D. Watkins - Black Boy Smile: A Memoir in Moments

Dear Cross,

I love you.

Ive loved you since May 14, 2019, the day when your mother asked me to buy a pregnancy test. No one in the world knows their body better than your mothershe can feel a cold coming on three weeks before hacking out the first cough. So, when she asked for the test, disappeared into the bathroom, and reappeared with her smile, the smile that makes me fall in love over and over again, the smile you inheritedI knew you were coming, and that love grew. And that love will continue to grow and fill my spirit in ways Ive never known, and I may never fully be able to understand its depthsbut if I am ever to attempt, then I must go back to the beginning.

This is the beginning of you.

My muva and grandmuva make the best seafood salad for reallllll, Im tellin you, Kavon said. The streets nicknamed him Burger, because he was big, dark brown, and lumpy, with a flat spotty face that looked just like an overcooked burger. Burger was only a few years older, but triple my size. Shit is sooooooooooo good, man, dont debate me, he spat, stuffing the mashed-up shrimp deep into his mouth, globs of wet mayonnaise oozing down his wide puffy jaws.

Mmmmmmmmm, mmmm, mmmmmm, he groaned, wiping the chunky off-white filth away from the corners of his mouth.

It was about two weeks before our first day of school. We were posted on the corner of Ashland Avenue, in front of a slouched redbrick collapsing row house that had been boarded up longer than any of us could remember. All us boys were baked a shade darker than our real complexions from riding our bikes, hooping, and swimming at the rec center in the ninety-degree weather every day. The happy bunch of us were all summertime ashy in tank tops with socks pulled up to our knees. Burger eclipsed our edge of the block as he shoved more of that cocktail of canned shrimp, corner store mayo, and imitation crab-meat-shit that he swore was seafood salad into his nasty mouth. He was spooning it out of a tan faded plastic Country Crock bowl that used to be a margarine container a long time agoeverybody from our block used them as bowls when the fake butter inside had run out.

That stuff stink! I accidentally mumbled. Shit. Fear instantly shot through me as the thought escaped my mouth. What in the fuck is wrong with me? Every kid in the neighborhood knew Burger could beat the shit out of everybody, even the adults, and he was glad to, for any reasonwe all held countless stories detailing the way Burger swung his puffy scarred mitts against somebodys teeth, so why would I comment, unless I wanted to be next? Did I lose my fuckin mind?

My friend Troy who was with us looked at me like I had three heads with a Are you fucking crazy? face and then went back to his Game Boy. As my heart sank into the bottom of my stomach, all I could hear was Troys bony fingers clicking away on Mario Brothers, and Burger shoving more of that shit into his mouth like, Muuuuuuuummmmmmmm, so good.

Burger was a bully in every sense of the word. He always started fights and finished them. He was bigger than grade school teachers, bigger than the principal, and bigger than his big brother, who was also a bully. We were only friends with him to avoid being on the wrong side of his fist. Once hed run up on the school bus and knocked out the driver. POW! Burgers fist blasted right on top of his face. The driver went straight to sleep and only the ambulance crew and their fists full of ammonia tablets could wake him. Hed only done that because someone had dared him to. That was Burger, and thats the kind of things Burger liked to do. Pissing him off had me so shook that I couldve shit myself, until I realized that he probably didnt hear me.

After Burger sopped up the last of the seafood salad, he trained his eyes on Troys Game Boy. I wanna play, yo, I got next, he said, snatching it out of Troys hands. Troy and I were the only kids in the neighborhood with Game Boys, as most parents didnt have $90 to spend on a handheld game console. But what Burgers mom couldnt buy him, he took.

Come on, man! I was about to win Mario! Troy protested.

Burger shrugged, looked at Troy, and breathed, I should sell this shit.

Come on, man! Troy pleaded.

Us kids were just starting to see the effects of crack cocaine, or what the streets called ready rock, ready, or cracka cheaper, rock-like, smokable form of powder cocaine. Crack hit our neighborhood like a missile, and nobody saw it coming. Respected coaches, the flyest uncles, and the prettiest teenage girls had morphed into funky, stealing, toothless addicts that roamed the block like zombies all day and night looking for crack. Many of the top dealers were teenagers driving brand-new Acura Legends, Nissan Pathfinders, 300Zs, and 5 Series BMWs, bossing other kids, beating the snot and shit out of grown men begging for a rock, and fucking bent-over grown women in the alley who needed a blast. Kids like me, Troy, and Burger were the young soldiers, next in lineso we had to be tough, because the older kids were always watching, offering us money, work, making sure we represented the neighborhood and carried ourselves like men.

We werent men, and didnt really want to be men, we wanted to be kids, but had to always act like men, whatever that meantit was all a lie. And I quickly learned how to be a liar. As a matter of fact, I mastered it.