Painted Cities

You better never fuck with drugs. You can smoke a little pot — shit’s harmless — but you motherfucker better never mess with that hardcore shit. I’ll beat your ass if I ever find any on you. You can’t think right, then when you need to move fast, figure shit out, you’re on low gear, you get swallowed up. That’s what happens. That’s how it works. The neighborhood wasn’t like that before. Not when I was coming up. These boys weren’t into drugs. It was all turf. That sounds stupid to you now, but that’s because you got these idiots surrounding you. Not before, though. It was all respect.

There was this boy named Jap. I used to run with him when we lived over on May Street. We used to hang over at Dvorak Park, where they had the sprinkler and shit, all the kids ru

That’s how it was when I came up. People would give warnings. It was almost fun, like a story. Like if you were to write the damn thing out you would say, ‘and the motherfucker said it just like Clint Eastwood.’ Now people don’t give a shit. You know why all these girls get knocked up? Because at one time it meant something. A few boys would skip out on their old ladies, but most of the time when you had a kid, that was your family. Everybody would talk shit. “Damn, you’re with her forever now, bro.” And the boy would smile and say all proud, “Yeah, I know.” Then we’d talk about it. Ask him, “When’s the wedding?” and “Is her old man pissed off?” That’s how it was. That’s when people were stand-up. Defend what’s in their heart, not what they can sell. You got a good friend, that means you do anything for them. That’s being stand-up. If he’s broke, you give him a handout, you never ask for it back. If he gets into some shit with some boys out front, you step out there and back him up, even when he’s the one who’s wrong. A friend’s all you got, they’re family, and once you don’t got family, tell me, motherfucker, what do you got?

BLUE MAGIC

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 pe

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 di

“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 fu

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 fu

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.