The Confession of Copeland Cane

by Keenan Norris

  Now, because I’m Bay Area turf by birth, I hate the BART train with a passion: dirty, virus-cooking, overcrowded, and just plain stank, not to mention too damn expensive. Bay Area Rapid Transit can go fuck itself for real. Now that the virus is dead, or whatever, and ain’t nobody but my momma got a mask on, rich folks is back to riding the trains again, which of course means BART can increase the price of the tickets. I done spent so much money just to be miserable riding them tin cans, Jacq, breathing in bad air and whatnot. They’re straight-up death traps, if you ask me.

  On this day, I stepped off the train and onto the platform at the appointed stop, and I scanned the crowd. My man’s people wadn’t exactly difficult to spot. They had they hair all done up in multicolor dreads, red, white, and blue, full-on Americana for real. They had on flashy, shiny, studded, sequined clothes straight outta Breakin’ or Paris Is Burning. I thought, What the hell did I go and get myself involved in? Some kinda patriotic Folsom Street parade?

  One member of the crew, a big guy who could see above the whole crowd, met eyes with me, nodded and smiled. He sifted the swarm of BART bodies, sliding and spinning thru traffic like everybody except him was standing still. Hella lovely footwork. In a second, he was in front of me. Mr. America extended me a muscled, callused hand. “What’s good, Cope! I’m the leader of the crew.”

  “Y’all sell shoes?”

  “Hell nah. Did Miguel tell you that? Don’t tell me that that nigga’s gettin’ his black people mixed up now?”

  “I don’t think he specifically said that. I think I misunderstood.

  What do y’all do?”

  “We can show you better’n I can tell you, bruh. Come get on this next train with us.”

  I wadn’t lookin’ to hop on the train and breathe up the latest germs, but being broke is the flu, too, so I agreed to jump in and see about it. Wadn’t much talkin’ anyway; them brothers were performers.

  *

  It goes down like this: Mr. America walks into your BART train car and comes up the aisle like he’s the president entering Congress to give the State of the Union, except don’t nobody stand up and salute him. He makes his speech despite the disregard—it’s some cold beautiful straight outta Obama game, about how all of us—black and white and brown, Left and Right, upside down and right side up—bleed red and blue and love the breath we breathe, the land where we live, etcet-era, etcet-era. The other two members of the crew low-key make they way onto the train, heads down, quiet, one with a phone that drips wires around his neck to connect to the speakers he has hid under his jacket while the other boy loosens his limbs to dance. The boy with the speakers wedges them things between the chair leg nearest the train door and the tin wall of the train with the phone resting on top of the speakers. After I started my work with the crew, it became my job to watch the speakers and the phone as the music cued.

  The three boys always go in, dancing with Misty Copeland, Crazy Legs, and the Holy Ghost taking turns taking over they bodies. Breakin’, flippin’, flarin’, they could be ballerinas, these boys with all the pirouettes on pointe and other mess they pull off; they could be gymnasts with the wild iron cross flips and pommel horse tricks they do from the rope ties and grab bars that run the length of the train ceiling; they could be anything that touches turf with all the pixelated poppin’ and lockin’, slow motion and vogue shit; they can hold forever on a train that never stops rockin’. Footwork from God. Balance like don’t exist anywhere shit’s easy. Cakewalk, moonwalk, pimp limp, church talk, whip that into some salsa and front flip to a perfect split. BOOM-BAP. They hang upside down from the beams, holding firm with just they feet and ankles, BOOM-BAP, and then against the laws of physics a boy will spill into a perfect somersault bleeding into somethin’ triple-jointed like a comic book creation come to life, a human body turning itself into whatever it wants to be, BOOM-BAP-BOOM-BAP, a boy who can Christ Jesus! that ass from water to wine across motion and time.

  They become the music, these brothers, the way they flow, transcend, and create on-beat and off-script. But the performance has rules. When I worked with them the act was as exact as clockwork. It always ran right to three minutes, never a minute longer, never a moment shorter, which was perfect timing because in the city the gap between BART stops ain’t much longer’n that. It left just enough time for Mr. America to do the Obama act again and make an additional pre-scripted speech about donations. My job at that point in the proceedings was to shut off the music, gather up the equipment, and walk up and down the aisle, asking people to toss a few dollars into an upside-down Abe Lincoln top hat the crew had found in an alleyway and took to the cleaners. After I collected all the money, I flipped the hat on my head, making sure none of the bills slipped out. That was my performance.

  Back and forth between Berkeley and San Francisco we went, same show all day long. An en-tire Saturday could fade away to the soundtrack of the same KRS-One and Slick Rick songs looped over and over and bookended by Mr. America’s preachments on our human oneness. After a while, the smell-track of stressed, pressed human flesh packed tight and the screech of wheels and rails as we rolled along underneath the first hot layer of earth seemed almost like a second home.

  The crew won’t do a lick of dancing outside that chain of stops that runs between the two cities. Everybody knows where the money be at. Folks in Oakland and Richmond won’t put down the jack to justify all the acrobatics they do. A lazy show is a waste of energy and won’t net no money. Better to cool down and save the flavor for later, where the payoff is bound to be greater. Which is what I did, once I joined the crew and began riding the trains every Saturday, all day. North of Berkeley or beyond downtown, deeper into the city, we rested, lounging across empty seats like the homeless travelers who rode the train cars to nowhere day and night and day again.

  ’Fore the rhythm got radiated outta me, I had the same sense of time as everyone else. I could keep a beat and move my feet. Maybe I was no Miguel, knocking out Kanye’s abstract stuff on bedposts in the dark, but I was on Colored People Time. So one day when Mr. America had the bright idea to make me part of the performance, at first I could just Soul Train up the aisle a few steps and be good. Our audience wouldn’t care no way. The train car was full of European elders who was headed to the opera in downtown San Francisco. The kinda crowd that you couldn’ta put on a BART train at gunpoint back in the day with the virus and whatnot. There was even a couple of them who sported them little walkers with the tennis balls on the legs. Them things is unstable than a mug, liable to go sliding every time the train hits a corner. Meanwhile, the opera people was sippin’ tea and eatin’ muffins. It wadn’t exactly a den of thieves up in there. Mr. America wanted to amp up the action. He pulled me away from the phone and speakers that I was guarding and caught a beat and motioned for me to battle him, and one, two, motherfucker, I tried to put one foot in front of the other on that rockin’ and rollin’ train and instead I stumbled into Mr. America because I was going right when he was going left. Then someone’s walker slid into me and tried to dance with me. I walked it back to its owner, and then the train juked like Kyrie Irving on the fast break and I almost fell flat. Mr. America brought me back to the battle. How he could keep his feet, let alone stay on beat as he danced, was a mystery to me. I couldn’t find the beat to save my life. The train tossed itself around a turn so sharp I lost my footing and fell ass-first into the lap of an old man in a tuxedo. He took it with a grunt, and some cussin’, and slapped me in the back of my head, which I didn’t take too personal. It wadn’t his fault or my fault that I had fell; it was Mr. America’s fault. Even if I still had had some rhythm, there was no way I could keep my balance on a stuttering, braking, twisting, turning train. No flares or back spins or any of that other mess was in my repertoire to begin with, let alone all them gymnastics them fools could do inside a moving vehicle. Gimme a piece of cardboard and a boom box, and all’s you about to see is a cardboard retirement home for your busted-ass boom box to die in.
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  I couldn’t help but be on time for everything but a beat. My dancing had turned into a disaster. I humbly found my way off of the old man’s lap and back to the phone and the speakers, and I stood guard there, eyeing down the senior citizens as they made they trip to see Beethoven. And when our performance was over, I went around with the hat and collected the donations right on time.

  After I collected the funds, Mr. America nudged my shoulder. “Blood,” he whispered into my ear, “I don’t know if anyone’s broke the news to you, but you’re a terrible dancer. Like, horrendous. Don’t ever try that shit again.”

  “I didn’t try anything. You made me dance,” I hissed back.

  “True. But still.”

  A younger audience came on board.

  “Look,” I said, “I used to dance OK, not special, but OK. But then somethin’ happened. I lost all my rhythm.”

  “You just woke up one day ain’t have no rhythm? All of a sudden? That don’t make no sense, blood.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “We got thirty seconds.”

  “I fell into a sinkhole when I was going to day school on Treasure Island—”

  “A sinkhole? Daaaamn.”

  The train seized and jerked itself backward on the tracks. Everyone in the Bay knows that jerk. It means the BART is ready to roll, which means the show must go on.

  “They don’t repair shit over there. Plus, it’s all radiated and shit. I think I got exposed to some nuclear shit.”

  “Daaaaamn, blood. I thought the children was the future.”

  “Maybe Treasure Island is the future.”

  “Blood,” he muttered. “That’s how they do us … Ladies and gentlemen, friends, Romans, Americans, Mexicans, please lend me all y’all’s ears. I know you did not get on this train to listen to a brother speak, let alone to be enlightened and entertained by him. You were under the impression that you were traveling between entertainments, when in fact the real show is always the journey itself. You see, this train is a lot like the Bay Area and a lot like America: everyone’s here, free and equal and oh so very beautiful. You all are looking fabulous this afternoon, might I add. You see, we’re all one human family, even though the shades of our skin and the accents that we speak in might be a little, or a lot, different. We’ve come from all over the world to the greatest city in the greatest country on earth. And here we are sharing this moment! Me and my partners wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but here with you. That’s why we’re gonna give you one beaucoup experience for the eyes and the ears right here. We are one people, one nation, shoulder to shoulder in a musty old metal cylinder going underground and into a groove …”

  *

  I don’t dream much, and the dreams that I do have I hardly ever remember. But once in a blue, I’ll have this dream where I’m riding the train, that bitch is bouncing along bad as ever. I got like two, three masks on my face, worse’n Momma, and then I hear that BOOM-BAP. BOOM-BAP BOOM-BAP. I look up and I see my old partners. They’re dancing. They have the Holy Ghost all in them. The spirit is speakin’ thru them. The hat gets passed by an invisible hand, and when it gets to me I pay them boys plenty, even when I’m down to my last dime.

  IRL I moved on from the train hustle. Wadn’t much I could contribute to the crew but to pass the hat on they behalf. But I was grateful Miguel had put me on with the crew. If not for him, I woulda been wandering East Oakland like Jesus in the desert lookin’ for a job. Who was gonna hire a kid with my background anyway? The bank? The Chinese take-out joint? C’mon now.

  Miguel was LinkedIn for the formerly fucked up. It had been many moons since me and him kicked it in the Youth Control. I figured he musta been sent home by now, but when I hit him up at his old cell number the mailbox was full and dude did not answer. I knew it was practically a rite of passage for a hustler like him to change out his phone. They stayed difficult to decipher. I had no idea what was up with my man. I would just have to wait and be watchful.

  *

  Them first weeks back home, all I wanted was to get my hustle up and make the world pay, literally, and in as many revenue streams as possible. I wanted to keep my folks in Oakland and, let me not be no liar, I also wanted some get-back for all the ways I’d got hustled, railroaded, radiated, and the rest. After all, hustling the system seemed like the best way to get ahead. Then news of another hustler hit Rockwood:

  ROCKWOOD HIGH SCHOOL PRINCIPAL OUTED Allegations of diploma fraud reached their zenith against local high school principal Sarina Jayachandra Campbell-Zayas when teachers union representatives voiced concerns on a conference call that the principal’s alleged alma mater has refused to verify her graduation from its doctoral program in Educational Leadership. In short, Campbell-Zayas, it has long been suspected, may not have completed a PhD and may have erroneously and repeatedly over the course of several years’ time listed the degree as having been completed on job application materials. Campbell-Zayas, it was also alleged on the same conference call, may have received her master’s from an unaccredited institution. A source inside the school board has leaked to journalists that the Western Accrediting Association of Schools and Colleges, which oversees accreditation of Oakland-area public and charter schools, requested proof of the doctorate from National Student Clearinghouse. The appropriate transcripts were never produced, according to the source, but in closed-door meetings the matter was resolved despite the objections of faculty at other area high schools such that Campbell-Zayas has been allowed to continue as principal of the school. It is unclear whether Campbell-Zayas will continue to refer to herself as having earned a doctorate degree. The principal’s Twitter feed advertises an internet-accessible graduation ceremony where she is to receive an honorary doctorate from the Todd $haw Music Institute of Oakland in Life Experience.

  I read that story off my phone while perched up on my dumpster lid, and then I clicked over to her Twitter and they wadn’t lying: there the lady was suited and booted, ten toes down in a big black graduation gown and hood, the whole lick. She walked the graduation stage to Jay-Z’s “Hard Knock Life” and got robed and hooded, the whole deal. Then the lady styled and profiled onstage way past her time limit like she was lettin’ them fools who tried to oust her know never to come for her head long as they lived. I remember lookin’ out at Rockwood and just thinkin’, SMDH: Shakin’ My Damn Head. I had grown up in a tight little community. Not the best place in the world, I’ll admit, but far from outta control. The planets of our universe rotated in steady circles. But now our issues was whirling outta orbit, out the atmosphere of anything that felt lawful and reliable. Maybe that was why I was so open to you, Jacq, when you approached me then.

  “Hey, you.”

  I heard a voice which was softer’n and smoother’n anything I had heard on the Rock or in the Youth Control. I looked up from our unaccredited lead educator, half expecting to see Ms. MacDonald cheesin’ at me, but instead it was you, Jacq, lookin’ dead at me, serious but sweet, smiling.

  “Hey.”

  “I’m Jacqueline.”

  “I’m Cope.”

  “I know who you are. I mean, I didn’t know your name, but I see you every day on these dumpsters watching everything, watching everybody. I figure you must know about me and everything else that moves here.”

  “Only a little bit. Your momma be droppin’ you here on Fridays after school hours. In a Lex, no less. She comes and picks you up on Sundays in that same Lex. I figure your daddy lives here. That light-skinned dude in 22A?”

  You nodded. “He grew up here and moved back when they divorced.”

  “Why?”

  You shrugged. “He doesn’t have the budget of a corporate attorney like my mom happens to have. Piedmontagne is expensive. Rockwood’s cheap—cheaper, I mean.”

  That made me think of all the things we could never afford. “You be rockin’ that fly ol’ bomber jacket: Pied-montay Prep. That’s where you go to school?”

  You confirmed. “I’ve got t
wo of these jackets,” you added, “this rose-gold one and another that’s dusty rose. They’re different.”

  “If you say so, Jacq.”

  “Jacqueline. And I do say so. You are right, though, I do go to Piedmontagne. Where do you go to school?”

  “When it ain’t summer?”

  “I take college prep classes in the summer, but sure, when it’s not summer, where do you go to school?”

  “Rockwood. Right here. Ain’t been enrolled for a minute, though.”

  I was expecting you to have somethin’ to say about my unenrollment, but instead you said, “Piedmontagne’s cool,” like you hardly heard me.

  “Yeah?” I said, since I was more interested in you anyway.

  “I mean, it is and it isn’t cool. I’ve lived there most of my life. And the school is highly ranked, so my mom really pushed to get me accepted there. She’s ambitious like that.”

  “What’s ambitious about Pied-montay?” I asked, and I didn’t mean that in some kinda sarcastic way, boss. I just ain’t know shit about y’all’s city within a city or y’all’s school or any of it. It might only be a few miles away, but like the Oakland Hills, I could count on zero fingers how many times I had been there.

  “What isn’t ambitious about Piedmontagne, or about my mom for that matter? I feel like they go together. She wants me to be multilingual. Piedmontagne has study abroad language immersion programs in Spanish, French, Farsi, Mandarin Chinese, and Arabic. She wants me to monetize my interests in social justice, literature, and new media. The school has a student-run newsletter with over five thousand subscribers, not including the students and staff at the school itself. It’s kind of a big deal, and I used to write opinion pieces for the newsletter. I don’t think I was great at being an opinion maker. Maybe I was a little scared to say things, maybe I didn’t want to open myself up to people not liking me. Now I run the newsletter website as well as the data collection and analysis, not that there’s a lot to collect and analyze, since the subscribers are the exact same people every year and the staff who read it are the exact same people every year because nobody’s retired or been hired since my freshwoman year and it’s against school rules to gather information about minors (that is, the student readers). But I play around with the software.”