Christopher Paul Curtis by Bucking the Sarge

strong feeling of relief, sort of like a giant rock has been lifted off your back. Or like the dump you take the day after you eat the ten-taco special from Los Aztecos.
    I know there's no way I can help most of the folks that are trapped in the Sarge's Evil Empire, but it sure does feel good to help even one.
    This is one feeling the Sarge never has to worry aboutbecause she's never done anything decent for anybody. Me and her just look at things different.
    But that's cool 'cause one of the things I've learned from studying philosophy and watching Judge Judy is that there are always two sides to every story. Things aren't ever what they seem to be when you first look at them. What's important is that you keep your mind wide open and try to understand what's going on from a lot of different angles. That's what I try to remember every time I talk to the Sarge or think about her or try to understand why she is the way she is.
    It finally sunk in that she wasn't like most other moms when I was in the third grade. It was back in the day when me and Sparky still hung with Eloise and Shayla, and I can let you know straight up that we didn't bunch together because we were the siddity committee. Kind of the opposite. We each had something real whack about us that made us stick out as much as it made us stick together.
    Sparky was messed up because he never had any money and came from a family with a long tradition of breaking and entering. Eloise was whack because she was smart and didn't try to hide it and didn't mind beating the mess out of anybody, male or female. I was uncool because even the dumbest of my classmates was starting to pick up on the fact that I was a lot more maturer than most anybody else (and maybe because word had leaked out that even back in third grade I had to change the Depends on some of the Crew), and Shayla had a bad rep 'cause not only was she smart, but she lived in a house full of freshly dead corpses.
    Me and Sparky and Shayla and Eloise had been on the playground at school when Eloise, just out of the blue, upped and said to me, “My momma said that your momma loans money to people at exorbitant interest rates.”
    What kind of third grader used words like “interest rates”? Who could ever understand what Eloise was saying half the time? But I could tell from the way she said it that this wasn't something that you'd wanna have your momma called.
    I said, “Why are you telling me that? If you wanna borrow some money you've gotta go ask my mother.”
    She snorted and said, “I don't think so. My momma said the Bible says, ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be.’”
    My boy had my back. Sparky said, “Who cares what your momma says?”
    Eloise said, “It's obvious that a little gangster wannabe like you wouldn't care,
Dewey!”
    Uh-oh.
    I wouldn't've minded watching a good fight but I wanted to see where Eloise was going with this money-borrowing stuff so before Sparky had a chance to go off on her I said, “So what? I know my momma tries to help people out when they're broke. That's why she gives them those Friendly Neighbor Loans.”
    Eloise laughed right in my face.
    Maybe there was going to be a good fight after all. When it came to keeping your respect it didn't matter if Eloise was the toughest fighter in the school, no one laughed in the face of Luther T. Farrell.
    Before I fired on her I said, “Why don't you say what you got to say, Eloise?”
    She said, “OK, but when you're sitting at home crying your eyes out like a baby later on remember you're the one who asked me to tell you. Friendly Neighbor Loans my foot. My momma says your momma is nothing but a loan shark, and that that hoodlum, Darnell Dixon, shakes people down when they can't pay her back!”
    Then, like I was stupid or something, she spelled it out, “L-O-A-N S-H-A-R-K.”
    It would've been a lot more helpful if instead of spelling it she would've defined it, but whatever this “loan shark” stuff was I knew it