Monday – Rashad

There’s this dude named Aaron Douglas. Scratch that. ere was this dude named Aaron Douglas. A painter in the time of the Harlem Renaissance.

Mrs. Caperdeen, my art teacher freshman year, turned me on to him during a lesson about artists from that period. Now, I had already been into art, way before Mrs. Caperdeen’s class. I’ve been drawing since I was like ve or six. It came from hanging out with my dad aer church on Sundays. Well, Spoony and Ma would be there too, but for some reason, when I think back on it, it always seemed like it was just me and Dad, probably because we had our own thing. Our own aer-church tradition. He would drive the whole family to this diner downtown. Ma would order the eggs and English muffin, Spoony always got the French toast, and me and Dad both got pancakes. en Spoony and Ma would go back and forth trading corny jokes, which I was usually all about, except on Sundays. Sundays was when I butted out and let the two of them have their dry humor because me and Dad, we had pancakes, coffee (hot chocolate for me), and the newspaper.

Dad, of course, would be really reading the newspaper. Politics, current events, sports, every single story. But he’d pull the comics section out and hand it to me. As I’m sure you can tell by now, my old man doesn’t do funny all that well. But me, I loved the comics. All of them. But there was one in particular that struck me more than the others, and the funny thing is, I’m not really sure why. It de nitely wasn’t the funniest one. As a matter of fact, most times it wasn’t funny at all. Not to me, at least. It was called e Family Circus. A brilliant name for a comic strip, even though the family in the comic wasn’t much like a circus. ey were pretty normal. And the strip wasn’t really a “strip.” It was just one image. One scene. Not like the others, which were made up of a whole bunch of different boxes, each one telling more of the story. I know you know what I mean. Everybody knows what

comic strips look like. But this one, e Family Circus, was just one picture, in a circle. Not even in a box like normal comics. And it was all about this normal white family. Four kids, two parents, and a grandma. And nothing ever seemed to be happening. Like I remember this one, where the oldest son, Billy, and his younger siblings are watching their grandmother talk on the phone, and it just said, Grandma’s phone is really old-fashioned. at’s it.

See? No punch line. Not funny, and if anything, it’s actually pretty lame. But maybe that’s why I liked them. Maybe I was fascinated by the fact that it seemed like white families, at least in comics, lived simple, easy lives. at, and also the images—I loved them. Loved them. And every Sunday aer church I would tear e Family Circus out to save.

By the time I got to Mrs. Caperdeen’s class, and by the time she taught the lesson about Aaron Douglas, I had collected like a thousand Family Circus clips. I stored them all in a shoe box under my bed and would go through them sometimes, just to pick one out to copy-sketch. And aer a while, I got better at drawing and started making my own family cartoons in the same style. I called them e Real Family Circus, and most of them featured a cartoon version of my father shouting at a cartoon version of my brother.

But when I saw Mr. Douglas’s work, well, e Family Circus kinda went out the window. Aaron Douglas was doing a different thing, on a whole other level.

Let me describe what his work looks like. Imagine e Lion King. But all the lions are people. Black people. So Simba and Mufasa, are, let’s say, a black king and a prince. Now, imagine that you’re looking at them through the thickest fog ever. So thick that you can’t make out any actually feature on their bodies, but you can still see their silhouettes. So it could be any king.

Or any prince. But you can still tell they’re black. at’s Aaron Douglas’s work. And the rst time Mrs. Caperdeen showed us a slide from his series Aspects of Negro Life, I knew the kind of art I wanted to start making.

And so I did. e only difference was that I framed mine in a circle, like e Family Circus.

And that’s why I needed Ma to make sure she brought me my sketch pad and pencils.

I woke up early, and before doing anything else, before getting up and having a morning pee, or brushing my teeth, or spirometering, I turned the

TV on, muted it, then grabbed my stuff and starting sketching on a fresh

page. I wasn’t sure what I was drawing.

at’s not true.

I knew exactly what I was drawing. e only thing I could. I was going to re-create the scene, what had happened to me, what was playing constantly on the news, on the page.

First the outline. A teenage boy. Hands up. No. Erase. Hands down. No.

Hands behind his back. Outline of a gure behind him. Bigger than he is.

Holding him around the neck. No. Not that. Fist in the air. No. Not that either. Hand pushing through the teenage boy’s chest. A building behind him. A store. Person in the doorway. Cheering.

Aer the rough outline I started shading, which was the tricky part. See, in Aaron Douglas’s work, there’s always this haziness. is ghostliness to everything. But then there’s also lots of light. As if light beams just break through certain parts of the paintings. I like that. But in order for me to get that look with pencils, I have to do a lot of shading. A lot of licking my

nger and smearing the pencil lead to make a lighter gray on some parts of the paper, then scratch the pencil over and over again on some other areas to make darker marks. Like I said, tricky.

Clarissa came in in the middle of me rubbing my wet thumb on the paper, adding a little light to a dark area.

“Hey, there,” she said, bringing in breakfast. “How we doing?”

“I’m cool,” I said, smirking. Clarissa set the food down. Pancakes and fruit cocktail. She glanced at the pad, the black and gray smudges probably seeming like a crazy mess to her. en she shot her eyes at the silent TV.

“So you’re an artist, huh?” she said, her focus now back on my work.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I knew it.”

I looked at her curiously. “Oh yeah? How you know?”

“I don’t know. I could just tell.” She could just tell? Yeah right. What she really meant to say was, I want to say something, but I don’t know what to say.

Instead she followed with, “Mind if I look?”

“It’s just the beginning,” I prefaced, handing her the sketch pad.

Clarissa, who by the way couldn’t have been much older than Spoony, maybe early twenties, white, freckles, bright-red hair, looked at the start of

my new piece.

 “What you gonna call it?”

“Don’t know yet,” I said, shrugging. Sheesh. Even that hurt.

“Well, it looks like it’s gonna be good. I mean, not good because I mean, this whole thing, this, I mean . . .” She went bright red but soldiered on. “I just mean it looks like it’s going to be nice. Nice art,” she nished, handing the pad back to me.

“You’ve seen the news,” I said, letting her off the hook.

Clarissa glanced at the TV again. en back to me. She sighed. “Yeah.

And . . . I think it’s bullshit.” She put her hand to her mouth, probably realizing that maybe nurses shouldn’t curse. Not that that was my rule, it just seemed like it was probably discussed somewhere in the training that you might wanna refrain from using foul language around patients. I liked it, though, and even thought about responding with a hell yeah it’s bullshit! but

gured that would probably be a little too much. “I think it’s just so . . .”

Clarissa couldn’t nish her statement. I nodded to let her know I understood and that I was having just as much trouble trying to gure it all out too. But one thing we could agree on was the part about it being bullshit.

To cut some of the discomfort that now surrounded us, I ipped through the pages in the sketchbook to show her some of my more nished pieces.

“is is what a completed piece looks like,” I said, holding the pad up.

e image was of silhouettes of soldiers. Maybe twenty of them in a line, marching. At the back were babies. Marching. And they progressively got bigger, older, and right in the middle was the ultimate image of a strong soldier. And then they started getting smaller again, becoming a baby again.

“Wow,” she said. “It’s beautiful. Why do you frame them in a circle like this? Why not use the whole page?”

“Because, well, the circle changes how you see it. Like, what are we looking through? A telescope? A peephole? e sight of a gun?”

“I see,” she said. “But how come none of them have faces?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they’re there, but they’re not. Like, ghosts. Or invisible people,” I said, instantly thinking that sounded dumb, but hoping Clarissa would just think I sounded artsy.

She nodded, then glanced at the TV again. It was like a magnet. My face was on the screen. “Well listen here, Rashad, the artist,” Clarissa said, low.

“Don’t forget what I said about getting up and moving around. It’s

important.” She wagged her nger at me playfully. “I’ll come back and check on you later.”

I worked on the drawing for a while, until my hand started to cramp up, which is just one of those things that happen when you work with pencil.

Seems like some genius would’ve gured out how to make pencils out of rubber or something a little soer, even though that’s probably a silly thing to even think. But when your hand starts aching in the middle of such a personal piece, there’s no telling what you might think about.

I put the pencil and pad down and decided to follow Clarissa’s instructions and get up. But not only did I decide to get up, I decided to get the hell out of that empty, boring, beige hospital room. Room 409.

I climbed out of bed, snatched the back of my robe closed, and ventured out into the wild—not so wild—world of the hospital. I hunched over like an old man, protecting, I guess, my ribs—they hurt more when I stood straight.

I eased slowly down the hall, each step pricking me inside, as I looked around at the nurses and the doctors and the families standing around the beds of their loved ones in the rooms with opened doors. Phones ringing.

Machines beeping. Doors opening and closing. Soda cans dropping in vending machines. Conversations about next steps and tests and surgeries.

At the end of the hall was an elevator that happened to open the moment I got to it. A doctor got off, and I got on for no other reason than that it was there, open, waiting for me.

I hit the “1” button, and down to the rst oor I went. Once the doors opened again, I found myself in the busiest part of the building, the main

oor where people were checking in, doctors and nurses zipping back and forth to the cafeteria, and most importantly, where the gi shop was. It was the only thing remotely interesting. So, destination gi shop was in full effect.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that hospital gi shops have terrible gis. At least that one did. I mean, really bad gis. Oh, so sorry you’re in the hospital having your legs amputated. Know what’ll make you feel better? A snow globe with a unicorn in it. Oh, so sorry to hear about your cancer. But I’ve got just the picker-upper. A refrigerator magnet of a lighthouse that says SPRINGFIELD. Ain’t no lighthouses in Spring eld, but who cares!

I poked around, looking at all the snacks (they did have good snacks), weird doodads, and whatnots, trying not to make any moves that were too

sudden. It was more of a step-step-step, swivel head to the le, then to the right. Repeat. Nice and easy.

e woman behind the counter didn’t seem to be paying me any attention and instead was ipping through the newspaper. She had to be in her sixties. I could tell, not because she looked old—she didn’t—but because she had all those little moles all over her face that only old black ladies get.

My grandma had them.

“Can I help you?” she asked, catching me off guard. I threw my hands up and backed away from the assortment of plastic owers.

“Just lookin’, just lookin’,” I said, wound up.

She zeroed in on me, smirked. “Relax, kid. I’ve been here long enough to know that no one steals from a hospital gi shop. And if someone did, well, hey, I can’t blame them. We should be giving this stuff away.”

I put my hands down, embarrassed. “Sorry.”

“Never apologize when there’s nothing to be sorry for.” She put her eyes back on the newspaper, licked her thumb, then ipped the page. I just stood there like an ass, until she spoke again. “But seriously, do you need anything?”

I almost apologized again, but caught myself. Not sure why I was all sorry sorry sorry, all of a sudden. “Nope.”

“So you just came to see me?” she asked sarcastically. And before I could say no, she demanded, “Say yes.”

I nodded with a big grin on my face and walked toward the counter.

“Yes,” followed by the truth. “Honestly, I just needed to get out of my room.”

“Yeah, I hear ya.” She closed the paper and extended her hand. “Well, I’m

Shirley Fitzgerald.”

“Rashad.” I squeezed her ngers lightly.

Mrs. Fitzgerald and I talked a while, but I didn’t tell her anything about why I was in the hospital. At least, not the truth. I told her I got banged up in a car accident.

“Were you wearing your seat belt?” she asked predictably.

“Yep, thankfully.” I felt bad lying to an old lady, but I had to. is was the most comfortable I had felt in a while. Turns out the best gi in the gi shop was the fact that it didn’t have a TV. No news. No fuss.

Aer we got through why I was in the hospital, I asked Mrs. Fitzgerald how long she’d been working there.

 “I don’t even know. Maybe three or four years. Lost track. Wait, let me think. Frank died . . .” She started running through the timeline in her head.

“Yeah, four years. Mercy, has it been that long?” She put her hand to her neck and ddled with the gold chain she was wearing. A ring dangled from it. “My babies are grown. My grandbabies, too. And my husband has gone on to glory, so this is how I spend my time. I volunteer here a few days a week, and on my off days, I go and volunteer down at the rehouse.”

“What you do down there?”

“I ght res, what you think I do?” she snapped.

“Oh,” I said, stunned. I mean, she was old. Like, too old to be hosing down blazing houses, that’s for sure. “at’s cool.”

“at’s a lie, baby,” she said, grinning, and ipping the newspaper back open, fanning through it until she got to the comics. e rest of my time with her was spent with me standing at the register and her reading funnies out loud, and either bursting with laughter, or totally shit-talking about how lame some of them were. Eventually, my body, waist up, started broiling on the inside, and I knew it was time to make my way back to the fourth oor.

“Come back and see me, Rashad. An old lady needs a little company every now and then,” Mrs. Fitzgerald said.

“I will.”

Around four o’clock, I had visitors. But it wasn’t my family this time. It was my boys.

“Housekeeping,” a light voice came from behind the door, aer a tap.

“Housekeeping.” en came the idiotic snicker of only one person—Carlos.

“Don’t come in!” I yelled.

“Oh, come on, Rashad. I know how much you love housekeeping,” Carlos said, lowering his voice ten notches below its normal tone. He pushed the door open and English, Shannon, and Carlos led in, backpacks and all.

“Oh man,” Shannon said, instantly becoming serious when he saw me lying in the hospital bed, my face swollen, bruised, bandaged.

“Dude!” English came right behind him, shocked.

“It’s nothing,” I said.

“Nothing?” Now even Carlos was serious.

 “Come on, y’all. I’ve gotten it from my family already. So just chill. I’m

ne,” I insisted. Carlos leaned against the wall. English and Shannon took the chairs. eir eyes, caught between bad and worse, bounced from me to the TV. e Rashad Show, on repeat. I tried to bait them back in. “Tell me about the party.” Carlos was the rst to bite, of course.

“Yo, guess who almost got some?” Carlos asked, a clownish smile

spreading across his face.

“Who, English?” I replied.

Carlos shot me a mean mug. “Really? Really, ’Shad?” He lowered the lids of his eyes until they were almost closed, then popped them open wide and bawked, “Me, man! at dog bark thing totally worked! My game was on a

million, man, I swear.”

“Who was it?”

“Sweet, sweet Tiffany Watts.” Carlos closed his eyes and puckered his lips as if he was remembering some passionate kiss.

I glared at Carlos. “My Tiffany Watts?”

“Yep, cartoon-character-looking Tiffany.” Now he wrapped his arms around himself and swayed. Asshole. My heart stopped. at cop didn’t kill me, but the thought of Carlos getting with Tiffany might be the fatal blow.

Shannon couldn’t hold it in anymore and burst out laughing. en Carlos

ashed a toothy smile.

“Sike, man. You know I wouldn’t do you like that. I know her Daffy Duck–lookin’ ass is the love of your life,” Carlos teased. When dealing with a clown like Carlos, the key is to never let him see you ustered. Never let him think you take him seriously. It’s the opposite, come to think of it, of how we were trained to deal with police. With your friends, you never put your hands up. I have to admit, though, Los almost got me with that one.

“By the way, she asked about you today,” Shannon said.

“Word? What she say?” I asked, eager.

“Just that she and a bunch of other people were thinking about coming to visit you,” Shannon explained.

“No,” I waved my hand, as if I was waving off the thought of Tiffany coming. “No one can come. I don’t want nobody to see me like this.”

“You sure?” Shannon asked.

“Yeah, man. Please. Tell everyone I’m ne. But no visitors.” I caught eyes with each of them to make sure they knew I was serious. I didn’t need

anybody else standing in front of me all teary-eyed, or sitting on the edge of the bed feeling awkward. I’d already had enough of that

When I caught Carlos’s eye, he jumped right back into form. “Man, can I

nish my story?! Damn!” he said, all indignant.

“Yeah, yeah, go ’head,” I said, trying to rush him along.

“So, the girl I got a little closer to was, drumroll please!”

“Come on, man,” I huffed.

“You wanna know or not?”

“I don’t really care.”

“Just give me a drumroll, bro. C’mon.”

I shook my head and started patting on my legs, doing my best to ignore the pricking feeling in my abdomen.

“Latrice Wilkes!” Carlos blurted this out like a dude squatting behind a couch waiting to yell surprise to an unsuspecting birthday boy. “Latrice ‘Silky’ Wilkes.”

Now, Latrice Wilkes was no slouch. As a matter of fact, she was pretty much one of the coolest, prettiest girls in our class. And “Silky” really wasn’t her nickname. at’s just what we called her among each other, and I have no idea why.

“For real?” I was honestly surprised. I mean, Latrice was way out of Carlos’s league. “Okay, okay, well, then why was it an almost?”

“Because . . .”

“Because then Latrice saw English,” Shannon interjected, with perfect timing.

“Whatever! It’s because the cops came and messed my whole groove up,”

Carlos shot back.

I laughed. Hard. Well, as hard as I could without feeling like my head was going to explode, or my ribs were going to rip through my chest. Once I

nally got it under control, I said, “Well, listen, if it makes you feel any better, the cops messed my groove up too.”

None of them laughed. Not one of them. You could almost feel the temperature of the room drop, like the way light dims whenever a cloud

oats in front of the sun. I was that cloud. So I changed the subject.

“Anyway, what else is going on at school?”

“Same ol’ shit. You ain’t miss much except for the fact that everybody’s talkin’ about you,” Shannon explained.

 “Yeah, you nally popular,” Carlos mocked. I couldn’t gure out if he was trying to bring the mood back to a lighter tone, or if he was just trying to make up for getting crushed by Shannon. Or both. “is might even land you an actual date with Tiffany.”

“Please, I don’t need no broken nose to get a girl.” e mere mention of it made the bandage itchy. I scratched it super gently.

“Take what you can get, bro. It’s an easy layup,” Carlos replied.

“Too bad you didn’t have all this layup knowledge when you were trying out for the team, huh?” I owed him a good one for the I almost got with

Tiffany joke. Redemption.

“Yeah, whatever.”

Me and Carlos went back and forth because it’s what we do, but neither one of our hearts was in it. e jokes lacked punch. No zing. Just . . . at.

Like e Family Circus.

“Forget all that, man. When you getting outta here?” Shannon asked. He stretched his legs, crossed them at the ankles.

“e doctor just le right before y’all got here. He said my nose and ribs are healing ne, but they’re still watching me because I got some internal bleeding. He said it hasn’t gotten any worse, thank God, and that aer a few

more days I should be good to go.”

“Sweet,” Carlos said. Meant it.

“Cool,” Shannon said.

English didn’t say nothing. He just stared at the TV like he was in a

trance.

“English, you good?” I asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, snapping out of it. “I just . . . I don’t know, man. is is crazy. You know that’s Guzzo’s brother, right?”

“Guzzo?”

“Yeah, big giant goony kid on the team. His brother is the asshole who did this to you. Paul Galluzzo. at’s why they call Guzzo, Guzzo. It’s short for Galluzzo,” English explained.

“Wait, you tellin’ me the ogre-looking dude on the team, that’s his

brother?” I asked.

“at’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

“Has he said anything?”

 “Not that I know of. Coach Carney won’t let us talk about it,” English explained. “Says we gotta focus on the team and our season, and that’s it, and to leave all this stuff at the door. Said he’d bench anybody who brought it on the court.”

“And you can’t afford to be benched, dude. Especially since scouts are

checkin’ for you, hard,” I said.

“Yeah. But it’s just nuts.”

“Yo, what I wanna know is, what the hell happened,” Shannon jumped in.

“Since Carney’s made it clear that I ain’t allowed to ask Guzzo, let me hear your side of the story. I mean, English told us what Berry said, but I wanna hear it from you.”

at was my cue. I knew English had already heard most of it from his sister, but I still gave the fellas the play-by-play, hoping that somewhere in it, it would make sense. But it didn’t. I grabbed a bag of chips, reached into my bag to grab my cell phone, a random lady tripped over me, and the next thing I know I was getting pressed out by the officer. ere really wasn’t anything else to the story as far as I was concerned. e cop and the clerk thought I was stealing and wouldn’t give me a chance to explain.

“Did you resist?” Shannon asked.

“Why would I resist? C’mon, man, you know I was shook. Ain’t no way I was resisting,” I said. “And when he got me on the ground, that’s when he really started going in. Like, every time he hit me, I would move—who wouldn’t—it HURT!—and then he’d tell me to stop moving. But I couldn’t help it.”

“Shit,” Carlos said, his eyes full wide.

English was staring at the TV again, his face now becoming a st, tight and angry. e room was sti ing with a weird tension, this strange sadness,

when nally Shannon spoke up. “English.”

English didn’t respond.

“English!” Shannon snapped.

“What?” he snapped back. And that’s when I could tell this whole thing was getting to him. It was stirring him up inside in a way that I had never seen before. I mean, this was English Jones, the coolest dude on Earth.

English braced his hands on either arm of the chair, and for a second I thought he was going to throw it. But then he drew a deep breath and simply said, “We got practice. We gotta go.”

 He looked from Shannon to me, his eyes slightly glassy. He stood up.

Shannon stood with him.

“Yo, what we gonna do about this?” Carlos asked, watching English and Shannon grab their bags. He ran his nger along his nose like he always did when he was thinking of something he probably shouldn’t have been thinking of.

“I don’t know. But I’m telling you, Coach ain’t playing,” Shannon said,

inging his bag up on his shoulder.

“Just leave it alone,” I said.

“Naw, man, we gotta do something, ’Shad. I mean, maybe you can’t do nothing, ’cause you in here. And maybe these two can’t do nothing because of punk-ass Carney. But I’m not on the team.” Carlos caught my eye and stopped me from cracking a basketball joke before I could even open my mouth. “So I can do something. Somebody gotta do something.”

“Los, just don’t be stupid,” English warned, coming over to the bed and giving me ve.

Carlos didn’t respond. Instead he just asked me if I wanted him to stay.

Carlos didn’t have anywhere to be. He never had anywhere to be.

“Naw, I’m cool,” I said. “I’m sure my parents and my crazy brother will be

by here later.”

“Word,” from Carlos.

“We’ll be back tomorrow,” from Shannon, reaching out for my hand.

Only a nod from English. And then it was just me, the TV, and the shadows, fades, and outlines of my art again. I thought about the fact that English and Shannon wanted to do something but were afraid to break the rules. I understood. I did. But the look on English’s face was a look I had never seen. He was struggling with it all. Maybe it was what happened to me that was eating him. Or maybe it was the fact that he felt like he couldn’t do anything about it. And then I thought about what kind of ridiculous plan Carlos might cook up. I just didn’t want him to put himself in some stupid situation where he got his ass beat too. Even though I hadn’t had to put myself in any “situation” for that to happen.

I glanced at the TV. My face, again. Wasn’t there anything else going on? I mean, there had to be something going on in the Middle East, right?

Celebrity drama? Anything besides me?

 I wasn’t sure what to do about any of it, or if I even wanted anyone else to do anything on my behalf. e looks on my friends’ and family’s faces—it hurt me to see them that way. Especially knowing that it hurt them to see me this way. I didn’t deserve this. None of us did. None of us.

I grabbed the remote, pointed it at the screen, and hit the power button to click it off. But it didn’t go off. I clicked it again. Nothing. I slapped the remote in my palm a few times, because that’s what you do to, I guess, activate the batteries. Clicked again. Nothing.

Now, split screen. Galluzzo’s face, next to mine. Him in his uniform. Me in mine. But we were not the same. We were not the same.

I didn’t deserve this. Click. Nothing. Click. Nothing. My eyes began to well up and my throat suddenly felt scorched, as if I had swallowed re.

Click. Click. Click. Click. Nothing. Fuck. Click. Please. Please turn off. Please.

His face. Next to mine. I didn’t do nothing. I didn’t do nothing. His face.

Made my bones hurt. A scrapy feeling in the marrow stuff. Fuck. Click.

Nothing. Click. NOTHING. I couldn’t take it anymore, and before I did something stupid like throw the remote across the room, smashing it into hundreds of plastic pieces that I wish were Galluzzo’s face, I leaped from the bed in a panic and yanked the cord from the wall, which turns out was also stupid because it felt like giant hands that I couldn’t see were ripping me in half.

But the TV was off. My face next to his, gone. Finally.