Black Boy Joy and Pain

by DeJuan Mason

There are some days when I feel like I’m on top of the world. Those are the days when I don’t miss a shot on the basketball court; eat my favorite food for dinner; and nobody gets on my nerves, not even my twin brother. On days like this I like to walk across the bridge where you can see the entire city. I hold my arms out and pretend the wind is going to lift me up and carry me away.

Today was one of those days. We got our report cards and I got all A’s. I was so happy, I couldn’t wait to get out of school and tell my mom, Ya-Ya and GiGi. Then I remembered that I couldn’t tell them because I was still on punishment and couldn’t use my phone. Not only that, I couldn’t use my iPad, either. I hadn’t been able to crush anybody in Fortnite for almost a whole week! I had to wait to get to school each day just to find out what was going on with my friends.  I know you’re wondering why such a handsome and talented young kid like me got on punishment; Well let me tell you. I was sitting in math class, finishing up my work. And because I’m a whiz kid, especially in math, I finished before everyone else. I asked the teacher if there was something else I could do and he acted like he didn’t hear me. So I got out of my seat and walked to his desk.  Do you know he started screaming at me?! Talking about, I didn’t have permission to leave my seat and I was being disruptive. I said, ‘If you had answered me when 

I was at my desk, I wouldn’t have come up here.” I guess that was the wrong thing to say because the next thing I knew my mom was on the phone asking me why I thought it was okay to be disrespectful to the teacher and disruptive in class. I tried to tell her my side of the story but she wasn’t having it. She said she was tired of my teachers emailing her and  calling her at work about my behavior and she would deal with me when we got home. Man, listen. My mom must be the punishment queen because she keeps coming up with new ways to punish us. It can be something as easy as writing a letter of apology to the person we offended or as boring as having to search the Bible for a scripture that describes our behavior and then another scripture that describes the kind of man we want to be. Finding the scripture isn’t so bad, because I do get to read the Bible and it has some good stories in it. It’s having to write the scriptures 50 or 100 times that makes it a punishment. Until last week, I thought the worst punishment she would ever give was when she took all our games away. We could only use our computers for homework.  But not to have a phone???  I can’t even FaceTime my brother. Or Ya-Ya or GiGi. which is sort of okay because all they would say is how disappointed they are in my behavior. They would remind me  that I had one job and that was to be the person Mommy was raising me to be and not someone who was disrespectful and disruptive.  

So now I have to wait until I get home to tell the people who love me that I really am doing what I’m supposed to in school. And the best part, my brother got all A’s, too!  He’s really good at math and science, like me. I like reading books more than he does. YaYa and GiGi used to buy us all kinds of books when we were younger. At first, making us read a chapter was part of our punishment. We had to read it then write about it. What they didn’t know, though, was that I liked reading those stories, all the adventures, the fighting, the blood - okay maybe the blood was just in my imagination, but the fighting scenes were great! Matteo, my twin, didn’t really like to read. He preferred watching the action on the screen.

“Mekhi, wait up!” Matteo was calling me.  We were on the bridge and I didn’t realize he had stopped to watch something below us.

“Come on, Tae!  Stop walking so slow!” I’m the older twin so I always get to be in charge on our adventures. Matteo doesn’t always agree with this arrangement, though.

“Khi!!!!  Waiiiiitttt!!!!!!”  He’s literally screaming at me now.

“Tae, what’s wrong?  Why are you yelling at me?”

“You know how we’re walking and having fun? And how we’re pretending we can fly when our arms are stretched out wide?”

“Come on, Tae. We need to get home before Mommy does.”

“I know but I need to tell you something.” Matteo was smiling at me the way he does when he’s got a secret, or he’s really mad and trying not to cry. He didn’t have anything to be mad about, I didn’t think, so he must know something that I don’t.

“What’s up?”

“I just want you to remember this moment,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because I just realized that while we’re rushing home to show Mommy our report cards, this is just the second quarter. When we wake up on Monday, we still have two quarters of school left.” His smile was gone.

And just like that, mine was, too.