Kevin Powell - The education of Kevin Powell : a boys journey into manhood

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An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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Copyright 2015 by Kevin Powell

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

Note to readers: Some names and identifying details of people portrayed in this book have been changed.

Poems excerpted throughout this book were first published in the authors poetry collections No Sleep Till Brooklyn (Soft Skull Press, 2008) and recognize (Writers & Readers, 1995).

First Atria Books hardcover edition November 2015

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Interior design by Kyoko Watanabe

Jacket design by Kerry DeBruce

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-4391-6368-9

ISBN 978-1-4391-6421-1 (ebook)

For my mother, Shirley Powell, the first teacher and leader I ever met. Ma, I love you forever

How I got over/How I got over/Oooh, my soul look back and wonder/How I got over

CLARA WARD/THE FAMOUS WARD SINGERS

I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.

KURT COBAIN

People think just because you were born in the ghetto that you are going to fit in.

TUPAC SHAKUR

F ISTS POUNDED my face from every angle. I am so stupid for coming out into this hallway , I thought. I shouldve known theyd be out here waiting for me. I wanted to scream, but I resolved to take the beating as punishment for my life. As the blows torpedoed my nose, my eye sockets, my temples, and my ears, my mind staggered toward the possibility that I could die, and I imagined the damage: the deviated septum, the detached retina and the loss of vision, the loudness of sudden deafness, garbled speech. I saw my body days laterswollen, with lumpy clots around the gashesbeing found in a park, decomposed and fed upon by bloated, fanged street rats. My mother would come to the hospital to identify me and screamthe kind of cry every ghetto mother saves for the day when it is her son who has died prematurely. I could hear my mothers anguished voice: Lawd, I knew he would end up this way. He was always walkin the wrong path.

Dang, what a way to go out! Beat down by some pissed-off Black men. I wasnt with that. I squirmed and ducked enough head blows to fold my bony frame into a ball the way theyd taught us in that Jersey City P.A.L. karate classbut the kicks and punches blasted through anyway. Bloodthick, bitter clumps of itoozed between my teeth and gums. My eyes had swollen into puffy balloons, so I couldnt make out the faces through the slits, but the voices sounded familiar:

We should kill this kid for that ISH!

Man, later for that! I aint tryin to get no murder rap.

Stop being a punk, yo! Who gonna tell?

I wanted to say to those voices, Yo, brothers! Dont yall know who I am? Im that kid from around the way.... But they could not have cared less. I was just another Black boy who had played the wrong game and needed a good butt-kicking

Once the men had planted me solidly on the tiled floor, I faked like I was out cold, hoping to get some mercy. Get up, boy, you aint dead yet! Sturdy, leathery hands yanked me by my feet, and I was dragged down the hallway stairs, out of the building, into the parking lot next door. An electric-like current jolted my body, and I could feel my flesh frying atop the friction and heat of the pavement. Does anyone see any of this? I thought as heavy shoes and work boots pummeled my chest and rib cage.

For the first time I bawled loud and longlike an abandoned baby . Aaaah! These dudes are going to kill me! Flat on my back, I cupped the nights pitch-blackness in my outstretched hands and prayed silentlyand I wondered if I were going to heaven or hell. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want ... My mother told me to say that whenever I was in deep trouble. Maybe I had used up too many prayers. But the men, reeking of alcohol and now exhausted, hurled their legs and arms into me a few more times, then floated backwards to admire their work. As they turned away, I could hear them smacking palms and each others backs, muttering, Dang, we beat that kid down....

Dear Lawd,

Ah aint meant to do dis Lawd. It wuz uh accident, God. But God,

Ah done had de baby now an it aint

Nothin Ah kin do but t raise it.

But God, how cum dat damn Cunningham done disown his chile?

Oooh Jee-zus! He 13 years older dan me an he should know bedder.

Lawd, Ah swear, if Ah known dat he was gonna do dat,

T m, t leeve me an dis chile

Ah sho wouldnt had never let him touch me.

Ahm ashame Lawd cause dis baby aint got no daddy.

Ah donno where t turn. Ah kint go back down South

Cause deyll call me a heffa .

Oh God! Pleeze show me de way cause dis

Aint gonna be eazy.

All Ah ask Lawd is dat you give me de strength

T take care of dis chile til he grown

Enuf t do fo hisself.

An Lawd, when dat boy gits t be uh man-size, if he ever run int

His daddy, let him make his daddy pay fo what he done did.

Ahm sorry, Lawd, fo sayin it lak dat but dats de way Ah feel God.

Ah-man.

M Y MOTHER ripped me away from the fire-hot radiator as I screamed in agony. Maaaaa! Maaaaa! Aaaaah! Maaaaa!

I was somewhere between two and three years old, captivated by the hissing of this thing that both warmed us in the dead-cold winter, and also made the kind of noises that lured a child as a familiar toy would. While my mother looked elsewhere, I stared at it, sized it up, and then I raised my right hand, as if saluting it, and I touched it

Pain knotted my fingers and I couldnt let go of the radiator. It ricocheted through my hand, up my wrist, and shocked my entire right arm into submission. I was stuck and all I could do was scream.