THE POLICE MOST LIKELY WOULDN’T AGREE, but the hotter it gets in North Philadelphia, the better. Philly heat makes people come out their houses quick as roaches running off a hot stove. The front steps fill up then; so do the pavements and corners. The streets get busy with cars flying by, blasting music so loud it shakes windows and old people’s bones too, I bet. Summertime is crazy time around here, my stepfather likes to say. “People lose their minds.” I guess he knows how Philly heat can be, hot like cooked grits sliding down your back.
“The devil must have made Philadelphia,” my step-dad says, pulling up his pants, “so he could vacation here in the summer, and not feel like he ever left home.” His forehead is wet. So are his underarms, which stained his blue uniform already. His shirt is open, like all the windows in our house, but still don’t cool him off none. It’s eight a.m. the Fourth of July, and not just starting off hot; it’s still hot from last night and the day before. Philly hot. “Give me another glass of water.” He holds out a glass full of ice. “And fill up the pitcher in the fridge; a few jars, too. It’s gonna be a bad one.”
A bad one in Philly means a lot of things to a police officer like my stepdad, so I know he’s not just talking about the heat. He’s talking about all the things that can go wrong when heat and people who are sick and tired of the heat and everyone else all get mixed up together.
By the time I get back with the water, my stepsister Patricia is sitting in his lap, asking what she already knows the answer to. “Can we get us an air conditioner?” He hands her an ice cube. She rubs it over her forehead, under her arms, dripping water onto his pants. “They don’t cost all that much.”
She shouldn’t mention money to him. He’s cheap. And he’s working two jobs, saving up for a new house. Him and Mom are always telling us that saving money for what we need is better than spending money on what we want. “Sacrifice,” he says, patting her back so she will stand up and he can finish putting on his work boots. “We all gotta do it if we wanna get out of here.”
Here is North Philly, where I was born—him and my mother too. They got married last year. Then we moved into this row house, which he says costs more rent money than it should for a house that crackheads used to sleep in. He stands up, stepping into another boot. Tying laces and stomping dirt off before shining his boots with a rag. “I gotta go. Y’all know the rules, right?”
I’m thirteen. I know the rules. I shouldn’t have to repeat them to him every day before he leaves. I do anyhow, ’cause if I don’t, well . . . I just do, that’s all. “Stay inside. Clean the house. Don’t answer the door. No BET or MTV. Drink water. Save the juice for supper. Look out for each other. Tell the bill collectors you sent the money in. Hit the floor if we gotta. And call you if things don’t seem right.”
He is almost out the door when our two-year-old sister comes into the living room kicking off her Pull-Ups and carrying a soggy undershirt. Golden’s cheeks are as red as the mosquito bites she keeps scratching on her neck. My stepdad taped the holes in her window screen because he says we’ll be moving soon and it don’t make sense to buy new ones. But the bugs get to her anyhow. Picking her up is as easy for him as picking up chips off the floor. So before we know it she’s on his shoulders, and he’s telling her not to wet him before he goes to work. He kisses Golden and hands her to me. Then he hugs Patricia and shakes my hand. “They crazy ’round here. Lock up. Stay inside. I wanna find y’all alive when I get back.” He’s outdoors, saying hello to a neighbor, then listening while I put the locks on—one dead bolt, two chains, a latch, and a chair underneath the knob, just in case. Then he knocks to let me know I need to close some of the windows. I ignore that rule.
I keep looking out the window, making sure he gets that ride from Mr. Shabiz, just like he did yesterday. Then I’m picking up what my sisters threw down last night, thinking about the baths I got to give them, the lunch we have to get packed, the Kool-Aid I froze last night, and the kitchen floor that’s got to be mopped, all before we three get dressed and go outside and have some fun in that Philly heat that my stepdad cannot tolerate.
It’s bad enough to be hot in Philly; but to be hot and stuck inside should be illegal. So I move as fast as I can. Row houses catch the heat like frogs catch flies, and they hold on to it forever, the way graves hold caskets, Miss Evelyn said once. Besides, so much be happening out there, who wants to miss it? Only him, my stepdad, who don’t love North Philly nearly as much as I do, and don’t understand nothing about her neither.
Pop. Pop. Pow!
Patricia ducks.
Golden starts to cry.
I run into the street, watching firecrackers shoot over our house, turning silver, red, and blue.
“ ’Bout time.” Elliott walks up to us. “Y’all late.” He picks up Golden. “See what I got?” He hands a lit sparkler to her. “I’m ready to set something off.”
I take it away from her. “Don’t give her that.”
He puts her down, reaches into his pocket, and pulls out his lighter and flicks. Elliott looks at fire like it’s a girl he can’t wait to kiss. I have to watch him. Last year he accidentally set his house on fire. The whole living room went up in flames. The couch, the bookshelf, his favorite chair—all gone. That’s when I knew for sure you gotta keep six eyes on Elliott. It’s the reason he don’t come in my house no more either. Not because my stepdad says so, but because I say so. He might not mean to do it way deep down inside—but Elliott would fire something up in our place fast as you could turn on a light switch. And I like my sisters alive, and my bed just the way it is.
“Back up,” he says. “Here go another one.”
Before it’s in the sky good, an ambulance flies past our block with its siren blasting. Two fire trucks follow behind it, horns beeping, sirens screaming, forcing drivers out their way. Elliott starts running. It’s like the sirens are calling his name.
“Come on.” He takes off after the trucks. “Let’s see where they go.” He looks back at me, picking up speed when he sees I’m not moving.
I pick up a Blow Pop wrapper and then Golden and head for our porch.
My father’s rules are like a rope tied around my hands and feet, forcing me to stay put even when I want to break loose, even when it looks like I am free to do whatever I like. Watch them girls. Keep ’em inside. Be the man while I’m gone.
I pull out juice boxes and straws. Twenty minutes later I’m still stuck, trapped outside in this Philly heat with two girls and a braid that won’t stay plaited no matter how many times Golden asks me to redo it. “Let’s go back in.” Patricia wipes her sweaty forehead. “It’s boring out here.” She picks up a book and reads it to Golden when she sees me ignoring her.
Finally, Elliott comes back. “I couldn’t catch ’em. But if we take the bus . . . that would be the quickest, fastest way.”
I start packing up Golden. Patricia’s eyes roll. “We don’t wanna do that. It’s hot.” Her ankles cross so I know she ain’t moving. “I’m telling Dad if you make us.” She tells Golden not to move either. “Open the door so we can go in and watch cartoons.”
My stepsister is like her Dad. She don’t like this Philly heat and she don’t care for North Philly much either.
I didn’t want to ditch ’em—that was Elliott’s idea. But I could see my sisters weren’t going to make it today. Philly heat ain’t for everybody. Besides, Elliott reminded me, in three months it will be my fourteenth birthday. I’ve got to start acting my new age. “Dragging sisters around won’t get you no girls,” he says as we walk out of my cousin Danka’s house. She’s giving me three hours to hang out. “Any later and I’m feeding your sisters to the cats,” she tells me.
You can sneak onto a bus in Philly, if you know how to. So when people get off the 32, Elliott and I go through the back door, crawling between legs and listening for the driver to tell us whether we’ve been caught.
We sit on the back seat, pushing open a broken window and sticking our heads out. Elliott yells to a girl wearing hardly anything. I watch the row houses go by, cats sitting under cars, cooling it, and girls with big thighs sitting on steps, using up their minutes. When someone wants off, the bus stops so hard that a woman who was standing ends up in some dude’s lap. I would just let her sit there, if it was me. She’s pretty. Dressed in a tan suit and wearing the kind of heels I like—red spikes.
“You smell that?”
I’m not sure if Elliott’s talking about fire or barbecue. I smell ’em both.
When he jumps up and pulls the cord, I know which one he’s talking about. You can eat anytime, but a fire you’ve got to catch when you can.
There’s a crowd on the corner, watching. We can’t see the flames, but we smell the smoke and hear firemen chopping doors and telling people to hurry out. “Excuse me. Sorry. Move.” Elliott pushes his way to the front. His cell clicks more than mine did when I took pictures of my cousin going to the prom. He could stay here all day. Could watch a match burn all week. But fires bore me after a while, so I leave him and take off by myself.
Philly’s got a lot of small blocks—mazes kind of. My stepdad says don’t get caught on some of them after dark. But he’s always looking at the bad side of things. They got murals in North Philly, too, the most beautiful in the world. I make my sisters stop whenever we see one, ’cause ain’t no harm in appreciating something while you trying to run the streets.
All the houses on this block are knocked down, boarded up, or busted up. It’s just me out here, smashing a SpaghettiOs can with my foot, putting it in my pocket, then climbing a tree that’s growing smack dab in the middle of a house, clear through the roof. A branch sticks out a third-floor window, like an arm through a sleeve. I get to the top of that tree and stare at the blue in the sky and everything down below, including cabbages growing in a yard next door, and pink roses climbing up a wall. I’m thinking about my sisters, wondering what my stepdad’s gonna say when he finds out I ditched ’em. But I’m out, so I might as well stay out as long as I can and make it worth getting punished for, I figure.
“Let’s go,” I say, when I get back to Elliott.
He wants to stay. I take off without him, for good this time. You gotta do that with Elliott—just leave him. He likes to be in charge; to do everything his way.
Before I get to the end of the block, he’s in front of me. “Look,” he says.
One day Elliott’s gonna get me killed. “Don’t look. Keep walking.” I’m trying not to look myself, but that’s a whole lot of money they counting up on that porch. It’s stacked as high as the red heels the lady wore on the bus.
Elliott stops. Not me. He heads for the porch. “What’s up?”
The man in the black do-rag nods, looks at his dough, and says for Elliott to keep stepping. The woman on the porch with the missing railing stays on her knees, counting. She reminds me of my cousin, Tracie. Skinny. Smiling, but looking like she is sad from her eyebrows to her toenails.
Elliott’s got this thing about him. He acts like he’s tougher than he really is. I think it’s because of all the cops in his family—two uncles, a sister, one brother, and a grandfather. He ought to know better, because even Superman could get jacked up around here.
Elliott gets warned again. “Don’t make me hurt you.”
“He’s slow,” I tell the man. “Not right in the head.”
He looks at the two of us. “So.” He reaches inside his shirt and pulls out a shank.
Elliott has always been a fast runner. So he beats me to the end of the block. We turn the corner, roll past a man sitting on his porch, drinking beer and lotioning his wife’s feet; almost run over a woman in a wheelchair riding up the middle of the street, carrying a rug and a floor lamp across her lap.
“Did you see it?” Elliott asks, walking backward. “All that money.”
I stop to catch my breath. “You . . . wanna. . . die?”
He holds up the lighter and sets off a firecracker. “People ’round here know better. They touch me, they in jail for life.”
Elliott first got the fire bug when he was six, he says, when his dad took him to a fire on South Street. It was big and went on for two days. People died. Some came out crying, with their clothes cooking and soot on their faces and their hair smoking, he told me. He felt bad for the people, but he fell in love with fire. “It made me feel happy like Christmas, not sad.” Ever since, it’s been in him to light and burn. His father tries to keep it a secret, but more and more Elliott says he can’t keep it under wraps. “I gotta do it,” he says, “like you gotta play Wii Sports every day.”
Sometimes we walk and get nowhere. Sometimes we get lucky. We both are feeling lucky right now, because of the girl across the street. Everything about her makes us stare: her tight, short purple skirt; her little top; and those lips—pink, big, soft.
“Man.” Elliott shakes his head. “Look at that,” he says, tripping over the curb.
North Philly girls can do that to you: make you forget what you doing. The way they get their hair done. The way they dress like they going someplace special, when most likely they are just going around the block. How they walk like they got all day, but you don’t mind because you ain’t rushing to noplace nohow.
I’m standing on my toes because I want to see every piece of her. But then another girl walks up to the bus stop. Elliott and I look her up and down, ’cause when a North Philly girl walks by, it’s like seeing one of them murals—something that don’t just look good but makes you feel good way deep down inside too. “Sometimes . . . I think I’m never going to get a girl,” I say.
Elliott wouldn’t admit that even if it was true. He slaps his chest. “Shoot. Girls won’t leave me alone.”
He and I aren’t the types that girls chase after. Or the kind they write notes to in class. Sometimes they call me “E” for “Ears.” Elliott gets called other names. Goofy. Maniac. Firebug. Mouth.
I take another look at that girl. “Nice,” I say, downing my soda, trying to cool off from this heat, and from that girl who is beautiful right down to the soles of her feet.
But we can’t stare at girls all day. So we cut up one street and head down another, where some dudes are standing on the corner downing brew and playing craps. Elliott wants in. Not me. “Let’s keep going.”
He gets loud. “So what you gonna do when you fifteen, sixteen?” Elliott asks, like he’s older than I am. “Still play video games? Basketball?” He crosses the street, flashing money. Dice hit the ground. Fingers snap. Hands slap, then stick out, waiting for people to pay up. I walk over too, because Elliott is right. I need to act my age. What do I ever do? Babysit. Collect trash. Who does that at my age? Nobody. I empty my pockets, dropping other people’s trash on the ground.
“Lend me some money, Elliott.”
Everyone here is older than us, in their twenties, mostly. They light up. Drink up. Cuss when they lose. Cuss when they win. And get tired of Elliott and his mouth after a while. I notice things like that. Elliott never does. So I tell him that I need to take a leak, not because I have to, but because I hate the way they’re talking to him—like he’s someone you put up with but you really can’t stand. A little while later, he’s outta money anyhow. So we take off, before they run us off.
By the time we pass Spangler Street, my skin feels as hot as the plastic bottle I pick up off the ground and put in my bag. So when we see a swimming pool in front of a house, looking cool and clean, I stop.
“Let’s get in.”
No one’s out on this block, just us. But we hear the family in the back, laughing and grilling. Elliott is out of his shirt and sneakers before I can change my mind. I kick off my sneakers. Let my shirt and pants hit the ground, then I slide into the water, staying underneath until my air is gone.
Rubber ducks and a beach ball, dead flies and a leaf float around us. Elliott does a headstand. I do a belly flop. He swims around the bottom, picking up pennies. It’s a big pool, like maybe six feet deep. That’s crazy. I never seen one this big sitting on a pavement before.
“Hey, Elliott, check this out.” I dive in this time.
“Mom! They in our pool!”
I hear the words while I’m underwater.
“They stealing it!”
A broomstick gets me in the ribs. I pop up. “Hey! Don’t . . .”
“Ouch!” Elliott holds his cheek. She smacked him with the bristles.
I’m limping, grabbing my sneakers and pants, telling him to bring the rest of our things. But then the father shows up. And he’s got more than a broom with him.
You can not outrun a pit bull. But I’m trying.
We’re running up the middle of the street, barefooted, wet, and in our underwear. “Help! Somebody . . .” I turn the corner, jump on the hood of a Merano, and climb onto the roof. “Elliott, run!”
Elliott hits the roof of a BMW so hard it dents. The dog puts its front legs on the fender; snaps and spits. People point. A man asks if we need help, but he don’t move. A few minutes later, the owner walks up the block, whistling and waving to people he knows. “Lesson learned?” he says, putting a chain on the dog’s neck.
Water is running down my legs, and it’s not pool water. “Yeah,” I say embarrassed.
“Wait till I tell my dad,” Elliott yells at the man. “He’s gonna kill you and your dog.”
A door opens. A woman yells for Elliott to get off her new car. “Now!” Then she runs down the steps, barefooted. Elliott and I hit the ground at the same time, turning the corner so fast it’s like we got wings instead of feet.
“This sucks.”
Elliott looks at me.
“People been chasing us all morning.” I pull up my pants. “I’m going home.”
Two Muslim girls walk by in jeans and hijabs. “What if I got us some girls?”
“How you gonna do that? Girls don’t like you, and they don’t like me.”
He follows them up the street, telling me to wait no matter how long he’s gone.
I’m on Diamond Street; by the time he catches up to me it’s half an hour later. He’s got four girls with him— and they ain’t ugly either. They’re North Philly girls— fine. Walking slow and talking with their hands a lot. Smelling sweet and glossing their lips.
These girls, whose shorts are so tight and small I’d rather walk behind them than beside them, introduce themselves to me. Raven is shy, I think. She stares at the ground more than she looks up. That’s my type—cute and quiet.
“There’s a block party off of Ridge,” Elliott says, putting his arms around Erista. “Let’s hit that.”
Philly loves block parties. You can find one anywhere in the summertime. So it doesn’t take us long to find one. The street’s blocked off, and all the cars are gone. Old ladies and fat girls line dance in the street. Men cook and cut cards. Little kids run up and down the block blowing bubbles, shooting water, and crying when they fall. The girl in front of me snaps her fingers and shakes her butt, then stops, drops, and pops. People laugh and run in and out of doors for more salt, spicy mustard, and lite beer. “I got next,” a woman says, sitting down at a table to play tonk.
A boy my age stands up asking if anybody wants to play Pokeno. “For quarters, not nickels, though.”
“Y’all eat?” a woman sitting out front her house asks. None of us knows her. She hands us plates. “Don’t pass my house without eating something.”
I pile my plate and dig in, eating everything I see— barbecued ribs and jerk chicken, potato salad, tuna salad, deviled eggs, and candied yams. At the next house I get watermelon, steak, and hot dogs. Then I stash empty M&M, Snickers, and Peppermint Pattie wrappers down my front pocket. Elliott tells me to chill when I pick up an empty pizza box, peeling off a piece of cheese that’s still on it.
“Wipe your mouth,” Jamilla says, patting my lips with a napkin.
I don’t think Raven liked that.
We hit another block. Check out another party. It’s hot and getting hotter. The dejay on the radio says it’s ninety-seven degrees. “And we ain’t done cooking yet.”
Raven’s nose sweats. Elliott’s forehead is red. And me, well, the elastic around my drawers is soaking wet; so is the rest of me down there.
“We can go swimming,” Elliott says.
“In what?”
The girls don’t live far away, so they’ll get their things, they say. It’s Elliott and me that can’t get into the local pool. But you know Elliott is nuts. He asks some people if they got old trunks or gym shorts that we can borrow. A woman who works at Sears, and lost her son in Iraq, feels sorry for us. She gives us trunks. And they fit.
North Philly girls got the best bodies, I swear. Karen and Jamilla don’t have on blouses, only bikini tops with peep holes in the middle. Erista’s got a chest big enough for two girls, and a butt as big as the moon. And even though Raven’s suit is under her clothes, I’m thinking about how she’s gonna look in it, and starting to sweat all over again.
“Check this out.” Elliott’s in front of a house that’s just about burnt down. He’s pulling Karen by the arm. She’s giggling. Acting like she doesn’t want to go in, but not fighting hard enough to stay out. I’m wondering about old needles, and rats. But she goes inside anyhow. When they come out, you can tell what happened. He got kissed. Her hair got messed up and so did her top. “Fix this,” she says, asking her girl to retie the strings to her suit.
Raven looks at me. “Don’t even think about it,” she says, like I ever would.
We’re outside the fence watching; smelling chlorine in the water and food cooking in the park across the way. People laugh and girls lie, telling guys, “Quit dunking me,” then going back for more.
I sit by Raven on the edge of the pool, staring at her flat belly, wondering what she’d think if I picked up the pecan swirls wrapper or that Arizona Iced Tea empty and stuck ’em in my pants pocket. My stepdad hates when I do that. But I got my reasons.
Raven slides into the pool, one toe, one thigh, one arm at a time, like it’s icy cold instead of warm as the sun. Dripping wet and smiling, she asks where I live and go to school. I forget about trash. I want to know if she has a boyfriend; what her cell number is. Not like I ask, though. I get in and out of the pool talking to her, but making sure not to splash her hair, even though a little water finds it anyhow.
It’s packed in the pool. So you can’t help but bump into people. Since we came an hour ago, I accidentally knocked into this one dude like four times. I can’t afford to do that no more.
But it happens anyhow.
“Quit it, man!” He’s all muscles, like my stepdad.
“Sorry.”
“Naw, man. You gotta do better than that.”
He’s like nineteen or twenty. Loud-talking me for swimming into him, ’cause too many people were around for me to do anything else. I walk away. He shoves me. Normally I would keep walking. But she’s watching. “I said I was sorry! What you want me to do?”
“Yeah. What you want him to do?” It’s Elliott. He is five-six and a hundred and ten pounds. No one is afraid of him. So the guy keeps talking to me.
He pulls his shorts up. “When I’m in the pool, you stay out the pool. Awright?”
“This my little brother. Don’t talk to him like that.” Elliott’s got a big mouth.
The guy pushes me down and holds me under until water fills up my mouth. I come up coughing and spitting. People circle us, looking at him and waiting for me to do something.
“You don’t own the pool,” I say.
Elliott’s fists are up, but he gets pushed under the water, too, and held down a long time. Elliott is a fool. When he comes back up, he’s still talking. “Do you know who I am? Do you know who my father is?”
The dude shoves him under again. Elliott comes up blowing snot into his hand and washing it off in the pool. Then out of his mouth comes the biggest lie. His father works for the DA, he says. And he pops off names to prove it. His mother is the mayor’s secretary and his uncle is the assistant to the assistant chief of police. “You don’t believe me, huh, huh?” Elliott is climbing out the pool. “Who got a cell? Hand me a cell!”
I don’t know if the guy believes him, but the lifeguard comes over and asks what the problem is. He tells people to swim or get out. The guy who dunked us is underwater, at first. Then he pops up with a girl on his shoulders. She laughs. He throws her off and swims to the other side of the pool.
It’s still not over when I get ready to leave.
Bam! I’m down on my knees.
“Don’t swim near me no more,” he says, diving back into the pool.
Elliott doesn’t say a word. Neither do I. This is North Philly. This thing could go on until something even worse happens.
“You okay?” Raven wants to know.
The other girls are laughing.
My back burns so bad that I ask Elliott if he sees blood. “I think he used something,” I tell him.
“Don’t be like that in front of girls.”
“Like what?”
He covers his mouth when he says it. “Like . . . lame.”
I walk as straight as I can. But all I really want to do is sit down, before I fall down.
The girls spread out towels on the grass, then kicking off their flip-flops and sandals. Seals spit water at two little boys, while old men sit and play checkers. A half an hour more and then we’ll leave, we all figure. Only Raven’s friends take off before then. “Y’all boring,” they say, leaving with their towels. I’m not sure why she stays. I wouldn’t figure her to be the type to stick with two boys she hardly knows. We three stretch out in the hard, dry grass, listening to Michael Jackson singing on somebody’s car radio, and water splashing. I close my eyes. Elliott asks her a question. I never hear the answer.
* * *
“How long we been asleep?” Raven wants to know. The pool is closed, and the creeps are out. “I don’t know. An hour?”
I tell her we’ll walk her home. “Not till the fireworks are done, though,” Elliott says, running up the hill and sitting down.
This is why I love North Philly. You can see all kinds of people and do all kinds of things—good or bad. Two Harleys ride up the middle of 33rd Street, side by side, doing wheelies and slowing traffic. Cars fly by in the opposite direction, beeping their horns at a man holding a sign saying honk if you’ve been tested. Music loud enough to hear downtown makes one woman dance all by herself. She’s throwing down so hard that a white dude jumps out his Volkswagen and finishes the song with her. Girls walk up the block in threes and tens. Cop cars creep up the street, watching, while reefer smells up the park and the homeless do their business in the dark.
I should go home. I’d tell Elliott that too, but she’s here. And my stepdad is probably home, ready to shoot me. So I lay next to her and listen to the fireworks thunder and whistle, explode and pop, whiz nearby and shoot up high, then burst into a thousand stars.
As soon as it’s over we run across the street. “Stop. Let’s get some watermelon,” she says. A man with a truck full of little ones gives us a sample. It tastes like sugar water, only sweeter. So we ask for more.
Elliott walks ahead of us, pointing at women painted blue and holding mics. Raven faces me. We walk and talk about the fireworks and melon, running out of conversation right in front of my favorite mural: a wall full of horses and people from around this way sitting tall on ’em. Golden always wants to ride on my back when she sees it, then we talk about all the places in the world she’ll ride to one day. Raven tells me about the mural on 22nd Street. It’s her favorite. “Somebody’s gonna draw me on a mural one day,” she says, posing. “Then I’ll live forever.”
Gunshots don’t surprise us when we hear them. It’s the Fourth of July weekend. Somebody’s gonna die. “We better leave.” I take her hand. She holds my fingers tight. I think I am the luckiest boy in the world.
Elliott is cool sometimes. While I walk Raven to her front door, he keeps quiet, mainly lighting matches and flicking ’em high in the air. I stare at her hard as I do those murals, because I know I won’t ever see her again.
She licks her pretty lips. I lick mine. She clears her throat. I do the same. Then a window opens. “Girl, get in here,” her sister says. “Dad’s looking for you.”
Just like that, Raven’s inside the house. Gone.
“You get her number?” Elliott asks.
“No.”
“She wasn’t that cute anyways.”
It’s what we say when we strike out.
We speed up, sweating like crazy. Philly heat don’t know when to call it quits.
“He’s gonna be mad,” Elliott says.
I quit walking. “It was worth it. I didn’t even notice the heat all that much. I mean, I met a girl. You can’t meet a girl in the house with your sisters.” We bump fists and I notice for the first time that him and me stink. I sniff my underarms. “You think she smelled me?”
“I smell you.” His nose goes under both his pits. “But we always smell like this. What’s the problem?”
Ain’t no problem, I’m thinking, taking my time walking back home, watching fireworks shooting off of porches. “I had me the best time. Dag.” I jump up, punching the air. “So I don’t care. For real. What he say or do to me don’t matter.”
“Blame me.” Elliott stops. “People blame me for everything anyhow.”
My mother says Elliott’s got sad eyes. They’re not sad, just big and tired-looking, like he never sleeps, which is true. He’s up till three every night. “Never could sleep,” his mother always says. “Even when he was a baby.”
“You gonna sleep good tonight,” I tell him, yawning. “As soon as he finishes yelling, I’m going to bed.” I don’t mention what I think next. That I’m going to sleep and kiss that Raven in my dreams.
Elliott turns in the opposite direction, jogs toward the corner. “Hold up. I’ll be right back.”
I pick up a Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos bag and two Hot Tamale boxes, flatten them and put them away. Our teacher said if we showed him what our neighbors were eating, he’d tell us what was eating our neighbors. He got sick and left for good back in May. But I’m still doing the project. Hot. Spicy. Sweet. That’s what they like around here. I don’t know what that means yet, but I’m gonna someday.
“Elliott!” I yell like he can hear me, then walk around the corner to find him. I’m in enough trouble already, I think.
I find him on the next street, sitting in a car somebody ditched, firing up trash. I don’t know if he knows why he does it.
“Elliott!”
“I quit last summer.”
“I know.”
“But quitting only makes me think about it more.” He takes the lighter and holds it to the busted leather seat with the stuffing pulled out.
“I know,” I say, holding my hand out.
He adds more trash, trying to build a good fire. “If the whole car went up . . . man, that would be cool.”
I look at him. “You take your medicine?’
He looks at me. “Naw.”
My hand burns when I snuff out the fire. “What about yesterday? You take it then?”
He smiles. “It makes me sleep. All the time.”
“You never sleep. That’s your problem.” I start walking. He jumps out the car and follows. “You got too much energy—up here.” I point to his head. “Take the medicine. It’s good food.”
We laugh at that because his mom always says it. It’s hard, I guess, being smart like him with a 130 IQ, but with a mind that won’t do what he says.
“I ain’t bad.”
I take his hand. “Come on, we have to go.”
He hands over the lighter, then digs in his pocket and gives me two more. “She was cute,” he says, talking about Raven.
“Sure was. I shoulda asked for her number.”
He slaps me on the back. “You gonna be fourteen soon. Not a kid no more. You better learn to ask.” He digs in his pocket again and pulls out three numbers. “I do,” he says, when we hit our block.
This is why I like Elliott. He’s braver than I am. Funny and loyal, too. You can’t give up on someone like that just because their mind don’t work like yours.
There are police cars parked in front of my house. That ain’t no surprise. We stop at the corner. I pick up an empty juice box and the top to a pack of Lemon-heads.
“See you next year,” Elliott says, crossing the street. “Hey. Happy birthday, early.”
He’s right. I’ll be on punishment when my birthday comes in October.
“I’ll get it for you. Her number, I mean.”
Elliott and I would do anything for each other.
Everyone’s outside, waiting for me; waiting for their houses to cool off too, I guess. Miss Evelyn’s sitting on her steps, watching the news on TV. Four little flags hang in front of her house, drooping like her flowers. “Boy . . . when you gonna learn?” I stare at the screen. There’s a reporter talking about a dead body they found, and there’s a helicopter in the sky shining a light on another street.
Patricia and Golden run up and hug me. “You in trouble,” Patricia says. “But I didn’t tell.”
One policeman is sitting in a car. The other one, Mr. Dave, is standing by the curb. “Hey, Mr. Dave,” I say, watching him put his pad away.
“Where you been?” It’s my stepdad.
Mr. Dave is my godfather. “This daggon Philly heat,” he says, wiping his forehead. “It’ll make you crazy.” He looks at my father, while the other car pulls off. “Make a good boy do the wrong thing sometimes. Know what I mean?”
I tell them our house is hotter than fire. “We just wanted some air; water, too.”
My stepfather grabs me by the front of the shirt. “I been calling the house all day. Danka finally told me how you left them girls and never came back.” He asks what I was thinking, neglecting my sisters like that.
I push his hands away. “I’ll be fourteen soon. I shouldn’t be locked up in the house like you do them crooks!”
The people across the street get quiet. Patricia and Golden too.
My stepdad smells my breath. “I don’t drink,” I say, feeling Elliott rise up in me.
He pats my pockets.
“What you doing?’
“Empty ’em. Slow. One by one.”
I’ve never ditched my sisters before. Never stayed out until dark. It’s not right, him doing this to me. In public. And for what? Being a boy?
“Do you know how many people been shot tonight already?” He kicks my trash and asks my sister to pick it up. Sweat drips down his chin. “You know how many times I called home; rode around this neighborhood?” His fingers shake. And he stares at the ground. “Boys like you get into trouble ’round here all the time.” He stands up straight and sends the girls inside to get something to eat. “I should . . .” His fist goes back. My eyes close.
Mr. Dave steps in between the two of us, and then walks a little ways with me. “When you’re a father, you’ll understand.” He takes out a cigarette and lights it. “When you a cop, you know already. It’s mean out here.”
He starts walking. “Don’t make your father hurt you.”
I try to explain.
“He will hurt you, if he thinks it’s gonna keep them from hurting you,” he says, pointing up the street. “Understand?”
“Yeah . . . but.”
He tells me to shut up, then walks me over to my dad and says the two of us have to work it out. We sit outside, the three of us, talking. I try to tell them that I’m not a kid anymore. “You lock me up, I’m gonna bust out— anybody would.” I’m shaking while I’m saying it, because once Mr. Dave is gone, my stepdad will show me who’s really in charge. But I don’t care. I met me a girl. I ate me the best food. And I’m never gonna forget those fireworks and her sleeping next to me.
My stepdad stares at his boots. “I told you . . .”
“I know.”
“If you got hurt . . . if the girls got hurt . . .”
My godfather asks to speak to him a minute. They go inside and come out shaking hands and talking about how hot it is. Mr. Dave goes back to work. My stepdad gets back to me. “I’m never gonna understand you liking North Philly the way you do.” All he sees is the trash, and kids out of control, police trying to get people to talk who won’t, and boys like me in trouble or dead. But if he saw Raven. If he had that lady’s sweet potato pie, or if he saw all that money on the porch, or those people line dancing, and grilling in the dark, then he’d know why I love North Philly.
He opens the door. “Maybe we need to change a few things around here.” He picks up Golden, who is out of her Pull-Ups again. “But first you have to get what’s coming to you.” He’s quiet a minute. “Tell me what you think is fair—and don’t be messing around, ’cause I got plenty ideas about how to make you wish you were never even born.”
I look at him standing there like a mountain in that doorway. He doesn’t wait for an answer. He walks into the house asking Golden if she wants Ernie in the tub with her, or Mickey Mouse.
I don’t know why, but he doesn’t tell me to come inside. And I don’t go, not for a while, anyhow. I sit. I tell my stomach to quiet down when I smell fish frying up the street somewhere. I watch my neighbors kicking back, talking on cells and to each other. I hear Miss Bert yelling to someone to bring her a bowl of butter pecan ice cream, and some grease, so she can oil her scalp.
Philly heat. It makes people stay outdoors all night long. You can’t hardly sleep for the heat and the noise sometimes. That’s why I like it, though—like living here, feeling the heat, watching people walking the streets— knowing that it ain’t all bad; ain’t all good, neither. It’s just where I live. My hood.