My small book collection had followed me from Junior Village to Miss Smith’s and back where they’d laid hidden atop a high shelf in McKinley Cottage’s Clothing Distribution Room. “You readin’ is makin’ kids mad,” was the second slice of wisdom Leon offered that day, “Some don’ know how.”īut the pouring was the reason I needed to go. Maybe the same wrong turn that had brought me: being more trouble to family than one’s worth.
“My people from DC too, norfwest,” he responded as we, buddies in the making, at his initiative and my reciprocity, commenced urinating on Garfield, standing perpendicular and at forty-five degree angles, on either side of the rough-painted southernmost corner, gazing up at the clouded sky, peering anywhere except upon the other, moved by circumstance to silence as the trajectories of our urinations (mine, with certitude his, within reason) buffeted and waving, splashy, in the late- afternoon wind.Īs we tucked away our leaking parts and ambled up the hill to McKinley, I wondered what wrong turn had brought him to Junior Village.
“I’m from soufeast,” I said, by way of introduction. Notwithstanding our differences, a kindred spirit, I guessed. Because of his outspoken nonconformity and independent thinking, perhaps, he had a magnetic pull of his own. Despite his small stature, he was graceful and unafraid. Leon turned out to be a novelty among kids. “Leon Best,” he offered along with his hand, radiating the same nervous energy of his Ping-Pong playing. I remembered seeing him too, our eyes clashing back on my thirteenth birthday, him among the gathered crush of kids watching one McKinley boy fellate another. Pulling me to sitting, “I seen you before,” he’d said. On handily winning the match, Do-rag flung his thin, sweaty arm around me and, though we had not officially met, buddy-hugged me to the curbstone outside. A boy decked out in a do-rag and I, two stalk- thin bantamweights, were on opposite ends of one of the grasshopper- green tables, swinging our paddles with abandon. Kids swarmed the long narrow space like mice: crowding the two frenzied Ping-Pong tables, sitting sprawled on the scatter of foldout chairs, waiting their turn to play. Shortly after my arrival from a failed Foster-Care stint at Miss Smith’s, I’d met Leon at the single-story rectangle, Garfield Cottage: Junior Village’s former Infant-Cottage-turned-Recreation-Center. Bilkins had a habit of appearing when least expected, Leon Best, my one and only ace boon coon, sat with me, watching, only half listening to the music. We had been waiting for the right moment to change the channel. Nobody-not Mama, not Pops-would be visiting me.įrom the rec room console, a gospel program blared: a favorite of Mr. to noon every Sunday of Richard Nixon’s 1970-my cohorts and I sat sardined in a cottage-cum-emporium where bullies waited for the lucky few with visiting family to kiss and hug goodbye before demanding that they, the lucky, hand over money and candy, clothing and comics. During Junior Village visiting hours-from 8 a.m.
McKinley’s recreation room reeked of teenaged boys: a sour inferno yawning in boredom as we played Tonk and raced Hot Wheels, voices shrieky in the echoing space. I checked the wall clock- hours to go before noon. The concussion of distant thunder heralded a rataplan of raindrops, flung pebbles against grimy windowpanes.
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