by Laura Goode
“I am officially changing the subject.” Tess waves her hands. “In the hopes of drumming up some buzz about 4H, I invited some people to come see us at this show.”
“What? Who?” Rowie panics. “Why would you do that? Who did you tell? If you invited Prakash Banerjee, you and I are over.”
“Of all the people she could have told that we’re playing one song at an open-mike night, why is Prakash Banerjee the one you’re afraid of?” I ask.
“Because he’ll tell his parents he saw Rohini Rudra at the LocoMotive when Raj and Priya think I’m just going to drink milkshakes at Home on the Range, and then his parents will tell my parents, who will then be disgraced,” Rowie answers in her father’s thick Indian accent, as though it were obvious. “Not so many Bengalis in Holyhill. We talk.”
“We should actually go to Home on the Range later — that place is my fave. Four words: bottomless chicken noodle soup,” I say, trying to distract her.
“Ro, will you relax?” Tess says. “You’re totally bugging. Why would I invite Prakash? He’s probably already got plans with his larper friends.”
“Who did you invite?” Rowie asks.
Tess shrugs, playing with her iPhone.29 “Just a few people I thought might be into it. Anders, obviously. He’ll probably bring some people. Oh, and I ran into Jane Njaka today and told her to stop by if she wanted.”
29. TheConTessa @4H4life: Come check out Holyhill’s hottest hetero/homo hip-hop crew at the LocoMotive 2night. 10 pm. Free.
“Tess, did you invite Jane to our hip-hop show because she’s African?” I tease her.
“I like Jane!” Tess says.
“I do too. I’m just playing with you.” I go to ruffle her hair; she ducks.
“We have to plan our first 4H meeting,” Marcy says.
“But where are we going to do it?” Rowie asks. “Are we seriously going to meet in the warming house? It smells like wet dog in there.”
“Let me worry about that.” Marcy grins. “The ConTessa’s on the right track. We drum up some underground buzz and then we can just start calling meetings. Right now all we gotta worry about is spreading our message and recruiting support.”
“Wicked.” I nod.
The James pulls off the big highway onto a desolated stretch of older highway cross-hatched with railroad tracks. The LocoMotive used to be a stop on the Soo Line Railroad, which ran from the upper Midwest (or, as I like to call it, the deep Midwest) to Canada. Soo is a synecdochic abbreviation for the Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Sault Ste. Marie Railroad; I like its whistle, a slow train shrieking in the night: Sooooo.
A smattering of cars sit in the parking lot. I hear a soft country voice singing Bob Dylan. I notice how cold it’s getting. Little paws of anxiety begin to pad along the walls of my stomach as we unload our equipment from the back hatch of the Jimmy. I hear a harmonica through the window and think that if I liked boys, I would like boys with harmonicas.
“Hometown boy.” Marcy jerks a thumb toward the music.
“Like Bob Dylan isn’t country?” Tess asks incredulously.
“Not like you’re country,” Marcy snaps back.
“Bob Dylan is the prophet of the plains states and that’s pretty much all there is to it,” I say, silencing the argument. “Let’s go get our flow on.”
Rowie looks pale again. “Oh, hell, no.” I nudge her. “Don’t get freaked.”
“I’m not freaked.” She looks darkly at me. She forces a grin. “I’m psyched.”
Tess and Marcy are walking up ahead, still bickering. I reach for Rowie’s hand in the chill October night. She brushes my fingers, her depthless black eyes flickering at me for a minute, but ducks when I go to put an arm around her.
“Party looks crackin’,” she says, eluding me.
I give up, ignoring the sting, and follow her into the old station, now a big, dark space with high ceilings and echoey acoustics. The Dylan boys finish as we walk in. We peel off our coats and are offered hot tea with lemon by a gentle, leather-faced, leather-pantsed woman who seems to be coordinating the bands. She has piercing blue eyes and one thick gray braid over her shoulder; she introduces herself as Vera.
“It’s for your voices,” she insists, refusing us as we try to offer her money for the tea. “These boys are almost done, and you’re the next slot. Do you need any help setting up?”
The four of us look at one another and shrug. “I think we’re good,” Marcy whispers. “We’re pretty portable.”
Vera nods solemnly, examining us. “How old are you girls?”
“We just want to play. We’re not gonna get into anything, swear,” I say.
She gives a half-smile, seeming to believe me. “How do you want me to introduce you?”
Rowie grins. “We’re Sister Mischief.”
We take in our surroundings, preparing. The crowd is mixed: a bunch of white indie-rock-looking teenagers sneaking slurps of flasks, a lot of college-aged kids who look mostly Somalian, including the guys now onstage, a pack of Vietnamese and Hmong kids, a few older sketchy white guys trolling for God knows what. Tess goes through her breathing exercises, stretching her arms, opening her chest. Every guy in sight checks her out, inevitably. As Marcy warms up her drumsticks, I scan the crowd for familiar faces and spot Jane Njaka with a boy who looks exactly like a shorter, wider-shouldered version of her. We lock eyes and wave, and I feel relieved to see a friendly face.
As we assemble our traveling band, I stop for a minute to watch the act onstage. Guessing by the Somali audience’s reaction to them, I’m guessing they’re the magnet that drew the crowd; right now they’re finishing up a fun, unexpected cover of Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love” with some sick Afrobeats layered underneath it. A baby’s fist of intimidation tightens in my stomach. Marcy punches me.
“Ferocious. Don’t forget to turn your mike on.” Marcy holds out mikes to me and Rowie. We take them, and Vera raises her eyebrows questioningly at us: You ready? Suppressing a shudder, we nod.
“Next up, straight out of Holyhill”— a few assholes boo until hushed by Vera’s ice-blue daggers of disapproval —“we have Sister Mischief. I’m going to need a round of applause for Sister Mischief, please.”
Most of the audience claps halfheartedly. One African dude winks at me as I walk up to the stage, and I smile back when I see a harmonica in his back pocket. From the shadows in the back, we hear an unexpected commotion of preteen whooping. Squinting, I make out Rowie’s little sister, Lakshmi, and a small company of her annoying eighth-grade cronies. Rowie herself gives me an accusatory look, but I throw up my hands, unaware of how that crew ended up here or how they got in. She glares at Lakshmi, then shakes it off.
“Check, check,” she says in a low voice into the microphone. Marcy sits down at the drum kit and cues up the backbone beat, giving us a few measures to settle into it, then Tess layers in our bastardized samples on her portable Casiotone electric piano, from M.I.A. and the Wilcannia Mob’s “Mango Pickle Down River.”
“Hip-hopsters!” I hear someone call derisively.
“Uh,” Rowie sounds tight-throated as she ignores the jeer and begins to move to the beat. “I got DJ SheStorm,” she says, gesturing to Marcy, prompting a little clapping and a few uncomfortable titters from the crowd. “ConTessa in the house.” Tess busts a responsive riff, prompting more serious applause.
“MC Ferocious getting down with mad flow for heteros and homos,” I say, warming up to the flow, ignoring the dwindling titters. “We’re Sister Mischief, Holyhill’s first interracial gay-straight hip-hop-positive alliance. Let’s get queer, y’all. Here it is.”
We break into Rowie’s newest chorus together:
“We gonna start some drama like Barack Obama
Yeah, we gonna start some drama like Barack Obama
This country needs some leaders who respect the mamas
So we gonna start some drama like Barack Obama.”
“MC Ferocious,” Rowie says, looking expectantly at me.
I’m ready.
“I gotta give a holla for my Sister Mischief ballas
Wanna know why we only get three quarters to the dolla
MC Ro, she just wanna her tikka with masala
So why they treat her at the airport like she dirty like Osama?”
Rowie answers my call.
“We mischievous but peaceful like a naughty Dalai Lama
We got pens for guns and drums and we rhyme like bhangra bombas
So we gonna holla holla those three words and a comma
’Cause we wanna cause some drama like Barack Obama.”
The enthusiasm from the audience builds as we repeat the chorus; some people are moving and clapping. Lakshmi and her friends begin to shake it like jailbait, which I’m sure is embarrassing the hell out of Rowie — but no, I look over, and she actually seems to be enjoying it. Jane and this guy who I think must be her brother get up and dance too — even Vera is bobbing backstage and gives a hoot. I see Anders Ostergaard and two of his douchebag white-hatted — oh, God, fucking Chuckles Knutsen is under one of the white hats — friends glowing in the dark mid-crowd.
Rowie and I are going hard at the second chorus and Marcy’s throwing down some fiendish, fiendish beats when Tess lets loose with this motherfucker of a rangy high note. Not dropping the flow, all three of us — along with the audience, who are all wondering how such a gorgeous growl emerged from this tiny girl — look at her in astonishment. Tessie can’t keep from singing.
Rowie finishes:
“She ain’t no prima donna, Michelle Robinson Obama
An educated mama who’s a mama role model
She’s fierce on the trail speaking truth about America
How we gotta do more about the arrogance and barriers
We put up when we front about race and the state of our
Relations in our nation, how we’re sick of being patient
While men legislate our bodies and they denigrate our matrons
She’s gonna be the mama who advocates for mamas
And we gotta holla proper for Malia and Sasha
’Cause we wanna start some drama like Michelle Obama
Yeah, we wanna cause some drama like Michelle R. Obama.”
Marcy drops the final beat, and the moment hangs thick and wordless in the air as we wipe the sweat from our brows, look at one another, and give an awkward bow, not knowing what else to do. I can feel the sweat trickling down my armpits like ants on a lemonade spill. There is staggering, awful silence for a number of seconds. It draws on. Someone sneezes. I’m looking at my knees and starting to want to die when I hear one barbaric whoop. It starts slow, and builds, and catches. The room detonates.
I raise my head slowly and people are hooting and clapping in this totally impolite way. It’s the best feeling I’ve ever had. It doesn’t last as long as I’d like it to — because ideally I’d like it to last, you know, forever — but as we hand the mikes back to Vera and she tells the audience to tip their waitresses and drive safe now, the glow just won’t shake off; it hangs on to us as the people we know gather.
“Dude, you guys are going to be, like, so famous!” Lakshmi screeches, throwing her arms around Rowie, which is sort of like throwing a water balloon at a cat.
“Mimi, you little scamp, how the hell did you even know about this?” Rowie demands. “And how did you get here?”
“Anders thought he was supposed to pick Tess up, and he came over to see if she was at our house when she wasn’t at hers,” Lakshmi replies, smiling all Cheshirey. “We made him take us.”
“They blackmailed me,” Anders says. “They told me if I didn’t take them, they’d tell Darlene I bought them Bacardi. I basically got hijacked.”
“You little dirtbags. Sorry, man.” Rowie shoves Lakshmi, but not too hard.
The girls giggle hysterically and traipse off to text someone else for a ride home. For some reason, the fact that Anders brought Lakshmi and her powder puffs here kind of makes me like him more. Then he and Tess start to make out in the corner as his entourage goes out to scam beer from the SuperAmerica across the street, and I go back to thinking he’s a tool.
“That was very fucking cool,” Jane says, appearing at my right elbow. “I didn’t even know you rapped until Tess told me today. This is my brother, Yusuf. He wants to be a producer. He thought you guys were really hot.”
Yusuf doesn’t even pause to blush. “Yo, that shit was heavy, girl!” he says, fist-pounding me and Marcy. “You all could be huge. We should record a demo.”
“That’d be pretty tight,” Marcy says. “You got a couple hundred an hour for studio space?”
“Hell, no! You gotta have money to make money,” Yusuf says, shrugging. “This is America, right?”
“No doubt,” Marcy says. Rowie and I nod.
“You should let us know when your next gig is,” Jane says. “We could help you record it and get it distributed in the TC.”
“Whoa, for real? That’s really cool of you,” Rowie replies. “Man, we hadn’t even thought ahead that far.”
“Do you have the equipment to do that?” I ask, picturing the album artwork to Sister Mischief: Live at the LocoMotive.
“We’ve got access to the parts; it’s just a matter of putting them all together. With enough extension cords and duct tape, I think we could pull if off no problem,” Yusuf tells me.
“What grade are you in?” Marcy asks as she dismantles the turntables she and Rowie built by miscegenating two of Luke’s old EP players, part of Rooster’s boom box, and some soundboard schwag from Marcy’s summer stint in tech theater. She’s got a good four inches on Yusuf, and she’s eyeing him.
“I’m a senior.” He reaches over and helps Marcy situate her bulky backpack into a carrying position. She lets him. “I go to Holyhill part-time, but I’m doing most of my classes at the U of M this semester.”
“We’re only eleven months apart,” Jane says. “We’re Irish twins.”
“That’s the funniest shit I’ve heard all day,” Rowie says.
“So, you Holyhill hos gonna turn my sister into a cake-eater?” Yusuf grins wickedly at Marcy, baiting her.
“Yo, maybe I’m gonna eat your ass,” Marcy blurts in an aborted attempt at a comeback. She blushes the color of borscht. Rowie, Jane, and I start laughing so hard that Tess takes her tongue out of Anders’s inner ear and turns around to see what’s so funny. Yusuf looks puzzled.
“Yo, Njakas.” I grasp for an opportunity to save Marcy from dropping through a self-willed trapdoor. “So, I can explain more later, but do you think you guys would ever want to be a part of a queer hip-hop alliance at Holyhill?”
“A what?” Jane looks intrigued, but almost as confused as her Irish twin. Marcy and Rowie laugh at me as we pack up the last of our shit and begin to clear out of the LocoMotive. “Is that what you were talking about up there? Do schools have those?”
“I’m getting a ride with Anders,” Tess says as she passes us, clutching his hand. “You wanna come?”
“Naw, we’re going with Marce.”30
30. Text from Rowie: Bike over after she drops you off?
“Remember,” Tess instructs me, boring straight into each of our eyes, “that you are the finest girl rappers in Minneapolis, and that we’ll all remember tonight forever.”31
31. Me to Rowie: Wouldn’t it be easier to just ask her to drop me at your place?
I shake my head. Tess should be a preacher. “G’night, homeslice.”
I toss her a peck on the cheek. Tess, Anders, Chuckles, et cetera, and their triumphant case of MGD pile into a Suburban with a McCain/Palin ’08 bumper sticker. I turn back to Jane.
“Listen, what I’m saying is — yo, do you want to just get together after school sometime, blast some beats, and piss off a whole lot of tightasses without really trying?”
Jane cracks up, clapping in delight. “Absolutely yes. Drive safe, now, y’hear?”32 She fakes a Minnesota accent as she gets into the car, fail
ing endearingly. Yusuf gives us a silent peace sign as he cranks the bass.
32. Rowie back: Wouldn’t she wonder why she wasn’t invited? and my parents might not be asleep yet.
We throw our tin-man sound system back into the Jimmy and roll out, not saying much,33 hungover from the high. Watching the Soo Line recede, I feel warm, united with my sisters in this music we make together, in something greater than ourselves; I feel a rising again and think that if this is what gets Tess to church every Sunday, this fantastic crush of creation and communion, then maybe faith hasn’t totally run out on me yet. And on the way home, from the backseat, on the door side of the car, which Marcy can’t see, Rowie reaches over and holds my hand.34
33. Me back: It just seems kind of overly complicated, but i guess.
34. Rowie, last: Everything is complicated. just come over.
Rowie smiles at me in Precalculus today, lifting her nose in the direction of my phone. I rummage stealthily through my backpack, defying the Holyhill classroom cell moratorium.35 I smile, twisting my hair around a finger as I feel her eyes on me, and hold my phone under the table.36 She clicks furiously,37 her boatneck collar dancing with the drop-off of her shoulder, and I feel myself waffling on my promise38 to myself to catch up on homework, to catch up on sleep, to finish the new song I’ve been toying with. She goes back to taking notes. I watch her in silhouette, her serene glance, the alluring length of her neck. I stop looking; looking wears something on the outside that we’re still keeping under wraps.