Tap. Tap. Tap.
I open my eyes. The sun is up. I’m in the passenger seat. Mom is standing outside the car, speaking with Leland’s mom. Ani is in her arms. Another set of taps against the window. It’s Leland. He’s holding two donuts. One is half-eaten. The other isn’t. Before I get out, I decide to forget about everything my mom said last night. She didn’t mean any of it. Or at least, I hope she didn’t.
I open the door, and Leland hands me the unbitten one. It’s a glazed donut. My seventh-favorite kind. I step out and take a bite. “Miigwech,” I say, while chewing.
“That means thank you,” I add, before he asks.
“I saved you the last one. They are gone in, like, five minutes at this place,” he says. “Why did you sleep out here? Do you sleepwalk or something?”
“Nope. Sometimes I just have a hard time getting to sleep,” I say.
“Really? I can do it with my eyes closed,” he says, and laughs. I laugh too. Leland is funny. “Maybe all that talk about stars and planets made you come out here to see them.”
“I saw a few stars and the moon. But that’s it. I wonder how long it would take for us to get in this car and drive to outer space,” I say.
“An hour,” he says.
“One hour? No way.”
“Technically, one hour and two minutes, given that we are driving the speed limit of sixty miles per hour. Space is only sixty-two miles away.”
“Mom, is he telling the truth?” I ask.
“If it’s about space, believe me, that boy knows,” Tessa says.
Leland is funny and smart. I bet he’ll be the funniest astronaut the universe has ever seen.
“So, if we drove straight up, we’d get to outer space quicker than we’d get to Los Angeles?” I ask.
“We can’t go to space instead. Neither of us have passports, silly. Now, he gave you a science fact, why don’t you give him one of your animal facts?” my mom suggests.
I look Leland in the eyes as I think of a good one. “Do you know which animal has the strongest bite in the entire world?”
“Easy. A great white shark?” he guesses.
“Good guess, but no. There’s an animal that has a bite even harder than them … Give up?”
“Yeah.”
“The Nile crocodile. Their bite can apply five thousand pounds of pressure. Us humans can only produce about one hundred. Imagine getting bit by one of them.”
“It would bite my head off,” he says.
“They kill almost a thousand people every year,” I add.
“Okay. Enough people-eating talk. Opin, we got to get ready,” Mom says.
“For what?” I ask.
“The welfare office opens at nine. The line will wrap around the block, so we got to get there early. Then we go to social security, then we have to see if there are any hotel vouchers left so Emjay has a place to sleep tonight. They are out of beds here, remember?”
“Do I have to go with you? That’s going to take all day. Those places are so boring,” I say.
“I’m not leaving you here all alone—”
“He can stay with us,” Leland blurts out. “Right, Mom?”
Tessa sighs. “I mean, I’ll be here all day. I’m waiting for a phone call. I can’t miss it. Your boy is welcome to stay with Leland, if that’s all right?” Tessa says.
My mom considers her offer. “Please, Mom?” I plead.
“Hmm … I’ll make you a deal. If you both can come up with three facts that will blow me away by the time I get back, you can stay and play,” she says. “Deal?”
“Deal,” we say simultaneously.
She hands me Ani and digs in her pockets, pulling out a scrunched-up fiver. “This is for lunch. I’ll be back soon. Stay out of trouble.”
“I will,” I say, and accept her kiss on my cheek.
“Chi-miigwech,” she says to Tessa.
“I don’t know what ‘chi’ means, but the next part means ‘thank you,’” Leland tells his mom.
Tessa smiles. “I should be thanking you. Leland hasn’t had a friend to play with in a while. These kids need it.”
“Yes, they do. And so do we, friend,” Mom says to Tessa, then looks at me. “Ani already peed and pooped, but don’t forget to eat her, I mean feed her,” she says, causing Leland and me to laugh.
She gets in the car and reverses. Loud music blasts through the speakers. She put in one of Emjay’s CDs. I love this song. It’s called “Posse on Broadway,” by a rapper with a funny name. Sir Mix-A-Lot. She peels out of the parking lot.
Tessa turns to me. “Your mother is one wild woman.”
“I know. She’s weird,” I say.
“I’m going to go back in and wait for that call. Would you like me to watch Ani for you while you two play?” she asks.
“Sure,” I say, and hand her over to Tessa. “She loves lying on your lap,” I add.
Tessa rubs her nose against Ani’s nose. “Just stay close,” she says as she walks back into the shelter.
I turn to Leland and show him the five-dollar bill Mom gave me. “This can get us, like, five comics,” I say.
His eyes light up. “There’s a liquor store across the park,” he says excitedly.
I know both our moms told us to stay close and to not get into any trouble, but I haven’t hung out with someone my age in so long, and I don’t think he has either, so it would just be a waste if we sat in a parking lot all day and counted pigeons. “Let’s go,” I say.
We walk through the parking lot, toward the street. Leland’s jeans and T-shirt look new. Maybe not new, but clean. I, on the other hand, haven’t been in a clean pair of pants in over a week. I hope I don’t smell. I lift my arm and smell my armpits when he’s not looking. I smell … okay, kind of like onion-flavored potato chips. I guess I’ll just keep my arms down today.
“We can get five comics or we can get three comics and two drinks. Or we can get—”
I interrupt him. “Two comics. One for you, one for me. A bag of chips to split and two drinks.”
“Epic! I hope they have Superman. He’s my favorite superhero. If I wasn’t going to be an astronaut, my next choice would be to be him,” Leland says.
“You already look like Clark Kent,” I say, referring to his glasses. “My favorites are the Ninja Turtles. I had three of their comics once, but I lost them.”
“Why are they your favorite? They’re just … turtles.”
“No way. They are so much more than just turtles. They’re brothers. And they look out for each other all the time. And they live in the sewer, so in a way, they’re homeless too, like us. But they have shells, and real turtles live in their shells, so at the same time, they can never be homeless. And they can fight. And they love pizza … And I love pizza.”
“Who’s the purple one? That one is, like, the scientist of the group, right?” he asks.
“Donatello. He’s like you. He’s super smart. I’m more like the orange one, Michelangelo.”
“I bet Superman can beat all four of them at the same time,” he says.
“He’d have to find them first. They’re ninjas, remember?”
“True.”
We cross the street at the crosswalk and reach a park. It’s a pretty big park. There are people playing basketball on the courts to my left and skateboarders launching off concrete ramps to my right. In front of us is a large green field. “Race you to the end of the park?” he says.
My mom is a runner. Not just metaphorically, but in real life. She did cross-country in middle school and planned to one day run for the Olympics until she got kicked out of high school. Now she just runs for fun, and sometimes money. But I don’t have her legs. Maybe I did once when I was littler. I ran all the time, but sitting in the car so much has made my legs act funny. But I’m not going to tell him that. “On your mark … get set … go!” I shout, and take off running.
Leland sprints ahead. Wow. He’s fast. I’ve never seen a person in glasses run so fast. He should do what my mom does and challenge people to race him. He’d make so much money.
“I don’t know about the ninja part, but you got the running like a turtle down,” he calls over his shoulder.
That’s it. I bite my bottom lip and run with everything in me. I try to tap into my ancestors. They were warriors. They would run for miles. I imagine myself running beside them, chasing down buffalo or cowboys. I try to hear their war chants, but all I hear is the wind as I tear through it. And Leland is still faster. So I imagine Ani as a wolf and invite her into my right leg. I need to run like a wolf. I imagine our beat-up red Pinto and morph it into a beautiful strong red horse and invite it into my left leg. I am a wolf. I am a horse. I am the wind.
And for a few seconds, I actually pass Leland up. His expression is utter disbelief. But my potential victory is short-lived, because my legs start doing that thing I hate. They seize up. They lock. They go numb. Then turn to mashed potatoes again.
I stumble tumble crumble into the grass and roll from the momentum. Leland, who could have easily kept running and won the race, stops and runs back to check on me. He cracks up when he sees the patches of grass in my hair. “Did you run out of gas?” he asks, in between laughs.
“My legs quit on me,” I say. “It happens sometimes.”
“That’s weird. Do I have to carry you the rest of the way?”
“No. They’ll kick in again. It just takes a minute,” I say, and begin massaging my legs up and down, the way the doctor showed my mom and me how to.
“Okay. I was going to win anyway. You know that, right?” he asks.
“I don’t know. The turtle does beat the hare at the end. And you did call me a turtle.”
“Yeah, but I ain’t no hare. I’m the cheetah that ate the hare. Did you clock how fast I was going?”
“If you’re a cheetah, then I’d say your top speed was about seventy-five miles an hour.”
“Dang. I’m fast. You know, from here to the moon is about two hundred and forty thousand miles. How long would that take a cheetah?”
I’m pretty good at math. Mom makes me solve these types of problems all the time. It makes time go by faster. Seventy-five miles per hour. Two-hundred and forty thousand miles divided by seventy-five equals … three thousand two hundred hours. That would be about … “A little over one hundred and thirty-three days,” I say.
“You just did all that in your head?” he asks.
“Yeah. My mom gives me pop quizzes. If I get them right, I get a prize.”
“Maybe you should be an astronaut too. You gotta be good at math up there,” he says, and points up to the sky.
I stop rubbing my legs. “I think my legs work again,” I say, and move them around.
A little wobbly still, but not bad. I brush the grass off my head and shirt before I try to stand. Mom is going to be pissed. Grass stains are hard to get out. We’ll need one of those expensive detergents, not the little powder packs they sell at the laundromat.
“Can I ask you a question?” he asks before I get up.
“Sure,” I say as he sits down.
“Why are you guys poor?”
What a weird question. And how do I answer it?
“I only ask because I’m still trying to figure out why I’m poor. I mean, I know my mom says the system is set up against my people, and the fact that Mom got laid off after my dad passed away didn’t help, but you’re not Black. Is the system set up against you too?” he asks.
“I’m basically going to repeat what my mom tells me every time I ask her why we’re poor,” I say. “Cool?”
“Okay,” he says.
“Native Americans have been poor since the moment the white man came and took everything from us. But before they invaded, there was no such thing as poor. Money wasn’t a thing. We traded everything with other tribes. If you had something I needed, I’d give you something you needed for it. But for, like, the last five hundred years, we’ve been shoved down to the bottom. Some of us have been able to climb out of the hole. Some of us haven’t,” I say.
Leland nods. “I guess the only way left to go is up, right?”
“My family have been climbing up for a long time. It’s a deep freaking hole. It takes lifetimes to get back to where we once were. But my great-grandma’s family got us closer. My mama’s mama got us closer. My mom’s trying to get me closer. And hopefully, I will climb out of this hole, and my kids won’t fall in it. They’ll just be able to do what we were born to do … live.”
“Your mama told you all that?” Leland asks.
“Yep. She talks a lot.”
Leland helps me up, and we continue walking toward the end of the park. After we cross the street, we enter the liquor store. To our right is the spinning rack of comic books. We spin it and search for the ones we want.
“Yes!” Leland shouts, and pulls his chosen comic off the rack. It’s not Superman, but an issue of another superhero: Captain America. “I’ve always wanted to read this,” he says.
All I see is a blond dude in a blue uniform. Honestly, he looks more like a villain to me. “Captain America? Why?” I ask.
“Look at him. He goes by Captain America, but America’s flag is red-and-white-striped with fifty stars. This guy has red and white stripes with only one star. That’s the flag for Puerto Rico. I bet he just dyed his hair yellow and changed his name to get the job. Now he’s super famous. I want to read this and see if his accent ever slips out. I am Capitan Puerto Rico, I am here to save you, amigos!” Leland says, and laughs.
“I am pretty sure Puerto Rico is part of America, though,” I say.
He stops laughing, realizing I am right, and puts the comic back. “I’ll just go with this dude, then,” he says, and grabs a comic of Wolverine. “He looks like Freddy Krueger’s better-looking brother. Look at his blades!” he says.
But I don’t look at Wolverine’s blades. Instead, I am looking at the comic I am going to devour. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I snatch it and hold it to my chest. I want to feel the turtle power radiate against me. I want these four green brothers to enter my heart, like a splinter. Like a Master Splinter.
We have our comics, so we head toward the back for the drinks. I grab a can of root beer. I love root beer. It tastes like I am drinking the insides of a tree. And Leland grabs an orange Shasta, probably to remember his dog, but I don’t say anything. Plus, I don’t want him to think I am somehow implying he wants to drink his dog. I doubt his dog was orange, anyway.
We agree on a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos and head toward the register.
Four dollars and ninety-eight cents. Perfect. I tell the nice man who rang us up that he can keep the change, and we walk out of the liquor store, completely victorious. Mission accomplished. The work is done. Now it’s time for play. And for two nerds like us, playtime means reading time.
We find a nice spot under a tree, in the shade, near the center of the park. Leland and I lean our backs against the trunk, rip open the bag, and crack open our soda cans. Ahh!
I’m grass stained and wearing the same clothes I’ve worn for days. My shoes are falling apart. My armpits stink, and my teeth are wearing sweaters, but right here, right now, hanging out with my new friend, I can honestly say this is perfect … But I should know all good things come to an end—sometimes abruptly, because as soon as we open our comics, a group of four teenagers are walking in our direction. Like, directly toward us.
Leland looks up and sees them too. They look my brother’s age. All four of them are white, but not the white group of friends you see in the movies. They don’t resemble surfers or football players or rich kids on the way to a high school party. They look like the kind that ditch class and go hang out in the alleys looking for windows to break or people to beat up.
I immediately wonder if I’m going to have to protect Leland; even though he’s taller and thinner than I am, I can see he is already scared. And it’s not like I am able to protect someone; I hate fighting, but I’m pretty sure I have had more practice at it than him. My brother beats me up all the time. Punches come in bunches from Emjay. I’m pretty good at rolling my shoulder and making slugs graze me instead of hitting me at full force.
But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they are just a group of friends passing through the park. And as if Leland was reading my thoughts, he stands up and says, “We should go.”
I stand up, but the group is getting pretty close. And if we run, my legs might give out again and then Leland would have to fight them three on one while the other one is stomping me. If you’re in a fight, no matter what, don’t hit the ground. And if you do, get up immediately. I hear Emjay’s advice ringing through my head.
“You know where we are, right?” Leland says to me.
“Stockton,” I say. “Why?”
“We are less than ninety miles away from the San Quentin State Prison,” he says.
“You think these guys escaped from prison? They look too young.”
“San Quentin is where the biggest White Power gang started. Now this area is full of them.”
“How do you know this stuff?” I ask.
“My mom researched our entire trip. She was worried about this place but didn’t think we’d be here this long. We need to flag down a cop,” he says.
I don’t have the heart to tell him that cops, in my family’s experience, are just as scary as these guys. Maybe their dads are cops. Maybe they’ll one day end up being cops. Can you imagine these four allowed to carry guns? But maybe Leland is right. I’m not stupid; even I know there are such things as good cops out there. I just haven’t seen one. They’re like narwhals and pangolins. I know they exist, but they’re rare.
If we were going to run, we just missed the chance. They aren’t happily strolling through the park. They saw us and decided to make our business their business.
“You two on a date?” the tallest of the four asks, and his friends laugh.
I don’t reply. And neither does Leland. Instead, we start walking away.
“We’re talking to you!” one of them shouts.
We ignore them and walk on; well, we try to, but we don’t get far. They catch up and surround us. “I asked you a question, nerd,” one of them says to Leland as they snatch the glasses from his face.
“Give them back,” Leland says, and reaches for them, but the one that took them tosses them to his friend.
“This is our park,” another one says, followed by a word-train of racist slurs.
It makes me mad. Real mad. But I know, if I throw a punch, there will be no turning back. And reality is that we are outnumbered two to one. “And what are you? Mexican?” he asks me.
“Nah,” another one chimes in. “Look at his slanted eyes. He’s a Jap,” and he shoves me from behind.
It makes me drop my comic. He picks it up and rips it in half, then tosses it behind them. His friends laugh. They do the same thing to Leland’s comic book. I don’t know what to do. If I was my mom, I’d sweet-talk my way out of this. If I was my brother, I’d have already pounded their heads in by now. But I’m me. And I can take a punch, sure, but that doesn’t mean I want to. I just want out of this. Maybe I’ll try a bit of both. My mom and Emjay.
“You guys proved your point. You’re scary. You’re tough. You ripped up our comic books. You had your fun. But now we should all go our separate ways … before I make you regret messing with us,” I say, and I already regret saying that last part.
That was the Emjay part. Dang it. Leland looks at me like I just stuck my foot into my own mouth. Not only metaphorically, but physically.
“Is that right?” one says, but before I can respond—
BAM!!!
A fist slams into my cheek from behind me. I fall. I remember Emjay’s advice and launch back to my feet. Another punch hits my nose. I smell blood. My vision steams up like a bathroom mirror. Everything goes white. I feel grass. I must be on the ground again. I try to get up, but I’m being held down. I hear laughing. I cover my head to make sure no kicks hit my face or neck. They are laughing about my shoes. “Duct tape” and “bum” and another set of racist names are thrown down at me. Half about me and half about Leland. His are worse. Mine are off target. They keep calling me Asian names. My shoes are gone. They took them off of my feet. I feel bruises forming already. Knuckles. Sloppy punches. Then it stops.
I get up and see them walking away. They are holding my shoes. And another pair. I look over and see Leland lying on the ground too, weeping. His white socks, now with green stains on them. Streaks, from trying to crawl away while they were beating on us. “You okay?” I ask.
He crawls over and picks up his bent glasses. He puts them on. They are cracked and lopsided. “Why’d you say that? Why’d you say they were gonna regret messing with us?”
“They were gonna jump us anyway. I took a shot and missed,” I said.
“Mom’s going to kill me,” he says, and stands.
I stand up. My face hurts. I pick up as many ripped pages from our comics as I can see and hand them to Leland. “Good as new if you can find some tape,” I say.
“The shelter has tape,” he says, and gathers all the pages. “Let’s go. I hate Stockton.”
We start walking back toward the shelter. I could tell him that what just happened could have been way worse. I could have told him that out of one to ten, our beating was about a three. I could even tell him that all we lost out on besides our shoes was our drinks and chips … But even though I’ve been jumped way worse than that before, I don’t tell him any of these thoughts. Because I’ve been down this road before, and I can clearly see he hasn’t. This was new for him. Too new. And all the horrible names they called him hurt worse than their punches and kicks. Their words will leave much bigger bruises. They may even scar. We can fix his glasses with tape, but what he saw and heard, there’s no fixing that.
I know how he feels. And if he’s anything like me, he won’t tell his mom all the things they said to him. He knows how bad they’ll taste if they ever have to roll off his tongue and leave his mouth. He’ll keep them all bottled up, hidden inside his head. It will protect her from being sad. That’s what I do.