His Next Move
For a Young Washingtonian, Life Is A Chess Match He Can't Afford to Lose

By DeNeen L. Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 7, 2008

He is already one move behind. He's overslept on the morning of his big chess tournament. So Marte Garner slips on his bluejeans and a white T-shirt and races through his Barry Farms apartment. He passes his rook, his little brother, and his bishop, his older one. His mother, the king, is rushing, too, on her way to work. The pawn whispers goodbye and pushes out the red door, racing for another chance to play the game of his life: survive and be among the last pieces standing.

"I'm a pawn," he says happily a few days earlier. "A pawn has power. You can never tell what a pawn will do next. A pawn can take anybody on the board."

"I would -- what do you call that word? -- sacrifice myself for my family," says the 15-year-old. "If my mother was in danger, I would put myself in front of her so she doesn't get hurt. I would sacrifice myself for my mother." And he is adamant that his mother is the king, the most important piece on the board, not the queen. Without the king, the game is over.

His life has become a chess game, and he has become a piece on its board. Chess has helped him frame his world. Chess is like life, the teachers at the rec center keep telling him. Chess, they tell him, is a mental game of transformation and survival. A game in which the weak could become strong and the strong could end up alone. All pieces on the board and in life, no matter how small, are significant, have their own power. Just because you may think you are a pawn, they tell him, doesn't mean you can't one day be king.

The words are as valuable as gold. Repeated every day in the Benning Park rec center's after-school program until he and the other students begin to believe them. A pawn could rise, despite his lot in life, despite his background, despite weak schools and dangerous neighborhoods where other pieces lurk, places where you could be minding your own business, moving across the board, then bam! -- just like that -- another piece tries to take you down.

Marte knows. He has burdens no young pawn should have to bear. In real life, pieces have fallen around him.

"My father was shot and killed when I was 1." He continues, without emotion: "My cousin got shot in the leg and arm. My uncle was killed when I was 10. Two boys, my role models who kept me out of trouble, died two years ago."

This is the reality of some children in Washington, where survival games are played at every level, some more fatal than the next.

But it doesn't have to be like that, they tell him at the rec, if you use the same strategy that you would use in chess: Look in front and behind at the same time and know that no piece is to be taken for granted.

It is the same strategy Marte has to use each day: to get to class at Eastern Senior High School, to move around his new neighborhood, where it is dangerous to be like him, new and not known. So he rolls with a swagger as he makes his way alone across the board of life. No rooks, no bishops, no knights out here to defend him.

"In real life you have to be cautious all the time," Marte says. "There is a lot of killing in D.C. You have to watch your back. You have to be on your toes. When they start shooting, you have to know where to run."

Always listening, always looking, he is wary as he catches the bus this morning, heading to the rec center, where he learned to play chess last year and spent this year practicing, match after match, readying himself for the tournament, for survival. To be among the last pieces standing.

* * *

It is Tuesday, four days before the tournament, and Marte rides the Blue Line from Eastern, then hops on the U6 bus heading to the rec.

The center, a squat brick building pierced with skylights, rises like an oasis in a place where kids walk alone. A safe haven, away from shootings, away from cursing, away from neglect. A place where kids learn to use chess strategies to save themselves, with hip-hop culture as the backdrop for lessons not only in chess but in DJing, art, fashion design, poetry and the lives of cultural revolutionaries.

On a warm night, chessboards are lined up on folding tables in the concrete courtyard in front of the center. Beyoncé's lyrics from the song "Irreplaceable" beat in the background: "You must not know 'bout me/you must not know 'bout me." Young teachers speak of Shaka Zulu, Joan of Arc, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Harriet Tubman, Gandhi, Frida Kahlo, Ho Chi Minh, assigning each historical figure a piece on the chessboard. Tubman is a knight who helped slaves escape to freedom; Sitting Bull is a pawn who defended his land against invasion; Nelson Mandela is a rook who led his nation out of apartheid; Malcolm X is a pawn who offered a new racial and political consciousness.

At the chess table under the night sky, Marte's face is smooth, his body thin like a carved piece on a chessboard. Marte used to live in Benning Park, before he moved to Barry Farms. But each day on the bus, passing funeral homes, carry-outs, teddy bear memorials to the dead, he returns to his old neighborhood for the after-school program, the Urban Arts Academy, a nonprofit group. Started during this academic year, it is run by a group of young teachers hoping to give their students just a little more than they might learn in school by teaching them how to get across the board of life, safely.

Many of the children, says Goldie Deane, the academy's director, are growing up in an environment where the future is a distant concept. "The reality is Ward 7 has one of the highest statistics of homicide and murder and abortions," she says. "When you live amongst that reality, the idea of planning for 10 years is not smart when your brother didn't make it. The students work on a life map. We teach that you have the opportunity to plan what you want to do in life."

Marte is trying to connect the dots. "Chess is like life," he explains that evening. He pauses. "Then it kind of isn't because it is still a game."

He wants to be a child psychologist when he grows up because he knows how to make people feel better. As the middle child of three sons, Marte feels he is the family's protector, his mother, Tonya Garner, an office worker, says later. He thinks a lot about things, too.

"He is quiet, not a loner, but sometimes he likes to be alone," she says. "He can sit in the house for days at a time, and it's okay with him." He doesn't like to go outside in the new neighborhood unless he has to.

Marte describes his neighborhood as "terrible" because it is so violent.

"He will keep himself away from that. We all get scared when we hear gunshots, but you also have people so used to it it doesn't bother them. Marte listens to everything. He will say, 'Ma, did you hear the gunshots?' I will say no. He will say, 'Didn't you hear that?' I say, 'Marte, you are listening too hard.' "

His world is this kind of place: One night at the center, a mother rushes in in a panic because her daughter has tarried too long. The mother is anxious. The clock says 9:07. It is dark outside. "Marshaé! Where have you been?" says the mother, scolding. "How are you going to get home if they start shooting?" She says it's all right for her daughter to talk more about chess and life, but right now it is dangerous to be away from home. "It's time for her to go inside."

The mother rushes the daughter out of the rec center, a queen protecting her pawn.

* * *

Thursday, two days before the tournament and in the room where the Urban Arts Academy gathers, a painted golden dragon is swimming up and down the wall near the blackboard. An admonition is written in red paint above the door: "Know Thyself."

The lesson for the day is on the board: "Which saying do you think is true? A: Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me! Or, B: Words are weapons used to shoot down or build up."

In walks Dequan Smith, 12, a sixth-grade student at William Hall Elementary; Jamal Garner, 13, a sixth-grader at Shaed; and Marte. Jamal and Marte are cousins and best friends.

Deane asks them about the lesson on the board.

Marte reads the blackboard. "What do you mean, using your weapon?"

Deane explains: "Some people think words can be used against you. Some people think words won't hurt you, like sticks and stones. Which do you think is true?"

Marte squints: "Sticks and stones can't break my bones."

"Yes, they can!" Jamal says.

"No!" Marte argues. "What kind of stick do you think will hurt me? A stick is not a limb. Sticks can't hurt nobody. . . . That has nothing to do with chess."

Deane probes deeper: "You say this has nothing to do with chess. But what if you sit across from somebody in the tournament, and they say, 'Marte, where you from?' And you say, 'D.C.' And they might say, 'You from D.C.? People in D.C. can't play chess.' "

"If they keep talking, you say, 'Shut up! I'm trying to focus right now,' " says Jamal.

"I'm going to have my headphones on anyway," says Marte, confidently. "I have my strategy. Four moves, and they are out. People will tell you you can't win. But you can tell yourself in your head you can beat them."

* * *

Saturday finally arrives.

Despite oversleeping, Marte arrives early for "Bum Rush the Boards," as the tournament is called, at Lincoln Middle School in Northwest. He sits in the tournament's intermediate section, facing his opponent, a 10-year-old fourth-grader from another part of town. They shake hands. Then the moves are on.

Quickly, each player advances a pawn. The younger boy is playing with confidence. Marte pauses, bites his finger. Bites his lip. He moves his knight. The other kid moves a pawn. Marte adjusts the volume on his iPod, drowning out the noise, drowning out the pressure.

Marte recognizes his own four-move strategy. His opponent has just used it. "Man, he used my moves on me," Marte thinks to himself, as he described it later. He adjusts his iPod. He will have to adjust his strategy.

Marte moves his queen to trap the opposing king. "Checkmate," he declares. And the two shake hands and walk down the hall to report their game.

Marte spins a big blue balloon while waiting for Round 2. As the balloon twirls and floats, he's immersed in thought -- a pawn holding up a dream.

Marte meets a sixth-grader when the games resume. He uses his four-move strategy and wins again. In Round 3, he quickly loses. But he is smiling. "It was a good game," he says.

In the final round, after three moves, he checkmates his opponent with his queen. He raises his hands in victory. He lost only one piece. This game is over.

Or is it?

He sits in a stairway at the school. The evening sun pours through the glass above him. He recounts the games, the moves. He smiles at his victories. He didn't lose too many pieces. Nor was he captured. And yet he is vulnerable. He feels it.

"I'm happy, but in another way I'm not happy. I still don't have a father," Marte says sadly. "I think he was killed -- I can't remember the street -- it was somewhere by Pennsylvania Avenue, I think. Somewhere. He was 21. Wait." He counts to himself. "He was 19. I think he was 19."

There are some pieces that are taken that don't come back, can't be set straight with the next move, the next game. Did his father ever play chess? If he had, would he have known what move to make to avoid a fatal capture? To be among the last pieces standing?