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curfew, my aunt was sitting in the living room talking to a man she introduced as a detective.
    “You’re late again,” she bitched.
    “I know I had to stop off and…”
    “I am so sick of your excuses.” She’d cut me off. “Come here and sit down.”
    My aunt looked as if she’d been crying. The detective began to speak. According to him they’d apprehended Tank. This made me happy as I immediately thought of my return home. Then the detective went on to say that he’d been caught while fleeing the scene of another murder. As they’d suspected he might, Tank had come looking for me again. Of course I was nowhere around, but my mother was.

6
KHALIL
    A fter a while I got used to Tenille’s abuse. I actually came to not only expect it but almost enjoy it. She had begun to convince me that she was the only one in the house that loved me. It just so happened that the only attention that anyone paid me came in the middle of the night. Deep inside I knew it wasn’t right. It just didn’t feel natural. Oftentimes she hurt me by being so rough. Sitting on my face, nearly smothering me at times. “Boy you need to get stronger,” she’d say. “Give me fifty push-ups.”
    I did them every day until fifty became too easy, then I did a hundred. I did get stronger and angrier every day at my life, which proved to be a dangerous combination. I attended Powell Middle School on 129th Street, in the heart of Harlem. With my home life a wreck, I began to act out in school, bullying other kids and being insubordinate.
    This morning I hadn’t been feeling well and for no reason in particular, I decided to stick my foot out and trip a passerby as we headed to the cafeteria for an assembly. Some rapper-turned-activist by the name of Chuck D was coming by our school to give a speech to what they called the at-risk youth. I was quickly becoming one of them.
    When the student I’d tripped fell on his face and busted his bottom lip, the only thing I was going to be permitted to see was the principal’s office. I got there and it was overcrowded as usual. Being the last to enter, I wound up having to take a seat in the back with the nurse. After an hour of sitting, waiting to see the principal, I began rocking back and forth in my seat as I fought the all-too-familiar feeling.
    “Son, what’s your deal? Do you need to use the bathroom? You’ve been rocking in that chair for thirty minutes,” the nurse said.
    I ignored her and tried to stop rocking but started again a few minutes later. Again she started. “What is your problem?”
    Finally I spat, “I do have to go, but I don’t want to.”
    “Why not? Do you need privacy?” I assumed she meant to take a dump.
    “No,” I responded. “I just don’t want to. Lately every time I try to go it hurts.”
    “What do you mean it hurts?” She frowned and looked down the nose of her glasses at me.
    “It hurts like hell…I mean it feels like I’m shooting razor blades out of my hole.”
    Her face showed shock. She asked me my name first then she started with a bunch of questions.
    Have you been having sex? Are you sure? Your symptoms say such and such. If you have had sex, then it’s your partner’s fault. They have done this to you; they gave you a disease. If you don’t tell the truth I can’t help you. You should know that in some caseswhere venereal disease occurs that it’s possible to develop septicemia and die .
    None of it scared me until she said, “Khalil, that feeling you have it’s going to get worse and worse if you don’t tell the truth.”
    I put my head down and continued to fight the urge to urinate until I could bear it no longer. I went into the bathroom and braved the pain as indeed it was getting worse every time. I stood on my toes and grimaced as I was almost dizzy from the pain.
    I had begun to sweat from the ordeal. When I came out of the bathroom I sat back down and began to tell my story.
    Then she left the office for about three minutes