“She can’t turn!” Stacia said, the ropes looped around her shoulders and torso as if she were a lassoed criminal. “You can get that over,” I said. She freed herself, then tried it again. The real trouble started when Tonya got off the end and jumped into the rope without any problems. She knew how to crisscross and all-around. She made it through the song about George Washington, then the alphabet. When we got to numbers, Stacia couldn’t take it anymore. The rope stopped, and Tonya got whacked across her arm. Her hand flew up to the spot, and she cringed. Maybe if Stacia’s face looked concerned, even a little, I would’ve believed that it was an accident, but she smiled and sang, “Your turn, Fee!”

“No it ain’t. She get that over,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because you messed up her turn.”

My friendship with Stacia was always exhausting, but the day that Tonya joined us, I worked overtime trying to keep the peace.

When Precious stepped in to help, saying, “Let’s play Down Down Baby!” that defused the tension, and I was grateful that Precious was there. We rushed together and danced and sang. After each cheer, somebody would yell out, “Rockin’ Robin,” or “Slide,” and we got in position and sang and danced. Tonya already knew the words.

So, for a few hours, we had fun, without any more drama. Jumping rope and playing these hand games were our only real distraction from the ongoing demolition of the neighborhood, and as much as we could bury our heads in this joy, we did.

The four of us sang these same songs and played these same games even though we grew up in three different buildings. While our high-rises looked the same, how they were run, the people that lived in them, even the varying levels of structural damage—some had endured fires or were marked by different graffiti—distinguished them.

Stacia’s family had to relocate from 4848 at the beginning of that school year because the buildings on her block were coming down, and Tonya moved into our building from 4946—which was one of the other two buildings on my block—because her old building was being demolished that summer.

All three of our buildings could’ve been three different countries, where people spoke their own slang, with unique customs, led by whichever gang ruled them. But since our families had all migrated from small towns in Mississippi, bringing the same superstitions, games, and cheers with them on those Illinois Central trains, we had these common things in our DNA; that’s what glued us together for a time.

Two
In War