Baby teeth shed and lean with new height, there comes a time when he begins to walk through the world with an undeserved cockiness. He's less impressed with the petty distractions that kept him so busy and occupied as a child. Recognizing his limited capabilities as an artist he rarely colors on construction paper these days. His crayons have been untouched for years now, forgotten in a toy chest with toy dinosaurs and a broken scooter, but he is still learning the nuances of color. He begins to understand that cornrows will never be for him. That for every claim he knows how to ball he'll need to prove himself and prove himself ruthlessly. And that if he wants patacones he has to pronounce it right. Quietly he blacklists the words he can't say and aggressively collects the stifled histories of the people around him.
Where public school fails living rooms full of warm voices and smelling of good food help him succeed. It's in these rooms that he learns about slavery and internment camps, civil rights and the ramifications of westward expansion. He begins to understand that the subjects the district think them too young for are the ones his friends have learned for years. He also realizes that while there may not be any stupid questions there are certainly ignorant ones. However, in all of his assumed worldliness, there are times when he misses the bigger picture.
When he's too young to drive and too old for babysitters, he defaults to wandering the neighborhood. Their own ragtag group of musketeers, he and his friends spend their summer scouring for rides to the mall or riding their skateboards after ice cream trucks. Frankie whose mother only speaks Spanish. Saul whose brother serves in the navy and sits with the Barnes' at church. One afternoon they happen into a liquor store where the overhead bell chimes their entrance. One, two, three. They fan out, noisy and prone to exciteability as most boys that age are, and he makes his way to the bite-sized cookies and seeming overabundance of candy. There's nothing wrong or right about hit and run snack theft. Sometimes he wants what he can't buy and it's so simple. So simple that he barely thinks about nabbing a package of M&Ms until they're outside the store again. They don't have time to cross the street before the manager marches out after them.
An angry little man a head shorter than Saul, his face is red and there's a smear of mustard at the corner of his mouth. The way his slacks snip-snap at the thigh would be funny if he didn't steamroll towards them all accusing finger and scowling mouth. "Which one of you little shits is stealing from me?"
They all look at one another. They're all on the cusp of scrambling words to say but it's Frankie who speaks. "We didn't take nothing from your smelly ass store, man." His lip curls up and his eyes get narrow.
"Yeah? You had your dirty little hands all over everything in there. I know your fucking type, cabrón." He enunciates the last word, spitting into an accent foreign to him. He moves his finger between them. Tick tocking from Frankie to Saul and back again. "So either you and your monkey ass friend turn out your pockets or I get on the phone and call the cops."
They're not out there long letting the store owner pick over their accumulated pocket lint but he feels like they're there forever. He doesn't know what's worse - that he barely gets looked at during the entire bootleg investigation or that he says nothing to defend his friends. The most the store manager says to him he says when neither Saul or Frankie turn up with stolen candy: "You hang out with these types of kids and they'll drag you down in the gutter with 'em."
The walk back to their block is stiff and tight with rightful anger. He feels that he can't breathe in it. Can't think in it. He listens to his friends complain and vent about the manager. About how this is the same motherfucker who tailed Guadalupe through the store and then stared at her titties when he rung up her purchases. He nods along when they endeavor never to shop at that termite ass shop again. And his tongue is two times heavier than usual when he tries to say something.
"I should take the M&Ms back."
They speak so quickly in response that they overlap one another.
"What? Why would you even bother, man?"
"Yeah right, Joe. Fuck that guy and fuck his M&Ms. Tear that shit up. Like he even gonna miss them."
With his mouth full of chocolate and the steel bands loosening from his chest he comes to understand another truth about color. Not everyone sees or wants to see the person behind a shade. They don't care about the experiences there or whether they're actually good or actually bad. Sometimes all it takes is broad stroke of brush for dismissal.
NEXT
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