Bronx Masquerade by Nikki Grimes Read Free Book Online Page A

approached the cashier. He spilled, or should I say poured, a cupful of honey on my shoes. My new shoes.
    “Oops! Looks like Mr. Goody Two-shoes got a mess to clean up,” he said, laughing. His buddies joined in.
    I stared down at my shoes, counting. One. Two. Three. Four. By the time I reached ten, I realized counting was not going to suffice.
    I need you, Lord. Hold back the Samson in me. I may not have his strength, but you know I have his temper.
    I counted backward from ten, felt my breath slowly evening out. A still, small voice reminded me to return good for evil, reminded me that my plans for the future do not include fisticuffs or expulsion. I am college-bound and nothing is going to keep me from it. Besides, these poor fools are only trying to get a rise out of me. They’re only trying to prove that the peace of God is nonexistent. But how can they?
    I looked up at Leon and shook my head. Then I grabbed him by the shoulders, kissed him loudly on both cheeks, and gave him a bear hug.
    “Get off me, man!” he said, trying to pull away.
    When I finally let him go, I whispered, “Leon, I forgive you.” Fear blotted out the pupils in his eyes.
    “Man,” he yelled, “you some kind of freak!”
    I smiled, strummed my imaginary guitar, and sang, “I’ll be a fool for Christ, not just once, but twice.” Leon and his friends backed away as if I’d set a match to them. They put as much distance between us as possible.
    “You sick, man,” Leon called over his shoulder. “Stay away from me!”
    It’s always something with these guys. Either they’re trying to draw me into an infantile game of The Dozens so we can trade insults left and right, or they’re slapping porno pictures inside my locker hoping to set me off. If they had some direction in their lives like Raul, Devon, or Raynard, they wouldn’t have time to worry about me one way or the other. Which is precisely why I want to teach, to give young brothers like Leon some direction. Even Wesley has direction, although the brother could clean up his language. Sometimes he sounds like a thug in training. Leon’s not much better.
    If only Leon and his friends knew how lame their antics are. As if any of that could stop me from believing in God.
    All my life, I’ve seen my mother pray, and all my life, I’ve seen her prayers answered. There was the time my baby brother was dying of pneumonia and the doctors had given up, but she prayed until the fever broke. There was the time she was laid off from her job, and the refrigerator was empty, and she bowed her head over an empty pot and prayed for God to fill it. That night, a woman upstairs begged her to accept a bag of frozen meats and vegetables, because she was moving the next day, and she hated to see good food go to waste. We had steaks that night, and we never have steaks. There were lots of times like that. “See there,” Mom would say. “That’s God’s hand. If you have God’s hand on your life, everything will be all right.” So of course I believe. And I believe big. I’m believing God’s going to get me and my three brothers into manhood, into college, and off of these streets—with no more than maybe a couple of black eyes between us. How’s that for believing?
    The change bell rang and I was still cleaning off my shoes. I could’ve used a few extra minutes to work on my own poem. It took me a while to get into this whole poetry thing, not that I don’t like it. I read God’s Trombones by James Weldon Johnson, and some of the work by Countee Cullen, like “Simon the Cyrenian Speaks,” and I liked what the brothers had to say, but their styles don’t suit me. Then Mr. Ward turned me onto Rev. Pedro Pietri, who is more my speed, even if he is kind of old. He knows how to put God and the street in the same sentence, and I figured if I’m going to write poetry at all, that’s what I want to do. So I put together a few. I couldn’t tell if they were any good, but I decided to read