Grip Trilogy Box Set - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,69

years old

“SEXUAL CHOCOLATE!”

I’ve lost count of how many times we’ve watched Coming to America. My cousin Jade, my boy Amir, and I know just about every line by heart. Every week, we watch this bootleg copy Ma bought at the barber shop, and not even the shadows of people’s heads in the shots or the sometimes-unsteady camera work make Eddie Murphy as Randy Watson and his band Sexual Chocolate less funny.

“’That boy good,’” Amir quotes when Eddie Murphy does the infamous mic drop and leaves the stage.

“’Good and terrible,’” Jade and I finish the quote. We all crack up laughing like it’s the first time.

“Y’all and this movie.” Jade’s older brother Chaz walks through the living room in his jeans, no shirt.

His body is like one of the graffiti walls off Largo Avenue, inked with five-pointed stars declaring his Bloods gang affiliation, “186” scrawled on his chest signifying the code for first-degree murder. His other passion, the Raiders, vie for equal space on his arms and back. Ink stains every available inch of skin, but he left his face clear. Ma says thank God the boy is vain, otherwise he would have ruined that handsome face of his with tattoos. A teardrop or something.

Everyone says we look alike, Chaz and me. Ma and his father were brother and sister, but my uncle died before I was even born, so I never met him. Ma sometimes looks at Chaz with sad eyes and says if you’ve seen Chaz, you’ve seen his daddy. You’ve seen her brother.

“How many times y’all gon’ watch this movie?” Chaz’s bright smile flashes before he pulls his Raiders T-shirt over the muscular framework of his upper body. “If it ain’t this, it’s Martin.”

“Wasssssup!” Amir, Jade, and I parrot Martin’s signature phrase on cue, laughing while Chaz rolls his eyes.

“Y’all little niggas a trip.” The pager on Chaz’s hip beeps, and he plucks it off his waistband to read the message. I love that we made him laugh before we lost his attention.

Jade’s other brother Greg is LAPD, but we don’t trust cops, so they aren’t our heroes. Chaz is our hero. He may be a gangbanger, and he slings, but he’s cool. He always has the latest Jordans, the freshest clothes, and the sound system you hear before you see his car bouncing around the corner, hydraulics on point. His mom, my Aunt Celia, doesn’t ask where the money comes from when he pays her rent every month. She turns a blind eye, but Ma won’t take Chaz’s money, no matter how tight it gets at our house.

“Shit,” Chaz mutters, a frown puckering his eyebrows. He usually walks slowly so everyone can see his fresh kicks, to make it easy for what Ma calls “fast tail girls” to catch him, but he runs to the back of the house like someone’s chasing him.

“What’s up with Chaz?” I ask Jade.

“Mmm-hmm.” Jade shrugs, her attention already back on Coming to America. “No telling. Trouble probably.”

Chaz has been nothing but trouble for a long time. Like most kids, he thought he’d be a baller, get drafted one day. If it isn’t rapping, it’s sports. In the hood, those are a boy’s dreams when anything seems possible. Most dreams don’t last long on this block of rude awakenings.

Our three sets of eyes stretch wide at the sound of a helicopter overhead outside. The cops have been cracking down lately. Some- times it feels like they’ve forgotten us here in Compton, like they give up on trying to regulate the violence and death we’ve become numb to. One minute, you’re on the playground swinging, hanging on monkey bars, and the next you’re dodging bullets. The cops come on their terms, usually when they’re looking for somebody. That bird in the sky tells us they’re looking for somebody. I don’t say it, but Chaz’s response to the pager and the helicopter that sounds like it’s right on top of us has me wondering if this time they’re looking for him.

“Amir.” Ms. Bethany, Amir’s mom, stands on our front porch, her usually pleasant face stern through the bars over the screen door. “Bring your narrow butt home right now.”

“But, Ma.” Amir gestures to the television. “We coming up on the barber shop scene where Eddie Murphy plays all the different characters.”

“And I’m coming up on that butt if you don’t get to that house like I told you.” She sends a worried look up to the sky. “Go to the closet.”

The three of us