Good Hair, No Socks, and Me
Twelve was my last year on the block, before foster care came for me.
My last year staring out the window through rusted bars, watching the six train rattle past every six to eight minutes like clockwork. My last year in that narrow room beneath the roof, where the ceiling held but the rooftop shook. Cops sprinting across it like they were chasing ghosts, the thuds and shouts dropping down through the walls like they lived with us. The walls bloomed with the dusty footprints of me and my sisters, swinging our legs off the edge of the bed, brushing our bare feet against the paint like it was a game we didn’t know we were playing. Where old magazine posters curled at the corners: KRS One, LL Cool J, Biz Markie, Whitney, Michael, and The Manhattans watching me like saints taped to the paint.
We had no dresser. No TV. No radio. Just a twin sized trundle bed and a window that faced the street. My mom stuffed a sheet into the sill to block the sun. From outside it looked like someone waving a ragged white flag. Like surrender. But I hadn’t given up. I was just waiting.
We lived one floor beneath the roof, in a narrow hallway with apartments lined up like shoeboxes stacked sideways. Every window on every floor had bars. Bricks pressed tight between buildings, and if you knew how to move, you could cut through by sprinting across rooftops, slipping down fire escapes, dipping into basements, ducking behind alleys.
This was Evergreen. And this was my home.
My mother had just had another baby, Sky. An infant. And while she was new to the world, I was already an old soul by then. I had raised two of my sisters already: Armani and Eve. I knew how to make bottles, burp a baby, wash diapers by hand and dry them on the radiator. We didn’t use store bought diapers. That was luxury. You made do.
Naomi was the second oldest. She had what folks called the good hair, but it wasn’t just that. She had the mouth to match. Loud, quick witted, no filter funny. A class clown with the confidence to make boys laugh and girls jealous. She was popular, playful, the one people followed without question. Armani was quiet. Eve raised H E double hockey sticks just for sport. I loved them all, but I carried the weight. I was the one who knew how to survive. How to keep the babies quiet while Mommy ran the streets.
Still, outside was alive.
Men sat on crates arguing over dice and dominoes. Drinking forties in paper bags. Most of them used to work in the factories, jobs stripped away after the civil rights movement when tariffs vanished and Black men got pushed out. No job meant no check. And no man in the house meant your wife could apply for benefits. So a lot of those men had to leave just so their kids could eat.
Three bodegas stood on the corners except for the one that had the Chinese restaurant and the Cleaners. Further up the block, Margarita’s Furniture sold secondhand pieces. I never stepped inside, but I watched what happened out front like it was Broadway. Old Hispanic men played music on anything, a jar of rice, pots, pans, end tables. They moved like water. Smooth, sharp, full of rhythm. Those old men danced circles around the young bucks. And that’s just facts.
Then there was 1184. The building where everything happened. Radios pressed against window bars, volume turned all the way up, synchronized to the same station. Summer felt like a block party. Dance battles. Rap battles. Yo mama battles. Jokes like: Yo mama’s so old, her Social Security number is 1. We laughed until our cheeks hurt.
And me. I watched from the window. Every day. Waiting for Mommy to come home. As if staring hard enough would make her appear. Sometimes it worked. Most times, it didn’t. But I kept watching.
We didn’t have money for video games. The streets were our arcade. Hydrants cracked open in summer. Kids ran barefoot through the spray. We played kick the can, double dutch, steal the bacon, seven eleven, spin the bottle. On quiet nights, I would sneak out after Naomi came home and lay on the hood of a parked car, counting stars and replaying the day in my head.
That’s when I saw him.
The Kid with No Socks
He wasn’t like anyone I had seen before. Same complexion as me, but speaking Spanish. He had on hard bottom shoes, no socks. That alone was enough to set the block off.
Naomi went in on him. She teased him for how he said tree instead of three. Laughed at his sandals, joked about his ankles. Kids joined in. He didn’t talk much, mostly just stood there, trying to keep up. His English was broken. But I watched his eyes. Kind. Open. Embarrassed. He didn’t talk back, but he wanted to. I could feel it.
That boy glowed. Skin like warm honey, hair thick and loose, lips full. But it was his smile, wide and real, and those coppery eyes that got me. There was something about him that felt soft in a world that was anything but. I didn’t know his name yet. But I knew what he felt like. My second crush. My first had been murdered. Just a kid in the wrong place at the wrong time. I wasn’t ready to unpack that, not yet.
But this boy felt like possibility.
I remembered how kids used to tease me. How I stuttered so bad I couldn’t say my name without swallowing it first. I had anxiety before I even knew what to call it. So I understood what it meant to feel like an outsider.
He came around every day. Always handing out candy. Trying to make friends. It worked. Kids started loving him for it.
One day, I found a pair of socks stuffed in the back of the closet. Washed them in the sink. Hung them on the radiator. Ironed them with a towel to make them look fresh. Every day the block clowned him for the sock situation, and Naomi never let up. I had to do something.
So I strapped baby Sky in the stroller, hid the socks in the back, and rolled her down the steps like I had done a hundred times before. Armani on one side. Eve on the other. When we crossed the street, there he was, holding court with a pocket full of Now and Laters and jellyfish.
I walked up with my sisters flanking me like security. “Hey,” I said, trying to sound casual. “Wear these when you come outside tomorrow. You got sneakers?”
He looked down at his shoes, then up at me. Smiled. “I do. Sank you.”
I handed him the socks and added, “It’s just so they’ll stop teasing you.”
He grinned like I gave him a gold chain. “You want candy? I have plenty.”
I nodded, trying to play it cool, even though I was cheesin so hard I probably looked ridiculous. He dropped some jellyfish into my palm.
“You live around here?” I asked. Already knew the answer.
“Yeah. One one eight four,” he said, carefully pronouncing each number.
“What’s your name?”
“William.”
“What’s you name?”
I smiled. “Nadira.”
“Where you from? Like, where you really from?”
He paused. “Santa Domingo. Is island. Very nice.”
“Where’s that?”
He laughed. “I don know. Far. But nice.”
Sometimes I had to ask him the same question twice. His English wasn’t all the way there. But it didn’t matter. We understood each other.
After that, we were friends. Not hang out alone friends. I always had my sisters with me. Couldn’t go nowhere without them. But he didn’t mind. He liked them too.
Soon, everyone on the block knew William. He was the candy kid. The food kid. The money kid. He wasn’t buying forgiveness, he was buying friendship. Even Naomi’s. She liked him now. Everyone did. I watched all of it from my window.
But I knew something no one else did.
He liked me too.
And on New Year’s Eve, I would finally learn exactly how he felt.
Spin The Bottle
Mommy told us, be home before midnight. New Year’s is for grown folks. That was the rule. The one time she played parent for the holidays.
Naomi and I promised we would be home. She went to her friend Luceetho’s house. I went to pick up William.
Luceetho’s place was lit up with music, food, liquor everywhere. Luceetho was already tipsy, doing too much. He was loud, funny, and crushing on William same as me. It was the first time I noticed that.
William stuck close to me. We stayed in the living room, laughing, watching everyone dance. Then someone pulled out a bottle.
Spin the Bottle.
William spun first.
The bottle pointed right between me and Naomi.
He had to choose.
I was hoping he would choose me. My friend Monica had taught Naomi and me how to kiss earlier in the year, so we were ready.
Luceetho shouted, “Come on, just pick already!”
William looked at me. Then at Naomi. Then back at me.
Then he chose her.
They went into the corner to kiss, and something in my chest cracked open. I told myself it was just a game. That he liked me as a friend, just not in that way.
But still. That moment stayed with me.
He left early, like any twelve year old with strict parents would. He was their only child. They watched him close. Streetlights came on, he was out.
Naomi and I had till midnight.
We drifted over to Big Mama’s house. She ran a truck stop hustle out of her living room. When truckers pulled into the Bronx, they didn’t go to the gas station. They went to her. Food. Booze. Company. Everything.
We sipped leftover drinks from cups people left behind. Danced with kids from the block. Counted down into the New Year without a second thought. Nothing regular about that night. Just that street life kind of fun.
By the time we got home, we were a mess. My mother cussed us out, swung on us, slammed doors. But I didn’t care.
I was twelve, and for one night, I wasn’t the backup parent, the diaper washer, the one holding it all down. I was just a girl on the block, out with my sister, side eyeing William, moving my body to music. He didn’t choose me, but I still got my moment. I danced. I laughed. I felt alive.
And then the next morning, when the sun was barely up, and Sky was crying in the other room, and the train was rumbling like it always did, William came over.
He knocked on our door with a big jar of jellyfish candy in his hand.
Stepped into that narrow room with footprints on the walls and saints on the ceiling.
And he kissed me.
Not on the cheek.
Not like a friend.
He kissed me.
It wasn’t long. But it wasn’t quick either. It was soft and careful, like he had been thinking about it. Like he had been waiting for the right moment to get it right.
I didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Didn’t even breathe.
It wasn’t a fairytale kiss. Nobody played music. The train still rattled by. The baby started fussing. But it was real. Honest. A little awkward and still perfect.
When he pulled back, I could see he was nervous. His eyes searched mine for something. I didn’t say anything. Just smiled. Big.
That kiss. That was mine.
I had never gotten picked. Not at school, not at home, not even in Spin the Bottle. But that morning, in my narrow little room with the dirty footprints on the walls, I got picked.
William came back the next day. And the day after that. And so on. We didn’t kiss everyday, but it felt good to have a friend.
He was still William, generous, goofy, a little soft in a world that chewed soft boys up. But he kept the bullies at bay. Not with his fists, but with his candy. His kindness. His timing.
Twelve was my last year on the block.
The in between was rough, no doubt, but these are the parts I hold onto with a smile.
Coming soon… festival highlights from the Pat Conroy Literary Festival, a peek into Trouble the Water by Rebecca Bruff, and… drumroll… my thriller feature script just hit its first major milestone… the completed first draft! Rewrites have begun. Thanks for all the love and support. It means everything.
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