Lit Riffs (23 page)

A few weeks after graduation I saw Inelda walking alone by the Harlem Meer in the north end of Central Park. The trees were beautiful and the pond was clean. We wound up talking about high school and all that junk, crews, graffiti, trains, styles, Lucky G, Yvette. When I mentioned Indio, her faced saddened. She said he was crazy, and I agreed with her. I asked her if Indio talks to her and she said no. After that walk in the park Inelda and me started seeing each other. At first it was just fuck, fuck, fuck, and later we had a kid. This was around the time when Mexicans were taking over Spanish Harlem. The green, red, white, and eagle of their flag fluttered all over East Harlem. Indio was gone by then. No one knows where he went, his mother said he was in the army, but we knew that was a lie because the dog was gone, too. The last time I saw him was at the library. Me and Inelda were checking out books about babies, and Indio was returning a lot of books. He was scrawny, like he didn’t eat much. We went over to talk to him and all he said was “Oh, hi. I don’t understand these books but they fill me up.” We said, yeah, nice seeing Indio, whatever, and went back to our lives.

When the eighties started to die, the city bought new trains with an alloy surface that not even flypaper would stick to. Many writers started to scratch their tags on train windows. I understood their need to tag, but I gave it up. Where were the colors, the smell of turpentine, the sound of the aerosol can? Many crews split up. Some took up Web design, graphics, some even hip-hop. I started working at the factory where my father is the foreman. Without knowing it, I’ve become Fred Flintstone. Now I work all day waiting for the five-o’clock whistle, and then it’s yababadabadoo! The factory is hard, backbreaking shit, mixing paint and hauling steel drums. I use to look down on my father. I used to think that if you’re not sitting behind a desk and don’t leave El Barrio, you’re a failure. I used to think that way. But not anymore. I work hard and my union has good benefits, it even paid for the birth of my daughter. And I get free paint, though for what, I don’t know. At times Inelda makes fun of me: “Now you have all the spray cans in the world, Hector, and no one writes on the trains anymore.”

Subway graffiti had a short but glorious history. I still say the city blew it. Subway art could have been a tourist attraction. If done right, people would have come from all over the world to see our trains. Another artistic ghetto invention America could’ve exported like rap music. More beauty from the gutters of NYC. Now, when I wake up in the morning to go to work and see trains rushing by me with that sterile steel shell that attracts more grime than anything, I miss the pictures, the colors, the words. And I remember Indio. Whatever happened to that graffiti monk? Man, there was a time when me and Indio would wait for hours in the cold subway stations watching trains rush by, checking out the competition or just hoping to catch a glimpse of a piece that Indio had done. Sometimes we’d never see it, the city had washed it before the train pulled out of the yard. But we knew it had existed and we had those stupid Polaroids. I never understood why Indio turned away from graffiti; whatever it was that he saw in those bubbles, God, death, or whatever, it must have been something big. Because there was nothing that brought me more pleasure than to know that strangers were reading my words, seeing my pieces whether they liked it or not. Back in those days, fame was the name of the game. “I saw your tag in Far Rockaway, nice.” And I felt as if I had traveled all the five boroughs. I was getting around, I was somebody.

author inspiration

Watching MTV’s late-night show
Old School Hip-Hop
, I came upon Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s video for their song “The Message.”

It wasn’t so much the words that caught my attention but rather the images of a filthy and broken New York City. For some reason, the next day I found myself waiting for the train on 149th Street and Grand Concourse. I looked for the “writers’ bench,” where graffiti writers would gather in the eighties. As a teen, I had admired so many, and to my surprise the bench was still there. I decided to write a short story about that period. It was really my late-seventies, early-eighties New York City I longed for. In today’s age of gentrification, that period in NYC history is lost. But there was a time when we took all that neglect, crime, and poverty and turned it into art. “Graffiti Monk” is my attempt to capture some of that lost history.

darin strauss

T
ragic example of me being a stupid mother came when Morrison, he’s my oldest, packed an onion ring up his nose while his brother peed the carpet on purpose. Little Dylan does that: he pees. I’ll open the door, burned up after eight hours helping morons at the library, and there’s my bony, pale guy standing pants down with his mini-sized Oscar Mayer between his pinkies. Like he’s been waiting to show me for hours. The jukebox in my head starts in on the Beatles’ “She’s Leaving Home,” but you actually think I’d split? A parent may get notions that are no more than daydreams for herself; she’s better than those.

Now, I don’t scream; I shake my head and go, “Put your little noodle mvay, Dylan.” Kid’s only seven, you think he’d feel embarrassed. But my shirtless boy, long black hair bopping across his shoulders, does a five-second hula shake. His measly dick flaps like one of those gummi worms my ex-husband, Dave the Rave, used to let our boys eat for dinner. (Dave the Rave left us for Sheri-with-an-z, and if Dylan and Morrison had been this hellacious before that bastard split, no one’s convinced me of it.)

“Put your goddamn penis away”—I’m trying for calmtoned, even in my rush of anger. Dylan’s eyebrows go flat above his squinting eyes that steal my heart every time; his cheeks look delicate like white tissue paper. When he runs crying to the kitchen—his butt too scrawny to have much bounce—he trips on the cloudy-blue corduroys tangled at his shins.

Watching him tumble, I think (or I want myself to think),
Kid, go on and cry yourself hoarse
. But why isn’t he wearing his underwear? Motherhood’s got loads more carpet-pissing and vanished underwear than advertised.

Then, just like that, Dylan’s up, off to hide within the majesty of my twelve-hundred-square-foot “amenity ranch home.” I turn to Morrison, the older one. He’s been watching Emeril Lagasse on the idiot box. (At thirteen, my Morrison’s the man of the ranch.)

“Hey, there, li’l’
gourmet
” I say, imitating my own mother’s idea of a talking-to, like I’m pulling taffy inside the words. “Isn’t your job in this life not letting your kid brother piss where he shouldn’t?” That’s angry-sounding, but what I feel is I’m just about used up. “Isn’t it—your one job?”

“Wait, Nanette,” Morrison says; he’s sunk into his father’s green TV chair, which is indented and frayed black around the buttons. “Emeril’s about to do it.”

And right on cue, Emeril Lagasse yells, “Bam!” and my son’s face bursts like one of those jiffy popcorn containers. I really can’t help my soft spot for the zip of that boy’s smile.

“Can you get that onion ring out of your nose?” I say, but not before something pulls at my attention like a magnet: Dylan’s whiz has made a perfect tan frown on my off-white pile rug. Since The Rave left, I’m the oldest single mother in Pritchardville, South Carolina, by eight years.

“Mo, what did I tell you kids about stopping for junky food on the way home?” I say. In the mirror my eye shadow’s runny. I haven’t taken off my coat yet. “Besides,” I say, my sigh showing too much of the unfun woman The Rave says I am, “it’s
Mom
to you.”

The thing is, I’m
not
that unfun woman, not when I don’t have to be.

“Men,” I’m saying now, “are allowed to call me Nanette only when they reach eighteen and take me to see The Black Crowes.”

“Nanette,” he says, “I didn’t get it on the way home—the onion ring, I mean.” He’s all nasally, as the food’s still in his nose. “This is from lunch.”

“
Take it out!
”

Later, I scrubbed the carpet until I woke the old knee cramps; after that I gave the little villains my “punishment dinner,” which is bread and bologna. (No matter how angry she gets, a mother has to provide.) I cleaned a half hour more before putting them to bed. And cursed the ex. But not before I logged on. I’d learned how at the library—I like books okay, but it’s only a job my cousin Francis got me. I hate having to talk politely, proper, and all quiet, pretending I give a tit about Tom Clancy or Hemingway; the one perk is it gives free internet at home. Nothing beats that eBay auction site. I once got a salesman’s sample “Hearth-Style” stove I didn’t need—thirty bucks, give or take.

On this night, eBay had 1½ Ct. Genuine Ruby Earrings in gold-plated silver for sale, pretty nice, and a Black Crowes Signed Concert Tee (I’m a fan. Though it stings to call anyone younger than me a real rock star).

I was surfing through it all when I got this idea. I love my kids and would be lost without them, etc., but wouldn’t it be quote unquote
funny
if I put them up for auction online?

Right away, emails. [email protected]: “Can I add my 4 snot-nosed guttersnipes to auction with your 2?” [email protected]: “Hoping you’ll take one obese, ‘prime-of-life’ husband for barter. I’ll throw in one pair skid-marked tighty-whitees and some Mitchum X-tra strength deodorant.” Best thing about it, I went to bed not really in a mood anymore.

Next day, from eBay: “To whom it may … You are hereby prohibited from auctioning … privileges invalidated.” No big deal. If they can’t dig a joke, I can join another auction site. Easy peasy.

Couple weeks later, I was cooking with Morrison—just store-bought sauce and pasta, he stirred the tomato paste while I did the noodles. Dylan was napping upstairs. The mail was an unopened pile on the table.

Out of left field, Mo asks, “If we get a dog”—his arm disappearing into the sauce pot—“would I have to still babysit?” That thirteen-year-old troublemaker smiles the way that only a kid who hasn’t seen the real world can. “Billy Doric said Irish setters are like smart enough to do it for you.”

This is probably because my husband was such a cock that I had to turn to something that wasn’t him, but when I first became a mom, the thrill I felt for Morrison was under my skin and stayed that way—until Dylan was born. It was like a poison oak rash for six years.

And now I’m sighing at Morrison: “Who said anything about a goddamn dog?” Because the thought of a puppy heartburns me—who does Mo think would end up walking the fucking thing?

“That’s shitting bullcrap, Nanette.”

He’s picked up language from school; he’ll curse even when it doesn’t make sense to. More than the words themselves, I hate that he doesn’t use them right.

Anyway, he’s chewing his lips, creasing his forehead—his best hard-guy face. But thanks to that squeaky clean skin of his, I always imagine Mo a sheep on a cultivator feedlot, blinking, a cream puff with no defense from the ax.

I slap his hand with all I can muster—
whap!
“What’d I tell you about language in this house?”

“
Ow
, Mom.”

Like the point of a boat, his nose splits the steam that rides around his head. He’s got Dave the Rave’s baby blues, bluer now that they’re getting all teary. “Jesus H. Crap, Nanette,” he mutters.

I can’t even remember my life without him; it’s always a shock seeing he’s not in any of my picture albums from, say, high school. Meanwhile, here I am, imitating his whine: “Ow, a woman hit my hand.”

He’s pouting about his wrist, which is blotched red where I slapped it.

“Mom?” he says, his voice tiny and tight.

“Dylan’11 probably go against the idea of a puppy,” I say, nice as I’m able now. I hadn’t planned on hitting him so hard. “You know how your brother can be a stubborn little shit.” We laugh on that.

(The truth of the thing is, motherhood came down-to-earth when little Dylan got born. Even Morrison started to get on my nerves. Overnight he turned from this cute superkid to a clumsy thing I had to protect the baby from. And I never really got that poison oak feeling with my youngest.)

Now little Dylan himself walks in, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, his hair a wild black heave—a seven-year-old bundle of pee wearing nothing but a Black Crowes T-shirt that’s not long enough to hide his goods. I should yell about this, but me and Morrison just laugh some more. The point is, I forget to look at the mail and don’t notice the letter from the Department of Social Services.

Next day I went to work, it was hell as always. Every time she saw me, Mrs. Crailt, chief librarian, puckered her face as if she’d heard an insult. Too tall even in flats, that woman showed more chins than I should mention here. “You sure you’ve cataloged everything, and stacked the
what’s lefts
, Nanette?”

Why are women so hard on other women? Her hair was the stringy that pasta in a can often is.

After work I open my front door expecting the usual zoo, but here’s Morrison and Dylan, both close to tears in front of the TV, their heads down. Mo’s clenching his free fist while some gangly man in a cardigan holds them by their hands.

“Who the hell are you?”—I’m trying to sound like more than the five foot three I am. My hands are trembling. “Get
the fuck
out of my house.”

“You don’t need to be alarmed, please. I’m looking for Mrs. McQuaid—their mother?” Cardigan has a breathy good-fairy voice and a wide smile. “Ma’am, is Mrs. McQuaid your daughter?” The guy’s got a tight grip on my boys; his fingernails are like Sno-Kones: red, followed by a white that’s bloodless.

“
I’m
the mother, thank you,” I say.

“Jim Plates,” the guy singsongs. “Department of Social Services.”

He doesn’t let go of my boys.

I’d been thirty-seven and two years married when The Rave and I did “blotter” acid in 1986. I sat alone in the kitchen and it hit. I got so cut off, Bono from U2 appeared. Bono wrapped me tight in freakishly huge hands, and he swept me from my housework, from my thinking about myself. He spun me, his massive thumbs flicking my apron off, and before I knew it Bono had me close, his chest solid against the mess of who I was. Bono held me in a way that
he
never could—
he
was miles from me, in the green TV chair, waiting on a beer—and I was snug in Irish arms in the kitchen. Together we sang the “name” songs: “In the Name of Love” and “Where the Streets Have No Name.”

Later, I squinted under emergency room lights at a beaver-toothed med student. If he’d asked me, Do you think you’d end up a good mother one day?—or a mother at all?—I would’ve said, Shut up and play yer guitar some more. But I cleaned up. Had the boys. And got rid of Dave the Rave (though not by choice).

After all that, here I found myself in 2004 with gray-eyed Jim Plates, Department of Social Services, a stranger across from me at my unset dinner table. His breath was a beesting in my nostrils. I’d sent the kids outside.

This Plates guy says to me, “Mrs. McQuaid.” He grins while he talks, which is a feat. ‘Tour son, uh, Dylan, tells me—”

“Mr. Plates, how’d you get into my house?” The breath smell’s not as bad if I breathe in through my mouth. I can take control of the situation. “Not to be rude, but—”

“—Dylan told me that you’d fed them ‘Orange Crush and peanut butter and jelly’ for dinner one night this week.” He has a voice that rises at the end of every sentence—apologetic-sounding even when you’re the one on the ropes.

“Mr. Plates, that’s not unusual for a mom.” I’m going with my cheerful voice. “Usually, I just get whatever seems best to me when I’m at the store. It ain’t a stretch to say the boys love that meal.” I don’t want to reach for a cig in front of Plates, but I need one. “
Isn’t
a stretch.”

Now the guy, looking up from his file, peers at the chest I haven’t got much of. And he keeps peering. His eyes are cement.

“I’m not like the type to auction my kids, really, if that’s what this is about,” I say brilliantly. My ceiling seems really low to me. “I mean, who is—right? Ha ha ha.” I bend toward him a little, now that we’re such pals. “So is
that
what this is about?”

He stoops to write again. The part in his hair makes a scalp trail, white and straight as a string. “Tes,” he says.

I check my watch: 6:15. I cough—even that doesn’t make him look up at me. My own house, now municipal-feeling as a DMV. Even the air seems what Mrs. Crailt calls “poor-ventilated.” And what are the kids up to outside that it’s so quiet?

Plates raises his head all of a sudden, as if I’m the one who’s disturbed him. “Don’t worry, Mrs. McQuaid.” He works his easy-on-the-ear half-whisper. “I’ll never let them take”—checking his notes—“Dylan and Morrison from you.”

That does the opposite of soothe me. I hadn’t even considered that possibility. I manage to use my librarian voice: “May I ask you to leave?” More than anything in my life I want to be happy, I think. Could be that’s the difference between me and the really good mothers of the world.

“Uh, sure, you can ask me to leave,” Plates says, squinting. “No probleme.” He’s extrabreathy now, speaking almost to himself, his face aimed at his notepad. “We’re just talking. It was my understanding that we were just talking, Mrs. McQuaid.”