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Kids who are different colors don't get to be that tight in my neighborhood. But we got past all that racial crap, until we were almost like real blood brothers. –Marcus (Black and White)
Marcus
The correction officer at the final checkpoint looked me up and down. He kept one hand on the butt of his holstered gun, while the stubby fingers of his other hand waved me forward.
"Let me see the paperwork," he said, without any emotion.
I laid the tall, brown paper bag I was carrying at my feet. It was stuffed with all my personal items, like books, letters, and photos of my family. Then I positioned my heels around either side of it, to keep the bag standing upright.
I showed the officer my release papers and prison ID. He probably saw that kind of paperwork every damn day. But he took his sweet time reading it all the way through, like there might be a surprise ending to mine. I didn't want to look him directly in the eye and take a chance on setting him off. I wasn't sure what kind of expression I was supposed to keep my face. I just wanted out, without any last minute problems or delays. So I played it safe and tried to stay blank on him, focusing on the middle of his chest and staring at his tie clip–a silver snub nose revolver.
"That's all. You can move ahead now," he said, finally satisfied.
I took my papers and ID back from him. Then I picked up my belongings and passed through that last gate. Maybe forty strides later, I stood on the open sidewalk in the middle of a hot August morning. I took a deep breath. The world was supposed to be different now with all the protests in the streets over racial injustice. I had heard that even white people were marching with us. Only I didn't honestly believe that my best friend, Eddie Russo, would be painting a protest sign anytime soon.
Seventeen months ago, I'd counted eleven gates from the entrance of the Auburn Correctional Facility to my six-by-nine foot cinderblock cell. Back then, it hit me that was the number on Eddie's old Long Island City High School basketball jersey. The same number I'd see him wear on TV, watching him play in college for St. John's as a freshman last season, from my front row seat in the prison dayroom. And the thought of me paying the price alone for what we did smacked me just as hard today as I counted those eleven gates on the way out.
Walking to the bus station, I could feel the heat coming off the asphalt, through the soles of my shoes. For the first time in nearly a year and a half, there was no correction officer breathing down my neck, telling what to do or how to stand.
I was free to walk in any direction, at any speed I wanted.
Whatever I'd owed the state of New York–or anybody for what I'd done–was finally paid off. From now on there wouldn't be any glass partition between my mother, my sister and me. I'd be able to hold them in my arms again, and hug them tight. I wouldn't have to settle for blowing kisses to Eddie's sister Rose, like I did the two times her parents let her take the bus up here with my mother to visit, after the state dropped all the charges against Eddie. I'd be able to taste Rose's sweet lips on mine.
The dispatcher told me the next bus to New York City wasn't for another fifty minutes. I'd had enough of killing time in prison, so I decided to stretch my legs, circling the three or four blocks around the bus station.
There was a basketball court a few blocks away, and I watched some of the game going on there through a chain-link fence. I saw a black kid feed a white dude for an open lay-up, and then the two of them slapped hands.
They acted like all the problems in the world ran from baseline-to-baseline, ninety-four feet long by fifty feet wide. That every one of those problems could get solved by your skills on the court, and having a teammate you could trust to watch your back.
Seeing them, I couldn't help but think about Eddie and me.
I thought about how we once ruled the court together at the Circle back home in the Ravenswood Projects, and on the team at Long Island City High School, where college scouts drooled over the thought of signing us both to scholarships.
Then, out of nowhere, a car in the street backfired.
Suddenly, my shoulders hunched down. A bolt of fear shot through me, just like it did that night when the gun in Eddie's hand accidentally went off, and the man we were robbing got grazed in the head. That was the last in a string of armed robberies we'd pulled, at first to pay off our senior dues and then to keep our wallets fat with spending money.
My name is Marcus Brown. My mother named me Marcus after Marcus Garvey–a hero from Jamaica. I'd looked him up in the library for a social studies project I once did, and learned he'd preached that the only way black people had a chance in this world was for them all to join together.
I guess Garvey would have been ashamed of me for sticking-up another black man–a city bus driver named Sidney Parker who had three kids to feed and nearly getting him killed. The fact that my white partner was the one holding the gun, and not me, probably wouldn't have made a difference to him.
If Marcus Garvey had still been alive, and heard what I'd done, he might have even asked me to give him his name back.
I wouldn't have been able to blame him if he did.
But I guess I got what I deserved, because both Rikers Island and Auburn were jam packed with black dudes like me, Hispanics, too. No brother in those places ever had my back.
The Brown in my name comes from my father, Eric Brown.
He split nearly thirteen years ago, right after my sister Sabrina was born. He never visited us, or sent my mother a dime of support money. We didn't even know where he lived. My mother was so pissed off that she destroyed every picture we had of him. So I didn't have a clear idea of what he looked like anymore.
"Why would you want to see the face of someone who didn't want to be a part of your life–someone who wasn't there for you?" my mother would tell Sabrina whenever she asked about how he looked. "There's blood, and then there's blood that counts for something. Blood that's there for you when you really need it. You can keep that other kind because it's thinner than water and cheaper than talk."
Since he'd split, my father had called me twice on the phone, both times on my birthday. As angry as I was at him, those calls meant something to me. And instead of saying what was really on my mind, I found myself trying to impress him, telling him what kind of star ballplayer I'd turned out to be.
When I was sent to Auburn, I stressed that he'd call the house again. And that's how he'd find out I was in prison. That his superstar son was just a stick-up man.
But the day before I turned 18, I got escorted from my job in the inmates' mess hall to the visit area.
I figured it was my mother and Sabrina, and I was praying Rose had found a way to come along. So when an officer steered me to a seat where a man with graying hair and a moustache sat on the other side of the glass partition, I thought he'd brought me to the wrong window.
"No, wait, this isn't–," was all I got out of my mouth before I realized it was my father, and sank down into the seat opposite him. That's when I probably took the deepest breath of my life, and I could see his chest rise too.
I've had a name besides the one I got from my parents–Black.
That tag came from hanging around with my best friend Eddie Russo. Kids back home in Queens called us "Black and White," and it started to get a lot of hype around New York City with all of the high school basketball games we'd won and news stories written about us.
"Another big night for Black and White, my brother," Eddie and I must have said to each other a hundred times before stepping onto the court.
But when the games for us were over, and the only court left was a criminal court, I found myself standing alone in front of a judge dressed in black robes. I couldn't complain about it. Neither one of us wanted to get caught. It was just me who Sidney Parker recognized from that robbery, because he'd turned his face away from Eddie who was holding the gun on him. There was no real reason for Eddie to give himself up. It wasn't going to help me any. I wasn't about to rat-out Eddie to the DA for less time. No matter what my mother or anybody else said back then, I was sure Eddie would have played it the same way for me if he was the one in shackles.
I admit it. It did stick in my side the way Eddie took that scholarship to St. Johns' the night I got arrested. It hurt a little more every time I saw him play on TV, and twisted deeper when I realized he was never coming to visit. And that line between black and white, that somehow snaked its way into our lives, started to look like the Grand Canyon to my eyes.
There was just a small minority of white dudes doing time at Auburn. One of them was named Weaks. He was the bastard who'd murdered Jason Taylor, the captain of the LIC team, who used to let Eddie and me up the back stairs to watch practice when we were still in junior high.
It was over a Christmas vacation when the team went upstate to Albany to play in a tournament. I'd heard there was lots of racial crap coming out of the stands towards the LIC players. Then, suddenly, the whole gym went zoo with people charging out onto the court to fight. I remember the video of it got shown over and over on the news. Weaks ripped the leg off the bottom of a chair, and that animal stabbed Jason through the back with it. Jason died on the basketball court, cradled inside Coach Casey's arms. I'd become super-close with Coach over the four years I played for him. But he still wouldn't talk to me about those last moments with Jason.
The day Coach came to visit, I told him Weaks was doing time in Auburn too. That I had even stood just a few feet from him. I could see the muscles in Casey's face tighten. That was the way my whole body felt the first time I laid eyes on Weaks. That same night, I couldn't sleep a wink. I just stared at the ceiling of my darkened cell knowing my mailing address was the same as his–Auburn Correctional Facility 135 State Street Auburn, New York. Neither Casey nor I wanted to get any deeper into it then. We wanted to concentrate on me coming home, and everything that was in front of us.
The bus rolled slowly into the station. Then the air brakes belched a chhh and the doors folded opened.
In my mind, the only time I had left to serve was the four-hour ride home to New York City. I gazed out the window most of the way. It was the first time in a long while there weren't any metal screens or bars blocking my view. I was surprised at how much bigger and more beautiful the world seemed now. I looked through the dirty streaks in the glass like they weren't even there.
I was thinking about finding a job to help my mother with bills, about basketball, and about finding a school that would take a chance on me–a convicted felon. I juggled those things in my head until the mountains and grass outside the window turned to apartment buildings and pavement.
I kept trying to put off any conclusions over how I felt about Eddie. At least until I looked into his eyes from up close and found out what kinds of feelings would be running through me.
There was plenty of traffic on the highway and the bus didn't pull into the Port Authority Terminal until after four o'clock. I walked the underground tunnel to Times Square 42nd Street to hop a subway train home. The last time I was in Times Square was late at night, two winters ago. I was up in the street with Eddie in the freezing cold surrounded by thousands of people, waiting for the lighted ball to drop on New Year's Eve.
I remember everybody counting down, Five! Four! Three! Two! One!
When the clock ran out, it was just like the celebration after scoring a game-winning basket at the buzzer.
I got off the subway at Queensboro Plaza with the sun still blazing and that brown paper bag beginning to feel heavier and heavier.
I was still a good ten or twelve blocks from home. The 19-A bus went straight there. Only that was the route Sidney Parker drove–the bus he remembered my face from being a passenger on. So I decided to walk. Then I noticed on the red and blue bus company signs that the 19-A was gone. It had been changed since I was locked-up. It was now the 69 bus. They'd taped up that new number over the old one on every sign along the way. I almost felt good about that, like a small part of what I'd done wrong had been erased.
Walking down 21st Street, I passed the basketball court next to the Department of Sanitation yard. That's where Eddie and me first played together, and where the white garbage truck Eddie's dad drove got parked on the other side of the fence every night with dozens of others.
Only that park was deserted now in the scorching heat of the day.
I reached the heart of the Ravenswood Projects and the shadows of the six-story buildings were already running through the streets.
In between my apartment building and the one next door, I could hear the echo of a basketball pounding the blacktop, and the sounds of a game going on at the Circle. My insides jumped at that, and I could feel a tingle on my skin. But I had something much more important to do.
I got buzzed into the lobby of my building and didn't even think about taking the elevator. I'd spent enough time in a tiny cell to want to see those metal elevator doors shut behind me. So I pushed myself up four flights of stairs, with the sweat starting to run down my temples.
At my front door, I reached into my pocket for the keys on instinct. But I didn't have any. Then the locks turned from the inside. When the door opened, Sabrina rushed out to wrap her arms around me.
"He's home!" she screamed back into the apartment. "Marcus is home!"
It was dark and the shades were drawn closed. After a few steps inside, the lights came on and a crowd of voices shouted, "Welcome home!"
There was my mother, Rose, Coach Casey, my friends and former teammates–Moses and X, and Jefferson the security officer from LIC.
They were all clapping and cheering. And for a few seconds I was so overwhelmed with emotion, I almost had to think to breathe.
"I looked back inside the locker room and two guys in suits were handcuffing Marcus...Then Casey wiped a tear from his eye and huddled us up around our bench. 'Marcus was just arrested,' Casey said, steadying himself. 'I can't say why.'...After we broke the huddle, kids were looking at me for answers. But I didn't have anything to say...I tried not to look anyone in the eye, and walked onto the court." –Eddie (Black and White)
Eddie
I was soaked in sweat, standing alone at the foul line beside a rack of basketballs. My drenched shirt was stuck to my skin and felt like it weighed an extra five pounds. I'd been running drills by myself for almost an hour, and I had just nailed nineteen free throws in a row. I was looking to make twenty straight before I'd let myself call it quits for the day. I set my feet right up to the line, and bounced the ball twice in front of me, like I did every time. I took a deep breath, and then I emptied my lungs.
At that moment, I was completely zoned-in on the basket. There was nothing else in the entire world, except for me and that iron rim.
"Eddie!" called Coach Jenkins, as he stepped into that sweltering St. John's gym, taking away my concentration. "One the assistants told me this is where I'd find you."
He walked onto the court with his footsteps echoing up to the high ceiling, and then back down to where I stood.
"I appreciate all your hard work this summer. But it's absolute torture in here," Coach said, fanning himself with the folder in his hand. "You should be on one of the outdoor courts where you might catch a cool breeze."
"Have to pay your dues at this game, Coach," I said, squeezing the ball between my hands. "I don't mind the heat. It's good conditioning. Anyway, I had enough of outdoor ball growing up. I like the feel of a gym now."
"Alright, just don't pass out inside of this furnace. Official practices don't start for almost another two months, and I don't need you getting weak-legged by then," he said. "Listen, I have an e-mail in this folder from your former high school coach, Casey. It's addressed to me and fourteen other college coaches. It says Marcus Brown is being released from prison today. He received two months off his sentence for good behavior and earned his diploma upstate. That he's committed to finding a school and playing ball."
"Okay," I said, trying not to seem interested. "I knew some of that stuff."
"What do you mean 'o-kay?'" asked Jenkins, with a confused look. "I've got an extra scholarship to give. I know Marcus has missed an entire year of competition, and I'm pretty set around here with my player rotations for the upcoming season. But he could help us to practice harder, and ride the bench in games until he works his way into our system. Then next year, he could prove valuable and have a bigger role."
"Are you asking me?" I said.
"Yes, you know Marcus Brown best, Eddie. I want to hear your opinion."
Maybe I wasn't ready to deal with seeing Marcus every day, or anybody calling me and him a team again.
My mouth just started moving, almost on its own, like I was a ventriloquist's dummy to my own fears.
"I don't know that he can sit in the background like that," I answered. "He's always been a starter. I'm not sure he's got that kind of patience, to support other people and not be out front for a while."
Somewhere in the back of my mind, there was a vision of me shoving Marcus off a mountaintop while he had his back turned to me.
"Really?" said Jenkins, looking surprised.
"Yeah," I said, bouncing the ball hard off the floor one time, like an exclamation point.
"Well, if you don't have confidence in him, it's not worth the trouble then. No matter what school he plays for, there's bound to be a backlash over giving a felon a scholarship," said Jenkins.
"Say, did you get yourself a math tutor yet? We can't have you walking an academic tightrope like last year."
"My sister, Rose, is a math whiz. She starts classes here in September. She's going to work with me," I answered.
"At least one Russo is solid with numbers," he said, wiping the sweat from his forehead before he turned and walked away.
"But is that the Russo you can depend on when the game's on the line, at crunch time?" I said.
"You tell me. She's your sister," Jenkins called back over his shoulder. "And by the way Eddie, we're the St. John's Red Storm, not the Red Devils. You're not a prisoner in here. Get yourself out of this heat. It's too damn oppressive."
I ignored his words and reset my feet at the foul line. Then I raised up with the ball, looking to can my twentieth straight free throw to end my workout.
But everything Coach had said about Marcus was rattling around inside of me. Nothing in my release felt smooth as the rock left my fingertips.
My shot clanked off the front lip of rim, and I had to start back at the beginning again.
That night, I climbed into my brand new Lexus convertible, left the St. John's athletic dorms and I took the thirty-minute drive home. I had to work the next day at the car dealership–Barone's Lexus of Northern Boulevard, just a few minutes from my house. The owner, Karl Barone Sr., had graduated from St. John's and asked me if I wanted a part-time job working for him.
"The Lexus brand stands for quality and performance. That's you, Eddie, on the basketball court," he'd told me, just a few games into last season. "I want customers to come to my showroom, see you working there with my staff, and find out you're the same way in life. And of course, I want them to see you driving one of our cars."
I pulled up to the curb in front of my house, honking once to let my parents know I was there. Then I walked around to the passenger side and I grabbed the huge duffle bag full of dirty laundry that had been riding shotgun.
"I think laundry's the only reason you ever come home now," Mom said from the front door, as I hauled the bag up the steps with our pitbull Gotti jumping all around me, sniffing at it.
"Don't forget about your cooking, Mom," I said, before I kissed her on the cheek and stepped inside. "Cafeteria spaghetti sauce is like ketchup compared to yours."
Dad was sitting at the kitchen table in front of a clean plate.
"Quarter of eight," he said, tapping the face of his wristwatch. "I was ready to eat a half-hour ago, but I knew your mother would wait on you before she touched a bite."
"Sorry, I got caught up with some things at school," I said, taking a seat. "Where's Rose?"
"Where do you think she is?" Dad said, annoyed. "I didn't know there could be a party over getting released from jail. After all, he's not Nelson Mandela. He's a robber for God's sake. At least you've got the good sense to keep your distance and not go running over there."
"Marcus is basically a good kid," Mom said, putting a platter of pasta and meatballs smothered in red clam sauce in the middle of the table. "It was just one bad mistake."
"A mistake that almost cost your son his future," Dad said, as he filled his plate.
"Thank God that's all behind us," said Mom, crossing herself, before she clasped her hands and looked up to heaven.
"Now, what are you going to do about him being home?" Dad asked me, holding a knife in his right hand and a fork in the left.
"Nothing really," I answered. "I'm happy for him and his family. But I'm loaded down with stuff–basketball, work, school, social. I'll see him around somewhere. I'm just not sure when."
"That's the right attitude," Dad said, through a mouthful of food.
"Eddie, are you going out with your girl tonight?" asked Mom.
"No, I need a night off. I've got work tomorrow."
"I really like Roxy, she's so pretty," said Mom. "To see her sitting next to you in that convertible, it's like a Hollywood movie."
"There's going to be a parade of those kinds of girls–with the sexy smiles, and the manicured nails, and the big hair. They know that pro basketball contract's coming. They're all going to be in line for your son," Dad said. "You just be careful, Eddie. Go slow and choose the right one. And go slow with that car, too. Remember, your job's just loaning it to you."
"By the way, Karl Barone called here today," said Mom.
"My boss?" I asked.
"No, his son, Junior, wanting to talk with your sister," she said. "They've been out on two dates you know."
"I heard. Why'd he call here? She wouldn't pick up her cell for him?"
"Your sister should give him a real chance," Dad said. "She could do worse than marrying into that family. They're Italian, and they're loaded."
"Shush on all of that. Your daughter's going to finish college first," Mom said. "But do you like him, Eddie? He's seems very polite, very well mannered."
"Junior? He's okay, from what I've seen of him at the showroom and around campus. I think Dad's right. Rose could do a lot worse for herself."
After dinner, Mom started on my laundry, while me and Dad cleared the table and did the dishes. He washed and I dried. Halfway though, Dad gave me a long lecture about making sure to turn the cleaned glasses upside down on the drain board.
"Otherwise the water that's left collects at the bottom," he kept on. "They never get clean. There's mildew and they turn cloudy."
At just past ten o'clock, Rose got home.
Her eyes opened wide, like she was shocked to see me sitting in my own living room watching TV.
"I didn't know you'd be here," she said. "I thought you were busy with basketball and your summer classes at school."
"I had some time," I said. "How was it over there?"
"What? Am I supposed to give you secret reports? Be your lookout?" she said, with some attitude. "It was great. It was a party. Everybody who really cared about Marcus was there–his mother and sister, Casey, Moses, X, Jefferson–everybody."
"Was his girlfriend there?" I snapped.
I knew Dad, who was sitting in his chair reading a newspaper, had no idea about Marcus and Rose.
"Not that I know of," she answered. "But neither was his partner in crime."
"Hey, not another word like that out of your mouth, young lady!" Dad roared, ripping the paper down from in front of his face.
"You could have come. You weren't going to get arrested for it," Rose said to me. "You're in the clear now. All the charges against you were dropped."
"He didn't need to be anywhere tonight but home, where you should have been. Your brother's got nothing to prove to anyone," Dad said. "Besides, haven't you ever heard of getting re-indicted."
"Who's getting re-indicted?" Mom asked in a stressed voice, standing at the top of the basement steps with her arms around a basketful of folded laundry.
"No one is, not in this family!" Dad said, firmly. "Eddie doesn't need to be seen anywhere near Marcus Brown. Especially, now that Eddie's got a little fame. We don't need some glory-seeking prosecutor trying to make a name for himself off of Eddie's. 'Cause his name's the same as mine, and yours, Rose–Russo!"
In the middle of that blowup, Gotti began barking at the backdoor to go outside to do his business. After his fourth or fifth bark pounded my eardrums, I couldn't take it anymore, and I went into the kitchen to put him out.
It was almost an hour before everything calmed down, and after it did, I went upstairs to my room. I was lying in my bed with the lights on, still dressed, when Rose stopped in front of my open door.
"Did Marcus mention my name?" I asked her.
"Nobody did," she answered, coming inside and closing the door. "But that doesn't mean it wasn't on everybody's mind."
"I'm sure I'll see him this week," I said. "You and Marcus got plans?"
"We'll probably do something together."
"So what's up with you and my boss's son?"
"Absolutely nothing. He's just a guy I've been out with, no one special."
"I hope that doesn't hurt me at my job."
"Thanks, Eddie. Nice to know your interest in my social life revolves around you," she said, smacking me on the thigh. "Anyway, Marcus sounds like he's going to be busy this week. He wants to find himself a job. And I know he's going with Casey tomorrow to speak with a college coach who might be interested in giving him a scholarship."
"It's not St. John's, is it?" I asked, hesitantly.
"Why, wouldn't that be great for you?" Rose said with a grin as she walked out.
"I'm serious now, tell me what school," I called after her.
"Why don't you call and ask him? I'll give you the number in case you forgot it," she said, before closing her own bedroom door behind her.
The rest of that night I could hardly sleep, thinking how maybe Coach Jenkins had really screwed me.
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