Green

  Green is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by Sam Graham-Felsen

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  RANDOM HOUSE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Graham-Felsen, Sam, author.

  Title: Green : a novel / Sam Graham-Felsen.

  Description: New York : Random House, [2018]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016051028 | ISBN 9780399591143 | ISBN 9780399591150 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Interracial friendship—Massachusetts—Boston—Fiction. | Boston (Mass.)—History—20th century—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3607.R34765 G74 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2016051028

  Ebook ISBN 9780399591150

  randomhousebooks.com

  Cover design: Rodrigo Corral Art & Design/June Park

  v5.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1: Machine

  Chapter 2: Shook

  Chapter 3: Paper

  Chapter 4: Penned

  Chapter 5: Tactics

  Chapter 6: Tested

  Chapter 7: Saved

  Chapter 8: Players

  Chapter 9: Ghetto

  Chapter 10: Drama

  Chapter 11: Blood

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Why, you could cause us the greatest humiliation simply by confronting us with something we liked.

  —Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

  I think everyone should have the kind of life I’ve had, going from one extreme to the other.

  —Larry Bird, Drive

    CHAPTER 1

  Machine

  I am the white boy at the Martin Luther King Middle. Well, one of two. Kev, my best friend and the biggest dick I know, is the other. But if you had to pick just one, it’d be me.

  There is a public middle school in Boston that white kids actually go to—the Timilty—but me and Kev lost the lotto to get in there. I begged my parents to put me in a private school instead of the King, but they wouldn’t budge. They “believe in public schools,” even when they’re mad ghetto.

  The first day of school starts in an hour. If I had a best outfit, I’d be rocking it, but my closet’s a disaster of secondhand pants, free tees, and sale-bin sneakers. Kev has an arsenal of stonewashed jeans and silk button-downs. He cops a fresh pair of kicks every couple months and he’s debuting some Air Force 1s today. I’ll be carrying a toothbrush and a travel shampoo in my pocket so I can scrub spots off my year-old Filas.

  Pops is in his pepped-out morning mode. He harmonizes with the folk music blasting from the stereo as he makes me a sandwich consisting of my least favorite cheese (Swiss) and last-ranked veggie (sprouts). He fishes my insulated L.L.Bean bag out of the cupboard. It’s got the initials of my extra-white name, David Alexander Greenfeld, stitched into it.

  “I told you I’m done with the DAG bag,” I say.

  “How else are you gonna keep the ice pack frozen?” he says.

  “Forget the ice pack,” I say.

  “You want warm yogurt? Do it your way.”

  I repack my lunch in a brown paper shopping bag, throw some extra gel on the dome, and grab my Walkman. Everyone follows me to the porch. Ma kisses me on my head, my little brother, Benno, shoots me a peace sign, Pops squeezes my shoulder and holds up his hand. I five him reluctantly. Then I head down the steps, turn left, and walk slowly, waiting for them to go back inside. When they do, I’ll turn around and take the scenic route.

  The thing about my house is that it’s on top of a hill. At one end of the hill, there’s a park—probably the nicest in the city—called the Arboretum. It’s huge, manicured, owned and operated by Harvard U. Pops says it has one of the biggest collections of tree species in the world. You can see the Arbs from my attic—endless green, spilling into the horizon. But from the opposite side of my attic, you’ll see steam rising off the tops of dark towers. Those are the projects at the other end of my block, the Robert Gould Shaw Homes. Even though it takes me twice as long to get from my crib to Centre Street, where all the stores—and my bus stop—are, I’ve been looping past the Arbs all summer to avoid the back of the Shaw Homes. I’d take the direct route, but practically every time I walk past the PJs these days, someone stutter-stomps toward me, shouts, “Fuck you lookin’ at, white boy?” and I end up jetting all the way back home. My first day at the King’s gonna be bad enough. I’m not trying to get jacked before I even make it to school.

  I wave bye once more and my parents finally close the door. Then I backtrack toward the Arbs. Minutes later I’m strolling under the shade of maples, listening to Geto Boys.

  —

  MY BUS STOP is in front of a bodega, right across the street from the main entrance of the Shaw Homes. There’s another dude waiting there, a black kid about my size. Thankfully he looks pretty soft: creased khakis, pilled-up flannel, boxy black shoes, and a short, unkempt flattop, more like a clumpy cloud. His chipped leather backpack is way too full for the first day of school. I tilt my head to get a better look at the magazine he’s flipping through and see it’s the Boston Celtics 1992–93 Preseason Report, a newsstand special I’ve been meaning to buy myself. I’m a little surprised he’s reading it in public, because no one openly admits they feel the Celtics anymore. He catches me clocking him and doesn’t look happy. I brace myself for a fuck-you-lookin’-at.

  Instead, he raises his chin and says, “King?”

  I nod and he turns back to the C’s mag. A few minutes later, the bus comes and he gets on with me.

  I head for the most prestigious real estate: the back of the bus. By the end of elementary school, I was rocking the rear pretty regularly, and I want to kick things off proper at the King. There’s a seat next to a hulk in a smock-sized X hoodie, who’s resting his head on the window. Dude looks voting age. My guess is he’s been to the Barron Center—where they make brawlers go before they get kept back—at least once. Still, it’s the only opening near the back, and I’ve come too far. I start toward the seat. He opens his eyes, stares out the window, and yawns, “Nah.”

  I smile and start to sit, like I’m in on a joke with him. He stiff-arms me in the chest and repeats, “Nah.”

  “My b,” I say. “You saving it for someone?”

  He closes his eyes again and says, all matter-of-fact, “Get your ass to the front of the got-damn bus.”

  I head back up the aisle toward the bench right behind the driver. Kev’s already up there, shaking his head. I read Nintendo Power over his shoulder, while the usual bus ruck—pencil fights, seat hurdling, dropkicks—breaks out behind us. At one point our driver, a fat, crinkle-haired white lady with a wack neon windbreaker, pulls over, turns off the gas, and shouts, “Stawp it—all a yuz!”

  “Stawwwwp it,” someone squawks back.

  “ ’Scuse me?” says the driver.

  “Shut up and drive,” snaps another voice from the rear.

  The driver turns to me and Kev—like all white people are a team or something—and we bury our faces in the Nintendo Power. She turns back around, sighs, and starts the engine.

  —

  WE WALK THROUGH the front doors and I take a whiff of familiar funk. The King smells ju
st like elementary did: a sour blend of mop juice and soft beans in murky water. A cane-carrying black dude in a brown corduroy blazer shakes everyone’s hands as we file past him. He greets the seventh and eighth graders formally, by last name, and he even pronounces the Spanish ones with decent rolling r’s. To the sixth graders, he says, “Welcome to the King. I’m your principal, Dr. Jackson. And you are?”

  “Dave,” I say.

  “Oh yes. David…give me a second…Mr. Greenfeld?” he says, enunciating the shit out of my last name. “Had a nice chat with your parents last year at the open house. You ever need anything—anything—you come see me now, okay?”

  I nod, eyeing the student-painted mural on the wall behind him. It’s supposed to be Martin Luther King standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, but the way they drew him—wide-open mouth, bugged-out eyes, stiff raised arms—makes it look like he’s trying to step to someone instead of uniting the races. The quote bubble bursting from his mouth says, “What’s YOUR dream?”

  —

  “LET’S MAKE SURE you’re all in the right place,” our homeroom teacher, Ms. Ansley, a small black lady with a helmet of dark, dyed reddish hair, says. She calls attendance, hands us star-speckled nameplates, and assigns us to our seats. To my right is Carmen Garcia. She has big pink glasses and shiny black hair, and she’s wearing a flowery dress with ruffled shoulders. The outfit makes her look like a substitute teacher, but beneath all that she’s kind of cute. To my left is Kaleem Gunderson, a tall, light-skinned kid with faint freckles and a high-top fade. He’s got the phattest gear of anyone in the class: a Chicago Bulls tracksuit, matching red Jordans, and a thick gold chain with a roaring-lion piece. For once I’m happy about my last name; I’m gonna be sitting next to this don all year.

  “Why I gotta be next to the white boy?” he grumbles to himself.

  The white boy—see? Kev’s in our class, too, but he’s half-Armenian. He has spiky black hair and lip scruff and sometimes people mistake him for Puerto Rican. I have curly blond hair, pink cheeks, and pale blue eyes. No one mistakes me for shit.

  Ms. Ansley walks to the chalkboard and slowly writes the word why.

  “My favorite word in the world. A three-letter word—a three-letter question! Why. Why? Why!”

  The class stares, confused. I assume this is some kind of motivational speech. When you come up in the public schools, all you ever get is motivationally spoken to. Our classroom is covered with the same inspiring posters we had in elementary, too. One of them shows a hyped-up white kid ski-jumping off a mountain of books. Another says, AMBITION: IT’S CONTAGIOUS!

  “Why are we here?” she finally says. “Let’s see some hands. No right or wrong answers to this one.”

  “We got no choice,” says Kaleem.

  Ms. Ansley smiles and says, “True enough.”

  “So we can get our diplomas,” a girl behind me says.

  “All right,” says Ms. Ansley. “Anyone else?”

  The kid from our bus stop, the one with the C’s mag, raises his hand. I glance at his nameplate. MARLON WELLINGS.

  “To learn?”

  Kaleem snorts into his fist.

  “Okay, Marlon, and why learn?”

  “To get smarter.”

  “Why?” she says.

  “So we can, like, choose better?”

  “Why’s that important?” she asks, her grin getting bigger.

  Marlon pauses. His big eyes roll upward in thought.

  “So we don’t get tricked as easy?”

  “See, now we’re onto something. That’s a good answer, especially with the election coming up. Took some whying, but we got somewhere. Whying. That means playing your own devil’s advocates. Not just thinking, On the other hand, but On the other other hand, too. The good stuff, the worthwhile thinking, usually doesn’t come till at least the third round, the third why. My number one goal is to get you to start whying on your own. My number two goal is to get you out of here.”

  She starts passing out fat test prep books.

  “You’re my advanced class, and as far as I’m concerned each and every one of you should be aiming for Latin. Don’t think I don’t love you all, but I prefer not to see your pretty faces in these halls come seventh grade. Unless, of course, you want to come back and visit and tell everyone how you’re doing at Latin.”

  Boston Latin is the best public high school in the city—by far. You have to take a three-hour test to get in. I suck at those bubble sheets. I look over at Kev, who’s resting his elbows on his test prep book. I know he won’t ever bother to crack it. Kev is a standardized test genius. Marlon’s already got his book open, running a finger along the text.

  “I know you all hate these kinds of tests, but I’m telling you, the more you practice, the more you’re gonna learn the tricks—or, rather, how not to get tricked. Kids from all over the city—private-school kids, too—are going to be scrambling for spots, and you don’t wanna lose out because you were too lazy to take the practice tests. I want you to start studying tonight, okay? Because if you get into Latin, you’re going to college, guaranteed. And let me tell you something else. You might even get into Harvard.”

  Marlon grins and I notice he has a gap in his front teeth like I do.

  —

  WE BREAK FOR lunch and the sound of new soles hitting fresh wax fills the cafeteria. Hundreds of hundred-dollar-plus pairs, all announcing themselves. Look at my Pump-infused tongue. Suck on this bright, popping Swoosh, they say to my sad, scuffed Filas.

  I follow Kev to the lunch line. Neither of us qualify for a free lunch card, but Kev gets enough of an allowance to pay cash when he spots something good. There’s a sign on the sneeze guard that reads, PROUDLY SEASONING WITH TACO BELL SPICES. The tacos look like they’re made with government meat, mystery cheese, and too-sour cream. But still: Taco Bell seasoning. To Kev, this is no big deal. He slams fast food on the reg and his pantry’s packed with Gushers and Fluff. I’ve never been to Taco Bell, barely set foot in a BK. My crib is world famous for its wack snacks. Pops grows most of our food.

  “Awesome.”

  The second I say it, I realize how bad it’s gonna be. Awesome is a Caucasian catastrophe, a word I haven’t uttered in years.

  “Awesome!” Kaleem immediately mimics from behind me in line.

  My parents—this is on them. Awesome’s what happens to a dreamer deprived.

  Another kid piles on, giving me two thumbs up. “Awesome,” he says in a surfer twang, “duuuuude.”

  Kev was hoping to sit with Kaleem. Now that he’s white-by-association, he has no choice but to follow behind me. The only open seats we can find are next to the one kid who’s lower on the pole than us: the Asian. He’s reading Nintendo Power. At least we have that to discuss.

  —

  I GET A-WORDED by a half-dozen kids on my way out of the building. And on the bus home a Puerto Rican dude named Angel, whose skin is even paler than mine, comes up to my seat at the very front of the bus, aka the White Bitch Bench, and says, “Gimme five, gringo!”

  I turn the other way. High fives are some hiked-up-shorts Hoosiers shit, the physical equivalent of awesome. There’s no chance I’m getting lured into his trap.

  “Fuck’s wrong wit’ you, gringo?” he says, no longer smiling.

  I decide to meet the five as clownishly as possible, hoping everyone on the bus will laugh with me. I do a sort of rag doll flail and my fingertips graze the bottom of his palm. Angel grips my shoulders, leans right into my face, and shoots hot breath into my glasses. My lenses take a second to defog and he’s still inches away.

  “You best do it right this time,” he says. He has the unreasonable eyes of a maniac, so I meet his five. I mouth along as he screams, “Awesome!” His audience erupts.

  When I get to my stop, Kev won’t even give me goodbye dap. Marlon and I hop off the bus, and as I’m walking away he calls out to me.

  “I’ve seen you before,” he says.

  I don’t know what he’s
talking about; I’ve never seen him before today. He definitely didn’t go to the Trotter.

  “In that, um, vegetable garden,” he says. “A bunch of times, with your family.”

  “I don’t think I’ve seen you down there,” I say.

  “Seen you from up there,” he says, pointing to one of the PJ towers.

  He stands there silently, and I can’t tell if he’s waiting for me to respond, or if he’s gonna start capping on my little brother, or what.

  “Aight,” he says, swinging his huge bag onto his shoulder. “Peace.”

  He crosses the street and walks through the blue doors of the Shaw Homes, and I head toward the Arbs.

  —

  A FEW YEARS back, Pops helped start a community garden in a lot behind the PJs. It used to be a dried-out field of chip bags and scratchies; now it’s packed with worm-filled soil and neat green rows of vegetables. Most of the gardeners are hippies like my parents, but people from the PJs use it, too, like Fernando, this old Dominican guy who’s always tending to his tomatoes, and the Xaviers, a Haitian couple who grow huge sunflowers. Once the garden got going, homeless people started coming through at night. They snatched so much food that the garden association voted to put up a fence with a combo lock. Pops felt bad, so he built a wood bin outside the fence, and whenever he goes down there he leaves a load of ripe veggies on his way out.

  During harvest season, every night before dinner, Pops makes us roll to the garden as a family. I always try to beg out. It’s not because the garden’s behind the PJs—I’m not scared of getting jacked while I’m with my fam. I just don’t like to be seen with the whitey brigade. Tonight, Pops is in his usual socks and Birkenstocks, and his safari vest pockets are stuffed with garden tools. Ma’s wearing these bright Nepali parachute pants she got at the street fair. My rattailed little brother is skidding ahead in his neon-pink Rollerblades. Benno is—how do I put this?—a freak show. He’s always been one of those kids who has to be the odd thing out. Like, he decided he wanted to play America’s whitest sport, street hockey, when everyone else plays basketball, and then he decided he had to be goalie, the one position that requires tons of extra equipment. A couple weeks after my parents bought him all the pads, he quit sports altogether and decided he wanted to be a street performer, so my parents copped him a unicycle. Now he’s into figure blading.