The services were over for Derwin “Win” Anderson. All through the service, the only thing I could think of was how messed up this was. The church was packed. Everybody was there, and a whole lot of people were crying. I got there right before the service started. I was lucky that Tommy saved me a seat. I didn’t want to go up and see Win’s body in that casket. I wanted to remember him the way he was. Always smiling, and always cracking jokes. He was a good athlete too. We were in seventh grade, but he had played football and basketball for the eighth grade teams. He was good at everything he did. He was smart in school, and he looked out for everybody. This was so messed up.
I had known Win since second grade, when he moved into the neighborhood. We were playing basketball at the playground, and he comes up and asks if he could play. We were just playing hustle, so we said he could. Don’t you know, he won the game, and the next one, and the next one. None of us had ever seen him before so Mikey asked him what his name was. He replied, grinning, “What I just did. Win.”
Win had two younger brothers, and a younger sister. They lived with their grandparents. He never talked about his dad. His mom, well everybody knew she was one of the neighborhood drug dealers. The neighborhood wasn’t that bad, but this was the city, and in the city, every neighborhood has drug dealers. Win would try and look out for his mom though. He liked to stay over at her apartment on the weekends, just to spend some time with her. He always wanted her to stop selling drugs, but she never did.
I sat next to Juanita on the way back from the cemetery. Win had so many friends from school and the neighborhood that they got a school bus to take us kids to the cemetery, since we were too young to drive, and then back to the church. She just stared out the window with tears running down her cheek. She turned to me. “Matt. Do you think Win’s in heaven?”
Win loved going to church. Every Sunday he would be at Sunday School, and church. He would come to youth group too. I remember when he got baptized. He was real happy, especially because his mom came that day. He was always trying to get her to come to church with him. Every once in a while she would. One thing he always asked in youth group was that if everyone could pray for his mom.
I looked at Juanita. “Yeah. He’s in heaven. I know he is.”
Back during the church service, I remember when his mom had come in. She was escorted by the police, because she had been arrested. She was falling all over the floor, crying and everything. I felt really sorry for her, but this whole thing was sort of her fault. This is what happened.
It was Saturday and Win was spending the night at his mom’s apartment like he usually did on Saturdays. Like I said before, he liked to spend some time with her, and watch out for her. Make sure she was ok. Well, it was real late, like 2am, and Win was sleeping on the couch. These guys came over. I heard that Win’s mom owed these guys quite a bit of money, and they had come over to collect. I guess they got into a big argument because she had said she wasn’t going to give them the money, or she didn’t have the money, or something like that. These guys weren’t people to play around with. One of them pulled out a gun. They wanted to send a message. Win was asleep on the couch….
When I heard, I just couldn’t believe it. Not Win. The police arrested his mother, and they finally tracked down the two guys and arrested them too.
Back at church for the repass, they had the typical church food. Fried chicken, sweet potatoes, greens, cornbread, and peach cobbler or pound cake. Win’s little sister couldn’t stop crying. His brothers were trying to be strong, but they just looked so sad. I went up to say something to his grandparent’s, but before I could get a word out, his grandmother just grabbed me and hugged me. She had tears in her eyes, but she was smiling. “I would love it if you and your friends would keep coming and stopping by the house.” She said. I promised that we would.
After awhile, we left the church and ended up walking over to Juanita’s house. You could see the sun was just starting to set behind the houses across the street, as we all sat out there on Juanita’s steps. It was quiet. We were all in our thoughts. Nobody really wanted to go home though. “I wish summer would hurry up and get here.” Teddie said to no one in particular. Then like he realized there were more important things right now than wishing for summer, he slowly shook his head. “Damn.” I looked at him and sighed. “Yeah.” I replied. “Damn.”