This old white nigga starts talking and everybody on the train shuts up real tight for a second. Then they start screaming, “Eeeeeh! Eeeeeeh!” cheering like on the basketball court watching Pito and Slimminy try to murder each other one-on-one, or when Sonjra and Ana-Rosario skipped Mr. Dominic’s math class to go snatch clothes from on two-fifth and rocked their new Baby Phat jeans straight through eighth period, still with the plastic lock tags on. They ain’t even hear what he said, and I’m not gonna front—I didn’t really hear it either, it was so loud. I was just surprised to see him put down his newspaper and open his mouth, and even more surprised to see the snow fall out.
And when he said “Shit!” forget it—it was a wrap. I always wondered what one of those random old white niggas on the train would do if you touched them or winked at them, rubbed your ass up on them one time when it was crowded or something. I thought maybe they would turn pink and start sweating and pull on they necktie like that old video for “Baby Got Back”—Sir Mix-a-Lot, I think—when the white dude sees the black girl with the phatty and it hits him too close, closer than white people like to go.
But your boy didn’t do any of that. All he did was clear his throat and say “HEY!” real loud, like Principal Scaprioni does at assemblies when Light-skin Chris and them is actin’ up, singing R. Kelley songs to the girls in the back row. At school, Scaprioni screams “HEY!” louder and they sing louder, going from the Chocolate Factory album and “Step in the Name of Love” straight back to some shit—I can’t even remember the title—’bout “your booody’s caaallin fooor me.” Scaprioni says “HEY” real loud—not loud as five or ten niggas singin’ to cute girls—but who got the microphone? You can feel his voice shaking the walls from out the speakers; if you not talking you can even feel it under your feet.
Me, I sit with my homegirl Patricia and she teaches me words in Spanish. When Chris and them act up she tells me they acting mad “bobo,” and when Scaprioni starts sweating like the white dude in the video, his fat face shining like a ham hock, she says “Que parece cerdo.” I laugh, ’cause my homegirl is funny, and ’cause I like how things she say in Spanish be so close to what I think in English. I don’t know, shit like that is just funny to me.
Sometimes, if Dominique showed up to school that day and decided to sit with us instead of her flavor-of-the-week nigga, she bite on her braids like how she do and say some Jamaican shit ’bout “Dat de man a puar wharff daawg!” But I’m not good at understanding all that. She make me laugh in the same way, though, for the simple fact that when me and Patricia went to her house, she had oxtails and fried fish with hush puppies, but her whole family called it “oxtail” with no s, and “festival.” And when Patricia asked what kind of fish it was, Dominique said it was salt fish, but Patricia said she coulda swore it was bacalao. Crazy how shit could be different as night and day, then turn out to be the same damn thing just in a different language or a different sauce. I don’t know, I just laugh.
Principal Scaprioni doesn’t usually have to shake the ground more than once, even though they say 155 is the worst school in the city. They only say that because them dumb-ass twins Andrew and Alex put on some black T-shirts and brought heat to school last year—their senior year, okay, in April, not even two months before their graduation—and tried to shoot the nose off the sphinx statue in the lobby, talking ’bout “THIS IS POLITICAL!” Now we have to go through metal detectors every time we come in and out. The line be down the street, almost to the train station. And still they expect us to get to class on time. What is that? And now we ’posed to be these bad-ass kids, meanwhile the worst shit that happens on a regular day is some dumb-ass, bobo-ass, wharff daawg-ass niggas singing “Sex Me!” to a bunch of eighth grade girls who can’t even be bothered.
Well, I guess that’s not true, depending on how you look at it. What shit does go down at 155 is ’cause they send these teachers whose names are probably Mary-Jane and Becky-Sue to come teach us—like thirty-five heads if everybody would show up—offa three or four books and a halfa piece of chalk. Even when niggas do have the book, half of them can’t read for shit ’cause they didn’t have the book last year, or any year before that. So what are they gonna do? Act up. I feel bad for the Mary-Janes sometimes. September they be really trying, lazy blonde hair all combed up, button down shirts and everything. They come in with all these books they photocopied and name tags they make in crayon to show us they really want to learn our names. By June they be done got attitude from the whole class, cursed the class themselves, then cried, and cried some more. Or if not they just broke out before they had the chance. But then I think harder and don’t feel sorry for them at all. They go home to Long Island, the Hamptons or some shit. I go home to 143rd.
The Mary-Janes don’t know what to do with us, but Scaprioni knows how to shut niggas up. On the news and in the movies they front like principals are some bitch-ass dudes who just love the kids so much they can’t find it in they hearts to control them. Picture that. Scaprioni is not scared of a damn body. He is quick to throw you out of the auditorium, or your classroom, or his office, or wherever, and send you right down to the glass box in the lobby with the security guard. (There’s two, and people say they both Five-O. I don’t know ’bout all that, but I know they have heat and that’s all I really need to know.)
If it’s the white security guard, you’re lucky. He just makes you sit in the box with your eyes closed so you can’t make faces to any of your peoples that might pass by. But if it’s the black dude, it’s a wrap for you. He’ll sit you with your back to the door, shove a book under your face, and tell you you better not touch it for any reason other than to turn the page. He hem niggas up with books like They Came Before Columbus, about black people been in America earlier than the pilgrims, or Cultura Afrocaribeña, about Dominicans and Puerto Ricans really came from Africa and just try to front. One time Dominique got caught messing with some Haitian nigga in the bathroom, and when the teachers found them they got sent straight to the box (nobody even called Scaprioni). Well, it was the black guard, and he sewed them both up tight. She had to read a book about When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost, and the Haitian dude got stuffed up with The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture.
That nigga does not play for real. You will be stuck up in that box with nuthin’ to look at but either some long-ass book or the shot-up sphinx statue, which still has its white people nose on ’cause Alex and Andrew couldn’t aim for shit and shot a hole in the left paw instead. Between the book and the sphinx, you might as well look at that book. And the black guard, if he even catches you with your eyes above page level for a few seconds, he will keep you there in that glass box till the building closes. And that’s not till seven thirty, after everyone on the playground been took it to the train, so you woulda missed mad shit, like today with the old white nigga.
I’ma be real with you. I actually like staying late at school. If it’s warm, we have a really nice time. Niggas play ball, shirts and skins. Females watch and try to look all cute. It’s like a fashion show—America’s Next Top Hood Model and shit—for the ones that have money like that. And even the ones that don’t, we can watch. After school it’s everybody together, and there’s too many of us for Scaprioni and the Mary-Janes to do a damn thing about us, really—other than try to make us leave.
When it’s warm, not like now, niggas be runnin’ around the courtyard and dancing crazy. Dominique and Patricia and me maybe start a game of double-dutch, and sometimes even some of the ninth grade girls will jump in. Then we sing all our playground songs from back in the P.S. days, back when we thought cursing was some hot shit: “1,2, my boyfriend wants to do me, 2,3, he wants to fuck my coochie…” We sing loud ’cause we can, and we say whatever we want ’cause it be so loud that nobody can hear us.
The best part of staying late at school is when it’s warm and you chill outside you can just listen to people speak their languages. It gets so uncomfortable having to talk to the Mary-Janes and Becky-Sues all day, for those of us who try. Talking like you’re reading from a book or some shit, like wearing a turtleneck sweater, how it stuffs up your throat. After school on the courtyard, none’a that. Niggas talk like how they fuckin’ talk: “This bitch” this and “yo, son” that. The Haitians talk their African-French that is so pretty, and the Jamaican girls go on and on so fast I have to get Dominique to whisper to me just so I can know what’s going on.
But in the wintertime, like now, it’s different. Only the straight-up bobos and wharff daawgs stand around the playground, smoking cigarettes. Everybody else takes it to the train. That’s when me and Patricia say bye, ’cause she lives on the A and I take the 1-9. Dominique and me, we do us, though. We sit close as we can get to the middle of the train and listen to the Washington Heights niggas fill up the whole seven cars with loud-ass Spanish: “Eres preciosa, amor, es un placer…” This scraggly-looking Dominican nigga is trying to spit game to a light-skinned girl. “¿Nena, Eres freshman?” She don’t seem to know how to respond, I guess she too young.
Down at the other end of the car they are talking so loud I can’t hear a damn thing, they laughing and running their mouths ’bout “¡Diablo, que’esa vaina!” I don’t know exactly what they’re saying, but it’s loud as hell, and it sounds like they having a good time. Dominique is too, talking to some dude I have never seen, so I just sit quietly and do me, try to pick more words out the air.
Then I notice this old white nigga, his back all bent over like a pterodactyl or some shit, this Jurassic Park nigga, face all up in a newspaper. He’s not making no noise, but his lips are moving fast as the keys on one of those old-ass typewriters from the movies, and I am wondering how long he’s gonna ignore all this noise bumping up against him.
When the doors open at 125th, the only outside stop on this side of the city, Light-skin Chris jumps out the door, and I think that’s weird ’cause he lives on my block and we both get off at 145th. But then he comes back into the train with a handful of snow and throws it cross the whole car and hits Slimminy right on his neck. Everybody is like “Ooooh!” and niggas start laughing. The train makes that doorbell noise to let you know the doors are about to close, but Slimminy sticks his little foot between them and reaches out. The doors click and bang against his foot like they don’t know what to do, till then he comes back in with a whole armful of snow. Now it’s on. Everybody’s laughing and cheering in no language at all, really. Some girls in the middle of the car reach out there, too, and start flicking snow at each other. The bells keep ringing and niggas keep blocking the doors, reaching out and throwing big-ass handfuls of dirty snow at each other.
Then I catch it. And I’m glad right then that I am the kind of person that watches shit instead of getting caught up in it. Light-skin Chris was aiming for Slimminy, but his right hand slipped down the pole he was leaning on. He lost his balance, and the old white nigga got caught in the face with a clump of nasty, dirty, gray snow. Chris looked like he saw his mama ghost coming for him.
“HEY!” the old white nigga goes, like Principal Scaprioni, and everyone shuts up quick, like if he was gonna send them to the glass box or expel them. Then, I don’t know, everybody starts cheering, screaming eight times louder than before, like if the Knicks would win a championship—like that. Like this was the best, funniest shit in the world. This old white nigga, the only one on the train fulla mad rowdy, laughing us, and he gets caught in the face with dirty snow, and what was he gonna do? Niggas cracking up.
Then he says something: “something-something, SHIT!” And it’s over. People is dying, laughing so hard. Dominique is biting her braids hard now, looking like she ’bout to piss herself. The door bells ring again and nobody stops them this time, everybody caught up in laughing so hard. Then the snow falls out old boy’s mouth and niggas laugh some more. They keep laughing after that and then they go back to doing their thing, just a little more loud and a little more happy.
But you know, I watched. And I’m glad too. ’Cause with everything that went down, the funniest shit to me—the part of this story that nobody else even knows—is the way your boy tried so hard to keep his typewriter lips straight while everybody was laughing. It was me, just me. I’m the only one that caught this old white nigga stretching his face over his teeth and scrunching up his neck and his eyes just to keep from laughing with us. I never woulda guessed that after all that, even this old white nigga himself would have an urge to smile. I don’t know, shit like that is just funny to me.