I was eleven years old; almost twelve. It must’ve been June and July. I figure that because school was out and Weird Al Yankovic’s Deep End album was still new. I remember watching him perform songs from it on one of those late night talk shows. I was at Cordell’s house. Though he didn’t own it; his mother and father, my uncle, stayed there but were often gone; it was the house he lived in. I was just a visitor, staying with him for a few weeks because me and my mother, whom I lived with, weren’t getting along.

I barely knew his mother, but I liked her more than mine. They at least seemed to have a normal mother-son relationship. She yelled at him on occasion, but they seemed to get along. She was cool too, in the sense that she could relate to him; a boy the same age as me. I remember the topic of sex coming-up casually one day. He said something in regard to the smell of pussy, using an implication or euphemism as to not get too explicit in front of his mother. She asked him what it smelled like. He said fish. She laughed.

She laughed even harder the time I wrote “niger”. We were at one of her friend’s place one night, playing a board game; just the four of us, I’m almost sure. It was a type of guessing game in that one player had to guess what another player wrote down based on certain clues or something similar to that. I was told that what I had to guess was the color black, so I guessed “niger”. I don’t know if that’s how I spelled it, but I know it was spelled wrong as both his mother and her friend burst-out laughing.

There was also the time we were at another person’s house and a man head-butted a light pole outside to show a skeptical Cordell that he could make it move, but, aside from going to The Boys And Girls Club; his mother would drop us off there regularly until we got tired of it and told her we didn’t want to go anymore; it was mostly just me and Cordell at the house. He was funny. His unique sense of humor made an interesting contrast to my general solemness, but he wasn’t always fun to be around.

There was often unease, at least for me, as we traded insults; not only about each other but, one day, each other’s mother; and sometimes argued. It was never vicious; him yelling at me for not rinsing my dishes, which led ants to invade the sink, is the only time I remember him being mad for real; rather like rough play. One day we had a wrestling match outside on the grass. My uncle used to say he was going to buy boxing gloves so we could duke it out for real. He said he’d bet on me because I had less mouth.

Most of my verbal attacks came out of defense. It seems he always started it and I always threw it back at him. I had to stay on my toes. Not that we didn’t bond. We shared many laughs and had lots of friendly conversations. He liked my raps; I remember him telling his friends about me; and music sense. I had a lot more cassettes than him and knew more about music than him, which, even though he didn’t share my diversity when it came to genres; he mostly listened to rap; he seemed to respect.

Delmere lived across the street. I knew her from elementary school. Ebony went there too. She also lived on his street. I remember him calling her “Ebonyzer” from the porch, but that was nothing compared to how he made fun of me for leaping the gate when he sicced his dog on me. We were in the backyard, with Tobe, when Cordell unlocked the dog. I turned around, ran and cleared the gate like an Olympic sprinter, which he found hilarious. He did a similar thing to Gregory, a boy who lived down the street.

Cordell knew a lot of people in his neighborhood. He was a normal kid in that sense. I usually preferred to stay at home than hang with the kids in my neighborhood. Another major difference between us is that he cussed a lot when his parents weren’t around and I didn’t. It just wasn’t how I talked. I would’ve been fairly quiet there if it wasn’t for him. He liked to talk, joke and laugh, and I had to keep responding. It wasn’t nearly as annoying as it should’ve been though. I don’t remember ever getting homesick.

I don’t even remember going home. Memories are fragmented and out of order. I just know I stayed there; he had twin beds in his room; for weeks. A little stank-breathed boy his mother was babysitting stayed with us one night. One day Cordell and I cleaned Carrie’s nasty house and she only paid us like 15 dollars to split. I remember us complaining to his mother about it in the basement. I remember my uncle playing music and cutting my hair in the basement. Cordell insisted on the barber shop instead.

I remember my uncle falling asleep in the basement when he was supposed to take us somewhere. We used to watch movies; Night Of The Living Dead, Johnny Handsome, Die Hard; there too. He lived there while Cordell’s mother slept on the second floor across from our room; the result of a romantic relationship gone awry, which I never pondered at the time. Thoughts like that didn’t really cross my mind back then. I was just getting into sex when Cordell teasingly asked me how many “holes” girls have.

I doubt he was getting any either. He talked with girls on the phone; one even prank-called my uncle; but they never came over. He talked with Keith sometimes. He’d tease him about the mole on his face. Cordell loved ridiculing people for the sake of a laugh. When I told him about Chris getting “jumped” and hiding by a trash dump, it was comedy gold. He once told me a joke about a man who took a challenge to shit without straining and saw a bird “waaaaay up there”; something I still think about when I go.

If nothing else, I cherish my stay for the funny and fun memories it created. Like most of my childhood, it wasn’t particularly pleasant at the time; it was merely tolerable; but I now hold those memories dear. It’s the closest we’d ever been; a bit of how it would be to have him as my (only) brother. He was an only child, at least as far as I was ever told, and, though he’s only a little older than me, he basically treated me like a little brother.