Darius takes pics of the graffiti-covered walls that are more like art for tourists than for kids who want to rep their hood or show off their skills to other crews.
When we reach the park, Janae hands me a blanket from her bag. Then she and Ainsley go off on their own, leaving me to babysit Darius because he looks like a fish out of water. Or maybe I’m the fish out of water, because no one told me that we were going to some sort of art and music festival for white people.
I look around to see that almost everyone is sitting on blankets, something we never did when I used to come here years ago. Nobody was having picnics in this park back in the day. We sat on benches and kept our eyes wide open in case anything went down. And something used to always go down. Still, I’m tired of standing, so I spread the blanket out on the dry grass, confident that with all these white people here now, they’ve cleaned up the rat poop and broken glass.
“Maria Hernandez Park should probably be called Mary Hernan Park now instead,” I say to Darius as he sits next to me with his hands in his too-tight khaki shorts pockets.
“What exactly are you saying? Why would the name of this park have to change?” Darius asks, raising an eyebrow.
A white woman gets up from her blanket and starts dancing for no reason at all. The music hasn’t even come on yet. So it’s not really dancing, it’s just random gyrating of her hips. “All these white people don’t even know who Maria Hernandez was,” I reply. “There’s nothing ‘Maria’ or ‘ez’ about this park anymore.”
“Lemme guess. You knew her. Are you related or something?”
I turn my whole body toward him, and he shifts to look at me. “When he was little, my father played with her kids here. She was murdered right inside her apartment for trying to stop drug dealers from selling in this very park.”
“Oh,” he says. “That’s cool.”
“That’s cool?” I say.
He shrugs, his button-down shirt going tight across his shoulders.
“What’s so cool about that? How ’bout you say, ‘That’s fucked up.’”
He leans back on the blanket, away from me, and props himself up on his elbows. “Okay. That’s fucked up,” he says. “And it’s cool that this park is named after her. And no, it shouldn’t be changed to Mary Hernan just because white people are here. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Of course that doesn’t make any sense. It was sarcasm,” I say, side-eying him. “If you knew this park like I do, none of this makes any sense.”
“I know what sarcasm is.” He pauses and stretches out his legs. I have to move back to make room for him. “What’s your deal, Zuri Benitez?”
“What’s my deal? My deal is that you’re taking up this whole blanket. My deal is that I’ve been coming here my whole life. And I know guys who come out here to play ball and chill, and they look exactly like you.” I rub the back of my hand so he knows what I’m talking about. “My deal is that they don’t talk or dress like you. And they definitely don’t live in a house like yours. So what’s your deal, Darius Darcy?”
He quickly folds his legs and scoots back, shaking his head and laughing. “Point taken, Miss Benitez.”
A loud screeching sound comes from the stage and makes me jump. A thin white boy with long hair grabs a microphone and shouts, “What’s up, Bushwick!”
Everybody around cheers, and it’s all so incredibly surreal. “I can’t believe this,” I say out loud, and grab my phone to take a picture to send to Charlise.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Darius taking a picture too.
“That’s your homeboy?” I ask. “Oh, I’m sorry. I mean, your buddy? Your pal?”
His nostrils flare, he licks his lips, and he exhales. “That’s Jaime Grisham of Bushwick Riot. They’re my sister’s favorite band. I’m sending her a pic.”
He says this as if it’s information I should know already.
“Your sister?” I ask.
He nods. “Younger sister.”
I take a good look at this band called Bushwick Riot. There’s the skinny white boy with the hair, another one wearing a black ski hat, a shorter, chunkier black one with a thick beard, and two girls—a thick white one with bleached hair, and the other is a black girl with mohawk braids. Each one is either behind a keyboard, a drum set, an electric guitar, or a microphone. “Interesting,” I say out loud. “Is your sister still in . . . wherever y’all just came from?”
“Georgia’s interning in D.C. for the summer.”
“Interning?” I nod my head several times because this is all coming together. “Makes sense.”
“What do you mean by that?”
I shrug, not really wanting to spell it out for him. “Rock band, interning, tight shorts. Makes sense.”
He laughs with his mouth closed. “Your sister doesn’t seem to mind.”
“My sister’s just making new friends, that’s all.”
“Clearly.”
The band starts with a thunderous drumroll. Some people start to move closer to the stage. “So you’re a fan of this band too? Bushwick Riot?”
“No. That’s Georgia’s thing.” He inhales deeply, puts his phone into the back pocket of his too-tight shorts, and crosses his arms.
“Is this . . . your thing? Art festivals in parks? Like, how come you don’t go to the park to play ball or something?”
He smirks. “You don’t leave that little corner of your neighborhood too often, do you?”
I lean back to get a good look at him. He stares at me, but he blinks first. “Just so you know, in this hood, you’re just like everybody else. The cops and all these white people will take one good look at you and think you’re from Hope Gardens Projects no matter how many tight khaki shorts or grandpa shoes you wear.”
I tilt my head to the side, and we stare each other down.
His jaw shifts again, his nose flares. I’m beginning to realize that this is what happens to his face when he’s pissed. “Damn. I thought we were having a nice conversation, but you just went left.”
“To the left, to the left,” I say, reciting the Beyoncé lyrics while pointing my thumb and tossing my head to the left.
Darius throws both his hands up and shakes his head.
Over his shoulder, I can see Janae and Ainsley on their way back to us. They’re both holding little paper containers of food, hardly enough to fill my belly after that twenty-block stroll down Knickerbocker Avenue. They’re purposely bumping arms as they walk, and Janae is smiling with her whole body, it seems.
Janae hands me my little paper bowl filled with two small tacos and laughs at something Ainsley says. For the first time since she’s come home from college, I can’t stand her. She practically begged me to come with her. But now I feel like the third wheel, even though there’s four of us.
“Actually, Janae, I’m gonna head home,” I say. Darius gives me a look as I stand up.
“Wait, why? We just got here,” Janae says.
“Hey, man! Yo, Ainsley.” A black guy waves at our blanket. He walks up to Ainsley and gives him a pound. Ainsley awkwardly shakes his hand, of course, while this new boy gives him a straight dap like a normal black dude. Darius acknowledges this new boy with just a head nod.
“This is Janae,” Ainsley says to the boy, “and this is Zuri.”
The new guy nods in Janae’s direction, then looks at me and says, “What up, Zuri? I’m Warren.”
I pause from picking up my purse and give this Warren a second look. There’s a little bass in his voice, a little hood, a little swag, not like these Darcy boys.
He catches me staring at him, but I don’t look away. I want him to know that I’m checking him out, and I want Darius to know too. Our eyes lock for a long minute, and it’s as if everything around us—that band, those voices, that warm summer breeze, sirens, and honking cars in the distance—all come to a full stop.
“Zuri was just leaving,” Darius says, rudely. But Warren and I keep staring at each other.