Drop

by Mat Johnson

  ‘No, I’m sorry, I’m a photographer, I’m trying to get—’ Camera lifting up, she didn’t like that. Pepsi bottle came flying, hitting me over the eye, making me certain it was a brick despite the fact I saw the blue logo before impact. Realizing the camera wasn’t in my hand, I dove forward. Sliding into the ground, somehow Alex’s baby was safe in my palms. Just the skin under my arms was gone. Crackhead ran in front of me, back towards the shadows of Frankford Avenue. Not too fast either. Pausing repeatedly to turn around and see if I was dead.

  Retreating, I hit a pizza joint back by Kensington station. The guy wouldn’t give me the key to the bathroom without buying something, so I got a slice. Going on two A.M., there was nobody in there but coffee drinking SEPTA workers and the two crack hos sitting by the window. Sharing a medium soda a sip at a time, their ashy hands pushed it back and forth between turns.

  ‘That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying. I go up there and I’m like, “Yo”, banging on the door and shit and the bitch don’t answer, right? Yelling her name and shit and nothing.’

  ‘How you know she there?’

  ‘I know this shit. Bitch don’t go nowhere, she don’t, that’s why I gave her my kids in the first place: bitch don’t go out. So I’m like, “Yo”!’ Hand drumming against air. Her arm was scraped like mine was. ‘ “I’m here to get my babies, open the fucking door,” right? Nothing. And I can hear the TV on, so I know she’s in there. Trying to keep my babies, tackhead bitch can’t get a man to make her own, okay? Bitch too fat to even get down the stairs, and you know that elevator don’t be working, right?’

  Laugh. ‘Yeah.’ She couldn’t have been more than sixteen’, she even wore an adolescent’s gumball band to hold the bit of hair that stood atop her head, giving her dome the shape of garlic.

  ‘So I’m like, fuck this shit. I’m beating the door, I’m kicking it, I’m like Bruce Lisa, ha ha. You know what I’m saying? You don’t know me, I’m crazy. I don’t care how long stank bitch got my kids, they mine, I’m the one that birthed them. Ain’t no amount of babysitting going to change that. Can I get some respect up this mawfucka? That’s what I’m saying.’ Mama had no front teeth. With nothing to stop her S’s, they flew past her wrinkled top lip and sizzled before her.

  ‘You say you got toys?’ the girl asked.

  ‘I yell it. I’m out there with that whole bag a stuff I bought with Saturday’s money. Jelly Babies, Thundermen, a bootleg of The Wonder World. I’m saying that, right, into the door. I’m pulling shit out of the bag and holding it up to the peephole in case somebody’s looking. But nobody there, right? She probably got my babies in her room, locked up, hands on their ears. Telling them all type a lies on me. It’s my daughter’s fifth birthday. How you not going to let me up in there for my daughter’s fifth birthday? Then some nosy bitch from down the hall tells me she called the cops, they coming. What’s that about? So I just leaves. Forget her.’

  ‘You still got them toys?’ the young one asked, hopeful.

  Only air coming up the straw, Mama went back to work. Out the door and across the street, staring up Frankford Avenue for headlights. The girl she left behind turned to an old exhaust-coated SEPTA worker sipping his coffee and said, ‘You buy me some food?’ I got up and headed for the street, taking off my lens cap.

  The shot: wild woman hanging out by the curb, leather dress on, red T-shirt stretched so much that her left shoulder hung out the top. Little blue supermarket sneakers at the end of charcoal legs. You couldn’t even tell that her shoes didn’t have laces, that she had no stockings on, or how bad her ashy skin thirsted for lotion. It was across the street, it was dark, but most important it was real. The face that stared back at you, that hunger, desperation, the sex and danger, that was real, too. And that was all you cared about. At the bottom of the page, the copy provided the mortal blow. This is Karen. Karen services six men an hour, thirty-two men an evening, 192 men a week, 9408 men a year. If Karen trusts Lionskins Condoms to protect her life, don’t you think you should, too?

  It took nearly two weeks to get the picture developed, scanned, and sent back to me in a digital format I could negotiate. Sitting up in Kinko’s on 40th and Walnut, trying to rush their slow-ass, money-grubbing computers to get the layout done. Then there it was, emerging from my long-dormant womb, another Chris Jones original in my classic style: knockout image with deadly copy that jabbed you bye bye as you fell to the mat. Follow that with the roaring Lionskins logo in the bottom left corner along with a miniature photo of the product’s box, and we definitely have a winner.

  ‘Yo Al, check it out.’ She’d just come in to give me the contact info for the Philly tourist board.

  ‘I’m double parked. Take this and call Saul. He’s good people. I talked to him yesterday so he knows who you are.’

  ‘Look at this, love of ages, and glance upon the face of genius.’

  ‘Shut up. What? Where is it?’ I pulled it up, the hard drive struggling to assemble the file. God, it was even better than I remembered. What a sublime choice of fonts.

  ‘What the fuck is this?’ Alex asked.

  ‘This is the condom thing, the Lionskins contest. This is only one shot, I got a ton more. I told you about this.’

  ‘But what the fuck is this?’ Alex demanded, pointing at crack ho mama’s face, at those eyes staring from the screen at everyone in the room.

  ‘That’s what I shot the other night, when I went to Kensington. You get it? I’m using the projected sexual risk of prostitution to plug the product.’

  ‘No, you’re not, you’re using her,’ Alex said, still pointing.

  ‘Al, it’s just a contest, nobody is going to see it but me and the judges.’

  ‘And what if you win?’

  ‘When I win it will be over there, in Britain. Lionskins don’t even sell in the States. Nobody this woman knows will ever see this. Ever.’

  ‘So tell me then, make me understand this: how is that not fucked up? This is how you’re going to represent us to the world?’ God I wished she would put her finger down. ‘You couldn’t just use some clip art instead?’

  ‘The point is that this shit is authentic. I didn’t hire a model and have her pose for this shit: this is reality. That’s what gives it its power. I mean look at you, you’re mad. That’s why you’re mad.’

  ‘You know why? You’re a fucking sellout.’

  ‘What!’ Copy center boys looked nervous behind their counter. Security man was talking on the payphone, annoyed that he might have to get off. Now Alex was yelling too.

  ‘There’s not enough sick, destructive images of us out in the world that you got to go put out another? She has to be black? She has to be from Philly? Why didn’t you just come take a picture of me getting out of the shower?’

  ‘So if it was a picture of a white hooker from Boston, you wouldn’t be bugging?’

  ‘You’re bullshit,’ Alex said, getting up and walking out. I popped out the precious Lionskins disk and followed. Running next to her, talking to her face even though she wouldn’t look at me.

  ‘How am I bullshit? How am I bullshit, Alex? Explain that to me.’

  ‘You know what? You been talking down Philly for years, busting on the place, bugging on the people, and I’ve always tried not to take it personal, okay? Even though sometimes it’s been really hard, Chris, really hard, I’ve always tried to take it in stride, I’ve always tried to remind myself that you’re just as much a part of this place as I am, and that deep down you love it as much as I do. Right? But you know what? The truth is you would sell it all out in a second to get away from here.’

  ‘What is it that you think I’m doing, Alex?’

  ‘You know what you’re doing,’ she said, trying to grab at the Santa-red diskette that I quickly pulled away from her.

  ‘That’s right: I know what I’m doing,’ I told her. ‘I’m creating. I’m giving everything I have, my world, myself, to do it. That’s the only way I can. I’m not good enou
gh to hold anything back. Everything or nothing. That’s the only way I’m going to escape.’

  ‘Escape what? Getting up and going to a job you hate, just like everybody else? You’re so special, that’s too much for you? You have to do whatever you can to get ahead? Even if it makes us look like animals?’

  ‘To who? White people? I don’t care what stupid white people think. And really, I don’t give a shit what stupid black people think either. The image is a negative statement about humanity, and, yes, we’re human. If they want to jump in with their coon issues, that’s their problem. Honestly, do you think it’s really possible to click a lens in this shit-hole town without the subject being offensive?’

  ‘You wrong,’ Alex said, and as mad as she was, you could see it was as if I had offended her personally, which just made me madder.

  ‘That’s it, Alex. That’s what I don’t understand about you. How the hell can you, a smart, educated, somewhat rational human being, love this.’ I motioned. Arms wide, I motioned to everything. The telephone poles crucified with endless staples and pamphlets waiting for rust or rain to release them, the knuckleheads bobbing down Chestnut with their shirtless, chain-gang struts, fucking yam-man, who was standing in front of Burger King pretending to be the door-man and now (Oh God) coming over here: I held it all out to her. ‘How?’ I demanded, not surprised by the tone of jealousy seeping through.

  Alex was writing me off with sideways nods. ‘You look around here and as soon as you see ugly, damn if you see extra. All those things that you should appreciate, all those things you should be thankful for, you can’t see any of it. You go blind. It’s pathetic. If I was like that, how the fuck could I love you?’ And as if this was a play and that was his cue, yam-man appeared beside her.

  ‘Hey, can y’all hook a brother up with—’

  ‘Yo, just get the fuck away from me!’ I was suddenly yelling. The throat-shredding, barely intelligible kind. So loud that I was as surprised as he was by my reaction. When the echoes of my scream had died, my face offered a demonstrative apology to yam-man as he shrugged an understanding forgiveness my way, but then both silent gestures were enveloped by the next scream. Female this time, the simple conjunction ‘Ass-hole!’ followed with the punctuation of a slam from a rusty car door.

  In the driver’s seat, Alex had sat down so quickly that a bit of her hair was caught in the jamb. She didn’t bother to free it. I ran out to the street, but she wouldn’t look up at me. Automotive coughs as the wreck tried to start itself, gears shifting angrily into first, and Alex was screeching away from me. Standing in the street, my 3.5-inch floppy in hand, I watched her go through a red light just to put some distance between us.

  Independence Day

  July. She wouldn’t answer my calls, no matter how many times I dialed the number. She knew from her caller ID box that it was me. Ring-ring for Christopher, no pickup except for the recorded dismissal of her machine. After a few days, I started calling when I knew she wasn’t there just so she wouldn’t be sitting, listening to me babble. Pleas sat on her answering machine like sloppily wrapped presents, waiting for her to get home and open them. But all I was getting in return was silence, a conspicuously quiet phone. She knew that my holiday was coming, what firecracker lights meant to me, that I needed to recharge on them to last another year, she knew that there was no way I would go out there alone, unescorted and unprotected, to face the mob of Philadelphians that would also be present to witness the glory. I even had her camera, and regardless of the fact that she wasn’t getting any work, she loved that baby. I knew that was eating at her. But that’s was how tight the door was shut.

  On the morning of the Fourth, I realized I was going to have to go over to meet Alex in person. Let her beat or scream or chastise or whatever she had to do to me before we headed down to the Parkway to watch the sky combust. I bought some flowers in Reading Terminal, figured they might soften her some. Calla lilies, long and white like she liked them. Only three but shit, they costed. At the thrift shop on 44th Street I picked up a vase, a long orange glass cut like crystal. Back at the crib, it took an hour in hot water to get whatever gunk was in it cleared out. I was just trying to shove those stems in when—

  Pop pop pop poppop pop

  —the familiar sound of a community coming undone. It had finally come for me. This time, no faint ghost. This time, right outside my window. So loud I dropped the vase in the sink and broke the bastard, only two hours after I bought it. So shocked that instead of hugging linoleum like a sane man, Chris Jones was hanging out his window, poking his head through that big rip in the screen that the mosquitoes had been flying in for months.

  Outside, an absurdly large American car, too damn long to be taking that curb that fast, screeching out an angle in front of my building. Hanging out the passenger window, the upper half of a shirtless well-built man, all I could see of his head was the top of his baseball hat (maroon and white, the old school Phillies kind). He was going through great lengths to point something out behind him. But it wasn’t called pointing when you had a gun in your hand. Pop pop pop goes this weasel, bangs even louder than the wheels screaming a turn underneath him. It was the only thing screaming though: everybody else standing around the intersection was too busy getting down on the ground to make a sound. Pop pop pop. Hiding behind telephones poles and stationary automobiles so that the next pop wasn’t for them. Look at the weasel, his gun pointing everywhere as if he wasn’t even aiming at anything at all, just trying to see how many times he could pull the trigger. Pop pop pop. That gun looked like part of his arm.

  It didn’t matter how bad it wanted to, there was no way that Caddy was going to make that turn. Pop pop pop pop. Even when the nose cleared the parked cars below my window, the ass just flew out to greet them. Thin metal crunching, plastic cracking in long dry lines, glass going from one unified plane to many smaller individual ones. The car it clipped jumped up onto the sidewalk. Weasel man, not prepared for the impact, flailed around like a mouse in a cat’s jaw, then went limp against the side of the Caddy. Arms flailing towards the ground, chest banging against the passenger door as the smoking wheels took him through a red light at Chester Avenue and beyond. Leaving bodies hugging sidewalk behind him.

  I ran down the steps, calla lilies in hand. Outside, people were already rising from the ground, checking for newly opened orifices, searching their clothes for signs of wet maroon. Once satisfied that they had gained no new holes, they looked around at the others. There was a woman thirty feet from my door, lying next to the parked car that the Caddy had slammed into. She was still on the ground, forehead resting on the pavement, hands loosely hanging away from herself. Just as motionless as the car she lay beside.

  I ran over, knelt by her. It was an elderly woman, a skinny one. The scarf she had tied around her head had slipped off and sat limp over the back of her skull, revealing a freckled scalp and a loose collection of white hairs. I brushed the material aside and reached for her neck to check for a pulse. Life had battered that skin soft. A hand shot out to slap my own. I jumped back, startled.

  ‘My neck’s ticklish,’ she said, staring up at me. I helped her rise off the ground.

  Looking around, we were all standing there, the whole neighborhood. People were talking, nodding their heads, people were brushing themselves off.

  ‘Is everyone okay?’ I yelled. All present seemed to think so. A group inspection showed there was nobody left on the ground, nobody hiding in the bushes, nobody left bleeding in a car that we didn’t know about. First-floor apartment windows opened and everyone was fine in there, too. Nobody seemed to know who the guy was shooting at, but whoever that was had disappeared like the rest of the madness. And in its place were smiles. Wherever people had been hurrying to go five minutes before was forgotten. Giggles and grins. A block party without music or potato salad, just us celebrating being alive. It was like we all hit the numbers at the same time.

  ‘Now that’s a good omen!’ the elderly w
oman said smiling, retying her scarf around her head. She danced up and down as she did it. When her bonnet was set, I handed her my flowers. She smiled so big that the top row of her dentures fell down, clacking for me. Chris Jones, the recluse, for once so proud to play the part of the Philadelphia Negro.

  The pop pop had finally come to me and still I was standing. Not just alive, but standing, calm, watching the dust return to rest. Look at me, not even sweating on this humid afternoon. I was unshakable; I was. I was invincible. I was determined. So I was fireworks bound.

  Near sunset, I got off the number 34 trolley alone, joining the current of pedestrians marching north towards the Art Museum, protected only by a T-shirt and shorts and the camera that hung before me. Together, we, the city, walked to the Parkway, feeling as if the clouds were boiling, our clothes heavy with sweat. T-shirts that would be outdated by tomorrow and flags that would be forgotten even before then, left as litter for someone getting paid overtime to pick up.

  Legions of temporary nomads trudging forward in the spaces between traffic-stricken cars, the screams of drunks and infants and the overwhelming feeling that something was about to happen, something good, something free. Amateur arsonists letting bottle rockets fly over the crowd by lighting the fuse and launching them from their hands, toddlers staring at the tin sparklers they held, fantasizing about eating the flame. Cops on bikes glided down 22nd Street towards the action, their tight blue butts hanging over the seats. As they coasted, they tapped on car doors and told young men to turn their music down, trying to bring peace in the battles of sound. Yam-skinned man canvassed out on the corner of 24th and Waverly, smiling and putting his hand forward like a Tuesday morning politician, waving at children, dancing to whatever rhythm was loudest to his ears. ‘Hot!’ he said to me when I passed. If they packaged whatever fire burned in his skull, we’d be addicted to that, too.

  The Parkway is a full mile of wide street and grassland separating the lanes, its main road lined with flags of every nation worth arguing about, colored banners I used to stare at as a child and wonder if they existed beyond names. At the end of the street, making the whole thing look like an emperor’s driveway, sits the Art Museum. That’s where I was headed. A public palace complete with Greek pillars as thick as redwoods and steps so wide they seem to invite the entire city to climb them simultaneously. By the time my section of crowd poured out onto the Parkway, the museum’s orange stone was illuminated in floodlights, its majesty accentuated by the fact that it was deserted and the street before it was heavily packed with worshipers. That’s where the fireworks would be coming out of, so that’s where I kept walking. When the flow of the crowd died I continued to charge on, armed with a sharp elbow and endless self-pardons.