The Black Kids(89)

“Are you sure it’s okay that I’m coming? I don’t want to impose myself,” I whisper to LaShawn. “What if they don’t actually like me but they’re being nice because of, like, racial solidarity or whatever?”

“Girl, what? Racial solidarity?”

“I don’t know.” I shrug my shoulders.

“Everybody likes you,” he says.

“That’s not even remotely true, and you know it,” I say.

“Well… yeah.” He laughs. “But I like you, and they’re my friends. You’re fine.”

Ranchero music drifts in from another block as we walk.

“You know, they act like we don’t belong here, like we’re just a bunch of thugs or illegals and the city would be better off without us. But we helped build this shit. We’re fucking genesis.”

“Here he goes again,” Candace says. “This nigga walk around talking about LA like it’s a girl he got a crush on. ‘Did you know LA this? Did you know LA that?’?”

LaShawn ignores her and continues.

Of the forty-four original founders of LA, only two were white. Twenty-six had some African ancestry. Sixteen were Indians or Mestizos.

Some of the wealthiest of them were the brothers Andrés and Pío Pico—of mixed Native American, Black, and Mexican ancestry. Pío Pico would become governor of Alta California before it became part of the United States. Andrés eventually became a senator after statehood. His son’s house is the second-oldest residence in Los Angeles.

Pico Boulevard runs the length of the city, from the ocean air in Santa Monica all the way to the smoggy history in Downtown. It passes by Santa Monica High School, Westside Pavilion, the Fox Studios, a snooty country club, the Museum of Tolerance, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, and Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles. It passes through poor areas and rich areas and areas in between, through famous people and nobodies, through Black people, Mexican people, Persian people, Greek people, Jewish people, and Korean people, and everyone in between. If you get on the 30 and settle in, there it is out a smudged bus window, behind a gang tag, a curse, or an etched declaration love; all of Los Angeles on just one boulevard named after a nigger.

And before us there were the Tongva.

On the corner of La Brea and Pico, next to where a shopping mall went up in flames, somebody spray-painted in black along a white brick wall, LOOK WHAT YOU CREATED.

“All I’m saying is, this shit is ours as much as anybody else’s,” LaShawn says.

“Don’t need no history lesson to know all that. Look at us. We here.” Candace gestures around the neighborhood and up at the sky, like not solely Los Angeles but the whole world is ours.

The front steps of Candace’s house are lined in a Spanish-looking tile. The path is lined in bright-yellow flowers. It’s a small home but pretty, minus the pointed metal gates on the windows. A big blue pit bull tumbles over itself as it rushes full speed from some hidey-hole. It barks at us from behind a metal fence.

“Don’t mind Horace,” Candace says.

“He gon’ eat my face?” Fat Albert says.

“Horace is a girl.” Candace laughs and starts to open the gate to her home.

“But you didn’t say no, though,” Fat Albert says, and backs away from the dog.

“Horace, sit. Stay,” she says, and Horace does.

We walk through Candace’s house to a wood-paneled den, where her little brother sits on a worn black leather sofa playing video games. A fan rotates its neck, blowing breath back and forth, but the room’s still stuffy.

“Out!” she says.

“No,” he says, and somersaults Sonic once more into Dr. Robotnik. Robotnik waddles toward his escape pod and Sonic chases after him, mere seconds from beating the evil scientist, when Candace pulls the power cord from the wall. Her brother starts yelling at her in Igbo, and I swear I see actual tears in his eyes.

Julia and Tarrell curl up on opposite ends of the couch. Fat Albert plugs the Genesis back into the wall; the controller looks tiny in his hands. He passes the other controller to Tarrell, but Julia snatches it from him.

“Let’s give Lisa Turtle a makeover!” Candace squeals.

The black kids still call me Lisa Turtle, only now it’s to my face, and I can’t get too upset ’cause it’s far better than being called Fat Albert.

“I don’t know.” I look over at LaShawn.

“C’mon, let us! Candace lives for makeovers.” Julia claps her hands.

“Do I look that awful?” I say. The last time I had a makeover was when we were in fifth grade and Kimberly informed me that I should straighten my hair and start wearing mascara if I was ever gonna get boys to like me.

“Let me braid your hair for you, at least,” Candace says. She opens a three-tiered caddy and wiggles out two bags of braid hair. She pats the floor by her.

“Sit.”

Candace carries herself like a princess, like she could be anything at all. When she tells me to sit, it sounds like a royal edict. So I do.

She takes a rattail comb and rakes the metal tip across my scalp, parting my hair into several sections. LaShawn sits next to me on the floor, legs crossed.

“So, what’s the deal with you two?” Fat Albert says. “Everybody in this room knows this boy been had a crush on you for years.”