by Laura Goode
Marcy follows. “Not worth the mess they’d make on the driveway. We should seriously call the ACLU on that Bible group. Bob’s always said pinko lawyers love that church-and-state shit.”
“Maybe,” I say, hopping into the passenger side of the Jimmy. “But don’t you think legal’s more flexible when you’re rich?”
“Shit is fucked.”
“For real.”
Marcy starts the car and I stick my tongue out between two fingers at Mary Ashley as we pull out. Dead prez’s lets get free blasts from the CD hookup. Marcy’s been heavy into hip-hop for as long as I can remember, and it was her endless lyrical parroting and beatboxing that got the rest of us rhyming in the first place.
“You’re good with words,” Marcy said to me about a year ago. She’d figured out how to break songs down for their parts on her computer. “You say things right. Can you make them rhyme?”
I wrote and I wrote, and it rhymed, but I couldn’t make it sit in a song shape. I just wrote lyrics like a highway without any exit ramps.
“I was thinking about Rapunzel,” Rowie said out of the blue one day. “I think I wrote a hook about Rapunzel.”
“Yeah?” I said, intrigued. “Lay it on us.” Rowie was so nervous as she read from her notebook that her voice shook.
“Bumping up against the edges of a blond-yawn town
She’s stuck up in a tower and she can’t get down
But she’s got beats in her feet and she’s drowning in sound
Break out, babe, obey it, get down.”
“That’s it,” Marcy marveled. “Thank God you came along. Miss Poet Laureate over here can’t write a chorus to save her own ass.” Then when Tess started hanging around, Sister Mischief was born.
People think it’s weird, I know — four suburban teenage girls, three white, one brown, making this kind of music. Maybe some people think a white girl from Minnesota doesn’t have any right to rhyme. But how am I supposed to keep from rhyming? To me, hip-hop is a reflection of your surroundings, and an instrument of change. And if that’s true, it can’t belong only to black people, or to white people, or to brown or green or blue people. Within a medium of subversion, I like to think that all subversive people are, or should be, welcome, because busting rhythm and poetry loose is the only way anyone with hip-hop pumping in their veins can feel free. We’re getting free. So fuck anyone who thinks we shouldn’t rap. If we’re being really honest with ourselves here, we rap exactly because a lot of people think we shouldn’t.
“Hey,” Marcy says.19 “Where you at, Ferocious?”
19. Text from Tess: On my way to R’s now, but I gotta hit choir practice for a while tonight or MA’s gonna call a Lutheran jihad on my a**.
I smile. “Just thinking.”
“Wanna find a new sign to bring Rowie?”
“No doubt, ladyfriend.”
Marcy pulls off the highway and we hunt for targets. I point out a generic handwritten GARAGE SALE THURSDAY sign and shrug; she shakes her head.
“We need something more ironic. Something with a little more smack to it.”
“What does that sign say?” Marcy asks, pointing at a sign on Mary Ashley’s mammoth yard.
“Oh, my God, we would have to be seriously stealthy to make off with that.” The lawn sign reads Herb for Holyhill: Herb Baumgarten for State Senator.
Marcy cackles. “Herb for Holyhill! That shit is ours.”
“Can you believe he’s actually running?” I say. “We’re basically doing Holyhill a nicey by sabotaging him.”
“I still can’t believe he’s running as a Republican with ‘Herb for Holyhill’ as his campaign slogan. Let me pull through the side street — it’ll get us closer.” She hangs a left and kills the lights. “I’m going to roll slowly by the edge of the lawn, and you dash out and grab it from your side, drive-by–style.”
“Someone should confiscate your DVDs of The Wire, but I’m on it.” We roll by the yard and I bolt across the lawn, twisting my ankle a little as I pivot back, sign in hand. The sprint leaves me panting when I jump back in the Jimmy and toss the booty in the back as Marcy peels out, cackling wildly. Marcy and me, we take care of business.
Rowie and Tess live at the end of a long cul-de-sac near the fire station, in houses facing each other from about a block’s distance. The Baumgartens live on the next street over, which lends a literal quality to Mary Ashley’s acting like we invaded her territory. Anyway, what I love most about Rowie’s house, apart from the old treehouse in the backyard, is the smell. It’s sweet and spicy and totally unlike the smell of any other house I know; I love that it’s full of scents unfamiliar to me. Before I knew Rowie’s family, I’d never really eaten Indian food, except for a samosa here and there, but Dr. Priya Rudra is a force to be reckoned with, in the kitchen as well as the ER. It took me a few tries to brave the Rudra chutney gauntlet without weeping from the heat, but that shit is legit. Marcy parks on the street, and we walk up to the embossed-copper door.
Dr. Rudra — well, one of them — Rowie’s dad — answers. “Ah! Friends! Rohini is expecting you. Do you want some chicken?” As the only non-veg member of the Rudra family, Raj Rudra is always trying to recruit companions in carnivoraciousness.
“You have no idea how full we are,” Marcy answers. “Esme’s dad just pushed me over my limit.”
“Maybe later,” I add. “Thanks a bunch, though. Is Rowi — Rohini down in her room?”
“Yes. Please go ahead.” He steps aside softly down the hall. “You girls have a nice time writing your rap rhymes.” He sends us off with a glance at the Herb sign ill-concealed behind Marcy’s back.
Just then, the other Dr. Rudra, Rowie’s mom, appears. Her face lights up when she sees Marcy and me.
“Girls! I’m so glad I caught you. Oh, I loathe that man.” She points to HERB FOR HOLYHILL. “He wants to destroy science education in Minnesota.” She laughs at the shocked looks on our faces. “My mother always says that American medical school turned me into a crazy radical. I say, what’s radical about dispersing information? Please, don’t get me started. How is your writing going?”
“Fine, thanks, Dr. Rudra.”
“I’m so glad.” She smiles. Rowie’s mom is really beautiful — not young, and not pretending to be, but she has a kind of glow that’s lit from within. “I was thinking about your verses. I studied poetry at university, you know.”
“I didn’t know,” I say, wondering when she had time to read poetry as she was learning how to save children’s lives.
“I have to get to hospital, but —” She looks conflicted for a moment, then relaxes. “Oh, it’s all right. I’m always early anyway. I want to show you this lovely poem I found. It made me think of you girls.”
“Yeah?” I say, surprised. Marcy looks awkward but intrigued. “Okay. I’d love to see it.”
She motions for us to follow her down the hall into the office she shares with the other Dr. Rudra. Marcy and I hover in the threshold, surveying the piles of paper and pictures of Rowie and Lakshmi, her little sister. Rowie’s mom plucks a sheet off her pile and scans it, smiling.
“Here it is,” she whispers. “It’s by a Minnesota poet, and it makes me think about those early friends, the girls you love first, before all others. This is the stanza that made me think of Rohini and you American girls.” She begins to read in a musical voice:
“How we could talk!
Translating back and forth. We knew hundreds
of lines by heart, the endless
rhythms, counterpoint to the ocean waves. We wanted
to take in all the wonder in the world, all
the ecstasy, all the tenderness. Ömhet,
you loved to say this soft word for tenderness, ömhet.
I loved to listen to you.
So strange to have loved something so much
and not to have known it was a calling.”
She finishes reading and looks up, gently searching our faces for a reaction.
; “That’s — that’s beautiful,” I croak, clearing my throat.
“Isn’t it? I think it captures a kind of magic feeling, something mystical about the way life feels when you are young, and the love between women. It’s truthful that way. Do you know?” Dr. Rudra’s eyes return to the page for a moment.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Marcy slumped, staring at the floor.
“I know we all need a little poetry sometimes,” I say, to break the silence, and because it’s true.
Dr. Rudra nods firmly. “Yes. You are a very wise girl, to know that already.”
I clear my throat again. Marcy shifts her weight.
She looks at us again, searching. “Well, any time you feel like you need some poetry, you come to our house.”
“Thanks, Dr. R. Have a good night at work.” She places a hand on both of our shoulders and slides past us, smelling like Rowie — gardenia and almond and something else. Marcy is still all hunched over and quiet. This mom shit, she’s never looked it in the face. I nudge her.
“You cool, fool?” I ask.
She raises her head, taking in a rush of breath. “Yeah”— it hangs for a second —“yeah. Let’s do this.” Without providing further opportunity for discussion, she walks out of the study.
We scamper downstairs to find Rowie nestled in her bed underneath her enormous headphones and Tess humming “Poker Face” on the floor. Before I can nudge Rowie’s shoulder, Marcy leaps in front of her bed and flashes the Herb sign.
“Herb for Holyhill!” Marcy cries.
Rowie jumps like she’s been electrocuted and falls off the bed, on top of Tess.
“Jesus Christ, Marce, you almost killed me,” Rowie gasps, yanking her headphones off her ears, rolling over, and catching her breath. Marcy doubles over, yukking.
“Me too.” Tess coughs. “Where’d you get that?”
“Some asshole’s lawn,” Marcy says.
“What’s got you so lost in thought, girl?” I ask Rowie, patting her hair.
“I’m trying to figure out how to isolate this beat and bassline from ‘Testify,’” she tells us. “I think we could use a sort of similar structure, like, give Tess a vocal hook that repeats throughout the whole track and lay the rhymes on top of it. Here, listen.” She unplugs the cord from her MacBook and Common fills the room.
“I can pull that beat for sure,” Marcy says. “This track is totally post Common’s selling out, but still good shit.”
“Have you started working on lyrics yet?” I ask, knowing she has.
“Affirmative,” Rowie replies. “I’m thinking ‘Lemme Get a Hit of It’ as the title. But in the actual track, I want to put a pause between the two clauses so they sort of rhyme, like ‘Lemme get / a hit of it.’ So it’s like a call-and-response thing, like you’ll say something, and we all say ‘Lemme get / a hit of it,’ and then I’ll say something and everyone responds. . . . You get what I’m talking about?”
“I think so. If you can work that into a chorus, I can write some verses around it. What you got so far for the call and response?”
“Okay, so I think it just starts with you and me doing some MC improv as the beat starts and Tess’s vocals come in, you know, just talking like ‘Turn that up in the headphones’ style.”
“Got it. Tessie, you got a melody?”
“You know it.” She grins, splashing an arpeggio into a circular hook.
“And then you come in with ‘Sisterhood!’” Rowie instructs me. “Then we all say ‘Lemme get / a hit of it,’ and then maybe I say ‘Equality!’ and everyone responds, then maybe the TC, rollin’ with my homegirls, Roe v. Wade, you know, some other sweet shit.”
Rowie’s door flies open and thirteen-year-old Lakshmi appears.
“What the hell? Get out of my room!” Rowie hurls her pen like a javelin at Lakshmi, which strikes me as somewhat vicious, but what do I know about siblings?
“Can you cover for me?” Lakshmi asks.
“While you do what, exactly?” Rowie snorts.
“There’s a party, obvs,” Lakshmi says, rolling her eyes.
“Will there be boys at the party?” asks Tess, bemused.
Lakshmi looks at us like we’re all shit-for-brains. “Why would I be going if there weren’t going to be boys there?”
“Excuse me,” Rowie says. “I will not cover for you so you can go do whatever you do with those skanky little Holy Hellions. Go to bed.”
“Come on,” Lakshmi whines. “It’s only three streets over. You know how Dad gets as soon as he hears party. I’ll be back by eleven. It’s not even a bad party.”
“No.” Rowie holds firm.
“Damn, Ro.” Marcy whistles through her teeth. “You’re kind of a tightass.” Rowie looks at her wide-eyed, then relents.
“Fine. Eleven. Don’t get hit by a car or anything. Bye.”
Lakshmi leaps with delight, blows us all a kiss, and dashes out. We exchange looks.
“That one’s gonna be trouble,” Tess says.
“Don’t remind me.” Rowie shakes her head. “She’s on the Holyette Express. Let’s just talk about the song.”
“I was digging what you had going on,” Marcy says as she pulls her computer out of her backpack and starts isolating more samples. “Carry on as I work on technical support.”
“What if,” I start, thinking out loud, “at the last call and response before we get into the first verse, I say something funny like ‘Yo, Ro, you got some deodorant in that purse?’ and you say, ‘Yeah, Ferocious,’ and I just say, ‘Lemme get a hit of it’ by myself?”
Tess giggles and her dimples indent her cheeks. “Your face is crazy, crazy-face.”
“That should be a lyric in the chorus.” Rowie lights up, trying it. “Your face is crazy, crazy-face.”
We die laughing. “Lemme get a hit of it,” I choke.
“Got it!” Marcy proclaims seconds later. “Listen to this.” She plays another sick polyrhythm for us.
“Sick,” Rowie says.
“Word.” Marcy is pleased with herself.
I agree. “That shit is heavy.”
Tess checks her watch. “Buttfudge, I gotta run.” She begins to get her purse together.
“Sometimes I think your non-swears are nastier than actual swears,” I comment.
“Where you going?” Marcy asks.
“I gotta go to choir to make sure Mary Ashley hasn’t put out a hit on me-slash-us after our little showdown in the commons,” she says.
“She did show up at my house pushing poinsettias,” I say. “With a mini-MashBaum.”
“That girl is a Percocet dependency waiting to happen,” Marcy says.
“Yeah, uh,” I stutter. “I meant to say earlier, sorry she, like, thinks you’re gay. I sort of feel like it’s my fault.”
“Eff that,” Marcy says. “What comes out of that girl’s mouth is not what thinking sounds like.”
“Why are you afraid of Mary Ashley?” I say to Tess. “I mean, why do you care what she thinks of you or your friends?”
Tess sighs. “It’s all politics, girlfriend.”
“Plus you feel guilty for breaking up with her,” Marcy says.
“I always felt like she blamed me for that. Once I moved into the neighborhood, it’s like she got demoted or something,” Rowie says.
“She did,” Marcy says simply, shrugging.
“Look, you’re not wrong,” Tess says. “But strategically, it’s better for us and for 4H if Holyhill still thinks I’m in with the A-list Christian contingent.”
“I guess then they can’t say we’re all degenerates and aliens,” I say.
“Just some of us,” Rowie mutters.
“Oh, quit it with the Indiangst,” Tess teases her gently. “That betch is perverting my church and effing with my friends, and her unconstitutional Bible group is the best leverage we have with Nordling. As long as I can help keep our plan moving forward intact, we have something he doesn’t want to leak to the local media and their lawyers.�
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“I feel you,” I say. “You’re like our secret ambassador. That’s some devious shit.”
“Yeah, get a hit of that.” She beams. “Plus, you know, I like to sing.”
“We’ll fill you in on this scheming later.” Marcy raises her hand in a good-bye salute.
“Tell the girls we said namaste,” Rowie adds drily.
“Mazel tov,” I contribute.
“Body of Christ.” Marcy makes the sign of the cross over Tess.
“Good night, God bless you, and God bless America.” Tess flashes us a peace sign and disappears out the basement door.
“Speaking of scheming,” Marcy continues slyly, producing an Altoids box from her bag. “Anyone wanna get a hit of this?” She opens the box to reveal a joint that looks like it’s been through a dishwasher.
“Oooohh, shit,” I crow, a smile spreading across my face. “I’m wicked down. Where’d you get that?”
“Rooster’s glove compartment,” Marcy informs us without a hint of remorse. “I think it’s pretty old, so I doubt he’ll notice it’s gone.” Things we’ve stolen from Rooster over the years include the first porn I ever saw, $7.86 in change for a late-night Perkins run, a whole truckful of Legos, and one shoddy little doobie before this one. Marcy’s been a lifelong beneficiary of the fact that she’s smarter than her brothers.
We look at Rowie, who looks a little nervous.
“Down. I think,” she says hesitantly. “Lemme just run up and assess the Raj situation.” She darts upstairs.
Even though we like to act like hardened criminals, truth is, our experience with the sticky icky is pretty limited. Marcy’s smoked a few times with her brother, but I’ve only tried it the once before. I didn’t think it really worked, but we did polish off six personal pan pizzas between the two of us, the kind Pops always buys from Anthony Grinnell’s Boy Scout troop. Marcy says no one gets high the first time they do it. Kind of like sex, I guess.
Rowie bounds back into her bedroom. “The news just finished and he’s snoring so loud I’m surprised we couldn’t hear it from here. We’re golden.”