“Ouch!” Miles hissed, flicking the spider onto the floor. Uncle Aaron jumped up and stomped it dead.
“Sorry, kid,” he said, with absolutely no embarrassment in his voice. He smeared the spider on the wood floor like chewing gum on the sidewalk. Miles saw him square himself to get a look at the guts. The goo that was aglow. “But you know how it is. Baruch ain’t no brownstone.”
There was a bang on the bathroom door.
Miles instantly camouflaged, blending in with the Pepto-pink tile of the wall.
“Miles? You fall in, son?” his mother shouted. After he’d come back in from taking out the trash and getting the You know your uncle was this and that talk, he’d left his parents and Ganke in the living room. His father, opening mail—mainly bills—from the day before. His mother, flipping through TV channels looking for Lifetime. And Ganke, a belly full of chicken and rice, sitting on the couch, waiting for Miles so they could get going back to Brooklyn Visions Academy. Miles shook his head and came out of camo mode—he was way too on edge.
“Um, no!” Miles yelled. “I’ll be out in a second. Just, um…brushing my hair.” He knew she wouldn’t believe that. It was the one time he took comfort in knowing she probably assumed he was having some…alone time. Miles pulled off the mask and used his hand to try to smooth his hair down.
“Rio!” his father called. “Come see this!”
“Hurry up, Miles. I don’t want y’all leaving too late. You heard what your father said about those punks robbing kids.” His mother walked away from the door, zipping a “What is it?” to his father.
Miles listened for his mother’s retreat before dashing across the hall to his bedroom. He stuffed the mask into his backpack and grabbed his brush off the table so he could keep up with the whole hair-brushing story.
“Aight, I’m ready,” Miles said, entering the living room acting like he hadn’t been in the bathroom forever. Brush, brush, brush. The top goes forward, down on the left, down on the right, down in the back. In that order. His mother was standing beside the couch reading a piece of mail that she pressed to her chest once Miles walked in the room. Miles figured it was another bill—there was always another bill. If he asked about it, he would just trigger another lecture about how important it was that he do well in school. And after the last three days he’d had, he couldn’t take another one of those.
“All that brushing ain’t gon’ get it, son,” his father said, tapping Miles’s mother on the leg to snap her out of her trance. “Rio.”
Startled, she folded the letter, stuffed it back in the envelope, and handed it back to Miles’s father.
“Um…sorry,” she said, approaching Miles. She ran her palm along his head. “You need a haircut, papi.”
“This weekend when you come home, we’re going to the barbershop. Can’t have you out here woofin’,” his father teased.
Miles kept brushing his hair and brushed his parents off. “You ready?” he asked Ganke, who had gotten up from the couch and flung his backpack over his shoulder, a goofy grin spread across his face. Ganke always loved these moments with Miles and his family. More ammo for jokes.
“Yep. Take care, Mrs. M.” Ganke came in for a hug.
“Bye, Ganke. Keep him in line, please.”
“I always try, but the boy’s crazy.”
“Whatever, man,” Miles said, hugging his mother and kissing her on the cheek.
“Mr. Jeff.” Ganke reached out his hand. Miles’s father took it, squeezed it tight. Ganke’s face wrinkled with pain.
“Next Sunday we’re having an all-veggie dinner. You in?”
“You know it!” Ganke chimed.
Miles’s father looked at his mother, shook his head. “I tried, honey. But it didn’t work.” He laughed.
“Okay, okay, you boys be safe, please. Ganke, tell your mother I said hello. Miles, call us when you get there.”
“Of course.” He slipped his brush in his bag.
“Don’t forget, mijo.”
“I won’t.”
Once outside, Miles was about to ask Ganke how his weekend had gone, especially since he knew time at home had been weird for Ganke since his parents had split up. But Ganke had a way of sensing those kinds of awkward questions, so before Miles could get it out, Ganke countered with a doozy of his own.
“So there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you for, like, ever.” Ganke had just finished tying his shoes at the bottom of Miles’s stoop. Miles took the concern on the tip of his tongue and slipped it underneath it, like gum—to be saved for later. Miles knew Ganke was probably setting him up for some joke he’d been thinking about for the last thirty minutes. He was one of those friends you couldn’t leave alone with your parents because he would ask all kinds of ridiculous questions, digging for secret embarrassing things that your mother and father would see as cute. Stuff like Miles used to cry every Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Not because of what happened to Dr. King, but because the television and radio would play clips of his speeches and Miles always thought he sounded like a ghost. Or Miles had irritable bowel syndrome and crapped his pants until he was ten.
“What?” Miles groaned as they passed Ms. Shine’s house. He remembered the way that mattress smelled when he’d moved it out for her, the way it felt to have those mystery stains and globs of matted white cat hair brush against his cheek. Ugh.
“Aight, don’t get mad,” Ganke prepped Miles, “but…”
“Just say it.”
“Okay, so…your last name. It don’t really make sense to me.”
“What? Morales?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m half–Puerto Rican.”
Ganke stopped walking and twisted his face up at Miles, like Duh.
“So…”
“So, your mother’s name is Rio Morales, right?”
“Correct.”
“And your father’s name is Jefferson Davis.”
“Two for two.”
“So then why isn’t your name Miles Dav—” Ganke’s eyes widened. “Oh…snap. Miles Davis!” He stopped walking again, this time in front of Mr. Frankie’s house. Ganke folded himself in half, exploding into laughter. “Wait…wait!” He tried to catch his breath while Miles laser-stared him down. “Miles. I’m sorry. Wait…Miles Davis? I just…I never thought of that until just now.…Oh…man…hold on.…” The laughter tapered off. “Okay…woo. Okay…”
“You done?”
“I’m done. I’m so done. Sorry, man, it just caught me off guard.” They continued down the block.
“Anyway, that’s not even the reason,” Miles said. “But I’m glad you think that’s so funny.”
“So then, why?”
“Ganke, why you actin’ like you don’t know my mother? Better yet, why you actin’ like you don’t know my abuela?” Now Miles laughed. “Nah, seriously, I don’t know. I kind of think it’s something else.”
“Like what?”
Miles shrugged. “Back in the day, my pops and my uncle did enough dirt in their lives to make Davis a bad word in some circles. I look just like them both and live in the same neighborhood, so, I don’t know, I wonder.…”