But most of these kids learned early that they were not funny or fast. They might have a jump shot or a spin move when running back a kick. But their talents were mostly elsewhere, and the other boys and girls gave them no respect. But somewhere about third grade they got the message: Fists could equalize it all. That if they could raise their dukes, they could cut a lot of the bullshit. It did not matter if their jab was wild or the headlock was no more than a firm hug. That they stood instead of ran made them hard targets and served notice to the bandits that there was no free lunch. Now they’d survived the early battles of elementary school and were here at Lemmel, in the midst of a bad combination. There was the bubbling pubescent machismo that under most circumstances eventually resulted in blows. There was the absence of men and fathers, men who could teach nuance and intelligence to boys. There were the girls, now sprouting attitude and curves, who we all desperately wanted to impress. And then there was class 7-16—the Marshall Team — the school nerds, easy marks.
By then almost every boy in my class had heard the talk in the halls — that 7-16 was soft, that its boys could not hold their hallway down. So my classmates rolled a little thicker than usually required, since sooner or later, one of them was bound to be touched.
This is how the Marshall Team, Lemmel’s best and brightest, became a gang. They assembled in their own area before school. They had their own table at lunch. They would throttle one another at random moments, testing for a weak link. In bathrooms and at lunch tables they’d beat on each other and critique the response, because all this was a dry run for what we faced outside.
But I was peace pipes and treaties. My style was to talk and duck. It was an animal tactic, playing dead in hopes that the predators would move on to an actual fight. It was the mark of unKnowledge, a basic misreading of nature and humanity. The fallacy was brought to light outside Ms. Hines’s Latin class just before lunch. The 7-16 boys circled around us. Kwesi Smith stood a few feet away. We were both new to Lemmel, and we’d already bonded over this fact. But he was a quicker study and when 7-16 formed an arena around us, and my eyes frantically scanned the wall of boys for a doorway out, Kwesi put up his dukes because he understood.
I got to know Kwesi as time went on. He invited me to his home for cookouts and birthday dinners at fish spots near the bay. He was like me, wore Bugle Boys, parachute pants, turtleneck sweaters with brass medallions and cryptic branding like “Fifth Patrol.”
All that was months later. Today was different. Someone — maybe Merrill, Gerald, or Leon — set this all in motion. They wanted a fight. A voice came through the crowd, said something like, Let’s see if you can take this mutherfucker. I raised my fist, thought, I’ll only swing if he—and that was it. I was in midthought when Kwesi reached in and slapped me across the jaw. The rest of the Marshall Team was changing classes. I heard the entire hallway laugh at once, then it echoed throughout the school, then the city, and somewhere else I felt Big Bill shaking his head.
It was disrespect — I didn’t even warrant knuckles. I got in a few lazy tags before a teacher broke it up. But that’s how it started — with a blow that didn’t even hurt. At lunch the story reverberated across tables and into the line. People I did not know were retelling the episode in grander terms—
That nigger was like, What the fuck you goin’ do, bitch. And Tana — this is how they shortened my name — busted out crying.
I felt my tenuous status slipping into dangerous territory. I tried to talk it down, but did not understand what had really happened. I would have had to murder Kwesi in the lunchroom to get back any respect.
From then on, I was the weakest of the marks, and my weakness was despised. By the gifted kids, most of all. Some of my whippings were just macho show, but mostly they were pure logic. 7-16 looked at me and saw everything that their world said they were — soft and weak — and that could not be allowed. I didn’t make many more friends on the Marshall Team that year. The few that I did could never understand why I would not fight.
I fit only slightly better back home. Our neighborhood was calm and could not compare with the rest of Mondawmin. We had only a smattering of Section 8, and no colorful legacy — no older gods regaled us with tales of knife fights and smack. All our houses were sedate and brick. They had bad self-esteem, were built on a natural incline, slumped down and into each other, had tiny backyards, basement doors embedded in the ground like bomb shelters. Insignificant lawns. Covered porches. But still, better — and yet worse than — the projects.
We had no rec centers or courts infested with ball hawks whose handles were legend. The courts at Druid Hill Park were beyond reach. I would launch kites from broad parking lots or get with Leroy and some friends to toss snowballs at buses and cabs. On the grass hill between Mondawmin and the crib, we drew up plays in our palms, hiked, and went deep. Behind our houses, we measured broad alleys and plotted courses for our Diamondback and Mongoose bicycles.
I had enough Knowledge to know that the athletes were our kings — Jordan, Tyson, and LT. And then there was Len Bias at the University of Maryland and his obnoxious array of shots. His game should have been locked in a cell. Bias had a first step that was unreal but was so complete that when everything pointed to a windmill or double pump, he’d pull up from eighteen feet and calmly shoot out the lights. Big Bill was entranced. He followed box scores in The Sun, cut out headlines, and fantasized about the Sweet 16.
Bill would ball up scrap paper in Dad’s basement office and take aim at the trash can. He would bang and bend wire hangers until they rounded into a hoop and could be jammed between a door and the sill. Then he’d make a ball from the Sunday Sun and cover it with packing tape. His addiction was all consuming. He put me to work gathering Dad’s tools, then boosting milk crates from the supermarket on the side of Mondawmin. In the alley between Forest Park and Liberty, Bill, Jay, Dante, and all the neighborhood boys convened. For Bill, turning an alley into a court was nothing — back in the projects he’d once conjured Madison Square Garden from a bicycle rim. He cut out the crate bottom, climbed a ladder while one of his boys held it secure, then nailed the makeshift goal to a backboard and phone pole. Then he grabbed the orange-striped rock, christened his creation with a short fadeaway and began chanting: Bias from eighteen feet, Bias coast to coast, Bias for the game.
The rules were organic. Breaks in the alley and cement were foul lines and boundaries. We were honorable and yelled “Ball!” when hacked. Starting with the rock, the alley flowered into a center of civilization. Bill would bring out his boom box and tapes of Frank Ski. Fools would pass around air pistols and shoot the threading out of old ski jackets. It did not end in the winter. Clouds gathered and dumped snow over the city. But the next day, we’d be shoveling until we’d reclaimed a broad patch of gray. Then we’d go to war in our skullies. The crate would stand for months, until one morning we’d arrive and find only plastic bits and bent nails. I suspected ghosts, invoked by the new moon, rising up like Darryl Dawkins’s revenge.