When I Was the Greatest Page 3

  “Ali,” my mother said warningly. Jazz looked at me, crunched on the ice in her mouth, and smiled, because she knew she had won without even saying anything back. But I really wasn’t trying to beat her.

  “Jazz, it’s like when you used to have a loose tooth, ready to come out. And I always had your brother come and pinch your arm. You’d be so concerned about Al pinching your arm that you would forget all about the fact that I was pulling a tooth out your mouth. And before you knew it, it was over.”

  “And I got a dollar,” Jazz bragged. “From you, the fake tooth fairy.”

  I laughed and shook my head.

  “The point is, Ricky will be so focused on what he’s doing with his hands, that he won’t worry about anything happening with his mouth. Understand?”

  “Yep. I think I get it,” Jazz said, turning to look out the window again. “Look at him down there, knitting. I can’t even believe it.” Then it hit her. “You know what I’m gonna start calling him? Needles. Yeah, Noodles and Needles”—she paused—“I like that.”

  2

  Okay, so about Needles. I won’t pretend he was a mastermind knitter or anything. I mean, he would just sit there on the stoop every day, in the middle of what had to have been the hottest summer ever, speaking in his soft way to all the neighbors walking by, freestyling, and knitting. But it’s not like he was making something. He was just knitting to be knitting. Every time he would make a stitch or two, his arm would jerk and the stitches would come loose. See, the syndrome sort of moved from his mouth to his hands, as long as he was holding those needles. So my mother was right, he wouldn’t blurt out crazy wild stuff as long as he was knitting, but his body would jerk instead. Every few minutes his arms would just shoot out in any direction. You never knew when it was coming, and you never knew in what direction they were going. But every time it happened, he would have to redo the whole knitting thing from the beginning. That would’ve made me crazy, but not Needles. He’d just start all over again like it was no big deal.

  But something was bugging me—it was bad enough Needles was sitting outside in the middle of the summer, in the hood, knitting, but what made it worse is that he was using purple yarn. Like . . . purple. How could my mother be so smart, and not even question what that might look like? Anyway, me and Noodles took care of it. The first chance we got, we went and found him some black yarn to mess with. Well, we didn’t exactly find it. We went and bought it, which by the way, was quite a situation.

  The first thing we had to figure out was where to get yarn from. It’s funny. When you don’t know nothing about something, you really don’t know where to even begin to find stuff that goes with the thing you don’t know nothing about.

  I threw out a few suggestions, like the hardware store, or the grocery store, but none of them were really making any sense. Then Noodles had a brainstorm.

  “I know where we can get some,” he said suddenly. We were walking up the block, headed toward Fulton Street. Fulton Street has all the shops, from wig joints to rib shacks. They even got a spot that sells TVs, Jamaican flags, leather jackets, and incense all in the same place. So we knew that if there was going to be a store that had yarn, it was going to be on Fulton Street.

  “We can go check the pet store,” Noodles said. He was pretty confident about this suggestion, but it made absolutely no sense to me.

  “The pet store? What you talking about?” I said.

  “Yeah, fool, the pet store. Ali—cats. They play with yarn.” He looked at me and bugged his eyes out. “Do they or do they not play with yarn?”

  “They do.”

  “Aight, then. Let’s do it.”

  The pet store was really only half a pet store. Not even that much. It was really a barbershop, and the dude who owned the shop, Brother, also sold animals and pet food and stuff like that. The only reason Noodles and I knew this is because Brother cut Noodles’s and Needles’s hair, and lined me up whenever I needed. Brother pretty much cut everybody’s hair in our neighborhood. He was mean with the clippers. He could even make a young dude like myself, with no beard, look like I got a little something.

  So we walked up to Fulton until we got to Brother’s. The sign on the door said WELCOME TO BROTHER’S BARBERSHOP, WHERE EVERYONE IS FAMILY. Inside, the place smelled like a zoo. Dogs and cats and little gerbils in cages. And then there were the barbers. Farthest from the door was Trini, an old man from Trinidad who we all thought might be a barber, even though he never cuts anyone’s hair. He also never says anything. I mean, nothing at all. He just cleans his clippers all day long. Next to him there was Cecil, who’s pretty much the guy who cuts the old heads. He does that razor shave stuff with the cream and the towels. All the old guys come in and go to him only because they think Brother is going to make them look too young. And then closest to the door was Brother. Brother is a pretty regular-looking guy with a crazy thick beard that’s always picked and combed perfectly. It kind of looks like he straps it on every morning. Brother always smells like oils and incense, and he’s always kicking black facts to everybody. And even though he is always ranting about politics, he’s still a cool dude, and everybody respects him because he has the cheapest cuts in town. Plus, he’s known for busting a head or two if your lip gets too loose on him.

  “Young brothers, young brothers, what’s good?” Brother said as we came through the door. There was a few other people in the shop hanging out, waiting for cuts.

  “Sup, Brother,” Noodles said, giving him a pound with his fist.

  “What’s good, Brother,” I followed up, playing cool as usual.

  “Same ol’ thing. Seeing red, being black, and making green, baby.” We didn’t know what that meant, but we never really knew what Brother was talking about when he said stuff like that. We just assumed it had something to do with being black.

  “What y’all into today?” he said while brushing hair off the neck of the man in the chair, who was knocked out, asleep.

  “Not too much, man, just trying to find some yarn,” Noodles said.

  Now, when he said it, I kind of froze up. I didn’t think he was just going to blurt it out in front of everyone, plain as day, like it was a regular thing for two young Bed-Stuy dudes to be doing, let alone doing together. Everybody looked at us. Trini even took his eyes off his clippers and looked over at us. Awkward.

  “Yarn?” Brother asked. “You mean like old-lady knitting yarn? What y’all young brothers doing, joining a nursing home?” Everyone started laughing because that’s pretty much what you do in the barbershop. You laugh at the barber who cracks jokes on the folks who come in. It’s the rule. Once this guy came in and said he was selling his R&B album. Brother told him that he couldn’t sell it in his shop unless he advertised it properly. Then he gave the poor guy a lecture on black business and how we need to do better, while Cecil gave him a history lesson on James Brown and Ray Charles. Next thing you know, that fool was doing a full-blown concert in the barbershop. Needless to say, everybody laughed. As a matter of fact, they laughed him out of there, but not before they bought a few of his albums, just to support.

  “Yeah, man, some yarn. But it ain’t for us,” Noodles said.

  “Of course not,” Brother replied. We could tell he was being funny. “So who is it for, then? Your grandma?”

  I could see Noodles start to get a little upset.

  “No, it’s for my brother,” he said. He balled up his fist and looked around the room. “Now what? Laugh!”

  Everyone was quiet.

  See, even though Noodles seemed to always give his brother a hard time, he wasn’t too cool about letting other people do the same thing. Like I said, he could slap Needles in the back of the head all day, but if Joe Blow from down the block did it, Noodles would flip his lid. And he was known for flipping out. I’ve seen him throw a whole pizza on the floor in the pizza place, just because they forgot to give his brother a soda.

  But that’s not why everyone was quiet in the barbershop. I mean, N
oodles had a big mouth, but he couldn’t take on those old heads. They would’ve mopped him quick. The reason they all got quiet is just because they respected Needles. They knew he had a syndrome, but they also knew he was a good kid. He didn’t bother no one or nothing like that. Plus they knew it wasn’t cool to laugh at nobody with a syndrome, because you know, anyone’s baby could be born with one, and if you laugh, you’re pretty much begging God to give your next kid something like that. At least that’s how I look at it, which is why I don’t laugh.

  “Easy, Noodles. No need to get upset.” Brother tried to calm Noodles down. Trini looked back down at his clippers. “Let me run to the back and see if I got anything.”

  The back was where Brother kept all his pet supplies. It was basically a closet full of cat, dog, hamster, and fish food, leashes, flea powders, and a few toys like bones and rubber fire hydrants that make squeaky noises. Brother was quite the businessman.

  “Sorry, young brothers”—Brother came from the back—“I got nothing.”

  “It’s cool, man,” I said, now speaking for Noodles, who was still cooling off. “Anybody know where we can get some?”

  “Atlantic and Court,” one older guy blurted out. “It’s called Knit Wit.” He paused and noticed all the other guys looking at him with a side eye. “Or something like that.”

  “And how exactly do you know this, Larry?” Brother was getting ready to go in on him.

  The older guy, Larry, started shifting positions in his seat like his butt was heating up. He looked like he wanted to run out of the shop when he said, “My wife, man. She makes me go sit in with her at these knitting classes.”

  The shop broke out in laughter again.

  “She makes you go? Yeah, right! You love it!”

  “You volunteer to go, don’t you?”

  “You make her go sit in with you!”

  “I want a Kwanzaa sweater with a pair of clippers on it. Got me?”

  And on and on. Noodles and I left Larry to be eaten by the wolves and headed to Atlantic Ave. We figured we could just jump on whatever bus was coming and ride it down to Court Street. While walking toward the bus stop, Noodles had another bright idea.

  “Aight, so how about when we get to the store, we just take some yarn, man. I mean, ain’t no point in buying something so stupid,” he said. I pretty much expected him to say this, but I knew it had nothing to do with yarn and was really all about him not having money to buy it. He would never just come out and say it.

  “Yo, man, do you not know Doris? She would kill me!”

  The bus was coming. Noodles didn’t say nothing else about it, but I could tell it was still on his mind.

  On the way to Court Street, Noodles just looked out the window and chewed on his fingernails. He spit the nails on the bus floor. A boy toward the back of the bus had music playing from his phone. The girl next to me was arguing with someone on hers. A baby was screaming in the front of the bus. Everyone was fanning themselves and wiping sweat, frustrated, trapped on the bus from hell.

  Everyone except Noodles. He just sat there gazing out the window. He didn’t roll his eyes or make some smart remark in typical Noodles fashion. He just stared and bit his nails. It was like he was out in space somewhere. When the bus finally got to Court Street, and I stood up to get off, Noodles didn’t move. I had to call his name to snap him out of it.

  “Man, I was gone. My bad,” he said, his raspy voice even raspier, like he had just woke up. “We here?”

  “Yeah, we here.”

  Noodles drifted off all the time. He never said what he was thinking about, and I never asked him because part of me was scared of what he’d say. He’s the type of dude who could be daydreaming about anything, from doing something crazy like sticking up a place, or something cool, like making sure his brother’s taken care of. Or, like in this case, both.

  Court Street was like a whole other world than what we were used to. I had been there once or twice with my mom but never on my own. It’s interesting how when you live in Brooklyn, you typically just stay in your own hood, unless you’re going into Manhattan. But I know a lot of Brooklyn dudes my age who ain’t never even been across the bridge. It’s just one of those things.

  There were shops everywhere, and I looked around for the knitting store while Noodles looked around for girls.

  “Hey, Miss Yellow Shirt, I like them legs,” he said. Then, when Miss Yellow Shirt looked at him sideways, he said, “You ain’t even that pretty.” Then he turned to me and said, “Yo, ain’t no black chicks down here?”

  To tell the truth, I was feeling kinda nervous about being in that neighborhood, and was more wanting to find the store than try to bag girls. After checking all four corners at Atlantic and Court Street, I finally had to break down and ask someone where the store was. I scanned the people waiting on the corner for the light to change when I saw an older woman who had that knitter look to her. And I was right.

  “Excuse me, Miss, but do you know where a knitting store is around here?” I asked as politely as possible.

  “Oh, Knit Wit, it’s right over there. In the middle of the block,” the older woman said. She pointed and smiled, and I just smiled back, a little embarrassed.

  “Not for us,” Noodles chimed in. “For my brother.”

  We walked down Court until we got to a door with a wooden sign with KNIT WIT painted on it. The words looked like yarn, which was kind of cool and kind of corny at the same time. It was obvious this was a place for old ladies.

  The door opened, and we were greeted by a cat. That’s not weird for stores in New York, but it just didn’t seem like a good idea to have a cat hanging out in a yarn store. One bad day, and that cat could go bananas and shred the whole place. The fluffy kitty rubbed up against Noodles’s leg, and Noodles halfway kicked it. He screwed up his face to purposely make himself look tough, like we had come to rob the place. But we didn’t. At least I didn’t. Just came to get some yarn. Black boys, looking for black yarn. That’s it.

  “Hello, boys,” the lady at the register said. She didn’t really have that knitter look the old lady who I spoke to outside had, but then again, neither does my mother. She had on a T-shirt and a pair of jeans with a hole in the knee. She also wore those hippie sandals that white people wear. My mother calls them Jesus sandals. Jazz calls them water walkers.

  “Hello, how you doing?” I asked, trying to be mature and comfortable.

  “I’m well, thank you. And yourself?”

  I like when people say “well” instead of “good.” Always sounds smarter. But I usually say “good.” It just feels better coming out.

  “Good, good,” I said. I could feel things about to get awkward.

  “So . . . what brings you in?”

  “Our feet,” Noodles said, just loud enough for her to hear. I nudged him.

  “Oh, nothing much. Just looking for yarn,” I said.

  Hippie girl smiled.

  “Of course you are.” She held her arms out like she was saying, Duh, there’s yarn everywhere, dummy. It’s a yarn store.

  “Yeah, but specifically, black yarn,” I explained.

  “You know what weight?”

  “We’ll just look around,” Noodles snapped. It came off pretty rude.

  I forced an uncomfortable grin as we turned away and started walking toward the black yarn. The store was organized by color, so it was easy to see exactly where we needed to be.

  “Why you being so mean, man? Lady was just doing her job,” I asked Noodles while squeezing different yarns like they were cantaloupes in the grocery store. I didn’t even know yarn had so many different feels. Weird.

  “Man, who cares about her? Just trying to cuff one and bounce,” Noodles said. “But we gotta get the right kind for Needles.”

  Again, I didn’t say anything. I thought it was funny how even though he didn’t want to be in the store looking for yarn because he didn’t want nobody thinking he was soft, he still wanted to make sure he didn’t j
ust get any yarn, but the best yarn for his brother. And I could get with that. That’s how I am with Jazz. She drives me nuts sometimes, but she’s still my sister.

  I watched as Noodles sized up the yarns to see which black was the best black for Needles. I saw him getting ready to make his move, so I stepped over to another part of the store, just in case hippie girl was watching.

  Toward the back of the store there was a bunch of ladies gathered around a table. They were all knitting and talking and snacking on popcorn. Popcorn is my favorite. There was a piece of paper folded in half, the short way. It was propped up like a tent in the middle of the table. On it said THE CIRCLE. I didn’t know there was such a thing. A knitting circle. I wondered if they were just a group of random women or if they were some sort of crew, like a sorority or something. Anyway, whatever they were, I figured they were just a bunch of ladies talking about lady stuff and knitting. But when I got closer, I overheard them talking about how someone named Susan got wasted the night before and that’s why she wasn’t there. I noticed an empty chair. Susan’s. They laughed and went on about her and who she got with, and how much she drank, but they were talking about it like . . . us. Like dudes. It was cool.

  “Excuse me, young man,” a deep voice said from behind me.

  I stepped out of the way of one of the biggest men I’ve ever seen. He sat down in Susan’s spot. He had a beard and didn’t look like no punk. Just a regular guy. He set his bag on the table. All the ladies were so happy to see him, laughing and blowing him kisses across the table. This guy clearly was the man.

  I wanted to stick around to see if he was going to do what I thought he was going to do: pull out some yarn and start knitting like a girl, in which case I would’ve thought he had killer game, and gets all kinds of women because he can knit. Girls like stuff like that. At least I guess they do. But I never got to see what the big guy was going to do, because as soon as he started digging in his bag, I felt a tug on my shoulder.