We’re always trying to own men we don’t got no control of. I’m tired of it. Tired of having to be out here thinking about all these people, all these things to keep me alive, keep them alive. I don’t got no air left for none of it. Maybe Camila’s right, maybe it’s time to let go, to let one of them take over, take care of me. But I can’t stop thinking about Shauna’s call, if Marcus is alright, if maybe he’s got enough money to help us out. Part of me is still angry at him for not coming to see Mama with me, but with Alé not speaking to me, I need him.
It’s two p.m. now and even though it’s only early spring, the heat has found its way to us, an unexpected warm day among the cold. It’s still afternoon when the door to the apartment swings open and Marcus steps through, turning to look at me with the most glorious smile on his face, my fingerprint scrunched beneath the grin. Marcus comes right up to me and picks me up from the waist, does a spin. Coming down, I’m dizzy, don’t remember the last time he spun me like that, like I’m his little sister and we might still be young.
“What you do that for?” I laugh, swatting at his chest. He seems taller today.
Those eyes stare at me and they got the smile in them too, lit up.
“I been missing my lil sis, what you talkin’ bout?” He looks like he might just pick me up again. “I got something to show you.”
In seconds, Marcus has taken my hand, grabbed a backpack and his skateboard from the closet, and is leading us back out the door. Marcus pulls my wrist a little harder and it almost feels like I’m imagining it. He seems to have forgotten all the shit that’s built up between us in the past couple months. And I guess since he ain’t really been home much, maybe he hasn’t seen me scramble to fill the envelope with next month’s rent or felt the way the chlorine and feces have become part of the air, the natural scent of the apartment. I wonder if he knows where I’ve been, what I’ve done.
I grab my scraper bike, the one Marcus and I made out of duct tape and junkyard scraps, from its spot on the rack by the pool. We ride them proud all over East Oakland, our wheels neon and brighter than the sky. I mount my bike and follow him out onto the road. Marcus winds us through streets I don’t remember being on before, which is funny because I swear I’ve walked every inch of this city. Maybe I never looked up. Maybe I’ve been too busy searching.
I call out to him, “Where the hell you taking me, Marcus?”
“Don’t worry about it, we almost there.”
Maybe this is how he’s gonna tell me he’s got some extra cash for us, even if Shauna’s right and he been doing something he shouldn’t to get it. Street money’s still money. I can hear the cars on the freeway now and we’re still in East, so 880 must be close, but I don’t see it yet. Sometimes you can hear things, feel things, that will never manifest in sight. That is Mama’s voice in my head: an unseen thing.
Under an overpass, Marcus stops abruptly. It is so unexpected that I almost lose control of the pedals and run into him. I skid, brake, hop off. It’s dark under the overpass and entirely empty except for two tents, a mini city. This is where we’ll be soon if Marcus don’t help me; sleeping in tents, my hips leaving me gaping when no zipper can keep me safe. Not even Marcus’s ego could salvage my body from the coldest nights out here in the tents, and nothing could hide us during fire season, when the smoke catches up to us.
“What we doing here?” I ask Marcus, leaning my bike on the wall.
He doesn’t respond. Marcus removes his backpack, crouches down, and unzips it. Inside are cans and cans of spray paint, that expensive kind that sometimes we rack from Home Depot when we’re feeling real invincible. He starts to line them up on the ground: a whole rainbow.
“Where you get these?”
“Don’t worry about it. Look, I got you a lil present and I’ll even be your assistant. You got a whole wall. Go crazy with it. You tell me what to paint and I’ll paint it. This your day, Ki.” Marcus stares up at me, beaming from his crouch.
Part of me wonders if I should object, if I should question him, but instead, I smile back at him, grab the green paint first, and tell Marcus to start with the yellow. I begin the outline, directing him. Marcus never does anything I say, but today he traces my lines and follows me. Today he is my brother.
When I paint, I close my eyes. Marcus and Alé both laugh when I do this. They think you gotta see to paint, but sight is just a distraction from what it really takes to translate image to art. I let it float out my fingers, escape out my breath, and I don’t need to see when my body is an entire vision.