by S. J. Rozan
For a good while I couldn’t see very good so I thought what I was seeing was not really real. I thought I was making it up, but when my eye swelling went down and I woke up and saw who was in bed beside me, I had to slap my mouth shut to stop the scream. In the bed was the whitest man I’d ever seen in my life. I wish I could say how it shocked me, I wish I could. At first I thought he was white. I couldn’t form a word or a fucking thought. He was in the bed, sorta curled up in a red brief. His hair was light yellow, lighter than any blond I know, and his eyebrows were white and his skin was just covered in white hair. I stooped down beside his face and saw that his lips were thick and his nose kinda flat. I’d never seen an albino before. He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life. I touched his hair, which was really coarse, and when I moved my hand he was looking at me. We just stood there. I was looking at him and he was looking at me.
Every now and then—shit, who am I fooling, every goddamn day Gary will just disappear like that and don’t come back for hours, sometimes days. And he’ll either be in a really good mood or a really fucked-up one and ask me for coke. I will tell him that I never do that shit and I can feel his punch coming before he even clenches his fist. This is so damn pathetic. I feel like the woman who loved too much. Then again, love is way too strong a word. And sometimes you blur the line between love and gratitude so much that you don’t know if you showing affection or repaying a debt.
Fourth snapshot. We’re in KFC on Gun Hill because the lighting sucks, and we’re eating and fooling around. When he isn’t pissed, or scared, or just in a mood to fuck things up, Gary is the funniest person to be around. And that place, especially in the darker corners round back, is one of those places where he can be himself. He lets out this nervous little laugh and says, “Boy, if some people ever find out, especially me girlfriend them, I don’t know if they’d kill themselves or me first. Then again, they wouldn’t believe it even if they heard it from my own mouth.”
“That you are a faggot?”
“I not no bombo raas claat faggot!” This he says to me even though, for the entire time we have been here, his hand hasn’t left my balls. This is not the kind of situation to get him mad.
“You can call a hardcore gangster faggot?”
“Well, you’re not feeling up a pussy.”
I shouldn’t have said that. He grabs hard, and pain, fucking splitting pain that feels as if something is clawing its way through my stomach, causes me to double over on the table.
“Sorry, sorry…” he says, and he sounds as surprised at what he did as I am. I stomp his foot hard.
“No, you not, you son of a bitch.”
He looks at me long and hard, then lets out a loud laugh. “Well, you certainly go on like a pussy sometimes. Look, how much time you want me to say sorry? Shit, you can gwaan like girl eeh, man? All this intense fuckery. Me can’t deal with that. Look, I have to go do some business, me’ll see you when me see you.”
Three weeks later he shows up at the room we’re staying, almost unconscious, trembling and bleeding. I will never forget the look he had on his face as long as he lets me live. Almost as if he saw God or something much worse. And he’ll never forgive me for seeing him that way. I knew that he barely got away from something. I put him to bed and have to hush him three times when he wakes screaming that they’re out ? get him wid forty-four bullets. You’d think he was reduced to nothing but a little flower in the palm of my hand and all that was left for me to do was to make a fist.
My name is Rockford Goodman. My mother thought she was being cute naming me after The Rockford Files. Even at her most depressed she was superficial that way. Gary calls me Rock and I’m not sure why either. Rockford sounds like shit, I know, so either he can’t be bothered with saying the whole name or maybe he thinks I have some inner strength or something. Right. He’s probably calling me Rock Hudson. I go back home. He’s either waiting for me or coming for me. One or the other.
Fifth Snapshot. I’m alone in this house and can still see the bloodstains. On the living room wall where Andre took the house rifle and shot Daddy in the shoulder. Andre didn’t know all that much about guns so he threw it away and went for a hatchet in the kitchen. By the time he found it, Daddy had already made the mistake to run upstairs. I can bet he was screaming. He must have grabbed the wall to support himself, because it had frantic bloodstains, which have fear written deep in them. Fear written deep. Clever. Man, I should be a writer. A blood trail leads halfway to the bathroom at the top of the stairs. It begins again and continues to Diane’s room. There’s blood in the closet. This strikes me as so damn ironic that he would run for safety into a closet that couldn’t save any of us.
I imagine it happened the same way. He’d be crouched under the musty clothes, so shit-scared that he wouldn’t even realize that his own blood was ratting him. Andre would open the door, and Daddy would see him, and that would be the last thing he saw before his eyes went red. I can imagine the hatchet becoming a part of him with a life of it’s own; taking control of his actions and plunging into flesh like a jackhammer. It feels as if it commands you and there is nothing you can do to stop it.
Actually, I didn’t say any of that shit, but the criminal psychologist did, at his trial. Personally, I think that is all bullshit. I don’t think he lost it when he killed my parents. I don’t think he was possessed by some temporary insanity or some Night Stalker bullshit. I think he just had enough. He told the court that he knew how Jane Fonda felt in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? My brother was tried as an adult and is serving two life sentences.
I wonder where Gary is. I wonder why this kinda exhilarates me, and I don’t use that word every day. Maybe he’s doing something that he always wanted, some kinky shit that he’ll take too far. Maybe he’ll enjoy it. He always talks about taking some asshole out in Kingston and how he’ll let him bargain for his life by sucking him off, then kill the guy anyway.
Final snapshot. Yesterday I was sitting on this bed that I’m sitting on now and I hear the door crack. It fucks me up how these things just happen. I know it’s the front door. Living here all these years, I remember the whole house coming to attention when one heard the click and clang of the front door being opened. Gary’s at the door and he’s laughing loud. This is strange. I lived here most of my life and never felt like I belonged, but this man who has never been here already sounds like his name is in the will. He laughs out loud again and I’m thinking he’s either mad or with somebody.
I’m forcing myself not to give a shit. Sitting on the bed, staring into space as if downstairs is some new dimension entirely. Fuck it. I have to see who…No, I hate how this bothers me and I wish it didn’t.
Damnit.
Damn him.
I get up and move to the door. Then turn back. It’s none of my damn business. He laughs again. She laughs with him. Louder, longer. I’m out the door before it can even swing back, feeling the cold concrete and hearing my own feet. The bedroom door bangs shut and rats me. Downstairs nobody seems to notice. Damn that son of a bitch. I don’t want to look, but I deserve to see who’s having so much fun in this miserable house.
She’s already on the floor smiling broad, with white teeth. Her hair is a big red Afro. I hate her already. She’s got these huge breasts with big black circles on each nipple. He grabs one of her legs and slaps her pussy a couple times with his cock. Then he pushes it in and begins to fuck her. She screams immediately. Of course she’s faking it, she could never know what true pain from being fucked feels like. He lies down on top and I see muscles in his back and buttocks flex and release as he moves in and out of her. She looks as if she’s being battered to death. They don’t say a word, only grunt like dogs or something. How does he do it? How does he fuck both ass and pussy but can’t stand either? He rolls over and sees me.
“Ohhhh, Rock. Big, bad Rocky.”
He’s looking at me with a big grin and humming the tune to that fucking Sylvester Stallone movie.
I hate him.
“Hers or yours?” I say.
I watch the albino man go red. The woman laughs out loud. He jumps up and starts to kick her in the belly. She’s screaming, but he grabs her by the hair.
“You know say me a bad man, bitch? You know say me a bad man?”
He pulls her up and tells her to get the fuck out. She runs, pulling down her dress and forgetting her shoes. I run to my parents’ room, but before I can close the door he kicks himself in. He grabs me and I’m kicking and fighting and trying to hit his balls, but he’s not feeling anything.
“What the fuck wrong with you, eh? What the fuckin’ fuck!”
He pulls me on the bed and straddles me and starts to punch me in the face and slap me and cuss me. And I can’t do anything but fumble around the night table beside the bed, reaching for something, anything, to hit this son of bitch. He’s still slapping me and cussing about me fucking up his business and how it’s my fault that people looking for him and white people just love to fuck up ghetto man life, and he’s still hitting me. I grab around the table and knock the lamp off and pull the crochet off and finally grab onto Mom’s letter opener. Then he swings his hand back to give it to me this time, his final superfuckin’ colossal shot, and as he swings his hand to my face I swing the letter opener to his palm and crucify the motherfucker.
He’s looking at me all shocked and shit, and I’m shocked too. And I think about saying something, and he’s pulling this puppy dog thing that disappears as soon as he notices that I notice. He climbs off me and leaves and I’m watching the door.
That’s why he’s coming back for me.
I’m beginning to think that there’s some deep shit to loneliness. People think loneliness is the absence of people, but I’m starting to think that it’s the opposite of people. And if that’s the case, then loneliness is just as real as having a warm john next to you. Think about it. If you look at loneliness as this perfect state, like this universe of just yourself, then it’s like perfect. I’m impressed with myself, this is some deep thinking. Clever, clever shit. Gary said I think too much.
Gary’s coming. I’m in my father’s deathbed waiting for my blood to join his. I took off all my clothes. You ever notice that most suicides took off their clothes before? Call me suicide by murder. The room’s all dark now. I’m a big boy. I don’t think I’ll cry. But then I do, thinking about my pops and my bro and my sis and wanting to make a bath red from my wrists so that I can be with her. She was always my girl and I still think that by giving in to my pops she was taking the hit for me. Jesus, Jesus, I miss her so much. I just want to tell her I’m sorry and I understand if she doesn’t want me in heaven with her.
I wish this darkness would just take me, then out of the dark he appears, and by the time his eyes and teeth match a description I recognize, I’m already screaming. He slaps me.
“What the fuck wrong with you?”
“Nothing. Why the fuck you hitting me?”
“You in the dark talking to yourself like you brain gone pan screw.”
“I wasn’t talking to myself.”
“Then you thinking out loud?”
“Just forget it.”
“Forgot it already. Move over.”
He throws his shoes off and then 200 pounds of sweat and cigarette smoke land beside me. His hand is all bandaged up and his gun is missing. He does not look at me. Just climbs in the bed. Even when he is not snoring he breathes heavily, it sounds like sinus but to me it’s like he’s cursed to a lifetime of adrenalin overdose. I don’t know how I feel. Kinda I want to, I think, but that’s just a stupid song from Nine Inch Nails and proof to him that a faggot with white skin is the worst kind of faggot. I feel like Jane Fonda in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? Clever, I know.
PART IV
THE WANDERER
HOME SWEET HOME
BY SANDRA KITT
City Island
It had been years since I was last on City Island. That’s the official name of the community that’s a little spit of land connected to the Bronx by a bridge, one lane in each direction, not far from Pelham Bay Park. The bridge is the only way on or off the island.
I came back for only one reason, and it wasn’t to order a plate of fried clams or shrimp bisque. I wanted to find out what really happened to Brody Miller. The two people in the entire world who would know still lived there on City Island.
I remember it was an adventure to go to City Island with my family and have dinner. Seafood and pizza predominated the businesses that ran the full length of the main street, City Island Avenue, from the bridge at one end down to Belden Street and the pier with its unobstructed view of Long Island Sound at the other. There were two other smaller islands as well, accessible by ferry. As far as I knew no one lived on either. (I now know, however, that short-term jail inmates from Rikers Island are transported there almost daily, for the grisly job of digging holes.) My family had its favorite places to eat, but since then most of those restaurants have been taken over by new owners and new names. Same food.
I never used to believe that anyone actually lived on City Island, as if the stores and restaurants along the main street were a back-lot façade. The restaurants located on the water were the real reason to go. Because of the view of the marina, and the bay beyond the small harbor, and to watch the occasional slow-moving pleasure boats on a nice day. There was something maybe a little exotic about this other world, because it was just barely connected to the rest of the city.
It was only after I met and started hanging out with Jenna Harding in high school, and she met and fell in love with Brody Miller, that I found some of the real charm of the place. Brody had fallen hard, granting City Island the status of Eden. Yeah, Jenna was our official safe passage into the tightknit community of people who’d lived there for generations. But it was Brody who embraced the island with fervor and devotion as if it was also his own. I could never see City Island through either of their eyes, but I went along because Jenna and Brody somehow brought both worlds together, his and hers. But in the end the island showed them both that, either oil and water don’t mix, or never the twain shall meet.
When I heard that Jenna still lived on City Island I knew I had to return. But it wasn’t about her. She was always going to be welcome there; she was one of the island’s own. I always felt more protective of Brody because, as everyone else and everything proved, he had no one but himself. I thought he was still there somewhere. I imagined I even knew where.
When I met Jenna in high school it was the first time she’d been off the island without her family or friends. But she had no choice. City Island schools only went through ninth grade and then all students had to go somewhere else to graduate high school. She said her parents wanted to send her to private school but couldn’t afford it. They were afraid that urban life, and all those ethnic types, would open its great jaws and swallow their redhaired, green-eyed baby whole. I was one of “those people,” but I’d add a little spice to my family by mentioning my American Indian background, effectively demon-strating that, in one way, I was here way before anyone else, like the Indians who originally inhabited City Island.
I started going over there to see Jenna and that’s when my tunnel vision began to broaden peripherally. There were real homes and families. The side streets were small, the blocks short, the homes very close together, barely a human width apart. The island was Old World, like parts of Queens and Brooklyn, with a touch of New England coastal towns before redevelopment. It was sweet. It looked kind of rundown, but interesting. I hardly ever saw other people who looked like me.
When I met Jenna’s parents they seemed, at first, suspicious. Years later I realized that their reception was probably no different from what
my parents might have shown had Jenna ever met them and visited where I lived in Washington Heights. My mother worked. Hers didn’t. My father owned a business that had him traveling through three nearby states several times a month. Jenna’s father managed a business on City Island that his family used to own. My mother was the strong family matriarch. Jenna’s father ruled because he was a chauvinist.
Tommy Harding liked to boast that his father was once the unofficial mayor of City Island. The Harding family had been there almost five generations. Tommy took over the title by default after his father died, and was inordinately proud of it. He wasn’t a very big man; slender, a chain smoker, and a big storyteller. Not a lot of formal education, but by no means a stupid man. Mrs. Harding was almost invisible the few times I visited. She kept a clean if unimaginative house. There was a lot of crochet and quilted accents. One was a framed Home Sweet Home sign that greeted visitors just inside the front door.
As much as I was a little bit afraid of Tommy Harding and his big ego, I was more fascinated by his stories of life on the island, what it used to be like. Jenna once confessed, embarrassed but honest, that she thought her father was probably prejudiced. He’d told me that his best friend in the navy was black. But I wondered what he said about me behind my back after leaving his house.
I came to believe that Jenna’s father treated me with the generosity of someone who felt perfectly safe in his universe, and was assured he was far better than I was. Jenna had two brothers. One who’d left right after high school to join the marines. The other had simply moved to a different boating town in Maryland. I wondered if in either case it was to get out of the shadow of their father. Jenna was the baby of the family, a distinction that held pros and cons, and that would ultimately decide her future.
And then Brody entered the picture.
Jenna and I met him at the start of our junior year when he’d transferred in to finish his senior year. He was tall, athletic, good-looking in a bad-boy, smartass way, even though he was neither. He was also an unknown. Neither white nor black, nor Latino, Brody was classic Heinz variety. That meant, whatever racial mixture went into his makeup, the end result was a guy who stood out, drew attention, seemed bigger than life. He had the open personality and charm of someone who went by his own rules but tried hard to get along.