EPISODE FOUR - HOW A SHARK GETS DOWN

EAST HARLEM, NY 1983

At Breakfast time Sister Modesta, sits pensively in her office peeling a banana and trying to figure out where little Ronaldo might be. Aside from his excessive absences he's always a well-mannered and seemingly intelligent boy in both a practical and intellectual sense.

The kid turns up six months earlier and his English is shaky. In a month’s time he masters the concepts of nouns, verbs and gerunds and is reading at a fourth-grade level when called upon. He also has a raw, uncanny knack for mathematics.

He just pops up one day with a benevolent police officer, an Irish Flatfoot who came up himself at Father Divine. Word is the officer caught three slugs in the face from a junkie he was trying to help. Pity, the sister thought recalling the day the policeman dropped Ronaldo off.

Ronaldo has scruffy black curls, puppy dog brown eyes, a button nose and compact lips and he has a little baby fat, a small potbelly. But the rest of him is a stick, the Sister remembers, envisioning him in her mind so she can perhaps describe him to police. He smiles a lot and brings joy and mystery to the place because he hardly speaks -- English or Spanish -- unless spoken to.

The priests marvel at his retention skills and he is most of the sisters’ favorite including Sister Modesta, who now sits contemplating whether to call the police and report him as a a runaway.

Where could he possibly be?

It's the beginning of the summer so school is out and most of kids play stickball in the streets all day and those who are old enough got summer jobs. So naturally Ronaldo isn't missing school and would never willfully do so, the sister believed, because he likes learning. So what’s he up to?

He's out in those streets learning, that's what he's up to. His disappearances start three days earlier when he sets out on his daily summer routine of walking around exploring Harlem’s streets where he receives strange looks from older kids and adoring stares from adults.

He seems to fear no one and smile at everyone. Even the most hardened of criminals can’t help but smile back and he is beloved by prostitutes who gave him money sometimes and take him to breakfast, lunch or dinner depending on what time of day they see him.

His day always starts at five in the morning, waking up and stealthily walking out of the room. He slides down the banister of the long staircase, a stunt that makes only a small hissing sound as he descends at breakneck speed. And then he ducks out of his favorite side window into a vacant lot and out of a hole in the fence.

His first stop is the Puerto Rican guy who stood in front of a newsstand. The candy is always free with a purchase of a Spiderman comic book. He likes the blind superhero Daredevil better though and often watches as the kids back at Father Divine argue about whether Marvel heroes could whoop ass against those distributed by DC comics.

He's the tiebreaker.

“Marbel,” says Ronaldo softly, having not mastered the English “v” yet. Then he lays back on the pillow, remaining quiet for the rest of the evening.

At the newsstand he snakes extra comic books when the guy isn’t looking, never feeling bad about it because it goes for a good cause.

Back at the orphanage he distributes his spoils to the other boys without saying a word.

Johnson likes the hulk.

“Thanks kiddo!”

Jackson takes Spiderman.

“Cool!”

Preston is a Batman guy.

“Solid.”

And Black Brown, when he admitted that comic books weren’t for “sissies,” goes "ol’ school" with Superman.

“That’s what I’m talkin’ bout.”

At the newsstand he always asks for a bag to carry the excess candy and the comic books.

Before he goes back, he reads all of the comic books while sitting on steps that go down to an old man’s basement home near the newsstand. The man is always gone between eight and one. Ronaldo is out of there by noon and on his way to the hot dog vendor on the corner.

His weekly allowance is five dollars so with four dollars left, he purchases two fifty-cent hot dogs, having subsisted off candy since the morning time.

The zesty frankfurter, ketchup and spicy mustard spoke to his taste buds while he listened to the rhythmic singing of the Hot Dog vendor. It was a corny ditty that sounded like a commercial gospel song. His melodic voice compensated for the lyrics. Ronaldo likes hearing it.

“Hawt Dawg, get you fresh all beef Hot Dog, Hebrew National, so fashionable, a tasty treat, so good to eat It’s Koshur’ you can fill that belly up fo’sure.”

Across from the Hot Dog vendor is a place Ronaldo has not noticed before, a store front with what looked to Ronaldo like a red, white and blue striped candy cane.

Grown men who leaned up against its windows smoking cigarettes are making melodramatic gestures and talking loud.

They were words he hears Lil’ black use under his breath but these men seemed to be more casual with the words and probably wouldn’t clam up in front of any nun.

The boy walks across the street and over into the store thinking maybe he’d have one of those red, white and blue candy canes. He smiled at the men standing outside to which they reply “What’s up lil man.”

No candy, only a pungent sweet smell, something fresh, like cologne, the same type of cologne his countrymen put on when they go out from the safehouse in Miami to meet women.

There was hair all over the floor and the men talk loud about everything from sports, to the goings on of the neighborhood , to Marvin Gaye’s death, to politics.

“Now come on Ray,” one man says. “Walter Mondale ain’t got a snowball’s chance in hell. These white people love them some Ronald Reagan.”

“The reason Mondale won’t win is that he chose a woman as a running mate,” another posits.

“That’s what I’m talkin’ bout. Not to mention Mondale just ain’t a good candidate,” yells another.

Ronaldo listens intently sitting on a chair near the door below a large window with big red letters that read: Ray’s Barbershop.

Although there was no candy, this would be a good opportunity to kick it with men, real men. He is accustomed to being with grown ups and coming from the Dominican Republic at an early age with a group of starry-eyed men who got on a cargo skiff bound for Pensacola, Florida..

A deep, smooth voice captures his attention.

“You niggas is something else,” said a man laid back in the barber chair receiving a shave from Ray, the man talking to another who, Ronaldo had surmised, was waiting for a haircut. That’s what a barbershop is, he figures out, proud of himself for deducing the obvious.

“Aww sheet, infinite wisdom from the shark man,” Ray, a short brown and balding man exclaims running the fine-edged razor down the side of “shark man’s” face.

The man in the chair continues to chat as he gets a towel wrapped around his face.

“I’m sayin,’ niggas is always runnin’ roun’ talkin’ bout’ voting. Like voting gone change some shit for ya’ll black asses.”

“Ah shit,” says the man waiting on line. “That’s that hustla talking. Real black men concerned about the movement don’t talk like that brotha.”

“Look, brotha, I’m all for improvement but votin’ ain’t gone do it!”

“But Sharkie, listen to what you're saying, people died fo…”

“For what?” The “shark man,” beams softly as his chair sits up and the towel came off revealing a handsome and clean but sinisterly-dark face.

“Nigga I’m from Mississippi. They was down there organizing and organizing and organizing. Tell me something. If you vote in November will that keep a cop from busting you head open when you come out the polls?”

“Man you talkin’ nonsense.”

“Am I? Voting don’t do a damn thing but put the lesser of two honkey evils in power. They ain’t thinkin’ bout ya’ll, bout us. Whatever we need to do, we should do it for ourselves.”

“That’s that Marcus Garvey, Malcom X shit right there,” Ray says proudly.

“Yeah whatever,” the skeptical man says getting up and then passing “the shark man.” to sit down in the chair. He then lifts his head to let the barber gown fall down on onto his torso.

Meanwhile Ronaldo becomes enthralled with what the man had said about “doing it for ourselves.” Ronaldo wonders, could this be the same Sharkie who was the biggest pimp, best nine-ball player and richest numbers man this side of Lennox Ave, that Black Brown and Preston always holler about?

It was.

The man they call “shark” is a well-dressed man with a flawless peach suit over a white shirt white tie and tops it off white straw fedora hat.
On his feet are peach-colored alligator skin shoes or “gators,” that Ronaldo had heard Lil’ Black speak of. “That’s what all the real niggaz wear,” he would say.

And here Sharkie is in the flesh, the hustlas's hustla and Ronaldo's introduction to the game, though he doesn't know it yet. He's like a kid in a candy store, or is it a Barber Shop?

TO BE CONTINUED!