“She slapped Frankie’s face?” a dusky-rose guy asked.
“No, stupid, that was TNT did that.” Some skinny kid.
I looked across the street and saw Trey and the spun-sugar woman Trixie and the TV-head guy Keith emerging from the gallery, just catching a whiff of what was going on.
Spike-hair folded his arms. “You ain’t from Noise. Nobody from Noise uses them faggot stencils.”
I turned to my Octora. “I do.”
“Yo, Steve, get the paints,” he said.
“You wanna paint with her?”
“Get the paints!”
The kid ran across the street, and Trey came over with Trixie and Keith.
“I dig that stencil,” Keith said.
I glanced at him—he was serious.
“Listen, Charlie, she’s down with my crew,” Trey said to Spike-hair—Charlie.
I was? Did that mean I was in?
“So she said. Since when you taking on this bullshit?” asked Charlie.
Trey shoved his hands in his pockets and didn’t look at me.
Keith came closer and eyeballed what I had done. “Stencil, yeah, that’s good. Clean lines. You ever try wheat paste? I bet you’d make some killer posters.” Why was he talking about wheat?
“Mr. Mendez will be thrilled with you going over this wall he just painted, Charlie,” Trixie said.
“I didn’t even do nothin’ yet!”
“Come on! Mendez loves our murals,” argued the skinny kid.
“Mendez will love that,” Keith said to Trixie, pointing to my painting. “Raygun.”
He got it!
She took it in, nodding. “It’ll be like that painting you have on your back. Smart,” she said to me. Her look turned studious, like she was deciding on me. “Not a lot of girls painting like you.”
Not a lot of girls painting, period.
Keith went on, “So you do your flyers and take them to Kinko’s and make twenty copies and wheat paste them to, like, any wall. Sometimes I do a collage on a sheet of paper first, then make the copies and paste them up.”
“I love your Reagan posters, Keith,” Trixie said. “How come you stopped doing those?”
This was the Keith who did the Reagan poster? I looked at him closer—he was older than me. He kneeled by my paints, checking out my colors. “I just saw one of those,” I said. “So, wheat paste. Is that like glue?”
He studied a label, took off a top, gave the cap a sniff. “Yeah, you make it with flour and sugar and water, just boil it up, spread it on the wall, the back of the poster, stick it on. Make sure you slap some over the poster, and voilà, it sticks real good,” he said, picking up my can of blue.
That was it? That was easy. “Where did you get your Raygun idea?” I asked.
He met my eyes with a smile that said: Where did anyone get their ideas? “It just came.” He held up the spray. “Can I?”
“Sure,” I said.
He moved a little away from me and started making his comic strip TV-head guy. It wasn’t graffiti, but he sprayed the same way—I watched the smooth moves of his arm, never a moment’s hesitation. He didn’t use words like me, just the angled drawings in blue. I picked up yellow and got back to work, wishing I could think of more to say to him.
The kid Steve came back with two milk crates of spray cans. Charlie called out colors and Steve threw them. Then he threw some to Trey.
Trey took a place on my other side and started working. Charlie got to it with his colors. Cans rattled, testing spray, getting busy. But it wasn’t like being with the crew, us all working together. Suddenly, it felt like a contest, like the first time with Trey in Garci’s class, everyone watching. Between the four of us, who would do the best painting?
We painted as high as we could reach, flipping the milk crates over and standing on them, then climbing a ladder Trixie had in the back of Glad. Wait, she owned the gallery?
Keith finished first—a vibrating comic strip that broke out of the borders, that made no sense unless you took time to really look, to see how all the pieces fit. I still had a can, still working while Keith slapped hands with Trey and Charlie.
Then, he patted me on the shoulder. “See you around, Octora.”
Before I could answer, he took off across the street. He didn’t come back.
Charlie stepped away when he was done and eyed our pieces. Trey tossed his empty into a crate. I was the last to finish.
Four different techniques eyed us back.
Keith had his comic strip line man. Charlie was CY-BEE, done digit style, like from the future. Under it were initials—MFU, which stood for MoFo’s United, his crew. I backed up to where he stood with Trey, his ROI 85 done wild style, with NI under it, Noise Ink. I didn’t put my name or crew—the stenciled Octora was enough.
Charlie studied mine for a while, then turned to me and said, “Hey. Why don’t you come on down to the ’hood? We’ll hit up the bridge.”
I glanced at Trey, who fingernailed paint off his thumb. I felt him waiting. “Let’s all go,” I said, nodding to the bunch of them.
“Let’s do it.” Charlie clapped his hands.
I stuffed my cans in my bag, and five or six guys stuck paints in their pockets. Charlie kicked the milk crates to the curb, and someone took back the ladder.
We walked toward the bridge, tagging walls and burned-out cars and vans as we went. I felt strange animal spirits in my blood, as if I was outside myself, felt my laughter shooting into the smog-brown night. Trey walked ahead with Charlie, some liquor in his belly, making jokes over the whine of buses. Was he scared to be seen with me? Some kids drank from paper-bag flasks, some toked up; by the time we got to the bridge, even I felt a contact high. The boys swarmed the graf-marked bridge columns that took up an entire block, the Doppler sound of cars flying overhead, loud, then disappearing in the distance.
I saw that nobody had painted higher than they could reach. The bridge was hit until about seven feet up—some scratch tags, some real nice pieces—but after that, it was blank. Forty feet up to the roadway, big and exhaust-black and blank. A forgotten part of the city perfect for painting.
I went to Charlie. “How come no one paints up there?”
He followed my eyes. “You climb up there, it’s like climbing a tower. The cops can see you a mile away. Down here, it’s hit and run.”
“But look, it’s easy climbing,” I said, pointing out the scaffold-like railings that went up the column. “I’d be up and down in no time.”
“Easy climb, easy bust. Everybody knows that.”
“Yeah, but if you paint up there, you’ll be the only name, and everyone’ll see it.”
“You won’t know that if you a jailbird,” Charlie said. I could see his shift—he was aiming to talk me out of what I was talking myself into, which made me want to do it even more.
Before he could protest, I grabbed two cans and flew up the scaffold like a squirrel. High up, the air thinned and cooled, sending a chill through me, a bubbling laugh. I could see half the city and I felt no fear, not like underground. I wrapped my legs around the metal bar at the top and reached as far as I could, clinging on with my left hand. School-bus yellow and cosmic orange against the soot-black column, where the whole goddamn world would see, I sprayed out a huge octopus screaming:
Underneath, I wrote OCTORA. I felt goddamn great. I did. Painted where nobody else dared.
I climbed back down, ready to gloat. Nobody was there. My backpack stood open on the ground, my near-empty blue untouched.
“Guys? Charlie? Trey?” I called out over the racket of traffic.
No one answered. They were gone, gone.
I felt dumb—I hadn’t listened, I’d put everyone in danger and they’d flat left me. Hollow sweat broke out under my cap. I could get jumped, here alone. What if Frankie show
ed up? I tossed my empties into the garbagey no-man’s-land under the bridge. Zipped my pack and hurried up the street.
I couldn’t resist a backward glance at my painting. They might have thought I was a dope, but mine was the only name up there.
The street was too quiet. I reached the corner, almost running.
Trey stepped out from behind a column.
I cried out. Hot tears of relief blinded me for a second. I blinked them away fast.
“You know you fuckin’ crazy, right?” he said.
I didn’t think he was really asking.
He came close to me, his forehead dark with anger, his eyes glowing phosphorescent in the night. He put his hand behind my neck and pulled me in, and I threw my arms around him.
We kissed for a very long time.
45
I ALWAYS PICTURED that every time I learned a new thing, a hard wave pushed energy through my brain. Newness formed more curves: the Glad Gallery, painting the wall with the guys, Trixie and her clear-eyed smile, Keith and the wheat paste, the bridge, Trey’s kisses. My head spun so much, I almost couldn’t bear it. I sat in class, trying to hold steady.
I asked to be excused and went to the bathroom to clear my mind.
Nessa came in. She saw me and froze. I felt trapped, hanging on to myself, sitting on the cool radiator, pretending I wasn’t there. How much did she know? Her face said: Plenty.
Everyone else was in class, no one around if she tried to kill me.
Fury smoke blew from her ears. She stepped farther into the bathroom, went to the mirror, and stared at herself.
“You ain’t the first,” she said.
I watched her back, thinking how she attacked Frankie, thinking I didn’t want to tangle with her. I fingered the knife in my pocket; I was facing a girl who was as strong as me, and dangerous.
“First what?” I asked.
“First girl.”
“First girl what?”
She turned cobra-like, and spit out, “You know. Don’t make me say it.” Her eyes seared guilt into me. A colorless gray drip of dumb filled my veins. Dumb cold and slimy like sewage.
I couldn’t help myself. “I know what?”
She darted over and smacked the wall behind me, and I couldn’t breathe.
“Shit! What, are you going to kill me?”
Her face close to mine, she said, “I should.”
“But I’m not the first! You’d have to kill us all!”
I thought she was going to bite me. She pulled away.
“Why do you stay with him, if I’m not the first?” I asked.
“You don’t know shit, do you, Ror?”
“What don’t I know? Tell me,” I said.
Another girl came in, saw us, and left.
“He’s mine. That’s all you need to know,” Nessa said.
I folded my arms. “If you love somebody, set them free.” It was the only thing I could come up with.
“Life ain’t no cheesy saying.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want to be owned,” I said.
She came close, and squinted. “Is that what he told you?”
I sighed. “He doesn’t want to hurt you. Neither do I.”
“You wasn’t with him when his pops was dying. See if he needed me then. See if he didn’t cry like a little baby in my arms.” She did this really strange heave, and then burst into tears herself.
Shit. That wasn’t what I was expecting.
“Aw, Nessa. Aw. I’m sorry.”
She crumpled to the floor and curled into a ball. I went to her, squatted down and touched her back, then pulled my hand away. She sobbed. “I tried to be your friend, I said you could hang with the crew and this is what you do to me? Don’t take him from me, don’t take him away.”
“Aw, shit. We didn’t do anything, not really. Aw, shit. Doesn’t mean anything, really, Nessa.”
“We’re gonna get married,” she cried up into my face.
“What?” I said, looking at her tear-soaked cheeks, the makeup all screwed up.
“I had an abortion with him.” She said it like they’d had a baby.
I had to stand up then. She was right. I didn’t know shit about their relationship.
“Come on, Nessa”—I waved my arm around the bathroom—“You’re so good at the graf.” Her tags covered the walls, the unmistakable drawings of funky girls doing dance moves. “You have your whole life to go, right?”
She pressed her hands to her face, crying so hard I thought she might tear something. “He saved me from Frankie,” she sobbed, “when Frankie owned my ass.”
“Oh, shit.” I didn’t think I could hear any more. I felt my heart turning against her, I didn’t know why. I just wanted to leave her, to not be near her. It was like in some sick way, she fed on these horrible things, held on to them for dear life. And Trey held on to her.
I had wanted to clear my mind; now it felt like all the curves in my brain were pulsing.
“I have to get back to class now, Nessa,” I said as cold as I could.
She scowled, pushed up her sleeve, and dug her long nails into her forearm. I saw the scars there—she’d done this before. Like the girls from the shelter.
“Damn, you need some help,” I said. “I’ll go get someone.”
She got to her feet quick, suddenly face-to-face with me. “You tell anyone and I will kill you.” She went into a stall, rolled out some paper and wiped her face. “Go back to class,” she spat. “Go back and keep your mouth shut and leave my boyfriend alone.”
I walked out, feeling black dry coal stuck in my throat.
46
BY THE END of the day, it felt like somebody had stepped on our anthill, and all us ants went scattering—Kevin and Reuben pissed at me and Trey for going to the Glad opening without them. Nessa pissed at me and Trey for fooling around. Me pissed at Trey and Nessa for dragging me into their drama. It hurt like getting stepped on, a giant Bad Barbie footprint right on the nest of us.
All the cold shoulders made me feel like disappearing into an alternate universe.
I found a note stuffed in my locker through the vent. We all meet at the building at midnight tonight. I’m callin a powwow. Trey.
That night, I told Ma I was going to the corner bodega for some ice cream. She stopped her stitching, not looking up like she knew I was lying and was tired of fighting. “Just get back here in one piece. I need you for the lawyer tomorrow,” she said quietly. I kissed the top of her head before I ran.
I got to the building five minutes early and heard arguing as I climbed the stairs.
“. . . gone downhill since she started hangin’ with us.” Nessa.
“You ain’t even give her a chance.” Trey.
“And you ain’t serious no more. She ain’t no graf writer, with all that stencil shit and whatever else she’s doing. Now you out painting up murals with her, like her.” Reuben.
“You talkin’, Rube, with all your stickers?” Trey.
“We saw it, down in the Village. She went way beyond stickers with that Octora shit.” Kevin. “She’s makin’ you weak, Trey. She don’t do it like us. She never did.”
“Come on, Kev! With your nihilist writing, you gonna say that? Best thing ’bout us is we ain’t like nobody else.” Trey.
I stomped up the last of the stairs, and they shut up. I walked in the dark room lit only by flashlights up in their faces, them looking like ghouls.
“We was just talkin’ ’bout you,” Trey said.
“Yeah? What were you saying?”
Silence. I remembered those same mad looks from when I stole their paint. How bad I wanted to be part of them. How they gave me a chance.
Finally, Trey said: “Listen, I called y’all here tonight because we got that jam comin’ up with Poison, and we need to focus.
This petty arguin’ shit gotta stop. We a crew, like this,” he said, making a fist. “Means we stay together through thick and thin. Nobody’s leavin’. We a family, that’s what this shit is all about.” He looked around at the sore-loser faces looking back. “Got it?”
“Why you get to break the rules?” Nessa asked.
Trey sighed, like an old man at his wife. “Yo, Nessa, I need you to kick ass on Friday, just like you know how, that’s all.”
“Answer her question,” Reuben said. “That was fucked up, what you did, not tellin’ us about the Glad opening.”
I was starting to smell a mutiny, people wanting to jump ship.
Trey ignored him. “Are we gonna focus, or what?”
Kevin said, “We gotta have trust, Trey.”
“Yo, look, I’m sorry, okay? That make you happy?”
“I want more than that,” Nessa said.
“What do you want?” Trey’s voice got tougher.
“I want you to get rid of her.”
They all looked at me—I met Reuben’s eyes, that betrayed look, like he’d been hoping for something between us. And Kevin, thinking I was making Trey weak. Cold fingers stabbed into my stomach.
Kevin said, “Let’s take a vote.”
“No,” said Trey. “We need her.”
“You need her,” Nessa snarled. “I don’t need shit.”
Trey looked at Reuben. “She’s good. Don’t take it out on her. It’s my fault.” He turned to Kevin. “She don’t make me weak. Ror makes me strong.”
A gasp opened in me—he was admitting me in public.
“What?” Nessa’s voice like ice water.
“Ror makes me strong.” Trey met her eyes and held them.
“And what do I make you?” Nessa said.
We all waited, listening to the car alarm blaring outside.
“You drainin’ me, baby.”
I waited for her to kill him. Or cry.
“Now, I don’t think—” Kevin started.
“Shut up!” Nessa shouted. “Let’s get this out once ’n’ for all. Why don’t you just break up with me, Trey? Go ahead, do it!”
Into the Dangerous World Page 14
