He’s got a plan, though. He’ll lay some pipe on Trenisha, who plays center for the girls basketball team. That shorty is over six feet tall and rough around the edges, but Baby knows he can smooth her out doggie-style like a Chihuahua on a Great Dane in the janitor’s closet or, better yet, in the backseat of Principal Colton’s Cadillac while the Mighty BNK cheers him on. The video would make him a legend in his own time.
But Baby doesn’t know the first, second, or third thing about girls, let alone what it might be like to go to any of the bases with them. He listens to the rest of the Mighty BNK kid around and is sure they’ve all done it — even Chaney, who will never do it again. Baby fears he’ll die without doing it. He wonders if dying without doing it means he winds up in heaven as a kid for all eternity. Or hell.
Touché snickers in the corner of the rusty cargo container, having gone first. His arms are tight against his chest. Baby knows this pose means to leave him be. Baby and the Mighty BNK jacked the nitrous oxide from Sanchez because they were tired of sniffing airplane glue and Freon, which burned the ever-loving b’jesus out of their noses.
Turtle fills a blue balloon from the nitrous oxide canister and hands it to Baby. Baby’s careful not to let any gas escape. Touché’s face is wet. He always cries when they fly.
Turtle tokes weed in a crouch. He offers to Baby, but Baby shakes his head. Baby takes a draw from the balloon, nearly as much as his lungs will hold. Then he sucks a bit of straight air on top to hold the gas steady. The nitrous is sweet on his tongue. Sweet like he’s just licked a birthday cake. Sweet and steady, like his birthday was yesterday, is today, and will be tomorrow. Seated and holding his breath, Baby clutches the tips of his Chuck Taylors for dear life. A tingling rips up his spine like electric spiders on parade. The spiders are angry this time. They rummage through Baby’s innards for flies, bad ideas, and mildew, but don’t find enough.
Baby pushes the gas from his lungs. He feels like propeller blades are chopping him into finer and finer pieces. Every time he feels this, Baby wonders what it would be like to choose how he puts himself back together. Maybe in Atlanta instead of New Orleans this time. Bigger and stronger this time. Taller and darker this time. This time hung like a mutant ox. Maybe this time feared by men and loved like a widow’s diamond. Baby clutches his hair and falls onto his back, shivering.
They were good until the alarm in Sanchez’s garage went off. Baby saw the flash of Sanchez’s gun, and Chaney’s eyes open as full moons on his way to the ground. After Touché and Turtle ran away, the police found Baby frozen in place, his sneakers covered in vomit, the only member of the Mighty BNK captured alive.
Touché finishes the weed before Baby gets a second tug at the balloon. Touché is tapping the side of the cargo container with the tree limb he sometimes uses as a walking stick.
“They running a terror campaign on all the blacks in our ’hood.” Touché flicks the spent bud away.
The gas has different effects on each member of the Mighty BNK. It makes Touché paranoid. Well, more paranoid than normal, Baby thinks.
“Them rednecks can’t just shoot any brother they feel like,” Touché says.
“That’s dumb,” Turtle says. “Sanchez ain’t no kind of redneck.” The gas brings out Turtle’s argumentative side. Sober, he would let Touché carry on until he got tired of hearing himself. “Old Sanchez’s Hispanic.”
“I don’t care if he Jesus on the cross,” says Touché. “His people coming over the borders taking our space, our girls.”
Baby knows Sanchez didn’t come over any border. Sanchez’s son went to the same school as Baby’s mom.
“And what about you?” Touché asks Baby.
Baby toys with his ankle bracelet. It’s a hunk of plastic in the shape of a watch, a handless, faceless watch that refuses to let him know what time it is. Baby wonders what will happen after they get Sanchez. Maybe the guy didn’t mean to kill Chaney, and it’s not like a smackdown will bring him back. Baby raises his eyebrows as if to say, What about me?
“You so fake.” Touché spits. “You need to man up.”
“I ain’t stomping some old dude,” Turtle says.
“He shot our boy. He got Baby with a tracking band on his leg. But he gets to walk around scot-free. This is our neighborhood. Shit, this is our country.” Touché started saying this after Chaney died. “We about to get a black president. People can’t screw with us like this anymore.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t have tried to take his stuff,” Turtle says.
Baby skates past a one-way sign on Claiborne Avenue, his hair bouncing in the wind. A police car with its sirens going nearly sideswipes him. He salutes it, but trips to his knees in the process. That’s what the gas does to Baby: it kills his balance. Baby looks around to make sure no one saw him and picks up his board. He hurries past an abandoned double the Latinos tagged with graffiti. He can’t accept that his own neighborhood isn’t safe anymore. The jerkholes are everywhere.
It’s almost dark, and Baby’s mom will start check-up calling for him from her night job scrubbing hospital bedsheets clean. She expects him to tell her he’s safe and sound in their box of old people’s feet.
Baby thought Touché and Turtle might fight over getting Sanchez, but Touché dropped it and skated off, muttering. Baby’s relieved. He feels like there might be a better way to get payback for Chaney but doesn’t know what that way might be.
A Latino in overalls is perched on a ladder, applying stucco to the side of a two-story house. The lawn is littered with empty stucco bags. Baby hums a stone at the man, but misses. The man waves at Baby. Baby searches for another good rock, but the world disappears. His head is covered by a bag and he can’t breathe. Something hard whacks him senseless, and even though he’s defenseless, whoever’s on top of him is having too much fun to let up. He kicks Baby in the stomach and twice in the face. Baby pulls the bag off his head, but the attacker is gone. He knows he’s in trouble when he wipes his mouth and finds blood and tooth fragments.
When Baby gets home, the Pie Man is asleep on the side steps, using a paint can for a pillow. Baby goes inside and looks in his mom’s hand mirror. He’s glad she’s not around to see his nose is smashed or that he’s missing half an eyetooth. Blood coats his chin, and the dust from the stucco bag makes him look like a spook. He doesn’t want to wash the dust off, though. He’s afraid water will activate the stucco mix and turn his head to stone.
Even his mom would agree somebody has to pay for this. If the Mighty BNK let this go, pretty soon Baby, Touché, and every other kid in the neighborhood would be swinging from trees like piñatas at Sunday picnics. Baby runs outside and fingers the van keys from the snoring Pie Man’s pocket. Every color in the rainbow is on the Pie Man’s grungy jacket. Baby hops into the Pie Man’s van and cranks the ignition. The van is hard to drive since the pedals are so far from the seat, but it’s only a couple of blocks to Touché’s.
The van seems fake, like one of those twenty-five-cent rides you plunk your kid brother into outside of a grocery store. The kind with two doughnut-sized steering wheels that don’t do anything.
“They rolled you like a blunt.” Touché purses his lips in a mock whistle after he climbs into the passenger seat. He almost seems to be enjoying this.
Baby rubs his mouth, but the sharp pain stops him. Although the bleeding has slowed, his jaw clicks when he moves it.
“Don’t say I didn’t try to warn you before,” Touché says. “It’s get or get got out here.”