Monkey Around

by Jadie Jang

  I flew on a cloud straight back over the bay to the sanctuary, and didn’t take a breath the whole time.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Tuesday, October 25, 2011

  Downtown, Oakland

  I went to sleep in the protection of the sanctuary. Exhausted by the past week’s emotional rollercoaster, I slept right through Timmy’s texts telling me to get my ass up at 3 am and go downtown to protest the clearing of the encampments. By the time I woke up, around 9 am, the Ogawa/Grant encampment was gone, as was the one at Snow Park: the tents shredded, a hundred people arrested.

  Ayo had opened Sanc-Ahh by herself, letting me sleep. I ran down the street to the donut shop and got us breakfast, and we sat, reading Twitter accounts and text messages about the morning’s action. In my exhaustion, I felt vaguely as if I were responsible: my inattention last night, and my sleeping through this morning had somehow caused the raid and dispersal of the encampment. I knew this was ridiculous, but I kept getting up to go downtown, as if my presence could do anything. Fortunately, Ayo kept making me sit down again. There was a plan, after all, to gather and march at 4 pm. Until then, all I could do down there was confront police and get angry, and nobody wanted that, did we? Finally, she set me to inventorying the bar, then the storage room, just to keep me busy.

  We didn’t talk about Tez.

  As morning turned into afternoon, members of my affinity group started trickling in, including Todd. His entrance made my heart simultaneously settle, and drop: what did he expect of me after Sunday night? It hadn’t, exactly, been a romantic interlude. He’d spent the night on my couch as a friend.

  But.

  “When was the last time you ate?” was the first thing Todd said to me. Ayo’s eyebrows went into her hairline; she knew all about canine weres and their feeding fetish. She moved immediately to the other end of the counter. Why was everyone conspiring to leave me alone with Todd?

  “Uh … Hi Todd. How are you today?”

  “That’s what I thought,” he said, producing a fresh onigiri, like magic, from his messenger bag. It was already wrapped in its nori sheet, but the nori looked fresh, like he’d just wrapped it. How’d he manage that? Jesus, was it homemade?

  I meant, for a split second, to refuse it, but then the scent hit my nose and Monkey reminded me that I hadn’t eaten anything since that single donut this morning, and was actually pretty ravenous. I seized and inhaled the onigiri—beef teriyaki, my favorite—then paused to realize the price attached when I saw the satisfaction in Todd’s face.

  “Uh, thanks for that. I spent the night here and didn’t lay in any provisions.”

  “I figured. Here, put these in the fridge.” He pulled an unlabeled clear plastic bag full of equally unlabeled onigiri, all in their cellophane-wrapped nori sheets, out of his messenger bag and handed it over the counter. I fumbled the bag into one of the mini fridges, not looking at him.

  “Thanks,” I mumbled. “Uh, what time is it?” I called to a bemused Ayo.

  “Quarter past three,” she said. Thank god.

  “We should start heading down there,” I said, in Todd’s general direction, then repeated it with a raised voice. While Todd had his back turned, gathering up our comrades, I surreptitiously slipped four more onigiri into my go-bag. I was still hungry and that one had been delicious. Todd didn’t have to know.

  As I ducked around the end of the counter, Ayo grabbed my arm.

  “Do you think maybe you should sit this one out?” She asked, seriously, but somewhat expressionlessly.

  I goggled at her. “What? Are you kidding?”

  “You seem a little … worked up. Things could turn violent out there. It’s just been … it’s been a really rough week. The last thing this movement needs is a superpowered protester whaling on cops.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I promise not to whale on any cops. Let’s go.” And I stomped past her.

  We straggled down to the meet at the library, and by 4 pm nearly a thousand people had gathered. We marched around downtown, disrupting rush hour traffic and getting angry honks; or maybe I chose to interpret them that way. Our mood was angry, but righteously angry, assuredly angry—hopefully angry. This wasn’t the end of the movement; it felt like just the beginning, although no one knew where it would go from here. Todd marched at my right, Ayo at my left; Mari, who joined us at the library, marched next to Todd. We all fell into the same mindset, the same determined wavelength, for several hyperreal hours.

  A few hours in, the sun had set and we approached the plaza again. We were given the order to disperse. I felt our energy rise to meet the opposition. Monkey was a soldier for Truth, and all parts of my mind pointed at getting back into the plaza. The cops had tear gas ready, gas masks on. Ordinarily, this would have concerned me; any smoke makes my eyes burn in the wrong way. But then the word went down the line to wet a scarf with vinegar to fend off the tear gas, and bottles of vinegar were passed around; and that gave me an idea. Todd pulled an extra cloth for me out of his bag, but I plucked a hair and changed it into a respirator. He grinned, and Monkey grinned back. I pulled out another hair and made goggles for myself, and then offered him a pair. He took them. I made Ayo a pair as well. I made a mental note to remember goggles in the future.

  Colorful protesters and black-suited cops boiled in the intersection. A line of clear plastic shields approached; order bearing down on chaos. After another warning, the cops began firing tear gas and lobbing flashbangs. Monkey screeched and jumped up and down in my head. Fucking cops! People began running in every direction, screams and imprecations thrown. I found myself automatically guarding Ayo; she wasn’t that old, but she had some arthritis starting and I just felt—

  I saw Todd lift an arm to protect Mari—or was that Jenn?—from a flying tear gas canister, but the canister cleared all of their heads. Monkey screeched angrily.

  A few yards away, tear gas flew, a white kid went down, and blood started streaming from his face. People dove in to help the injured protester, pulled him up and carried him out, screaming “Medic!” The fucking cops stood in a line, watching, throwing flash bangs, impassive, doing nothing to help.

  Suddenly, my mood turned, from righteous anger to hot rage. Monkey began screeching incessantly in my head. I couldn’t stand down here any longer, doing nothing. They wanted mayhem? I’d show them mayhem! I shoved Ayo towards Todd, who was partially shielding both Mari and Jenn, and cried, “Get them up past the the line on 15th!”

  “Where are you going?” he yelled back.

  I leaned in so only he could hear me. “I’m going up, to get a better view.”

  Ayo’s eyes narrowed at me.

  “Maya— ” she started, but I was already gone, having used the smoke from the tear gas to cover the cloud I’d called down. Mari and Jenn were watching the injured man being carried away and Todd hustled them along after. I rose quickly above the level of the high-rises, ripping my mask down at the first opportunity to breathe freely. The fresher air was like oxygen to a fire.

  The airspace above Ogawa/Grant Plaza seemed completely socked in by police helicopters and haze. Bring them down! I considered growing my fists large and just walloping the birds until they fell. Fucking cops! Then, when a fucking cop goggled at me out a helicopter window, I realized that, in my enraged, distracted state, I’d forgotten to go invisible. I corrected the omission, then stood back and glared at his craft. How to bring down his chopper, fast? Fucking cops! I tried to track the fuel line, but had no idea where that would be on a helicopter, or any other vehicle for that matter, and couldn’t be bothered to study it in my fury. Maybe I could snap off one of the propellers!

  From below I could faintly hear, among the rest of the hullabaloo, Ayo’s voice calling my name. She sounded a bit … desperate. Maybe something was wrong. But I couldn’t see her.

  I looked consideringly at the chopper again. It was rimmed in red.

  The cop pressed his face to the glass and his bug-eyes scanned the air franti
cally, for me. That was actually kinda funny. Monkey’s screech turned to laughter. Fucking cop! I really wanted to smash his … I really wanted to make his eyes … I really wanted to fuck with this guy.

  I moved in and rapped “shave and a haircut” on the window directly over his bewildered face. His eyes nearly popped out of his skull. While he eye-scrabbled the air for the source of the sound, I flew under and around to the other side of the chopper and pounded “two bits” on the opposite window. He must have shat his pants! High-larious!

  The rest of the chopper’s inhabitants were starting to cop to the strangeness and look around, puzzled. “Cop” to, get it? I screeched with laughter, not caring if they heard.

  I flew over to the next chopper and considered. Idea! I pulled out a hair, turned it into an invisible bullhorn, which I placed directly against the glass, and, in a booming, sepulchral voice shouted, “The roof! The roof! The roof is on fire!” Instant mini-pandemonium, wild eyes looking around, guns pulled out. Hah! I flew under and up to the other side and placed the bullhorn against the opposite window. “LET THE MOTHERFUCKER BURN!” I loosed at the perfect moment. Major freak out! One cop even had to stop another one from firing through the ceiling.

  I sat down on my cloud and gave in to a severe bout of guffaws. While Monkey was enjoying herself, and feeling the sudden rage blow off, my rational mind was able to insert a slim finger. Maybe, just maybe, scaring the crap out of cops who’d been out here for 16 hours and had already started injuring protesters wasn’t the best idea.

  Ayo! Where was Ayo? Where were Mari and Jenn and the rest of my crew? I stuck my head over the edge of the cloud. I didn’t see them immediately in the chaos and darkness, but then I remembered, and scanned the mayhem at speed for a … there! Up near 15th St! A burning flash! That must be Todd!

  I landed next to him and waited for a cloud of tear gas to blow past to drop the invisibility.

  “Maya!” Mari shrieked. Jenn grabbed my arm.

  “Where have you been?” Ayo cried, distressed.

  “What did you do?” Todd asked, eyes shining.

  Ayo grabbed my arm and pulled me away from Mari and Jenn and the handful of others who’d collected. Todd followed.

  “What did you do?” she hissed.

  I told them.

  Ayo huffed. Todd guffawed.

  “It’s not funny,” Ayo said to Todd. “The last thing we need is someone provoking the cops. Maya, you promised— ”

  “—not to ‘whale on’ any cops. And I didn’t. I just shook ‘em up a bit.”

  Todd snorted again.

  “Todd, don’t encourage her. I think you two have had enough excitement for the day. Let’s put your strength to good use and shield people who are trying to get away.”

  And, ever so slightly abashed, but chortling occasionally at each other, we did, for the next hour or so. While the cops continued to hurl objects and smoke, and grab protesters, and make arrests, and use their nightsticks … Then, something in my eyes made Ayo wary again, and she insisted that I go back to the sanctuary, and that Todd accompany me there, in case Shady showed up.

  I had a hell of a time getting Todd to leave me alone there, but I needed him to go; I had an appointment with Tez that night, although Tez didn’t know it. I finally got him to go away by retrieving and scarfing the remainder of his onigiri, and letting him watch me eat them. Even then, he stood outside the door watching me lock it, and then watching me walk through the darkened cafe into the office. I don’t know how long he stood outside there after I shut the door.

  Probably not long, though, because Ayo came into the inner sanctum a short time later, fuming.

  “I’m really disappointed in you, Maya,” she started, “I thought you’d come a lot farther than—”

  “I have to go, now,” I said flatly.

  “Don’t try to duck out of this—”

  “Tez is bonding with the Huexotl tonight and I have to be there to back him up, just in case.”

  She shut up immediately, and narrowed her eyes at me. She was too damned perceptive, was the problem.

  “So … you convinced him …?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Well, somebody did,” I said bitterly.

  She knew immediately what I meant. “What did you do, Maya?” she asked, hopelessly.

  “What I had to do.” I looked up at her tiredly, and she looked surprised at my attitude; I guess normally I’d just be defiant. “You said the Bay doesn’t exactly have a spirit, but it does. And it spoke to me. And I had to do it.” I pulled out a hair and made a windbreaker and pulled it on. She looked even more surprised. “And now’s not the time to talk about it. Is the coast clear outside?”

  Suddenly, she was all business, like she finally understood; not just what I was saying now, but my erratic and dangerous mood all night. “I’ll walk out ahead of you and make sure.”

  And she did.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Tuesday, October 25, 2011

  Kite Hill Park, San Francisco

  I made sure I was set up, invisible, in a tree outside Tez’s house by 10 pm. I watched as Tez watched tv with his siblings. Manny, the bigger, stockier one—way bigger than Tez—with the stubborn lower lip, looked like a mule … a mule on steroids. Pronk, the skinny gamer from last week, could not sit still, and sprang up periodically to get snacks as if zeir feet were spring-loaded. I watched as Manny put on a security guard’s uniform and left for work; as Pronk went to zeir room and somehow instantly transformed from a quivering mass of springs to a facedown corpse, legs akimbo.

  Later, I watched Tez making a call. He probably was talking to Amoxtli: he was taking copious notes. So I flew up to the nearest window and heard his side of an argument about whether they should use a cave and, once that was resolved in the negative, what greenspace is in the exact center of San Francisco: Dolores Park or Kite Hill. He was going through with it. Monkey hmphed in satisfaction, but the rest of me felt an unnamed anxiety.

  He spent nearly an hour studying his notes. I guess if your training is incomplete you try to make up for it with studiousness—if you’re Tez.

  I followed him the mile or so to Dolores Park. He knew he was being followed; he repeatedly turned around and looked right at me, puzzled, before resuming. Probably thought he was being paranoid. We walked straight through Dolores Park, at 19th St., took the bridge over the MUNI tracks, and continued up the hill. We walked for a while through a nice residential area that I’d never explored, steadily upward, until Tez suddenly disappeared into the bushy darkness of what looked like someone’s yard—or perhaps an overgrown empty lot.

  I dove in after him and found a footpath that led behind the house next door, and followed the fence surrounding that house’s backyard for a stretch, before turning and heading straight up a grassy hill that had been hidden behind backyards and tall trees, in the middle of the block. Halfway up, the overgrown slope opened out into a large empty space on top of the hill. Tez trudged to a flattened, open, dirt area near the top. I turned into an invisible mist so as not to leave footprints or make a noise, and floated up to a position behind him.

  This must be the Kite Hill he’d been arguing with Amoxtli about, at or near the geographical center of the city. Behind us the hills of Twin Peaks cupped our promontory in their orange-streetlight-starred embrace, like we were standing on the pistil of a broad-petaled flower. From this flattened spot—like a dirt-floored stage—you could look out over the audience of Eureka Valley to the entire Inner Mission, up Portrero Hill, and, off in the distance, to the bay. The location was perfect: empty and dark, yet lit by the orange ambient light of a million streetlamps reflected back from the partial cloud cover; quiet, yet washed over with occasional traffic noise; protected from behind, yet open to the world that mattered most in this moment: the world of the Bay.

  For a moment, the Spirit of the Bay rose up and the entire vista shone on me, almost like a face. It was a nod of acknowledgement. Then it was just a view again.<
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  It was midnight. Tez set up at the center of the dirt-floored stage. As he began his preparations, his movements changed; gone was his general, relaxed readiness, and also the tense uncertainty and uncontrolled eagerness of the past week. Now he was all intention, direction, competence. He clearly knew exactly what he was doing.

  He set down the paper with his notes on it, but didn’t seem to refer to it at all. I remembered suddenly how he’d perform even new and rough poems from memory. He set out the Huexotl, first, then a knife that looked like it was made of a highly polished black rock, a bowl with a plastic bag stuffed into it, and a few other things I couldn’t identify from this distance. Was that … lipstick? No, he was using it to draw stripes on his face. It looked like … black? Or maybe dark red? I couldn’t tell in this light. And another one in a lighter color, maybe yellow or brown. He dumped the contents of the plastic bag into the bowl, and lit it with one of the unidentifiable objects, which turned out to be a lighter. Then he muttered something and waved the smoke around with his hands in a formal gesture.

  Things really started hopping when he picked up the knife, which flashed like glass, and cut his earlobe with it, leaning forward and letting blood run thickly to the dirt ground before him. The moment the blood touched the ground, I felt a jolt of some sort of power, some sort of consciousness awakening and looking around, much as Tez had done last night: confused and incoherent.

  Tez muttered more words, slightly louder now, so that I could hear that they weren’t English, or recognizably Spanish. Probably Nahuatl, I thought to quell the mild panic I felt when I didn’t understand language. That’s what they would use, right?

  He caught dripping blood in his hand, then reached over to the Huexotl with his bloody hand and dripped on It for a bit, then made sure the trick was done by smearing the blood all over It. I wasn’t close enough to see clearly, but the darkness of the blood seemed to seep into the stick and disappear. Whoa, freaky. Then he held his hands out, facing palm upward, and I could see that the slice into his earlobe had already healed, and the blood had disappeared from his hands. Even with everything that was going on, I was able to spare a moment’s jazz for the beauty and length of his fingers, his strong palms.