Ramone stood over him, his feet spread in the power stance, that cop thing. Diego read it, smirked, and shook his head. He got up off the bed and stood facing his father. He was only a couple of inches shorter than Ramone.
“Let me just tell it,” said Diego.
“Go ahead.”
“Today was…”
“I know.”
“It wasn’t nothin serious.”
“Mom told me.”
“It’s like they’re singling me out, Dad.”
“Well, you gave them a reason, in the beginning.”
“True,” said Diego.
Diego had acted out when he’d first come to the school. He’d felt that he had to show the other students that the new kid wasn’t soft. That he was tough, cool, and funny as well. Ramone and Regina had gotten several calls in September from exasperated teachers who said Diego was disruptive in class. Ramone had been pretty rough on him, giving him stern, threatening talks, putting him on restriction, and even pulling him from football practice, though Ramone had not gone so far as not letting him play his weekly game. The tough love seemed to have worked, or Diego had simply settled down on his own. A couple of his teachers had told Regina that Diego’s behavior had improved in class, and one even said that he had the potential to become a positive influence on other students, a leader. But the negative first impression he’d left on the principal, a white woman named Ms. Brewster, and her assistant, Mr. Guy, had been damaging. Ramone felt that, at this point, they were targeting his son. Diego, discouraged and unmotivated, was losing interest in school. His midterm grades were lower than they had been at his school in D.C.
“Look,” said Ramone. “You say you didn’t know your phone was on, I believe you.”
“I didn’t know.”
Ramone had no doubt. He and Diego had made a deal from early on: Tell the truth, Ramone said, and I won’t go off on you. I’ll only get angry if I think you’re lying. We can deal with the rest. As far as he knew, his son had always kept up his end of the bargain.
“If you say so, I believe you,” said Ramone. “But they’ve got their rules. You should’ve let them confiscate your phone for the day. That’s where the problem came from.”
“They took my friend’s phone and he didn’t get it back for two weeks.”
“Your mother and I would’ve stepped in and got it back. The point is, you can’t fight them. They’re bosses. You’re going to grow up and get out in the world and you’re going to have some bosses you don’t like, and still, you’ve got to do what they say.”
“Not when I’m playin in the NFL.”
“I’m talking to you serious here, Diego. I mean, I have to make compromises to bosses I don’t like, and I’m forty-two years old. It’s not just part of being a kid, it’s part of being an adult as well.”
Diego’s lips tightened. He was shutting down. Ramone had given him this speech before. It no longer sounded fresh to Ramone, either.
“Just try to get along,” said Ramone.
“I will.”
Ramone felt like they were done. He put his hand out, and Diego lightly slapped his fingers against Ramone’s.
“There’s somethin else,” said Diego.
“I’m listening.”
“There was a fight the other day after school. You know my friend Toby?”
“From football?”
“Yeah.”
Ramone remembered Toby from the team. He was a tough kid but not a bad one. He lived with his father, a cab-driver, in the apartments near the school. His mother, Ramone had heard, was a drug addict who was no longer in his life.
“Toby got into it with this boy,” said Diego. “He’d been talkin mess to Toby in the halls and he challenged Toby to a fight. They met down by the creek. Toby said, Bap!” Diego slammed his right fist into his left palm. “He stole him with a jab and a right punch. One-two, and the other boy went down.”
“Were you there?” said Ramone, perhaps with too much excitement in his voice.
“Yeah. I was walkin home that day with a couple of friends and came up on it. You know I was gonna watch.…”
“So?”
“The other boy’s parents called the school. Now they’re havin what they call an investigation. Finding out who was there and who saw what. The parents want to press charges on Toby. They’re talking about assault.”
“I thought this kid challenged Toby to the fight.”
“He did, but now he sayin he was only kidding around. He sayin he never did want to fight.”
“Why is the school involved? It was off their property, wasn’t it?”
“They were both walking home from school, still carrying their books and stuff. So it makes it the school’s business.”
“Okay.”
“They’re gonna want me to tell how Toby hit this boy first.”
“Somebody had to throw the first punch,” said Ramone, speaking as a man and not a father. “Was it a fair fight?”
“The other boy was bigger than Toby. One of those skateboarder kids. And he was the one made the challenge. He just couldn’t back up his words.”
“And it was just the two of them. Nobody ganged up on this other boy, right?”
“It was just them.”
“I don’t see a problem.”
“What I’m sayin is, I’m not about to snitch out my friend.”
Ramone didn’t want him to. But it wouldn’t be right for him to come out and say so, because he had to play a role. So he said nothing.
“We straight?” said Diego.
“Get ready for dinner,” said Ramone with a small, strategic nod.
As Diego put on a clean T-shirt, Ramone took in his room. Pictures of rappers cut out from the Source and Vibe, and a nice photo of a dropped, restored ’63 Impala, tacked to a corkboard; a poster from Mack Lewis’s gym in Baltimore, a collage of local fighters along with Tyson and Ali, with the saying “Good fighters come to the threshold of pain and cross it fully to achieve greatness” printed on the lower border. On the floor, homemade CDs burned on the house computer, a CD tower, a portable stereo, copies of Don Diva and a gun magazine, jeans and T-shirts, both dirty and clean, Authentic jerseys from various teams, a pair of Timbs, and two pairs of Nikes. On his desk, rarely used for studying, an unread copy of White Fang; an unread copy of True Grit, which Ramone thought his son would like but that he had never cracked; sneaker cleaning solution; photos of girls, black and Hispanic, in tight jeans and tank tops, taken at the mall and presented to Diego as gifts; a pair of dice; a butane lighter with a marijuana leaf inlaid on its face; and his loose-leaf notebook, with the name Dago written, graffiti-style, on its cover. A cap decorated with his nickname and the numbers “09,” his alleged graduation year from high school, hung on a nail he had driven into the wall.
Even with the variation in styles, the advances in technology, and the changes in culture, Diego’s room looked much like Ramone’s room had looked in 1977. In fact, Diego was very much like his father, in so many ways.
“What’re we having?” said Diego.
“Your mother’s making a sauce.”
“Her sauce or Grandmom’s?”
“Go on, boy,” said Ramone. “Get washed up.”