Black Tickets (22 page)

S
HE IS SITTING
in the car and I do my number. Looking down the sight I see an aureole flare to the right and left, all around in haloed flutters. Then it wavers like underwater moons, I have to split, my Uncle doesn’t wait. He says be back, be quick, be reverent. We pray for these great states, for the Great State of the City of New York. We make em break em cart em away, Zing! like a silver cat scratch burning way down where you recognize your name. I make a sound: the letter
S
, snakes leaving skin to sun. Her head sinks down; I hear the sound and right away I’m fluttering. Gem-stepping down the alley I turn, squeeze off a quick shot and the girl half dazed on sidewalk falls over, lays down like she’s home. And I’m running, rolling round like the eyes of Jesse James. Love is the outlaw’s duty.

You see me everywhere. I spit on the surface of night, on
the rattling backdrops of subway gutter art. I suck you up like erasers. I am that glittering drop of mercury spilled out a broken glass stick. Mark me in numbers and names of the dead. I take your temperature, your pulse. I have my fingers on your wrist and I will twist it. You suppose I fade as my women fade, buried or barricaded; my women with their swinging hair and their protectors. But no, I am with you though you walk through the lit-up noise of Mondays; I comfort you. I know the accountant’s language of knuckles and swivel chairs, the jostling streets, the department store blues of floorwalkers and lyric radios, the sweat of the laundress scheming in powders and starch, the burger joints deemed blessed by girls in their thin white legs. I love my work. I crack these gems and expose their light in the dark Saturdays, the nights. My Uncle leads me astray into the paths of right thoughts. He holds my hand. Wait, he says, the time is not right—but we will yet have what we need. And surely, what we need comes in its time.

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.