And then, that was it—we had no more dancers left for the cypher. The crowd cheered and booed.
Capgun declared Poison the winner, and I wanted to crush him, to argue until he changed his mind, till they all did, those faces mocking us. He put on another song, and everyone boogied like nothing had happened, filling up the empty space in the middle.
I stood next to Trey, not wanting to touch him. He did that in front of them all—went over to Poison’s side to fight. Everyone saw he still loved Nessa. I had come down here for him, for our crew, and now I just wanted to go, to leave, to not be involved with this beautiful boy who would tear my heart out and make me eat it.
But I had a mural to put up.
49
FRANKIE AND HIS boys moved over to their half of the whitewashed wall and started pulling out spray cans from old gym bags. One of them unfolded a ladder, and I saw Reuben come from behind the tagged concrete block carrying another one for us.
We took our places.
I was at the edge of our side—in the middle of the wall, next to Nessa. She cut her eyes at me.
Heckling rippled through the crowd—Cat fight! Toy girls!—and I wished I had earplugs.
The crews fanned out on either side of us. On my right, Trey and the boys set out our colors. Since my word was the last one in the mural, I would stay on the ground while the guys worked the ladder around and above me. Smoke and voices and music congested the air; if I had blinders, I’d be able to focus. I thought of putting on my gas mask, but nobody else had one.
Enough. I had to get busy.
I picked up a can of neon red. Neon, like freon, like cold chlorofluorocarbon right through your bones. In a few long sweeps of my arm, I had the outline of Octora. Nessa did her TNT. I stepped back for some breaths, then came in again. Working in purple and green neons, I filled my foundation. I was getting better at this. Faster. A lot faster.
With my name done, I opened my bucket of glue and slapped it along the wall and under the ladder with the brush in thick white lines, trying to chase out the lumps. No matter who won the dance, we would win for our goddamn mural; I was sure about that.
It was time to reveal my brown paper masterpiece. I took off the rubber band and unrolled it onto the ground. Intense saturation of colors and layers and flavors. People scrunched in behind me to see.
“Ho, snap! Look what she done!” Some kid in a tracksuit.
“Dang, Frankie’s gonna shit when he sees that!”
I could feel Nessa and their boys looking.
Quickly, I flipped it and brushed on a thin layer of paste. I picked it up, and, using the brush, started smoothing the painting out over the length of the wall.
“Yo, Octora, you be buggin’!” Steve and Charlie jumped in to help me flatten it down. As I cleared off the glue, more and more people gathered, their voices rising above the din.
“That’s cold, girl.”
“Fresh!”
“Def! Check it out.”
Behind me, firecrackers went pop-pop-pop, and I thought they were getting a little carried away.
“It’s the cops! Man, it’s the cops, everyone split!”
The cops? I heard a crazed scramble and a swell of shouts, and turned around. The cops? I tried to think. To move. People raced by. The pigs are here? How do I get out? The music cut off, kids screamed, some shoved against me. The ladder fell with a crash, nearly knocking me over. I stood perfectly still as if I could become invisible.
The cops, the pigs—we never had a run-in on Staten Island. It was one of the first things Dado had taught us kids. We were all so careful. I never got caught. Inside me screamed Run! but my legs wouldn’t move. Fear leaned into my chest like an anvil.
The madness of the crowd froze me.
If Trey hadn’t—
If I hadn’t followed him down—
What am I doing?
Everyone stampeded the ladders up to the grates, but flashlights shone down, stopping them, so they reversed, went other ways, psychotic with terror like roaches in the sudden light.
I watched, my whole world gone berserk.
I didn’t belong here, this wasn’t my scene—this wasn’t me. With Dado, this wouldn’t have happened. None of this would’ve happened. We wouldn’t be doing this at all.
Reuben was no longer beside me. Neither was Kevin. Or Trey. I heard the thonk thonk of hard rubber shoes on metal ladders, and saw the men in blue. Kids disappeared like rats down holes while the men scurried after them. One yanked a guy’s jacket over his head, slamming him to the ground.
A man in a blue NYPD sweatshirt snagged my arm and twisted me toward the wall, shouting that I was under arrest. The moment he touched me, the whole thing shattered apart like broken glass—this world, graffiti.
My life was over. I fought him like a dog, trying to get loose.
He snatched a can from the ground and sprayed it in my face, blinding me. I screamed, pain blazed into my head, a blackness I couldn’t blink through. I tried to run, to free myself as I howled and clawed the paint from my eyes—
My eyes, shit, my eyes, I need my eyes—
I heard him grunting, “Stop moving, you bitch,” as he tried to keep hold of me.
I heard a clunk, like someone hit the guy with a bagful of cans, then felt other hands on me, pushing at me, and a scared voice telling me to shut up and keep moving. I let myself be dragged forward, still blinded. I promised myself if I got out of this tunnel alive, I would never paint underground again. I would never take another train anywhere.
“Fuck,” I heard him muttering, “fuck, fuck, I knew it. I knew this was gonna happen.”
Trey. He came back for me. This was all his fault.
As he pulled me, I rubbed at my eyes, trying to clear the spray paint. I felt it burning into me, clotted on my lashes. Tears bucked out of my lids. Everything was a blur.
I wasn’t built for this shit.
We were in the back tunnels then, deep in the underground station maze. Trey led me through the cold space, down the ladder, over the hole, murmuring where to go the whole time.
We crawled to the end of the platform tunnel and sat there catching our breath. I’d left everything behind—my paste, my brush, my backpack, my stencils—it didn’t matter. I had nothing, and it didn’t matter. I didn’t care. I didn’t want it anymore.
“I can’t see!” I moaned. I shook. My whole body was wet with tears and sweat and fear.
I heard him moving around. Then I felt him rubbing some kind of cloth over my eyes; I smelled the coconut of him.
I was crying, sobbing, “What happened? I don’t even know what happened.”
“Shh, now. They’ll hear us.” He worked at my eyes, clearing them.
I stuttered in my cries and blinked and blinked, my vision coming back as he wiped at the paint.
“I—I think I’m starting to see.” I began to make out his face, his caramel eyes clearly worried. His T-shirt was off. When he saw me able to look at him, he tied the shirt over my head like a bandana.
He crammed his arms into his jacket. Somewhere along the line, he’d lost his top hat crown. He looked pitiful without it. Not so royal.
“We gotta make a move,” he said. “We can’t stay here.” He scootched to the opening, and from his inside pocket took out a mirror attached to a car antenna that he stretched to its full length. Stuck the contraption out onto the tracks and used it to look up and down and onto the platform. “All right, this is simple,” he told me. “You just get out onto the tracks and follow me inna that tunnel. We’re gonna walk to the next station, away from the Five-O crawlin’ all over here, jump onto the platform, and get on a train home like you ain’t got a faceful of paint. Got it?” he said.
My eyes still burned. Everything was wavery. “I can’t.”
“Let’s go.” He stepped out a
nd reached in and seized my arms and dragged me out of that tunnel.
50
WE GOT OUT at our stop and ran up the stairs to the street. Trey zipped into a bodega for a jar of mayonnaise, and we went up to the sixth-floor bathroom and barred the door shut. He filled the sink with warm water and sat me on the floor with the mayo.
I couldn’t help crying salty tears that stung my smarting eyes, the world a fog in front of me. “I can’t . . . I don’t know how I got into this,” I wailed.
“Hush up.” He took his T-shirt off my head and threw it into the water. Then he opened the jar, scooped up the cold mayo, and smeared it onto my forehead, up into my hair. My skin revolted at the cold. I felt glad I could see him; I didn’t want to look at him.
“I’m a dope,” I cried.
“Shut your eyes,” he said.
“I’m a total fucking loser. I can’t do this. I can’t.”
“Cut the pity shit or I’ma put some ham on you and eat you,” he said. I felt his cigarette breath on me, his fingers working the oily glop into my eyelids, gently down my lashes. The mayo smelled of egg. His expert hands rubbed at my cheeks, soothing me. I sniffed, my sobs dying down. “You scared of the cops,” he said then.
I wouldn’t admit it to him.
“You scared of the tunnels, you scared of bein’ underground, you scared of the subway, you scared of the Five-O—”
“All right, already!”
“What the fuck you wanna be a graf writer for, then?” he asked, like he was really curious.
I couldn’t answer that.
“One thing for sure,” he went on, “you ain’t scared of high places. I seen you on that bridge like a fuckin’ chimp.”
I breathed in, breathed out. Heard the water drip. “Maybe I ain’t a graf writer,” I finally said.
“You a graf writer and you an artist. You a graf artist. You could suck and be a toy, but you don’t suck. You just scared shit. That’s your weak spot. Work on it.”
I heard him squeeze the water out of the T-shirt. He pressed its heat into my eyes, as if trying to melt the pain.
“Once you’re king of the lines,” I asked him, “then what?”
He sighed. “My daddy called me poppy show. He said I got to be ginny gog. That’s irie, fadda.” He squeezed out the cloth again, and washed me.
“What’s that mean?”
“He said graffiti was a lot of chobble—trouble. I’m a show-off. I should be a politician.” He shook his head. “He never got past bein’ a fuckin’ bus driver.”
“You talk to your dad in your head?” I asked.
He didn’t answer as he wiped my lids again. “Open,” he said. When I did, I could tell the paint was washed clean from my lashes. I looked at his smart Stokely Carmichael eyes and knew he had some plan for himself, one he couldn’t explain to me.
His plan wasn’t my plan. Neither was Garci’s, or Jonathan’s. I’d have to make my own. I needed some rules—my own fucking manifesto. Right now, going along with the crew, I was shutting off who I had been with Dado. The things he taught me. Right now, I was ruled by the law of unintended consequences.
That was no way to live.
Trey scooped up a handful of mayonnaise and wiped it on my mouth, and then, with his thumb, rubbed it around and around, getting my pulse going. If only he wasn’t so damn fine.
I held his arm still. “You keep doing that and I’m going to put cheese on you and eat you,” I joked nervously.
“Stop talking.” He took the wet cloth and rubbed the mayo off my mouth. Then, he came close and licked my lips. “Mmm, creamy.”
“Do it again,” I said.
He sat on the tile in front of me and pulled me close. “I love when a girl’s all slick,” he said, running his fingers through my mayonnaisey hair.
“Any old girl?”
“You.”
He put his mouth on mine and I fell into his hot cocoa world. Something inside me didn’t want it. Didn’t want to hurt like this. Didn’t want to follow him so hard and fast that I forgot to hear my own fear. Dado always said it, Stay quiet, listen to the warnings inside.
With Trey, in Noise Ink, I couldn’t stay quiet enough inside.
I pulled away and said, “Would you hate me if I quit the crew?” They left the King Kennedys one by one, to save themselves.
His pupils were big, swallowing his eyes. He swiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You scared of me, too?”
“I’m scared of the pigs.”
“We hit playgrounds, ball courts, construction sites. Ain’t no pigs there.” I heard the tightness in his voice, impatient with my fear, yet wanting to convince me.
“I don’t know, Trey.”
“We go to the East Village, hit the walls like Charlie, like Keith. Our crew backs you up when you do shit. Ain’t nothin’ to be scared of.”
I thought of the way he bopped that pig and dragged me away. I never wanted to feel that terror again. I dropped my head. When I didn’t say anything, Trey got up and threw down the wet T-shirt as if he was done with me, getting ready to leave me with my hair full of paint and mayonnaise.
I scrambled to my feet, stood beside him, and looked in the mirror—like damn Halloween looking back. My eyes two irritated circles, paint turning my skin tomato red, my hair drooping with the weight of wet, smelly glop. My cap long gone. Next to me, Trey looked sexy as hell. I just looked like hell.
“I showed you how to use spray, R. I gave you that idea for the fuckin’ octopus. I brought you to Glad Gallery. I took you into the crew when none of them wanted you.”
“It’s just—I’m not sure I’m cut out—”
He put his hand up like he didn’t want to hear any more. “Fuck it, Ror. I knew you was a soft yellow banana.” He turned and threw open the bolt and slammed his way out of the bathroom.
51
THAT SATURDAY TURNED out hotter and more humid than any had been so far. June heat fermented the exhaustion in my bones into a weird popping energy, and I just couldn’t stay asleep. Eyes closed, I listened to my sister dress for work, a perfect girl on her perfect way to the ice-cream shop. I picked at my hair with furtive fingers. A warm shower and a nub of soap had gotten off all the mayo, but still I could feel the hard paint in my bangs and deep in my nostrils.
Mid-morning, Ma got up and folded the sheets from the couch and turned on the TV. The sun hid behind heavy rainclouds. Thunder rumbled and cracked. Rainy wind brought me out of bed. I shut the window as water threw itself in streaks down the glass. While she hand-sewed tank dresses on the couch—ones she’d designed with Marilyn, perfect for this sweltery summer—Ma watched the news. I eased myself beside her.
“I’m not going to ask you why you came in at dawn this morning,” she said without looking at me.
Yellow.
“I’m not going anywhere today,” I said.
“I’m not going to ask you about that paint on your face and in your hair.”
I ran my hand over my bangs.
“I’m just going to tell you that I fear for you, but I love you no matter what, Ror.”
I pressed my cool fingertips into my hot eyes. I just wanted to be there with Ma, listening, feeling, breathing, being. News came on about the fallout from the Olympics. After that, a story about a police officer shot with his own gun. Police officers; I never wanted to see another one. He was just doing his job, the news said, stopping a man from stealing a pair of glasses when the thief stole his gun and shot him.
Just doing his job.
Was that cop just doing his job when he shot me?
Was that even legal?
I wanted to get it down, what happened. I started for my sketchpad, then remembered I had lost everything. Got to stop doing that. I dug around for an old school notebook, and used that instead.
Through
the floor came downstairs neighbors yelling out curses in Spanish; from the halls, kids screeched as they chased each other up and down the stairs; outside, an angry rain tried to clean the dirty city streets.
A commercial came on—Reagan’s reelection campaign ad. The words made me look up from my drawing.
“It’s morning again in America. . . .” a voice said.
I wondered what America Reagan lived in. Not my America. Not the street I lived on, not the projects one neighborhood over, not the kids with sick parents or no parents at all. Forget it if you were seventeen and needed help. Would Reagan turn into an octopus if he told the truth in his ads?—“Okay, folks, I’m going to give all the money to big businesses so they can kick back some to me. I really don’t care about the rest of you. Fuck off and die. Just make sure my friends at General Electric keep their corporate jets. Our America’s run on crisp dollar bills and fat accountants.”
Those tentacles.
Yellow.
This was a country where the only place for an artist like Trey was the street. Where a girl had to become one of the boys or to give herself over to some guy just to be taken seriously.
I didn’t want to end up like that. Dead or lost or just plain faded away.
52
I FELT THE CALL of grass and trees, the cry of dirt. Early Sunday morning, before anyone else was awake, I walked through the rain-washed streets to Central Park feeling as alone as a person could ever feel. I entered the park without seeing anyone else.
Breathing in the tree-fresh, grass-bright air damp as morning dew, the past months, weeks, days went by in my mind like pictures. The fire. The shelter. Finding spray paint. Running after Trey and the crew. Painting underground. Fighting with Frankie. Octora. Meeting Trixie. Watching Keith paint. The bridge and the cypher. Getting hit by the cop.
When I sat on a bench and took out my notebook, a question came at me hard and fast: Why couldn’t I decide for myself what and where I wanted to paint?
Into the Dangerous World Page 16