Into the Dangerous World Page 4

  I said, “Hey. Yeah. I mean, no.”

  “Don’t tell me you live in this dump?”

  I nodded. “418.”

  “No shit! I’m in 621,” he said. “Lemme tell you, don’t trust the dude in 534, no matter what he says. And make sure you stuff Brillo under the radiator, or you gonna have a pizza party with them mice comin’ in.”

  “What about the drunk guy who sleeps in the hall?”

  “Watch how you talk about my uncle.” His eyes laughed. “Just playin’. Joe won’t do you no harm.” He smiled at me, adjusted the kid’s legs around his hips, and went inside.

  I felt it then, the emptiness. How was it you could be so alone in a city of millions?

  10

  IN ART CLASS the next week, Trey threw his sketchbook on the desk and sat beside me. “’Sup, Staten Island.”

  We’d worked on our projects side by side but hadn’t really talked. On the cover of his book, I noticed the writing like I’d seen in the subway and on the walls, only his was good, and in color, and I wanted to ask him what it was, how he’d done it, but I couldn’t find the words.

  “’Sup,” I said back.

  We met eyes, and I studied his, today the musky brown-green of fern moss. He tilted his green fedora down and eased back into his chair until I couldn’t see him anymore. But I had the image of him imprinted in my mind.

  Garci handed out paper and asked us to draw the still life with a blue bottle he’d set up on his desk. I’d done a million of these—the round bowl, the flat dish. Trey had the same sharp eyes I’d seen in pictures of Stokely Carmichael. I drew the way his tight curls burst out from under the brim of his hat, his rounded features—that curved nose—was he part Cherokee? His lips were square at the top, so full at the bottom.

  “Hey there, I see you’ve found something more interesting to do.”

  I looked up; Mr. Garci was inspecting my work. I was supposed to draw the bottle. I reached for fresh paper.

  “No, no, let’s see what you’ve got there,” he said, moving my hand away. I couldn’t tell if he was smiling, or angry that I didn’t do the assignment. “You seem to have some experience in this.”

  “I just—”

  “No, it’s good, Ror, but it’s a little flat. If you want to add some depth, see if you can focus on what’s going on behind Trey’s face,” Mr. Garci said.

  Flat?

  “What?” Trey said. “You drawin’ me?” He looked over and his face changed. Soured, darkened, like I had drawn an insult. His head snapped back, and he pushed his hand out as if to brush me off. “Yo, I don’t look like that! Why you make my eyes so small?”

  Small?

  Everyone turned to look, and I held myself steady. What were they going to say? Would I hear more of these insults, or would someone understand it?

  Mr. Garci said, “Okay, folks, art is not a spectator sport. I want to see those still lifes done by the end of class.”

  Trey’s eyes narrowed. “You think you draw good—I’m gonna draw you—see how you like that.”

  “But I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “And you two—” Mr. Garci said.

  Trey held up his hand. “Nah, nah, I’m gonna get this one, Mr. G. I’m gonna show her who can do it better.” He made a big drama, turning his chair around to face me. He grabbed fresh paper and started drawing me.

  “It’s not a competition. Let’s just see what you two can do,” Mr. Garci said as he drifted down the row.

  Trey drew fiercely. What was he looking at? Drawing, I’d always been in the driver’s seat. Was this what it felt like to be drawn? The precision of laser beams, his intense eyes, like he could slice a design into me. Would he make me look like a psychopath? There was nowhere to hide. His eyes pinned me down.

  I could tell by his hand motions that he was using crosshatch and shading. He worked fast, his other hand holding the paper away from me. He was so focused, like he wanted to win, like it was a game, who could be better, faster.

  He slapped his drawing down next to mine, and said, “There. That’s how it’s done.”

  I felt myself gasp—wow. Like looking at me, only a deeper me, a better me. How had he gotten me so clearly, so fast, and with so few lines?

  Our drawings were so different. Garci came around to compare. “Good. These are good rough sketches. You two have distinct styles.”

  “You damn right, I got style,” Trey said. “I got miles of style.”

  The class laughed; now everyone was paying attention.

  “But Ror, what’s the matter with Trey’s drawing?”

  “He drew me too pretty,” I said too fast. Titters broke out behind me.

  Mr. Garci said, “That wasn’t what I was thinking. Trey, what’s the unusual point of interest in Ror’s face?”

  “The unusual?” Trey was serious, studying the surface of me.

  “What attracts your eye?”

  Trey stared, his look crawling over my skin. I touched my ear. “She’s got them circles.”

  Circles?

  “These circles here?” Mr. Garci said, drawing with a finger in the air around my eyes. “Okay, what do they mean? Explore that in your sketch next time.”

  Was my nightmare life so easy to read?

  “And, you, Ror, don’t gloss over Trey’s flaws. Where is this scar, and this?”

  Trey pushed Mr. Garci’s hand away. “What you talkin’ ’bout, Mr. G? I ain’t got no flaws!” Laughter.

  The bell rang. Everybody jumped from their seats, including Trey.

  “Next time,” Mr. Garci said to me, “focus on pulling out his personality.”

  As he left, Trey didn’t look back at me.

  Next time.

  I followed him out of the room.

  11

  I WANTED TO ask Trey where he learned to draw like that. As I neared him in the hallway, a couple of guys went over and slapped hands with him. I forced myself on, until I was standing right in front of him, watching him joke with his buddies.

  I said, “Trey, hey, Trey, your drawing was—”

  He turned, his eyes triumphant, and said, “That’s right, Staten Island, you know I beat your ass.”

  I felt my cheeks burn. “What?”

  He said, “I beat you so bad, you ain’t never gonna come up for air.”

  His friends cracked up. “Yo, you beat her?”

  The one with long hair said, “‘Staten Island’?”

  “Ain’t that where cows live or somethin’?” a Chinese kid went. “Moo.”

  “Nah, ain’t nothing on Staten Island but garbage.” This from a little pimply boy.

  I felt for my knife in my pocket.

  Trey said, “I beat you so bad, the vultures gonna come pick at your old drawing.”

  “Fuck you,” I said.

  His face changed, taken aback. “Ooh,” the boys jeered.

  Then he smirked, “You wish you could, Staten Island.”

  I backed off, their laughter ringing in my ears.

  “We’s just messin’ with you,” Trey said, but I was already hurrying away.

  How did that go so wrong? I walked home alone, my eyes burning hot, even in the cold wind. The monstrous buildings made faces, groups of girls turned from me in horror, one of them laughed at me, her mouth dripping red. I kept thinking of his words—I beat you. I beat you. Nobody had ever beat me—nobody even saw it that way!

  I was grateful no one was home when I got in. I switched on the TV and took out my schoolbooks and tried to concentrate, but my eyes kept drifting back to the Afterschool Special, some sappy Wonder Bread love story. I must’ve fallen asleep, because something woke me. Dancing in the hall: Badum bum, badum bum. Badum badum, bum bum. I looked out the peephole and saw it was Trey, jumping down the stairs to some rhythm in his head.
<
br />   I grabbed my coat and got outside just in time to see him cross Columbus Avenue. I followed him for another block west on 85th, keeping a half block between us. Then, I saw him stop. I ducked behind a parked car. I didn’t know what I’d say to him if I caught up.

  He looked around and went into a weedy lot. I hurried and saw him disappear in the dark of night around the back of an old brownstone, the one with the front door chained shut. The lot was seeded with dumped garbage bags, used condoms, cigarette butts, beer cans.

  Was he scavenging?

  I walked away, down the block, around the corner, trying to talk myself into shadowing him inside.

  I went into abandoned buildings all the time, so what was stopping me now?

  By the time I got back there, I’d talked myself into it. Dammit, I’d done this before. I could handle Trey alone.

  I glanced up and down the street, then went into the lot and found a way to slip inside through the loose basement door. The floors were strewn with empty wine bottles, tinfoil, needles. I looked at the stuff, wondering what a shot of heroin would feel like. Not that I was into drugs. The couple of times I smoked pot, I got real paranoid. Pot could make some people fly, but not me.

  Upstairs, a streetlight shone through the window, picking up the neglected beauty of the room—a fireplace with a marble mantel. Carved moldings around wooden doors. I imagined Dado prying off this stuff, piling it up, taking it home and putting it to good use. Now there was no use.

  I stopped and listened upstairs for junkies or drunks, but even they had deserted this place. Trey wasn’t making a sound. Handwriting lined the walls like I noticed everywhere in the city now, like a massive snarl of roots, spies talking to each other. Glass crunched under my boots as I climbed another flight of steps.

  On this floor, a bathtub with lion’s feet, a broken-down cabinet.

  I went higher, to the third floor, marveling at the old paper peeling gracefully from the walls. On the fourth, I heard rumbling, laughter, moving around. More voices than one.

  Shit. He wasn’t alone.

  I backed down the stairs, wishing there wasn’t so much broken glass. A door slammed above me, and feet went running down the hall. I skittered into a nearby room, praying they’d leave without spotting me. I stared through a crack in the door and held my breath. Laughter, the feet tramping down the stairs. When they got to my level, I saw Trey with the other boys from school.

  I held my breath to disappear as they ran by.

  What were they doing here?

  I waited for silence. Then I stepped into the hall and hurried upstairs, following a bitter smell into the room where they’d been hanging out. As soon as I pushed the door open, it struck me.

  A painting. The biggest painting I’d ever seen in real life. Bigger even than ones in the museum.

  Covering the entire wall, up to the high ceiling, the colors and huge shapes in code. I’d caught glimpses of them on the subway cars, but not like this. Not in a room. It filled the space; it seemed to belong just right here, to transform this forgotten place into a secret marvel. I moved closer to study it in the pumpkin-flesh streetlight. Looked like Trey had been working on it a long time. The paint was so smooth and flat, the lines so crisp and even. The colors were as perfectly blended as the Dark Side of the Moon album.

  How did he—how did he do it?

  I saw, then. He knew something I didn’t know.

  I stood and stared, feelings flooding me—the way it vibrated off the wall, as if it was alive and singing—the blood surged back into my veins, the vacant lot of my heart filled with pumping red that made me want to live, to find colors, to do that.

  On the floor were cans of paint, spray paint. Spray paint! That was it! I picked up a can. What would happen if I pressed the button? I tried it. It sputtered and sprayed only air. I dug through the cans hungrily, wanting to make it work. I pressed one button after another, until I found one that shot out paint with a kick like a gun. I took it to the wall—a burst of black. Oh! The power! I shaped it, trying to stay up with it, the quickness of the spray. This was the stuff! I wanted more, I had to ask Trey—

  Trey.

  I stumbled back from the wall and saw with horror I had sprayed the black on the painting. I had sprayed out a Fire Pop.

  A Fire Pop.

  It was quick and it was right, the best I’d ever done, but why had I sprayed that? The can burned into my hand as if it wanted me to throw it back. Instead, I shoved it in my coat pocket, flew down the stairs, and out into the street.

  12

  IN MY TOP BUNK, I held that can close, slipping the metal ball around and around. Beneath my subterranean layers, I felt the power of spray and knew I needed to get more, to learn how to use it. Sounds of that painting sang in me, colors swam in my head like schools of exotic fish flashing by.

  That black Fire Pop like a mark on my soul.

  “What’s that sound?” Marilyn whispered from below, her voice thick with sleep.

  I stopped. “Nothing.”

  “It’s something. Tell me what.”

  We’d shared secrets, broken the deepest Manifesto laws together. But I didn’t want to tell her about Trey, the building, the painting. That was mine. “It’s just some junk I found,” I said lightly.

  Our mother slept with her back to us, tucked on the couch.

  “Let me see,” Marilyn said. “Rora, let me see. Come on!” She was awake now. There was no hiding from her once she figured out that something was important to me. I leaned over the bunk and gave her the can. Reruns of Family Feud played on the TV, the gray reflecting on Marilyn’s face as she put it together.

  Spray paint = Graffiti.

  “Where’d you find it?” she asked.

  I told her about the abandoned building but not about the painting or Trey. She stared down at the can for a long time.

  She lifted her head, finally, met my eyes. “You still doing that kid stuff?”

  The insult stung.

  “Give me a break, Rora. Don’t go digging in other people’s shit. We’re trying not to be squatters anymore. You can do better than this. You can.” She tossed the can back up onto my bed. “Grow up, little sister.”

  I listened to her settle. It flitted through my mind: Maybe I could ask her for money, but she’d never give me money for no reason—she hated when I asked her for anything unless I proved its necessity. You can do better. I can’t, you can. From a book we read as kids.

  The can in my fingers set my mind free—that wall must’ve been higher than twelve feet and wider than twenty; I had never painted anything so big. I wanted to know how Trey made the colors do that, how he reached the ceiling, what it felt like to paint in that space—I could taste it, the bitter smell of paint. I slipped out my notebook and drew what I would do if I got myself some.

  13

  I RIFLED THROUGH Ma’s purse and came up with a crumpled dollar, two dimes, and a handful of food stamps. I kept the money and left the stamps. I had no idea how much a can cost, or where to buy one, so I went hunting, up Broadway, past cheese stores and blue-haired ladies, bodegas and domino players, a movie theater playing La Dolce Vita, a boutique with busted glass.

  Up on 92nd, I found this store, Jon’s A#1 Art Supplies & Framing. The place took up half a block. Inside smelled of fresh-cut wood. I picked up pencils, pens, markers, brushes. I ran my fingers over sketchpads of creamy paper, squeezed tubes of yellow ochre and aquamarine blue and cadmium red, wishing it was all mine.

  All the time, I looked for spray. I could practically taste it in my mouth like hard metal, that can, the feel of it in my hand, the kick, like starting up a chain saw.

  The cover of a magazine stopped me: the mouth-pink screaming face of a Francis Bacon. I saw three Francis Bacon oil paintings together once at the Standish Museum with Dado. I stood in front of the triptych for an hour. It was
n’t in a book. It was on the wall. Right in front of me. For real. I couldn’t tear myself away from those smears of desperation. The way they shook.

  A good painting is one that makes you gasp inside.

  “You looking for something?” An old guy behind the counter picked at his teeth with a paper clip. I lifted my head, and there I saw, in perfect geometrical patterns, color-coded shelves of spray paint behind the counter.

  “Um, yeah,” I said. “How much is a can of that spray paint?”

  He squinted his eyes at me. “What do you want with that stuff? What’re you gonna do with it?”

  I rubbed my mouth and looked down at my filthy hand. I felt my face smudged with ink from drawing and tried to wipe it off on my coat. It suddenly occurred to me: graffiti might be illegal.

  He said, “What are you, an artist or a hoodlum?” What was he going on about? What did he care? “What you got in that book?” he asked.

  I hugged the pad to my chest. “Nothing,” I said.

  “Let’s see nothin’,” he said.

  His challenge did something to me. Like Trey. I didn’t want to be whipped. His wrinkled hands with road-map-blue veins opened to me. I went up and put my worn-out drawing pad carefully on the counter. He flipped through the pages, then he looked up.

  What was he thinking?

  “You got a lot of good stuff here, kid,” he said, his voice quieter. “What’s your name?”