No Place Like Home, page 12
I stand up, but the group is getting pretty close. And if we run, my legs might give out again and then Leland would have to fight them three on one while the other one is stomping me. If you’re in a fight, no matter what, don’t hit the ground. And if you do, get up immediately. I hear Emjay’s advice ringing through my head.
“You know where we are, right?” Leland says to me.
“Stockton,” I say. “Why?”
“We are less than ninety miles away from the San Quentin State Prison,” he says.
“You think these guys escaped from prison? They look too young.”
“San Quentin is where the biggest White Power gang started. Now this area is full of them.”
“How do you know this stuff?” I ask.
“My mom researched our entire trip. She was worried about this place but didn’t think we’d be here this long. We need to flag down a cop,” he says.
I don’t have the heart to tell him that cops, in my family’s experience, are just as scary as these guys. Maybe their dads are cops. Maybe they’ll one day end up being cops. Can you imagine these four allowed to carry guns? But maybe Leland is right. I’m not stupid; even I know there are such things as good cops out there. I just haven’t seen one. They’re like narwhals and pangolins. I know they exist, but they’re rare.
If we were going to run, we just missed the chance. They aren’t happily strolling through the park. They saw us and decided to make our business their business.
“You two on a date?” the tallest of the four asks, and his friends laugh.
I don’t reply. And neither does Leland. Instead, we start walking away.
“We’re talking to you!” one of them shouts.
We ignore them and walk on; well, we try to, but we don’t get far. They catch up and surround us. “I asked you a question, nerd,” one of them says to Leland as they snatch the glasses from his face.
“Give them back,” Leland says, and reaches for them, but the one that took them tosses them to his friend.
“This is our park,” another one says, followed by a word-train of racist slurs.
It makes me mad. Real mad. But I know, if I throw a punch, there will be no turning back. And reality is that we are outnumbered two to one. “And what are you? Mexican?” he asks me.
“Nah,” another one chimes in. “Look at his slanted eyes. He’s a Jap,” and he shoves me from behind.
It makes me drop my comic. He picks it up and rips it in half, then tosses it behind them. His friends laugh. They do the same thing to Leland’s comic book. I don’t know what to do. If I was my mom, I’d sweet-talk my way out of this. If I was my brother, I’d have already pounded their heads in by now. But I’m me. And I can take a punch, sure, but that doesn’t mean I want to. I just want out of this. Maybe I’ll try a bit of both. My mom and Emjay.
“You guys proved your point. You’re scary. You’re tough. You ripped up our comic books. You had your fun. But now we should all go our separate ways … before I make you regret messing with us,” I say, and I already regret saying that last part.
That was the Emjay part. Dang it. Leland looks at me like I just stuck my foot into my own mouth. Not only metaphorically, but physically.
“Is that right?” one says, but before I can respond—
BAM!!!
A fist slams into my cheek from behind me. I fall. I remember Emjay’s advice and launch back to my feet. Another punch hits my nose. I smell blood. My vision steams up like a bathroom mirror. Everything goes white. I feel grass. I must be on the ground again. I try to get up, but I’m being held down. I hear laughing. I cover my head to make sure no kicks hit my face or neck. They are laughing about my shoes. “Duct tape” and “bum” and another set of racist names are thrown down at me. Half about me and half about Leland. His are worse. Mine are off target. They keep calling me Asian names. My shoes are gone. They took them off of my feet. I feel bruises forming already. Knuckles. Sloppy punches. Then it stops.
I get up and see them walking away. They are holding my shoes. And another pair. I look over and see Leland lying on the ground too, weeping. His white socks, now with green stains on them. Streaks, from trying to crawl away while they were beating on us. “You okay?” I ask.
He crawls over and picks up his bent glasses. He puts them on. They are cracked and lopsided. “Why’d you say that? Why’d you say they were gonna regret messing with us?”
“They were gonna jump us anyway. I took a shot and missed,” I said.
“Mom’s going to kill me,” he says, and stands.
I stand up. My face hurts. I pick up as many ripped pages from our comics as I can see and hand them to Leland. “Good as new if you can find some tape,” I say.
“The shelter has tape,” he says, and gathers all the pages. “Let’s go. I hate Stockton.”
We start walking back toward the shelter. I could tell him that what just happened could have been way worse. I could have told him that out of one to ten, our beating was about a three. I could even tell him that all we lost out on besides our shoes was our drinks and chips … But even though I’ve been jumped way worse than that before, I don’t tell him any of these thoughts. Because I’ve been down this road before, and I can clearly see he hasn’t. This was new for him. Too new. And all the horrible names they called him hurt worse than their punches and kicks. Their words will leave much bigger bruises. They may even scar. We can fix his glasses with tape, but what he saw and heard, there’s no fixing that.
I know how he feels. And if he’s anything like me, he won’t tell his mom all the things they said to him. He knows how bad they’ll taste if they ever have to roll off his tongue and leave his mouth. He’ll keep them all bottled up, hidden inside his head. It will protect her from being sad. That’s what I do.
CHAPTER 13
HITTING BULLIES AND THE ROAD, AGAIN
“What in God’s name happened?” Leland’s mom shouts as soon as we enter the shelter.
She was sitting by the one public phone mounted on the wall, but in three large mama steps, she is right to us, with her boy’s face cupped in her hand as she examines his war wounds. Ani is in her other hand, also looking at Leland’s lumped-up face.
“We got jumped,” I say, since he’s not making a peep.
She turns to me. Looks me up and down. “You got it worse. And if your mama is anything like me, she won’t be happy.” She turns back to Leland. “Get your butt in the washroom. Now!”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says, and sluggishly walks away.
“And where are your shoes?” she shouts, after seeing the full scope of him.
“They took our shoes,” I say.
“They took our shoes,” he says, and walks off.
She turns to me. “Now, why in the world would they take your shoes?”
“Just to do it, I guess,” I say.
“Come here,” she says to me.
“You going to spank me? Because I don’t think you’re allowed to do that.”
She laughs. “Looks like you’ve been hit enough. Come here.”
I approach her. She hands Ani to me. It feels so good to have an innocent ball of fur in my arms. I missed her, but I’m glad she wasn’t with me. That would have made things much worse. Ani is not a wolf yet.
Tessa cups my chin in her hands, just like she did with her son. Her palms are warm. And they don’t smell like cigarettes. They smell like coconuts. She examines my face.
“Your cheek is red, which will go down in an hour or so. But that shiner under your eye is turning purple. Your mama is gonna see that. What do you think she’ll say?”
“She’ll ask if the person that gave me this got it worse or not,” I say.
Tessa looks at me with a tilted smile, like she doesn’t know if I’m telling a joke or not. “Did he?”
“No. But to be fair, there were four of them and just two of us.”
“What did they look like?” she asks.
“You did the research. You know what they looked like.”
“I’m sorry this happened to you two,” she says with a cloud of sadness rolling over her skies, I mean eyes.
“It’s okay. I’ve been punched by Blacks, Mexicans, my brother, and now whites. And you know what? All fists feel the same. It’s kind of unavoidable, staying at cheap motels and shelters. For some reason, the cities always like to build these places in bad neighborhoods. Makes no sense to me.”
“You should go wash up too. Looks like you took a dirt nap,” she says.
I get three steps away from her when I hear a voice from behind me. A voice I recognize, with a tone that sends shivers down my spine. “Who did that to you?”
I turn and see Emjay. The marks on his face, from his recent fights, have pretty much cleared up. I guess the baton of bruises gets passed around from brother to brother as we grow up and move from shelter to shelter.
“Just some guys at the park,” I say, hoping what I know comes next won’t come next.
I don’t know where Emjay has been, but wherever he was, he sticks out like a lion in a room full of homeless hyenas. His pants are new. His shoes are new. His shirt is new. I’m starting to think I need to adopt his lifestyle a bit more. I’m covered in grass, shoeless, stained, and I smell like onions. “Hand the mutt to this nice lady, Opin,” he says.
And there it is. The inevitable. Emjay’s chance to lay a beating down on someone. A part of me likes the fact that he will defend me. His blood wants to protect my blood. If someone messes with me, they are messing with him. That’s how families should work. But another part of me knows that he’s not really doing this for me. He loves fighting. It makes him feel alive. And he’s good at it. Practice makes perfect.
“Opin, is everything okay?” Tessa asks, growing suspicious of Emjay’s tone.
“Yeah. This is my brother, Emjay. We have to go do something. Can you watch Ani a bit longer?” I say, not waiting for her reply and handing Ani to her.
“Violence doesn’t solve anything,” she says, looking me square in the eye.
“Of course it does, lady. Where have you been?” Emjay says.
“I beg to differ,” she replies to him.
“You can beg all you want. But I don’t think the white man just handed your ancestors their freedom, now, did he? No. They had to fight for it. Problem solved.”
Tessa doesn’t respond. I can’t tell if she’s offended or if she actually thinks my brother made a valid point. Personally, I just want to get this over with. “This is what we do when we do what we gotta do,” I say, and follow my brother out of the shelter.
We walk through the parking lot. He doesn’t say a word to me, or even look at me. His eyes are dead set on the park across the street. The asphalt is uneven, and it kind of hurts my shoeless feet as I try to keep up with my brother. He walks fast and focused, like a gladiator entering the coliseum. I bet this is how our Native ancestors walked when they were about to go to battle with the cavalry. They knew they could potentially die, but they didn’t care. And if they did care, it didn’t show in their steps. They were ready. Always ready. Like Emjay.
Unlike me.
We cross the street and enter the park. His eyes scan the area. He sees the basketball players. “Them?”
“No,” I reply.
His eyes turn to the skateboarders. “Them?”
“No … them,” I say, and point to the four guys across the park. They are sitting on a picnic table, and there are now four girls with them.
I guess while they were waiting for their dates, they saw us and decided to beat up a couple of kids to pass the time. Big mistake. They had no idea I have a fighting-machine brother who fears nothing. And no one. And has never lost a fight because he’d rather die swinging on his feet than accept defeat. It’s not that he’s bigger or stronger than everyone else. It’s because most people know when to quit. Emjay doesn’t. I almost feel sorry for these four guys … Almost. They are so going to regret not going to school today.
Emjay heads toward them. Each step he takes, I hear thunder. I know the lightning is coming next. And instead of running for shelter, I follow the storm. My body tenses up. I hate this feeling. No one should have to feel their hearts beating so hard. My hands shake. My knees shake. But Emjay shows no signs of nervousness. Instead, I see joy. I see a pride that I wasn’t born with. I see a hungry lion hoping his next meal puts up a worthy fight. It makes the meat taste better, I guess.
We reach the picnic table, and I stop just before Emjay does, leaving me a step behind him. The four guys see my brother. Then me.
“This is my brother,” Emjay says to them.
They get off the picnic table and face Emjay. They don’t look afraid. Dumb gazelles.
“It’s the little Jap kid. He went and cried to his brother,” one says, and the others laugh. Even the girls are amused. “But you don’t look Jap. You look more … I don’t know, what are you? Mongolian?” he says, and his friends crack up.
“They look like Aztecs,” one of the girls says.
“What the hell is an Aztec?” the guy asks.
“We are Ojibwe,” I say aloud. “The direct descendants of Chief Shawano of the Anishinaabe—”
“Shut up,” Emjay snaps at me.
The group laughs. “An ojib-what? What’s that?” one asks.
“I’m about to show you,” Emjay says.
They move closer to us. They still don’t realize how bad their day is about to become. “What did you think would happen? You’d come here, and we’d what? Say sorry for beating his ass?” the taller one says with a smirk. “Because that’s not happening.”
“I didn’t come here for an apology,” Emjay says, and rolls up his sleeves.
The group laughs again. It’s always chuckles before knuckles. They inch closer. They are within striking distance. It’s like four muscle cars playing chicken with a tank.
“It’s four on one. You really want to do this?” one of them asks.
“Too bad for you. You should have brought more friends,” Emjay says, and before they have a chance to react, Emjay throws a right, down the middle, slamming into the closest guy’s nose.
Blood splatters the guy’s face, like a red butterfly spreading its wings. He drops to his knees, cups his face, and makes the sounds of an animal caught in a steel trap.
The other three guys charge, but Emjay lands a kick right into the nutsack of one of them. The kid buckles in pain.
Emjay is tackled down by the remaining two. They all hit the ground. Emjay is the first one back to his feet. He’s always the first one up. Always.
My brother lands a knee into the face of the guy on his knees cupping his balls, which sends him crashing down into the grass. Emjay takes a few punches from the two guys—but their swings are sloppy, which allows my brother to counter, easily, and knock both to the ground with a series of combinations he learned by watching boxing fights whenever we were at a place with a TV.
I watch in awe as my brother starts kicking them while they’re down. Four on one. It wasn’t a fair fight at all. The girls start begging my brother to stop; even I try to tell him he’s done enough, but Emjay is done when Emjay is done. Never a second sooner.
I wonder if our ancestors are watching this. Are they proud? Disappointed? Entertained?
Emjay starts removing their shoes. One by one. And tossing each pair to me. “Take the best fit,” he says.
I notice the symbolism here. He just went to battle with the white man. He won. Now he’s taking their souls by taking their soles. These shoes look new. I bet they all have rich parents. Or at least middle-class parents, but from where Emjay and I are sitting, the middle class is rich to us. I try the shoes on. They are all way too big for my feet. “Fine. Pick them up. They’re mine now,” Emjay says, and approaches me. I see his lip is swollen and leaking blood.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
He punches me in the stomach. I buckle. I drop to my knees. I drop all eight shoes. I lose my breath. “That’s for not fighting your own fight,” he says, and walks away, back toward the shelter.
I was right. He didn’t fight them to defend me or to honor our ancestors. He was just a shark that smelled blood. I catch my breath. The four guys are still on the ground, in pain, but not seriously hurt. They got lucky. If Emjay was in a bad mood today, they’d all be in the hospital. I stare down at their shoes. Eight empty shoes. Then I stare at my feet. Dirty socks. I know I should just do the right thing and leave these shoes where they are, in the grass. An eye for an eye or a shoe for a shoe never ends well. But instead, I pick them all up and carry them toward Emjay, because if I did leave them, I’d most likely get another punch in the gut from my brother. And I’m done with punches. There’s been too many today.
I catch up to Emjay at the street. We’re near a bus stop. A large trash can is propped beside it. Emjay tosses all eight pairs of shoes into the trash. It’s not like he didn’t want these souvenirs as a reminder of his epic victory in the Battle of Stockton Park. Eight trophies would have looked nice on his wall. It’s just the reality of our situation. Emjay has no wall. These shoes would just take up space. Space that we don’t have.
We get to the parking lot, and I see that Mom is back. Our car is parked in the same spot she drove out of this morning. My mind doesn’t race through whether or not she’s going to be mad at me for getting beat up or mad at Emjay for fighting again, no, my mind goes straight to wondering if she was approved to get the food stamps she’s been hoping for. Don’t get me wrong, Taco Bell and Burger King and all those other fast-food places are fine, but I miss the other foods we used to eat. The good foods. The apples. The grapes. Corn on the cob. The real bread. The peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Cereal with milk in it. Shelters only have Cheerios. I don’t know why. And they’re always out of milk. I’m so sick of stale Cheerios in a bowl of water. I want to eat those fun ones. Fruity Pebbles. Cap’n Crunch. Lucky Charms. Apple Jacks. Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I want to drink orange juice and apple juice again. I want to eat Salisbury steak and green beans and pancakes. I miss those instant ramen noodles in the Styrofoam cups. I know it says to microwave them for three minutes, but I like to do it for only one minute, because it keeps the noodles crunchy. I want a Hot Pocket. I want macaroni and cheese. I’m sick of KFC and cheeseburgers and French fries.
