “You goin’ out with a hoodie?”

  “Yeah!”

  Havoc shakes his head, takes a puff from the blunt he’s still holding. “Oh, nah, you different, bro.” He coughs around a laugh. “You gon’ catch frostbites, my nigga.”

  The other cat sucks his teeth. “I don’t catch frostbite. Them shits don’t bite me, I taste like doo-doo.”

  “My man, just put on a coat.”

  I’m laughing behind my fist, trying to keep them from seeing, because I don’t know if this other cat’s the type to flip his switch mad quick and dead my shit for giggling.

  “This hoodie’s my coat!” says the other cat. “My coat, jacket, sweater, shirt.”

  “Bro, you wylin’.” Havoc can’t stop chuckling now.

  The other cat tries to stay serious, but he knows he’s playing too, so we all have our little weed-filled circle of laughter until I hear something crash upstairs.