Hold Love Strong by Matthew Aaron Goodman Page B

feared what we’d find, brothers and sisters desperate for a place to sit, be warm, hide. Someone might be urinating or getting high or crying or a young couple might be ravishing each other, sucking and licking and humping with the hope to lift and carry the other away. Someone might be waiting to rob the first person coming down the stairs. They might have a knife or a gun. They might be reckless, distressed. Too many horror stories came out of the stairwell. Too many sisters were raped or almost raped. Too many brothers got jumped, beaten with pipes and bricks, cut with box cutters, stabbed with screwdrivers.
    Nice put his hand on the door, pushed it, and walked into the blackness of the stairwell. I followed and paid close attention to the sounds around us, listened more desperately than intently for clues and reasons to stop walking, run back, save Nice and me from bearing witness or, worse, being victimized. I wasn’t a fighter, but I’d fight if I had to, if I was forced to by circumstances and threats against those I loved. I descended with my fists clenched. I squinted into the blackness as if narrowing my eyes would help me see. Luckily, there was nothing. No sound; no one. In fact, the only noise came from our footsteps, sticking to something like syrup on the steps between the second and third floor.
    â€œA,” Nice said, somehow sounding calm, his voice echoing through the stairwell. “Who were you gonna be tonight?”
    The application of fantasy was how Nice survived, how he taught himself to play basketball and how, through watching and listening to him, I learned to play basketball as well. I couldn’t just be Abraham Singleton. I wasn’t enough. I was in Ever. I had to imagine myself as someone or something else for flight. So sometimes I was Michael Jordan. Sometimes I was Magic Johnson. I imagined I was the greatest, the strongest, the fastest, the highest leaper, the most courageous and clutch, and because I never made mention of it, because I never shared the notion with anyone, there was no one who could tell me no or prove that who I imagined was not who I was. So every time I played I chosea player and made the moves he made. I scowled like them, swaggered. But that night, that game, my first championship and chance to win a trophy, I’d planned something else. I’d decided to be the one champion, the one MVP, I knew.
    â€œI was gonna do ’em like you,” I said.
    â€œMe?” Nice laughed. “What you gonna waste your time being me for?”
    I thought for a moment, then said: “Cause you got all them trophies.”
    We made it to the bottom of the stairs. Nice pushed the door open. We crossed the dim, industrial green of the building lobby. We stopped at the entrance of our building, at the heavy steel door with the slim rectangular window fortified with chicken wire in its glass. We stared outside. All of the snow extinguished Ever, the bustling, ramshackle world we knew.
    â€œSo Goines was outside?” Nice asked.
    â€œHe was boxing,” I said. “Punching the snow.”
    â€œMaybe one day Ma will give him a chance, you know,” he said. He laughed a quick breath, then became serious. “Listen,” he said. “Don’t be me. Don’t be no one but you. You understand?”
    Nice pushed open the door and I followed him into the whiteness. I didn’t understand. Why not be him? Wasn’t he the greatest, a hero? If not be like him, then be like who? Be you, he said. What did that mean? Who was I? What could Abraham Singleton do?
    The wind whipped snow against me and ripped my face left and right. I tucked my chin to my chest and kept my eyes on the back of Nice’s legs. The snow was two feet deep. I pumped my arms and lifted my knees just to trudge through it. We crossed the snow-covered concrete courtyard, the parking lot, and the sidewalk. Then, when we reached Columbus Avenue, we made a left and