Brother and the Dancer. Keenan Norris

which made him feel good and bad at the same time. But he also knew that however he felt about black people, San Bernardino was a Mexican town. Most of the gangs were probably Mexican gangs, not black gangs. How effective, then, could a forum organized to stop violence be without a single Mexican?

      A man the color of parchment paper and dressed in dashiki and sombrero began talking loudly about just that problem: “This party is supposed to be a chance for reconciliation, redemption.” The man was strutting through the massing crowd talking to no one in particular, everyone in general. “The black gangs need to make peace with regular folk. Regular folk need to make peace with the gangs. The po-lice need to make peace with the folk and the gangs. Brown folk need to unify with black folk. The po-lice need to unify with all the peace loving people here. But they ain’t here! The Mexicans ain’t here! The po-lice may be here, but they ain’t showin they faces! We can’t have true reconciliation without all parties present.”

      Touissant watched the insular cliques of gang members and young women and middle-aged women and elderly women. They began talking louder, doing their best to ignore the man. Obviously he was not held in high regard in the neighborhood. Touissant looked back to the flyer: former USC All-American, NFL defensive back and San Bernardino native Vincent Deveraux had organized the event. Below the title of the forum, its date, time and location, the athlete’s figure loomed imposingly upon the laminated card. He was dressed in a business suit, not a mess of contradictory ethnic clothing. His face was drawn and stern. Touissant overheard a few girls whispering about the NFL player, wondering when he would appear, what he would look like in person, if his girlfriend would be present. The athlete was the kind of man people responded to. He had respect, unlike the man in the sombrero. Touissant hoped Deveraux would take the stage soon and get things started.

      The night was desert cool, desert dry and windy, and most of the girls were wearing jeans or conservative dresses. The jeans, hugged tight to their legs and asses, were more revealing than the dresses. Some girls were plain-looking, others very pretty. One by one, he watched as the prettiest of the girls brushed past him and into the vicinity of the older guys, the gang members and the unaffiliated brothers. Being attractive, he quickly realized, was no prerequisite for a girl to ignore him. There were no prerequisites. Everybody ignored him. Even one very tall, very gawky girl about the same age as him, with a jutting emaciated collarbone and eyes that looked too big for her skull, walked past and gave Touissant a disdainful once-over with her insect eyes. He watched her go stand with a group of other loud and unattractive girls: at least all the ugly ones stay in one place, he thought to himself.

      Touissant had come to the neighborhood forum to learn about the violence so close yet so far away from where he lived. But he had also come to meet people, especially girls. The grasshopper-faced girl looking at him like he was the ugly one was not a good sign when it came to meeting girls. He spent a minute telling himself that it was the absence of any but black girls that was holding him back. He told himself that he didn’t know how to relate to black girls, at least not these ghetto black girls.

      Then he noticed a pretty honey-colored girl: she was standing alone just like Touissant was. She had big eyes too, but they were different somehow. Big soft doe’s eyes. Those eyes mooned off into the distance, probably wishing after something she couldn’t have or had yet to find. Touissant wanted to go and talk to her. But then he thought about all the things that could go wrong; a leave-me-alone look, a put-down, a jealous gang member boyfriend dismembering Touissant in public. He didn’t get up and go over to her. His fear and pride were invisible hands holding him in place.

      After a while a butter-faced Black-Filipino kid came and sat next to him on the bench. The kid was two or three years older than Touissant, but he seemed just as ignored. “Sucks we can’t smoke out here,” the kid offered. “I got a dime ’a weed but cain’t share it with nobody. Cain’t smoke it in Seccombe my own self.”

      Touissant was confused. He didn’t know what marijuana and dimes had to do with each other. “Huh?”

      “Undercovers. You know what I’m sayin. The NFL nigga who put this on has undercover po-lice all around this bitch.”

      “Really?!” Touissant suddenly felt safer.

      “Yeah, black. This is on some inner-sanctum illuminati shit, know what I’m sayin?”

      Touissant had no idea what the boy was saying now.