I got the thing about the nuclear bombs, but—“Americans? Where you from, anyway?”
“He’s a fucking vegetarian!” Nessa shouted. She took off her headphones, and I could hear Blondie blasting out.
“Kev, shit, we forgot the boom box, man,” Trey cried. “Go back and get it!” He grabbed Nessa’s headphones and put them on. He started singing and dancing right there in the street, robotic Michael Jackson moves to “Call Me.”
Kevin ignored him. “My mom’s Chinese and my dad’s Italian,” he said. “And I’m not a vegetarian.”
“They have some good rice at his house,” Reuben joked. “Risotto à la tofu, mmm, mmmm, good.”
“Get the box, I said, man! What you still doin’ here?” Trey yelled.
Kevin sucked his teeth and dropped his board. “I’ll catch up to you.” He took off.
The neighborhoods changed fast: from Bummy on Broadway to Wealthy on West End. We walked down to the olive-green Hudson River, where the wind churned whitecaps, then back up the drive along the car-stink highway to a park with a chain-link fence towering around it. The gate was locked.
Inside, the concrete walls and handball courts were covered with graffiti. I hung my fingers on the cold links. All different styles, colors, sizes of letters and pictures filled my eyes. I stood there hunting out NOISE INK, or NIL, or ROI 85. It flashed out before me, who these guys behind me were. How much time they’d been together, what they had done while I was back at the King Kennedys digging in the dirt. They’d had a whole lifetime together, and I was trying to join like it was nothing. I felt like a fool, pushing so hard to make me one of them.
Trey said, “Ror, you climb the fence first. Let’s see if you can get over.”
I looked at them, the little smiles playing on their faces, like they thought I couldn’t do it. Could Nessa, in her brighty whitey Adidas? I looked up. The fence was like a million feet high. I hated climbing chain link. “I can do this,” I said.
“Let’s see.” Trey waved his hand.
I tightened my backpack and hooked my boot in a link. The worst part of fences like this was the pointy ends, but at least there was no barbed wire. Still, I’d gotten stuck at the top before. I felt them watching me struggle and grunt, waiting for me to fail. I flipped over, trying not to catch my jeans on the sharp tips, and scaled down inside.
Kevin had caught up with us, carrying the boom box. I stood breathing heavily, waiting for them to come on.
“Good,” Trey said. They started walking away.
“What the fuck, where you going?” I cried out, following them from inside.
Kevin turned on the music, and that punk band came on, something like “Ain’t got talent, ain’t got class, use that hand to wipe your ass—” They all cracked up, slapping each other like crazy. They started singing loud, each shouting a line. All of a sudden, Kevin broke into one of his moves, and Trey spun and jumped as he walked.
“Wait up!” I called.
Nessa and Reuben did some twists together, dancing away, laughing with each other. Ignoring me.
“Where the hell you going, man?” I shouted over the music.
Down a block, the gate was open. They rocked into the park toward me, mouths open in laughter.
I was ready to give Trey a piece of my mind when he said, “You passed your second test.”
28
TREY SET DOWN the duffel bag on a bench and zipped it open, the colors a chopped-up rainbow. “Oh my God, is that beautiful,” I breathed. Like a symphony, I heard brown Gregorian chants, red cymbals, black timpani. I tasted purple haze, yellow sun sweat. I felt frosty blue, smelled Irish Spring green.
Had they stolen all those cans from Jonathan?
Kevin dug through the bag, muttering, “I need engine red, and some Mean Joe Green.”
Reuben grabbed my ebony black.
Trey took mellow yellow, angel white, chocolate brown. He tossed Nessa cans of turquoise blue and girly pink.
When I moved to reach into the bag, Trey held up his hand. “Uh-uh. Today, you be the lookout,” he said. “No painting for you.” Words caught in my throat. After all I went through, and he wanted me to just sit still? “We need recon, someone to keep an eye out for cops and crooks,” he went on. “That be you.”
What did he want me to do, walk the perimeter like a paranoid freakazoid or something? I needed to lay my fingers on a cold can and let the spray loose.
Reuben messed with the cap on the black, and got up to a wall. Real smooth, he sprayed out ME ONE in letters that dripped long and curly as his hair. So he was the ME ONE I saw on the street and all over school!
With his free hand, Kevin took out a folded piece of paper and opened it up to a sketch that said NOISE.
“I’m going over Frankie’s piece with this,” he told Trey. He held it up to the handball court, where I saw POISON painted across the whole wall in these fierce accordion letters. I wanted to go up close and study how they did it.
“Let’s kill that shit,” Trey said.
Why wouldn’t he let me have a can?
I slammed myself down on the bench next to the bag and took my drawing pad from my backpack. With a thick gray Design marker I snagged from Garci’s class, I started trying out ideas for my new identity.
Nessa came over and said, “Grab a can and get up.”
“What?”
She shook her head at me. “Trey said you got mad skills, but he didn’t tell me you were so fuckin’ stupid.”
Trey said I got mad skills? I squinted at her. “What are you talking about?”
“He’s messing with you, sister.”
She tilted her two cans slowly like she was holding grenades she was thinking of throwing. The ball bearings rolled back and forth inside.
“I still don’t get it,” I said.
She clucked her tongue. “You are one dumb bitch. He’s playin’ with your head. Does it look like any cops around here? This is our teenage wasteland. The boys and me, we do recon all the time—we’re always checkin’ out the scene, you know, like we got a sixth sense, especially for Frankie.” She took a quick look around, like he might be there.
“What do they have against that guy?” Over the wall, Kevin and Trey were already covering Poison’s piece with a giant N.
“Fuckin’ Frankie thinks he’s king ’cause he goes to Art and Design, but he’s really just Jabba the Hutt. He ain’t like Iz or Lee. He ain’t no Dondi.”
I had no idea who she was talking about.
She kept on going. “Frankie ain’t no kind of famous. That’s why I came to Noise Ink. I was in Frankie’s crew before, when I lived up on 125th with my moms.”
“What’s Art and Design?” I asked.
“High school you try out for.” With a finger, she circled a name I’d drawn. “Aura’s not too stupid. Get a can, let’s go.”
I picked out Icy Grape, the name on the can. We went to a low wall that held up a hunk of concrete. Nessa sprayed out:
She was TNT? From Columbus Avenue? I studied the letters—it was her.
I took a quick look around the park, hugging the can. I’d never sprayed in public. I couldn’t bring myself to pop the purple top.
“You waiting for a formal invitation to come in the fuckin’ mail?” Nessa snapped.
Dado’s warnings rang in my head.
She knelt to the wall and wrote:
Beside it, fast and clean, she painted a winking girl with big hair.
I took a deep breath, shook the can, and took off the top. I got down to the empty space beside her. I felt them all around me, the crew, working together on their separate parts of the big whole. Together, the crew, like a commune.
The first shot of spray jolted me. I chased the paint up and around, trying to stay with it, the speed of it blasting the wall, splatters landing in my op
en mouth like bitter grape juice. Purple had a sound all its own, like a magic trick, ta-da!
I tried to push off the feeling we weren’t alone, that there was someone watching.
But who? An invisible pressure from behind, pigs in the shadows, spooks in the trees—made me stop and turn around. The crew busy over there, making paintings.
“Where’s your tag? What’s with the ears? This ain’t no fuckin’ chalkboard,” Nessa said.
I sprayed out real quick:
The word was like marking Z for Zorro, like finding the guts to dive into a cold pool, like Fuck, I did it!
Everyone took a break; they’d come over and were watching me—I could hear the music from the boom box. I stepped back to look, glancing at them. I couldn’t tell by their faces if I was any good at this.
I said, “So?”
Nobody answered.
Then, Kevin: “You got style, but look at these broken lines here. You got lazy hands, Ror.” He pointed out a section of the name where I lost control of the can and hoped no one would notice.
“This here,” Reuben said. “You should be filling this in.” He showed me an area I could have used to better effect.
“I still don’t know about that freaky picture.” Nessa put her hands on her hips.
I waited for Trey to say something. He took off his top hat, put it on the ground, and sprayed the crown yellow. He put it back on his head and walked away. I picked another spot on the wall and started again.
29
THE PROBLEM WITH GRAF painting is that it stinks. The smell of spray gets in your skin, your clothes, your hair. If you love spray, you love that reminder. But it was half-witted to show up at dinnertime, Ma and Marilyn at the table already twirling their pasta, watching news on the TV.
I served myself a plate and sat down, suddenly way too aware of how I smelled.
Marilyn lifted some spaghetti up to her mouth. She said, “Ror wasn’t in school today.”
I glared at my sister. Ma kept watching TV—Princess Diana attends a charity gala, with Luciano Pavarotti singing—I wasn’t sure she heard.
“You better watch out, snitches get stitches,” I muttered to Marilyn.
My sister stuffed her mouth and chewed. She broke up a meatball while examining me: the colors between my fingers, the splatters on my jean jacket. Who could eat with those eyes on them?
“What?” I said.
Marilyn took a sniff. “I’m just wondering why you weren’t in school, Ror. I mean, after all the tests you took to get in, and—”
“What do you care?” I swirled the spaghetti in the red sauce. How many times had I skipped classes and no one seemed to notice? Shit, I hadn’t even gone to school until now, and it hadn’t seemed to matter much.
“Ror?” Ma woke up. “You weren’t in school?”
“School’s important, little sister,” Marilyn said.
“Bullshit.”
“Ror, what’s going on?” Ma’s voice made my stomach hurt. She got up and turned off the TV. She didn’t sit back down. For a second, I saw the old Ma who used to ask me questions all the time.
I took a breath and pushed around a meatball. “I—some—some painters in my school were doing a project, and I wanted to be a part of it.” That sounded good, right?
“Painters? What kind of painters?” Ma asked.
Marilyn slurped up some long strands, her eyes wide open, waiting for the answer.
“Ma? You know how Dado—” His name, it made Ma choke, like ripping off a heart scab. What was I going to say? “Dado wanted me to learn about art in a classic sense. I mean, he taught me about Brancusi and Calder. The purity and the balance. But his own sculptures—I just don’t know what he wanted to do with them.”
Marilyn side-eyed me. She knew I was deliberately avoiding the question.
But Ma answered. “Peter always felt torn between utility and beauty.” She stopped and shook her head. “Why are you bringing up your father now?” That look in her eye scared me like a switchblade.
“Well, Dado had four acres to work with, he had tools and wood and things he could scavenge. But I don’t make things like him. All I have are these little rectangles. I—I always felt that paper wasn’t big enough.”
Ma folded her arms around her waist as if to hold herself in. “What’s all this got to do with school?”
I shook my head. “Now I know—that’s—that’s why Dado brought me a whole roll that night.”
“What night?” We never talked about that night. Even with all the stuff going on with the insurance and the lawyers and the property, we never talked about anything. TV did all our talking for us.
“That night. That night. He brought me that big roll of paper,” I said, “and he kicked it so it rolled all the way across my room. Like it was a path, a path to somewhere. He said, ‘I’m going to save you, girl.’ Then he left, and that was the last time I saw him.” I forced the words out, trying to control the bee stings inside me. “I could never figure out what he meant.”
They both stared at me. In a shaky voice, Ma said, “He did that?”
“Right before he went downstairs and started the fire.” My fingertips were icy grape. I rubbed my mouth and said, “Now I know what he meant.”
“God, what could he have been thinking?” Ma said to herself. I heard in her voice all the sadness for not getting to him, not fixing him. Why didn’t you help him, Ma?
“I think he was showing me a path to here.” It sounded simpleminded, but that’s what I felt.
She shook her head, not understanding.
“Ma, I joined a crew of painters. We paint on the street,” I said.
She blinked quickly. “A crew?”
“Graffiti, I knew it!” Marilyn said. “They run around in those crews.”
Ma’s face went dark, her eyes hardened. “Ror, I asked you about that, you said you weren’t doing it.”
“I wasn’t. Before this.”
“I don’t want you getting mixed up in all that.”
“Ma, you’re the one taught me about being a revolutionary!” I shoved back my plate. It banged into my glass. “Why are you giving me a hard time about this?”
“A revolutionary?” Marilyn said.
“A revolutionary!” Ma said wonderingly. “Is that what you think we were teaching you?”
“Of course!”
She shook her head. “Ror, your father and I—we wanted you to learn how to depend on yourself. Not be some street kid!”
“What about the King Kennedys? What were we then? Stealing electricity from the goddamn poles!” I shouted.
Ma got real quiet and still. She said, “We took what was ours, Ror, what had been stolen from us. We were fighting—the Vietnam War and Nixon’s lies and the draft—we were fighting the greedy pigs who started that war so they could make money on the backs of our boys. We could fight—there was room for us. That was our—our purpose. Now, this country’s changed. It scares me to think of all Reagan’s done—money for the rich, nothing for us, as if we asked for this—then turning around and blaming it on us. Listen, Ror, I don’t know how the world works anymore. If you get tangled up with the police, that means serious lawyers, and jail time, and I may not be able to help you. You don’t want to mess up your life!”
“You’ve got to get that straight, Ror,” Marilyn added.
“Are you saying I have nothing to fight against?” I asked. “Dado made his manifesto because he was sick of what the world forced on him! No wonder he was so paranoid. I watch TV. Look what it does! It makes me want—wish I had money to buy stuff I don’t need. Makes me feel bad for who I really am. Every time I look in the mirror, I see it: I’m not like everyone else. Not even close!”
Ma’s face shimmered pale. “Your father’s plans didn’t work out. You don’t have to punish yourself
for that.”
“Graffiti’s a way to take back what’s mine!” I said.
“Dado went to the other extreme, Ror. Nobody could live the way he wanted!” Marilyn said.
“How would you know? You buy into that brand-name TV shit.”
“So do you,” she replied. “You were the first to break Number Seven with a Snickers bar. It doesn’t make you any less human to want brand names.”
She was right. I loved my Doc Martens boots and Gloria Vanderbilt jeans and my Design markers. I loved the feel of Krylon spray in my hand. I hated that I loved them.
“You could get killed doing graffiti, Ror,” Marilyn went on. “Remember Michael Stewart, that guy the transit cops beat to shreds last year just for writing on a wall? He died. It scares me, what you do.”
Talk about taking the gleam off my gold.
“Revolutionaries get killed. It happens,” I said. “At least they’re fighting for what they believe in.”
Ma shook her head again. “You’re not a revolutionary, Ror. You’re just a kid. My kid.”
“It’s something I’ve got to do, Ma.”
She kept shaking. “I can’t let you.”
“I’ve got to.”
“Then I won’t let you out of this house. We can stay here together. I’ll give up the job search and teach you again,” she said.
“No, I don’t want that. I’ve come too far! You can’t stop me!” I was shouting at her, just like kids and parents did all around us. “Oh, forget this!” I stood up from the table, grabbed my bag, and split.
30
I FELT LIKE a snail on a razor. Flesh inching forward on a sharp edge that split me in two.
Jonathan’s was still open. I took my watercolor paintings out of my bag and stood outside his store, looking in. The thought of stealing that ebony black tightened my fingers around the paper he’d given me.
Into the Dangerous World Page 9