“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 peeclass="underline" “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.