When I Was the Greatest

Ali, Noodles, and Needles are again on the stoop. Congregants are leaving a nearby church, and Noodles is waiting for Tasha, who he thinks is his girlfriend. She eventually joins the boys but tells them she has to help her older brother Mo with his party. Mo, also called MoMo, throws legendary parties, but they are extremely exclusive, and invites are hard to come by. Ali recalls a sparring partner who claimed to have gone to one of these parties. He says there was a DJ with a complete system, dancers like strippers, a bar with a bartender, and a room “in case somebody gets lucky” (56).

MoMo is popular in the neighborhood but the black sheep in his family. He is an unemployed high school dropout and suspected drug dealer, although some think he makes his earnings by throwing parties. In contrast, Tasha gets top grades, his mother works as a college professor, and his father, who wears a suit and carries a briefcase to work, is employed in the city, though Ali is unsure where specifically. The parents own “a whole brownstone” (56) that Tasha says her family has held for three quarters of a century.