The Boy Who Ate His Vegetables

“Ma,” I yelled down the narrow basement stairs. I sat alone at our rectangular kitchen table, an empty porcelain plate with a floral design and metal fork staring at me. “I ate all my vegetables. I cleaned my plate. I didn’t leave anything.” Sinisterly smiling from ear to ear, I was sure my devious plot to make my bland carrots and peas disappear beneath the white and red K-mart bag in the kitchen trash can had worked.

At five, like most children, I despised vegetables outside of the crispy root vegetables known as McDonald’s French Fries. Carrots lacked the melt-in-your-mouth factor that freshly baked chocolate chip cookies prepared by Ma possessed, and peas were void of the sugar rush I got from Frooties sold at the penny candy store. I think God set out to torture children in the prime of their lives by making their parents feed them distasteful vegetables.

While eating dinner, I often daydreamed while gazing around the airy and spacious kitchen. It seemed to me a massive place that served as both a community area to dine on Ma’s home-cooked meals, and a revolving door that could take you to various other places in the house. It could spin you to the sliding screen door that led to an unclosed patio and backyard full of vibrant green grass, or to a small half bathroom with a seashell on the top of the toilet that told stories of great oceans. It could guide you to an unfinished basement that housed a deep freezer full of assorted meat and a talkative community of crickets. If your meal was complete, it could also steer you upstairs to play Mortal Kombat on the Sega Genesis or out the front door to ride your bike and meet up with friends to eat honeysuckle.

“You ate all your vegetables? You sure?” Ma asked as she slowly walked up the stairs to inspect my suspicious claim. Ma was not a rushing woman. As I often darted from room to room like a track meet, she was the turtle that beat the hare with a steady pace. Her dark chocolate skin told stories of West Africans from whom we descended, and her long and flowing hair made the stories of “Indian in the family” seem actually true. Her style was modest. Her mood was mild. Her most pronounced physical feature was her Colgate-commercial smile, which was a stark contrast to her dark complexion. It was so radiant that it almost forced you to smile back.

The time between Ma walking from the basement felt like at least half the time of an episode of Moesha. When Ma finally made it to me, my constant leg rocking caused her to turn an eyebrow as she hovered over my plate for inspection. “You ate it all, huh?” she asked again, before I quickly nodded without making eye contact. Moments later, as if secret cameras were installed in our kitchen, my plan was foiled. She walked to the trash can, moved the K-mart bag, and asked, “Well, what’s this right here then if you ate it all?”

Caught red handed my counterfeit confidence vanished. “Ma," I whined, "I don’t want them. I don’t like vegetables. They are nasty.”

Ma had never whooped me in my entire life. When I was in the car cursing with my friend Michael in the backseat after school, she chose a stern look over a leather belt. When I kept pricking my fingers on the real Christmas tree that stood in our living room last winter, she picked a conversation over a paddle. Today, she continued her nonviolent trend and talked to me for a few minutes about my fibbing ways. I cannot remember her words, but they likely ended with a hug that calmed my frightened soul — just like the one she had given me a few nights earlier when I jumped out of bed and sprinted to her bedroom because I dreamt a gray wolf was stalking me in the woods. My punishment? She made me drink eight ounces of V8. It tasted like freshly-harvested celery with a splash of tomato, so I squeezed my nose when reluctantly gulping the broth-like red juice.

And then, knowing her, I imagine she hugged me. After the hug, she likely held me out and in front of her and smiled. Undoubtedly, I happily smiled back.

Steps Ova West Baltimore

The four marble steps outside my wooden front door were often stained from the artificially colored and flavored juices of Huggies or Faygos from the Asian-owned corner store near my Sandtown Winchester apartment. My step brother, Rome, was the tall, dark, and handsome neighborhood mack — who had more women rotating in and out of his upstairs apartment than I can remember — would give me a few dollars nearly everyday. I would use the gracious donations to buy my favorite snacks — Cool Ranch or Nacho Cheese Doritos, a Star Crunch, Andy Capp’s Hot Fries, and the Blueberry Faygo that made my tongue blue and caused me to burp excessively.

 My friends and I would sit on my steps, “making a mess” as the old heads would say, attracting parades of ants and swarms of bees. A mop bucket, tap water, scrub brush, Ajax, and some elbow grease rejuvenated the steps to a pearly white sparkle, obliging the orders delivered by my father. He was not an extremely strict man, but he did believe in order and cleanliness, so cleaning the steps was no surprise chore for me.

My main friends were all guys who lived within a two bloc radius of my apartment on Arlington Avenue. One of my closest friends, Melvin, lived down the street with his elderly parents and voluptuous older sister, Kandy. Like me, he was named after his father. Melvin and I would jar back and forth on his steps while playing Pokemon Blue on the Gameboy Colors we got for Christmas last winter. We also both tried our best to manage our Iverson-inspired cornrows in hopes that girls would notice. 

Body, known by the government as Khalil, lived around the corner on Mosher Street. I couldn’t tell you the origin story of his nickname, but I can tell you that he was often adorned with a fresh Caesar and the latest Baltimore street wear, probably funded by the car wash on North Avenue that his father owned. I don’t think his parents lived together, but he spent a good amount of time with both of him. When we weren’t playing Playstation video games in his second-floor bedroom, we sat on his front steps and used his stereo system to dub freestyles onto cassette tapes. None of our bars were memorable, but the tearful laughs made up for our lack of lyricism.

Next door to me lived Troy, who opened his door to me with “You did it again, huh?” every time I lost my keys while outside playing Army Dodgeball in an alley or riding my bike near Pennsylvania Avenue. He was a couple of years older than me and his dark chocolate skin and athletic build reminded me of Ricky from Boys N The Hood, though I don’t think he played sports.

Being older in my neighborhood often came with peer-pressured sexual experiences, experiences that were either real or fabricated but described well enough for your friends to believe you. One time, when my parents weren’t home, Troy came over and tried to have missionary sex on our dark gray living room couch with Lacey, a light skinned, neighborhood girl that I adored. She always wore jean jumpsuits that accented her ass. Angry that he was with my crush, I escorted them both to my steps and slammed the door like Martin Lawrence. 

When my friends and I got too bored outside, we sometimes annoyed neighborhood drug dealers by yelling out their drug calls from my steps or the trunk of parked cars. “Killer bee, killer bee, red tops, red tops,” we chanted until they icegrilled us and told us to knock it off. Secretly, we wanted to be drug dealers. Some of my friends ascended to the occupation, but the thought of calling my father from Baltimore Central Booking, where my step mom worked, and saying I was locked up for selling drugs scared me out of considering it a legitimate career choice. That and the 50-something year old drug addict with a black cane who used our steps as a Temper-Pedic mattress kept me honest. My dad would politely ask her to move whenever she got too comfortable. I would just walk around her and hope she didn’t make a mess I would have to clean up later. 

These days, twenty one years removed from Arlington Avenue, I rarely ride through my old neighborhood for various reasons. The sound of household items being thrown and violent yelling from my father's second divorce still haunts me. The sobbing from my teary eyes watered the steps as I left with my dad in the darkness of the night. The ghosts of childhood friends lost to gun violence still hover over the neighborhood. I heard Lil’ Reese, who lived three doors down from me with his older brother Johntay, was shot to death on a basketball court while going up for a layup. He died with dreams unfulfilled.

Like many poverty-stricken areas in West Baltimore, My old bloc never evolved. I’m sure the corner store never started selling organic or gluten free options like Whole Foods. The safety and security of Roland Park and Canton have not found their way there. I heard some friends still live there, but most traded the disinvested hood for the comfort of suburban homes and gated communities.

I have not been in touch with Body since around 2006. I don’t even know if he and Troy are still alive. I went from having sleep overs at Melvin’s house in the late ‘90s to only communicating with him through Facebook DM’s when he posts pictures to his stories. Technological advancements, they say. 

I still know the marble steps are still there, though. I can’t imagine someone removing them. An article I read years ago dated the marble steps in Baltimore back to at least the early 1900s’, so what would they be replaced with? Cement, wood, or metal wouldn’t look nearly as pristine. They wouldn’t shine like hood diamonds after a fresh scrub. Ain't no way. 

When Babies are Murdered

I texted my supervisor at 7:00am and told her I was taking off today because conducting myself like “business as usual” wasn’t going to cut it today.

As I laid in silence, grappling with my thoughts, above the birds chirping and engines starting, I heard a joyful child chanting, “Let’s go O’s! Let’s go O’s! Let’s go O’s!”

I wondered if the child recently watched a baseball game on television or attended a game with family. I also wondered if the same joy was exuded by the students at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas before they went to school yesterday.

I was born and raised in one of the deadliest places on Earth — Baltimore. We shoot for fun. We shoot for respect. We shoot because it’s frigid. We shoot because “it’s hot out this bitch and that’s a good enough reason” like 50 Cent once said. We shoot fathers. We shoot mothers. We shoot senior citizens. We shoot babies. Citizens shoot citizens, and law enforcement shoot citizens, too.

With so many bullets flying, the names of the victims keep adding up and the tears of those devastated never fully stop flowing.

I wanted to take a “business as usual” approach to my day today. I typically do. I think most of us just keep moving when calamitous events happen. Kendrick Lamar recently reminded us, but I think we were well aware that we as a country either “grieve different” or don’t grieve at all.

I’m not here to tell anyone how to process murder, pain, or misfortune. I don’t think I have the credentials or expertise for that type of prescription. However, when babies die, I wonder how the world manages to keep spinning.

Right now, parents are broken. Right now, families in Texas are hoping that their children are somewhere hiding and will reemerge unscathed — but they won’t. Right now, communities from Baltimore and Buffalo to Texas and Togo are trying to conceive a world without someone who was murdered and died prematurely.

I wish I had some comforting words to say to those suffering. I wish I could combine the right nouns and verbs to say the thing that could usurp agony and replace it with comfort, but I don’t know if I have it.

When children die, so much more than just the body of the child is taken from us. When we murder children, we murder laughter, we murder doctors, judges, activists, and scientists. When we murder children, we murder friendships, vacations, field trips, and first kisses.

When we murder children, we prohibit them from developing into adults. We take away marriages. We take away their offspring, which means we take away potentially hundreds if not thousands of other people. We decimate lineages.

As I lay across my bed with my room slightly illuminated by the sunlight, I continue to hear birds chirping and car doors closing. Parents are readying to drive their children to school as they do everyday, but I am sure there is an extra feeling of uneasiness when they pull away from the school and their children wave them goodbye.

I hope that our children still find joy and hope in being the children they are. I also hope the extra hugs and kisses parents provide today will fortify the bond and serve as extra protection for our youngest learners.

If schools decide to boost security, I hope the security is more like the NOI and less like the FBI. I don’t want our children trying to learn in a police state.

And to the child who shouted “Let’s go O’s!” before jumping in the car this morning, thank you for bringing me some hope on a day that feels completely hopeless.