“I s’ink he was like a Indian,” she says, cupping her left breast with her right hand. “I couldn’t understand him too good and his boca smell like curry.”
“Are you in the same religion or club or whatever as Brand Nubian?” I ask Angel.
“True indeed. The Nation of Gods and Earths.”
Angel traveled all the way to Philadelphia to become a part of the Nation of Gods and Earths, though they’ve been in our backyard all along, founded just fifteen minutes downtown on the A train by a former student of Malcolm X in 1964. Clarence 13X clashed with the Nation of Islam on the true identity of God. He believed that God was a direct reflection of the Original People, those of African descent. Clarence 13X also believed that 15 percent of the world’s population possessed the truth about the nature of God and that only 5 percent were destined to shed light on those still in the dark.
Clarence 13X delivered an ideal of self-determination and improvement that found an audience with a younger crowd of disenfranchised Black-Americans who found his so-called Supreme Mathematics and 120 Lessons palatable.
At the dusk of the 1980s, and now, the onset of the ’90s, social awareness is at the forefront of rap vérité. Hip-hop storytelling, illustrated most vividly by N.W.A. on the West Coast and Public Enemy on the East, is starting to eclipse its other expressions by assaulting all those who’ll listen with the fucked-up truths about society’s mores and politics. A spirit of resistance is being captured in the zeitgeist. The aftershocks of the crack era shredded our families and, in turn, sent us into our communities looking for role models in all the wrong places. Police brutality, while hardly a new phenomenon, was finally caught on video in the savage beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles. Shit is tense, and there’s been no time in hip-hop like the present for a revival of Clarence 13X’s Five Percent ideology.
“You know, I heard Brand Nubian over a year ago in New Rochelle before they dropped One for All,” I say, trying to make conversation with this stranger before me. “My tennis friend dates one of Lord Jamar’s best friends, the god Mellicon.”
Nikki is one of the few tennis players whom I’ve befriended off the courts. She loves hip-hop as much as I do. She looks like one of those Essence cover models, tall and thin, with her mother’s Chinese-Jamaican eyes and her father’s bronze skin.
“Yeah, they’re dope, but listen to the message over the music,” he says, quoting Grand Puba on “Wake Up”: “ ‘The maker, the owner, the cream of the planet earth.’ ”
“You think they didn’t have to work with a few devils before they were able to release an album on a record label?” I ask. “We all have to work the system or, like in Maria’s case, a discount to get what we need.”
“Sometimes,” he replies with the utmost gravity, “we have to dance with the devil if it enables us to get a greater message out there.” He pauses, glancing down at my legs. “Why are your clothes so tight? Don’t you have self-respect as an Earth, a mother of civilization? Are you cheating on me when I’m in Philly?” His voice is rising. “Since you like Brand Nubian so much, listen to what the gods say and “Slow Down.”
“Why are you wilding out?” I ask. I always ditch the Girbauds for tight jeans when the man I once knew as Angel comes to town.
“Ay, Angel, leave her alone,” Maria says.
“Listen, the white man is our collective oppressor,” Angel says, “all over the world. Look, even in the D.R., the Taíno and Carib Indians and the Original Asiatic Black man had to contend with those white devil Spaniards. And now look at how we embrace the Spaniard and call ourselves Spanish and white, even when most of us obviously are not.”
“You’re the first Dominican I’ve ever met down with the Five Percent Nation, but I can see the link,” I say. “My only thing is that I’ve also met Black and Latino devils, and how about those Black cops who took part in Rodney King’s beat-down?”
“They’re just brainwashed—they’re part of the eighty-five percent who live in the dark about their own and our collective identities.”
“Casimiro made the connection explicit—maybe you should have spoken to him more. He could have told you how they couldn’t kill our culture completely, even though Columbus wiped out all the Native Indians and—”
“Don’t say that maldito man’s name in this house!” Maria screams. She slams one of the dinner plates we bought at the 99 Cent store into the sink, cracking it in two pieces. “You see what you make me do?” She storms into her room and doesn’t come out for the rest of the night.
Angel goes back to Temple, back to the gods in Philadelphia. I find out some time later that he’s moved on with a new so-called Earth who doesn’t mind that he has a girlfriend at home. I am devastated.
“Maria, Angel is living with some chick in his dorm,” I tell Maria and Natalie, sobbing. “Something told me to cut class and go call him.”
“¿Y que paso?” Natalie asks. “What happened when he picked up the phone?”
“He didn’t. This girl did and said her ‘king’ wasn’t there.”
“He’s just going through a morena girl phase,” Maria says. “Be patient, mi hija, and he’ll come back.”
“I should have stabbed him that time I chased him around the block after catching him with that ugly-ass girl from the Caroline.”
“Why would Raquel want to wait around?” Natalie asks.
“Yeah, fuck that asshole, I don’t want to waste my life with someone like that.”
“My son is not a fuck-ass, don’t talk about him like that,” Maria screams at me.
“How can you defend that behavior, especially after all you’ve been through, Maria?” Natalie asks. None of us have touched the chicken guisado or rice on our plates.
“That whole situation was Charo’s fault,” she yells. “That puta stole him from me!”
“I thought you cared about me, but I can tell you see me through Angel’s eyes, like a piece of shit,” I say, crying.
“Well, he is my baby, my son, and you are nothing to me but una recogida into that brujería mierda Casimiro fed you,” Maria screams. “You know, maybe you liked him, too!”
“Maria—” Natalie yells.
“I can see why Casimiro left you,” I snap.
“Get out.”
I storm out, down the long dark hallway, past the image of San Miguel slaying a dragon and an old dry coconut on the floor. Casimiro must have left it there in haste.
* * *
I can’t hide my hatred of tennis anymore and become bolder with Papi when he screams or threatens me.
“You’re terrible, never will you get in college playing lousy like that,” he says one day after practice.
“Well, then kill me,” I scream back, “or kill your own self.”
“Nobody can deal with you, not even that woman you pretend is your mother.”
Alice doesn’t say anything, not even “Eduardo, please.” She has remained nothing more than a spectator ever since I told her Papi was cheating on her again with the cubana across the street who looks like Rocío.
“Get out!” Papi screams at me.
He locks me out of the apartment for hours. The last time it was overnight. I walk around the park and sit on the benches, looking at the river for hours, wondering why I haven’t been raped or killed.
Ever since I discovered The Village Voice downtown last summer, I’ve wanted to become a music writer, replacing my dream of writing lyrics for female emcees. I never cut English class, hoping Ms. O’Connell will one day notice my writing and take an interest in me. In the meantime, I bring copies of the alternative newspaper to class and spend the period reading them cover to cover, even the classifieds, while the other kids crack jokes and fuck with Ms. O’Connell until she explodes.
The bell rings. Nothing happens. “Can we start class?” I ask Ms. O’Connell.
She looks in my direction, uncertain who in the overcrowded class made the request. “I can’t wait to stop having to teach you bitches,” s
he says. The kids break out in laughter as Ms. O’Connell stares out the window for the rest of the class. I break out and never return.
* * *
Maria has left an urgent message for me. Surprisingly, I see it on the crowded table in Papi and Alice’s suffocating apartment. It reads, “Come to house, urgentemente.”
I walk over to Maria’s apartment that evening during dinnertime, when I know other people will be there. The door, as usual, is open. Natalie is sitting in the kitchen.
“Ay, Raquel, I have to tell you something, sientate,” Maria says, serving me a plate of food. She’s wearing the same thing I last saw her in: an oversize pastel T-shirt with a robe on top. Her deep auburn hair looks freshly dyed.
“How have you been?” I ask.
“My left breast—I think I have the cancer again,” she says. I guess this is Maria’s way of apologizing. I look at Natalie and make small talk.
“I hear you’ve been walking around the street late at night because of your idiota father.”
“He’s all I have.”
“Why didn’t you come here?” Maria asks. Natalie glances up at me. On the wall to my right is Sheeba’s telephone number scribbled in Angel’s handwriting. She sees me looking at it and says, “Angel is doing so well in college.”
I don’t respond to that. Sheeba, my “sister,” always wore Night Queen oil. That bitch. “I read a note that you had something urgent to tell me,” I say.
“I had a terrible dream with you a few nights ago,” she says. “You have to leave New York City por un rato.”
“Why?”
“I dreamed that you were in the elevator of the Caroline with two cops. They were being bad to you, and you screamed at one of them. The guy shot you dead. I only saw your back, never your face, but I’m sure it was you. You have to go.”
“You sure it wasn’t Papi who killed me?” I ask, chuckling to break the tension.
“Listen to her, Raquel,” Natalie says. “Maria’s dreams are real.”
I do. That week I walk into the empty guidance counselor’s office. There, I find a catalog of colleges and universities around the country and lug it to a round table. I set the book in front of me and close my eyes. I don’t know why, but I start praying. To whom or what, I don’t know.
I wish I had spoken to Maria before I took the SATs. I took them last Saturday, after another tennis-related fight with Papi. I was so exhausted and angry that I filled in my name and put my head down for the rest of the period. I didn’t realize how important that test was until now.
I open the book to a random page with my eyes still closed. My right index finger falls on the right side of the fold, to a university in a city called Pittsburgh, somewhere in Pennsylvania.
* * *
I don’t know how it happened, how I got here.
I mean, I know how I got here, but it doesn’t seem real. The eight-and-a-half-hour bus ride with Papi was crazy tense, even though we barely spoke and sat in different rows. Sometimes Papi would walk by when he wanted to stretch out, staring at me as if he wished he could lay me out right there in front of everyone for almost breaking his arm several weeks ago.
“You wasted all of my money and my time,” he screamed at me from his dimly lit bedroom, now stuffed with dental equipment and framed photographs of people I assumed were Alice’s family members. He was upset that I didn’t have the drive to become the next Gabriela Sabatini, or at least get a full ride to the university, after all his hard work.
“I’ll be out of your place soon, and you won’t have to worry about me at all after that,” I yelled back from the bathroom. I didn’t care about having to take remedial courses. Anything was better than this.
Alice said nothing. She sat drinking a cup of Sanka. The noise she made gnawing on a Stella D’oro breakfast treat was crazy loud.
“I’m tired of your shit,” I said to Papi, now standing by the doorway.
“What did you say?” he screamed as he reached for my hair and dragged me to his bed. Papi punched me so hard, I blacked out long enough to see black, then red, then a series of thunderbolts flashing before me. This was it. I felt something pass through me.
“This is the last time,” I said when I came to. I lunged at him. I punched and kicked and scratched and grabbed Papi’s wrist with the intention of breaking his arm. He yelled for Alice, who was already in the room.
“Rachel. Please,” she yelled. “He’s your father.”
“I’m not going to sit here anymore and take your shit,” I said to him. “Next time the neighbors will be calling the police on me. I don’t give a shit who you are.”
Papi ran to the bathroom, holding on to his right arm and yelling, “Dah’ling, I think she broke my arm! I think she broke it!”
We barely spoke to each after that. I spent almost every night at Maria’s until Papi and I boarded the first local bus out of Penn Station headed to Pittsburgh. I didn’t say good-bye to anyone except Maria, Blackie, Natalie, and some of the other neighbors who came by to eat dinner with us the night before.
Before leaving the city, I’ve traveled around the country only by plane, to compete in tennis tournaments, barely taking in my surroundings before winning or losing the game and then heading back home. This was the first time I’d seen other parts of America from this angle. My heart sank when we rolled out of New York City and into the downcast city of Newark and then Philadelphia.
I imagined Infinite and his Earth living in one of the houses or apartment buildings we drove by. I looked for them, dressed in matching red, black, and green kente cloth outfits. I was sure her locks were hidden under a head wrap high enough to pierce one of the clouds looming above us. I looked for Infinite in every face standing out in front of the corner stores we drove past. Surely he was somewhere, devouring a pressed Cuban ham, cheese, and garlic sandwich, away from the disapproving gaze of the other college boys who discovered God in themselves and white coeds. I tried to look into every brown face on the way out of the city but never found his among them.
I fell asleep en route to King of Prussia and woke up sometime after departing Harrisburg to miles and miles of unchanging landscape. I couldn’t believe how depressing the scene looked from my window. I started regretting listening to Maria’s warning. I could have flown to and from Santo Domingo in the same amount of time it took me to get here.
While I first find it unsettling, Pittsburgh also means a break from the violence. Here, I’ll be able to finally sleep through the night in my own space. I’ll be far away from Papi and Alice and the cops who brutalized me in Maria’s dreams.
Almost as fast as we hail a cab to Forbes Avenue, Papi’s ghost. “Good luck,” he says, shaking my hand. He reaches into his pocket and gives me a wad of singles—under twenty dollars—and some loose change. I don’t get a chance to thank him. The man disappears into a group of students and families rushing the Towers entrance, leaving me and all my possessions, stuffed into two suitcases, at the top of the steps.
Freshmen are whizzing by me in the Towers lobby like Flash Gordon, most with their proud fathers and frantic mothers in tow. I’m alone and lost, standing by the revolving doors, watching strange faces smile nervously, running in every direction to what I think are their assigned dorm rooms. I’m disoriented and hungry.
“Hey, excuse me, you look like you need help,” says a voice in the mob. Jane Mintz is a sophomore from some town outside Philadelphia I’ve never heard of. Her face is bright red, and her hair is long and wavy. Jane has pretty big hips for a white girl. “I first noticed you from across the lobby because I thought you look like a girl that me and Egypt would have.”
“Who?”
“He’s Black, from Cleveland. What are you?”
“I’m Dominican, from New York City.”
“Is that like biracial?” she asks. “Or like a Puerto Rican?”
At home, Papi said I wanted to be Black because I love hip-hop, and a low-class Dominican because I like graffiti and b-bo
ys. The kids at St. Thaddeus said I wanted to be white because I played tennis and lived with Alice. Casimiro said I needed to recognize and embrace my native indios and africanos in order to strengthen my spiritual guides, whom he likened to my intuition. Caridad told me I had a vibe of a Black and white gringa. And Blackie said I could be from anywhere. But I like being Dominican, sort of, especially one born in Harlem who likes to wear socks in the winter.
I don’t know how to answer Jane.
“I know you ain’t completely white or Black but somewhere in between, and you are so pretty,” Jane says. “Egypt is going to think you’re so pretty, too, and the AKAs are going to want you to be down.”
“What the fuck is that?”
“Oh, I can tell you’re from New York City with that mouth,” Jane says, laughing. “Let’s go to the pool hall later, when you settle in.”
I can barely get a word in on the short walk to my barrack-style dorm room, but I do learn plenty about Jane. First, that she wants to be an FBI agent. And ever since learning American history in a Black Studies class here, she’s been ashamed of being white, so much so that “I’d never pledge anything other than a Black sorority” and “I’d never marry a white boy, regardless of what my parents say.”
Jane leaves me at the ground floor of my new residence. I walk up a couple of flights and open the door to my tiny room. There’s only enough space for a set of bunk beds, one dresser, two desks, and one tiny closet. I stare at the beds. I hadn’t realized I’d be living in this box with a total stranger. I almost feel like I’m back on Seaman Avenue, back in prison.
Before my roommate arrives, I drop my bags atop the bottom bunk and leave to take my first walk down Fifth Avenue in search of a school cafeteria that might be serving food. When I finally return to my room, I find my roommate, Tanaisha from Philly, looking through my clothes.
* * *
All the beatings, tournaments, traveling back and forth to tennis practice, early-morning private lessons—none of it pays off. Alas, I can’t fake my drive or enthusiasm for the sport and receive only an itsy-bitsy partial scholarship. In the first few weeks of school, I report to tennis practice. I can almost see Papi on the sidelines, standing next to the coach, shaking his head every time I miss a volley or ram a backhand into the net. I can hear him screaming: “Add more spin to your forehand! Attack the net! Serve and volley! More power on the serve! Come on! Come OOOONNNN!”
Bird of Paradise Page 13
