The Old Neighborhood by Bill Hillmann Read Free Book Online Page A

they’d bargain and offer to carry me piggyback. More often than not, they’d carry me to school. Grandma saw us a few times as we crossed through her gangway, and she told everyone I was their prince. In a way, I was, I guess, but I was also a despised pest. Once, as I rode piggyback in the falling snow, my boot slipped off. I didn’t say anything until we got to St. Greg’s in the hopes it’d disqualify me from school that day. They screamed at me the whole way back trying to find that boot. Jan was inconsolably enraged, and Rose was near tears because we’d been late several times that month—all my fault. I don’t know how they put up with me. On summer nights, they’d get their revenge.
    Jan’n’Rose hung out with their Filipino friend Marge and her effeminate little brother, TeeTee. Jan had this way of turning everything into a military action, so instead of strolling the neighborhood, they’d march. Or, Jan’d march and they’d follow. Whenever Jan saw me, she’d unleash this seething scream and sprint after me. I’d take off running, and the rest of them followed, laughing. It sucked sometimes, but I loved them like that—like every moment of my life they were my sisters. Not my adopted sisters, or my black sisters, or my Afro-Caribbean sisters. Just my sisters—that simple. Our neighborhood was so accepting of us and them that it was like nobody noticed. That fight was the first time it’d been thrust in my face. They were different than me. Even though every fiber of my being knew they were part of me, and I part of them.

CHAPTER 4
    QUARK
    MY BROTHER RICH was a racist, but he was one of the few individuals in the world who actually almost had the right to be one. He was the victim of a terrible hate crime.
    It happened earlier in the same summer as the fight. Rich, Nancy, and another friend of theirs named Garret were walking through some alley in Rogers Park looking for a basement party they’d gotten bad directions to. It was about midnight, and they passed a liter of Old Style amongst themselves. The neighborhood streets were quiet. Suddenly, two black men burst out of a gangway behind them. The first brandished a heavy, muck-covered lead pipe. He surged toward Rich, hefted the pipe over his head, and swung it down hard, nicking the side of Rich’s skull and planting deep into his collar bone. Rich’s knees buckled. The other one rushed at Nancy and grabbed hold of her shirt. She screamed, instantly reached up, and gouged at his eyes with her nails. Rich staggered and leapt at the one who’d grabbed her and thudded his fist into the guy’s head.
    â€œGo!” Rich shouted. Garret yanked Nancy free, and they ran. The pipe finally found its mark over the back of Rich’s head, and he flashed out like the streetlights had been shut off, but Nancy said he never hit the ground. The heavy-set ex-cons snatched him up, blabbering something about guard brutality in Statesville and how they were ’doing this for dem brothas in Statesville. ’
    The two men dragged Rich into an abandoned basement and ripped his clothes off with their incredibly strong hands while they muttered, laughed, and grunted.
    Nancy and Garret ran down the alley screaming for help. Then, they cut onto Clark and ran right out into traffic, waving their arms. The cars swerved and screeched around them. Nancy screamed, “Rape!” then, “Fire!” and a light clicked on.
    Rich’s mouth filled with blood. Some slid down his throat, and it gargled there as he begged for mercy.
    Finally, a police squad swerved up to Nancy and Garret. They jumped in and surged into the alley, where they frantically searched for the gangway. They found it thanks to a red hand smear on a wooden garage siding. When they got down in the basement, the men had Rich’s pants down to his knees. The shirtless one was hovering above him, stroking his own