That was enough to bring out Linda—
Have you lost your mind? I didn’t raise you to put your hands on women. Get in the damn house.
Inside, old girl broke it down, while Bill sat and stewed. Of course it was out of his hands now. Linda called Dad and Bill was ordered to be responsible for his half and make the trek out Route 40 to a country clinic and see the thing done.
After that, Dad cut Bill loose. They’d been at war all his life, but now Bill was seventeen, a grown man in my father’s eyes, and mostly set on whatever path would be. He was remanded back to Tioga, but there was no more checking homework, reviewing report cards, or upbraidings for cutting class. Dad issued the simple ultimatum that all of us lived under — at eighteen you will leave this house — and left the rest in the hands of Big Bill.
Back at Lemmel, the Marshall Team came to an understanding with 8-07. A few fights followed mine, but once respect was assured, our meetings lost their sinister edge and diffused into the everyday roughhousing of boys anywhere. In our second semester, we took gym alone and were left to spar with one another. The boys were still desperate to prove their hand speed and ability to dominate. Me, I just threw enough combos to send the message that I was willing, a few slaps to keep the peace. That accomplished, I came to an accord with my gifted brothers.
There were only seven or eight of us, but a year earlier they could not help but broadcast their contempt whenever I was near. Now, we would build on what we had in common: an obsession with Dan Marino’s rifle. At lunch, we would spread the lore of Mike Tyson, how he knocked niggers out southpaw, how they danced as they fell, rose, and fell again. Our deepest dream was to move through the world with that sort of constant thundering force. Failing that, we banded together and tried to project an aura that guarded against assault.
My pre-school ritual came to include a larger circle of friends. The gifted kids had to be bused in from deeper sections of the West Side. They altered their trajectory and would stop and meet on my porch in the morning. Then we would begin our march forward, shielded by the security of one another. I swooned in the turnaround, and marveled at my own power to remake myself not at some private or county school, where I was unknown, but here on my own soil where once I’d feared for my skin.
On weekends, I did projects for school and wrote rhymes. I played tapes of Gil Scott, Malcolm’s “Message to the Grass Roots,” and continued my quest to ingest anything in my father’s book collection relating to the Panthers. It was all so romantic to me. I’d replaced one pantheon for another, Spider-Man and Goose for Robert Williams and Huey. This was not joyful, exactly, but offered me freedom. I could not escape who I was, but now didn’t want to. My new heroes and narrative gave meaning to everything I’d once hated about my life — the banned holidays and fasts, the assigned reading, the angry young boys all around me. Dad noticed, but uttered not a word of pride. Still, I knew how he got down, reserved, with most of his more positive emotions inferred.
I carved out safety at Lemmel, but knew that if I could go to a school where I did not require a security detail, I should do it. My sights were set on the majestic stature of Baltimore Polytech and its twin school Western. In my early days down near Mondawmin, Kris was a junior at Western. On school days we would take the same train to West Cold Spring. I would walk a few blocks over to fifth grade. Kris would wait on the street under the elevated subway tracks. Often I’d see her bus, the number 33 with Poly/ Western scrolling electronically across the front, and I thought it incredible that two schools could hold such sway that mass transit was turned to charter.
The Poly/Western complex was a royal seat in Baltimore. Once they were the exclusive domain of white kids in uniforms. Now like all the old white neighborhoods with prewar homes and yawning streets, they were ours. But unlike everything else we inherited, the great traditions carried on. Western was the oldest all-girl public school in the country. It emerged as a funnel to exclusive schools in the Northeast. Traditions were minted. Big sister juniors adopted little sister freshmen. Seniors wore all white to inaugurate the start of the year. The mascot was the dove. The basketball team was hot and dominant.
Poly stood across the quad, equally venerable and exclusive. Once all boys, it had gone progressive, admitted girls, integrated before any other high school in the city. No boys of sense disputed the presence of young women. Besides, the old ways endured — the orange and blue colors, the great football teams, the rivalry with City College, and most important a steady stream of young scientific minds. Everyone from Poly/Western went to college.
I did well that year, which for me meant a high C, and only one beating from Dad or Ma. I must have done really well, because I don’t even remember who administered it. I was always better when the repercussions were immediate, and the threat of heading to my zoned high school sent me to homework and study. They notified us in the spring. It was like a miniature ritual of college admissions. You could tell that we were different in the gifted program, because while most of the school knew where they were headed, we buzzed with expectation. No one wanted to go to their zoned school.
When I got the news, my mother was at home. I do not remember the color of the envelope or the length of the letter. But I remember jumping up and down and hugging my mother. I remember her smiling at me in actual pride, and this was new. She was often proud of me and demonstrated as much, but it was over potential and possibility, something I had said which made her expect that at some unknowable future date, I would amount to something more than what I seemed to be. Now she smiled at the tangible, at the real, not at what I dreamed I’d be but at that moment what I was.
It was the season of expectations for all of us. Dad had left Bill to his fate. Bill, though oriented to the streets, still had enough wits to know that no one ever pulled a girl by bragging about being a high school dropout. Bill did not even bother applying anywhere aside from the Mecca. By now he’d visited Kris and Kell, had seen the parties, which were next level, and had some sense that college was more than a collection of eyeglasses. That was enough to pull from him the first mature effort of his life — and thus the first meaningful result. He was accepted, the third among three that Dad had steered to Howard.
The rest of my year felt easy and musical. Classes were more relaxed. I wrote rhymes at night. All of us were anticipating the annual eighth-grade trip to Patapsco State Park. My mother took me shopping up at Reisterstown. I bought a fresh blue sweat suit with a matching Duke tee shirt, Starter hat, and a pair of blue-and-white Airs. Afterward we ate fried chicken, corn, greens, and biscuits. I dressed the next day with pride — I had never been so in style in all my life. We were told to bring our boom boxes and dress in our flyest gear. Teachers provided food for a cookout, footballs and softball equipment. They piled us into buses and rolled us out of the dense city for a forty-minute drive into the open. I rolled down the cheese bus window and tasted the air. I had hayfever then, but it must not have mattered because I don’t remember a single sneeze or eye rub.
We walked all across the state park that day, tossing the football, running routes and calling out Henry Ellard or Jerry Rice. And that’s when we saw them coming over the hill, running our way. We were not the only middle-school seniors on the trip. 8-07 in all their deep glory were running down an asphalt path. We made them from a distance, and, not knowing what to expect, we were ready and we were cocked.