by Sapphire
My blood is all over everything, the white-suited little black flunkies, the sheets, the white walls.
“Get out of here right now!”
“What do you mean, ‘Get out’! I have the right to defend myself, you Arab motherfucker.”
“I mean it, get out of here! And if these boys don’t get you out, I’ll call security. And if I have to do that, that will be your job!”
“Are you crazy, I was doing my job. I don’t have to be hit by nobody! Ain’t nobody gonna hit me and I don’t defend myself, motherfucker!”
“You are not defending yourself now. The boy is not moving, he has backed off. You are trying to retaliate, and you don’t have that right. Look, if you don’t get out of here, I will have your job.”
“And I will have your ass.”
“Please!” Dr See claps his hands like a sultan and says to the crew, “Get him out of here.”
They drag him out still frothing at the mouth. I lay back down on the bed, pull the bloody sheet over my head, even though I know it’s too late to act like nothing’s happened.
“Why did you do that?” he shouts.
“I’m going to keep on doing it.”
“Why?”
“He was going to hit—”
“Why did you bite yourself!”
“It’s my body!” I shout.
“Oh, great, that makes a lot of sense.”
“Is that why I’m here, because I make a lot of sense?”
I hear feet in soft shoes coming down the hall fast, an army of them, ten twenty thirty faces like black death masks. Dr See gives orders, a cold alcohol wipe, needle sting, then plunge. It gets dark in me, then outside of me, and I leave.
PLIÉ STRAIGHTEN RELEVÉ, tendu into second, plié, straighten, I really get off on opening out into plié, pressing my muscles, antagonist agonist, to open my thighs as I bend my knees. They don’t want to open, the muscles, tendons, ligaments want to stay closed, be comfortable, not hurt. But I press on and out.
Roman says, “Bend, open wider. Put your heart into it. Everything you do, put your heart into it. You as strong a dancer as your plié is strong. I seen a few dancers who is not got good deep pliés, but not many. You got a good body; work on putting something into it, saying something. Every time you move, you should be saying something. People look at you and read your story like a book. Did you know that? That’s all we have is our bodies, dancers, and you can’t hide or lie. If you do, nobody want to look at you. You hiding, Abdul. Show me your heart. Don’t worry about fouettés, so what are you going to be, the swan in act three where she does thirty-two fouettés? The black swan?”
I don’t know what he’s talking about, I had never seen Swan Lake, but I kept that, “the black swan.” That’s what I was, no more ugly black duck! My Lai hated him because he liked me. She hated the way he taught his class, his accent, she made fun of how he walked. She was so mean sometimes. I fell in love with her body, her smell, her juice way before I fell in love with her. First it was just the way the bitch moved, then the tough pieces of her cunt hair, her briny cunt, hips, and tits—so hard it was like sucking a lollipop. I grooved on that, I never even knew I wanted to do that before, suck a girl’s tits. She would start to writhe and arch.
“Put your finger in me, put your finger—no, go like this, yeah, in an’ out like you’re fucking me, don’t stop sucking my tit, stupid! You gotta do both at the same time. This is way cool,” she panted, cumming on top of my fingers. I felt for her what I think Roman felt for me, desire and terror, but I didn’t have what he had. He had control. My Lai had the money. I loved her, love her. But I don’t know if she loves me. She only said it once, and that was when she . . . well, whatever. I don’t want to think about that. I call up the picture of her in my mind laying on my bed, her thighs open as a baby’s to ask my own thighs in class to open past that point where my body thinks it can’t go. I pretend her body is mine and push my legs open; my legs believe the picture in my head more than they believe their own almost-hard-as-steel tendons and tight ligaments. When I’m fucking her, she cums in heaves and spasms; I feel like a volcano, rock outside and liquid on fire inside. She taste like water, tears, piss, curry powder sometimes, not like how Roman said she would, “Stinking pussies!” He hates girls, and how would he know if their pussies stink? “I like how you taste,” I tell her between catching her clit in my lips till she screamed. I don’t feel alone when I’m slamming. I ain’t afraid to die when I’m slamming. Tombé pas de bourreé, tendu, fourth position, plié TURN TURN TURN!
Mornings intermediate advanced ballet, afternoons contemporary jazz, evenings we have rehearsals. For a while it’s like having parents: not having to worry about money for classes or clothes, dancing on scholarship, living off handouts from Scott’s and My Lai’s parents. Restitution, My Lai called it. Freeloading? Where’d bucks like that come from? Endless, no fucking bottom, how could they afford to just give and give to their kids, while me, Amir, Jaime, Etheridge, and the rest of us little shits lined up in front of our pee plastic mattresses in our striped jailhouse pajamas like we were in Siberia or some fucking place? Shit, if we’d been in Siberia, we might have been better off, we would of maybe had a chance of getting adopted. Who knows, and what fucking difference does any of it make now?
We went to DKNY, me and My Lai. Of course I had seen credit cards before—what do you do, hand ’em to the clerk, they swipe, you sign? I never paid any attention before, because that wasn’t me, I didn’t have one. (Hey, hey, I’m the cash underground!) So I’m hanging with My Lai, waiting for her to go in, do her shopping so we can go get some sushi and fuck. And she digs in her bag and hands me this gold AmEx card with my name on it, talking ’bout ten grand.
“Go head, motherfucker, get dressed.”
My mouth falls open, it doesn’t compute as they say. She’s giving this to me? Total, new experience. With Roman, he had, but I had to ask all the time, half of the time I would just do without rather than ask, and I wasn’t going to go shopping with him, fuck that.
Humiliation, what I felt at the donut shop on 125th Street comes back to me now. Me thinking I was gonna grease on a dozen and the perv hadn’t given me a ten but that crumpled one-dollar bill, a hot feeling rising up in my chest when she put the donuts back. Rage, humiliation. I felt so stupid, such a sucker.
The same feeling with Brother John.
“Leave it!” Brother John shouts.
Leave the books? Pussy-face hypocrite, could he hear himself telling me books are our friend and how his life turned around, how he would have been like any of those guys out there nodding if it wasn’t for books? “Books took me from the crowded foster home on 155th Street.” Then the foster brothers, four dead, two in prison, he escaped. I always hated that story. I hated it for the missing parts, did he fuck them, did they fuck him, is that why he fucked me, us? Or is it some, some magnet in us?
He’s crying all over you, licking your butt, all the time talking in his nigger voice. I convinced myself I was special. Shit, if I ever kill anybody, it would be—Have I ever killed anybody? Maybe that’s why I’m in here! Did I kill Brother John that day? That’s what I had gone up there for, to save my own life by killing that fucking faggot. But maybe something else happened. Sometimes I think I’ll go to look in the mirror and I’ll see him there, that they made me, made me, be them. I’ll ask Dr See when he comes back. My thoughts are racing now, remembering in a hole full of colors and sounds, deep but not connected to the next thing. Dr See will know. I want to talk, but my mouth is dry cotton. I try to move my tongue. No happenings. Whatever they gave me put me on the opposite side of speech, like we’re boxers in separate corners. I have not shit in how long? I sat on the toilet and stuck my finger up my ass circling around hard pebbles of shit, pulling them out my ass one by one till I farted and finally some shit came out that wasn’t rock hard. I don’t dream much, but just now I dozed off and was dreaming, at least I think it was a dream. I can’t tell you because I d
on’t know if you’re really here or you’re in the dream.
What happened?
I was uptown somewhere, maybe walking along St Nicholas Terrace, that little lane behind the college that winds along the little cliff above St Nicholas Park and looks down on green grass, giant granite boulders sparkling in the sun, the playgrounds and wide black street below. You never know where you are in a dream, really, and I was dreaming, I think. But it was one of those days I was broke and just didn’t want to ask My Lai or Scott to hold me over till I got my next check from Starbucks; they didn’t care, but I did. I don’t want to be dependent on those motherfuckers all the time. So when he drove past me, crawling, then turned around and came back, older white guy, maybe some professor at the college or some white shirt, yeah. He was driving a black BMW, freak-ass car, you know, the kind of car I want to have someday. So he rolls down the window, I can feel the cold air from the air conditioner out where I’m standing on the curb.
“Want a ride?”
I look over my shoulder.
“We could go anywhere. It doesn’t have to be around here.”
“Where?”
“Take the Henry Hudson to the Bronx?”
I look around again, I could just be giving a lost white guy directions. The door opens. I get in. He is a medium-build old guy, forty-five, fifty, sixty, what’s the difference? They all look alike, losing hair, bellies with glasses.
“What’s your name?” he asks.
I look at him. Probably from the burbs; if he isn’t a professor, he’s a broker or a dentist or some shit.
“What’s your name?”
“Oh.” He like almost chokes. “Martin, Martin Wilson. I’m a teacher.”
He’s driving faster now. Good, I don’t want anybody to see me with this old white motherfucker. Not that I know anybody around here that much.
“You didn’t tell me your name.”
“Martin, my name’s Martin too,” I say.
“You’re kidding me.”
“Why would I do that?”
“I’ve got some good videos. You like videos?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Movies?”
“Yeah, sure,” I tell him.
“You’ll like these movies, and we can have a little fun while we watch.” His laughter is all nervous.
“Yeah, sure.” I hope this motherfucker doesn’t think he’s going to keep me up there all day, watching no fucking porn with his tired ass.
I forget the street, the exact area, the name of the bridge we crossed. But I know we crossed a bridge to get to the one-story flat white motel. It could have been anywhere.
“I’ll be right back. I’m going to pay for the room, and then we get the equipment out of the trunk and have some fun. Are you an athlete?”
He’s looking at me like I’m a package of Ding Dongs.
He comes back and then sure enough goes and gets all this shit out of the trunk—tripod, camera, video camera, videocassettes. He’s got one of those silver fold-up screens and lights.
“I thought you might want to take a few shots, you of me, me of you, just for fun. What do you say?”
I don’t say. He ain’t mentioned coins yet—I want at least two bills—and he ain’t taking no pictures of me doing nothing. He motions for me to take the key sticking out of his fat shirt pocket. I make him put the stuff down and open the door himself. The room is no surprise. Bed: box spring and mattress pushed up against a permanently-attached-to-the-wall headboard. Two thin pillows on top a dreary bedspread with geometric designs and a VCR on a dresser. And next to the VCR an ice bucket and two paper-capped glasses. He starts setting up his stuff and pops a cassette in the VCR. Two black boys appear on the screen, twelve, fourteen, maybe sixteen at the most, on their hands and knees fucking each other doggie. And that’s what they look like, skinny black dogs. Is this supposed to be turning me on? The picture opens up to show him, or someone who looks like him—chunky oldish white guy—sitting in a chair, no shirt, pants unzipped, whacking off. I hardly ever go to the Bronx, what happens up in Boogie Down aside from this shit, and house fires, drug shoot-outs, or shoot-downs like Amadou Diallo? Someone like that taken off the count for believing in a dollar and a dream and having a cell phone, and this guy is riding around with a kiddie-porn home industry in his car like it’s nothing at fucking all.
“I want to get the camera set up, OK?”
“Let’s just go on and do what we gonna do. I don’t feel like taking no whole bunch of pictures right now.”
“You think I came all the way up here and rented a room for that? We could have done that in the backseat.”
Man, he’s like nasty!
“OK, give me two hundred.” Fuck it, who’s gonna see some shit like that? I mean, how many people can he show it to without going to jail?
“I don’t have two hundred.”
“You wanna take pictures?”
“Look, I—”
“No, you look. What kind of money are you talking about?”
“I’ve got twenty dollars.”
“Twenty dollars?”
He yanks out his wallet, snatches out a twenty, and thrusts it at me. “I had to pay for the room in cash. I don’t carry around a lot of cash. . . .”
I’m just standing looking at him, his voice trails off. He’s scared. I snatch the wallet out of his hand. I could stick a fork through him, hold him over boiling water like a tomato, skin him alive. It’s like a fire in my brain. He brought me all the way up here for twenty motherfucking dollars? I open his wallet and see a bulge under a Visa card and pull out a wad of bills.
“One hundred, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred! Now we’re talking,” I say in a triumphant voice.
“Oh, please, I got to get my son’s bicycle from the shop.”
“Use one of these.” I point to a row of plastic cards.
“It’s his birthday. The guy who’s customizing his bike for him only takes cash.”
I put the four bills in my pocket and step into him and slap him as hard as I can. The slap knocks him onto the bed on his back, but he bounces up again like a jack-in-the-box. I hit him in the face with my fist, hard, all my weight behind it. I hit him again and again, then snatch him up off the bed and throw him on the floor. He’s groaning, his face is covered with blood. I kick him in the stomach. Wish I had boots on. I look around the room for something to smash him in the head with, although a little voice in me is saying stop, enough already. I pick up his camera and throw it at his head. He jerks as the camera bounces off his head to the floor. I look at my hands—hitting his stupid ass has broken the skin on my knuckles. My right hand is covered in blood. I don’t know whether it’s mine or his. There’s blood on my right shoe. I go to wash my hands in the bathroom; even with the cold water, my knuckles are still bleeding. I grab a towel. How should I do this? I wipe the blood off my shoe. What should I do with the towel? Take it with me, it has his blood; leave it, it has my blood. I start to stuff it in my pocket, then see how big the pool of blood is getting around his head. He’s groaning? I don’t believe it, maybe it was my own voice. Just drop the towel in his blood? No take it with you. Take it and get the fuck out of here.
Where am I? Way the fuck up around Van Cortlandt Park. Slow down. Train train train. I gotta find a train downtown. Stroll, walk slow. I locked the doorknob lock from inside and pulled the blinds tight, then drew the curtains over the blinds. Either he’ll wake up or they’ll find him, him and his kiddie porn. OK! Number 1, Van Cortlandt Park station. After 225th Street, Marble Hill, we go over the bridge. I step between the cars and let the bloody towel drop. Swirling down toward the water, it looks like a white wounded bird.
I switch to the A train at 168th in the Heights. I look down at my feet. I didn’t get rid of all the blood on my shoe. So cut these motherfuckers up in little pieces for landfill, yeah, everything I got on. Twenty dollars! I should have cut his dick off!
It’s Dr See’s deep “Hmmmm” that let
s me know I’ve been talking and at the same time stops me from talking. Dr See is sitting by the bed.
“Tell me, do you dream like that often?”
“I don’t know.”
“Abdul, can you tell me about the dream that brought you here?”
“I don’t remember most of my dreams,” I tell him, and it’s the truth. Not that I owe him the fucking truth.
“If you could remember, what would you remember?”
He’s fucking with me. I got this shit figured out; he’s in me, he’s my mind. I’m going to die. They’re experimenting on me with all these drugs, and they’re never going to let me out. They’re going to kill me or. Or something. What the fuck is going on here? If I don’t remember, why doesn’t he? Shit!
“If I don’t remember, why don’t you?” I ask.
“Say what?”
“Don’t you know what I remember?” I ask.
“How would I know that? That would be to know who you are. Who are you but what you remember?”
“But you know why I’m here,” I tell him.
“Even if I knew everything about you, I still wouldn’t know what you remember. Even your DNA couldn’t tell me what you remember.”
“I want to go to sleep.”
“Am I stopping you, sitting here?”
“The lights.”
“They’re a problem. Shall I get you something to help you sleep?”
“No, yes, let me see,” I mumble, drifting in the whiter light like polluted foam down a stream. I reach out my foam hand for things: my name—just had it, but it passes me by. I can’t hold on to nothing with my foam hands. Things are drifting past me again, how old I am, where I am, did I ever know? Of course I knew, I had to have known, but like a bar of soap in the shower it slipped out of my hands. How long have I been here? If I knew that, I could figure out how old I am, maybe. If I’m normal, what am I doing here? I feel death trying to rub up on me. And the guy across the hall, Watkins and another nigger are talking. “. . . Piece of Velcro wasn’t did, letting another piece of Velcro to be undid, ’n he got loose! And hung himself from the side of the bed.” “Close the door,” one says. “I ain’t closing shit,” Watkins taunts. I see across the hall. I can smell shit piss. It’s not like the movies, no stretcher or wheeling the bed away. Watkins and the other guy roll his body onto a long piece of black plastic and then roll him over and over again in the plastic like he’s a tamale they’re wrapping in corn husks, and then they kick his body onto a long piece of canvas and drag him BUMPETY-BUMP out the room. It’s like they ain’t going to fuck up their back carrying the nigger.