I read the papers. I save the stories in a box. They print my letters to the press, my exhortations to action. Get off your collective ass and rise to the occasion, rattle doors, knock on the deafened tombs. Haunt the alleys of the city which shine with slivered glass and clues to the underside. Inspect the eyes of winos. Inspect bellies in rotten shirts beached up on curbs, heads cradled stupid in a pasty arm. The whores, the Catholic girls, speak well of these whales of the streets. They sit on lumps of sleeping flesh to wait for a bus or a trick. They keep their jewels in trash cans and adorn themselves by the light of the moon. The drunks, the sleeping whales, have seen it pass. Ask these prophets where I lie in wait, where I sleep to evade your manhunters in their uniforms and carbolic faces. Ask the prophets whose shaggy heads slumber on newsprint fantasies of my face, on news of the latest sacrifice. I live in the gutters of dog manure, wine and urine; in the sewers which eat these melodies delivered by the sprays of the sweeper trucks.
Remember Babylon. I live in a swelter of bobbing heads navigating east and west far down in the streets. I ride the elevators up sixty floors; I stand at the windowed corner of a big hotel on a forgotten floor. Alone in a hallway while the rows of locked doors sleep, I watch the swelter break and sigh. The swelter rolls like waves; an ocean of passengers on foot. Watch it move. Beneath me, far down in the streets, the ocean wobbles in red shoes and three-piece suits. Those red shoes! wooden heels stacked in layers of light and dark like a parquet floor dismantled and cut to fit. Ankles above the shoes are strung thin and tuned to recite. Though I see only tops of heads, female heads smaller than the metal caps of straight pins, I remember the ankles: their nylon sheen, the round bones rising up to glint like a covered eye.
Once I shot marbles. Glass and porcelain. Agates. Colors snaked in stripes through the centers, formed a wavered pupil of no determined expression. Handfuls of lovely eyes. I propelled one with my thumb to hit others, drive them out of a circle scratched on the ground. I crouched with the rest. I crouched in my scarred shoes and took aim. I dented my shoes on rocks and sticks. Those shoes were brown and tied with long ties which tangled or dragged in the dirt. Gouged scratches in the leather turned pale and tempered like scars on skin. I dug my fingernails into the dirt and aimed. We played marbles on the hard-packed ground, dust baked blond in the sun. I kept my prizes in a string bag. Scooping up the captive jewels, I rolled them in my hands and kept them warm. Later I would examine them by a light, sit home alone and stare into their centers. Now the boys crowded round with smears of dirt on their faces, silent, while the high-pitched screams of girls signaled they were sweating at their games of tag. Girls ran close and teased us with the sounds of their buckled sandals. Slaps on the ground. Quick. Flat. No one looked. The boys watched me, my cat’s-eye. Its chatoyant luster glimmered onto my skin: a stripe of shade burned in.
Shade falls on me as I walk among the faces. I walk east and west with my hands in my pockets. By day the discos are only the flat mutes of their doors and lightless signs. The crowd flows past them. Some of us walk in the black slant. A shadow falling from a long place is cast across us. Perhaps we will meet at night, in an alley beside a club. They sit in a parked car. They see me, some stand and sink. As they fall off their shoes I remember my own, those scarred leather ones with rounded toes. Was my Uncle watching me then, in my crouch? My cat’s-eye shot in its spinning roll across the dirt, rolled with its chosen celebrant beyond the scratched circle into no-man’s-land. Listen: I’ll discuss my country; the playgrounds of the Bronx where buildings hedge their sooty roofs together and the dented rain pipes glitter. The ground was littered with smashed bottles. We ate Push-Ups, slender creamsicles frozen to a stick. We bought them across the street from the school for a dime. The sticks were saved, sharpened with penknives, used in games of pirates.
The girls and boys. We evaded each other. No one wanted the secrets yet, just the surging underskin like splinters. Some days it rained. They kept us inside. Ceilings of the classrooms were high and cracked. Above us in a heavy frame hung a portrait of George Washington in clouds, his patrician nose rouged and tipped with a ball of light. Each morning we recited the Pledge. Then the prayer about the hollow Father and the coming Kingdom, the heavenly Will. My Uncle grinned in my mind but kept silent. He saved his commands and watched me. In the rain the old school building smelled of chalk and dirt. Dirt rubbed into the floor and packed itself firmly in cracks. We dug it up with pencil tips. Outside, the grounds were gray. Swings moved on chains. The teacher left us alone for recess. She snuck cigarettes in a lounge with a closed door; she thought of nothing. Noise in the classroom got louder and louder. The girls made games and diversions. Some wore full dresses with crinoline slips, ankle socks, patent leather shoes. They stood inside the reading circle and twirled to records of rhymes. Goosey Goosey Gander, whither shall I wander? Upstairs and downstairs and in my lady’s chamber. There I met an old man who would not say his prayers. I took him by the left leg and threw him down the stairs … The girls twirled, seeing how big their skirts became. I lay on the floor inside the circle of chairs. Above me the skirts volumined like umbrellas. I saw the girls’ legs, thin and coltish. Pale. The ankle socks chopped their calves above the ankle and gave the illusion of hooves. I saw their odd white pants and their flatness. They were clean like dolls. They smelled of powder. They flashed and moved. I turned my face to the hard blond legs of the chairs.
At night I wake up. I put my hands across my face but the smell persists. My fingers smell of onions. I want to peel back the skin layer by layer, find the smell and wash it. I smell of something cut up, limp curls on boards, limp curled skins of onions.
My Uncle says, Come close. He stands in the shadows by the window. He stands behind the long curtains and ripples the dirty cloth. I see his shoes sticking out beneath, laced-up military boots and green woolen socks on his ankles. Come, he says. I see his head moving behind the cloth. He is unkind when he is angry. He is waiting for me to get on with the work. He comes at me out of everyone’s mouth until I know he is the only one talking. He’s inside the hippie across the hall with the moon poster tacked to his door, inside the black girls I see in the elevator. They say Hi, they taunt me with their sloe-fizzed eyes and the pinkish palms of their hands. My Uncle waits at night in the dark bedroom until I wake up and listen. Come close to me, he says. And then he begins the giggling, long idiot sounds drawn out warbling and buckling, drawn out circling to choke me.
I have a job in the days. Always on time. Holding my computer card to the time clock, I hear a magic click writing numbers. The clock has a face of cats and rats; a black-ringed face with hands like whiskers. I like to check sizes, work in the stock shelves. I pull a folding ladder along the shelves, between the endless rows. Rows and rows of shoe boxes stacked to the ceiling, printed in size and swirled calligraphy; Spectator, Top o’ the Town, Mr. Rocker. Mr. Rocker shoes are spangled with mirrors on clear plastic heels, sewn in satin stripes, dappled with brass studs. Girls paint their toenails red and go dancing in Mr. Rockers. They sway on their transparant platforms while the music bleats. Mostly they don’t move their feet; they bend at the waist, side-to-side, arch hips and slinky strut. They close their eyes. Smile. Others stamp their feet, beat time with Mr. Rockers, pound sequined heels the width of a peg leg. I know because I go to watch them. My Uncle stands beside me; he whispers and points. He tells me what to do in his voice that whines and excites, his old voice that talks in the eyes of the reeling prophets and clattering cans in the streets. He knows languages with no letters. When he sees Mr. Rockers glitter under strobes, he grips my arm and buzzes like a bee.
But now I watch the escalators, shoes on the moving steps. They pass up and down, back and forth in front of our department. The manager rubs his hands and nods. I have a silver shoehorn in my pocket. When no one comes in, sits in our enclave of padded chairs, I dust shelves of Mr. Rockers with a feather duster. The salesgirls sit and saw their nails with emery boards embossed in the
name of the franchise. They wear sensible shoes, beige Wedgies and Weejuns with pennies. They are required to wear stockings and shoes with covered toes. Their ankles are shy and crossed with a strap. I could show them places to go. My Uncle nods. He is serious about my work; only I can serve him in my way.
By late afternoon the store slows down. The empty escalators move. Women at the jewelry counters lean on the glass, looking closely at rows of pierced earrings. But they aren’t really looking, only flicking at dangling golds with a fingernail. They’re thinking of catching buses, eating dinner, locking their doors to sleep. And the accountants walk by, hurried, lace slips for wives tucked in a briefcase. The days get darker. The lawyers, deli owners, insurance salesmen, aging girls from publishing houses: they fill up subway cars and stare straight ahead. They remark on the newspapers. Some save clippings, fascinated. At the stalker, the legions of manhunters, the series of chosen faces innocent in those painful graduation pictures. I know which readers follow the stories. Their faces are looking for secrets. I’m pushing them. I could tell them light comes in one quick flash to the seeker.
The apartment was always dim. The Bronx was rows of tenements, metal fire escapes at spindled angles, thin grass strips by lengths of sidewalk. Junked cars in the street. Basketballs made their repetitive rubber slaps on pavement. My mother worked a factory in Brooklyn; she rode the trains home late. We were alone in the place. Every night I waited for her. We kept a wooden crate by the door, a steel door like the rest with a two-inch-square window high up. I stood on the crate to watch for her, a short wire-haired woman lumbering in kerchief and shapeless dress up the stairs. She always carried groceries. She said she liked my eyes right there at the window after she’d climbed three flights with the heavy bag. So I pushed the crate to the door and watched. One rectangular light in the hall cast a yellow shape on the floor. I stood there for hours. I watched them all come and go.
Daughters of the Spanish family across the hall folded clothes at the Laundromat. They were dark and brassy, gold hoops in their ears, wrinkled cigarettes. They came home after five and fumbled with keys, shifting big purses and bundles of towels bound with a paper strip. In the warm box of light their faces lost sharp expression, seemed rounder, tawny. They all had moles near their lips, dark little pigments ignored and sexual. The dark spots rose like tiny scarabs on their faces. The girls tossed their heavy black hair. They sighed, shifted hips, jingled their rings of gold keys. They were sleepwalkers slouched by the metal doors. I wanted to wake them up.
And there were others, all asleep, all waiting. Fat women who worked in the markets, cleaning women, women who did nothing. Men came back with their silver lunch pails. Most of them lived alone or transient. Their faces were putty in the light. Only the shamblers, the rocking drunks, didn’t care. They yelled and pounded on doors, walked into walls and laughed. Their stubbled whiskers gleamed. They opened their mouths wide and threads of spit glistened like dewed web. I believed they had spiders inside them. They were the only ones: they saw my eyes at the window. They pointed at me. They bowed, doffed their lumpy hats, and fell down in a heap.
Mostly I’m invisible. I stay in my apartment. I go to work and come home. In summer I turn off the air-conditioner and open windows. I like to feel it all heat up. The city gets hotter and hotter. Tar bubbles on roofs and tops of cars shine white. The air gets heavy and hums. Suddenly, when its hardest to breathe, sirens cut loose. The heat is punctured like a big bag; the weight leaks out and whines. Ambulances or fire trucks. Or cops. Long sirens blurring in and out, screaming to make things real. I sit still. After the sirens there will be sounds again; doors slammed, strays barking in the streets. Colors start in the sky and night comes on. I hear footsteps in the hall. My Uncle is walking around. His sounds are in my head like a voice in a radio.
My mother said to stay inside. She said those sleeping drunks in the halls would steal my clothes. I counted marbles I’d won and left the best ones out to show her. The Bronx smelled of garbage left in a heat, smelled of a whole city wasting. I watched the electric fans revolve their whirring heads. I turned off the lights and watched them in the dark; the glinting circles they made.
When my mother got home we played cards. Crazy Eights or Slapjack. She was quick at slapping Jacks. Her hand came down hard on their faces, their jeweled capes, their little hatchets. She wore no rings; her nails were blunt-cut straight across. After she’d won all the cards she shuffled the deck and dealt us hands of eight. Sometimes she let me win. I changed suits to hearts or diamonds, neat red shapes: I still see them when I look at neon signs. My mother smoked Pall Malls and took the combs out of her hair. She was always old. She rolled down her heavy support stockings, rubbed lotion on her calves. She rubbed gingerly at places where the dark blue veins were coming up, as if she were afraid of her insides. She told me twice she never knew my mother. Other times she’d say how sick she’d been when I was born.
Once we heard a shuffling in the hall, snarls and squeaks. One of the alley dogs had got in and caught a rat. The dog had it by the throat and their eyes were wild, wide open, rolling. I called her to look and she grabbed me. She pulled me back from the door, from the window that fit my eyes. She held me to the opposite wall and stood shivering while the sounds went on. She kept her hands on my neck. I looked up from beneath her and saw her parted lips, the edges of her teeth. And her eyes had sharp edges to them, watching the metal door.
Each time, I do the same things. I come home and lock the locks. I have a mattress on the floor and a box of clippings. I read them over and over and listen for his voice. It starts coming every night; my Uncle is there all the time. I go for weeks and then it is time again. I take the gun out and look at it.
When I went in the army my mother cooked a big dinner. She fried chicken and mashed the potatoes. She stood cooking gravy, stirring it with a fork. The skin of her arms was cracked and crossed with tiny lines. She thought the army would be good for me: I could go to school on the GI Bill. I watched her standing at the stove. She wore white waitress shoes with thick soles and she had a big safety pin fastened to the collar of her dress. She saved rubber bands, paper clips, thumbtacks, safety pins. When she found them in the apartment she put them in a pocket or fastened the pins to her clothes. She stirred the bubbling gravy and hummed hymns. By then her face was pasty and she wheezed. She hummed “We Gather Together.” The army, she said, maybe I’d be an engineer. Design machines and engines. I’d always been smart, she said, why shouldn’t I have the best.
At Fort Dix I was a typist. I hated the khaki uniforms. I hated the southern boys and their jokes. They only noticed me when they told their dirty stories. If I didn’t laugh they said I needed a whore. They came close to my face and their little pig eyes glittered through slits.
I learned how to shoot. I practiced. I shot at clip-on targets printed in red and yellow rings. The black bull’s-eye spiraled deep. I hit it and dreamed of hitting it. In dreams I laced up my boots and walked in the dark to the target range. I saw each step and when I touched the gun I saw through the bones of my hands. I kept shooting into the eye of the black and a star burst up each time. At first I didn’t notice the girls. Then, one by one, they started filtering out of the woods; slim girls in knee-length dresses whose bare arms stayed still as they walked. They walked slow, their hair billowed out. They stood dotting the meadow and gazed at me like waiting deer. I kept shooting. Stars in the black bull’s-eyes burst brighter and brighter. The girls stayed motionless, their faces toward me. The sky grew lighter above their pale dresses. Their feet were hidden in grasses. Across the rolling field their arms gave off faint glows.
I wait for a weekend. Saturday night. All day I wait for the dark. My Uncle is with me though he is not present.
I look at the gun and I touch it. I turn it over and touch it everywhere. I have everything I need and his voice has stopped and I go where his voice has said to go. I park the car and I walk a few blocks. I have the gun in my pocket and t
he note I have signed for his voice. I don’t wonder about the girl; I’ll read about her later, her parents, where she lived, what she did. Now she is dancing or she is getting smoke in her eyes from the cigarettes in the crowded room and she is getting ready to walk outside. I hear a buzzing and my vision flickers. In an alley by the side entrance of the club I have my hand ready; I see her hair and her red coat. Sometimes they don’t see me but she does and that’s good, it’s very good; because she shakes me, I’m fluttering, she rushes in like electric shock in the instant she looks at me and knows—I never hear the gun—But after she falls there is a loud crack. Something big caves in. The whiteness comes up brilliant, sudden, stutters sparks and spreads its burning arms. Then a flash like imploding air. I pass through like flame. My shoes bleach concrete where I touch. Sometime, someone will see and follow me. I’ll say they found me with special eyes; I’ll say they have grown up in light.
Black Tickets Page 17