“Foul!” Mercedes didn’t like calling fouls in pickup games, but she didn’t like the hurt Lincoln was putting on Jade. She needed Jade to lay the smackdown on Lincoln about the bad choices he was making. Jade had made some of the same choices. Maybe he’d listen to her.
“She moved her feet!” Lincoln shouted back. Shouting had been his only volume speaking to Mercedes ever since she pulled him off the corner. “This is bull—”
“And an odd way to celebrate non-violence,” Mercedes’s dad said softly. She recalled that all his yelling at Callie just drove her further away. Different child, different approach, but it didn’t seem to be working. Lincoln stayed off the corner, but didn’t seem part of their house. After church and a Martin Luther King celebration, they’d headed to the park to play, Lincoln against his will. Their mom rarely left home except to go to work; ever since the funeral she couldn’t face the world with one less child in it.
“That MLK stuff is crap!” Lincoln said. He picked up the ball and tossed it not just off the court but into the street. Mercedes’s father inhaled deeply like he’d been punched, and went to retrieve the ball. With her father’s back turned, Mercedes saw Jade step forward, nose to nose with Lincoln.
“You foul me again, little man, I’ll break you in half.” If Mercedes’s father wouldn’t be tough, Mercedes knew Jade would be. Jade got up in Lincoln’s face. “You think you’re real tough, don’t you?”
“Stop spitting on me,” Lincoln shot back. Mercedes grabbed Jade, but she pulled away. Jade ripped off her long-sleeved maroon shirt, down to a white beater. Lincoln’s eyes grew wide.
“Get your eyes here.” Jade pointed at the “Loyalty” tattoo on her right arm. “You think you know what you’re getting into with goons like Robert, but trust me, you know nothing.”
Lincoln laughed, but stopped when Jade grabbed his right arm and twisted it behind his back. “You’re hurting me,” Lincoln whined like the little kid Mercedes guessed he was inside.
“You don’t know hurt!” Jade shouted into his ear and she wrenched his arm tighter. “How much do you think Callie hurt when that bullet went into her skull? How much do you think your sister and parents hurt watching her lie there dying, kept alive by machines? How much—”
“I don’t know, let me go!” Mercedes stood in front of the two to obstruct her dad’s view.
“So what are you gonna do, act all tough, be on the corner, be somebody?”
Lincoln started to speak but stopped when Jade wrapped her other arm tight around his throat. He tried to pry her arm away without success. “This is what dying feels like. This is what standing always on guard feels like. This is life on that corner. It is nothing but a stranglehold.”
“I can’t breathe,” Lincoln muttered.
“That’s right, you can’t and here’s why.” Mercedes felt her heart drop as Jade told her brother stories about gang life, about what she did to get in, what she did to get out. Mercedes didn’t know how much was true and was afraid to ask. She sensed Lincoln was afraid too.
“So I’ve been there, like when my pops died,” Jade said, twisting Lincoln’s arm tighter until tears formed in his eyes. “Angry and scared. I was acting more like a wolf than a person.”
“That’s enough,” Mercedes said, placing her hand on Jade’s arm.
“There’s an old Cherokee story that we have two wolves inside us. Lincoln, you have a bad wolf roaring inside you so loud you can’t hear. But you know what, little man? You have a good one too, like your sister,” Jade said. “She’s that good wolf living in you.”
Jade released Lincoln. He stumbled and fell to the ground. Mercedes and Jade offered their hands to help him. He waved them away, cleared the tears from his eyes, and coughed. Jade turned and kissed Mercedes.
“And do you know which one wins?” Jade continued.
“Which one?” Lincoln asked as he brushed off his dirty pants.
“The one you feed.”