The Stars Beneath Our Feet

by David Barclay Moore

  “¿Mi amigo está bien?” I asked her in Spanish.

  “No, no!” she shouted back at me. Everything was always shouts up here. “He no leave this apartamento, Lolly! ¡Es una lástima! A shame!” She threw up her hands and rushed into the kitchen.

  Inside Vega’s bedroom were a bunch of kids, all of them related to him. Three of his teenaged cousins, Luis, Dalvin and Junior, were all huddled near the open window, smoking.

  It was freezing in here. When Rose and me were out earlier, it had been nice, but now the sun had gone down.

  Nervous, his cousins glanced at me and then smirked.

  I knew Vega’s mami wouldn’t like his cousins smoking in here. She didn’t allow no cigarettes in their place. Not even her husband could smoke, which was why he was always hotboxing in the stairwell or down in front of the building. Vega had told me that when his mother was a little girl in Santiago, her dad had accidentally set their house on fire with a lit cigarette.

  Ever since then she had hated smokers.

  Even though she later married one.

  I was surprised to see Vega’s cousin Frito in a chair in the corner talking on his phone. He nodded at me and kept conversatin’. His right arm was in a blue cast. I guess from that bullet that found him.

  When I stepped into the room, Vega’s young sister, Iris, jumped up from the floor and ran to give me a hug. She had left the bowl of sancocho she was devouring on the carpet. Mrs. Vega made the best sancocho, with big chunks of pork and lots of plantains. I was eyeing it, hungry.

  I picked Iris up like I always did and sat her on my hip. She was heavy. And only six. Too chunky. Her ma fed them too much.

  Vega had a older sister, who was at Brooklyn College. She lived in the dorms and was big as a house too.

  “Cas is grounded,” Iris sadly told me about her brother.

  Vega was flicking through stuff on his phone. “Dímelo, chan,” he said to me.

  “Nothing, man,” I answered. “What did you do?”

  “He left his new coat somewhere and can’t remember,” Iris said.

  Frito sucked his teeth at this. I sat Iris down on the rug, my back aching. Frito hung up his phone and stood, grimacing. He rubbed his right shoulder.

  “They got out the bullet?” I asked him.

  Frito nodded. “I was lucky. My doctors say it just missed my blood vessel here.”

  I exhaled a puff of air.

  “Lolly, do us a favor,” Frito said, glancing at Vega. “Tell your homie to man up.”

  “Vete pa’ carajo,” Vega told him without looking up from his phone.

  Frito grinned and whistled at their cousins smoking by the window. “Let’s go,” he told them. They all slapped hands with me and Vega before disappearing, dragging Iris with them.

  I sat down beside Vega.

  “I can’t believe you lost the coat your grandmother gave you,” I said.

  He rolled over in his bed and faced the wall.

  “I didn’t lose it,” Vega said to the wall and me. “I gave it to those two dudes.”

  “Gave it? What two dudes?” But I knew before I even finished asking.

  Vega told me that Harp and Gully had run up on him this afternoon just like they had run up on me this morning. Only Vega wasn’t lucky enough to have Rose bum-rush them. They caught him by himself, coming home from his violin lesson.

  I hoped that Rose smashing Harp and Gully wasn’t the reason they had jumped Vega. That might’a put those two dudes in a bad mood for the rest of the day. I know it would me.

  “They said, ‘Tell your cousin Frito to join our set!’ ” Vega said.

  And then Harp and Gully had gave him the same choice they had tried to give me, which really wasn’t no choice. They made Vega give them his coat that he had got for Three Kings.

  They let him keep his violin.

  “I gotta do something, Loll,” Vega told me. “Frito says it. Or you know they won’t never stop.”

  “Yeah. What else Frito say?”

  Vega didn’t speak. Started chewing his bottom lip.

  He had lied about this to his mother and father—told them he had lost his coat—because he knew if he’d told them the truth about them boys taking it from him, he would’a got a worse whupping from his parents.

  There was something extra evil about the way that Harp and Gully stole stuff. They would make you give them your swag instead of them actually snatching it off you. That way, I thought, if they got caught, they could just tell the cops, “Hey, it was a gift. We ain’t no thieves.”

  But more important, them forcing you to share your belongings, it played with your head. Made you feel less than human. Like you had no power.

  Like you needed to find some way to get it back.

  In the city room Vega sat on a upside-down pickle bucket playing his violin while he watched me and Rose build. He was still mad. And playing a sad song.

  In fact, Vega’s music was making me sad even though I had been feeling all right before. It’s funny how music can do that to you.

  I guess all art is like that. Making art, you can sure change people. Make them feel a certain way or think a certain way.

  Mr. Ali had said that what we were doing in the city room was art. I hadn’t even thought of it like that before, but I think Ali was right. We were creating worlds in here.

  Lately, I had been feeling like it was just something that I had to do.

  Like I didn’t have no choice in it.

  I wanted to do it forever.

  “What is that?” I asked Vega.

  He paused playing his violin and told me, “Tchaikovsky.” And then he went right back to playing it. I sighed.

  I glanced over at Rose, who was bent over a model, building a girder. She didn’t seem bothered by Vega’s sad music. Rose didn’t show her emotions too much. She hid them from everybody.

  But when her emotions popped, watch out, man!

  Vega set down his violin.

  “You playing made me depressed,” I told him.

  He shrugged. “Music should bring tears to the eyes of women,” Vega said. “That’s what Beethoven and Ms. D. say. You must be a girl, Lolly.”

  “You made that up.”

  “So these new Rose buildings are models of all them buildings you two saw downtown?” Vega asked.

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “I don’t know how she remembers them all. Keeps it up here.” I tapped my forehead. “This one here is the Hearst Tower.” I showed him some of the pictures I took on my phone.

  “Man!” Vega said over Rose’s shoulder. “How you do it, Big Rose? Remember everything with all that detail? That’s perfect.”

  Rose stood up straight, stretched her back and turned to us. “I just do it,” she said to Vega. “It’s easy. They’re there already. All over the city.” She looked at us like, How do you not know this? “Lolly does it too, but his come out of his head. Just his head.”

  She went back to adding on another story to her miniature Hearst. Vega stooped to get a better look at her St. Nick buildings. He stayed down on the floor for a minute, squinting.

  “This is different, Rosamund,” he said, pointing at something there. Rose didn’t answer him, but kept working. “These little stars here, Loll. What’s she done here?”

  I stooped down beside him, not knowing what he was talking about. But then I saw them. Something I’d never seen before. Down beside Rose’s St. Nick Houses there were all these little stars.

  Shiny.

  Golden stickers.

  She had stuck golden star stickers on her model where all the sidewalks were. This was new, I thought. I was surprised because every other part of her city was exactly like the real-life buildings. Except these little gold stars.

  “Yeah,” I said. “What’s this, Rose?”

  Without looking up from her business, she said, “ ‘Rosamund, when you die, they bury you, but your soul flies to the stars. Your mama, your daddy—they were buried under the ground, but they’re
stars now, girl, stars beneath our feet.’ ”

  Vega and me stood there, thinking about this. We had buried Jermaine. He was a star now too.

  “Sounds like a poem,” Vega said to Rose.

  “It is a poem,” Rose said. “In one of Gran’s books.”

  Later on, Vega reminded me, “I told you she was keeping track of the dead bodies.”

  “So Harmonee was built and designed by the Moneekrom family dynasty. But the evil Swarm has abducted King Blaze. His son, Prince Stellar, fights to rescue his father and drive the Swarm monsters out of Harmonee. Prince Stellar leads a group of heroes called the Star Drivers. The Star Drivers are the good guys and whale on the monsters so bad, the Swarm flees to a totally different galaxy.”

  “Does Prince Stellar rescue his dad?” Vega asked.

  “I haven’t decided that yet. It might make a good cliff-hanger,” I said.

  Vega had been listening to me tell my story. Him and me had just finished circling around the new edges of Harmonee. He took a step back to take in the whole thing, which stretched from one side of the old storage room to the other.

  “Yo, this is chévere, Lolly,” he said. “This whole other world from tiny bricks and your head.”

  I felt like I had done something.

  I rolled my bike out of our building’s elevator and rode over to meet Daryl R. and Kofi on Eighth Av’. They were waiting for me right on the corner in front of the barbershop like Daryl’s message had said.

  It felt good to be back on my bike. It was already the middle of March. The weather wasn’t so cold like it had been.

  Kofi and Daryl had just got fresh cuts at the barber’s. This was a different one from Jermaine’s, but I’d still never been allowed to go inside. Ma usually shaved my head herself with our electric clippers. She didn’t trust any barbershops no more.

  All three of us on our bikes, Kofi, Daryl and me went pedaling down to 110th Street and turned left to cruise over toward the East Side, Spanish Harlem. On the right was the top of Central Park and the Harlem Meer, which was a little lake where you could go fishing in the summer.

  Mr. Ali had taken us down there last year.

  We rode over to Park Av’ and turned to head uptown again. This street might’a been one of my fave places in Harlem. I liked it because of the old-timey-looking bridge that ran all along the street, up above you. That bridge was where the trains rolled on.

  The rocks and bricks in this bridge felt like they were one of the original things anybody had built in New York City. Like something out of a castle.

  We made our way north to 145th, and Daryl stopped at the fish place there to buy a soda and order of fries. While Kofi and me was waiting on him was when I saw Rockit.

  Rockit was sitting in his truck, parked along the sidewalk. I could see he was murdering a fried-fish sandwich. On my bike, I scooted over beside the driver’s side of his truck where he sat and yelled at him through his window.

  “Rockit!” I shouted.

  He ducked and started to reach for something. When he saw it was me, he grinned and rolled down his window.

  “Little man,” he said. “Don’t be rolling up on me like that. Something might happen.”

  “What you doing?” I asked.

  “Eating fish,” he said. “You want one? It’s good.”

  I shook my head. I noticed the right side of Rockit’s face was all swole and his eye was red, like he had got pistol-whipped by somebody. He wasn’t as unperturbed as he usually was.

  “I never heard from you about that Christmas present,” Rockit said. “I guess your moms took it from you.”

  “Nah,” I said. “Thanks, man. She let me keep it. Me and Vega play it all the time. Thanks, Rock.”

  He nodded all slow. Rockit seemed like he needed some rest, like he hadn’t slept in, well, forever.

  “Yo, like I told you, that’s from ’Maine. Your brother wanted that for you. The night they got him, he told me he had been planning to get that for you, that particular brand. He said he had always wanted a game system when he was little, but your parents never had the paper.”

  I nodded. I was in the street talking to him. A car drove by kind of close to me. I picked up my bike between my legs and scooted it closer to his truck.

  “Jermaine had big plans for you, Lolly,” Rockit went on.

  Hearing Rockit say that made me tense up.

  “You need help with anything, little man?” he asked. “Ain’t nobody bothering you? You need a job?”

  I shook my head.

  “ ’Cuz if some niggas was bothering you,” Rockit said, “just let me know and I’ll get involved. Stomp that out real quick.”

  I could feel my blood rush to my face. Though it was chilly outside, I was getting hot. I was about to tell him about Harp and Gully and me and Vega. Rockit probably would handle it. He could make them hurt. He could…

  “Yeah,” Rockit went on, “ ’Maine wanted more for you. If he had lived, I know he was gonna make sure you got some kinda college.”

  I froze. Suddenly wanted to smash Rockit in his big, dumb face. “He never talked about all that to me” was all I said.

  “There was a lotta stuff he never talked about with you.” He stared down at his fish, frowned and tossed it into the street. “Look. Give a brother a call sometime,” he said. “Send me a shout-out. Something. I’m gonna hook you up, Loll. Like ’Maine would’a wanted. You remind me of him. Look just like ’im. You need any money?”

  I shook my head.

  “A’ight, then,” he said, all drowsy. “Call me sometime.”

  I nodded, but I didn’t think I would. “I gotta go.”

  “I gotta bounce too,” Rockit said, starting up his engine. “I’m tired, man. Just…tired….I’ll see you, little man.”

  He drove off. Daryl, Kofi and me pedaled up the steep hill on 145th Street, headed back to the West Side. I knew all that pumping would help pedal off all this anger I suddenly felt.

  That hill was always a monster, but we glided down the other side.

  Flying fast like this, down big, long Sugar Hill, really made me feel free. Like I was about to take off.

  Kofi and Daryl, on either side of me, were smiling.

  On our right side, suddenly everything had turned brown and green. St. Nicholas Park came up. We whizzed by the park, glancing toward the branches every now and then.

  Finally, near the bottom of Sugar Hill, Daryl braked.

  He pedaled over to the edge of the park. Kofi and me rolled our bikes up behind him.

  I didn’t know why he’d stopped. If he hadn’t, we could’a rolled all the way down to St. Nick Houses just on momentum. After a minute, I realized what Daryl was doing.

  I searched too, but I couldn’t see our coyote nowhere. I had packed my tablet. Just in case I wanted to sketch it. For a second, I thought something rustling the grass might’a been him, but it was just a little black squirrel.

  Daryl reached into his backpack and placed the French fries he had just bought onto a park bench. He scrutinized the trees one more time and then we all biked off.

  As I pedaled, I kept peering into the park for any signs, but didn’t see none.

  Afterward Kofi had told me that Daryl had been leaving fries for that coyote ever since we saw it.

  Our coyote was part of a species in danger. Hunted down and shot up.

  We knew how it felt.

  Sunnshyne stuck her African scarf–wearing head inside our city room to see what was up. At least, that’s what she had said. To me, it seemed like she had just wanted to instigate something negative.

  Like always.

  Her and Vega were arguing.

  Like always.

  Only this time they had been arguing about my artwork.

  Ever since I had started hanging out with Rose, Sunny had gotten more and more despicable about what I was doing. I remembered back when I had commenced my city, she had thought it was supreme.

  But now…


  “Well, I think it’s just childish,” Sunny went on. “I mean, Wallace is too old for all this Lego junk.”

  “What you talking about, Moonshyne?” Vega asked her. “Twelve’s not too old. What is childish is running around St. Nick acting like you run a detective agency. That’s as childish as dirty diapers.”

  “Shut up. I’m telling you,” she said, “it’s sweet that they put all this work into these Legos…but for what?”

  “It’s artistic,” he said.

  “Toys ain’t art.”

  “Have you heard the whole story Loll came up with? For Harmonee?”

  “That’s nonsense.”

  “Don’t call it that, Sunny!”

  “I’m saying, think of all their extra studies they been missing out on. It’s a waste.” Sunny shook her head. “The only thing more wasteful is Big Head over there, regurgitating the PJs.”

  “That means puking,” Vega said.

  Sunnshyne was impressed. “Anyway, at least Lolly’s shows more imagination than his future baby mama.”

  She pointed her finger at Rose in the corner.

  Rose, who had been sitting, legs crossed, leaped to her feet. Before me or Vega could say or do anything, she was standing over Sunny with her fist raised above her head. She was about to deck her.

  I held my breath and locked my eyes tight. I had seen Rose in action. After a minute, I hadn’t heard Sunny’s bones break, so I peeked.

  Rose was still standing there over Sunny. Instead of clubbing her, though, Rose lowered her fist all slow and glared at her. She told Sunny, “When you die, they bury you.”

  “What?” Sunny said.

  Rose let a grin flash over her face and folded her hands over her chest. “You’re ugly,” Rose told Sunny. “You act ugly.”

  Sunny glared at Rose like she didn’t know who Rose was. Then Sunny breathed out a heavy puff of air and her face seemed to melt, get all soft. She left the city room, looking worried, rushing right past Mr. Ali, who had been standing in the doorway this whole time.

  I wasn’t sure if Rose had seen him there or not. I didn’t think she had.