Panther Baby by Jamal Joseph Page A

swinging and pushing back. I was right next to Yedwa doing my best to land a few haymakers and kicks. Th ere were no arrests and the cops didn’t follow us when we jogged out of the building. “You’re a crazy little nigger. You like to get down, don’t you?” Yedwa said as he dabbed blood from my nose with his bandanna.
    “Yeah,” I answered, trying to sound tough even though I was still shaken from the fight. From that moment on, he seemed to take a special interest in me.
    One night we were sitting in a Harlem greasy spoon known as a Jap joint. Greasy spoons are small restaurants where patrons can get large portions of greasy but delicious soul food for cheap prices. Jap joints got their nickname because they were staffed by Chinese cooks that Harlem residents incorrectly identified as Japanese. Th e trippy and fun part would be the black waiter or waitress at the counter who took your order in English and yelled it to the cooks in Chinese.
    Yedwa and I were well into a few jokes and big plates of ribs when two young thugs eased into the restaurant. Th ey took off their fedora hats, which they used to shield the pistols they pulled from their waistbands. One gun man jumped behind the counter and cleaned out the register. Th e other stood near me watching the patrons, his gun inches from my head. I jerked nervously and turned to run out the door. Yedwa grabbed my arm with a grip that was firm and calming. “Just keep eating your food, brother,” he ordered in a whisper. I mechanically shoved food in my mouth while the gunmen stuffed money into a paper bag and scooted out the door.
    After a minute, one of the Chinese cooks ran into the street yelling, “Police, police. He rob us.”
    Yedwa kept calmly eating like we were at a beachfront resort. “ Th at was real smooth,” he commented between bites. “Now those brothers need to go downtown to a bank where the money is.” Yedwa dabbed his goatee with a napkin and put five dollars on the counter to pay for our meals. “Let’s split before the pigs get here.” I followed Yedwa out, my body still electrified from the robbery, my mind blown at how cool Yedwa was. He was the father I never met, the big brother I never had.
    Th ere was a Che Guevara poster that hung in the front of the Panther office, with a quote from a speech that Che gave at the United Nations. “At the risk of sounding ridiculous, let me say that revolutionaries are guided by great feelings of love.” Wow, I thought as I read that. Th e “love” thing. Pastor Lloyd talked about it in Sunday school and at NAACP Youth Council meetings. Noonie talked about it at home. Dr. King talked about it in his speeches, but love in the Black Panther office? What was that about? “It’s about understanding that being a Panther is about serving the people, mind, body, and soul,” Afeni would teach in political education class. “If you’re here because you hate the oppressor and you don’t have a deep love for the people, then you are a flawed revolutionary.” Hearing these words made me feel less like I was doing Noonie wrong or letting down Pastor Lloyd or my favorite teachers at school.
    Being a Panther meant that I was being a real aggressive lover of freedom, and I took this part of the training to heart. “It’s love that makes a Panther get up at five a.m. on a freezing winter morning to travel across town to serve breakfast to kids that are not their own,” I would say in speeches at school and park rallies. “And it’s love that will make a Panther get off the bus on the way home and stand between a cop who has his gun drawn and the black person being arrested, someone he’s never met before.” So I learned to smile while I was being taught to cook pancakes, change diapers, and fix broken windows. I learned to be enthusiastic about asking for donations and giving away the food and clothing that we collected. I learned how to find the energy, even when I was dead tired, to help a