Street Wise

Chapter 2: Against a Wall

         After we got Brianna all patched up, it began to lengthen into a longer day than usual. 

        Alyssa and Brianna begged us for 'Wednesday treats,' a tradition regrettably started by me to get them to stop nagging me last year. When we asked them where they wanted to go, it had to be the ice cream shop all the way on the other side of the Bronx. Finding a cab was hard enough, and the traffic was even harder. Then came the task of shutting Alyssa up when they ran out of the flavor she liked. Because in a seven year old's mind, if they don't have double brownie fudge sundae with caramel swirl, the world must end immediately.

      If you think the way there was rough, you don't want to hear about the way back. Both of the kids started arguing about which boy was cuter and it grew into a Paul vs. Daniel national debate. (Did I mention they were seven? Sometimes it gets confusing to tell whether they're four or fourteen.) The cab was much too cramped for all their noise. Even the driver was getting annoyed.

        Finally, the cab stopped in Harlem in front of the bus stop, and Mother Nature decided I hadn't suffered enough, so there was a downpour. 

     Flo and I said our goodbyes when we got off the bus with promises of continued conversation when we got to school. Her apartment was a few blocks away from mine. (I lived on 8th street, and she lived on 14th street.) Then it was time to abandon the children.

   Dropping off the soaked little kids at their apartments was the best thing that ever happened to me. All I could do was hope that I didn't sound too satisfied to their mothers when I dropped them off at the door and eagerly turned them down for coffee.

         As I strolled down the dark street towards my own apartment, I broke the first unspoken rule of the city: Don't lose focus on where you're going. I had passed my house and not even realized it.

    "Shit," I hissed under my breath. I was feeling stupid, but I wasn't afraid. Out of every girl on this block, I probably had more survival instinct than all of them put together. Unlike them, I had truly been thrown in the middle a life or death situation. While they were backed into the wall begging for mercy, I would be tossing someone against it. That space in your heart filled with promises of protection and juvenile hope were emptied the day my father had left. I had realized that in this world, this big ass scary world, someone would chew you up, spit you out and pound you shitless if you let your guard down long enough. That's just the reality of my city, but I only found it terribly dangerous at night.

         What most people haven't figured out, however, was that you had just as much of a chance of pounding someone as they have a chance of backing you up against the wall and making you fear them.

        That's why I was never afraid to fight. I welcomed the scraping of my back against the wall just as much as I reveled in the feel of bones cracking under my fists and the knowledge that someone was going to have to ice their face to remove the marks of the hit from their skin.

      Because when so many people leave me, my mark is permanent. No matter how faded it becomes, they will always remember that they had backed me up against the wall and it had done nothing to break me. They had hit me first, yes, but in the end I always had the last punch.

        "Am, why can't you just pay attention for once?" I scolded myself as I turned around to head home. It wasn't long before a gloved hand enveloped my mouth and I was tugged into the  next to the old pawn shop. Just a moment of vulnerability had cost me my vigilance. I had walked straight into the line of dark stores, where I was always taught to walk on the other side of the street. 

      My eyes widened in a moment of shock and initial fear from being completely blind to what I was up against, and something long and cool was pressed to the back of my neck: A blade.