Painted Cities

THE EDGE

For one summer I lived on the edge of the earth. This was when I was small, like six or seven. I lived with my aunt, across the street from a huge gravel park. Across the park there were houses, and then a water tower, and then who knows what, the edge of the earth — I never went any farther.

There was a river there. I could smell it, especially in the morning, or early in the evening, a strong fishy smell, the way a penny tastes. I stayed indoors during those times. The rest of the time I walked.

The edge of the earth was strange. There were highways up on stilts. There were empty churches. There were foghorns. There was the constant hum of traffic, like a swarm of bees hovering just around the corner. After a while the sound was comforting, and when I finally moved back with my parents, after they got back together, it took weeks before I could actually sleep a night the whole way through.

My aunt used to walk with me. She was young. She was very pretty. When we walked men whistled at her. I shot them dirty looks. They paid me no mind. My aunt didn’t seem to care one way or another.

Our trips happened at night, after dinner, after the river smell had passed, or receded back into the river as I imagined it did.

“Where does that smell come from?” I asked her.

“The fish,” she said. “Didn’t you ever see the fish floating on top?”

“No.”

“We should come out in the day sometime. You’ll see the dead fish, how they float on the top.”

“Do you think the group KISS are really devil worshippers?”

“No, I don’t think they worship the devil. But I think maybe they know some kind of magic.”

“Do you think they ever take off their makeup?”

“No. They do everything with their makeup on. They even sleep with it on. They never take it off.”

My aunt and I had conversations like this as we walked down the broken streets of our neighborhood. We always moved along the same route, starting out toward downtown, the big buildings of the Loop, then turning up and over the railway viaduct, then moving down by the shrimp store, then over the river. We were always on the edge, skirting the lines, the boundaries. I often felt that one step too far to the left would cause the earth to crumble beneath my feet, and off I would tumble into darkness, nothingness, my aunt looking down at me, her hair blowing in the wind, a look on her face like she’d seen things like this happen before.

STREETLIGHT

We stole the ladder from Fat Javy’s house. It was in his gangway. He should’ve had it locked up.

Sergio was more drunk than me. We laughed as we walked down Javy’s gangway. I remember Javy opening his window and saying something. I remember Sergio saying something back. I wish I could remember what it was now. It was funny as hell.

We walked down Twenty-First Place. Sergio was in the front. I was in the back. The streets were empty. It was late. We had school the next morning.

I remember now. I remember Little Joseph opened his screen door. It was warm that night, like close to the end of the school year. Little Joseph, who was eight or nine at the time, opened his screen door and asked us: “What are you guys doing?”

“Shhhh,” Sergio told him. “We’re breaking into Yesenia’s house.” We started laughing again. Little Joseph looked at me and smiled, then he closed his screen door. When Little Joseph was fourteen he was stabbed to death by his girlfriend, a girl who everyone said “loved him too much.” It’s funny how you remember things, a word or two, a scene you carry with you for the rest of your life. What are you guys doing? I remember Little Joseph.

We got to Yesenia’s building. Sergio said he knew where her bedroom was. “Right here,” he said. “It’s this one. I’m positive.”

We placed the ladder up against the wall. She lived on the second floor. The top of the ladder rested just below the window ledge.

“Hold on to it tight,” I said to Sergio.

“All right,” he said.

I began to climb.

It was a long climb, longer than I’d expected. Halfway up I stopped to rest my arms. I looked up the block. Streetlamp poles sliced long, thin shadows across the orange-tinted sidewalk. An L train rumbled over Hoyne Avenue then disappeared behind the Lutheran church. I looked down to Sergio. His face was bright orange with streetlight.

“Hey, bro,” he whispered loudly to me. “Tell her you love her.” He started to laugh.

“Fuck you,” I said down to him.

And then I turned and continued to climb.

BLUE MAGIC

She made me dance. It was her. I never wanted to.

She was drunk. I knew she was when she started to smoke the Kools she bummed off my aunt Stephanie, or my father’s Winstons when Stephanie had run out. She’d hold the cigarette between two fingers and with her remaining fingers hold on to my small hand. In those days I was just barely tall enough to stare at her breasts, but I didn’t. I looked down at our feet, my dirty white socks, her bare, dark toes. She was a natural barefooter. It was in her blood.

“No, no,” she corrected. “Like this, Mm, mm — mm, mm.” She moved to the Chi-Lites, the Delfonics. She swung her hips, stepped in a way that appeared entirely light. I followed her movements. “Listen to the song,” she corrected. “There… there you go… right… that’s it.” At this point I closed my eyes.

I don’t remember much after that, at our parties. The feeling I remember after closing my eyes is something similar to what I felt as a drunk teenager, cruising with my partners, time and distance nonexistent.

For me, our parties always ended up this way. I remember small things, people laughing, cursing. I remember my aunt Chefa cackling, that laugh she used to have. I remember my cousin Bobby fistfighting with my aunt Bernice’s boyfriend, Fabian. I remember bottles of wine, clinks of glasses. I remember the Stylistics, Blue Magic. I remember death being something that happened to people I didn’t even know, ancient, gray people from Mexico or Poland, places I’d never seen, places I could only imagine. And I remember a song called “I Do Love You.” And if I could, I would take my mother in my arms again, and I would dance with her to that song, which went, “I do love you, Ooo-oo-o, yes I do, girl.”