Beyond Poetry Read online

  “So, that’s it?! Y’all just gonna walk off?” Junior watched as his mother howled to the crowd of onlookers as Senior attempted to cart her away. “Y’all saw my ten-year-old son get shot, and y’all ain’t gonna do nothin’? Fuck y’all! I babysat your kids!” Her voice hoarsened as she cried. “Gave away my last to y’all when I was Vice President! You motherfuckers!”

  Whatever faith Junior had in his city that day was left on the street next to Lawrence. He would never forgive Philadelphia for what it had done to his family.

  On the day of Lawrence’s funeral, family and close mourners of the Robinsons crammed into 116th Street Baptist Church on Greenbelt Parkway to celebrate the life of Lawrence Robinson. Junior sat in the back of the church in his black suit and tie, refusing to see Lawrence asleep in his western-oak coffin. Just feet away from where his brother lay, Senior and Sandy wore their best masks for the occasion. Surrounded by arms, they thanked relatives for coming and shook hands with folks they hadn’t seen in years. Unmoved by the fakery and fluff of well-wishers, Junior kept his distance. At one point, Junior noticed his mother turn to whisper something into his daddy’s ear. Shortly thereafter, Senior got up from his chair and joined Junior at the rear of the church. He hadn’t said much since the shooting, which puzzled Junior. Senior was a complicated man to get to know. Most often, he spared his feelings in exchange for his riotous and ruthless behavior. During the service, however, Senior was all jokes – which was nothing like him.

  At the back of the church where Junior sat, Senior scooted beside his surviving son and placed his long arm around Junior, pulling him in close. Junior looked over at his daddy to see if he was crying or not – he wasn’t. He had never seen Senior cry, not even for Lawrence.

  As Senior glanced down into his son’s watery eyes, Junior stared straight ahead at a fixture of Christ on the cross near the front of the church, not blinking. Once in a while, a tear ran off Junior’s chin and dripped down onto his suit. To cheer him up, Senior reached into his breast pocket for an old handkerchief to wipe his son’s face as Junior weaved out of reach.

  “I’m good,” said Junior.

  Shrugging, Senior returned his handkerchief back in his suit.

  “Never thought I’d see the day we’d be burying one of y’all,” said Senior. “Fucked up.”

  When Junior didn’t answer back, Senior switched gears to a new topic, trying his best to keep his awkward conversation afloat as Junior stared lifelessly ahead. As Senior carried on endlessly, Junior couldn’t wait for his daddy to shut up.

  “I forgot Sandy had such a big damn family. Look at all this,” he said. “You see Ellis’s boys? Man, those suckas got big since the other year. Almost as tall as you, Junior.”

  Still, Junior didn’t answer back. Although, he did peep over at his cousins near the front row and could tell they’d put on some size since he last saw them. Figuring he got Junior’s attention, Senior continued.

  “Maaaaann, Carter’s daughter. Shit, she ‘bout as big as a house. Baby ought to be here any minute now. Look over there,” pointed Senior. “You know who that is? That’s Uncle Duke – y’all used to call him ‘Dookie’. Hmph. Nigga ain’t been to the house in almost six months. Duke said he’d drop by later after the service. He better, shit.”

  “What for?” asked Junior. “Seems like the only time we get together with family is when somebody die. This time it just happened to be Lawrence,” he said. “Duke ain’t coming by, Daddy. Ain’t none of these folks coming by – not until it’s one of us lying in a box next.”

  Senior didn’t talk for the rest of the service. As the reverend began his eulogy, he kissed Junior on his forehead and slipped back to the front of the church next to Sandy. Later, as the service concluded and Lawrence’s coffin made its way down the aisle, Junior darted from his seat at the back of the church and into the nearest restroom. He wanted no part of remembering Lawrence in that way. A cousin later came to get him after his brother’s body was moved. Unable to afford a full burial, Lawrence was buried in an unmarked grave next to Sandy’s mother at Hyatt Park Cemetery on Rhode Island Avenue.

  At the repast, Junior sat out on the stoop of 116th Baptist Church overlooking Philadelphia. Twice, Sandy came to offer him food. The first plate he rejected and, on the second, Junior accepted – not because he was hungry – but so he could be left alone. After Sandy went back inside, he offered his meatballs and macaroni salad to a row of starving pigeons in front of the church.

  Back at home, Junior exited his mother’s ’85 Buick Skylark and stood next to Sandy as she looked down Joseph Boulevard. To everyone else, it was just another day. Snaggle-toothed old-timers sat on their porches skipping checkers and drinking Colt 45 malt liquor as they reminisced about the good old days. Across the way, young girls skipped rope in the street as boys tossed around a football, pretending to be Randall Cunningham or Warren Moon. A week earlier, everything had been normal. Junior looked over at his peers playing carelessly in the street, wondering which kid would be next.

  For days after the funeral, Junior noticed his mother would spend hours by the windowsill waiting for Lawrence to show up on his bicycle while Senior busied himself with work. Late in the evening, she’d return upstairs to her room where she’d moan for much of the night. Weeks went by. A month. Two months. Just as Junior had predicted back at the church, not a single family member had stopped by to check on the Robinsons. Early into Lawrence’s investigation, detectives warned Sandy that without any leads, her son’s case would go cold. It did, and so did Sandy.

  In the two months following Lawrence’s death, Junior’s mother barely ate or left the house. When Junior left for school in the mornings, she was asleep. And when he returned home, she would still be asleep. Except to munch on a light snack, Sandy seldom left the bedroom – not even to bathe.

  The first month was the hardest for Junior’s mother. She laid in bed helplessly, unkempt, her fingernails and toenails dirty and long like Freddy Kruger’s. On the weekends, when Junior was home, he’d help Senior cart his mother into the hallway bathroom where they bathed and returned her to bed. By the time Junior and his daddy had finished bathing Sandy, a ring of grimy crud slithered down into the drain.

  Junior was no better during those first two months. His parents didn’t know it, but he had stopped going to school to hang out at Hyatt Park next to the patch of humped dirt where Lawrence rested. He got found out when the groundskeeper began noticing he was the same boy from the day before and the day before that. Fearing he had run away, the cops were called and Junior was taken to his house back on Joseph Boulevard.

  Then one day, two months later, it happened. Junior came home from school to see Sandy sitting at the kitchen table rummaging through a newspaper with a cup of coffee. Her hair was curly and wet as if she’d just got out of the shower. Her nails were neatly trimmed and painted.

  “We’re movin’ to South Philly,” she said to him, her face still buried in the Philadelphia Weekly. She barely looked up to acknowledge him as he entered the house. A few weeks later, the Robinsons relocated from Crawford in North Philly to Brook’s Rowe on the south side of town.

  Brooke’s Rowe, in a lot of ways, was no different than Crawford. Shootouts happened. Drugs. Homicides. Prostitution. Police Brutality. Fights. Stabbings. Bodies found in abandoned houses long after rigor mortis and decomposition set in. But Brooke’s Rowe was a thirty-six minute drive south of Crawford, which was better than nothing. For the Robinsons, it was an opportunity to start over. They left Crawford without a goodbye, leaving in the middle of the night to avoid the drudgery of neighbors swarming over them.

  1401 Kennedy Street became Junior’s new address the evening he moved into his Brooke’s Rowe home on the south side of Philadelphia. Once there, Junior’s parents encouraged him to get around and socialize – although the same rules from Crawford applied in Brooke’s Rowe. Junior still had to be in before streetlight or at least within earshot of hearing his name get called.r />
  The change of scenery had worked wonders for his family – all but him. Sandy was able to transfer from the northern postal district to the southern, and the change added more clientele to Senior’s handyman business. To aid Junior in his recovery, Sandy encouraged him to take up a new hobby. By that time, Junior couldn’t fathom something as complex and misunderstood as poetry. So, he tried his hand at several sports, hoping to fit in with his peers throughout Brooke’s Rowe.

  Down at the rec center, a short walk from the house, he tried to make new friends by trading some of his video games but got cheated. He had a bicycle that he chained to a parking sign that got stolen when some savage popped the chain with bolt cutters. In basketball, the boys outran Junior on the court, which didn’t endear him to get picked in a second or third game. In football, the boys were much bigger, stronger, and ran twice as fast as him. They’d offer Junior a spot on the team but played too rough for a kid as fragile as he was. They’d hit Junior so hard, knocking the wind out of him until he cried. Of course, the boys all teased him. They taunted Junior, calling him names like “faggot”, “fruitcake”, and “dummy” when he dropped a pass. All were names he used to call Lawrence. One day, during his tour of the neighborhood, Junior stumbled into a local boxing gym. The manager there, a guy known around South Philly as “Uncle Skeeter”, allowed Junior to tap on the bag. Impressed, the man offered Junior a chance to spar with another amateur boxer there. Junior took one look at the blood-stained ring apron and politely declined.

  Unable to compete athletically, Junior took notice of his associates’ clothes down at the rec and decided he’d found his way to fit in. The kids around Brooke’s Rowe wore nothing but the finest in Reebok, Guess, Nike, Adidas, and other top-flight apparel. Hoping to win them over, he petitioned Senior for $140 to buy a pair of Bo Jackson sneakers. Junior’s daddy looked at him like he had six heads.

  “$140?” asked Senior. “For some goddamn tennis shoes?” he laughed. “Tell you what, Junior. Work with me on Saturday. I got a couple of water heaters to put in out in Camden. You do good, I’ll get you a pair. But let me tell something,” said Senior. “Them folks down at that rec center ain’t gonna like you no better. Trust me.”

  So, on a Saturday, in the dead of morning, Junior went to work with Senior out in Camden, New Jersey to install the water heaters. From 6 a.m. until 4 p.m., he hustled tools from his daddy’s truck up to the house where they worked until the job was finished. Senior put him to the test, making him complete some of the smaller tasks, hoping to make a protégé of him. For Junior, working with his daddy was strictly about the shoes.

  For their last job of the day, Senior coached Junior into changing the oil in an Oldsmobile Delta Eighty-Eight. Afterward, as promised, he awarded Junior a wad of crisp twenty-dollar bills and gave him a hearty handshake. Junior noticed his hand fit completely inside his daddy’s wide palm.

  “Mmmhmm.” Senior half-smiled. “Very good, Junior,” he said to him out in the parking lot of the strip mall in front of Footlocker shoe store. “Go’on, get your Bo Johnsons.”

  “It’s Bo Jackson,” laughed Junior. “The football player?”

  “Boy, I don’t give a damn about no Bo Jackson-Johnson or nothin’,” said Senior. “Just hurry up, I’m tired. Go!”

  Junior exited his daddy’s truck, walked into Footlocker, and returned twenty minutes later with the beautiful pair of silver and black Nike sneakers. He opened the box and took a whiff of his brand-new shoes, waiting for Senior’s approval.

  “Why would you buy some bullshit like this?” Senior held up one of Junior’s shoes. “Ain’t nothin’ special about ‘em, Junior. Ugly-ass damn shoes.”

  “They ain’t ugly!” said Junior. “These are better than Deion’s!”

  “Who the hell is Deion?” asked Senior.

  “Just forget it, Daddy.” Junior placed his shoe back in the box.

  When Junior got home after working next to his daddy, he showered, threw on his new Bo Jackson sneakers, and headed down to the rec center. Just as Senior had predicted, the boys there mocked and laughed at Junior’s chicken legs and big feet. The moment Junior entered the gymnasium, the kids all stopped dribbling and surrounded him.

  “Goddamn! Big ass feet!” One kid pointed and laughed.

  “Word to my mother! Man, where’d you get those?” another kid asked.

  “I bought ‘em,” said Junior. “I got a job working with my pops.”

  “A job?” asked another kid. “Nigga, you ain’t got no job. Broke-ass bum. Take your brother’s shoes back home, bitch!”

  The entire gym erupted, including some of the adults who were there. Junior stood in the center of the gym, watching as his peers scoffed at him. Shortly thereafter, he turned and left.

  He cried for most of the walk back to Kennedy Street feeling sorry for himself, without a friend in the world. Not wanting his daddy to see him crying, he used his t-shirt to dry his eyes before passing by Senior as he fixed on his truck.

  “So, what’d your friends say?” asked Senior. “Are you Bo Jackson or not?”

  “I ain’t got no friends,” mumbled Junior as he walked by. “Man, I ain’t shit.”

  Senior threw down his oily rag and charged after Junior, snatching him up by the arm.

  “What the fuck did you say?” he growled. “You ain’t what?”

  “…I said, I miss Lawrence,” he began to cry. “Don’t you, Daddy?”

  Senior then loosened his grip on Junior and exhaled.

  “Damn it, Junior.” He shook his head. “You know I miss your brother. Now, why’d you have to take it there? Huh?”

  Senior then took his big, greasy hand and wiped away Junior’s tears.

  “Don’t ever let me hear you talkin’ about you ain’t shit. You hear me?” Senior held Junior by his chin. “You say you ain’t shit – next thing you know – you won’t be shit. Just like your father. I told you last week about those stupid shoes. It ain’t the shoes that make who the man is – it’s the man that’s in ‘em. Remember that.”

  After his daily lesson, Junior returned to his bedroom, boxed up his Bo Jackson sneakers, and pushed the box far under his bed. He then reached inside his closet for an older pair of sneakers he owned. They were weathered and dull, but comfortable. Afterward, Junior went into the bathroom across the hall from his room to wash his face. He stared at his reflection before overhearing Sandy call him down to the basement. When he arrived, Sandy asked him to lift an old cardboard box loaded with books from off the floor. Without surveying its weight, Junior went to lift his mother’s box from the floor, and it split completely in half. Sandy rolled her eyes as she walked over to give Junior a hand.

  Down at Junior’s feet, he sifted through a collection of his mother’s old school books before finding a journal made out in his mother’s full name, Lonnie Sandra Woods, dated back in 1969. Without permission, Junior picked up one of his mother’s composition journals and began to read aloud. She snatched her journal from his nosy paws and bopped Junior over the head for good measure.

  “Boy, gimmie that book! Get your own!” she laughed.

  “You never told me you wrote poetry,” he said. “Can I finish that last part?”

  “Hell no! You cannot!” She chuckled at his audacity. “But if you wanna write, I’ll take you down to the drugstore and you can get your own journal. You got any money, sucka?”

  Junior zipped off to his bedroom and grabbed his Bo Jackson sneakers from beneath his bed and returned down to the basement.

  “What? I thought you wanted those?” asked Sandy.

  “I did,” said Junior. “But…they make my feet look too big.”

  Down at the strip mall, the clerk looked over Junior’s sneakers with a magnifying eye and asked him the reason for the return.

  “They hurt my feet,” Junior lied to the man.

  Eyeing both Junior and Sandy suspiciously, the clerk who sold Junior the sneakers earlier that afternoon went into the register and hand
ed him back his $140.

  Money in hand, Junior ran out of Footlocker and into the drugstore a couple of doors down and purchased a journal, a set of ballpoint ink pens, a can of Arizona Iced Tea, and the biggest bag of Skittles he could find. He even tipped Sandy a few bucks for driving him down to the store. Adoring his cute gesture, she handed Junior back his three dollars.

  On the way back to Kennedy Street, he asked his mother for tips on what to write. Sandy offered him the same advice a writer once gave her.

  “Just say… something,” she told him, “but say it from the heart.”

  So, while most of Junior’s peers around Brooke’s Rowe were out playing ball or chasing young girls down at the rec, Junior wrote. Between Lawrence, girls, and feeling like the pariah of his new neighborhood, he had a lot to say and carefully crafted his thoughts inside his journal before moving onto poetry. At first, Junior wrote corny, cookie-cutter poems that he crumbled and tossed into the bin inside his bedroom. Disappointed, he opted to quit, but Sandy made him continue. Junior resented when Sandy wouldn’t allow him to quit things the way he wanted. It took him days to come up with something decent to show his mother. Then one day, it happened. Junior strung together his first poem, ever. He titled it “Waters” and dated it in the upper-righthand corner of his journal for November of ‘94.

  As streams run and rivers rush,

  lakes remain on hold like phone calls

  from oceans that don’t call back from the shoreline.

  LEONARD G. ROBINSON JR.

  After reading “Waters”, Sandy shoved Junior into her car, drove him down to the nearest library, and got him a membership card. On the weekends when she was off, she’d run Junior down to the public library where she introduced him to the most brilliant minds of African-American literature: Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, Claude McKay, Carter G. Woodson, Zora Neale Hurston, and a host of others.