I walked the dimly lit streets filled with parked cars and trees lurking. Home. It was odd how, over the years, it felt less and less like home, yet it was all the home I had ever known.
I looked up at this tall building—a high-rise, in a dull gray color, breaking the sky. Defiant against its backdrop of flashing city lights, opulence, and monuments in the distance; so far in the distance, it was another world. We had lived and seen it all here: no electricity; a room full of candles, no heat; wear your coat inside; a floor with no carpet, the rusted wooden floorboard cutting into our feet. We had seen it all here: drug dealers, smoking and snorting at the end of the steps, police raids at 4 a.m., barking dogs and chases, broken windows, cold air breaking in, burglary and theft, not safe to walk through past a certain time unless you knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody; someone who jumped from the fourth floor trying to take their own life but only managing to break their legs. We watched him, laid there, body flat, knees inverted like a bird; his only wish had been to fly, fly away from here. And fires blazing, touching the sky—a furious lover scorned.
But we had also seen bread, sugar, milk, shared and borrowed, sitting and eating with strangers until they too became family; children walking to school together every day, until they too became family. Conversations at the bottom of the block, exchanging life stories in the fifteen-second elevator ride up, and sometimes longer if you were stuck. We had also seen parties; music so loud the party came to your living room, and leftover food being brought around; Christmas where no one was left alone, Halloween and trick-or-treat so intense we carried it on for days after. This was the place we all had known, the only place we called home.
I reached the front door of the building, and came in as someone was leaving. “You all right?” we said to each other simultaneously. I didn’t know his name but recognized him and knew he lived floors above us. At the steps of the ground floor were some young guys, tracksuits and hoods up, a puff of smoke lingering above them like a cloud at the peak of a mountain, plant smell wafting through the air. I looked at each one of them; and each of them looked back at me, neither of us breaking the stare; this act of defiance, this battle we found each other fighting, angry at everything outside of us; and at everything including ourselves.
Sitting at my desk for lunch, the new week brought nothing but a new heaviness to it. I could hear the roars and screams of children in the playground outside. I drowned them out by putting on my headphones and listening to the Ali Farka Touré and Toumani Diabaté In the Heart of the Moon album. I closed my eyes and imagined sitting in the hotel room they recorded the album in, being submerged in an air of esoteric magic through the sounds of the kora. I opened my eyes, and just as quickly as I had closed them, the eleventh-grade class was sitting in front of me, heads down in their books. That’s how time seemed to pass lately, in flashes, moments coming and going in a blink of the eye.
Alex all the A’s was sitting in the left corner of the front row, nearest to my desk, looking up intermittently, clamoring for attention and receiving none. In contrast to him, in the back right corner seat, farthest from my desk, was where Duwayne sat, slouched on the chair, staring into the distance, demanding to be ignored. He had returned from suspension and received a hero’s welcome. His defiance toward everyone save Mr. Black was revered, but no one even expected him to challenge Mr. Black; it was as though he were the de facto head teacher, the authoritarian of the school. All the teachers were given a behavior support plan on how to engage with Duwayne, and what to work toward. It created an air of trepidation around him, as if he were an explosive device that could be triggered at any moment.
As I stared at Duwayne for just a second too long, my memory flashed back to seeing his eyes under his hood on that bridge. He looked up at me and I wondered if he remembered, if he had even known it was me. Nothing in his eyes—distant and despondent—seemed to reveal the answer, so I returned to normal: classroom, teacher, student. With the class dismissed, I asked Duwayne to stay behind for a moment for “a quick chat.” He was used to this. He did not move from his seat, let alone the slouched position he sat in, school uniform trousers falling so low past his waist they revealed the gray tracksuit bottoms he wore underneath. He didn’t respond to any of my initial questions: “How are you doing?” “Is everything okay?” “Have you learned from your mistakes?” Instead, he sat there still looking out into the distance, until I mentioned “basketball,” to which he responded with a twitch of the head, shoulders moving upright, like an alert wolf or soldier on guard.
“What do you know about ball?” he replied.
“I got a pretty mean crossover,” I said, firmly nodding along to reassure myself more than him. He chuckled, potentially showing some teeth and flashing a smile, but it was gone before it came. Truth is, I had not picked up a basketball for years, decades even, close enough to two, not since the London Towers basketball club had come to visit my secondary school, and my premature teenage growth spurt had singled me out, as I was chosen to shoot a free throw, which I subsequently air-balled. The free jersey made up for the embarrassment. I wore it every day until the end of that year. I wondered where it was now. I wondered where all my old clothes were.
“Who’s your favorite player?” he asked, now sitting up and facing me, eyes coming to life.
“LeBron James.”
“King James?”
“Yeah.”
“You know LeBron James?”
“I don’t know him like that… well, not anymore. We fell out,” I said with such certainty, as if it could be true. Duwayne looked at me with a confused face, unable to tell whether I was serious or not.
“Yeah, I dunked on him when we were playing one-on-one back in the day, and we haven’t spoken since.” Duwayne didn’t laugh; he just raised his eyebrows up and down. I imagined, in some alternate universe, it was true. Maybe I was the superstar professional basketball player, and LeBron James was a schoolteacher, the GOAT: the greatest of all teachers.
“Anyway, who’s your favorite player?” I asked him.
“I ain’t really got one.”
“No?” I replied, surprised. He shrugged his shoulders.
“Not even me?” He scoffed at the possibility. “I’ll tell you what,” I continued, “why don’t we play one-on-one; if you win, no homework…”
“I never do it anyway.” He kissed his teeth, and looked away. “Think I’m some fool?”
“All right, fair enough. If you win, I’ll give you what you like the most… a fresh pair of Nike Air Maxes. But if I win…”—he looked back at me, sat up in his seat again, perked with attention—“if I win, you’ve got to go to basketball training with Mr. Black… for the whole season!”
“Aaargh,” he groaned, then placed his hand on his chin, while covering his mouth, and sat momentarily in the pose of the thinking man statue. I watched him as the cogs in his brain went into gear.
“If I win, I get trainers. If I lose, I’ll go training…”
“Yes. For the whole season. You can’t miss even one.”
“I’ll go. But only if you come to the first session with me.”
“Okay, deal.” He stood, and we shook hands firmly, staring into each other’s faces with competitiveness and compassion.
“When shall we play?” he asked at the foot of the door, as he was leaving.
“Next week. I’ll give you some time to practice,” I said, and sneered confidently. He nodded and left, dunking the frame of the door on his way out.
I saw Jalil less frequently these days, but each time I saw him he exhibited a slight change, only noticeable with close attention. It was like watching a flower, left in a dark room, slowly lean toward the crack of light that had just broken through. However, Aminah was not just a crack of light to him, she was the dawn. We had been invited to Jalil’s house for dinner; I was told that, of course, his other friends would also be there, and so would Aminah, an opportunity for us—the closest people in his life—to meet her. But really, it was more than that; it was a chance for Jalil to strategically evaluate how Aminah behaved around his closest friends, and to get an insight into what we thought of her.
I arrived at the front door and steadied myself. A long day’s work can leave you exhausted; couple that with an evening of socializing, and you might end up comatose. At least for me, socializing was a drain on the body and the mind, sometimes with disastrous consequences; I remember spending days not speaking to anyone simply because my brain needed to reset. I had always been this way, locking myself in my room, waking up in the middle of the night just to listen to the silence.
As I raised my hands to knock, the door swung open, and I was greeted with a bright smile and a very enthusiastic “Hi” in a singing voice. I was certain it was Aminah, but I did not want to assume. She wore a scarf over her head, and a printed flower dress with long sleeves, and a pair of jeans—she was dressed up, in a casual sort of way.
“Come in. I heard shuffling behind the door, and I thought I’d open… I hope I didn’t startle you,” she said, speaking so confidently, directing me into a house I already knew so well.
“No, not at all,” I replied, courteously, smiling as I entered. I took off my shoes and presented the glass bottle of some nonalcoholic drink I had bought along with some baklava from Woody Grill. I could hear chatter in the living room, combined with the occasional explosions of laughter.
She received my gifts, and just as she began to say, “I’ve heard so much about you…,” there came an interruption of “Yoooooooooooooo!” breaking through the air, as Jalil came rushing toward me. We hugged, warmly, patting each other on the back.
“This is Michael,” he said to Aminah, as she reciprocated with a smile.
“And this is Aminah.” Jalil nodded his head and raised his eyebrows at me in a self-satisfied way. I nodded along, validating him.
“I figured. Lovely to officially meet you.”
“Lovely to meet you too,” Aminah replied, looking up between me and Jalil.
“You have to tell me everything about him,” she said, placing her arm around Jalil and resting her hand on his stomach, for which I’m sure he would have quickly tensed his abs to impress her just as he’d seen her hand moving closer. I chuckled at the thought of Jalil quickly tensing his abs.
“Well,” I said, “what can I say? He’s a great guy,” which seemed really monotone; rehearsed even, not really eliciting a response from either Jalil or Aminah. I continued.
“He paints, he plays the piano, he reads, he’s really smart, he’s so kindhearted… and he’s got a motor, with a big engine.” Jalil and I shared a smirk between us.
“Oh gosh, don’t encourage him about that bike. I’m trying to find a way to get him to stay off it.”
We entered the living room, where there were fewer people than I had originally thought, which made me feel much more comfortable. Maybe it was the raucous laughter that had made me imagine a room full of people all waiting to see who was going to walk in next. At least that’s what I expected from Jalil, but perhaps this smaller, more reserved gathering was an influence of Aminah’s. I was introduced to the three other guests, then we took our seats around the dinner table. I sat directly opposite Jalil and Aminah, watching their display of newfound romance. After a few moments, Jalil abruptly stood up, unhooked his arm from Aminah, and stormed out of the room.