Chili-Wop became an ally, a protector in a violent world. Finally, after I’d lived there for nearly two years, he told me something. “When y’all first moved in, I robbed your house, maaan. I never knew you was gonna be a cool family.” When he told me, there wasn’t much I could do about it, and by then he was like my best friend—or as they say in the hood nowadays, my big homie—so in a way it was cool. That’s just one hood lesson: Your allies can arrive as enemies, blessings as a curse.
