by Sapphire
Creepy quiet here. But it ain’t quiet like when you really all alone. Somebody is here. So where’s the old lady? Behind these doors. What’s behind all these doors? It’s like three on the same side of the hall as the room my suitcase is in, including mine. Mine? Then across from me is another door, and down from it the kitchen doorway. So where’s her room? Who is the old broad and what am I, a rubber ball or some shit? Hit the ground and I be bouncing up somewhere else next week? This is a nice bathtub, big. This is a weird old apartment, feel like it got ghosts or monsters. One time we seen a BIG cat. Ugly like a monster. Pregnant, Jaime said. Jaime threw a brick at it, I threw one too. Bad luck, Amir said. Why? It’s pregnant, Amir said. It’s black, bad luck, I said. You ain’t spozed to hurt nothing pregnant! What’s pregnant? I wondered. It was black! Jaime said. If I was grown up, I would expose St Ailanthus as a camp of terror and cruel shit. Catholic school spozed to be so much better than public school, but they forgot a few little shits! Like beating up and fucking kids. And this shit here, you know, like pack up and get out, J.J., nice knowing your black ass. I can’t just let that shit go. What would Crazy Horse do—what would my father do? If somebody did some shit like that to him? The water’s getting cold ’cause I been sitting up here with the window wide open. I run the water hot, like a hot spring coming from the earth’s interior; in school we learned about people going out in the snow sitting in hot springs. Due to volcanic activity, the rock near the surface is still hot enough to boil water! The water comes up hot even in the snow! I’m gonna stop going to school? I mean, what’s up? Can school teach me how to dance? If I was a professional, I could run away somewhere and be a dancer, get paid. Water warm, I’m sleepy again. Nod, see a walled city like in photographs of China, ancient and all green, tigers, which makes me open my eyes and get out the getting-cold-again water, I got enough problems. I dry off and head down the hall past doors harboring big pregnant black cats.
My pajamas are big maroon and white stripes, just like all the other boys at St Ailanthus, unless their parents or relatives buy them something different. Some kids in St Ailanthus got parents that’s alive. Most of ’em ain’t. Now, it’s not no whole row of striped pj’s getting ready to bunk, it’s just me alone, one boy, one bed, one striped pajamas.
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
God bless our parents, here or departed,
God bless the Brothers of St Ailanthus,
God bless all the children of the world,
including myself, God’s dearest lamb,
and God bless the sweet little Lord Baby Jesus.
In the name of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
AAAhhh MMMmen!!
In the dream I’m paying attention to Imena, not just waiting for her to shut up and the drums to start. “Nkisi,” she says, holding up the ugly thing with its lips like a black duck. Why is she showing us this shit! Are niggers ugly? Or are we beautiful? The walls of the gym change to dazzling white. Blondie appears out of nowhere in her nurse uniform and nose ring. She’s holding this big jar. I think she’s trying to psych me out, but she can’t, can’t no fetus in a jar blow my mind. I already seen that shit in don’t- do-IT-until-you’re-married-because-IT’S-a-mortal-sin abortion videos. But it’s not a fetus. It’s my penis in the jar!
“Hey, how’d you get that!”
“It’s OK, J.J., I’m just going to pierce you, then you get it right back. Right, Wang?” Wang nods his head. He’s looking at her big beef nipples poking out from underneath her uniform. Wang nods again, and she sticks a corkscrew into the jar, which has turned into a dark green champagne bottle. It pops open and my penis shoots out of the jar spraying!
“What’s that!” I scream.
“Champagne, silly rabbit!” she says in a TV voice, and disappears. I feel my crotch. I’m all there, hard as shit. Wang is down on his knees in front of me. I’m worried the class won’t know he’s a doctor and will think he’s sucking my dick.
“This dog’s skull on its head—” It’s the African from NYU.
“Ugh!” one of the stupid girls screams.
“The serpent’s vertebrae around its neck—”
“UGH!”
“—the sheer size and placement of Nkisi’s head speaks to the dominance of the senses in the transmutation of spiritual desire—” He’s saying the same shit he was saying in class. Blondie is gone, Wang too. I try to wake up, move, make sure they ain’t got no part of me in their jar, but I’m paralyzed. I feel like I’m falling. My body is so heavy, it doesn’t hurt, the falling isn’t scary, it’s sweet dark, down low I feel so good falling I just spread my arms and flying I’m flying back to where it’s all green grass and the sky is so blue like the park when I was little. She’s saying something I can’t hear. I’m little running around and around in the grass. She has a gold ring in her nose. I hold out my arms, I’m opening and closing my fingers like gimme gimme. Everything is aching like when you wanna come, but I’m just a little boy. “Mommy! Mommy!” I sob. I hear birds like seagulls, but I don’t see them. The sound moves something wild down deep in my gut. I open my arms wider. Light fills me. Everything is suffused with light. I never seen so—I never been so much light before. I’m a STAR born for my mother. I want to put my tongue in her mouth, kiss her. She opens her arms to me, and I start running in the grass. Squirrels that I’m usually afraid of don’t hurt me. Trees is singing songs, have faces, leaves tongues, everything, even the flowers is singing. “You don’t listen, Abdul,” she says. “Listen.” The trees is talking. She gathers me up in her arms and says something I can’t hear. “What, Mommy, what?” She laughs kisses me. “You don’t listen, Abdul,” she says. “Listen.” I’m running again. I know so many things, the brothers taught me how fast sound travels, that God is an indivisible entity known through Jesus Christ his only son. I’m only a little boy, but I know the name of things, rocks—igneous rock, basalt, granite, obsidian, sedimentary rock, calcite, halite, gypsum, metamorphic rock, marble quartz, garnet, and diamonds—and how fast light travels. I’m light traveling she tells me who I am what I’m supposed to do but I’m running so fast I don’t hear it except to hear her say it but I don’t understand how I can hear her and not hear her. I’m getting confused the sun is going down it’s changing here. I look for her but she’s gone and I’m falling again. I’m in assembly at Culture Night and the brothers is reading their poetry to us. We don’t like it. Brother John howls, “Terror is the gravitational pull toward nothing!” Oh, no! I run behind my brain where the gravitational pull can’t get me. Then all of a sudden I’m in a subway car hurtling through an endless dark roar. The clock in the ceiling of the car is blinking 3:00, 3:00, over and over. “SAY WHAT?” a voice blares over the loudspeaker. “SAY GET UP! THAT’S WHAT, J.J.!”
“Git up, nigguh! You gonna sleep yo’ life away!”
Huh! The train stops, I sit straight up! In front of me a cracked wall paint peeling? Where’s the other boys? I turn my head see old Slavery Days bent over in the doorway. Oh, no! The vanity table, the dried-out oval of wood where the mirror used to be glued to, the bench, open suitcase. Oh, no! Dull hurt throb my cheek. I touch the open cut on my face. Wet but not blood, clear ooze. I squeeze my eyes shut the train is pulling out the station! I look up at the ceiling, the lightbulb dangling, paint rolling back from cracks. Oh, Holy Mary Mother of God, No! NOOOOO!
“No my ass! Git yourself up and come git some breakfus’.”
I smell bacon think of Rita, sitting next to her in the diner, her silky dress, perfume, she’s stirring milk and sugar in my coffee. A big dude says something in Spanish and sets a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon in front of me. Rita’s drinking coffee looking at me with her eyes big like a baby. I’m awake but I close my eyes I don’t want to let her face go last face in my life loved me I want to go back to sleep.
“I said git up! Git some clothes on! You know how long you been sleep?”
“Git up!”
“Well, I would if you would get out of here and let me get dressed.” I try to talk to her like she got some sense, rationally.
“Like you got somethin’ I ain’ seed.” She laughs. “Simple big-head boy! Git on up!”
Now, how I’m gonna get my pajama bottoms off the floor, under the covers, and back on? I lay there a second, then it’s like what the fuck! I get up let it hang. She don’t bother me. But she does, she gives me the creeps, the fucking willies, man, staring at me. All I want is some fucking breakfast and for things to get back to normal. She turns and walks out the door. Mission accomplished? If I ever had a doubt about this whole thing being a case of mistaken ID, I know for sure now, this old bitch ain’t none of me.
Friday? Yeah, last night I was at Thursday night dance class. Before that? Here, then Harlem Hospital, then St Ailanthus, then here—805 the first time? Then hospital again? I don’t know. I do know I started out at St Ailanthus. I had thought I was gonna be there until I was eighteen, then go to college for computers or English or something, maybe come back and teach at St Ailanthus if I didn’t become a famous dancer. Now what? Same shit, different day, that’s what. Well, whatever! Moving right along. My jeans and briefs is on the floor by the bed. I don’t want to put that dirty shit back on. How my clothes gonna get clean now without no Mrs Lee and laundry like St Ailanthus? I got all these little cuts on my chest, rub my nipples, think of Blondie, getting pierced, and I am gonna get tattooed, maybe not my face but something. Where those leather pants? Shit, they fit! Shoes, and let’s see what’s for breakfast.
The kitchen is a big cruddy rectangle, two refrigerators next to a double sink, and the stove all against the long wall opposite the doorway. Up against the far wall is a table with two chairs and one place set. This is where I sit. She takes a plate from the stove and sets it in front of me. Bacon, eggs, toast, grits.
“What you want on yo’ grits, margarine or jelly?”
“I don’t eat grits,” I tell her, then I feel bad like I ain’t got no manners, but I don’t—eat grits.
“Well, you got ’em on yo’ plate now. Eat around ’em.” She laughs.
Hah! Hah! yourself, bitch.
“Social worker was here Friday. She be back on Monday.”
Social worker? Friday? She must be bugging.
“Today is Friday,” I tell her.
“Naw, fool, today Saturday.” She looks at the clock on the wall over the stove. My eyes follow hers. Eight o’clock? “You slept through Friday. Clean through it. Social worker was all in dere tryin’ to wake you up, askin’ was you high, did you have a history of sleepin’ hard. All dat shit. She put ’monia under yo’ nose, but you jus’ near ’bout killt her slappin’ at her. But you didn’t wake up. She kept askin’ he ever done this befo’. How I’m spozed to know, I ain’ seed him since he was a little boy. Quiet is kept I ain’ seen you den. But I don’ tell her dat.”
Her talking like this gives me the fucking heebie-jeebies, like her lookin’ at me this morning like I’m a dog show, and now this shit—ain’ seed me since—like she know me or some shit.
“But you wadn’t wakin’ up no kinda way! No sirreee! I tol’ her go on’bout her business to somebody else’s house. She don’ want no one walkin’ in on her sleep. She said she wadn’t a child under supervision. I tol’ her go on, just go on.”
Maybe the social worker is gonna come get me outta here. “How long I gotta stay here?”
“How long? You home, Abdul. You cain’t go back to de Catholic peoples. Whar else you gonna go? Don’ nobody wanna adopt you. Thas why dey sendin’ you back, plus you don’ need to be adopted. You could go to a foster home or group house, she say, if this ain’ fit fo’ you. But why do all dat? I tol’ her it was fit fo’ yo’ sister—”
Sister?
“At least whatever little bit of money I gits for you, I gonna give some of it to you. You ain’ gonna git dat in no foster home.”
I seen this Jamaican kid get hit once with a baseball bat by some black kids. WHAP! All the air knocked out of him. Shit too.
“Eat yo’ eggs.”
I do, six slices bacon, toast, and the grits too. Ain’t nothing wrong with grits. I must of not been hungry before or they must of tasted funny’cause I was a kid. But I’m a man now, and I’m so fucking hungry I could eat the plate. Where she get this weird plate? Blue and white with a rabbit in the middle of tall grass.
“Ain’ no mo’ eggs,” she says, looking at my empty plate. “You want some mo’ bacon ’n grits? Coffee gittin’ cold, want some mo’?”
No! Shit, what about milk, old bitch? My bones gotta grow. I take a sip of the coffee. Why people drink this shit?
“Any milk?” I ask her.
“Jus’ fo’ de coffee, you don’ put no sugar in yo’ coffee?” She takes the cup and dumps the cold coffee in the sink and pours me some more. I put three teaspoons of sugar in it. She fills the cup the rest of the way up with Pet evaporated milk. Taste better, good.
Guess I’m grown up, what the fuck. I wanna ask her what’s going on, tell me something! But then I’m not sure I want to hear what she gots to say. I think I just want the social worker to come take me away.
“Yo’ grandmother—”
My grandmother? I’m on my knees, my nose is pressed into, breathing, the black leather of the armchair. Brother Samuel is sliding his dick into my asshole, everything opens up, my toes feel like lightbulbs turning on—one two three four five six seven eight nine ten! I love it. My scream gets caught in the black smell and how good it feels. Nkisi, the nails driven in—the Fon people—it feels so good to come—wheee, me and Britney. Then he takes it all away, sticking a nail clipper cutting my navel the pain. I’m convulsing. Tell, if you want to die, he always says that shit right before he puts that black hood over his pig face. Then he says, Tell me if you want to die. Kings and queens? J.J., maybe we were slaves of kings and queens. All we got is the art, and they steal that. Maybe it’s our karma because we’re a bought and stolen people. I don’t understand. Don’t try to. All you, we, got is Basquiat, Billie, Bojangles, and Bird! Bah dee bah dee bah dee dance if you wanna, J.J., gimme some love gimme some love. When the drummer uses the sticks on the outside of the drum, it adds another rhythm to the existing rhythm. This is not disco, J.J. What’s disco? Don’t worry about bullshit, just listen, listen. Listen to the rhythm, then move. Abdul? Old witch called me Abdul. You’re moving to the rhythm. So did she. The rhythm is not moving to you. Submit. You’re dancing to the heartbeat of the earth. Five billion years ago the solar system was a mass of whirling gasses. Big-headed boy? Excuse me! Who is that old witch talking to? What about Macbeth? Then the cloud shrank or was made to collapse by the explosion of a passing star. What about computers in 8A? French? Haiti, all of Africa, Puerto Rico, Cuba were all affected by the slave trade, the presence of the African in the New World created a new kind of dance. Jaime, Jaime! Come on, bite my nipple! Compression of the cloud’s core material heated its in terior—ABDUL!
I look over at the stove where she’s standing.
“Believe it or not, yo’ mama useta do de same silly shit you doin’, stare out in space fo’ hours you don’ knock her upside de head or somethin’. Like some kinda damn voodoo.”
I wipe the egg off my plate with my toast, something a St Ailanthus kid ain’t spozed to do. It lacks refinement and we’re gonna be out in the world one day. You don’t want people to think you were brought up without—
“Go to show blood is thicker den mud,” she said.
Mud? Grandmot
her? Abdul? I get up go back to the room. My room? Who’s my grandmother? And who is this old bitch? I thought she was my grandmother or something? It’s Saturday? I went to sleep Thursday? Slept twenty-four hours away? Weird, fucking weird. I look in the wardrobe I guess you call it, the “where you hang clothes,” hangers, a lot of hangers. My stuff is still in the suitcase, it’s mine. I’m not sure about no grandmother and shit. I look from the wardrobe back to my suitcase. I’m gonna stay here or not? Simple question if you eighteen. Deep-shit question if you fucking thirteen. I don’t wanna be no runaway sleeping under no bridge like some of the kids that split from St Ailanthus or fucking a whole bunch of faggots and shit for a Big Mac. Get AIDS for a shake and fries. I’m trying to have a future, like a normal life, go to school, college, be a famous dancer, why is this weird shit happening to me? Messes with my mind to even think about being connected to ugly shit like ol’ Slavery Days bitch talkin’ like a movie and roaches coming out of cracks. Should I hang up my clothes? You wanna dance? Imena say. Class and practice, J.J. You got to practice. You can’t just depend on taking class, that’s not enough. I start taking my clothes out the suitcase and hanging them up. I’m gonna keep on my leather pants today. I gotta get more stuff to dance in, like what the professionals got, shit like what everybody got! I’m the only one come in there looking all wack ’cause they ain’t got the right shit to dance in. You gotta take what you learned in class home and P-R-A-C-T-I-C-E. I don’t know how to get that into your heads. Dance may be fun, but it’s hard work too. Dance is greedy, it’s like that, it wants everything! You have to get off your ass! You have to open up!