The Virgin of Flames

by Chris Abani

  Everything he did was political, he liked to say, but this was the first one he thought was overtly and unmistakably so. The title had been difficult for him and he had played with American Soul, American Confessional and even The Birth of a Nation’s Conscience. But none of them worked.

  “What does it represent for you exactly?” Iggy asked.

  “Well, I figured that racism and sexism had retreated from the overtly public to the private, you know, all the jokes and so forth that people only feel safe telling in the confessional space of toilets, but ones that still reveal the soul of this country to be racist and sexist, and I want to point to that heart of darkness.”

  “So why not just call it Heart of Darkness?” Iggy asked.

  “Nah, too Conrad and too Apocalypse Now,” he said.

  “American Gothic II?”

  He smiled.

  “American Gothic: The Remix.”

  “The matrix?”

  “No, I said ‘remix.’ ”

  Picking up a box with various colored markers, pieces of charcoal and pastel and oil pens, he decided to go downstairs and continue working. He opened the box to make sure that the moleskin journal with all the material was also in it, then turned and headed for the door. On his way out, he paused by the mannequins closest to the door. They freaked him out, made him think of ghost trains or crazy rides in amusement parks, so he took their heads off. That didn’t make it any better, because now they terrified him. And yet he couldn’t get rid of them. This mannequin was wearing Iggy’s wedding dress and the blonde wig. For some reason it reminded him of Marilyn Monroe, and something else.

  Once, but only once, when he was ten, dressing up in his mother’s boa and red pumps, lips redder than those pumps, running through the living room, blowing kisses from pouted lips and yelling:

  “When it’s hot like this, I keep my undies in an icebox!”

  Once though and no more, because his mother beat him so bad he bled from the cut above his left eye where the metal heel of the red pump had dug in. He did it to cheer her up, he told himself, later, as he put a Band-Aid on the wound above his eye. It was three years after his father left, a year since the army had delivered his medal and their apologies.

  “I am sorry, Mrs. Anyanwu, but your husband is missing in action. At this time we can only presume he is dead.”

  But Black never believed, didn’t dare believe his father was dead, holding on to the smallest shred of hope that he would return someday. His mother had taken the news of Frank’s MIA status well at the time. She didn’t cry, which surprised Black since she was such an emotional person. Instead she went really quiet and then began to pray. Obsessively. That day she began a rosary that never ended, calling for a miracle that never came. Black wouldn’t have minded any of it if she hadn’t conscripted him as the one with a purer heart. With time and the disappointment, she hardened and began to beat Black, blaming him for not delivering. He let go of the lacy dress he was rubbing between pinched fingers and opened the door, mentally wishing the memory away. He wasn’t even sure it was real.

  The Ugly Store was full. All the tables were taken and several people were standing around or sitting on the floor. All petitioners to see Iggy, no doubt, he thought. Ray-Ray was skittering about on his stilts doing his best to meet all the orders. Black thought he would wait until things quieted down before asking for a drink. He stepped over the CAUTION tape around his installation.

  “Hey, mister,” a little girl called. “I don’t think you can do that!”

  Black turned to her and smiled.

  “It’s okay, I’m the artist.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, arms folded.

  Black sat on the floor in front of the installation and emptied the pens, paint-sticks and charcoal onto the floor like a shaman throwing divination bones. He spread them apart with quiet fingers, eyes never leaving the huge canvas, as he tried to get into the mood. The little girl came over and studied him. Black, already unaware of everyone in the room, opened up the black moleskin notebook and began to read.

  “Say, is that the Bible, mister?” the girl asked.

  He turned to her: “In a manner of speaking.”

  “We’re here for the Lady,” the girl said.

  “The lady?” Black asked, clearly sounding confused because the little girl rolled her eyes in exasperation.

  “Where have you been? The Lady, the Virgin.”

  Black shook his head slowly, still not catching on.

  “On the roof!” the little girl said, pointing up.

  “Oh!”

  “Yes, my mummy says she will make Daddy better so we’ve been here for two days now.”

  “In here?” He didn’t remember seeing anyone, and he and Iggy had been here the other night.

  “No, silly, outside in a tent. We only came in here to eat and wash up.”

  Black took in the rest of the crowd: regular working folks dressed in their best clothes which were faded, if clean, from repeated washes, their faces shining from the same grease slicking their hair down and polishing their shoes. Earnest folk with wide-open faces and hands calloused from the hardness of their labors. He should have guessed. They weren’t here for Iggy, these weren’t the kind of people who paid a psychic for a tattoo and a reading; they were here for him. Well, not him exactly, but him as the Virgin. He should do something about it, he thought. Tell everyone the truth. There was no Virgin, it was him in a dress, a stolen dress, on the roof of the spaceship. He couldn’t let them go on believing. Not when they were making their kids sleep outside in tents. But how?

  “She’s not real,” Black said softly.

  “Of course she’s real. My mummy saw her, on the tree house.”

  “It’s not a tree house, it’s a spaceship,” he corrected.

  “That’s not a spaceship, mister. It’s fixed to a pole.”

  Black made a face at her. Her mother just happened to look up at that moment.

  “Jacinta!” she called.

  The little girl turned and ran toward her. Black was about to turn back to his work when he spotted Iggy coming toward him. She waved and he smiled at her.

  “Hey!” she said, climbing over the yellow tape to join him on the floor, legs folded under her in a full lotus, arching her back as she did. He knew the metal loops were hurting her, so he reached across and rubbed her back gently through her top. She relaxed into his hand. “Oh, that’s nice,” she purred.

  “Thank you,” she said, when he pulled his hand away.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I almost forgot, I have some lines for you.”

  He took the sheet of paper she handed him and read.

  “ ‘And the green freedom of a cockatoo/The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.’ This is poetry, right?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she replied. “Wallace Stevens. It’s from Sunday Morning.”

  “All of these lines?”

  She leaned over and pointed to, “In the darkness/they wrestle, two creatures crazed with loneliness.”

  “Those are from Valentin Iremonger.”

  “I like them but how do they fit here? Did you find them in a toilet?”

  “Yeah, mine. Look, you need something to balance out the darkness, right?’

  “Sure,” he said, selecting two markers. He tore the sheet in half and passed it along with one of the pens to Iggy. “Join me?”

  She took the paper and pen and smiled.

  “Are you sure?”

  He nodded.

  “Anywhere?”

  He nodded.

  They worked silently, inserting the lines of poetry into the already crowded canvas. Black had rigged the wall with a pulley system. The contraption was simple. Two lengths of rope dangled down from a series of pulleys embedded in the ceiling. The rope ended in two wooden steps that looked like wooden bicycle pedals. Black could step onto them, and pull himself up to any point along the length or height of the canvas. He did it now, swinging up and across to
insert lines from the poems in harder to reach places, while Iggy covered the lower sections, both working silently for an hour or so before taking a break. They both sat back on the floor to admire the work.

  “What do you think?”

  He took out a cigarette and lit it. The Ugly Store sometimes seemed like the only place left in California where he could smoke without offending anyone. He took a long drag and passed it to Iggy, blowing smoke as he spoke. He walked up to it and stared for a long time.

  “I don’t know. Nearly there.”

  AMERICAN GOTHIC—THE REMIX

  What do you get when you cross a nigger and a spick? A lazy thief; WHAT DO YOU CALL THE USELESS SKIN AROUND THE VAGINA? A WOMAN. “And the green freedom of a cockatoo/... The holy hush of ancient sacrifice”—Wallace Stevens. What does FUBU stand for? Farmers used to buy us. Asians have small dicks, no fucky fucky long time. How do you blindfold a gook? Use dental floss. “Winding across wide water, without sound/ The day is like wide water, without sound”—Wallace Stevens. A Mexican and a nigger are riding in a car, who’s driving? A cop. “Death is the mother of beauty, mystical/ Within whose burning bosom we devise”—Wallace Stevens. Only cockroaches and Nigerians will survive a nuclear holocaust. What does that say about cockroaches? What do 3 million abused women do wrong each year? They don’t fuckin’ listen. KKKK—Kill the Ku Klux Klan. I sit here flexin’ trying to make another Texan. What do you call a man with his arm up a camel’s ass? An Afghan mechanic. what do you call a beautiful Moselm woman? Asif! Fuck Conan O’Brien. Condoms are for Sissies. Jesus was a drunk. What do you call a black woman who had an abortion? A crime prevention officer. What do you call a plane load of black people heading to Africa? A good start. “I’ve known rivers, mighty mighty rivers”—Langston Hughes. What do you call a bad driver? Asian. Catch a nigger by his toe, if he hollers, lynch the motherfucker. Why aren’t there any spics on startrek? Because they won’t work in the future either. “Gazelle, I killed you/for your skin’s exquisite/ touch, for how easy it is/ to be nailed to a board/ weathered raw as white/”—Yusef Komunyakaa. If your wife and a lawyer were drowning and you had to choose, what would you do? Go to lunch or a movie? “In the darkness/they wrestle, two creatures crazed with loneliness”—Valentin Iremonger. What do you tell a woman with two black eyes? Nothing, she’s been told twice already. How do you hide money from a Mexican? Under a bar of soap. What’s the difference between a pizza and a Jew? A pizza doesn’t scream when you put it into the oven. Why does Stevie Wonder smile all the time? Because he doesn’t know he’s black. “The bud/stands for all things/ even for those things that don’t flower”—Galway Kinnell. What is better than winning a medal at the special Olympics? Not being retarded. Hoodwink—what a member of the KKK does just before he lynches a nigger. Es una copa Ilena/ de agua/ el mundo—Pablo Neruda. Black...

  An Attempted Index on Self-Censorship

  Coles, 6h St. Corazon, Madrid. Spago’s, Hollywood. Dutton’s, brentwood. The getty. Lacma. Sunny’s, leimert park. Lucy Florence. Psychobabble, n. Vermont. Goodluck club. Buckingham palace. Hilton, paris. Hilton, munich. Hilton, los angeles. Hilton, cairo. PHILLIPE’S, ALAMEDA. UNION STATION. CROCE’S, SAN DIEGO. LOS ANGELES SUPERIOR COURT. DOROTHY CHANDLER MUSIC pavilion. fifth street dicks; The world stage, leimert park. Ins building; Parker center, los angeles. Tottenham hale station, London. Internal revenue service, London. Ochel, cuba. Tony’s, treasure beach, Jamaica. Elliot bay bookshop, seattle. Texaco building. World trade center, new york. Barnes and noble. Pharoah’s tomb, Egypt. Oum kalsoum hotel, cairo. International library, Alexandria. Tia chucha’s, los angeles. Pizza hut, Melrose. Japanese gardens, Huntington. Vroman’s, Pasadena. Mobil station, Rakim tree. Ranger station, Rakim tree national park. Motel 6; The way station, palm springs. Coffee house. The performance loft, Redlands. Dinner cruiser, san diego. Center for race studies, new york. Museum of tolerance. Kali Koffee, Mumbai. Cut Leaf Café, Bombay. Taj Mahal. Taboo, delhi. Jazz bistro, lagos, Nigeria. Starbucks, Milan. Coliseum, rome. Samba-samba, rio de Janeiro. Exodus, Israel. Titanic café, Kabul. The rose, Seattle. Miyagi’s, los angeles.

  Iggy had joined him, standing next to him, head inclined, hand rubbing her shaved dome slowly.

  “I like it.”

  “You don’t think it is too dark?”

  “Oh, it’s dark. But that is a good thing.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  They stared at it for a long time without speaking. “Coffee?”

  They both looked up. It was Ray-Ray and he had two cups of coffee on a tray. Black reached for them.

  “You know the rules,” Ray-Ray said, pulling the tray back. Black smiled. It was an old game. Ray-Ray had been named after his mother’s favorite writer, Raymond Chandler, and he loved to play quote games from Chandler’s work. Black thought it was ironic that a black man should be named after Raymond Chandler, but he said nothing.

  “ ‘ Shakespeare. He knew his liquor too.’ ”

  “Farewell, My Lovely,” Ray-Ray said, as though he were biting into soft nougat.

  Black took a coffee and passed it to Iggy before he reached for his. As Ray-Ray left, Black muttered under his breath.

  “Why can’t he play a regular game like Monopoly? You can really destroy a person’s soul if you own all the railways. Now that’s a game.”

  “Like the Huntingtons.”

  Black didn’t know what Iggy was talking about, but decided to pass.

  “I’m going for more coffee,” he said.

  “Hey, Black,” Ray-Ray said, as Black walked up to him.

  “Hey, Ray-Ray.”

  “Coffee?”

  “Double cappuccino but hold the foam.”

  “It ain’t a cappuccino if it ain’t got the foam,” Ray-Ray said.

  Black made a face. As Ray-Ray crossed over to the espresso machine on the edge of the bar, Black caught sight of the two-foot-high stilts he walked on. Being a dwarf, he needed them to reach the top of the bar. Black paid for the coffee and reached for the paper cup, but Ray-Ray pulled it back.

  “‘ Freeze the mitts on the bar,’ ” Ray-Ray said.

  “Farewell, My Lovely?”

  “Damn, skippy,” Ray-Ray said, releasing the cup.

  Black saw June, Iggy’s friend, walking through the store. She headed to Iggy and sat. Ray-Ray hurried over to her and came back to the bar to fetch her order. Black joined them. June was an artist. Black knew her well because she was a regular and had held several showings there. He loved June’s work, prints with bold lines and startling colors. Something about them, maybe the grain, gave them soul. It moved him, made him realize how deep surfaces could be. His aesthetic was as wide open as his field of influences, although he drew the line, he once told June, at Shigeto Kubota’s vagina paintings, which the artist did by attaching a paintbrush to her groin.

  “Hey, Black,” Iggy said. “Join us?”

  “Sure. Hey, June,” he said.

  “Sit,” Iggy said, rubbing her hand over her bald scalp.

  Black thought he saw more purple fuzz than usual. “June was just telling me about her new project. A map of Los Angeles without the religious place names.”

  Black paused, as Ray-Ray returned with drinks—coffee for June and some kind of tea for Iggy. Black took a sip from Iggy’s cup and made a face. Wheat germ tea. Vile.

  “Installation? Painting?”

  “I haven’t decided,” June said.

  “Doesn’t matter, really, it won’t be a map of Los Angeles, though,” he said.

  June laughed.

  “But it would.”

  “The landscape won’t change just because you alter the names.”

  “I know, but the psychic space will,” she said.

  “Exactly. So if it’s not Los Angeles, then it’s not Los Angeles , so to speak.”

  Black was pulling his overalls away from his stomach as he spoke. Iggy smiled. She knew he was conscious of his weight, and she wanted to reach out and rub he
r palm down his chest, say, stop, don’t, you are beautiful. Instead she sipped her wheat germ tea.

  “Oh, that’s bullshit,” June said. “That kind of mumbo jumbo is what keeps the superimposed perversion of religion in place.” Her position on religion of any kind was well known to him. He once called her a Marxist idealist, but she demonstrated equal scorn for that.

  “Black has a point,” Iggy said.

  “Pooey!” June said. “You two are no good together.”

  Black laughed. He couldn’t figure out what these two white women had in common: an atheist artist and a Jewish fakir.

  “When Parker plays ‘Lover Man,’ it’s a different song from when Grover covers it. Same instrument, same notes, different song. Same landscape, same map, different town. Not Los Angeles,” he said. “This place is more than surface, June. It’s about what it means to you.”

  “Which is?”

  There was so much he wanted to say. Los Angeles for him wasn’t Beverly Hills, or the movies, or Rodeo Drive. It wasn’t the deception of movie studios that built sets with varying door sizes so that cowboys looked brawnier against the smaller doors and ladies daintier against the taller ones. It wasn’t the Mulhollands and their water, nor the people everywhere with too perfect hair and smiles as fake as the teeth they framed. Nor was it San Marino and its pretend class, or even the Hollywood sign. It was in the angle of light caught in the trickle of the Los Angeles River as it curved under one of the beautiful old crumbling bridges of East LA. The way the painting of an angel wearing sandals and jeans, its once-white wings stained by exhaust soot and tag signs, smoking a cigarette on a support of the 10 East Freeway on Hoover, curved into flight if you took the corner of the on-ramp at speed. In the cacophony of colors and shapes in the huge piñata stores on Olympic, near Central; and the man pulling the purple wooden life-size donkey mounted on wheels down Cesar Chavez, wearing a nonchalant expression as though it was the most normal thing in the world; or the people who parted on each side of him as he made his way down the sidewalk, completely oblivious to the sight. In the occasional clip-clop of horses pulling a brilliant white bridal carriage that resisted the dust and dirt everywhere, and the line of cars following slowly in awe. It was in the solo of an unemployed saxophonist in Sunny’s Café down at Leimert Park playing for tips.