Slowbomb

Tournament “Yo, I’m not tryna get my new kicks dirty” is Kenny’s excuse for wearing a busted pair of Adidas to the game. Me and Kenny have been cool for a while. He’s the only one I really chill with around here. He has no brothers or sisters. It’s just him and his mom, so he kinda considers me family. Today there’s a basketball tournament between the Slowbomb and School Street housing projects. It’s the game we’ve been waiting for all year. They’ve got a ref, a DJ, plus Papí and his wife from the corner store gave us juices and water for free. It feels real official. Slowbomb’s got the home court advantage, and that’s only because our Big Park—the giant slab of concrete divided by a fence to separate the basketball court from the playground equipment—is bigger than School Street’s. My brother, Jason, is playing, and although me and Kenny are just watching for now, we’re dressed and ready in case they need some subs—not that they ever do. These guys usually play straight through to the end. “Brian,” my brother calls me over. “Run upstairs and get my knee brace for me, please.” There’s nothing wrong with Jason’s knee, well, not anymore. He hurt it a few years back, but now it’s like he needs an excuse in case he doesn’t play well, which never happens. I know the court is gonna fill up fast, so I tell Kenny to hold my spot and I run to Building Five, up the three flights of stairs and into our apartment to get Jason’s knee brace. I know where he keeps it—in his big cardboard box in the corner of the closet. Even though his dad buys him more stuff than he needs, Jason keeps everything neat and organized. I toss Jason his brace and try to get back to my spot on the fence. No one moves to let me in, and now I can’t even find Kenny. It’s one of those blazing hot days in June when your clothes are sticking to you, so you fill up a plastic bottle with water to pour on yourself. Then you use your white tee as a towel. The guy who runs the rec center is behind the turntables. He’s the one who organizes this type of stuff. After about thirty minutes of playing a mix of our favorite summer jams, he pauses the song most of us were bopping to and announces the rules for the game. The ref is one of our maintenance men. He holds the ball at half court as one player from each team crouches down to jump for it. The ref tosses the ball in the air, and a player from Slowbomb wins the jump and taps the ball in Jason’s direction. The ball is moving nonstop, snapping from player to player. My brother is the man when it comes to three-pointers, and Slowbomb is s******g the competition. By halftime, the court is packed. People are watching from everywhere: from all four sides of the court either standing up against the fence or sitting on milk crates, from the ramp blocking people from coming and going, and even through their apartment windows. Probably nobody in this crowd has ever been to a pro game, so for us this is as real as it gets. This game is intense. If it weren’t for this kid with neon green sneakers on School Street’s team, this game would’ve been over a long time ago. His fadeaway is sick and it’s what’s carrying his team. The game is in its final seconds, and Slowbomb’s got the ball. A player pushes it up, and as it’s flying towards the basket, neon-sneakers jumps, arms outstretched, to block its path but Slowbomb’s forward jumps up and sinks it in. “Alley-oop,” someone from the crowd shouts as the ball is helped into the basket. Neon-sneakers is knocked to the ground by the body swinging pendulum style from the basketball rim. “That’s game,” players from Slowbomb taunt. “Yo, y’all cheated,” someone from School Street yells. “Y’all just mad ’cus y’all got beat,” a dude named Dice shouts. I know what’s coming, and apparently so does Jason. He grabs me by my arm and leads me out of the Big Park as the pushing and shoving starts. What starts out as fun always ends up in a fight. “Oh, wait. Kenny,” I remember when we’re a safe distance away. “Nah, let’s go,” Jason says, pulling me. “Let Kenny act bulletproof if he wants to.” Jason’s doing push-ups in the living room. Something he does to burn off his adrenaline. I look out the window for what feels like the tenth time, but I can’t see remotely close to the Big Park from here. “Yo, I just remember I left something at Kenny’s,” I lie. “Nice try, Brian. Go draw something,” he says without stopping his workout. “You’re not going back out.” I go to the bedroom he and I share. I pull his pillow off his bunk and throw it on the floor. I should fart on it. I look out the window again but I still can’t see anything. “Who won the game?” Ma asks when she gets home from the hospital. Today she worked her two-to-ten shift. “My team,” Jason brags, as if he trained the team himself. Ma leans on the wall as she steps out of her white Reeboks. “How was work?” I ask. “It was work. One of you run to the store and get some bread and cold cuts,” she says, taking a ten and some singles out of the pocket of her nurse’s scrubs. Most places won’t deliver food to Slowbomb, because they’re afraid they’ll get robbed. Some make you meet their delivery boy at the top of the ramp. If the delivery guy does enter the projects, at the very least you’ll have to be waiting for him downstairs when he pulls up, because there’s no way he’s getting out of his car. It doesn’t really matter though, not even a hop, skip and a jump away is Getty Square, where you can do some dirt-cheap shopping. Even closer there’s Herman’s bar, the liquor store, and the pizza shop, where you can get a slice for a dollar fifty, and Papí’s corner store for everything else. Our lives literally extend “around the corner and back,” as some would say. “I will,” I say, grabbing the money from Ma. I want to find out what went down. Jason gives me a look, but I dart by him before he can say anything. Outside it looks deserted. The cops must’ve rolled through here. I walk past the Big Park. There’s shattered glass from beer bottles and trash all over the basketball court. It looks completely different from how it looked earlier today. I walk up the ramp, and then I stop and stare up at the tree that’s between the Big Park and Building Eight. I feel a little sick at the sight of the dude’s neon green sneakers hanging from a tree branch by their laces. Slowbomb has a bad rep, and what I’m staring up at is even more proof of that. This is what it’s like living in the projects, if you could call this living. I don’t really know how it happens, but you quickly learn what to do and what not to do. Those who don’t follow the rules end up hurt or even killed. It’s not living. It’s survival.