On the eve of his first day of school, he didn’t sleep a wink. He spent the entire night rolling about on the sofa bed, picturing his new life at the big kids’ school. He’d have eight teachers now, one for each course. He could fail up to two subjects and then make them up the following year. He’d made up his mind to join in on the first brawl to defend his school, and he’d fight with so much team spirit he’d fall into favor with the older kids. Not that he liked tussling or was particularly skillful at kicking and punching—until then he’d shown himself to be second-rate in fights against kids his age—but there was no getting around it, he was certain that this was the only way he could gain the respect he needed. Otherwise, his life would be hell: head-smacked and teased for being a shrimp, from Monday to Friday until he reached seventh grade.
He left behind his colored pencils, ruler, pens, and everything else in the list of materials off which his mom had made a point of buying every single item—no matter how much it hurt her pocket—and instead took only his Flamengo notebook and a Bic pen. Sitting in the front row with a pencil case and answering the teacher’s questions were all terrible ideas for anyone who intends to be respected at school.
Through the circular holes in the wall that served as windows, he could see the soccer pitch. It was big, with a covering and everything, and even a changing room where you could shower after PE. Although he was nervous, trying to control each step he took, André still found it in him to savor a bit of every novelty.
He spotted two girls sitting at the other end of the pitch, near the metal fence, smoking a cigarette out of sight from the monitor. Watching that scene, he felt content, seeing himself in that moment as the girls’ accomplice. He felt he was growing up, maturing in the face of this new life unfolding before him. What would he be doing when he turned twenty? Would he be a businessman, a soccer player, a parachutist?
The last period before recess was French, and André didn’t understand a thing. He couldn’t stop staring at the teacher’s unibrow and, also, wasn’t the least bit interested in the language. What he really wanted was to learn English, ’cause everybody says it makes you rich, and also because of video games. He was sure that if he knew the language spoken by the characters in people’s favorite video games, everybody’d invite him over to play with them. At the time, learning English in school was an easier challenge than getting his own console from his mom. He only snapped out of it once the bell rang, hearing a schoolmate inform the class that in French cou, which sounded like “ass” in Portuguese, actually meant “neck.” Once he absorbed this piece of information, he started warming to the class. The language might not be useful, André thought, but it sure was funny.
The eighth-graders stood at the door to the cafeteria. André spotted them as soon as he reached the patio. He knew that to survive a place like that he’d have to be strong in the face of any kind of terror. “There’s no lunch today,” they said. André looked at every one of their faces, trying to make the toughest possible expression, to seem dangerous and unpredictable. “Everybody in the can, now,” said one of the kids, who looked like a playboy with his straightened, bleach-blond hair. And everybody went. Once they were all inside, the boys spelled out how things worked in the school. André pored over every word. It seemed fair. “Every newbie gotta pass this test,” they said after explaining the rules. André immediately thought it’d be something pedophilic. He hadn’t prepared himself for that, hadn’t imagined that in the big kids’ school, where girls smoke and have sex, he’d have to go through that kind of thing. But that wasn’t it.
It was the Bathroom Blonde test. André knew that story inside out and couldn’t believe that’s what they were doing. Bathroom Blonde was a girl who’d killed herself after being raped in the school bathroom. Ever since then, every time someone said “Bathroom Blonde” in front of the mirror, she’d appear. Then, you had to run away as quickly as possible, before her spirit took over the bathroom, ’cause if you were still there when she showed up, there were only two options: either the girl’s presence drove you crazy or you were abducted into the mirror.
André had challenged her once on his own, out of sheer curiosity, and managed to get away. But he’d felt so scared he promised himself he’d never, not for anything in the world, do it again. He said to the kids:
“C’mon, give us a real test, pô. All that talk about the Bathroom Blonde is just to scare the little kids at Antônio.” He chuckled half-heartedly.
Then the kid with the straightened hair announced: “Seein’ as you don’t believe, you’ll go first. Everybody outta the bathroom.”
Everyone left, the door closed, the lights went out. André was burning up thinking of the head-smackings he’d take, the hotties he wouldn’t tap, the soccer matches he’d miss, and all the awful things that would happen if he faltered in that moment. He steadied his wobbling legs, took a long breath, looked deep into the mirror’s eyes and spoke the words: “Bathroom Blonde, Bathroom Blonde, Bathroom Blonde.”
THE TAG
He wasn’t supposed to be there. Suddenly, everything became muddled: he was drinking beer, filled with nostalgia, pride, want. A kid rocked up with some spray, word on a spot he’d scoped, the metal ball dancing in the can, the sharp smell of adrenaline. Next thing he knew, he was on his way up to the building’s rooftop terrace, scared off by the woman’s terrified screams: “Thief! Catch him!”
The kid with the spray paint was just another one of those boys who spent their lives paying homage to graffiti kings, xarpi big shots: wanting to throw them cigarettes, brew, bud, and, of course, spray. All in the hopes of someday setting off on a mission together, their names tagged side by side on the same gazebo, eaves, window. Or even on a tintão, pebble-dash wall, gate. What mattered was sticking together, slurping up fame like a blood-sucking tick. The world was fed up with these kids, so was Fernando.
I say Fernando because by then he’d dropped the name he’d used to tattoo the city. It was coming up on three months since he’d left xarpi behind, he wasn’t dropping marker tags anymore and even avoided tracing the motion of the letters with his fingers. On the bus, he’d try and find other distractions to keep himself from looking out the window: he read books, the paper, messed about on his phone, followed the horoscopes flashing on ad screens. He was recalibrating his relationship to the city so he wouldn’t become so pumped about scoping out heavens, tripping over the legion of legit names that crossed his path.
After his son, Raul, was born, Fernando did what he could to change course. It’s rough, fighting your instincts. He didn’t want to want to hit x peak in x place, didn’t want to be recognized at meets as Maluco Disposição, for being a fool who’s always game, or be called to sign with initials that, by then, were relics. What he really wanted was to look after his kid, to stay alive, be present. But he always knew that to do so, he’d have to leave xarpi behind, to let the persona he’d erected on a wing and a prayer die. Or, at least, to take fewer risks, throw stuff up on the down-low, go on easier missions. Which, at the end of the day, is a much worse kind of death.
He didn’t catch where the shots came from, couldn’t tell if it was the police, militia, or locals. It didn’t matter; on the blacktop at daybreak, it’s always you against the world. Luckily, the building was low, only five stories high, and he’d nearly reached the top by the time the woman started yelling and the chaos broke. Good thing his reflexes were top-notch: he reached the terrace in a split second, caught his breath. From way up high, he hunted the spray kid with his eyes, but the son of a bitch had ghosted, hadn’t even made it up the building.
He considered tossing the spray can, explaining that he wasn’t a thief and wasn’t there to take anything from anybody. It was just the opposite: he wanted to leave his mark on that tile wall, a gift. He already knew everything he was gonna do: the size of the sequence of names, the spacing between one name and the next. He’d even throw in a line by the Racionais, “Pesadelo do sistema não tem medo da mort
e”—the system’s nightmare fears no death—and dedicate it to those friends who’d given their lives for art.
In the end, he didn’t toss the can. In the minds of those who wear the cape of justice in this sort of situation, taggers and thieves nearly always have the same worth and the same destiny. Fernando was aware of all that, he knew his rivals well, the result of years challenging them on the street. He didn’t resent them, he knew they were essential to the game. After all, street tagging wouldn’t make much sense without all those people who were willing to do anything to keep those names and colors from spreading across properties and streets. You can only play with both teams on the field. He decided to wait, to temper the game. If they didn’t spot anybody soon, they’d split. This time, he wouldn’t win, the wall would remain clear of his marks, and yet he believed strongly that, sometimes, a draw was a good outcome.
Tags are about eternity, about marking your passage through life. Fernando, like most people, felt he couldn’t go through this world unnoticed. Next thing he knew, he was hanging around all the taggers on his block. It was wild hearing stories of names that had lived on in that city for over twenty, thirty years, and that would surely—even after they were scrubbed out and their walls knocked down—live on in people’s memories. That’s how he wanted to make history, remembered and respected by the right people. And this had always been his greatest motivation at the moment of tagging—more than fame, dissent, or aesthetics, though they all conspired for it to make sense. What he really wanted was to mark his city and his time, to traverse generations on the street, to become visual.
But his son’s arrival had made a mess of his ideas. The boy was a second chance at life, right there in his arms. He had his features, soon he’d have his smile, his way of talking. But if this is what Fernando wanted, he couldn’t be there in that building. When he announced he was planning to quit, everybody started giving him lip, saying dude hadn’t quit for his ma, now he’s gonna go and quit for his girl. And as much as it nagged him to be pegged as pussy-whipped, Fernando didn’t even bother talking back.
Some days the sun shines even after dark, the heat and sweat-drenched bed don’t let anybody sleep right, and people go outside needing fresh air, which is why the crowd way down there kept growing, even past two a.m. They arrive not knowing what’s going, are told the reason for the gathering, and become enveloped by the street and by its incredible capacity to transform common folk—who love and cry, feel hunger, nostalgia—into something altogether different, a unit that extends beyond the confines of each of the individuals gathered and is unflustered by the sight of blood running down the clothes of the affected target, should it, at the exact moment of the blow, satisfy their sense of justice. Once again a thirst for justice to be served against the unknown, just as it had always been, since the beginning of time. Fernando looked down at the crowd with surprise. There’s danger in the tag, mankind’s rotten, that much he’s always known. For every action there’s a reaction, and everybody’s got to face their own music.
What he wanted was to put himself out there and tag that entire building, in front of everybody. To show them that, even after paint hit property, life went on. Until a higher power—such as God or a gun—decided to put a stop to it.
He tried but couldn’t make out the exact moment he’d let himself go, when one force had overcome another until he’d found himself there. He had the sense that life never left room for making plans, things kept happening, one way or another, trampling over any projects in their way. Only in the future—when it arrived—could we understand, and laugh or cry, at the stories we’d lived.
Fernando remembered his dad banging on the door. A stiff sound. His mom would say: “No one open that!” She only ever let him in when he was sober and was well-acquainted with the sounds of his drunk bashing. She’d spent a pretty penny on all those locks, but at least her kids wouldn’t have to see their dad passed out on the kitchen floor. Fernando would feel like opening the door, remembering the times his old man had taught him to fly kites and taken him to the fair in Quinta da Boa Vista, or when they’d made paper balloons together to let loose on holy days.
He had a bad feeling. For the first time since the night had begun, he felt things slipping out of his control. It wasn’t long before his body was seized by despair. Something amid all the things that were happening warned him that, this time, he wouldn’t get off lightly. It wasn’t at all like a movie flashing life before death, as they say, but a living memory, messy, reeling backward and forward the entire time, thumping in free fall over the utter uncertainty, pounding at the same speed and with the same force as his heart. It was pain, fear, and a hatred of life, all together, mixed up with the building, the shots, his son, the screaming woman, all those people down there.
This time, the adrenaline worked against him. It shouted the same mantra as always, that we only live once, but with the opposite effect. Instead of stoking his courage, it smothered him. Smothered like a body, any body overcome by fear.
While he was clean of xarpi, Fernando liked to come home early, dashing out of work and into his wife’s arms, to his son’s still-toothless smile. Sometimes, he’d buy some food for them on the street, on weekends they drank wine or beer, depending on the weather. He liked it when, lying in bed, instead of thinking of spots to tag on the blacktop, he thought only of how lucky he was to be alive.
From up high on that building, looking down at the impromptu patrol, Fernando couldn’t help himself, he thought of his dad. Of how, once he’d quit trying to get through that door, he’d bounced from one relative’s house to another till he found himself almost definitively on the street, sinking nearly his entire retirement into cachaça. Fernando remembered the times he said he’d be better to his son than his dad had been to him, that he’d give Raul everything he’d been without. In that moment, feeling the burden of his choices, he had the strength to remove himself a little from the place he’d always been. A pity he was dead, his dad, and that the urge he felt to apologize was in vain.
Things couldn’t stay the way they were. He had to fix the situation, take control, study the possibilities. Had the crowd down there spotted him? He didn’t think so, didn’t want to believe it, but would they really spend so much time looking for someone with no leads? Better to accept it, they’d seen him. And they were waiting. That must be it.
In that case, there was no other way but to parley his way out. If he stayed quiet, he could very well take a bullet as he tried to flee; out of fear, you never know. He ditched the spray can, waited a few seconds until he heard the clang confirming his message had been delivered, then yelled “I’m a tagger!” and felt alive.
After that first attempt at a conversation, one of the residents opened the door to the building and let the men up. A handful stayed down there, eyes peeled for a possible escape. It was clear they didn’t want to talk. Fernando knew that by staying where he was, he wasn’t in danger of being shot close-range. Not with so many people following events, and inside a residential building. He’d almost certainly be dealt a nice beating, though—the delay and who knows how many other frustrations taken out on him with kicks and punches.
Trouble is, beatings can kill, too. He’d never forget all the friends he’d lost, pummeled on the blacktop, suffering cranial trauma and internal hemorrhaging. And, even if his time hadn’t come, if he survived the thrashing, at home he’d still have to explain how he’d gotten all those hematomas, and they’d know he was tagging again, that he’d given in to his addiction, and he’d be accused of being weak, a hypocrite, of constantly moaning about how his dad had chosen the bottle over him and now, there he was, choosing spray over his own son.
The weight of his body broke the roof of the next building, the noise taking everyone by surprise, slicing through the silence and static tension that had gripped the night until that moment. Luckily, the ground wasn’t far, the roof was over the building’s depot, where they stored all kinds of junk. The perfect
hiding place, he thought. Only then did his foot start hurting, like hell, as if he’d twisted or, worse yet, broken it. A wet stickiness ran down, soaking his pants. He smelled it and felt the heat rising.
He managed to drag himself behind some large stacks of wood, where he felt safer. He wanted to howl from all the pain, scream out every cussword he knew in case it helped the pain pass, when he heard one, two, three shots. All of them up into the air, he could tell from the echo. Likely fired with the intent to scare him, so that he’d move and give away his position.
After the blast from the shots, he was enveloped by a silence and darkness unlike any he’d known. It wasn’t long before he’d grasped everything around him, buzzing from certainty after certainty surging through his veins. It was clear now, he really was meant to be there. This was his life and his story, and though he felt weak and selfish, he realized he could no longer fight the inevitable. Before he passed out, he dreamed of the day he’d return there and throw his name up on both buildings, side by side. Loki.
THE TRIP
FOR RAPHA, OF COURSE
I’d rolled into Arraial do Cabo hoping to ring in the New Year someplace calm. Far from the madness of Copacabana, where so many of my friends were planning to spend New Year’s Eve. It was my first réveillon with Nanda. I was crazy about her. I hoped the trip would bring us even closer together, allowing us to experience things we couldn’t as college students on Fundão Island. The place was beautiful, vibrant. A far cry from our recent past filled with assignment after assignment, endless photocopies, bills, anxiety, too little time.
The Sun on My Head Page 4