Let Me Hear a Rhyme: Chapters 22–31

He shrugged, indifferent. “It’s cool man. Don’t sweat it.”

Steph had watched Quadir ravenously devour school lunches, even picking at his friend’s leftovers, for over a month.

“Some coach stopped by last week’s game,” Quadir relented.

“I’m saying, wouldn’t hurt to step out the box and see what they talking about.” Quadir fidgeted in his seat, the proposition making him antsy.

“I’m saying, wouldn’t hurt to step out the box and see what they talking about.” Quadir fidgeted in his seat, the proposition making him antsy.

Quadir measured his tone, his words only half in jest.

It’s just a school. A school with a championship-winning team and alumni that play in the pros, but still...it’s just a school.

“The Black Star Line was created by Marcus Garvey, one of the leaders of the Black Nationalist movement. It was a shipping company that took black people back to Africa, when black people were free from slavery, but not really free because of segregation. He wanted black people to be proud of their heritage and stop assimilating with our capturers. Why continue to live in a country where they treat us like animals?”

Because she still doesn’t have answers, she still doesn’t know who killed her brother, she still doesn’t have closure.

“I’m serious. Lena Horne was born and raised in Bed-Stuy, went to Boys and Girls High when it was still called Girls High. Same school Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to run for president, went to. Gwendolyn Bennett, the renowned poet and figure of the Harlem Renaissance...shall I go on?”

“You can sing,” Quadir says, his eyes wide and in awe.

“Well,” I say, my chest heaving.

He gives me a look and shakes his head, checking over his shoulder at the goons chilling on the plush white sofa.

You know how much audacity you have to have to say ‘I’m on tour’ and can’t make it to a Red Starr meeting?

Music plaques, crystal lamps, statues, awards, and framed photos of Pierce with celebrities hung everywhere.

Pierce’s eyes ping-pong between us, then he smiles. And it ain’t one of those nice smiles, it’s one of them sly joints, like he’s up to something.

We come up from underground at 125th Street, Harlem’s mecca.

Let me break it down: ten percent of the people in the world, the elites, know the truth of existence, so they keep eighty-five percent of the world ignorant and under their control.

Let me break it down: ten percent of the people in the world, the elites, know the truth of existence, so they keep eighty-five percent of the world ignorant and under their control.

That leaves the five percent, the enlightened ones, whose mission is to enlighten the rest through teaching their lessons in supreme mathematics and alphabets.

She points in my face, hissing. “You know what? You just like my daddy said. You a scrub who think he better than everybody else, trying to be something he not, perpetrating a fraud. Can’t keep it real with nobody. Not even with yourself! I can do better. And believe me, I will!”

He rubs his hands together with a nonchalant shrug. “It can work.”

I shake the tremors out my hands and close my eyes, searching for that note, deep in the pit of my stomach.

I failed chemistry, but biology passed and
If you feel chemistry, let anatomy happen

I brought Queens to a Brooklyn party
That's an oxymoron
Here's some more on who I be

Mona Lisa smiling
Mona Lisa with an Afro or braids Fulani
Find me
Reading books in a Brooklyn lobby
So intrigued you took up a new hobby

Cause I be thirteen
I don't mean Iverson's sneaker
I mean I'm the keynote speaker
Step to the podium, break on linoleum
Stepping all over that boys' club sign with "men only"
written
On the banner....

Cause I be thirteen
I don't mean Iverson's sneaker
I mean I'm the keynote speaker
Step to the podium, break on linoleum
Stepping all over that boys' club sign with "men only"
written
On the banner....

By the second hook, I become the song. Every note, every inflection, every beat, I own.

There’s nothing like Brooklyn summers, filled with the type of heat that brings the crazy out of the sane and ruthlessness out of the mundane.

The cute girl in the powder-blue dress, the grandpa with his old dachshund, the mailman hitting his route...they all become subjects in his impromptu poems.

Steph noticed Jarrell’s demeanor and cut his last rhyme short. “Yo man, what’s up with you?”

“Cats be famous in the hood but not mainstream.”

We head to the front of the club, walking past the line that starts almost two blocks away, metal barricades keeping people flush against the building wall.

“What’s an Incredible Hulk?” I whisper to a chick strutting by.