You see, by beating my brother, Larry
had violated unspoken, unwritten
street code. The street code was simple.
You don’t beat up an innocent person
because you lost a fight that you started
with strangers. And, as I was taught
to believe, gang members would even
protect the family of opposing gang
members, if outsiders were involved.
My brother should have been safe with
Larry that night — Puerto Rican or not.
The same principle applied to women.
No matter what beef you had with
someone, what fight you had or were
going to have, women were never
to know — especially women of the
opposing group. Mothers, brothers,
sisters, and girlfriends were sacred.
If you saw your enemy’s mother on the
streets struggling with groceries, your
job was to carry them upstairs for her
and never, I mean never, accept money.
If you were high or drunk and that
same woman passed by, you sobered up
immediately, or acted sober, and made
sure you said, “yes ma’am,” and “No,
ma’am” to all her enquiries, regardless
of your reeking breath or unsteady gait.
Some folks today think that those codes
applied to people you were connected
to in friendship, but that wasn’t the
whole of the matter. I t applied to all
elders and family members of opposing
gangs as well. It was street chivalry, the
warrior code. That’s just the way it was,
and by beating my brother, Larry had
violated that code.
My inner circle started to get impatient.
Their way of fighting was quick, fast,
efficient, very little talk. I was taking
too much time. Moose stared me
straight in the eye and then issued the
challenge, dryly. “What you gonna
do with this dude, man?” I was shocked
into reality by those few words.
This was neither a movie nor a game.
Somebody had to go down, something
had to happen. I looked away from
Larry and said, “I’m gonna ask you
again, why’d you beat my brother?”
Larry saw the redundancy of the
question as a sign of fear and weakness.
It was. He spat out his answer. “I told
you I fucked him up ‘cause I felt like
fucking him up and if you keep this
shit up, I’ll fuck you up, fuck your
mother up, your sister…” I saw his lips
moving, but I couldn’t hear anything
else. A bomb went off in my head and
the punch started from my right toe,
went through my knee, ripped through
my hip, flashed through my chest,
flooded my shoulder, strengthened my
forearm and granitized my right fist.
It stopped Larry’s bravado and shattered
the afternoon standoff.
10
Larry and I had a low flame, simmering
conflict since I moved into Bushwick.
He didn’t like me because, though I
lived within his gang borders, I didn’t
join his crew. Most of his guys were
thuggish bullies, directionless, and were
always fighting. The group I joined
had dreams, sang doo-wop well, went
to school and dressed nicely. In those
days, they called guys like us “cool
breezes” — guys who would fight hard
if forced to, but would rather look
good, go to school, and talk to the
ladies. Everybody also knew I had
always stood on the black side of the
“hood,” even when the Puerto Rican
gangs tried to recruit me. It was
common knowledge that where you
lived is where your loyalty lay. And I
always lived on the black side of every
neighborhood and every gang knew it
and accepted it. If the beatings came,
they resulted from being on the losing
side, but not because I was Puerto
Rican. Larry knew he couldn’t explain
his racism without losing the support
of his own guys. Whatever anger Larry
had toward me should have been
directed to me — personally — not
my brother. Paul should never have
been touched.
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