to Hank, the Beautiful brother picked up the lyrics, and everyone waited to see if he’d stumble on a word, making me winner of the battle. We sat on porch steps, lawn chairs, and grass, and took turns singing the parts we knew, laughing when somebody didn’t the know the rhyme and tried to make up words. We weren’t thinking of dead kids anymore. I wasn’t thinking of mean white girls who couldn’t see the beauty in a dance beat so tight you couldn’t resist moving to it.
*
After I finished my homework, Bridgette and I were watching the news and heard that another boywas missing. They still hadn’t found Milton Harvey, the boy who was last seen at the bank, but it had been over six weeks and I’d already stopped making up reasons why he went missing. I didn’t bother to imagine what this fourth boy was doing, where he might be. I knew he was dead, just like lots of people in Atlanta knew, just like his mother must have known while she cried in the film that the news people were running, praying publicly for his return. I turned to Channel 17, which had no news hour or crying mothers, and played a constant loop of sixties sitcoms and Braves games during baseball season.
Ma walked into the den and told me to turn the TV back to the news. She wanted to hear it. This I didn’t understand because whatever information she had must have been better than the story they told on the news. But Ma was a news junkie. No matter what was on, boring human-interest stories or the most terrible murder, she had to see it. Even after the crazy stuff she saw all day, she could come home and watch more.
This time the boy, Yusef Bell, was only nine years old.
“That’s the same age I am,” Bridgette said.
I asked Ma to tell me what she knew about him, because even to a thirteen-year-old, nine seemed too young.
“Why do you want to know?”
“So I can be safer,” I lied. I guess that could be true, but now I just wanted to know. Was this boy more like me than not? Did our paths ever cross?
“Don’t go sharing this with your friends.”
“Do I ever?”
I never did, even when I was younger and first understood that Ma being a cop gave me the kind of attention I’d never attract under other circumstances. She helped me earn my grade school friends’ respect when she’d turn on the blue lights of her patrol car, and my high school friends’ envy when I hinted that I could have a traffic ticket fixed if I ever got one, but I never betrayed her trust.
“He was last seen in Southwest, but closer to us, only six miles away.”
“Anyone see anything?”
“Nothing. His mother had sent him to the corner store to pick up something for her neighbor friend, and he just didn’t come back.”
Like the boy from the skating rink, I wondered what this boy was thinking, what he was doing, before he was taken. He’d probably run the same errand so many other times before. Was he hoping he’d have enough change left over to buy some Pop Rocks? Did he plan to stop off at a friend’s house before returning home to pick up the football he’d loaned him? I wondered what his last thoughts were, what his last happy act was, and hoped it gave him something sweet to hold on to.
Chapter Six
Ma threatened to keep me from going downtown on the weekend with Cassandra and some other kids to watch a kung-fu movie at the Rialto. The Rialto was one of those old-time theaters that had been around forever and couldn’t compete with the wider screens and armrest drink holders of the newer shopping mall theaters. Downtown Atlanta didn’t make it the most attractive location either, since people with the most discretionary income spent time downtown only Monday through Friday, nine to five. After their weekday, they beat it out of there, packing cars onto I-75 or I-20, heading for the suburbs in every direction.
The Rialto understood its weekend audience—young black folks who needed a theater on an easily accessible bus
*
After I finished my homework, Bridgette and I were watching the news and heard that another boywas missing. They still hadn’t found Milton Harvey, the boy who was last seen at the bank, but it had been over six weeks and I’d already stopped making up reasons why he went missing. I didn’t bother to imagine what this fourth boy was doing, where he might be. I knew he was dead, just like lots of people in Atlanta knew, just like his mother must have known while she cried in the film that the news people were running, praying publicly for his return. I turned to Channel 17, which had no news hour or crying mothers, and played a constant loop of sixties sitcoms and Braves games during baseball season.
Ma walked into the den and told me to turn the TV back to the news. She wanted to hear it. This I didn’t understand because whatever information she had must have been better than the story they told on the news. But Ma was a news junkie. No matter what was on, boring human-interest stories or the most terrible murder, she had to see it. Even after the crazy stuff she saw all day, she could come home and watch more.
This time the boy, Yusef Bell, was only nine years old.
“That’s the same age I am,” Bridgette said.
I asked Ma to tell me what she knew about him, because even to a thirteen-year-old, nine seemed too young.
“Why do you want to know?”
“So I can be safer,” I lied. I guess that could be true, but now I just wanted to know. Was this boy more like me than not? Did our paths ever cross?
“Don’t go sharing this with your friends.”
“Do I ever?”
I never did, even when I was younger and first understood that Ma being a cop gave me the kind of attention I’d never attract under other circumstances. She helped me earn my grade school friends’ respect when she’d turn on the blue lights of her patrol car, and my high school friends’ envy when I hinted that I could have a traffic ticket fixed if I ever got one, but I never betrayed her trust.
“He was last seen in Southwest, but closer to us, only six miles away.”
“Anyone see anything?”
“Nothing. His mother had sent him to the corner store to pick up something for her neighbor friend, and he just didn’t come back.”
Like the boy from the skating rink, I wondered what this boy was thinking, what he was doing, before he was taken. He’d probably run the same errand so many other times before. Was he hoping he’d have enough change left over to buy some Pop Rocks? Did he plan to stop off at a friend’s house before returning home to pick up the football he’d loaned him? I wondered what his last thoughts were, what his last happy act was, and hoped it gave him something sweet to hold on to.
Chapter Six
Ma threatened to keep me from going downtown on the weekend with Cassandra and some other kids to watch a kung-fu movie at the Rialto. The Rialto was one of those old-time theaters that had been around forever and couldn’t compete with the wider screens and armrest drink holders of the newer shopping mall theaters. Downtown Atlanta didn’t make it the most attractive location either, since people with the most discretionary income spent time downtown only Monday through Friday, nine to five. After their weekday, they beat it out of there, packing cars onto I-75 or I-20, heading for the suburbs in every direction.
The Rialto understood its weekend audience—young black folks who needed a theater on an easily accessible bus
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