by Sapphire
“You’re off, J.—Abdul! Listen to the drum, come in on the one!”
Shit! I get back on the beat put everything out my head except the drums. She’s doing some hard-ass steps today—Haitian, Congolese. It’s the Congolese that trips me up, even though she say one come from the other. I forgot exactly where Haiti is. She motions for us to form a half-moon circle in front the drummers. She does this sometimes near the end of the class to give us a chance to work it out doing solos to the drums.
“Listen up! I’m going to tell you a little story,” she says. “And I want you to think on it and let the story inform your solos today. Keep moving! Keep moving while I’m talking. You don’t have to retell the story or act it out—in fact, I wish you wouldn’t. Just let the words in. Way way back before ‘back in the day’ from Father Sky and Mama Earth and rain came the first life on the planet. Father Sky breathed into the dirt, had Sun shine into the dirt, but no life emerged. When Father Sky saw that, he upped the ante and started to blow Wind hard into the earth, tearing its soil asunder, and when that didn’t work, he sent Thunder and Lightning down hard into the Great Mother. No dice! Father Sky was so angry and sad with his failed efforts because he really wanted life, and great as he was, he couldn’t do it alone. He began to cry. When his warm, salty tears rained on the Great Mother she said, ‘Shit yeah, this is smooth, I like it,’ and she opened up her body and Life came, and the earth, which had been gray and barren, turned GREEN. Grass and grapes and apples, lush greens, collard greens, mustard, avocados, mangoes! The earth turned greener than the mighty ocean. At that time the people had been living under the ocean; in fact, all creatures had been in the water at one time. Now old crocodile, one of the first creatures to really stick his big nose out of the water and talk about what was going on out on earth, came back to the people and told them it was very, very green on earth, greener than down on the floor of the ocean where the people lived. There are mangoes, cherries, and avocados, he told the people. But the people were afraid ol’ crocodile was just feeding them a line to get them to come up so he could eat them. Under the ocean they were safe; on the way to land, they might be eaten by crocodiles. One of the old first people had already lived three hundred years and had great respect among the people for her potions she made from seaweed. Potions that gave you immunity from disease and protection from danger. People drank them, but nobody was a hundred percent sure they worked, because there really was no danger or disease deep down under the sea where the first people lived. In all her long life, she had never drunk the guts of the shark potion designed to give . . . well, guts. One day old first woman—Lucy was her name—decided she had to eat this mango, crocodile or no crocodile. So she drank the potion, guts, she walked up from the bottom of the ocean right past ol’ crocodile. She was the color of the rainbow when she stepped onto earth. All people were once all colors—how they got separated into different colors is another story. But Father Sky and Mother Earth saw Lucy standing alone. They knew that under the ocean both men and women could give birth. But when they saw Lucy’s guts, they gave the job of birthing to her.”
Imena turns around, claps her hands at the drummers, and the ting-ting-ting of the cowbell starts, and the drums roar. Imena moves her back like she has the ocean in it. She looks around for someone to step out; this freak-ass fine Asian chick jumps out in front the drum. FIRE! FIRE! A lot of the time, I’m the first one out there, I feel like an asshole sometimes, but that’s better than standing there watching everyone else and getting scareder and scareder, wishing I had jumped on out there. At least when I get on out there, I feel like I’m, you know, a dancer. These girls here ain’t shy, I seen them do a lot of stuff . . . well, not seen but heard the boys, “men,” say stuff; it’s four “men” men in the class. They gets the girls. What am I? A boy.
The drums is hot now, the Asian girl moves back in the line. I move on out, dancing fast. One of the drummers has a jembe drum, I love its sound. And when they open up with sticks beating on the side of the big conga drum feeding in another rhythm, it takes me out! I go with what I feel; you ain’t got to be no professional to do that. I don’t care about being no beginner or having tacky clothes, this is Crazy Horse in the house, dude! Wild horse be running past me and stop on the high tabletop on the Great Plains, they call it a mesa. I got scars. Scarification like Africans. I got a eagle feather. I drag the arrowhead across my chest blood drop the lightning is flashing but no rain and my horse is dancing in the sky, jack! Dancing!
It’s that way when I get to moving like a gate opens and buffalo stampede, everything comes rushing out of me at once. It’s like I remember everything that ever happened to everyone. My body is not stiff or tight, I’m like my mom, soft, dark, and beautiful. It last about a minute, hah! I feel her kiss, kiss her lips, she’s like African. The top and the bottom—Africans got the worst of everything, Brother Samuel say. Nonsense! Brother John would say. I’m so mad at them! Fuck them, right now I’m a warrior walking from the bottom of the ocean to plant my seed! A man man! A man! Amen! Our Father Who Art in Heaven—
“Yeah!” People are screaming. “Way to go, J.J.!” “Dance, boy!” “Work that shit OUT!” “Yes, Abdul! Yes yes yes!” I look over at Imena shouting at me. A couple of people run over to where I am press both hands over their hearts, then kneel down and touch the ground at my feet. That’s like mad respect for another dancer’s effort; no one ever did that for me before. I back back into the half circle with the other dancers next to Imena. She hugs me, then dances out in front of the drummers herself. Fast birdlike movements but sexy, she got that. Sexiness! I want to move like that too, yeah! I start winding my hips like she’s doing. Another of the guys standing in the circle is doing the same thing. He sashay out to her and they start winding down together! Their pelvises music together. Bah dee dee bah dah dah PAH!
I WALK UP Lenox Avenue to 145th Street, totally bypassing the pigs. I hate them. So what now, it’s almost four o’clock. I ain’t got a dime in my pocket, and where am I going? Back to 805 St Nicholas. Do what? Just hang out in that room. What about school, ducats, grub, riding the train? I don’t get it, I really don’t get it.
I hardly ever used to come up this far, 145th Street. Interesting. What guys, kids, do for cash? Sell crack, ass, strong-arm. Rob? I never really robbed before, maybe I hit somebody tried not to give me something like that old guy once in Marcus Garvey Park, gave me ten dollars to blow me up near the bell tower, I wanted twenty, he had said he was gonna give me twenty. I didn’t hit him hard, I don’t consider that robbing. Little as Jaime is, he is doing that shit all the time and pretending like he got a piece. Then he wanna act like he’s scared of me now.
I get up to the old brick face of the building. What? What am I spozed to do? I look up the street, nothing. Behind me dance class, but that’s over. Go back inside, just for the night. Tomorrow? I don’t know.
I knock no answer try the doorknob it’s open! I walk in the vestibule turn left down the hall. All the doors are closed except the bathroom door at the end of the hall and the door to the room with my suitcase in it. Out the bathroom window you can see the city lit up like Christmas, cars crawling across the bridge from far away look like bugs with headlights for eyes. Bronx, Manhattan, I been in every borough except Staten Island. On one side of the hall are two closed doors and the kitchen, which doesn’t have a door. On my—the side of the hall where the room is that has my stuff in it—are four doors, all closed except for the one to the room with my stuff. Looking at a hole in the linoleum, the layers of linoleum, um—four, five, six, look like rings around a tree, the bare wood shining through the hole. I think of St Ailanthus, clean, clean, floors like on TV.
I stick my head in the kitchen, go in, pull the light string, and stare at the swimming-pool-colored walls, two refrigerators, probably a lot of people used to live here? Everything—the walls, clock, stove—seems covered with a film of grease, there’s a old, I mean old, smell of fried chicken hanging in the air. A l
ong table pushed up against the wall is covered with a blue and white plastic tablecloth with birthday hats, whistles, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY written in different spots in big letters. On the table there’s an unopened loaf of bread, a big can of peanut butter “USDA Grade” something I can’t make out, “Smooth Style,” and a plastic container with . . . um, let’s see, bacon, about eight slices of cooked bacon, smells good. And next to the container two keys. To the front door? One says “Medeco,” the other “Jet U.S.A. SE1.” I dash down the hall to the front door and out. Try the keys, bet! Come back in, now for bacon and peanut butter sandwiches? I almost laugh; this shit is funny in a way. Well, I like peanut butter and I like bacon. I open one of the refrigerators, the olive green one, on one shelf are four trays covered with see-through plastic wrap. The top tray has a plate with grayish string beans, a scoop of mashed potatoes with a pool of gravy in the middle, and brown cubes of something with more gravy poured over it. Next to the plate a bowl of lettuce with orange stuff on it and on the other side of the plate, a perfect pink square of cake. Written across the clear plastic wrap on a piece of masking tape: “WHEELING MEALS senior.” On the bottom shelf a carton of eggs, two big packages of bacon, half jar of spaghetti sauce, square stacks of yellow cheese slices. The freezer is full of what looks like hamburger meat and bags of turkey wings, and a can of coffee and a Sara Lee cheesecake that takes, let’s see, three hours to thaw.
In the other refrigerator is a big box of grits, a can of look like grease, five, no six more packages of bacon, and a giant jar of grape jelly, a sick-looking head of cabbage, and some looks like water in a pitcher and a liter of orange soda. I grab the soda, I could just go with the jelly and have peanut butter and jelly. But I’m gonna go with the bacon, I think, looking around for a knife as I close the refrigerator door.
There’s one in the sink. I rinse it off, the only towel I see is dirty-looking. I shake water from the blade, causing the light from the bulb overhead to dance off the blade and make it sparkle. I was a kid standing by the bathroom door looking in at my mother staring at herself in the mirror, a knife in her hand, the light dancing off the blade and making it sparkle. What she doing? Quiet, no breathing. She raises her wrist to the hand holding the knife. Slice. Blood dribbles down the white sink. I SCREAM.
“What you doin’! What you doin’!”
The sound of the knife clattering to the bathroom floor, her screaming back, “Get out of here! You spozed to be in bed!”
Bap! Not hard, but she never hit me before. I hate her.
“Stop crying, silly rabbit. Mommy’s sorry. Mommy’s so sorry.” She’s kissing me now, wrapping a towel around her wrist.
“What you was doing?”
“Nothing, nothing. I was just tired. Go back to bed unless you don’t want to go to the movies Friday.”
“I wanna.”
“Well, then get back in bed and go to sleep.”
Hmm, weird shit to be remembering now. I walk back over to the table. I don’t want to put the bread on the table, got little roach shits here and there. I end up taking the bread out the bag and open the inner cellophane, take out four slices and lay them on the bread wrapper, spread the peanut butter and then lay the bacon on top the peanut butter. Cool, lunch and dinner. Shit, it tastes great! I drink the pop out the bottle. Good, I love orange pop.
Now what? Homework? TV? Bed? I look at the stove, little roaches crawling out the stove door, the greasy blue wall, clock over the table, five o’clock. Read a book? What I got? No TV, nobody to play with. Practice my dancing, stretch out? Jaime always thinks of things to do. I touch my face, feel the scab starting to form on the side of it, my fingers want it. I look in the bathroom mirror, squinch my mouth to one side, which draws the skin tight around the other side of my face where the scab is, and start pulling and picking the scab off. Little beads of blood pop like red pearls as I pull. What’s a scab? Blood and dead skin cells? I forgot; what I remember looking at my blood is sliding into Jaime, him calling me Papi, Papi! But quiet real quiet so don’t nobody wake up. I don’t like it here. Alone. Till? This can’t go on forever, peanut butter and bacon sandwiches, roaches. The earth, fuck the earth and Brother John’s stupid class, what was all that shit for? The Great Wall of China, crop rotation, erosion—the gradual wearing away of the earth’s surface, killing the earth is what they mean! Where I pulled the scab off, the line of little sparkling rubies is starting to drip down my face in red lines. Like tears. If I was good in art—I’m not, I suck—I would draw a black boy’s face, the skin crying crying. Our skin do make us fucking cry. I would make it like a Frida Kahlo. When Brother John took us to see her at the Met, Jaime didn’t like her. I did. She excite you, gets your freak on. I wish I had a book on her. Jaime said all she paints is pain, who needs it?
I think about what I’m going to miss, but maybe not, maybe things will still work out. I never even got to do computers, French either. Spanish, what for? Brother John said, learn Italian, you can’t use Spanish as your second language in college. Is that true? But anyway, who you gonna talk to? The ones that hip speak English. Jaime speak English. He don’t even speak Spanish. In the bathroom mirror, I see the city lights starting to glitter outside in the twilight. Beautiful. I turn to the window, the lights look like little seeds growing brighter as it gets darker; make me feel small, lonely, and mad horny. I unzip my pants, squeeze myself, I love me, start jacking off, while my hand is working, I feel no pain, fuck Jaime that lame! I see myself pulling a razor across my chest while I’m riding; my blood sprays red in the wind. The other warriors know I am the one! I cut myself to show courage, yeah ooh, ooh. Motherfuckers, Custer included, will know I mean business, know I’m not playing, know ooh oh ohh! Shit! Ump humph! Goddamn fuck! I shake myself, run my hands down my dick, take the semen, sperms—sperm or sperms?—not sure, rub it on my hands, rub my hands together like it’s lotion, power potion, Brother John says.
For a second I think I heard something. Did I hear something? Maybe one of the doors? When I look behind me, the hall is still a dark tunnel of closed doors. I turn to the mirror, the lights, the lines of blood drying on my face, and then all of a sudden I’m mad, slam my fist in the mirror. It doesn’t shatter but cracks in a pattern like a spider’s web radiating out from where my fist struck. I feel so full and totally empty at the same time. My hand don’t even hurt. I wonder what kind of glass that old mirror is made from. I could tear up everything in here, but I don’t really feel like it. I just feel sleepy now. I go back to the room, I don’t even take off my clothes, just climb in bed with my leather pants on, without even wiping the blood from the side of my face. Yeah, go to sleep, that’s better than sitting up here going berserk.
WHAT I DO REMEMBER is getting up to take my pants off. They’re too tight around the waist to sleep comfortable, no give. It’s too cold to be naked, so I look around and try to find my maroon and white stripes, but I don’t see ’em, I thought I left them on the bed. I open my suitcase, empty except for my books and manila envelope with my papers in it. Say what? Where’s my shit? I wheel around on my heels. The old wooden wardrobe is right in front of me. In there? But how? I open the doors, and the dry smell of dead roaches I’ve already gotten used to here hits me in the face with the smell of my own stuff. It’s all there, sure enough, everything, even my underwear and socks on a hanger. On the floor of the closet is my shoes, the Sunday black loafers we wear to Mass, sitting in a graveyard of roach bodies and droppings. Ugh! Who did this? Her, Slavery Days, of course. I pull one pair of pajamas, I got two, off the hanger and go back to bed.
That’s what I remember. I don’t remember walking down the hallway, opening up all the doors, talking about, “Hey, hey, it’s J.J.!” That’s what she said, fucking fossil. She woke up, and I was standing over her, buttnekkid, talkin’ ’bout, “Hey, hey, it’s J.J.!” Yes, you was, nekkid as the day you was born! Johnson hard as a rock talkin’ ’bout, “Hey, hey!” I tol’ you, you don’t git yo’ butt back in bed, you gonna wish y
ou hadda. Then you sat down talkin’ ’bout, “Heinie, Heinie,” or some shit. I hit you good as I could with this damn lupus ’n all the other shit I got. Hittin’ you cost me! Boy, when I lay down even thinkin’ about gittin’ up damn near kill me. You pulled up my gown. Yes you did! I ain’ had a stitch on under it, nuthin’. That woke yo’ ass up, and you went on back down the hall—”
I don’t remember no stupid shit like that. Why is she even saying some crazy shit like that? What I do think is when I be dreaming I remember shit, but I know it is not a memory but a “dreaming,” which I can’t control. Memory you can control, at least I can, and I have decided not to remember nothing no more. Her shit included, I don’t even know her. It just gets in the way of everything, remembering. Like I don’t remember walking down the hall, I’m sure I didn’t unless it was to go to the bathroom. I know I’m not crazy. I don’t walk in my sleep, so someone is a liar. And it ain’t me. I ain’t got no cause to lie. I ain’t did nothin’ to nobody. Why would I go do some weird shit like that after all the trouble I’m in, you think I’m fucking crazy? Crazy? No, I’m not crazy, not at all, at all, at all. Sometimes I think, shit, I remember so much, even things that didn’t happen, why can’t I remember her? I want to remember her, that’s different from Brother John, Samuel, the fucking cops, lies, lies, lies! How come I can’t forget what I want to forget and remember what I want to remember?