But then, there were those, like the b-boys this morning — “Hey, big legs!” “Boo-tay!‘ “Look to me like she with the itty-bitty titty committee.” “Well fuck you, bitch, won’t talk to me. You ain’t shit, nohow.” It is easy — too easy, of course — to airbrush the past. Did Mama ever look back with longing, even for a moment? Did she ever regret stealing away? Worry about losing the accuracy of her memories?
The propped-up Caddy down the street, rusting on cinder blocks, is one of a handful of altars for preachers of the dozens. You ain’t got game, Lame, watch me, watch me work. I went to your house to ask for money, your mama rip off her drawers, say, “Fuck me, honey.”
Your mama eat shit.
Your mama eat dogyummies.
Word!
Some of the boys wear wool caps and hooded sweatshirts, despite the late-morning broil, or shuffle about in heavy winter boots. They wear dungaree jackets turned inside out. Others high-style it in black and silver L.A. Raiders shirts, Kangor caps, and Tommy Hilfiger jeans — which nearly slide off their butts. Even from a distance, their capped teeth gleam in the sun; knuckle rings, neck chains sizzle and flash. These are the fellows missing from Etta’s on Sunday nights.
Every other corner’s got a clocker with a beeper, every vacant lot a lost soul ready to beam up to Scotty. The old winos, the King Cobras I remember trying to avoid as a girl, seem quaint and harmless next to the freebasers and skeezers screaming to themselves, weaving through fields of broken glass. As I turn back toward Bitter’s, a lanky kid in Kani’s and Tims stumbles into me out of the boneyard, marble-eyed, drooling, haranguing the trees. Our collision knocks the cup from my hand, and it shatters on the wall.
“Miss Thang!” I turn to see a Beamer take the corner. The man Reggie called Rue Morgue. “Well well. We out cool chilling. You with that, babe?”
“Excuse me,” I mumble, stepping around the car. It tails me. Rue waves and grins, hanging out the passenger window. An insignia on his baseball cap shows a guy caught in crosshairs. “Come chill wit’ us, aight?”
I keep my head down. I remember overhearing a colleague of mine in Social Services say one morning, to a bruised young girl, “There’s no type of woman who gets hit. We could all get hit, okay?”
Trailing us, the lanky kid calls, “Yo! Right chere!”
Rue laughs at him. “Yeah? And how I know you ain’t some knocko, G?”
“Come on, man, look at me.” He holds out a twenty dollar bill.
“Fucking pipehead. Go change it for singles. We meet you ‘round the corner in five.”
The kid ambles off. The driver mutters something to the Man in Charge. “Yeah yeah, aight,” Rue says, mock-serious. “We got mo’ business now,” he tells me. “My crew is in effect. But later, cakes, hm?” He aims a gun-barrel finger my way. “Maybe we knock boots, Jiggy. Lay us some pipe.” He cackles. The driver glides them down the street.
On my car radio, a woman says Houston has surpassed L.A. as the nation’s smog capital. A caller says, “I agree with Governor Bush. It’s not that I’m against clean air. I just don’t think the federales should tell Texans what to do with their cars.”
I park next to an abandoned taco stand and a boxing gym rumbling with youthful energy. My hands have been trembling ever since the Beamer. Reggie’s office is open, but no one’s around. He’s got a new picture on his walclass="underline" an Emerge magazine sketch — Clarence Thomas as a lawn jockey. The place smells of tuna fish and potato salad. A desk fan stirs warm air.
A hip-hop groove drills through the back wall, from Natalie’s apartment. In the open doorway, her boy, Michael, in a red Houston Rockets jersey, gyres and slashes the sunlight — Listen up, suckers! I step outside. He sees me and stops. “What’s the haps?” he says, looking braver than he sounds.
“Reggie around?”
“Hang. He be here. Holding a meet for the ‘hood.”
“Looks like you’re helping him get organized.”
“Yeah. He axed me to grab him some records — wantsa talk up the talk. You cruising or what? I seen you here before.”
“I’m Ariyeh’s cousin.”
“That right?” He looks skeptical. He turns back inside and stacks CDs: Puff Daddy, Low G, Rasheed.
“Your mom?”
“Down at the U. Economics class.”
“Tupac?” I ask, a wild guess, nodding at his boom box.
“Wu-Tang Clan,” he sneers, but his face perks up. “You like this shit?”
“Sure.”
“A ‘bout it ‘bout it chick, eh? You a wigger? Flipping the script?”
“What do you mean?”
“White person wantsa be a niggah, know’m say’n?”
I laugh. “Show me. Who do you like?”
“All right. Really?”
“Really.”
Seems he’s a young performer, waiting for an audience, or maybe he’s just happy to have someone listen to him talk about anything. “Here it is, then. In all the o-fficial talk, in the papers and shit, ‘Fifth Ward’ is what they say when they want to say ‘niggah’ ‘thout really saying it,” he says, lowering his voice like a DJ. “So these here the original voices of Fifth Ward, Texas: Bushwick Bill, Scarface, Willie D — the Geto Boys.”
For a year, Willie D and Scarface had a falling-out, he tells me — Willie’s name shit in Southside, and a few niggahs died — but things are cool again, and the music’s as dope as ever. He plays me some cuts on the boom box: “Mind of a Lunatic,” “No Nuts No Glory,” “Murder after Midnight.” Fifth Ward, Texas.
“Yeah,” Michael says, watching my face. “This ain’t no Cristal-sipping, Versace-wearing shit. Boys keeping it real.”
As I listen I realize, more forcefully than before, that I’m stuck in the early seventies: civil rights / street agitation / black is beautifuclass="underline" Uncle Bitter’s world. Reggie is right — I feel it now in my gut. The world has moved beyond the mere low-down of the blues and into a bloody mess. Crack-capitalism rules the streets, not protest marches. Needles, not Ripple. I glance at Michael. Kids like him don’t expect to live past twenty-five. I think of the boys disappearing from Ariyeh’s school … a sacrifice of children, forfeiture of the future, but why?…
Suddenly, Bushwick is dwarfed by a louder beat from the street. Michael runs to the door. “Motherfucker,” he says. Over his shoulder I glimpse the Beamer.
“Little rag! Little bitch-boy! You got that twinkie for me yet?”
“Fuck you, motherfucker! You dealing with a niggah that’s greater than you!”
Rue Morgue removes his baseball cap. He’s got a wide bald head. Shades, small mouth. He doesn’t smile. “Got a body bag waiting for you, little rag.” He waves to me. “Miss Ann! You everywhere, boogee. I’s thinking you just a tourist, enjoying our fine vacation grounds. You living here now?”
“Michael, come back inside.”
“Wants to hang with a Big Willie, Miss Thang? See how it’s done? I’m your man. Come on over here, hm?” My palm trembles on Michael’s shoulder. He shrugs me away.
“Come on, baby, slide on over here now.”
“No, thank you.”
“Damn, she a polite dime piece,” the driver says. Rue coos, “I know you want it, sugar.”