THE ETTA JAMES VIBE

 Me and Na-Na are in the art room, we just smoked some Hawaiin, and He has put in some amazing music in the cassette player.

I pick up my pencil, no way I’m gonna mess this up with charcoal. Slowly, I take it to the wall, struggling to keep this snapshot, this essence, in my mind and transfer it to this wall before it fades away, like déjà vu.

Hesitantly, I start putting down the preliminary lines, trying to get the proper shapes, the perspective. I was never great at drawing bodies before, not of this magnitude, this size, anyway. No, I am a face man. It’s daunting. I’m shaky. You know when you instinctively know that you have this really phenomenally great idea, but it’s almost kind of too overwhelming? This is it.  Please God, don’t let me fuck this up!    

So, I’m sketching now, tentatively, delicately. So afraid to blow it, yet so much wanting to express it. I’m in and out of the flow, trying in vain to nail that curve of the shoulder, over and over, but no matter what - it’s just not coming. Now frustrated and feeling thwarted, I’ve been vaguely aware of the music in the background. Until this voice - this AMAZING voice - jolts me out of my self-consciousness, forcing me to put down my pencil. I don’t know if it’s being magnified by the Hawaiian, or what, but her voice just freakin’ BLOWS ME AWAY. It is so real. She practically moans through this whole song, no words, but she puts it over with such a sense of heartbreak, of such genuine conviction and realness – that words just could not portray it. Beautiful. Piercing through some hazy level of my unconscious, the recognition of its truth lodges in my throat, and it is choking me up. I don’t want Na-Na to see me getting all emotional, so I try to hide it, while rhythmically swaying back and forth to the music on the ladder.  

Finally, I can’t repress myself any longer; I have to know who this is!

“Na, man, who is this singing?”

“Etta James, my man, Etta James.”

At that moment, it flashes through me.  Another secret door to black culture has just been opened to me, and that in some way it would change me forever. This transcends just black music! It’s deeper than that. Whatever it is - this is what I want my mural to be about! I know it, without even being able to put it into words.

Infiltrated. Seduced. Inspired. Listening. Listening. Listening. Etta James, man. I’d Rather Go Blind, Almost Persuaded, All I Could Do Was Cry. The songs just go on and on.

 All of a sudden, it just clicks! I’m able to go beyond my perceived limitations, elevate my game – my pencil begins gliding over the wall. Smooth, tranquil. Focused. Catching me by surprise, the morning sun peeking in through the classroom window, snaps me out of this trance.  I look up at the clock - 6:35 in the morning! Six hours had passed! We quickly pack up and I scamper home before my parents awaken.

THE TRIBUTE

So there we are, me and Na-Na, sitting in the art room we have just broken into. We have just smoked up that joint of Hawaiin. It’s that quiet moment before the storm.

“Yo, Strong, what we was talking ‘bout? Les’ get to work, man.” With that, we break the tranquility of the moment, and start busily setting up the two small ladders Silverstein’s got in the back of the room.

I climb up and perch myself on the top. Just me and that wall now. The wall is more wide than high; more so than I had figured it to be. Maybe Silverstein was right all along – maybe I don’t have a clear sense of perspective. No way can I do the portrait of Esperanza standing up, like I had imagined it.  I close my eyes now; just letting go, thoughts and various images drifting in and out of my consciousness. No concrete focus yet though, it’s all fluid. I feel the weight of the pencils and charcoal in my hands, as the minutes clock by. The strike of a match redirects my thoughts. I hear Na-Na climb off down his ladder, the click of a cassette tape being inserted into the boom box’s tape player follows. The whir of the mechanism as it starts up, and the smoke from a Kool wafts through the air, circling my nostrils.

Igniting a new set of images, circulating through the screen of my memory. It transports me back to the smoke of Esperanza’s Virginia Slim, when we were standing outside in front of Tijeras de Oro. The day I finally had dragged up the courage to ask her out.  She gave me her number. That was the last time I saw her. The Dentyne gum she was chewing, the roar of the motors and black smoke, exploding from the tailpipes of the buses as they sped by.

That carries me back to the first day I ever saw her - a nasty, sopping boiler of a day, in late August.  Had to be at least 100 degrees. Relentless sun driving through the polluted haze. Even the flies buzzing you from the nearby dog-shit on the curb are dragging ass.  I see this insanely breath-taking girl in this Puerto Rican beauty salon. I halt mid-step, staring in incredulousness.

Daaaamn!

Their air conditioner must be broken, because all the beautician ladies are plopped down on the chairs, the ones who don’t have customers. Flushed, fanning themselves furiously with takeout menus from the Kim Wah, the Chinese restaurant across the street.

There she is. Esperanza. Stretched out on one of the small sofa-like waiting chairs. Legs curled up a bit behind her, right arm propping up her head in a way that totally accentuates every curve. Effortlessly exhaling that Virginia Slim, watching the rings of smoke dissipate into the heavy mugginess. The thing is, the girl is not even sweating! She is so ice. How could anyone look so hot on such a miserable day? 

A shiver, like downing a frozen Slurpee shakes me into another memory. A centrefold of Raquel Welch, in LOOK magazine last year. Lying in exactly the same position - except she’s wearing a full-length, white mink coat. Shit, I don’t know how many times I fawned devotedly over that picture. I still have it in my room, as a matter of fact.

BAM!

That’s what I would do! I would draw Esperanza in that same reclining position. Like a double tribute!

IT'S REALLY GOING DOWN!!

So here I am - it’s really gonna go down…we’re actually gonna break into the art room…holy shit!

Na-Na is there as advertised, standing in front of Roselle High, toothpick in mouth. He’s twirling his umbrella, and thrusting it forward in the night air, as if stabbing imaginary people, I presume.

“Yo, champ.”

“Hey, whassup, Na-Na?”

“Damn, my man be fierce, an’ shit, last night.”

I smile, trying to play cool, but now my curiosity is really aroused.

“What the fuck happened last night, man?”  

He studies me for a few seconds, I guess trying to figure out if I’m kidding, or not. He shakes his head, chuckles, and clucks his tongue, then picks up this huge boom box and knapsack.

We head towards the parking lot, to the green fire exit door on the side. I look at Na-Na, wondering what his plans are, as he pulls out this tremendous set of keys from his coat pocket. Where he got them? Who knows? Feeling our way into the darkness of the hall, he flicks on his gold plated lighter. We bound stealthily up the stairwell, our footsteps echoing like Goliath into the empty midnight hour.  

The spooky glow of the shadows cast by Na-Na’s flame, infuse me with a strange type of giddiness. I’m imagining I’m in one of those Adventures of Johnny Quest cartoons I used to watch on Saturday mornings. Exploring some ancient, forbidden underground temple in Egypt, or some crazy place like that. Suddenly, I get this uncontrollable impulse to yell out in that Indian kid, Hajji’s, accent.

“Johnny, Johnny! Race! Dr. Quest - look - it is the sacred jewel of the mythical Monkey God, Babaganush!”  One glance at Na-Na, though, and I resist that urge. Who was that kid Hajji anyway? And why was he always following around Dr. Quest, Johnny, and Race Banyon?

We march our way through the second floor corridor, till we finally reach the object of our illicit journey. Mr. Silverstein’s art classroom. Na-Na opens that door with another one from his magic set of keys, we switch on the lights - and it’s all right there in front of us, now. Gazing up at that wall above the closet in the back, the wonder of it all just stone hits me. This is to be the canvas that will fuel our revolutionary hunger. Whoa.

 Inexplicably, in the next second, pangs of fear and anxiety with all the force of a typhoon crash through me. Obliterating the exhilaration that had filled me on the way up here. Now, the wall seems to me a towering monolith of epic impossibility.  

This is gonna take, like, Michelangelo type of talent!  Who am I to even attempt to immortalize Esperanza like this? She is so beautiful. I don’t know if Na-Na reads the panic expressing itself in the sudden paleness of my face.  Maybe he does.  Maybe he doesn’t. He sets up his boom box on one of the tables.  

“Yo, Strong, check it out, man.  This be Hawaiian, man - this be the shit for creatin’.” 

He torches up the monster spliff he’s got in his hand, takes in a couple of major hits, and passes it off to me. I grab it warily, remembering last night when I nearly hacked to death. Man, I’m already feeling super uncool right now, I don’t need to sink even further in esteem. I close my eyes and pull in a toke. Fuck it.  

“My special blend a’ herbs and spices.” Na-Na says, the smoke still cascading out of his mouth. 

To my great surprise, this stuff goes down easy. Nothing like last night. No burning my throat or chest this time.  No, this is a distinct and different flavor and feeling. We just sit there in the night silence, me and Na-Na. Handing off to each other, puffing totally mellow. No laughing. No coughing.

THE MORNING AFTER

Ok, so this is the morning after our ( me and Na-Na) big trip to the Savoy Lounge to get ‘material!’

Next thing I know, I’m in my bed, waking up to the morning sunlight flooding through my curtains. Still clad in my dishevelled golden ensemble under my covers! The manic activity of everybody getting ready for school must have blasted me out of my slumber, and it takes me a minute to figure out where I am. To say nothing of how I even got here. This confusion is accompanied by nausea, and a headache bigger than Hardcore. I feel horrible. My mother sticks her head in my bedroom door.

“Get up, Joseph, you’re going to be late for school! 

Within minutes, I convince her, or she realizes, that I am way too sick for that. I’m careful not to let her see that I’m fully dressed under the covers.

I take a peek at my sketchbook, mysteriously lying next to me. Opened up to a crudely drawn picture of some black man’s face contorted into a fierce grimace, head apparently on the floor.  That’s weird, I think to myself as I drift back to sleep. I lay in bed the whole rest of the day, and somehow, in between frantic dives to the toilet bowl, and falling in and out of consciousness, remember that Na-Na and me had decided we were going to break into the school tonight. And, for the next three nights, to get down this mural thing. I just hope I’m not dreaming. Or, indeed, having a nightmare. I’m far too incapacitated to go to work, which is fine with me, and I take a certain redemptive comfort in that it’s a rainy day – raw and chilly. The real autumn is absolutely barging in on our Indian summer now.

It calms me, along with periodic visits from my mother, with homemade vegetable soup and hot tea with honey. There is a nurturing, soothing feeling I haven’t experienced in a long while.

It goes on like this all day, falling asleep to a fantastic montage of mysterious, other worldly dreams, waking up, and back again. Until the piercing whistle from the southbound train at the Roselle Park station blows me into final awakening. I dazedly peek at my clock radio! Holy shit, its eleven o’clock in the night!  Whoa. It’s almost time to go. As if on cue, I hear my parents turn off the TV downstairs, and begin their treacherous, middle-aged ascent of the steps. Yawning, as their footsteps drag. They take their turns in the bathroom, and have their nightly whispering argument in which my father asks my mother where the clean towels are. Finally, they close the drama – and their door. I wait the requisite fifteen minutes for them to settle in, don my work clothes, and creep down the stairs.

The rain had stopped, but it’s damp and cold as a bitch. The instant I hit the street, doubts about what I’m going to be able to accomplish tonight begin swirling around my head, like the invoking winds blowing down the nape of my neck. I shudder and quickly zipper all the way up.

The warm, satisfied feeling that had enveloped me while I was lying in my bed, has now disappeared. I observe the vapor from my breath, and begin trudging down Third Avenue, a stabbing tinge of sadness, of being alone - separated - curls around me. I hesitate, gazing back at my house, and stop for a second.

How am I going to do this mural?! I really have no idea of what I’m going to do! Panic sets in. Na-Na and I have never even talked about it, really. I mean, I made this big bravado speech and everything…what if I - we - get busted? How are we going to finish this in only three nights, anyway?! And, to be honest, I am still kind of afraid to be alone in a room with him for any extended period of time. Especially with nobody at all around. Maybe I should turn back now! I keep going, though, more scared of not showing up than anything else.