walking the prison yard for the rest of my life. Besides, I wasn’t certain I could find it anyway. Mom was a master at hiding things she didn’t want me to get a hold of.
As soon as I left the house the other kids walking past on their way to school all turned to look at me. Then they looked back around the corner on Duval Street at something I couldn’t see. I knew that the something was probably Huey or Tank or both of them. I steeled my nerves and stepped on down the street strolling like I was the hardest nigga on the planet.
Iesha, this little red-bone girl who lived up the street from me, came rushing up to me and grabbed my hand. I had a crush on her and she knew it, but fronted like she was naive. I knew she liked me too, but her mom thought I was a little hoodlum so she had to keep her distance. Her mom would kick her ass at the drop of a dime, even in public. Her hand in mine sent shivers through me and when I turned to look into her light brown eyes all thoughts of Huey fled from me.
“Oh, hi Ieasha. What’s up?”
“Don’t you know?”
“Oh, I know about that shooting last night. The shit happened right in front of my crib. I watched the ambulance take the body away.” Even at ten I knew better than to admit to anyone that I had witnessed a murder. Especially when the killer was a psychotic white man who ate brains.
“No, I mean about Huey sayin’ he’s gonna kick your ass! He’s right around the corner with his brother. You should go back in the house ’fore they catch you!”
The concern and worry in her voice, the fear on her face, wounded me. Didn’t she think I could take care of myself? Shit, I ran that school and had kicked more ass than any ten kids and here she was telling me to run?
“Before they catch me? Bitch, do you see me runnin’! Ain’t no bitch ass North Philly pussy’s gonna kick my ass!”
I said it loud enough for all the kids on the block to hear along with anyone who might have been waiting around the corner, then I stormed down toward Duval Street hungry for blood. All the kids followed a few steps behind me like vultures circling carrion, leaving Iesha standing alone in the middle of the street still looking worried for me. I was going to beat this Huey kid ’til he lay bleeding at my feet for making Iesha doubt me.
The air parted reluctantly as I charged through it. It was so thick with tension that running through it was like swimming through quicksand. All that did was make me even more desperate to get it all over with. I still had not learned fear yet.
I was at the end of the block in seconds looking for the pretender who had come to usurp my crown as king of the block. I turned at Duval Street and didn’t see anyone but a bunch of second graders being walked to school by a woman too young to be any of their mothers. Just as I was about to sigh in relief and talk some trash to the other kids about scaring them off, Tank’s hulking bulk turned the corner from McCallum Street onto Duval followed by a little light-skinned kid who was almost pretty enough to be a girl.
Huey was all of 4’ 8” and no more than 90lbs. His skin was butterscotch and he had big hazel eyes with long lashes, thick bushy eyebrows that rose to sharp peaks, and curly hair that grew in an unruly bush. My grandmother later referred to him as “That high-yaller nigga with the good hair.”
When I saw him come walking down the street led by his behemoth “Little brother”, whom I’d already sent hobbling to the principle’s office the day before sniffing and crying with blood and snot dried and caked beneath his nose. I nearly burst out laughing. There was Tank with his nose all bandaged up, grinning like an idiot, walking alongside his “Big” brother who looked like you could knock him over with a few harsh words. I knew a lot of short kids who were bad as fuck but none of them were as pretty as this kid. He looked like a mark to me. I couldn’t imagine anyone who looked that feminine kicking my ass, but that just showed the limits of my imagination.
He stepped up to me and I puffed out my chest and said “So, you’re Huey, huh?” His eyes met mine and I knew I had made a mistake. I knew that this little yaller nigga was dangerous. He had eyes like Darryl had after returning from ’Nam, eyes like my uncle had when we used to visit him at Gratersford prison before he was shot by a guard, eyes like that white boy who shot that Jamaican yesterday, eyes that have seen the worst the world had to offer, eyes that had seen lots of killing, eyes that have killed. We all look like that now, but back then you didn’t see eleven year-old boys with eyes like hardened cons.
Huey didn’t say a word as he stepped up. He just kicked me right in the jaw with a move every bit as graceful and beautiful as himself. This was no Kung fu Theatre bullshit either. This little brotha new what he was doing. I felt my jaw pop and then a punch landed on the other side of it that felt like it would rip my head in two. Instantly I flew into a rage, throwing myself at the little pretty boy in a rage, but I couldn’t land a single blow.
Huey slipped and ducked and weaved, while firing counter shots in rapid combinations. My blows were wild and flailing whereas his were precise and accurate. As his punches landed again and again my rage started to give way to fear. I couldn’t even see the punches coming and once they began they were like an endless wave of kicks. Knees, elbows, and hooks. He was taking me apart. I felt myself starting to lose consciousness so I did the only thing I could at that point to save myself. I ran. Hearing the kids behind me laughing, hearing Iesha’s pained voice calling my name, hearing my father’s disappointed hiss echoing in my mind more painful and intimate than the rest. I ran home and ransacked Mom’s room looking for Darryl’s gun. If I had found it Huey and I would have never become friends. If I had found it Huey and Tank would have never become anything but dust and stench.
Grandma rushed upstairs when she heard me dismantling Mom’s room. She found me sitting in Mom’s closet with tears streaming down my face and blood and saliva drooling from my mouth, which hung carelessly open. My cheeks were swollen up like two puss-filled blisters about to rupture. She screamed and hugged me, and prayed, and dragged me to the hospital begging and praying to God all the way.
They wired my jaw shut and I adamantly refused to go back to school looking like some freak whose braces had been welded together. I stayed home reading Elijah Muhammed’s book and thinking about what I’d seen that white boy do to that Jamaican dealer. The more I thought about it the more amazing it seemed. I’d never even heard about white boys that hard. Except maybe the mafia but I didn’t think this guy was Italian. He looked too pale. And I’d never heard of anyone from the mafia eating anyone’s brains. It just didn’t add up. It didn’t make sense.
It didn’t add up at all unless of course he really was some kind of demon. I kept thinking about the way his face had looked after he’d peeled that Jamaican’s cap back and scooped out Jah Warrior’s brains, all covered in blood with flesh and brain matter coating his gold teeth. His eyes had filled with something like ecstasy. There was definitely something not right about that white boy. He looked like he was possessed or something. But Elijah Muhhamed had said that all white people were demons. Did all of them do shit like that? I wasn’t sure. I just didn’t know enough about them.
I started making it a point to question every Muslim I saw about white people and that whole devil thing.
“No, brother. You got it all wrong. There ain’t no one white man walking around who’s the devil like they portray him in the white man’s bible. He ain’t got horns and tail or nothing like that.
His name was Jihad Ali and he was selling bean pies by the side of the road, dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and red bow-tie. His head was clean-shaven and his face was serious but friendly. He’d been only too eager to talk to me when I walked up to him with my mouth still full of wires and started asking him about white people.
“See, the white man is the original trickster, the deceiver. He was created by an evil scientist named Dr. Yaccub in order to bring down the Black man from his throne of power and enslave him. That’s why we have to separate ourselves from these devils in order for our people to rise again. As long as we are living among them we are corrupted by their evil.”
“Do they all eat niggas brains?”
“No, they don’t eat your brain literally. They are parasites that eat your soul. They eat away at you every day by making you feel like less of a human being. They keep us poor and pump our neighborhoods full of drugs and alcohol and fried foods and pork to eat away at our spirits.”
Jihad’s eyes sparkled when he talked, the way my grandma’s did when she talked about Jesus.
“Then what about what I saw?”
