by Sapphire
“You done broke de mirror!” Ol’ bitch hollering at me. “You know how old dat mirror is!” I can’t get with her voice, like it don’t really connect to me but float over me, like it ain’t real, maybe none of this shit is real, me laying on glass in the salt-metal smell of my own blood, this old roach room.
“Go away!” I holler at the old nigger slave.
“Git up ’n sweep dat glass up, Abdul!”
“My name is J.J.! Not no fucking Abdul!” I scream back. I can tell I’m gonna hate her. Have to, for pretending to be my relative. I already do hate her.
“Fool, number one better learn yo’ name! Number two git ready fo’ seven years of bad luck unless de old folks down south is lyin’! Git up’n stop actin’ stupid, you might have to go back to de hospital. Go wash yo’sef.”
I get up and walk down the hall to the bathroom, press my body against the sink, and stare at my face in the mirror. Blood is dripping from the top of my head. I put my hand there. It’s wet. I pull out a big sliver of glass red with blood. It cuts my hand. I drop it in the sink. There’s a jagged pink line where the falling glass sliced open my cheek. I think of Crazy Horse riding into battle with lightning bolts drawn across his cheeks. How I know that? We never study Indians at St Ailanthus. My face hurts bad, but I feel good. The pain and blood make me feel hot. I put my hand in my pants, touch my dick. Hard. The piece of glass laying in the sink looks like a bloody sword. I feel like taking that piece of glass and carving my new name on my forehead. CRAZY HORSE! Goddamn it! Niggers know not to fuck with me, see I been in battle! I will kill! I want to get on a horse and like ride out to St Ailanthus and kidnap Jaime. Then ride on out of there. I drop the piece of glass back in the sink.
“Git in dere ’n sweep up dat glass! I done had dat mirror since befo’ you was born. Is you crazy!” The old bitch is hollering outside the bathroom door.
Am I crazy? She must be totally bugged out to be talking to a total stranger who would be happy, happy to kill her old ass because he gonna be a dancing star and don’t come from this stinking shit! I am very intelligent, Brother John said so, It’s just that you’re so . . . so grown-looking, or it would be easy to get someone to adopt you. The people want little children, but they like intelligent kids too, winners. You’re a winner, J.J. Did anyone ever tell you you’re beautiful? I was raised in Harlem, J.J. I know what’s going on. You’re special, real special. Now, come over here....
“’N when you git through sweepin’, report to me!”
Yeah, she’s crazy, crazy as one of these roaches on crack. I look down the dingy-ass hall. Time to break out of here. Perfect day to die! This is the third time my life been shaken like my kaleidoscope. God or somebody just pick it up—broke pieces of glass, mirrors at right angles, shake that shit, twist the lens, whoosh! A different picture. God don’t care how it hurt you. It’s a done deal. Can’t go back.
Flipped like cook do pancakes. Flip Flap Clik Clak. I remember sticking a fork in my hand. Was that yesterday? Last month?
As I stagger back down the hall, I look at the ugly linoleum floor decorated now with drops of my blood. I look at the holes worn through to the wood, the weird black and green paisley pattern. The place before St Ailanthus, what color was the floors? I don’t know, something weird. At St Ailanthus? I can’t think. Oh come on, I was just there today, or was it yesterday? Fuck it, what’s the point in thinking about that shit now? I don’t get it no matter how I try, how could a kid be normal? Normal! Have friends—everybody at St Ailanthus love me, my mom love me. How could I end up tossed salad? Thirteen? How I’m gonna be put out of school, my bed? My house. St Ailanthus is my home! I live there. And some assholes can just call me in a room and tell me to pack! And send me to some ol’ nasty house like this. Shit, I ain’t staying here. I slam the door.
I look around at the bedroom walls. I’m used to a clock, knowing what time it is. She knocks on the door. Opposite the door on the other side of the room are two windows. I could just charge the window, jump the fuck out and end this wack shit now. But that’s stupid! I’ll never get a chance to dance I do some triple-stupid shit like that. I keep forgetting about my dancing. She pushes the door open.
“Abdul—”
“Stop calling me that!”
“Telephone!”
“My name is J.J., you old witch, remember that shit ’fore I kill your ass!” I’m screaming right in her yellow-eyed, black-prune face. She don’t move. She don’t blink. I feel like a rock sinking to the bottom of the sea. Topsoil is irreplaceable. I’m so far away from anything that makes sense. Old bitch, let her call me Abdul again. I feel enough hate to kill her. I feel wasted. I collapse on the bed. She shuffles out the room. I’m not sorry to be talking to the old bitch like that. I’m sorry for me because I’m not raised like that. At St Ailanthus we don’t talk to grown-ups bad. I’m a St Ailanthus kid, I got a future. I don’t usually scream at people, threaten’em, but I don’t usually feel like I’m losing my mind. Can the brothers just put me out my house overnight like that? Can Brother Samuel and Brother John do that shit to me they did and then put me out for nothing? I squeeze my eyes shut to not cry again. I see Brother John black robes flowing like water his dick pink. My first day they look like Batmans, the brothers. I’m only nine years old. We’ll take care of you. It’s a shame you’ve lost your mother and father. But you have a mother and father in us here at St Ailanthus. We love you and will take care of you until you’re a man and can take care of yourself, J.J. All the boys here go on to college or trades—would you like that? What’s a trade? My mother wants me to go to college. I want to go to Callie, Disneyland.
I gotta talk to Jaime. Maybe he knows what’s happening. Why I got lied on. Busted. Kicked outta school. Shit, what time is it? I’ll have to sneak back to see him. Where is he now? What’s up, dude? I’ll say. My arm hurts, this is the second time Brother Samuel done fucked me up. I try to shake the scene of me on my back that giant pink-ass freak pinning me down while I piss on myself. But then he had my back at the police station. Brother John was nowhere around.
The door creaks, Slavery Days sticks her head in. “Look, nigguh, somebody on de phone waitin’ to talk to J.J.”
Nigger? Who do this bitch think she is, calling me a nigger! She ain’t no kid. I ain’t no grown-up. I gotta go see Jaime. I turn to check myself out in the mirror, forget it’s on the floor in pieces. Good. Better that damn mirror than this whole fucking place!
“I said, telephone.”
She’s still standing there? Jesus! Best to ignore her, obviously she’s crazy. Somehow between St Ailanthus, Harlem Hospital, and back here, I lost my bomber jacket. And that was a dope jacket. Where would Jaime be right now? I don’t even know what time it is. I don’t want the brothers going crazy on me like, shit, yesterday? Or was it today? Time? I’m not even sure of the fucking day! It’s like a hallucination instead of my life.
So, OK, what now? I’m representing for myself, by myself—a false victim of a crime of lies told against me by people who don’t like me. If I knew what time it was, I could figure out where Jaime would be. I look out the window. Are they gonna leave me here for long? I can’t stay here. This is insane. I rather sleep in the subway. What Mr Lee mean with his “You musta knowed your mama had a mama” shit? And the other guy, the driver, with his shit! Motherfucker pulling a gun on me! I should kill Richie Jackson. No, everyone’ll think I’m a punk laying on a little kid. Kill his fucking brother! He’s little, but he’s my age. Their lies done caused all this shit. I almost got killt by police, then Brother Samuel twisting my arm around my back like that. I look at a spot on the wall where a roach is climbing out a crack, then at the pile of broken glass on the floor, the dried blood. I can’t stay here. I look out the door down the hall with the lightbulb hanging cheap-looking, dim. Sad? I start to holler at her, like, Hello Looney Tunes. What time is it! Then it’s like fuck it, lemme just get the hell on out of here.
Air on the street smells good. Fresh. F
REEDOM! I wonder who was calling me. Maybe I should have answered the phone? Could have been Brother John telling me the shit is worked out? I doubt it. Yeah, I doubt it. Jaime? How would he have the number? And ain’t no use going by St Ailanthus unless I want them to kill me with their crazy asses. I get Jaime on Saturday at dance class. Now lemme get me with what day it is. Wednesday? Three o’clock, 5:00 p.m.? I ain’t never been around this neighborhood before. I ain’t that far from St Nicholas Park. More trees around here. Blue sky over broke-down apartment buildings. Head toward 145th Street?
Twenty-four hours? A day ago? I was living at home, my home, a Catholic home for orphans. St Ailanthus School for Boys. Get up at six, make bed, wash, pray, eat breakfast, go to school. My life was ahead of me. Now, a day later, I been waken up out of my bed, taken to the police station, falsely accused of bullshit, made to pack my bags and driven to a hole in hell in the middle of the night. Then I go back to my home and they attack me! I get taken to the hospital, then back to the Slavery Days Roach Motel.
I see this old lady coming toward me on St Nicholas Avenue. “What time is it?” I ask her.
“Time for your butt to get a watch!”
Damn, what’s that all about? Now I be a monster if I snatched that shit off her wrist. I run down to the subway. The side of my face is in crazy, stupid pain, mad pain. Between my shoulder and my face, I don’t know which hurt worse. What can I do? I can’t go back to St Ailanthus and request to see the nurse, tell her, Oh yeah, I’m here ’cause Brother Samuel, Brother Bill, and Brother John jumped on me, twisted my arm till I passed out, put me in emergency. No, I can’t say that, I can’t say I’m tired and hungry and kicked out my home. That don’t make no sense. Nobody thirteen is spozed to get kicked out their home, especially not for no lying bullshit. I remember hot piss, Brother Samuel throwing me on my back. One minute my feet was on the ground. Whap, next minute I’m on my back! Whole dorm looking on. You tell me that big faggot should get to do shit like that and walk! That’s not all he did to me, that’s just what people seen. So all that they do is just peanuts and popcorn, just par for the golf course! OK ’cause we kids? Brother Samuel did mean things to me, mean, I think, running down the stairs.
Clock on the wall next to the token booth says three minutes after four o’clock. Jaime’s checking the salt and pepper shakers, setting the table for dinner. He got KP. I wonder who was calling me on the phone, some kinda way I got to see Jaime, get a message to him. I ask the guy in the token booth.
“What day is it?”
“Thursday.”
I stand, blink. Thursday? That’s dance class, maybe I catch him at the door before class start.
“You OK, buddy?” the token-booth guy ask me, his voice strange coming through the microphone behind all that Plexiglas.
“Yeah, I’m OK,” I say slowly. I touch the top of my head lightly, and when I look at my fingers they’re all bloody. Then I flash—BING!—my jacket’s at Harlem Hospital! I run for the stairs. Token-booth guy probably really think I’m crazy now. My T-shirt all bloody. Something’s sticking me. I got a piece of glass from the damn mirror in my jean pocket. I didn’t even feel it. Just lemme go git my fucking jacket! Whoa! Glass in my fucking shoe, now, well, it’s really my sock, which makes shit easier, I just take ’em off. So I’m leaning against the wall next to a bodega on 145th Street taking off my shoes and socks. People coming home from work stare at me, but only for a minute. They life probably ain’t no cupcake either, even if they is grown up and got a job.
I, SHE? No, it’s me I think, make the nurse in Emergency crack up laughing. I look at her, she look at me, we both say at the same time, “Wasn’t you here yesterday?”
Even though I was out of it, I remember her: black black skin, blond afro, and a pink metal nose ring hanging down to her blue lipstick. Forget that? I don’t think so.
“I left my jacket here.”
“You got a hole on the top of your head,” she says. “What’s your name?”
“I jus’ want my jacket.”
“Well, I need to know your name, people leave stuff here every day, we put it in a bag with their name on it and hold it here thirty days, then we dispose of it.”
“Jones.”
“Jones what?”
“J.J.”
She comes back with my jacket and a big bag. “Jamal Jones?”
“Yeah.”
She points to the top of her head, then slides her finger across the side of her face like a knife cutting it open. “Who did that to you?”
“I just want my jacket.”
“OK, OK, big man! No more questions! Do me one favor, pleeease!”
OK, she did get my jacket. She look like Village people. I listen for her program.
“No questions, no problems, no nada! Let me get one of the students to sew up your head and put something on the side of your face.”
“I’m getting my face tattooed where that shit is!”
She looks at me like I’m crazy. I don’t even know why I said that.
“No, no! Honey, you let that bad boy heal, you hear me. Give that three or four months before you get any damn tattoo.” She looks both ways, then pulls the short sleeve of her white uniform up and shows me her tattoo, one of those Maori kind. “Is it phat or what!”
It is.
“When your face heals—Oh, here come gonna-be-a-doctor-one-day Wang. Don’t say nothing, hear? Just let him do his thing. I’m gonna spray some stuff on your head and face, numb you up a little, OK? And I’m gonna wipe some of that dirt off the side of your face, OK? Then I’m gonna have Wang give you a little shot. He’s cool.”
“What do we have here?” Wang look like he could be my age.
“Just do it, Wang. Look at his head and hurry up. J.J.’s in a hurry, ain’t you, J.J.?”
“Yeah.”
“I was telling him where to get his tattoo. I got mine at Hades in the Village. Where’d you get yours?”
“Same place,” Wang say. “I got my piercings there too.”
“Cool,” Blondie say.
“We gonna do the right thing, stitch you up and stuff—”
“Give him some of that time-release.”
“Don’t worry, Williams. I got my mojo working.” They crack up laughing!
The whole shit, stitches in my head, shot, seems like it don’t take but ten minutes. I don’t know how I look, but I feel better, my face feels better, my shoulder too.
When I go to leave, Blondie hands me my jacket and says, “This nigger won’t be needing this no more!” and hands me the bag she had brought out earlier.
When I hit the street again, I’m right on Lenox Avenue and 135th Street around the corner from dance class. I open the bag. Whoa! A pair of black leather pants and like a leather jockstrap or some shit? I’m not sure. I open a sealed manila envelope, there’s a watch, two little gold hoop earrings, and a gold chain in it! Well, whatever, Blondie! I wanna run back and give her a hug, thank her, or do something! But I don’t want to get her in trouble. Shit, probably everything she did was illegal! But shit, it was right.
I was gonna warm up for class if I was early by running around the track upstairs, but when I get there I scope Imena sitting in a little circle with some of the students. Some blue-black dude in African clothes is in the middle of the circle with some statue or something. Everyone’s eyes is on him. I go over to see what they’re looking at.
“Nkisi is a religious power object,” the guy is saying.
It’s horrible-looking, whatever it is! It’s about two feet tall, a statue kind of. Of a . . . a African? It has real big lips.
“This is from the Congo peoples.”
He’s carved from wood and has nails stuck all over him! They should keep that shit in the Congo. I look upstairs at the track I could be running around. Poor little thing even got nails in his head! Beads and rags is hanging off him and in his chest it looks like a—
“Yeah.” The African guy notices me scoping. “That’s v
ery old, but it’s a mirror in his chest. I guess if it was made in America nowadays we would put a TV screen in his chest, that’s how we see ourselves reflected in this culture? But this is a nineteenth-century art object.”
Art? Please! I hope Imena ain’t paying this dude to talk to us. She don’t need this, she already got a bunch of people taking class for free. Blondie say the spray will wear off in an hour, the shot won’t wear off until tonight.
“When was the nineteenth century?” one of the girls ask. Stupid bitch, I think.