Street Love Read online

  Walter Dean Myers

  Street Love

  To Constance

  Contents

  Harlem

  The Hero

  Damien and Sledge

  Kevin and Damien

  The Beauty

  Melissa Ambers

  Ruby Ambers

  Junice Ambers looking from the Window of the Bus

  Leslie Ambers in Bedford Hills Prison

  Junice tells her Story at the Family Welfare Bureau

  Damien on a Bench in the School Office

  Junice on a Bench in the School Office

  Damien and Kevin and Junice in the Supermarket

  Junice in the Supermarket

  Melissa’s Dream

  The Mothers

  The Fathers

  Junice and Melissa

  Rachel Davis, Department of Family Services

  Junice in the Early Morning

  Damien and Roxanne

  The Phone Call

  Damien, Junice, and Melissa in Grace’s Coffee Shop

  Damien standing on the Platform, waiting for the Uptown 2

  Junice Washing Dishes

  Junice and Melissa

  Damien

  Junice at Bedford Hills to see her Mother

  Junice and Melissa at Home

  Kevin and Damien in Kevin’s House

  Junice thinks of Calling Damien

  Junice Calls Damien

  Damien in his Room, his Math Homework on his Desk

  Junice at the Family Court Offices

  Junice

  Damien by Himself on the Corner

  Sledge and Damien and Harlem in front of Jackie Robinson Park

  Junice and Damien

  Damien and his Mother on Saturday Morning

  Damien wakes at Night

  Nine a.m. Damien calls Junice

  Damien at Junice’s Door

  Kevin and Damien on Malcolm X Boulevard

  The Port Authority Bus Terminal

  Damien and Junice

  Junice with Damien and Melissa on the Bus to Memphis

  About the Author

  Other Books by Walter Dean Myers

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  HARLEM

  Autumn in Harlem.

  Fume-choked leaves, already

  Yellowed, crack in the late September

  Breeze. Weeds, city tough, city brittle,

  Push defiantly along the concrete edges

  Of Malcolm X Boulevard. On 137th Street

  A toothless sidewalk vendor neatly stacks

  His dark knit caps beside the plastic cell

  Phone covers. Shadows indistinct in August heat

  Now deepen and grow long across

  The wide streets. Homeless men sniff the air and

  Know that somewhere the Hawk stirs.

  Harlem is not an easy place

  To grow old, and so the young

  Are everywhere,

  Pouring from the buses, city dancing

  To the rhythms of the street,

  City dancing to the frantic spin of life

  In the fast lane.

  The HERO

  Here we see a busy school yard

  Black, brown, and tan forms

  Painting the illusion of music

  With their bodies, ball-dancing between the

  White lines of the court.

  Young Damien Battle, comfortable in stride and gesture

  Wearing his seventeen years easily around broad

  Shoulders, saunters at the unhurried pace of

  Hero knowing that the space that

  Opens before him is his due.

  Beside him, perhaps a half step

  Behind, his friend Kevin chatters easily.

  They are young and proud and Black

  For them life is a ripe orange

  Succulent and sweet, ready to be devoured

  And here are Sledge and Chico

  Rivals from the other side of the Avenue

  Their tribe is the more familiar

  We have seen them on every corner

  Of every city in America. They make us walk

  Faster. They make us think of locked doors.

  Of differences we would like to deny.

  Do Sledge’s eyes meet Damien’s?

  Does he sneer as he spins his basketball

  On one brown finger as if it was the World?

  Does he speak?

  Does he speak?

  We listen as Sledge’s mocking voice

  Lifts itself above the background clatter

  DAMIEN and SLEDGE

  “Yo, Chico, check it out.

  Yo, Chico,

  There goes Damien, sliding and gliding

  Past the court. Just strolling

  And rolling his eyes

  Away from the action

  So we can’t get the satisfaction

  Of him peeping our dazzle.”

  “Peeping your dazzle?” Damien replies,

  White toothing all over Sledge.

  “I thought I was scoping the

  Frazzled chumdom of a downtown clown.”

  “My game is my name,” Sledge replies.

  “Call it if you want some.”

  Damien shakes his head

  “Yo, Sledge, if talk was walk my man you would be

  Halfway round the world. You’re confusing game with

  Lame and Ball with stall. But at the end of the

  Day your rap is weaker than your play.”

  Sledge comes chest to chest with Damien.

  His eyes are slits that carve into the flesh.

  “Yo, Damien, Listen up, man

  Your mouth is shouting and your lips are pouting

  Like you’re somebody’s girlfriend

  Running off to double latteville

  ’Cause you know you ain’t got the heart

  To start no get down with me.”

  Damien scoped the scene and weighed it

  Sledge’s crew was throwing signs

  And gritting teeth

  They wore their colors but Damien didn’t

  Know what was beneath those jackets

  “Yo, Sledge, we’ll get it straight one day,”

  Damien said. “Just the two of us.

  Not now, not here, but we’ll know when

  We got to do what it looks like we got to do.”

  A brief conversation, hard looks in the air

  Damien walks away and Sledge stares.

  No big thing.

  No big thing.

  Just two seventeen-year-olds

  Checking out a manhood jam.

  Damien and Kevin make their way out

  Breathing easier as they start up to Sugar Hill

  The late summer shadows accentuate the edges

  Of the hood, define it in shape and size

  Yes, and darkness

  The shadows on the corner shift as they walk by

  Sharp eyes weigh their pockets from the distance

  Heavy sisters weighing down the white brick

  Stoops watch the passing scene

  As they have for a hundred years

  KEVIN and DAMIEN

  “Yo, Damien, how you read Sledge?

  Is he just about being a fool

  Or do you think that his brain

  Is twisted enough to find something

  Cool in that lip and drip world he’s sliming In?”

  “Sniff the hood, my man,” Damien said. “The bad with the

  Good. Some guys are banking on their reach

  Going for the stars, scoping on the great,

  Some see they can’t reach and all they got is hate

  To lift them from misery of the day and there’s


  Nothing you can say if their eyes don’t see

  The prize the way you do. That’s the hood, bro,

  That’s the way it flows and it don’t make

  No never mind if you find yourself

  Off the glory ride and slipping with the tide

  Like Sledge. Hate is what the man

  Got and if it’s not boss he’s got to toss it

  Anyway. This is a concrete Apple.”

  “Damien, so are you saying

  You’re ready to fly?

  Cop some getaway like all the other sleek

  Birds winging through distant trees with just

  An occasional peek

  Now and then and a slanted rap about

  Old school memories?”

  “Who knows, man?” Damien said, checking out a tall

  Brother working on his gangster lean.

  “You’re talking about

  What tomorrow will bring, and what tune the hood will

  Sing. You’re talking and I’m listening, but

  There’s no clear message glistening on my Horizon.”

  “Yo, you’re sliding deep but my brain is still

  Creeping on the surface,” Kevin said. “Break it on

  Down or push it on. It don’t make no never mind.”

  “My moms was asking me to do the same layout

  But that’s all played out when you don’t

  Know which way the wind is blowing

  Or which way you’re supposed to be going

  My folks are laying lines on me like

  They’ve written out the part and all

  I got to do is get to a place called Start

  And follow the road to fame and glory—

  A PhD in mucho buckology

  Two point five kids and a quick apology

  To the starving folks in East Ain’tGotNothingVille

  While I look down from Sugar Hill and tell

  Myself how phat my program is.”

  “Sounds righteous, my brother,

  Best listen to your mother

  Now what I need is for you to feed

  Me the name of the female lead

  Is the right chick a light chick?

  Some straight-haired honey

  With a little money and a skinny little nose

  Pointing away from her toes?

  Or could it really be a girl with some kink to her curl?

  A midnight mama with some snap and some sway

  Like that treetop sister ’cross the way

  Walking like the Queen of the Avenue

  Could she interest a lord like you?”

  Damien looked, he had seen her before

  He knew her name, but not much more

  “Yeah, I see her,” he said. “She’s the quiet kind

  I don’t know her game, or what’s in her mind.”

  “And if you found her in your net,” Kevin asked,

  “What then? Would you throw her back?

  Or could she be a midday snack?”

  “Yo, Kevin, you know I have a plan

  And you know I have Roxanne. I’m not into

  Fast foods or the easy line

  Although I have to admit the lady’s

  Fine as she needs to be but can

  She satisfy the brain or the heart

  I don’t know.”

  “Damien, Main Man, that girl might not satisfy

  Your brain or your heart,” Kevin said. “But, Lord knows,

  There are parts of me that find her

  Delightful. We should catch

  Her and offer her our sweet company.”

  “No,” Damien said. “She might be light, I haven’t

  Spoken more than a word or two with her. But

  She walks darkly, as if her mind weighs down

  Her steps.

  When we’ve spoken it was just puffs of air

  Syllables that weren’t there

  When we said them and left nothing

  On the memory.

  I don’t know what she thinks

  Of if she thinks of anything so profound

  That it would interest me, and I’m not a snob

  But she’s a depth I have not sounded.

  I wonder what a movie of her life would be

  What images come to fill the screens

  Of her mind?”

  The BEAUTY

  My head is filled with images as I stumble,

  Heavy-footed through this endless day.

  Terrible images of my mother’s face

  Twisted in disbelief, her body trembling

  As the realization that her life was finished

  Washed over her.

  Her mouth was open but all that I could

  Hear was the wailing of her soul

  As they hustled her from the chaos of the courtroom

  Into the chaos of the foreverness

  That was to be her punishment.

  Guilty of possession and distribution

  Twenty-five years to life

  How could they know she had never possessed

  Anything worth the while

  Had never distributed anything except pieces of herself

  Which she gave freely

  To those in need, or to those who, like

  Her, were broken, and needed a fix?

  She possessed nothing as they led

  Her, handcuffed, away

  What she left behind

  Forlorn and weeping in the second row of benches

  Were not her children,

  Lost and desperate in the whirlwind

  My head is filled with images

  Of Melissa and me on the court steps

  She crying and clinging to my skirt

  Me crying and clinging to a distant God

  As we made our way to the bus terminal

  For the long journey home.

  My head is filled with images

  That mare at night and tear at my flesh

  There is no rational corner in my head

  Beyond making tea for Melissa

  Beyond making conversation with Miss Ruby

  Nothing to make my legs move in the

  Direction of our apartment as if there

  Were sense to moving

  If anyone could look into my head

  See or feel the dread that has captured

  Me or see within this sad, unhappy brain

  They would only turn away

  Turn away.

  MELISSA AMBERS

  Mommy seemed a hundred miles away

  In the yellow-light

  Courtroom

  With all of the people standing at the tables

  And Mommy was smaller

  Than they were

  Even though everybody says

  She is so tall

  The judge pushed his glasses

  Up on his nose when he was talking

  But Mommy just looked

  Down

  When the judge said how

  Long Mommy would be in jail

  A terrible sound came out of

  Junice

  A hurt sound

  A Uhhh! sound

  Her body jerked forward

  I was so scared

  So scared

  People were shuffling papers

  They swished as people

  Stood and their feet

  Cluffed across the floor

  Mommy turned

  Her eyes were dark and

  Wild as if she were

  Seeing a monster coming

  I turned to see what Mommy saw

  But all I saw was the people leaving

  Through the big doors in the back

  When I turned back to Mommy

  There was just a little piece of her left

  Between the big policemen

  My skin was crawling

  And my arms were shaking

  Miss Ruby called out in the courtroom

  She said “Be strong, da
ughter!”

  Junice said I was crying.

  I don’t remember crying but afterward

  Afterward

  My throat was sore

  RUBY AMBERS

  Yeah, it’s hard, baby

  It’s hard right down to the bone

  I said Oh, it’s hard baby

  It’s hard right down to the very bone

  It’s hard when you’re a woman

  And you find yourself all alone

  I’ve been flapping and scrapping

  And running from door to door

  You know I’ve been flapping and scrapping, honey

  Running from door to door

  I ain’t what I used to be, ain’t really Miss Ruby anymore

  Oh, daughter, daughter, daughter,

  Why you chasing White Girl dreams?

  Yes, oh, daughter, daughter,

  Why you chasing White Girl dreams?

  Them rainbows you were finding,

  Ain’t really what they seems to be.

  I told Junice to get herself on up

  We ain’t no trifling women

  I been knocked down and flung around

  “Junice, why you looking so sad, baby?

  You got your Miss Ruby here, ain’t you?

  You and Lissa gonna be all right.

  Miss Ruby’s been scruffed and roughed

  In her day but she don’t lay down.

  No sir. You mama will be home ’fore

  You know it.”

  “She got twenty-five years, Miss Ruby.”

  “We Ambers women. We been down and we

  Been up. We don’t tip and run. No, we sure