Graffiti Palace Page 12

  * * *

  Monk lingers, watching as she marches with her shopping bag toward the immolated heart of the city. Now another kind of war rages in the streets, and she’s returned. Her figure, a wisp of red and white, disappears around the corner. He turns and walks down the sidewalk. To this spiritless world, to her tormentors, she would always be Rose.

  11

  “Sugar, I know you’re worried. He’ll be fine, honey.”

  Karmann nods and takes a deep drag from her cigarette. She and Dalynne are sitting at the kitchen table, smoking, drinking wine from paper cups. Through the open hatchway, music and voices rise and fall from the adjoining container. “I know,” she answers softly, unconvincingly.

  “Monk knows that damn city better than anyone. Better than the police. He’ll make it back.” Dalynne pats Karmann’s hand.

  “Maybe I should go out there, try to find him.”

  “Are you crazy, girl? In your condition? They’re burnin’ the city down!”

  Karmann frowns and taps her Kent into the ashtray heaped with lipsticked butts and ashes. Flames, smoke, blackness: she can’t think about it anymore, it’s worse than death, this limbo, as if hell had somehow impinged on them and the city, engulfing them all.

  “Look, I didn’t mean it like that.” Dalynne sips her wine. “It’s dangerous, but Monk’ll be all right, you’ll see, honey. He knows how to stay out of trouble. He’s smart, clever, can read all the signs, right?”

  Karmann nods.

  “Just stay put. Wait a little longer. You can’t go out there, it’s too crazy.” Dalynne lights another cigarette, decides to change the subject. “I love your hair, it’s so glorious. I hate this damn Ultra Sheen.” She flicks a thick shoulder-length strand.

  Karmann smiles; she can see Dalynne’s roots, tinged with sienna from the lye straightening parlor.

  Outside, a bottle smashes and loud laughter echoes off the iron walls.

  Dalynne gazes at her friend for a moment, the empty, dark eyes, Karmann’s face lined with exhaustion and worry. “Besides, you gotta make sure these fools don’t burn down your house … or sink it or whatever.”

  “Yeah.” Karmann grins for the first time tonight. “I just feel so … so damn helpless.”

  “Now, we might be a lot of things, but helpless ain’t one of ’em. Listen to those fools out there, they just boys, not a man around. You lucky you have Monk, you got his back.” She sips her wine and nods. “He’s like, I don’t know, something different, something fine. You’re protectin’ him, though you don’t think so.” A little drunk, she points her cigarette at Karmann. “And I know he’s watchin’ over you and the baby, in his way, gettin’ closer to home.”

  “Hey, girls.” It’s Cooky weaving through the hatchway like a black scarecrow with an Afro. “Hey, wine, wine’s fine.” He’s swaying above the table, his junkie face gaunt, chalk-gray, holding up an empty plastic cup.

  “You gonna make yourself sick, Cooky,” Karmann pouring red wine into his cup.

  “I’m real good, real good.” Cooky cheers, gulps wine, and staggers away through the portal.

  “A ship of fools.” Karmann exhales smoke.

  “Like I said, girl, not a man out there, ’cept Maurice.”

  “He ain’t no good either.” Karmann sips wine. “With his Islam mumbo jumbo, all he wants is slave women.”

  “Yeah. Them Muslim men get to have harems, don’t they?”

  “He’s tryin’ to recruit me as one of his concubines.”

  “Conk you what?” They laugh and sip wine. “Is that on their damn leaflets they passin’ out in the ghetto?” Dalynne exhales her smoke. “I’m surprised every nigger in town ain’t linin’ up at the temple.”

  The girls laugh loudly and squeeze hands across the tabletop; it feels liberating to laugh, an animal joy that short-circuits too much thought, too much worry and fear.

  “Honey, you blessed you found Monk, don’t you worry about him. Now, Marcus, he’d sign up for that harem in a minute. No damn good. You lucky, girl. Only two things Marcus likes.” She refills her wine cup. “The sound of his own voice when he’s speechifyin’ about all us still slaves, you’d think Lincoln got shot yesterday … with his long gray beard like a black Moses.”

  Karmann inhales her Kent. “I’ve seen that beard up close. There was, let me see,” she’s buzzed, counting off on her polished fingernails, “crumbs … cheese dip … drops of chicken gravy—”

  They’re laughing, slapping the tabletop. The wine bottle is almost empty.

  “And the other thing that man loves to do is look ’n’ try to touch every woman he can find.” Dalynne frowns and empties the bottle into her cup.

  “Let’s go see what these fools are up to,” Karmann says, smudging the Kent into the overflowing ashtray.

  * * *

  In a Triton container, knots of people dance around a plastic radio blaring pop songs, or stand around drinking beer and wine. A girl in a beret and a frowning man with a black T-shirt and sweatpants nod to Karmann as she walks past; she doesn’t know who they are. Two couples are making out on the car seat in the corner; others crowd around the window torched through the iron walls, gazing at something below. Slim-Bone and three men are sitting on crates, playing poker, smoking, a bottle of Monk’s whiskey in the center of face-up cards on the floor.

  Karmann and Dalynne climb metal steps and clamber into a Matson container room: blue and yellow lightbulbs on strings cast the room in strange velvet shadows. Two couples slouch on pillows on the floor, drinking wine and talking. A few young men are hovering around a table, picking at cold fried chicken and potato chips. Karmann has to step over puddles of wine and shards of broken beer bottles. Near the opposite hatchway, a glint of golden light in the indigo shadows catches her eye: it’s Felonius, grinning, his gold tooth sparkling. He’s on the wall phone again, slouched down on the floor, the phone cradled in his sweaty neck as he sips from a bottle of Monk’s brandy. Lamar’s sitting next to him, nodding his black sunglasses, mumbling to himself.

  “Motherfucker’s always on my phone.” Karmann threads her way over to Felonius. She glares down at him. “Felonius, you gotta get off the phone.”

  “In a minute, baby.” He sips from the bottle and taps the receiver. “You should meet this girl—no, not you, baby,” he mutters into the phone. “Says her name’s Jazmin, like Jazz, you know?”

  “Jazz,” Lamar grinning, stoned, mumbling incoherently.

  Karmann grits her teeth, her heart racing; the line has to stay open, what if Monk tries to call? She grabs the receiver from under Felonius’s chin and slams it back into the wall cradle.

  “Fuckin’ bitch, why y’all gotta get nasty like that?” Felonius’s bloodshot eyes glare up at the women.

  “If you don’t like it, why don’t you leave?” Karmann says.

  “You girls should be sweet to a brother,” Felonius says. “Use honey, not vinegar … I could give you somethin’ sweet—”

  “Sweet and short,” Dalynne says.

  Lamar grins up at Karmann. “Shame,” mumbling something she can’t understand, “sweet piece of ass … Monk done knocked you up. Nigger ain’t comin’ back.”

  “Fuck you! Get out!” Karmann shouts. Now, for the first time, Karmann feels this surge in her belly, the faint but unmistakable kicks of the baby inside her. “Oh my god,” she whispers, rubbing her stomach.

  “What is it? Come on, honey,” Dalynne steering her away. “You don’t need this shit.” Turning as they walk away: “Fuck both you motherfuckin’ losers.”

  Another hatchway leads into the double-wide Sea-Land container. A half-dozen revelers are gathered around the Zenith TV towering above them on the crab trap, its baling wires for antennas snaking up the riveted walls. On the screen, black-and-white images materialize, then fade away, coalescing between white storms of static, a newscaster’s voice fading in and out. Karmann and Dalynne watch the screen: a dark avenue, the blinking lights of police cars behind a white re
porter speaking into a microphone. The reporter, the news camera seem to tower over them like some hellish sky god. “This is Mr. Gonzalo Gomez with MAPA—the Mexican American Political Association. Now, you’re saying, Mr. Gomez, that Mexican Americans are angry at the Negroes?”

  Gomez’s face is covered with a bandanna, only his eyes visible as he stares into the camera. “That’s right … Negroes are getting the jobs … making gains … we’re tired of it.”

  “Jobs?” Someone next to Karmann. “What’s that motherfucker talkin’ about?”

  “We don’t get on the white man’s news,” Gomez says. “Mexican Americans are more passive than Negroes … we would never riot in East L.A.”

  “Shit, why that beaner wearin’ a mask?” another voice nearby.

  “He prob’ly not even Mexican.”

  “You know what I think? I think he’s white … maybe works for Channel Five news.”

  “Yeah, or a cop … anything to keep us at each other’s throats, black against brown.”

  “Fuck ’em, burn it all fuckin’ down.”

  The voices around her fade, her ears are ringing, waves of nausea grip her as the room seems to sway, then Dalynne’s holding her by the waist. “Let’s get out of here. He’s okay, he’s okay,” Dalynne steering her toward iron steps, Karmann’s palm pressed against her belly.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Thanks.” Karmann looks around, feels better now; they’re in the Hanjin cargo room, with its lime-painted walls. Here, someone’s blaring one of Monk’s bop records on the hi-fi turntable atop its rusted-crab-traps countertop. “Dalynne, when Felonius was on the phone. I felt for the first time the baby! The baby kicking inside me.”

  “Oh, honey, that’s wonderful! And you’re just what, fifteen weeks?” Karmann nods. “Fifteen and already kickin’ up a storm! That means a boy for sure.”

  “It was when I screamed at Felonius … like the boy was trying to kick him.”

  “Kick him out!” Dalynne laughs. “That’s right! Let’s celebrate! We need more wine.” She guides her past milling couples and drunken men, all strangers. Who are they all? How did so many people come? They find a table strewn with empty beer and wine bottles. “Shit, they gone and drank every fuckin’ thing.”

  A black girl appears, wearing a pink halter top and jeans: her jet-black Afro seems to mushroom out from a pink headband. A hand, thumb and four fingers wearing silver and gold rings, extends a smoldering joint to Karmann.

  “No thanks.”

  Dalynne takes the joint and sucks in a voluminous hit, passing it back to the girl, who wanders off. “You got any more wine hidden away, honey?” she gasps, exhaling cloying, pungent smoke toward the peeling iron ceiling.

  “Dalynne! I been lookin’ for you!” Marcus appears out of the green lightbulbs and haze, like some nightmare of a ghetto troll. Another stranger stands beside him, a middle-aged black man with short hair and round wire-rim glasses, smoking a menthol cigarette. “I been lookin’ all over for you, where you been?”

  “Just hangin’ out with Karmann.”

  “This is Etaoin Shrdlu. Just met him at the party. He’s a real gone motherfucker. Works at the DWP. This is my girlfriend, Dalynne.” He’s waving a beer bottle in his hand.

  Dalynne, having rolled her eyes at the word girlfriend, smiles and extends her hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  “This is Karmann, our beautiful hostess.” Marcus grins hungrily at Karmann, letting his eyes slowly gaze down and take in Karmann’s breasts under her blouse, her tight jeans.

  “Pleased to meet you.” They shake hands; she wants to get away from Marcus, from everyone, these strangers, this rent party that the riot’s turned into a siege: how can she demand anyone leave when the city’s on fire? What to do? Go to the bedroom and sleep. Get drunker. Guard the telephone and hope he’ll call. Keep patrolling their home, try to keep these men from descending into god knows what depths of mayhem and depravity.

  “Nice to meet you too,” Shrdlu says in a nasal voice, sucking in his menthol cigarette.

  “Show ’em, show ’em,” Marcus says, slightly slurring his words, sipping his beer.

  “Are you sure? They are disturbing.”

  “Yes. They should see!” Karmann notices a new glob, looks like guacamole, clinging in Marcus’s woolly beard.

  Shrdlu pulls a stack of cards from his pants pocket. “I collect certain antique postcards.” Eyes gleaming under his glasses, he moves between the girls, slowly shuffling the cards so they can see. Karmann, in this cloud of menthol cigarette haze, gazes down at each postcard.

  “Oh my god!” Dalynne whispers.

  Karmann looks down, her lips grimacing in horror at the black-and-white or faded sepia photographs and tintype engravings and daguerreotypes, each image engraved or etched with a postcard greeting or legend: a black man in a suit and bow tie hanging from a tree: Greetings from Biloxi, Miss, 1912 … a little boy gazing up at an oak tree, a naked black man suspended from its branch: Hangman’s Tree, Helena, Montana … a cinder corpse on a dirt road, carbonized hands still tied with singed coils of rope: Burning of the Negro G. Jones, Marietta, Georgia, 1930 … a naked black woman hung from an iron bridge: The End of Negro Mary Thorn, Clanton, Alabama, 1926 … a black man, shirtless, hanging on a gallows in a town square; a crowd of men, women, and children wave to the camera: Scenic Greenville, Texas, 1933 …

  “Why do you— I don’t want to see,” Karmann turning away.

  “That’s just it. No one wants to see!” Marcus waves his beer bottle. “It’s like I been tellin’ you. We’re still slaves to them. That’s how they see us! Nineteen thirty-three, that’s yesterday! Nothin’s changed. Instead of rope, they use M16s and police shotguns! That’s why we got to burn it all away, burn it all down.”

  “Marcus, you and your damn crazy theories.” Dalynne shakes her head.

  “Crazy?” Marcus’s bloodshot eyes widen. “You know what I think, Mr. Shrdlu? I think some brothers should go out there, take pictures of beatin’ some white ass, then we can mail our own, watcha call it, commemoration postcards … Greetings from Watts, Motherfuckers…”

  Etaoin Shrdlu nods, sucking his menthol cigarette. “In the water department, where I work, my cracker coworkers secretly trade ’em with all the city departments, like fucking kids with baseball cards.”

  Dalynne frowns. “If you paid half the attention to me as you do goin’ on and on about slavery—”

  “Why you so selfish? Why don’t you listen to what I—”

  Karmann’s gone, across the hazy green shadows, their voices fading away. She wants to smoke, take an aspirin for her pounding head, lie in the darkness of her bedroom, wait in the cool darkness, wait for him.

  No one seems to see Karmann as she passes through each iron chamber like a ghost: perhaps she’s invisible because she doesn’t want to see them … she feels as if she’s in a trance, floating back through each chamber and container, each stairway that descends or ascends, each torched window gouged through the iron walls, windows that reveal nothing, only the darkness beyond.

  Like a sleepwalker, the only thing Karmann sees is that tiny gold light penetrating her nightmare, like a portent of danger that dimly breaks through to register on the dreaming brain: it’s Felonius’s gold tooth again. She walks under the cones of blue and yellow bulbs in the Matson container, light shrouded in cigarette and pot smoke. Felonius is on the phone again, slouched on the floor, brandy bottle empty between his legs.

  She heads upstairs on the steel rebar ladder Monk has welded between containers, and steps through another hatchway. The WestCon container reeks of sweat and beer. Men and women, some shirtless and topless, sway and dance drunkenly under amber strobe lights; they’ve set up two big radios in the corner that blare rock and funk music: the sounds echo from the metal walls, creating delays and jarring distortions. Pressing through the dancers toward the open hatchway, now she can see they’ve stolen five or six of those yellow blinking lights, pried them fr
om the wooden sawhorse signs the traffic department uses, and strung the lights across the room with wire. A thin girl grabs Karmann as she passes, spinning her around, the girl’s exposed breasts jiggling and flouncing: Karmann sees a flash of black nipples like inky silver dollars, then the dancer’s eyes, empty, void of even a hint of reflection or life, then she breaks away. Near the hatch door, two shirtless young men smoke cigarettes and watch her sullenly; one man turns away, but not before she can glimpse the pistol jammed in his waistband … Karmann slips through the portal.

  Karmann’s on the rusted roof of an Evergreen container. The evening is thick with August’s heat, no breeze, just this warm oppression that seems to squeeze her body, her brain itself. A sliver of moon wavers above like a mirage. Down below, the Pacific seems a dark mirror that only reflects the heat back into her bones. Karmann walks toward the steel boat ramp on the southern edge. Distant shouts, laughter rises through the thick night air, and Karmann pauses, turns. Behind her, toward the docks, a couple of containers down Boxville: some of the revelers have tied a rope from a beam they’ve jammed through a rusty big crane hook on the container’s roof, and now they’re taking turns swinging on the rope, leaping naked into the inky Pacific below. In her mind a flash of light—light dead from the past, ghostly reflected in faded antique shutters and prisms and powder flashes—sears the night as the naked black boy swinging on the rope seems to be hanging from his twisted neck …

  Karmann turns away and strides across the boat ramp. She has to step over the thick iron ribs that divide the roof of this Atlas Maritime container. Beyond the harbor, north into summer’s night, ominous ribbons and towers of smoke glower in the dark sky. My baby’s out there … stop thinking stop thinking.