“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. The faggot-ass muthafucka didn’t even know how to do it right. If that had a been me I would a kicked that muthafucka to death. He wouldn’t a stabbed me!”

“Aw, punk. You wouldn’t a done nothin but ran to your mama. You ain’t nothin. You let a white boy whip your ass.”

“Oh, yeah?” he said. Bringing his forearms in against his sides, he went into a squat, raised his bent right leg into a jackknife, and snapped his foot straight into the side of the other boy’s head.

“EEEEYOWWWW!” The boy ran screaming to the curb and from the debris picked up a drained wine bottle that he broke against a fire hydrant. The shatter of the bottle moved the heat of attention from Otis to the spectacle of the two boys. The boy who had done the kicking stood his ground while the other boy advanced on him with the broken bottle. Suddenly, involuntary muscles activating me thrust me between the two boys.

“Gimme that bottle!” I yelled, reaching for his arm. Fear and surprise detonated in his face. He swung at my hand. I snatched it back to see a stream of blood flooding between my fingers. He jabbed at me again with the bottle. I jerked away too late. But before the pain spoke from the place where I was cut, I replayed in slow motion the broken bottle pushing into my side, the give and take, and finally feeling the raggedy mouth of the wine bottle cut into me. I ran, my head thrown back, my throat gargling the screams from the street and the sirens in the distance.

I RAN INTO A FIRE HYDRANT. Dizziness from my eyes formed a cartoon blurb above my head, filling up with diacritical marks and exclamation points.

“You ain’t nuthin,” someone said. There was a man leaning against a pole of a bus stop sign shaking his head. “You couldn’t even take a bottle away from a kid. You ain’t nuthin but a silly-assed little mama’s boy.”

A boy resembling me ran into a building. I followed him and knocked on a door to one of the rooms.

“Just a minute, Melvin, I’m dressing.”

“Mama, how come I can’t watch you when you dressing?”

“It’s not polite for a little boy your age to watch his mother when she’s not dressed.”

“But you see me when I’m not dressed.”

“That’s different, Melvin. I’m your mother. I brought you into the world.”

“Mama, when you brought me into the world was you dressed then?”

“No, Melvin, I wasn’t.”

“Mama, could you bring me into the world again so I could see you when you ain’t dressed?”

“Come on in here, Melvin, and zipper me up!”

The room was engulfed by thick grass, twigs, and high weeds. A wind bent the weeds into bows, and in the opening between, was an elderly woman wearing coveralls, white tennis sneakers, and a Brooklyn Dodger baseball cap. It was Mrs. Cotton and she was looking intently at a small patch of earth cordoned off by pegs and string.