Vanishing Rooms

by Melvin Dixon

  I froze. My stomach churned with sudden fear and heat. I reached for the light. I couldn’t say anything. I looked at him. My words were slow in coming. “What did you say?”

  “I said, ‘nigger.’ ”

  “You mean that, Metro?”

  “You wanted it low, didn’t you? You wanted it dirty. Yes, I meant it.”

  “But I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “You wanted to ride the rough train, huh? Well, ride it, nigger.”

  “You goddamn son of a bitch.”

  “No, I’m Metro, remember. You call me that. You want it low. You want me to take you there. Down under. Well, down under you ain’t nothing but a nigger. A coal-black nigger.”

  I hit him once, and I hit him again. He didn’t hit me back. I hit him again, harder, so he’d hit me back, but he just lay there moaning and fighting the air. He wasn’t fighting me. He wasn’t even seeing me. He was pulling at himself. I stopped and watched him pulling and punching at himself and pulling and punching again until he moaned again and stopped as abruptly as he had begun. The bed was wet, his groin was wet. His hands slippery with his own semen.

  “That’s what you get being a snow queen.” It was Clementine.

  “Huh?”

  “I was watching you. You must have been asleep. You were yelling ‘nigger, nigger,’ in some high girlish voice so I knew it really wasn’t you saying that. You wouldn’t call yourself a nigger, would you?”

  “Who’s that? How’d you get in?”

  “Clementine, darling. Like I said, that’s what you get being a snow queen. Don’t you know white boys only want to get close enough to you so they can call you nigger to your face then have you fuck them hard up the ass to get your revenge? And you know what happens?”

  “What, Clementine?”

  “They put those business suits right back on, chile, and head straight back to those real estate offices or employment bureaus, and give us the same shit about not being qualified enough, or that the apartment’s just been rented, or they’re too tired now and if you come back to their room in about an hour they might be able to get it up for you. Shit, I know their tricks. I was one of their tricks. Now look at me.”

  “Metro wasn’t like that.”

  “And no black news story ever gets decent coverage, does it? You ever read about the charitable work the Elks was doing or the Daughters of the Eastern Star? Or any black man winning a prize for something outside the stadium or the disco dance floor? Huh? We’re all subway muggers and rapists and drag queens. Not men. And not black men loving other black men. Loving being black and men together.”

  “Not Metro. He wasn’t like that.”

  “You was his nigger. Face it. Your college degree wasn’t shit. All he wanted was your cock or your ass, but he was afraid to get it off the real streets he walked on.”

  “No.”

  “And you see this-here meat? You see it? Black, ain’t it? Real black. It’s greased and ready, Jesse. Fat as a Carolina sausage. Greased and ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  “You coming home now, baby. I’m gonna get in that ass.”

  “No.”

  “Indubitably? That’s what I heard you moaning. Roll over.”

  “No.”

  “I said roll over. Spread it. People been asking me, and I got to know.”

  “No.”

  “Goddamn it. You my nigger now. I’m gonna get in that ass.”

  Just as he sagged onto one side of the mattress, I jumped off the other side and made it to the door, slammed it shut, and bolted down the stairs. My feet twisted against the steps, missing a few, but I kept on running, past the TV room and the sauna, past open rooms, past the exhaling mist of the steam room and its fog of memory, past everything there that descended into nothing but a row of lockers and vending machines selling Coke and cookies and condoms and KY. I got into my clothes, returned key and towel, and hit the streets. From the seventh-floor window came a voice yelling, “You mine, nigger.” And there was Clementine waving a fat fist.

  I walked quickly, mindlessly, until I came to the subway. The smell of burning electricity turned me right around, and I was back on the street, not knowing where I’d go next. But there was only one place I could go, the battered room Metro and I shared the last time I saw him alive. I wasn’t Metro’s nigger, or Clementine’s. I was my own beautiful black son of a bitch.

  I found West Street, dodged traffic, and entered the abandoned warehouse. And there I was, face to face with the splinters.

  “Jesse. Oh, Jesse. I knew you’d come.”

  “Do you love me, Metro?”

  “Call me baby, ” he said drowsily.

  “Is that why you asked me here? Just to call you baby?”

  It wasn’t always like this, I told myself. A quick fuck in an abandoned warehouse. It wasn’t always like this. Once, we strolled across campus holding hands. Once, underneath the streetlamp behind the library at the marble stairs leading onto the quad, he kissed me. Once, anyone studying all night in the reserve room or just getting high late that night could have seen us. Once, someone did. Once, we marched together in the commencement procession. Then I arrived in New York first because Metro went to Louisiana to visit his family. When he came back North he seemed different, as if the change of place had given him new eyes and a different voice. Then there was something strange and desperate about him. But I showed him, didn’t I? I showed him who the real nigger was. I kept my hand closed over my palm. I wouldn’t let him smell it. And I didn’t have to dance that time, did I? Like I’m dancing now that he’s gone. Dancing, dancing …

  And he was in my arms … was in my arms …

  One step, two steps, three steps together …

  One step, two steps …

  The footsteps were real. Shadows. Presences. Body smells. A door opened somewhere close by. I felt air all over my body, all on my skin as if someone were blowing kisses. Then, as if all the breathable air inside was sucking out, a long human gasp came from somewhere behind me. Only a choke of horror remained. “Jesse!”

  I was too scared to look.

  Lonny

  “IT WASN’T JUST ME,” I TOLD THE POLICE. Red leaves are tiny mouths falling through the sky. They dry on the ground and talk back in a scratchy, girlish voice. They say things like, “You ain’t never had a chance. You ain’t never had a chance.” And they dirty my sneaks saying, “My boy. My boy, Christ Jesus!” Shit. You have to step on them to shut them up. You got to keep on stepping sometimes until they come off the ground and come off your shoes with a sigh. Leaves leaving. Ain’t that a bitch? And then they brush back, leaving the chalk outline of a guy you want to fuck. But leaves leaving in November say, “No. No. No.” And you talk back to those lips crackling underfoot, saying, “Shit man. I make my own chances. I make them myself.” And they lay there scattered like blood in the street, shocked, brittle, open, and hard, like pulled teeth that won’t shut up. And I get to asking myself why Moms had to be there cackling at me like that. I told her once how things happened the way they did. I told everybody and signed my name in ink where they told me to sign. Even the doctor promised me clean sneaks.

  Now the leaves talk very little, or I just don’t hear them as much as before. Soon they’ll all go away and I can walk on lighter feet. See some sky. Never hear them voices again. Never. I’ll shut them up like the guys tried to shut me up. They didn’t want me to say nothing. And even Metro didn’t know nothing until it was too late. I didn’t realize it either until the voices came back with bodies when they locked me up to wait for trial. The bodies and the voices attacked me this time, and I had no room to hide in or get away to. No fucking where to go.

  “It wasn’t just me,” I said when the doctor wanted me to come clean. “It wasn’t just me.” And I must have talked out of my head because the next thing I knew Cuddles, Max, and Lou was filing into the precinct with their sweatshirts pulled over their heads and hiding their faces from photographer
s. Then before the TV cameras they showed themselves off proud. Camera lights blared everywhere, and you’d think that the tiles and linoleum floors had lights on them too. Blinding lights. The officer said he was Detective Stone. I told him my name—all of it. He said it was first-degree murder and bail would be pretty high. Then they brought Moms in and she wailed up and down the halls like I was her precious somebody who ain’t never been in trouble before. Which was really a lie, ’cause when the judge set the bail that high she said I’d be better off in jail anyway than home with her or out in the streets, where I’d be, mostly. The others came later and even they couldn’t pay bail. Not Cuddles, Max, or Lou. But they never signed their names like I did, which started all this shit. Which had started for me when the leaves was talking, and what was I gonna do but talk back. Tell them everything. The others said they wasn’t guilty. That I’d done it by myself. But when some doctor said there was too many stab wounds on Metro to come from one person and that even though he was drugged up with Valium and Librium and shit to calm him down, he died of the stab wounds from different knives. You know, knives of different lengths. Not the clean knife I dropped running out of there. So it wasn’t just me, I said. In fact, I don’t remember it being me at all.

  It was just a blowjob. Just a crazy running in the streets. My knife was clean. They must know that. It was clean. My fingerprints, if there was any, was on his head, holding it, and in his thick hair when it got to feeling good and I couldn’t stop myself. Then his voice made the air thick. He was screaming. But I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t stop hearing him crying or touching the red coming out of him bent up with Max and Lou at his back. Then I was alone with him. Metro. I found my feet and used them. Shit. I made room for myself. I got the hell out of there.

  But it didn’t end with running or dropping the goddamn knife that was clean. I went back to him. Maybe just to touch him, but he wasn’t there. Only a chalk outline of his body bent like a leaf. Round and scraggly. The police found me and brought me here to face the others. And when we was left alone, like there was a goddamn signal I didn’t read, they was all on me, doing an Irish jig on my head. Shit. Just ’cause I signed for myself and told what had happened. Just ’cause my knife dropped clean to the ground, just ’cause I heard them leaves falling and they sounded like lips calling my name, saying, “Lonny, Lonny,” and saying, “I never touched you, man. Never.” And when I told the doctor about it, he said they’d stop talking like that. And them leaves did stop talking like that for the split second before Maxie’s fist found my jaw and Cuddles squeezed at my throat. Moms in night court was squeezing, too. And Moms in the visitors’ gallery was yelling all out of her head and mine in the same scratchy voice, “He ain’t never had a chance, Christ Jesus.” Which was a lie. I had my chance. Better than that, I took my chance, Moms, and I’m gonna tell everybody about it. You all hear me out there? “Shit. I took my chance. I’m self-employed.”

  The one who ain’t had a chance wasn’t me at all. It was Metro. That’s something I knew about all along. Which probably explains how I got to jail in the first place and why I even went back where they stabbed him. I wanted to tell him he never had a chance. I did, and I took my chance. And if Cuddles didn’t have his knife on me, or if Maxie and Lou was really friends like I thought they was and not the crumbs they turned out to be, I’d have stopped them then and let Metro go. We was just gonna fuck him up a little bit, you know? But I didn’t stop them. I couldn’t. Don’t ask me no more how it happened. Don’t ask me no more about who he was to me, ’cause all I know is what he was and what I hate. Telling me his real name didn’t change nothing. Not like he wanted things to change. Get to know me maybe. Talk shit and get high. Chase cock, not pussy. So why was I even watching Cuddles fuck that whore up near Columbus or hiding my face in his denim jacket? I was really hiding in it, you. see. Cuddles ain’t nothing to me. He proved that when he made his steel talk in my face. Not stainless this time cause it could have been my blood on the blade. Or my ass open like that for all the craziness Maxie and Lou had stored up inside them. It could have been me. Which is what I told myself when I was alone in the cell and nobody was looking and I could rub smooth the bruises Cuddles left on me. Not just the prick of steel. They didn’t allow that in there. But the hammer of his hands and backhand jabs hard to my stomach and head. And the guards? Shit. They just pretended I wasn’t even there. Your ass ain’t worth shit around there. ’Specially if people are holding crap against you. And when you find out the hard way that your friends ain’t your friends, you take your own chances cause you’re the only one you rely on from then on. You go solo.

  “Only thing worse than a faggot is a stool,” Cuddles says.

  “A stool faggot,” goes Maxie.

  “So you told them, huh? You probably told them about the herb, too. You must have told them everything,” says Lou.

  “I signed, goddammit! I signed my fucking name. Yeah, I told them. You guys never saw that guy Metro. You never looked back. You never heard the sound of leaves falling red or curling up dry on the goddamn ground. Don’t give me none of that stale shit.”

  “You yellow, Lonny.”

  “But who was fucking him, Max? Who was fucking him?”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah, a great, big, stool faggot.”

  “If I’m a stool then what are you? All of you?”

  But they wouldn’t let up. They got in close. I called the guard over and he acted like he didn’t hear me. He didn’t move from the door. The rooms was close and hot and they was crowding in on me. The guard watching away from us, watching the outside. Cuddles’s fist came first. I swung back. Caught Lou and swung again. But Maxie had me then. He had me from behind. Fists dancing on me. I couldn’t feel my teeth anymore.

  “You ain’t gonna fuck with me!” I yelled.

  The guard finally came over. “Cut that shit out,” he said. “Cut it out.”

  But Maxie held tighter. The guard looked away. I couldn’t move my hands. Cuddles and Lou at my face again until my eyes closed on red and my throat got tight with spit and acid coming up from my belly. I tasted blood. I ate it. And it was mine. Mine.

  I couldn’t open my eyes for two days. I could hardly eat. They had me go to the infirmary for a few hours. Then sent me back the day I had a visitor. Someone I wasn’t planning on seeing ever again. Moms. She was there with my sister Patty. I didn’t want to see them. Not the way I was looking. I could barely walk to my place behind the glass booth when, suddenly, she saw me and wouldn’t keep her mouth shut from screaming. Her screams were metal, metal on metal, knives on knives. I held my head. I couldn’t say nothing ’cause my mouth was still purple and fat and would let only air come through, and even that hurt. But she kept yelling at me, making my head hurt worse. “Look, Moms,” I said to myself and to her silently through a swollen mouth, hoping she could hear me somehow, even if the words never came. “I’m doing it. I’m taking my chance. ”

  “My boy! Christ Jesus. Look what they done to my boy.”

  My knife was clean. I never stabbed Metro. I was caught in it as much as he was. I never stabbed him, really. Really. But that’s what Maxie is saying, and Lou and Cuddles too. Maybe they’ll believe me ’cause I’m youngest. The public defender didn’t listen to me. “They got your confession,” he said. “You might as well come clean.” Come clean, come clean. Shit. Everybody wants you to come clean like you nothing but shit anyway. My knife dropped on the ground. I went back to see him. I went back to touch him, like he wanted to be touched. I was there, wasn’t I? Inside his shape? I was inside the print of his hands and feet and head. I was lying inside all of him. And the cold in that chalk shape was mine.

  After they beat me I got put in a separate cell. The cops told me that I was going to a juvenile home upstate until the trial date. I don’t know what’s going to happen to the others. I don’t give a fuck. Cuddles wanted it big. Let him have it big. I only signed because they said it would be easier if I went a
long with the cops and told what happened, told what I did and what they did, which is all I said. What I didn’t expect was to see it all typed out on a page all neat and clean like a government paper for somebody’s file. Mine. And I didn’t expect to be locked up this long either, just ’cause we couldn’t pay bail. The doctor who talked to me said they’d transfer me upstate, but there wasn’t no room there just yet, no openings. I’d have to stay put for a little longer until something could be done. Something arranged. We’re in separate cells. I don’t know nothing about the others. We met together only once after they beat me. The guard was watching them differently that time.

  What did I expect out of those bums, anyway? What did I expect out of the cops and guards? Wasn’t I looking on when they stabbed Metro? Didn’t I know it was going to end up like it did? How the hell could I blame anyone? I had red on myself now. Red eyes. Swollen red lips. A head that wouldn’t stop pounding at the slightest footsteps. And all you could hear is feet dragging on metal. My feet dragged too. But inside the metal catwalk the floor is concrete. Walls are cinder blocks stacked high and glazed with gray paint. Each one measures twelve inches by six inches. And there are thirty blocks on the wall below the metal bars and window. One window. I’ve seen some cells that are just metal and air. Then some with walled metal slats for ventilation. Space for names and fingers, maybe. Nothing else. And one square lock to remind you how far the space goes out, how far you can walk forward without coming back, then walk back again. One five-step run from locked bars to back window. Then an iron-pole bed, an open toilet, and me. Five steps this way, five steps that way. Step-touch, step-touch, step-touch back. And the pacing, the pacing back and forth, back and forth inside my head.