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  Then Mom roared, “Take down his damn license number!”

  “You see this?” my father called to the reporters. “What happened to my son—it doesn’t change shit!”

  Asa and Bonds had been keeping a low profile and hadn’t come to see me in the hospital even once. I didn’t hold it against them, though. I’d have been covering my ass, too, if I could, hoping the cops wouldn’t find any charges against me. But the second day I was home, Bonds called me on my cell to say they were both coming over and Mom overheard me talking.

  “Tell your criminal-minded friends they’re not welcome inside this apartment,” Mom said, cold. “And from now on, as long as you’re livin’ under this roof, Noah, I want to know where you are, twenty-four/seven.”

  So I watched out the window and went downstairs to meet them on the stoop as they turned the corner. Every building on the block was an exact Xerox copy of mine—a four-story, eight-family apartment house filled with black families.

  Only the colors on the outside of them were different.

  Even as a little kid digging in a flower box with a toy steam shovel, I remember wanting to plow those houses under and rebuild each one again to be special.

  Halfway down the block there were a bunch of kids in bathing suits making noise, running through the spray of a fire hydrant with a sprinkler cap on it. Asa and Bonds must have ducked through, too, because I could see their wet footprints behind them, fading into the hot pavement.

  “Daaaamn,” said Asa, seeing the patch of stitches in my head. “That’s no joke when they operate on somebody’s skull.”

  “How you been holding up, dog?” Bonds asked as I gave them both a pound, before pulling them in close for a hug. “You know those crackers can’t break a strong black man.”

  “I’m all right. I guess,” I answered.

  That’s when somebody’s grandmother, from a stoop across the street, called out, “Noah, God bless you,” and blew me a kiss.

  “You a celebrity, Noah.” Asa grinned. “Everybody’s talking ’bout how you stand for something now—almost like Rosa Parks.”

  “Nah, I’m just history in my own crib,” I said, looking up at Mom peeping us through the curtains of our third-floor window. “I’m the most famous dude under house arrest in East Franklin.”

  “I know it,” moaned Bonds. “My mom’s got the shackles out, too—Where ya goin’? Whataya doin’? Who ya be with?—meanwhile I’m thinking, my boy almost got killed. It’s time for war.”

  “Nobody can touch them punks,” Asa said. “You know they’re in protective custody, each with a cell to himself. Cops can’t put those dudes in population. Niggas will tear their asses up.”

  That was the first time I’d heard that word nigger since Scat screamed it at me. And suddenly, I didn’t like it any better coming easy from Asa’s mouth.

  “One of them’s out,” said Bonds. “It was on the radio before.”

  I felt the blood rushing to my brain, and all I could see was red.

  “Which?” I asked.

  “One whose father’s a detective, ratting out the other two,” answered Bonds. “The kid who kicked you. That Ra-O.”

  “Oooh! Somebody needs to clap that cracker,” said Asa, throwing a right cross and stamping his foot on the steps.

  “So his father’s got a badge,” I said, hawking a wad of spit onto the street and wishing I’d clammed it into the face of that white detective in the hospital who’d promised “nobody” would get a free pass.

  “Sherlock Holmes to the bone. Everybody knows they take care of their own kind,” Bonds said. “But we didn’t come here to amp you up. We wanted to set things straight.”

  “See-we-didn’t-know-you-tripped,” Asa said, beating a rhythm on his palm with the back of his other hand. “I was, like, fifty feet out in front of Bonds. I figured you was behind him.”

  “I seen that bat and I was too busy bookin’,” said Bonds, more serious than I’d ever heard him. “I thought I was bringing up the rear and you was way out in front, Noah. You didn’t call out or nothin’. And if you did, I didn’t hear it.”

  “We’d have never left you one on three against them animals,” said Asa, pounding his chest with a fist. “We was on a mission together. That’s blood, right there.”

  At first I’d felt like a fuckup for falling and causing everything that night, and part of me still did.

  “People around here been busting on us for not having your back,” Bonds said, looking me in the eye. “I don’t need that kind of rep, ’specially when school starts up.”

  “I’m good with it,” I said, my stomach going tight into knots over that Rao getting turned loose. “That’s just the way it went down.”

  “Yo, when the cops drove us around Hillsboro, we seen your old Air Jordans,” said Asa. “They’re still hanging right where you left them, almost four years now, over that phone wire in the Crackers’ Hall of Fame.”

  As freshman, for half a season, the three of us played JV football together for Carver, till our grades came out and we flunked off the team. One Saturday morning, the school took us by bus to play at the athletic field that connects up to Spaghetti Park. Our squad was mixed, and the Armstrong High team was all white. Their guys were bragging about the “Hall of Fame.” It was just a phone wire that ran across the street next to the field with maybe forty pairs of old cleats hanging on it.

  “After we stomp some black ass, we’ll vote our best player to hang his shoes up there,” one of them cackled.

  The game was nasty, with lots of kicks and punches from both squads at the bottom of every pileup. Then, with the score tied in the fourth quarter, the rain started coming down in buckets and wouldn’t stop. You could hardly see in front of your face, and after five minutes that field was nothing but a muddy pit.

  On the next-to-last play of the game, their quarterback threw a pass that got tipped in the air. By dumb luck it came down right into my hands. I started running for the end zone as fast as I could, with half their dudes hot on my tail. I sank deeper into the mud with every step, and it was like running in quicksand. My thighs and lungs were burning. I didn’t even have on football cleats. I was wearing Jordans. But I made it past what was left of that white-chalk goal line before one of them shoved me face-first into the mud.

  My teammates were jumping on top of me, celebrating, even the white ones. And after we won, Armstrong’s players used the rain as an excuse not to shake our hands.

  We changed our clothes back on the bus, and our guys were calling it “Noah’s Ark.”

  Then Asa, Bonds, and me went back outside on the low. The street was empty with all that rain pounding down, and I tossed those muddy sneakers over the phone wire on my first try.

  NEW ATTACK OPENS OLD WOUNDS

  From The Morning Star Herald

  On a stifling summer afternoon, Columbus Park offers barely an inch of shade. its 14-foot-high chain-link fence encloses a handball wall, swings, monkey bars, sprinklers, and benches spread out over half a city block of asphalt. For almost two decades, this ordinary-looking playground in the nearly all-white section of Hillsboro has been called a den of hatred and intolerance by surrounding black communities. On the street it is known as Spaghetti Park, due to the large number of italian American teens who hang out there. The park was the igniting point of the 1990 killing of African American Michael Sheffield, who was struck down by a car as he fled from an angry mob of white teenagers.

  “it’s safe here. Everybody knows everybody else,” said Diana DeBlassi, a 16-year-old sophomore at nearby Armstrong High School. “My parents let me stay here with my friends at night because they know i’ll be all right.”

  On August 9, just six blocks from Columbus Park, three African American teens from East Franklin were chased, and 17-year-old Noah Jackson was beaten in the head with an aluminum baseball bat. And once again, Hillsboro is in the headlines as the site of an alleged hate crime.

  “it wasn’t anything racial,” said a d
istraught Delores Scaturro, the mother of bat-wielding suspect, Charles Scaturro, 18. “They’re trying to make my son pay for what happened here twenty years ago. The mayor and DA are playing politics with his life to score points with the blacks in the next election.”

  Charles Scaturro, who is being held without bail, is currently on probation for firing a paint gun at a Pakistani couple on the streets of Hillsboro. A high-school dropout who has a $40,000 land Rover registered in his name, Scaturro is unemployed.

  Also charged in the hate-crime assault on Jackson is Joseph Spenelli, 18, who allegedly beat and robbed the teen of his sneakers and diamond-stud earring. Spenelli is also being held without bail. As of yet, no charges have been filed against a third suspected attacker, Thomas Rao, 17, whose father, Anthony Rao, is a city detective. Thomas Rao is cooperating with authorities.

  “That’s what the (expletive) police do in this neighborhood now. They set traps for young people. Then they try to turn them against each other to survive,” said Delores Scaturro.

  After successful surgery on his fractured skull, Noah Jackson, a senior at Carver High School, which Charles Scaturro also once attended, is now recuperating at home.

  Jackson, who has a pair of juvenile arrests on his record, admittedly was in Hillsboro with his companions to steal a car.

  Chapter FOUR

  I’D MISSED A LITTLE MORE THAN TWO WEEKS of work at Mickey D’s. Then I found out from Deshawna that my father had given her a C-note to help take care of Destiny Love while I was in the hospital. He never said anything to me about it. And that was the first time he hadn’t flattened me with his mouth over helping out with money.

  “I wasn’t the one who had any of that bedroom fun, but I’m the one who’s got to pay,” Dad would say. “I’d have been happier to give you the money for condoms, son. It would have been cheaper.”

  But mad as my father would get, it all melted away any time he bounced Destiny Love on his lap.

  Deshawna went to Carver High, too. Only she’d dropped out of regular classes just before she had our baby, and was taking a GED class in the school’s basement, along with Asa. We weren’t planning on getting married or anything. At least I wasn’t.

  I still wasn’t 100 percent sold that I was in love with her, and other shorties were always catching my eye. But I knew for certain I was in love with my daughter, and that she’d always be a part of my life, no matter what.

  I’d been dating Deshawna for six months when she got pregnant.

  She never had a thought that she wouldn’t keep the baby. So there was nothing I could really say on the subject.

  Deshawna was scared to death to tell her dad and wanted me to be there with her.

  “I’ll break the news,” I said, acting confident. “I can handle it.”

  I even had the words laid out in my head from practicing them over and over—It’s not something Deshawna and me were planning, but it happened. She’s pregnant, and I’m the baby’s father. So I’m going to do what’s right—what a man’s gotta do.

  But when I looked Deshawna’s dad in the eye, I turned paralyzed with fear and couldn’t say a thing.

  Deshawna finally burst into tears, screaming, “I’m pregnant, Daddy! I’m sorry, but I’m pregnant!”

  Then she jumped into his arms. He was hugging her tight, grilling the shit out of me with his high beams tattooed onto mine. And I felt like less than half a man standing there alone.

  We didn’t even have to tell my family when we got to my place. Deshawna had been crying all day. So when they saw her red, swollen eyes and the two of us holding hands, they figured it out straight off.

  Mom and Grandma both blamed Deshawna, like she should have been ten times smarter about it than me.

  “Girl, don’t you know these boys only got one thing on their minds?” bristled Mom. “You need to have the brains that they don’t!”

  I wanted to stick up for myself, but I didn’t.

  “A lesson too late for the learning, child,” Grandma told her, plain.

  But Dad was pissed at me, and knocked on my head with his knuckles like it was hollow inside.

  My first Friday back at Mickey D’s, kids who worked there crowded around me, asking how I was. Maybe it was my imagination, but there were two white kids on the outside of that circle who looked like they couldn’t care less if I’d come back a cripple. Then the manager, a white dude named Gavin Munch, barked at everybody to get back to their stations.

  Munch was always a crab, acting like we were in the army, instead of serving up fast food. That’s because he was almost thirty years old, and this was his real job.

  “Can’t you cover that?” said Munch, pointing at the patch of stitches in my skull. “It’s the customers that are supposed to get the attention. Not the workers.”

  Munch had a buzz cut, and I’d even dreamed of flipping burgers off the top of his flat head. But I just held my tongue and pushed the paper hat part of my uniform over to the side.

  “There you go, boss,” I answered, pissed, walking over to the deep fryer. “All covered up. Like it never happened.”

  About an hour into my shift, the girl on the drive-through register got sick, and Munch hollered for me to take her place while she was in the bathroom.

  People ordered over the squawk box, talking into a clown’s face. Then they’d drive around to the side window where they picked up their food and paid.

  My Mickey D’s is off the highway exit, just outside of East Franklin and a few blocks from the start of Hillsboro—close to Carver High. So the customers are mostly mixed. But every kid I knew, white or black, called that space no-man’s-land, because there was no hood you could lean on for backup if you ran into any drama there.

  That whole time I was on the window, I was uptight listening to people’s voices, trying to figure out who they were. I’d never stressed over anything like that before I took that beating with the bat.

  Then a bunch of rowdy dudes drove up, yelling their orders over each other’s. They changed around everything they wanted—twice.

  “Got it right now, clowny?” one of them asked, nasty.

  “You’d better or it’s free!” snapped another one.

  I knew in my bones they’d be white, and they were.

  The total came to twenty-three bucks and ninety-nine cents.

  They looked through every bag, like I was too stupid to get their order right.

  I went to hand them the penny change and the driver cracked, “Keep it, bro. Buy your family something nice.”

  The five of them howled like a car full of hyenas, and pulled away with me holding that brown penny. I looked Abe Lincoln dead square in the face. But he just stared off to the side, like my problems weren’t his. Then I slammed that penny to the ground wishing I’d spit into their food.

  I got home that night around six thirty, tired as anything. But I opened the front door and saw Grandma feeding Destiny Love her bottle. That picked me right up.

  Destiny Love slept over at our apartment every other weekend and this was my weekend to have her.

  Deshawna was there, too. We were going out and my family was going to babysit. Then Mom called me into her bedroom and handed me a long, thin box with a blue bow. Deshawna’s birthday passed while I was in the hospital, and I’d forgot all about it.

  “Am I more interested in this girl than you are?” Mom whispered to me, sarcastic.

  Deshawna loved the wristwatch inside, and I took her by bus to the new multiplex in Centreville. Before the flick, she caught me checking out a shorty in the next row, but I started talking fast and said, “Nobody else’s watch looks as sharp as that one on you.”

  And she backed off, half smiling.

  There were some steamy sex scenes in the movie, and the two of us started kissing. Then I let my hands take a walk where they wanted. We were both into it, but we didn’t have any place to go. Since our daughter was born, we’d only had sex twice—both times at Deshawna’s house, while her da
d was at work.

  I didn’t have money for a motel or anything like that. And I wasn’t about to do my baby’s moms on some park bench. So I let all that heat just pass.

  Later, Deshawna wanted to stop for something to eat. I was working a double shift at Mickey D’s the next day, and I didn’t want to see another Big Mac. But there was a Taco Bell close by and we went inside for a burrito and soda.

  “I’m going to get my nails done tomorrow with my girls,” she said from across the table. “Then on Sunday, Daddy’s taking me shopping for new jeans.”

  “I got no work Sunday. I’ll probably take Destiny Love to the playground and push her on the kiddie swings,” I said, sipping my soda as I noticed Deshawna’s eyes focusing behind me.

  “Noah, look at what that girl’s got on,” she said, jutting her jaw towards a corner table.

  There were some white girls sitting there, and one of them was wearing a T-shirt that read FREE SPENELLI!

  “I feel like tearin’ the shirt right off that snow bitch,” growled Deshawna.

  But I wouldn’t let her. And I got us out of there quick before she started something, or somebody recognized me.

  “What’s with you, Noah?” she asked. “I know you ain’t scared of those girls.”

  “I seen enough drama lately,” I answered. “And we don’t need them calling the cops on us now.”

  I took Deshawna home, and her dad watched me tight all the time I was there.

  When I got back to my place, my father was sitting in his chair reading the newspaper.

  “Looks like the city’s gonna let the detective’s son—that Rao kid—walk for testifying,” said Dad, scowling.

  Only it felt more like a swipe at me, like I was supposed to do something about it. So I didn’t even tell him about the T-shirt, before I took the blame for that, too.

  I knew part of that anger from him was about me planning to steal that car.

  “It’s just a big game to them,” I said, heading for my room.

  “But it’s about our lives—what we’re worth in this city that’s hanging in the balance,” I heard him say from behind me.