His calculating eyes looked her over in the darkness—seemed to navigate complex algorithms in the three seconds it took him to look her over from head to foot… then his eyes rested on me and he regarded me with the same combination of uneasiness and antagonism I got from most adults. “What he doing wit’ you?” he demanded of her.
She turned and looked at me confusedly—as though she had forgotten that I was there… as though I wasn’t there at all and she was wondering what the hell Binzo was talking about. I stared at her longingly—desperately needing some acknowledgement of my existence… but she seemed to look over my head, toward the abandoned building: “… I was just playing,” she said.
She said, “I”—not “we.” A shiver went through me. I stood there freezing, perhaps seeping into the spirit world I had just fled, with all its desperate, unrealized hopes… and then Tisha was gone. Binzo told her to get into the car, ostensibly so that he could take her home to her worried mother, and I was left on the curb, standing in the deepening darkness.
When I got home, Williams was at his usual place of honor on the stoop, dispensing advice to children who had long learned to ignore him. They were playing some nebulous game involving hitting a ball with a stick and chasing one another—sometimes with the stick. I walked quietly past and up to my room. Technically, the room belonged to my mother and me, but as she was gone, it was mine by default. In the living room, where my aunt was still on the couch, the baby was crying and the TV was playing full blast, as though to counter those cries. Elsewhere in the building, loud music was blaring. In the apartment one story below me, Mr. Johnson’s loud, belligerent voice rang out; his tirade, either on food that should have been prepared by now, or an unclean house—or one of the myriad rants that seemingly marked his deep dissatisfaction with his wife, but which was only a reflection of the emptiness of his life—joined in the chaos of the night. Similarly, Mrs. Johnson’s tirades on a stingy husband whose toe jam was so bad it “melted her nose holes” joined with the loud music of the neighborhood, and the intermittent gunshots that echoed through the ghetto streets… and the obligatory police sirens.
I lay in the big empty bed for hours—even though I wasn’t sleepy. I lay thinking about Tisha and that magical room in the basement. I took out the amulet, wondering if maybe it only worked one time, and had to be recharged by Madame Evangeline after each miracle. I don’t believe I slept much that night. Besides my preoccupations and fantasies, the sounds of the neighborhood, which had at times bewildered me—but which had mostly lain on the periphery of my awareness—had seemed inescapable that night. After a while, the Johnsons’ various rants and counter rants ceased and were replaced by sounds of screaming and rattling furniture. Sometimes those sounds denoted a horrible fight and the couple would emerge from their apartment with bruised lips and darkened eyes; sometimes those sounds denoted sex, and after all the tumult my neighbors’ various demons would be hushed and they would go to sleep. I lay there trying to figure out which it was. However, before I could come to a conclusion, all the sounds from the Johnsons’ apartment ceased. The silence seemed ominous somehow and I found myself scouring the air for any sound from them—something that would assure me that they hadn’t disappeared like Tisha. It had been as though those sounds had been meant for me—as though the Johnsons had known that I was alone and desperate for the inadvertent conversation that their brutality provided.
As I often did during the summer—when the nights were hot and muggy and the fetid air outside my window gave the impression of fresh air and a cool breeze—I went out on the fire escape. The fire escape looked out on the back alley; beyond the alley there was a vacant lot, which was growing wild with weeds, and pockmarked with rusting cars and a treasure trove of human refuse. After the lot, the hazy outlines of my neighborhood opened up like a cheap whore. A block away, a boy was yelling below someone’s window, like a modern-day Romeo trying to catch Juliet’s heart. However, instead of sonnets about the moon and unrequited love, the girl’s mother came to the window and launched into a string of expletives; other neighbors went to their windows to see what the fuss was about; and soon, neighbors began yelling at the mother and one another. More expletives were exchanged; and the modern-day Romeo, seeing that he wasn’t going to get screwed that night, disappeared and left the unromantic adults to their nonsense.
All night, the realities of my existence kept me up. My mind flashed with images of the murdered youths from that morning—but now I saw those scenes without my feeling of imperviousness. I remembered the demon stirring within my aunt, now figuring that maybe I had celebrated too soon and too boisterously, so that evil was building up its forces in order to put me back in my place. Those thoughts, and thoughts I couldn’t even name, filled my mind with a conveyor belt of horrors. After a while, the real joined with the imagined; the imagined joined somehow with things I couldn’t possibly know about—couldn’t possibly even begin to grasp—but which lurked nonetheless in that shadow world between revelation and delusion. It was within this context that my mind returned to the spirits from the crack house—to all those generations of desperate souls who, like me, had been all too aware of the things that were killing them, yet incapable of formulating the means of overcoming them.
… Have you ever noticed that no horror movie has ever been staged in the ghetto? The classic horror movie takes place in a mansion or castle, in places of luxury and ease. Today’s horror movies most commonly take place in the suburbs—where dream houses turn out to be haunted by demons and all the nefarious forces that the bourgeois and well-to-do have to fear. Horror is about losing what one has. It’s about thinking that one has something—and is secure—only to discover that one is powerless against the forces of the world. In communities being unraveled by socioeconomic insecurity and desperation, the horror is anticlimactic—mundane. Also, the horror movie is about triumphing over the forces of darkness to keep what one has. In contrast, the story of the ghetto is about struggling to attain that which the forces of darkness, either through their duplicity or their indifference, claim one has no right to have. A horror movie about the ghetto would therefore be, by its very nature, a revolutionary medium.
When the sun began to brighten the horizon, I gave up my quest for sleep and peace of mind, deciding to get out of bed. I was drenched in sweat and thirsty. The Johnsons were “going at it” again. This time, it was definitely sex. Mrs. Johnson had a habit of screaming out, “You cocksucker!” when reaching orgasm; and her husband, spurred on by these declarations of love, would be driven into a frenzy. “You asshole!” the woman screamed next, above the frightful din of the shaking bed and their slapping flesh. Outside, a neighborhood stray, confused (or aroused) by their screams, began to howl. The call was taken up by all the dogs in the neighborhood—and dogs blocks away. In my bed, I hung on for dear life as the cruel rhythms of their lust seemed to be shaking the foundations of the world. I expected cracks to appear in the wall; I expected everything to come crashing down—especially after Mr. Johnson screamed his own string of expletives and cried out. However, there was soon silence and what passed for a peaceful calm.
I went to get washed up. My aunt and her baby were sleeping in their room. My aunt was snoring in her usual way that always made me wonder if she was being strangled in her sleep. It used to terrify me, but in time, it merely became another signpost of my life—a reminder that I was still alive and that the people I had known yesterday were still there today, living their lives. Besides, of course by now my thoughts were only about Tisha and that magical room in the basement of the crack house. I had to see Madame Evangeline about the amulet, but first I had to see Tisha—to make sure that magical room still existed. I left the apartment before my aunt awoke. I practically ran to the crack house. In the basement, I was relieved to find that the room was still there. The dolls were still arrayed on the plush rug; the pink curtains still danced lightly on a gust of air beyond the shattered windows. However, as Tisha wasn’t there, the magic was gone. I waited around for a couple hours, by which time it was about 10 o’clock. Unfortunately, in my haste to verify the existence of that magical room, I had neglected to eat. Hunger pangs began to gnaw at me (if you’ll forgive the pun). That hunger, combined with the sleeplessness of the night before and my mounting bewilderment with life, left me in a dazed state. The heartbreak of the previous evening, when Tisha had seemed not to see me, returned to me then, and I became suddenly terrified that when she finally did return, I would still be invisible to her. I fled back home—where there was at least food to eat and where my loneliness would be straightforward and non-threatening.
My aunt was again in the living room w
hen I got home. The baby was crying and my aunt sat holding it indifferently on her lap. I looked at them both anxiously. My aunt didn’t seem to notice me, so after a while, I went about my business. Rather, I went to eat something while my yearnings for the fantasy of Tisha built themselves into a kind of madness… I guess that, at this point, some of you are probably bogged down in the question of if my aunt was a good mother or not. As I write this I sense my own judgmental inclinations being triggered. It springs out of me like a reflex. I’ve found myself thinking that most human acts of evil are just an evolutionary reaction to stress—to terror and panic and disillusionment that have reached such a state of refinement that that terrified, panic-stricken, person seems outwardly calm. The frenzied violence which one saw on the streets was only a showy distraction. The worst violence always happens in private—within one’s soul. That’s where dreams die and the human desire to love and be loved festers in the face of disappointment and hopelessness. It is once this evil had entrenched itself that the showy violence of the streets has a fertile breeding ground, and people like my aunt (and those she loves and can’t love) became statistics. I’m not saying that my aunt was a “victim of circumstance” or anything so trite. I’m saying that she was a circumstantial human being, undone quite possibly by her inability to grasp the essential truths of her existence—or, as I’ve said before, the inability of her imagination to see past the horrors of her predicament.
Anyway, after eating, I returned to the room that was mine by default and fell asleep. I dreamed the kind of formless, disturbing dreams that usually plague those incapable of finding rest during the waking hours. I awoke four or five hours later. I awoke abruptly, disturbed by some fleeting image from my dream. I shuddered and sat up in bed, looking around confusedly. The mid-afternoon sun was shining directly into the window and I squinted as I looked over at it. I needed to move, but I felt too tired. At the same time, while I needed to sleep, the residual images of the dream world—whatever they had been—terrified me to the point that I began to think of sleep as a horror to be avoided at all costs. I went to the bathroom again. My yearning for Tisha was still there. I remembered that I had to see Madame Evangeline again. I missed my mother. When she first went away to work, I would be overcome by the certainty that she had returned. That certainty used to always be there when I was about to open the door to come inside the apartment—or in those dreamy moments immediately following sleep, when all seemed possible. I would rush ahead, expecting her to be there, expecting to find her smiling and opening her arms to me, holding back tears as she told me how she had quit her job to be with me. I, in turn, would be rapt in the joy of angels, because her declarations would verify that nothing else mattered but the peace and love that existed in that moment.
When I checked the apartment, I saw that it was empty. My aunt had made one of her rare forays into the outside world—most likely for food and other household essentials. I didn’t want to be alone just then. I wanted someone to talk to and play games with—someone whose presence would be a shield against my budding awareness. In this context, my mind returned to Tisha; and for once, I found myself willing to risk the kind of loneliness that came with rejection, if the prize was another wondrous afternoon with her.
Outside, Mr. Williams mumbled his salutations to me; I grunted and rushed past him to meet the girl who literally seemed to be the woman of my dreams. I ran to the crack house with a desperation I had never felt before, and which I probably haven’t felt since. I willed Tisha to be there. As I ran, I conjured scenes where she turned to greet me—just as she had the day before. I was so mad with longing for her—or at least for what she seemed to represent in my childish imagination—that I half thought I was dreaming when I rushed into the room and saw her sitting on the rug, playing with her dolls. We began playing without greetings and without the banter that marked true friendships. We played the same games as the day before—with even more virtuosic flights of fancy. However, we played with an underlying desperation that neither of us had the will to acknowledge. Playing there, in that strange room where the curtains suffused everything in a pink, fairy tale hue, and the realities of the outside world seemed magically banished, we were free—but free in a way that bred madness and delusion, not empowerment.
Still, even then, delusions can sometimes bring peace of mind—at least in the short term. As Tisha and I played—rather, as Tisha allowed me to share in her fantasy world—I looked at her and felt grateful beyond reason. She wasn’t merely playing, she was summoning ancient magics and I was her apprentice. Now that I think about it, there was always an ancient quality about her, something anachronistic. I had before joined her and Madame Evangeline because of their accents, but now I joined them explicitly because of their communion with forces that seemed to exceed the limitations of physical space and time. Even now, I can’t think about her without my mind going to newly emancipated slaves migrating to the north after the Civil War. Somehow, Tisha carried with her the religion of the slaves, an unshakable faith that God was good and on her side, coupled with the resigned, pragmatic awareness that the only joy and peace she would ever experience would have to be in another world. For us, the basement room became that other world. As she played her games, there was about her, that desperate hopefulness seen among those that had experienced a trauma so deep and all-encompassing that they, themselves, could barely come close to conceptualizing what had happened. The only thing they seemed to have was the hope that something better would eventually come their way. Also, now that I think about it, I was probably drawn to her precisely because something about her terrified me. Something about her kept eating away at me. Yet, perhaps even then, it ate away at me in a manner that left me thinking that I was on the verge of unlocking a portal to heaven and eternal happiness.
… I’m not saying that I realized all this back then, of course. Whatever truths I was able to glean that afternoon were all subverted by the realization that I didn’t want the afternoon to end. The games we played were wondrous, precisely because they were mysterious to me—and had been conjured by Tisha’s imagination. They gave me a window into her soul and her mysteries. Thus, when she brought out a huge teddy bear, I thought it was only another game. However, it was then that she asked me, “Have you ever been angry with anyone?” That entire afternoon, that was probably the first time she had addressed me directly—addressed me as the boy playing with her, not as a character in whatever fantasy she was conjuring. I felt enlivened—vindicated somehow. However, her question remained in the air. I looked from her to the huge teddy bear, then back to her again.
“I guess,” I said at last.
She smiled, going on, “You can do anything to dolls; dolls can be anything or anyone you want… even people you’re angry with.”
I nodded when she paused.
“Who are you angry with?” she encouraged me.
I didn’t really have any particular person in mind, but as she looked at me imploringly, I said, “My mother.”
She took my hand then—I remember that her hand was warm and soft—and made me stand up before the teddy bear. I complied shyly. “Hit it,” she told me, gesturing to the teddy bear. I looked at her stupefied. “Hit it if you’re angry with your mother.” I hit it timidly. “Hit it harder! Is that all you have?” she taunted me. I balled my little fists and hit the teddy bear in the buttons that passed for its eyes. “Hit it!” she screamed again, and a strange rage expanded within me—a self-destructive kind of rage that made me lash out at the teddy bear with a vicious right hook. In the wake of the strange outburst, I stood there panting and terrified… and feeling guilty somehow, because I loved my mother and felt that she would know what I had done. Somehow, she would know, and would never come back to me. There was a tearful expression on my face now and Tisha, thinking that my outburst had been cathartic, laughed and hugged me. She pulled me into her budding breasts; she held me with her maturing body, with its promise of womanhood and adult dreams… but my terror and guilt remained.
She left soon thereafter. Binzo bellowed her name from outside—more likely than not from his car window—and she sprang up from our reconstituted game and dashed out of the door, again without acknowledging me. I looked at the teddy bear guiltily, then, hoping to get a final look at Tisha, I went to the window and, standing on a chair, was able to see her running up to Binzo’s car. Still, despite her seeming haste, she slowed down about five paces from the car and walked the last remaining steps cautiously—as though anxious of stepping on a land mine. Binzo was actually outside the car, sitting on the hood with one of his expensive new sneakers resting on the bumper and the other one resting on the curb. These were the days of thick gold chains, jumpsuits and Kangol hats, and Binzo was resplendent as he sat there contemplating Tisha. I suppose that Binzo was in his late 20s. His face was scarred, and gold teeth replaced those that had been knocked out—
“Yo’ mama told me to take care of you,” he announced equivocally as she strolled up and stood before him. He sat watching her undecidedly as she stood before him. There was an uncomfortable, lingering silence. I guess he had expected her to say something—to thank him for following her mother’s dictates perhaps—but she remained silent. I’ve come to realize that men like Binzo, who are used to having their way—especially when it came to poor, desperate young women—think it beneath them to ask for what they want. There is a certain patience about then, born either of calculating wisdom or cowardice. They see the desperation of others and know that eventually those others will come begging for their help. However, in Tisha’s case, even though she exuded a certain kind of desperation, there was something unaccountable about it. It wasn’t desperation of the type he had seen and known, which was soothed by sugary words, new outfits and the honor of riding shotgun in an expensive car. Her desperation, I’m convinced, wasn’t material—but spiritual. The simple calculations of the ghetto defied it. Also, whereas Binzo had learned to be patient with those he wished to corrupt, when he looked at Tisha, there was an expression of frustration—and impotence—in his eyes. Tisha’s mannerisms were outwardly submissive, yet he still wasn’t able to get what he wanted. She did what he ordered, but he didn’t want to have to order her. He wanted her to come to him—even though he probably didn’t care whether her coming was because of love or suicidal desperation. Both were only pretexts that had as their ultimate design sexual intercourse and his total mastery of her.
After about thirty seconds of the strange silence between Tisha and Binzo, he ordered her to get into the car. She complied and they drove off soon thereafter. Having no reason to remain in the darkening room, I left as well.
Another long, steamy night seemed in store for us. I walked home in that languid way seen
among those who had nowhere to go and nothing to do. Guilty thoughts about my mother lingered in my head. I found myself thinking that the next time I saw Tisha I would tell her that I had lied. Tisha was again the good fairy to me, and in telling her the truth, I would be able to undo whatever enchantment my hateful words and actions had cast.
On the block, some ten-year-olds were taunting Williams, while he went on a shrill tirade about how in his day a child would never talk to an adult the way they did. His tirade encompassed the children’s horrible parents and the futures of jail, pain and pointless deaths. Williams was right, of course: none of those 10-year-olds made it to 25. Two got AIDS; three were gunned down; one was serving a life sentence when he was stabbed in the prison shower. That afternoon, I stood on the sidewalk watching them objectively. Maybe the spectacle of all the name-calling and Williams’s flustered attempts to defend himself (and the honor of old people everywhere) intrigued me for a moment. However, in the end, the realization that none of them had anything to say to me made me walk past them and go inside.
In the apartment, I found my aunt in one of her strange moods where she was trying too hard to be happy—and to be nice to me. For a moment, I thought that the amulet was finally working and that the demon had been banished from the house, but the obvious unnaturalness of my aunt’s behavior made me increasingly uneasy. Her boyfriend had called and said that he wanted to work things out. Like I said, she was trying to be happy. There was strain on her face; her smiles took effort and were too short-lived to be genuine. She kept asking me what I thought and I began to realize that it wasn’t a confidante she wanted, but a co-conspirator, someone to help her carry on the charade of being happy. Her strange joy terrified me—it was a terrible burden that she was trying to hoist on my shoulders—and all I wanted to do was get away.