The Dreadlock

“Just so you know, I still have it… and I’m never giving it back.”

The elementary school I went to was in the heart of Coney Island. Coney Island, where I was a Jew. But I didn’t live in Coney Island. I lived in Gravesend. Gravesend, where I was a nigger.

In Gravesend, I was sub-human. I was sneered at for not wearing a yarmulke. I was tripped by the boys who did. Doors were slammed in my face. Even the adults—the adults of the tribe Sephardic—gave me no quarter. I was a little boy who was not worth a sliver of sidewalk space. I was an alien whose money meant nothing to shopkeepers. On Friday nights, they asked me to close their lights and turn off their TVs, but I was the outsider and I was always alone.

I had no one. No one. No one but my Legos, my video games, and my Mickey Mouse jacket to keep me company. The jacket was black and had an emblem of Mickey’s ever-smiling face sewn onto the heart. When I wore the ears, I even looked like him, all black except for my face and hands. Imagine that. Mickey—the closest thing I had to a friend.

At my school, a school in the heart of a ghetto, I was also the minority. I was bussed in from Gravesend because I was smart (because I was lonely) and I was placed in the magnet class. The magnet class in each grade was almost all white and the other four classes in each grade were almost all black. In some sense, this was only a magnification of the feelings I had at home, except that I was privileged rather than persecuted.

I had friends in my class; acquaintances really. Danielle Frieda, Dennis Wee… But they didn’t live anywhere near me. They were also bussed into Coney Island, from neighborhoods far and wide. Also, their parents were strict and strange and I never saw either of them.

At lunch, the kids from the magnet and mainstream classes could socialize, but it took a long time for that to happen. The mainstream kids didn’t like us much. We were invaders, colonizers, and we squandered their resources, exporting whatever we could to Midwood, Bay Ridge, Mill Basin, or, worst of all, Queens with all her rolling parks and cemeteries.

Eventually, though, eventually the mainstreamers were drawn to us. We were a kind bunch, after all—little aliens, far from home—taught to be guilty about slavery in this new world, even though it had nothing at all to do with any of us. Gradually, the fighting quelled, Athenians and Cretans breaking bread and sharing songs of Sesame Street and Lamb Chops. And true to Sherry Lewis’ words, once we started, we couldn’t stop. Friendship bloomed.

My favorite friend, my best friend, the best of them all was William. He was almost a year younger than me, but a million times more brilliant. William would do his 5^th-grade brother’s homework every single night. A second grader doing the work of a senior. And the funny thing is, his brother’s name was Mickey. I wanted everything to do with William. I wanted his brain. I wanted his dreadlocks. I wanted his love. And for some reason, he wanted me too.

I think it was because we looked alike. It seems strange to say, me being an Irish and Italian mutt and he being a luscious Caribbean gray, black mostly, but somehow, somewhere, long ago, something else too. But if not for the skin—and the hair—we shared an impregnable similarity. And we both loved Legos best of all.

William told me about his castle on West 37^th Street. It’s not there anymore, but when it was, it was gray and it had a rampart with places for archers. “It looks like Legos,” he said. Also, it faced Seagate, the fenced off tip of Coney Island, reserved for those like Mathew Gonzalez (in my magnet class) who could afford it. No one was allowed in or out without permission. William liked to pretend that he was Coney Island’s defender, the King of the Free Lands with a crown of spiky dreads. He spent his time on the roof, gazing out beyond.

We shared our lunch together, William and I. Sometimes, we’d even pool our coins for dessert. We were always talking about what we wanted to be. I remember one day rushing to tell him that he should become a writer. He could be William Shakespeare. Sometime later, he told me I would be Michael Jackson. Not the king, though. The artist.

The artist and the bard. I liked that. I liked William. He made me feel less lonely.

I got to thinking that maybe we could be real friends… You know, the kind that go to each other’s houses. The kind that crawl in through the window like on Saved by the Bell or the kind that grow old together like the Golden Girls. It hurts just thinking about it. My whole life, really, my reality, a skin—all of Brooklyn—a tapestry of threads of worn out things; a terrible Dreamland. Nothing like the city of lights that illumed that little island of rabbits so long along. Simply skin, when the jellyfish come to shore, stinging everywhere, always, like hair ripped out, but never regrowing… But nothing hurts as bad as when I think of King William’s house. As if sprayed by a thousand arrows, that castle stings the most.

When I brought it up, William nodded just once and then was silent. Only a few days later did I bring it up again. He said we’d probably have to get permission. So I asked my mother and William asked his a bit later. We talked to our teachers. We got the necessary forms signed. We set a date. And finally, one day in late January, I woke up and thought, “Today is the day we make friends.”

William and Michael, I thought, Michael and William. Best friends. Brothers.

That day at lunch, William was sullen.

“I don’t think you can come over today.”

“Why not? I thought…”

“My brother. I think he’s going to have a lot of homework and…”

“I’ll do it with you…”

“And I have to do the laundry…”

“I’ll do it for you…”

“And I feel a little sick…”

“I’ll make it better…”

“Well… alright.”

But William was troubled. I could tell.

After school that day, snow on the ground and cold in the air, I was able to find William’s bus. Just in time too, as the row of yellow caravans had already started to pull away. The number was wrong, but I couldn’t mistake William’s face gazing out the bus window, sad because he didn’t see me and sadder when he did, I think, because he had gotten the directions wrong.

When I got on the bus, I showed the driver my form and rushed back towards William, but I tripped. I was in such a rush, I didn’t realize one of the older boys had his foot in the aisle. Everyone was black; everyone laughed. Even William, a little later. But that’s what friends are for.

I got up, worried just a bit for the Game Boy in my book bag. But when I got to William, he was sitting on the aisle, shaking his head ever so subtly, his lips crinkled like my mother when she’s sad.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Let me in.” The bus had just begun to move.

“You can’t sit here.”

“Why not?”

There was a voice behind me. “No crackers allowed.”

I turned around and there was an older boy sneering. He looked like William and he looked like me. “I’m not a cracker.” I said.

“Then what are you, white boy?” The rest of the bus was beginning to take notice.

“I’m a nigga too.”

They were all waiting to see what the rotten boy would do and the rotten boy—William’s brother? Mickey?—was waiting for an explanation.

“Never Ignorant about Getting Goals Accomplished. Nigga.” William taught me that. The bus laughed at a joke that I wasn’t privy to. Music real niggas listen to. 2pac. And this little alien didn’t even know.

“William, you know this herb?” William was out of his seat now, standing behind me.

“No. Yes. No.” An Oreo of a sort.

“This your friend?”

William was silent and by this point, I dare not turn away from Mickey. Behind me, an almost unperceivable whisper: “Yes.” No one could’ve heard but me. I knew I was in terrible danger.

“No.” He said louder. “Faggot wants to see me naked.” What?

“Oh, you ain’t makin’ my brother a faggot, bitch!” Mickey yelled. Within moments, the emblem sewn onto the heart of my jacket was ripped away and my knees were kicked in from behind. I had fallen to the ground against my book bag with a crack. Goodbye Game Boy.

Mickey pulled me up by the collar with his left hand and spit in my face. His right hand, a fist clutching my jacket’s old smiling mouse, in one swift motion, pop! My nose broken, snot blood mixing with saliva blood.

Blood. I thought we could be friends.

His sneaker on my face. “Lick it, bitch. Lick it like a faggot. Lick it.” It was the sneaker that tripped me. I was trying to fight back but I was stunned, weighted by my book bag and confined by the tight school bus aisle.

“Mickey! Mickey! Let me do it.”

“Aight. Like I showed you.”

Mickey loosened his foot and two fingers were in my nostrils, pulling me back. Not my nose. Not my nose. Don’t rip my nose, William! But I was just wailing, doing my best to slide along the floor towards the back of the bus as fast as he pulled.

We were in the trunk, back by the emergency exit where there’s extra space for wheelchairs and kiss and tell. “Get up, faggot.”

“William.”

“Get up!”

I got up to beg and he punched me. Right where it hurt. The kind that grow old together.

“Why are you doing this?” I yelled and he punched me again. William knew how to beat Mike Tyson Punchout. Punch him when he blinks… And I was blinking all over the place, if just to keep the tears away. Why was this happening? Pop.

“William!” I charged at him, pushing him towards his side of the bus. His head cracked the glass of the window behind him. And unperceivable “yes”. I pulled him away as he flailed and I smashed him again.

“Stop it!” I yelled. But he was pushing me back, pushing me, crack. He spit like his brother, but missed my face. I hated him for missing.

There was screaming. There was jumping. There was Mickey, watching.

I pushed against William again, this time twisting into the aisle and charging with all my might, me into William into Mickey into some other fucking mainstream nigger piece of shit. I had a plan. A hateful, vengeful plan against a brother that betrayed me.

I don’t know how I did it, pushing all of those kids towards the front of the bus, but I did. And this time Mickey was stuck. And he was watching, watching as I grabbed one of William’s beautiful dreadlocks and pulled, ripping it away from both of them forever. Blood and skin and it was all mine.

I raced towards the back of the bus and leapt into an empty seat with an open window. William was stunned, crying now too, and blocking Mickey’s path towards me. “Come any closer and I drop it.” My arm was out the window, a bit of King William’s crown flapping in the wind.

“Give it back!”

“Never!”

The bus stopped. It was William’s stop. The first stop.

Mickey grabbed William’s arm and got off the bus. They watched the dreadlock zoom away as I watched my best friend, a little mouse with a white face and a black body, shrink and blur until finally… gone.

I got off at the next stop, pretending, for the bus driver’s benefit, to be with the kid right ahead of me. I was somewhere in Coney Island, in view of the boardwalk, a nine-year old miles from home.

I wandered, seeking landmarks in that alien land, following the boardwalk towards the Parachute Jump, then from the Jump to the Cyclone, and from the Cyclone to the Aquarium. There, I found Ocean Parkway, the street that I lived on. I walked and walked and hours later, found home.

It was dark by then. The blood had frozen, shattered, dripped, and frozen more times than I can remember. My feet and hands were blue with cold. The hole in the heart of my jacket fluttered in the wind. On the way, I peed my pants, just because I wanted to feel warm again. But even that was frozen now.

When my mother saw me, her lips twisted like William’s for a moment and I cried and she cried and I explained everything that happened.

My mother told me she did everything she could. But the school was no help. And the cops were no help. And my mother couldn’t get a hold of William’s mother until just a few minutes previous, at which point William’s mother cursed my mother and her cracker son for hurting her boy.

The following day—William and Mickey’s last day at 188—William stood as far from me at lunch as possible. Towards the end of the period, I went over to where he was sitting, stitches seaming my lip and my left nostril into something else entirely.

I waited for a long time, but William didn’t say anything.

“Just so you know, I still have it… and I’m never giving it back.”

But the truth is, I didn’t. I threw the dreadlock into one of the trashcans I passed on my long walk home.

Fourteen years of later, I was on the B44, riding down Nostrand Avenue into some other corner of Brooklyn’s tapestry of stinging alienation and unresolved longing. Just before my stop, some black dude called me by my name.

“Michael!” he said, but I didn’t know him. I looked—I tried—but I saw no resemblance.

“It’s me, William.” I pretended to remember who he was, but I didn’t, and I got off the bus.

A few weeks later, I realized and it occurred to me that it was my turn to play the villain.

But, no. That wasn’t it. How stupid of me. I’ve been the villain for fourteen years. Maybe my whole life. I was free to forget, but he still remembered and he still remembers because I still have something of his.

And I’m afraid I always will.