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  Ella steps past the argument, stops at her apartment to change, and then heads down to the rec, where the business at hand is a Valentine’s Day sock hop planned for Friday night. That leaves Ella with three days to transform her bunker of a rec center with red and white ballons, ribbons, hot dogs, punch, and candy. She’s looking for a rare chemistry on Fayette Street, a magic that can beguile fifteen-year-old drug traffickers and fourteen-year-old mothers-to-be into accepting and enjoying an unlikely moment or two of shared innocence.

  But come seven o’clock on Friday, only a few of the prepubescent girls show up to stand around the food tables while the chaperones—Ella, Marzell, and Joyce Smith of the Franklin Square neighborhood association—watch the door and wonder if the two-dollar admission fee might keep the older ones away. Ricky Cunningham, too, arrives to chaperone, then leaves for a time, his eyes showing a telltale glaze when he returns a half hour later. Ella senses this, but greets him warmly nonetheless.

  “Oh Ricky,” Ella teases. “You’re in for it tonight.”

  Ricky struggles with a response.

  “This is a rough crew we’re dealing with,” she says, laughing. “And we’re going to have more than this. Otherwise the chaperones are going to outnumber the kids.”

  Ricky nods. He stations himself against the far wall, arms crossed, watching Ella watching the door.

  Three of the older girls—Neacey, Gandy, and Shaneka—finally show up and follow Ella’s rules for the dance, leaving their shoes at the door. They run through a few well-rehearsed dance routines, giggling at their mistakes and working out a handful of new steps. They laugh uproariously at every new move.

  It’s almost eight before most of the C.M.B. contingent wanders in. Tae, Manny Man, Dinky, Dorian, and Brian—but not R.C. and not DeAndre, who, Ella has learned, will spend the weekend at Boys Village before getting a juvenile hearing. Each is reluctant to part with the price of admission, each argues about having to leave his high-tops at the door. DeAndre’s girl, Tyreeka, starts to follow them inside, but when she hears about the socks-only rule, she runs home for a clean pair.

  It’s slow going at first, slow as any teenage dance always is—the boys looking uncomfortable in one corner of the room, the girls, across the floor, dancing with each other, glancing over their shoulders at every loud laugh or shout. Kiti has his sound system set up in the far corner and he stays shy and aloof behind the turntables, keeping the dance mix going. There are a few forays to the dance floor by a couple or two, but most end in childish laughter.

  It’s amazing really, considering the range of their sexual experience. Perhaps it’s the colored balloons and candies, or perhaps it’s Ella’s presence that has the boys subdued, sitting in a row against the front wall, goofing with each other, Manny goading Tae to dance with Neacey or Shaneka. Suddenly, they’re children again; nervous, excited, and only marginally competent to deal with the matter at hand. Somehow, the jaded sexuality has been dispensed with; the sordid histories forgotten. The adventures with that freak girl in Manny Man’s apartment, the blow jobs from the hollow-eyed pipers down below McHenry Street—none of it stands with the fumbling modesty now on display.

  At least until Tyreeka returns. Alone among the girls at the dance, Tyreeka has some mastery of her own bumps and curves, and she’s quick to cross the no-man’s land, hips and breasts moving suggestively inside tight denims and a clinging jersey. She beckons, then turns her back to Tae, grinding away just a few inches in front of him. Then, on down the line she goes: to Manny Man, then Dorian, then Dinky.

  “Damn,” says Manny.

  Tae laughs nervously, pulling his wide-brimmed cap low over his eyes. He takes the challenge, edging out onto the dance floor as Tyreeka backs away. From the corner, Dinky shakes his head and smiles, obviously embarrassed. Tyreeka is DeAndre’s girl and DeAndre, Dinky’s second cousin, is locked up out in the county somewhere. Ever loyal, Dinky holds back.

  But Tae doesn’t seem to be worrying about DeAndre, who might stay locked up until spring for all anyone knows. Instead, he’s right on Tyreeka, his hips grinding against her, his bandy legs moving forward in a jerking, syncopated motion. Manny Man and Brian are inspired; they issue cat calls and creep out to edge of the dance floor. Neacey and the other girls sense the moment and drift toward the center as well. The room is finally jumping.

  Ella stands at the edge of the dance floor, pleasure and concern warring inside her as she watches the scene unfold. Her eyes scan the room, then fall on Kiti, who smiles back. Looking proud to have the party moving, her son keeps layering the mix on his turntables and laughing at the dance-floor antics. For a time, Ella watches him, his tall frame hovering from the equalizer to the turntables, then over to his crate of dance tracks, his head bobbing softly to the rhythms.

  For Ella, just seeing her son this way is a blessing. Tonight, in the rec center bunker, the crepe-paper-and-balloon illusion does its number on Kiti, too, taking him beyond the usual precautions and calculations of Fayette Street. She knows how he hates the neighborhood; how he can’t wait for graduation and a reprieve from the horror show that greets him every time he leaves their apartment. And she knows, too, how constricted he is, how he has held so much inside himself since they lost Andrea. She looks at him now and feels palpable relief. Tonight, at least, Kiti is out of that back bedroom, showing his stuff, feeling a little bit free.

  Ella is watching her son so intently that she’s caught by Joyce Smith, who creeps behind and pushes her onto the dance floor.

  “C’mon,” says Joyce. “We’ll look foolish together.”

  Ella laughs off her embarrassment and begins to move.

  “GO EL-LA, GO EL-LA, GO EL-LA.”

  Neacey and Gandy start the chant, but soon it’s community property as all of the dancers cluster around the two women, who try a few old-school moves before they’re overcome with self-conscious laughter.

  Ella gets Marzell out on the floor and calls for Ricky to join them, but the young man is braced against the wall, trapped, a vague, uncomfortable expression on his face.

  “Oh mah Gawd,” laughs Marzell, dancing with Ella. “There you go now.”

  They are rescued only when Kiti changes up and slows the rhythm. Ella catches her breath and pushes her bangs up her forehead. She looks over to see Ricky Cunningham gone.

  “Miss Ella, you was good,” squeals Neacey.

  “Miss Ella can move,” Tae agrees.

  Ella broods for a moment about Ricky, wondering if there was anything she might have said or done to keep him there. Then, shrugging it off, she gets back into the mix, showing off an old step or two, sidling up to Tae and bumping him with one hip as the girls dissolve in laughter. Tae buries his face in the brim of his cap and pivots away in modest retreat.

  “I’m soooo old,” she says, brushing her hair back and losing the rhythm. “I’m too old for your kind of music.”

  The dance floor once again belongs to Tae and Tyreeka, who resume their hormonal ballet in earnest. Joyce watches them grind around the room, then shakes her head softly.

  “That one girl,” she says finally. “How old is she?”

  “Tyreeka is … thirteen,” Ella tells her. “Or close to thirteen now.”

  Joyce rolls her eyes. “That girl is too bold for thirteen.” When Kiti takes a break for hot dogs and punch, Tyreeka and Tae move to one corner of the rec. There she takes things a step further by sitting on his lap, making herself something of a centerpiece to the C.M.B. boys who settle with their food plates into the chairs on either side. The other girls hold warily to the opposite side of the room.

  Dinky and Brian finish eating quickly, and with Kiti still giving it a rest, they fish a homemade mix tape from Dinky’s winter coat and march over to the worn-down tape player that is among the rec center’s most utilized assets. Brian slaps the cassette into place and punches play, then rushes to find the stop button when the music dissolves in a warped slur.

  “Damn,” he says, punching out
the cassette.

  “You gotta rewind it and put in the other side,” says Dinky. “It fucks up like that on one side.”

  “Dinky.”

  “Oh, sorry, Miss Ella,” he says, genuinely embarrassed. “I forgot where I was.”

  They rewind the cassette, turn it over, and punch the play button once again. A pulsing cacaphony fills the rec center. The C.M.B. boys hoot and holler.

  “That’s the shit,” yells Tae. “That’s the shit.”

  This time, Ella doesn’t even try to shout an admonition above the noise. The tape is the full dance mix of a local song that’s all over the Baltimore stations this winter; a rollicking seven minutes of audio dissonance with lyrics that amount to a listing of bad-ass drug corners and housing projects, followed by a shouted one-line chorus.

  “Here we go … Cherry Hill.”

  “GET YA GUNS OUT,” shout the C.M.B. boys, delighted.

  “La-fay-ette.”

  “GET YA GUNS OUT.”

  Tae lifts Tyreeka off his lap, then jumps up to dance. The good part is coming up.

  “Mount … and Fayette,” chants the rapper.

  “GET YA GUNS OUT!”

  The boys shout and stomp and fill their corner of the room with high-fives. Mount and Fayette, spoken like it was a place that mattered. Tae, Dinky, Manny Man, Dorian, Brian—they’re all genuinely proud, so engrossed in the tape that they ignore the banging on the outer doors.

  Marzell finally makes her way over from the food table and opens up to see R.C. out on the blacktop, one arm draped around his girl’s shoulder.

  “Tae in there?” he asks.

  “Well, hello to you too, R.C.”

  “Um, hello, Miss Myers. Tae in there?”

  She shouts for Tae, who saunters to the door, followed by Manny and Dorian. R.C. drops his arm around Treecee’s waist and leans against her as Tae steps outside.

  “W’sup,” R.C. says.

  Tae shrugs. “We dancin’.”

  “Who else in there?”

  “Dinky, Brian, Reeka, Neacey and them girls, you know … um, Miss Ella and Kiti …”

  “Man, shit sounds weak.”

  “Naw,” says Tae. “We havin’ fun.”

  R.C. looks at Treecee, who gives no sign either way.

  “They give you food and shit,” adds Tae.

  R.C. relents and follows Treecee inside. Ella greets them at the door, explaining that their shoes have to come off. No tennis, just socks. R.C. is having none of it; he guides his girl back outside and follows her down the steps, shaking his head in disgust. Tae comes out after him.

  “Man,” says R.C., “fuck that no-shoes shit. I ain’t about givin’ up my Jordans.”

  “C’mon, R.C., it’s fun.”

  “Naw, fuck that,” he says, firm. “I know where we can get some good weed, get us blunted.”

  But tonight at least, Ella’s got Tae. He turns back toward the dull orange glow filtering out of the rec center windows. R.C. and Treecee glide into the darkness.

  “What’s with R.C.?” asks Ella when Tae returns.

  “He don’t want to take his shoes off.”

  “’Cause his feet stink,” says Brian.

  “Brian,” says Ella. “That isn’t nice.”

  “It’s true,” says Dinky. “R.C. has some steady smellin’ feets. He don’t wear no socks is what it is.”

  The boys play their gangsta mix once more before Kiti comes back to his turntables. Again the party carries them together on the floor, culminating in a dance contest that delivers heart-shaped boxes of Valentine’s candy to Shaneka and Tae. At eleven, the dance is over and those who paid their two dollars are reluctant to leave. Tonight, they’ve snatched a good and ordinary time from the streets of a sad and extraordinary place. Against long odds, the Valentine’s dance is a victory for innocence that somehow survives Tyreeka’s hip-shaking performance, and Dinky’s profanity, and songs about drug corners and firearms.

  “Good night,” Ella tells her charges as they drift out the double doors into the dark. “Be careful, now. It’s late.”

  She watches Tae walk Tyreeka down the alley to Fayette Street and wonders how that business will end. Tae has one arm around the girl’s waist, but Tyreeka has her hands in her coat pocket, her body language noncommittal.

  “Miss Ella,” says Neacey, buttoning her winter coat in the doorway.

  “That was so much fun.”

  “I’m glad you liked it.”

  “Can we have another dance?”

  “We’ll have to see.”

  The young girl bounds down the steps, followed by Gandy, who catches up to whisper something in her friend’s ear.

  “Oh, Miss Ella, Miss Ella,” says Neacey, reminded. “Wait.”

  Ella catches the center door just as it’s closing. She peers out into the darkness, waiting with failing patience. Neacey is a favorite to Ella, a young girl groping through adolescence alone, ignored utterly by her mother, Ronnie Boice, and craving attention from all other quarters. Then again, the girl can talk you to death if you let her, and Ella will be here past midnight bagging paper plates and sweeping candy hearts off the floor.

  “Neacey, what is it now?”

  The two girls stifle a laugh, then steady themselves in the night air. Neacey whispers a one-two-three to time the thing.

  “Thaaaaank you, Miss Ella.”

  Tyreeka Freamon is down on Fayette Street early, her best denims tight on her waist, her hair teased up and curled in the front and falling long and free on her shoulders. She’s out on the sidewalk before the early package, before the touts and runners have cluttered the Mount Street corners. She’s way too wired for the hour, primped and polished and bright-eyed. She walks the two wickedly cold blocks from her grandmother’s house on Stricker Street against a blustery wind, arriving at the front door of the Dew Drop Inn well before nine, sliding out of the February air into the shelter of the rowhouse vestibule, then climbing the stairs to bang on the door of the second-floor apartment. She’s hammering on it for two minutes before anything stirs.

  “Who there?”

  A male voice. Stevie probably.

  “Reeka.”

  “Huh?”

  “Reeka. Is Miss Fran up?”

  “Hold on.” Stevie sounds upset.

  She waits out in the hallway for five minutes, watching her breath freeze in clouds outside the apartment door until the lock is unlatched and DeAndre’s mother appears before her, the very picture of yellow-eyed, morning-after exhaustion.

  “You early, girl,” says Fran, stepping back.

  “I didn’t want you to go without me,” Tyreeka explains.

  Fran manages a half smile.

  “Wait up front,” says Fran, gesturing toward the front of the apartment, then padding back toward the bedroom. The arrangements call for the hack to show up sometime after nine, which in Fayette Standard Time means anywhere from ten to noon, but Tyreeka is taking no chances on getting left behind. She’s been up since a little after seven, choosing her outfit and doing up her hair in the style that DeAndre likes best. She’s saying something today and she wants to be sure the boy hears her.

  The old console television in the front room is jabbering on from the night before, the screen muted by a green-yellow tint that suggests a dying picture tube. Tyreeka stares at the raving of a Sunday morning preacher and listens for the sound of movement in the house, but nothing. Not a sound from Stevie’s room, and nothing at all from the others on the third floor. Ten long minutes pass before she hears another television come on in Fran’s room, and another ten before she hears someone shuffle into the bathroom.

  In the back, the television fare is cartoons. In the front room, Tyreeka is listening to the preacher talking about the Corinthians, talking about them like everyone knows their business. Tyreeka, listening, wonders where it is they fit in. She’d been to that church up on Edmondson Avenue as a little girl, sitting there in her Sunday clothes with her grandmother and sometimes
even her mother, back before her mother fell. She’d heard enough in church to get the main parts of the story. She had the Jews and Romans and apostles down, but who the Corinthians were and what they were about, she couldn’t say.

  DeRodd slips out of Fran’s room in his long underwear.

  “You going to see my brother?”

  Tyreeka nods.

  “He locked up.”

  “Boy, you don’t think I know that?”

  “He in Boys Village.”

  Tyreeka ignores him. Sometimes she liked DeRodd, but sometimes he could wear on her with his little-boy nonsense. DeAndre would always tell her that DeRodd wasn’t right for Fayette Street, that he belonged in the county somewheres. He’ll never make it, DeAndre would say, he’s always daydreaming and talking silly shit and if he don’t toughen up soon the corners would chew his narrow ass up. Tyreeka figured it was true enough. Half the time, DeRodd was in another world.

  “Where Boys Village at?” DeRodd asks.

  “Prince George County.”

  “Where that?”

  “In Maryland.”

  “Where at?”

  She swings on DeRodd with an open palm, but he leans back from the blow and races behind the television set. He pokes his face up between the rabbit ears of the antenna, his tongue wriggling from his mouth in provocation.

  “Boy, you stupid.”

  “You slow.”

  “I can catch your little ass.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Catch it and whip it.”

  DeRodd smirks at the challenge. Again, he sticks out his tongue, this time accompanying the gesture with an insolent, two-handed wave, his thumbs wedged into his ears. Tyreeka exhales loudly and rolls her eyes. If she catches DeRodd, she’ll have to torture him, and if she tortures him, she’ll have to mess her hair. By such calculations are the lives of eight-year-old boys occasionally spared.