Paintings from the Cave (5 page)

She takes a breath. “Where’d you get this?”

“Somebody gave me half a pizza. You eat it all. I already ate.”

She chews and sighs, a soft sound in the dark.

I dig in my pocket. “Here’s some money. Ten dollars. I know you gotta buy those vitamin pills so the baby grows good.”

“I can’t take your money, J.”

“I can get more. He wants me to come back.”

“Who?” Her voice is hard. “Come back for what?”

“The … artist I met. I met an artist. And he pays me pizza and ten dollars for sitting.”

“What do you mean ‘sitting’?”

“He pays me to sit and he makes a model of my head with clay and later he’ll turn it into iron.”

“You’re crazy. You’ve always been a little loose, but now you’re making things up.”

“He’s in the building on the other side of the fence. One of them rich people like we watched that time. He’s an artist, name’s Bill. He paid me ten dollars to sit on a stool and he made a statue of my head.”

“You’re messing with me.”

“Nope. He bought the pizza, then gave me the money. Said he’d make a clay head of you, too, ’cept I told him you couldn’t get through the basement window.”

“I’d stick in the window like a cork in a bottle.”

We both laugh at the picture, then grow quiet. She’s thinking and I’m wondering about the head he was making of me.

“It’s really something to see …,” I start.

“What?”

“The way he moves the clay around with his thumbs. Pretty soon I could see me inside it, waiting to come out.”

“Sounds like you liked it.”

“Watching him made me want to do it.”

“So you’re going back?”

I didn’t say anything, but I knew I would.

To see if I could get another pizza.

To see if I could get ten more dollars for Layla.

More.

To see if I could move the clay like he did.

“You come sit next to me on the bench here.” Her voice is low and I move to her, put my arms around her shoulders. She holds me around the waist and we sit like that in the dark.

I think she’s just breathing but then I know she’s crying.

“I’m scared.”

“It’ll be all right.”

“I hate it here.”

I hold her tighter. “It’ll be all right.”

Like I know.

Like I know anything.

M
e and Layla spent the night in the basement with the lights off because she couldn’t go home.

“Ma lost her night job,” Layla tells me. “Got mean drunk when she came home. Blamed me for getting pregnant. Blamed me for everything.”

“Like always,” I say. We have that in common, getting blamed for everything that’s wrong.

We slept some, talked some, cried some.

Just after the light comes through the little window, Layla goes back upstairs because she knows her ma left for her day job. But I go outside and through the alley and into the other building, back to my place. I wanna see about working with clay today.

I look out the window, but Bill isn’t up yet. And even my Eskimo jacket can’t stop the cold. Cold comes in like a snake, crawling around inside my clothes. My feet hurt for a long time, don’t stop hurting until I can’t feel them anymore.

Finally Bill wakes up. I watch him move back and forth. He goes past windows without looking until finally, when he’s putting water in a teakettle, he looks up and sees me.

He opens the window. Steam comes off the sink and outside. He looks warm.

“Good morning, J. How long have you been there?”

“Just got here.” No sense telling him everything. “Thought I’d see how you’re doing.”

“I’m fine. Since you’re probably not going to school today …” He pauses and when I shake my head, he continues, “Come over and have some oatmeal and then we can work for a while. I didn’t finish what I started last night.”

“See you at the door.” I go out to the middle of the building and start climbing out through the basement window.

Petey.

Another man is with him, name of Slipper, who’s high all the time, worse than Petey.

They’re by the Dumpster, but they don’t see me so I pull my head back in. They’re out early looking for
something. I can see their breath in the freezing air and I know they’re not out this early and in this cold unless Blade sent them for something.

For someone.

Only one thing Petey could be looking for ’cause there isn’t any money to be made on the street this time of day.

He’s looking for me.

Blade’s got everything God made—money, connections uptown, the Big M car, the Glock Nine, women. Everyone on this street is either scared of him or working for him and it’s not fair that he wants me, too.

But I know that when I got away from Petey, I made Blade look bad ’cause Petey works for Blade, and Blade doesn’t like looking bad. Blade can’t let that be.

I move across the basement to rooms I don’t usually go in, wade through trash almost to my knees, to another window on the other side of the building.

Petey’s so drunk he thinks he can stand by a Dumpster and catch me. His brains are nothing but mush from the drugs.

I climb outside, take the long way around the block to the other world, and I see Bill at the door. Waiting for me.

I slip inside. Warm. Safe. Good smells. He hands me a bowl of something tan covered with brown sugar, flecked with dark things.

“What are those?”

“Raisins. Don’t you like them?”

“Sometimes.” I shrug. “What are they?”

“Grapes. You dry grapes in the sun and they turn into raisins.”

I eat the whole bowl and it’s so hot and sweet it hurts my teeth, but good. I wish I could take some back for Layla. He puts the bowls in the sink when we’re done and then slides the stand with my head out from a corner.

The head looks different from when I saw it last. Twisted or something, like I’m looking over my shoulder. There’s nothing below the head, but the way the statue is looking, you know there’s a shoulder down there. You can almost see the whole body below the head even though there’s nothing but air and the post for the stand.

“Can you teach me to do that?”

He looks up quickly, surprised, smiles.

“I can help if you want to try sculpting.”

He finds another small worktable, puts it in front of my stool and drops a lump of clay on it as big as both of my fists.

“What do I do?”

“Put your hands in the clay. Learn the texture and get used to the feeling.”

“I want to do what you did. How do I make the clay look like what I can see in my head?”

“You have to work awhile before the clay shows you things that aren’t there yet.”

“But I … I want to make Layla.”

He inhales sharply and studies my hands on top of the clay.

He comes over to the stand and looks into my eyes like he’s seeing me for the first time. “Do you have a picture of her in your mind?”

“Sure. Layla’s like the other side of me.”

“Do you love her?”

“What’s that got to do with making her come out of the clay?” I frown at him.

His face changes and he steps back quick, like he’s said something he shouldn’t have or done what he shouldn’t. Like he’s worried that he’s made me mad.

“Working with the clay is … it’s about a kind of love. You have to see things like you love them. Whether it’s Layla or a brick … you have to see inside them to make the clay show you what’s there.”

How do you love a brick? But I can see he’s happy talking like this, even if it is crazy. “How do I start?”

“Here.” He takes my hands in his. I try to pull away but he holds firm, placing my hands gently on the lump of clay before he lets go. “Knead the clay, work your fingers into the clump. Learn how the clay moves under your hand. Feel how much pressure you need, and sense the difference against your fingertips and your knuckles and the heel of your hand. Start to try to make the shape round, like a head. Just work at that and, when you can see her, when you can see Layla’s head in your hands,
then I’ll show you how to add clay and make the nose, lips, ears …”

So I start.

Warm, slow hands in the cool, soft clay, just trying to make it round.

I start.

T
ime stops. I don’t know how to say it another way. I stop thinking of when, only thinking of what. No more whens or ifs.

Layla in the clay.

She’s in there, waiting to come out. I use my fingers to try to find her. Like she’s hiding and I’ve got to find her and bring her out.

I don’t think of where I am when I’m working. Everything else goes away, this room, the neighborhood, the building on the other side of the block, Blade and Petey, I even forget Bill is there, listening, watching.

I don’t know how long we’ve been working but when I look up he’s looking at me. Not the way he was studying
me when he sculpted me, but … I dunno, nice somehow. Nobody ever looked at me like that before.

“What?” I say.

“You were talking to yourself.”

“I was?”

“Yeah. Who’s Blade?”

“He’s … over on my side of the block.”

“He sounds like a very bad man.”

“He’s badder than words can say.” I think about telling Bill about how Blade got his name, about the drugs and the money and the girls, and Petey hunting me for him, but Bill wouldn’t believe me, wouldn’t get it. “I don’t even know words bad enough for Blade.”

“Isn’t there something you could do? Call the police?”

Now I
know
he’s shining me on. “The police? Call the cops to come to my side of the block and do something with a drug dealer?” I laugh. Not a real laugh. Through my nose. “There’s not enough police in the whole world to take the drug dealers out of my neighborhood.… ’Sides, I call them, they’ll think I’m playing them. I’m just some dumb-ass kid on a phone. They won’t come.”

“What if I call them? Will they come then?”

“It won’t matter anyway because Blade’ll know before they get there. His people on the street tell him. The cops get there and there’s nothing to see, nobody to
arrest. Then they go away and Blade is still here. Only then he’s pissed.

“You’re over here warm and safe. We’re stuck with Blade, who knows how to hurt people.… Don’t call, it won’t do any good anyway. There’s only one way to stop Blade.” We look at each other in the silence before I continue, “But even then, another Blade will just come along.… Nothing works out on our side of the block.”

Bill looks down, toys with a piece of clay, stares out the window for a few seconds and then goes back to his work. I look at mine. I see something coming so I just let my fingers push here, pinch there, make a line with my fingernail. They’re short ’cause I’m all the time chewing on them, but they make a line if I use the edge, and I see an eye, then another, a corner of lip.

“God.”

I hear it in back of me and jump. Bill came up on me and I didn’t even hear him.

“What?”

“Is that Layla?” He reaches out like he wants to touch her face but then he pulls his hand back. “It’s … What is she afraid of?” His voice is hoarse.

He sees that. I didn’t know it was even in the clay. But now I see it in the corners of her eyes. I know. I know what she’s afraid of, but I lie—I shrug like I don’t know.

He squints. “Her eyes off to the side like that, looking back almost like she sees …”

We don’t say anything, but we both know that it’s a monster she’s looking at.

Blade.