FICTION: From the Rooftop of a Ruin, pt. 1, "It"

BY DENNIS SINNED

“You have a cloak;
you shall be our leader,
and this heap of ruins
shall be under your rule.”
Isaiah 3:6

Ricky Rivera never asks his mother permission to go play outside 63 TenEyck Street on warm summer days when school is out. He begs. He screams. He follows Ruth around the apartment, slaps his thighs, thumps his chest, jumps over furniture, wrenches open then slams shut the refrigerator door without so much as peeking inside. He speaks unkindly about her fashion sense, insults her cooking, shreds blank sheets of paper he loudly claims contain poems written for her. He pretends to hit her—risking una pela. He sticks his finger in every unguarded bowl of food or cup of water and petitions for justice from lo’ santos stationed around the house. Failing all else, he lifts his arms, falls on his knees, and implores God to strike her down or otherwise intercede. She relents with the caveat that he play “in the block”—within TenEyck Street’s four corners, between Leonard and Lorimer.
“However,” she leans towards Ricky, “The moment you turn any of those corners and decide you want to go roam the world, pause for just a second and remember that—eventually—I will find you. I will smash the stairs with my stomping feet racing down to get you. I will lift up every loose stone and brick, and peek under cars, to find you where you hide. I will stalk every neighborhood nook and cranny until all your friends tell you in school the next day how I visited them searching for you, banging on their doors with that crowbar I keep locked up in my bedroom closet—just for you. I will spot you from a distance before you notice. I’ll hide up in the bushes. I’ll camouflage, disappear into the walls. I’ll lunge at the last moment; strike from the shadows. Without warning, I’ll run right upside yo’ head. And I will, I promise you, brain damage your disobeyin’ ass ‘til you can’t read or write no more.”
Ruth sits up at the kitchen table where these negotiations always end. “Then I will drag you by the hair back home, laughin’ my ass off in front of everyone, including that little girl across the street—that’s right, Almita. And don’t think I don’t know about that big stack of undelivered love letters piling up behind your closet.” She draws closer, huffs on Ricky’s face. “I will make copies and send them to everyone on the block.”
She leans back on the groaning chair, flipping through one of the magazines stacked at the table. Ricky risks his chances by taking his eyes off her to stare at the clock above the stove, calculating the summer hours’ rapid dwindling. She sighs, pretends to read a page. “If you got any doubts about my willingness or ability, I suggest you remember those occasions where I have, in fact, slapped the taste right outta your mouth.”
Ricky ignores the mocking postponement of his manhood. “Ok. Gracia’ mommy, I love you. I’ll be back for dinner.”
She smiles and tousles his hair with a callused hand. “Be back for a bath before dinner. Way before. Who knows? I might have to burn your clothes. Don’t want your stinky lil’ ass contaminating the air, food and water.”
“Ok, mommy. We’re having chuletas tonight?” His eyes open. His smile widens. He rubs his shirt over his tummy. “Mmmmmm.”
She rushes to the door before it closes. “I love you, hijo. Be careful. I’ll watch you from the window.”
The door closes. He whispers back, “Of course.” He climbs down the stairs.
Bucktooth Felix, Fat Frankie, Cross-Eyes and Church Josie are already outside playing poison ball when Ricky charges out the front door. They stand in a circle in the middle of the street, each with his head down, staring at the radial they formed with their extended right feet. Ricky jumps down the front stoop in a single bound. He cries, “Not it!” Their heads perk up, and they happily greet him, “Sigh!”
Fat Frankie, Ten Eyck’s de facto master of ceremonies, quickly gets over his initial jubilation and stomps a few feet away, breaking the huddle. “You can’t do that! You can’t just call ‘not it.’ The game hasn’t even started yet. You gotta put your foot in.” He grows hysterical. “Nah, fuck that. I’m not gonna play if Sigh’s gonna start cheatin’ already, before the game even!” He crosses his arms with a wicked shoulder shrug that can only be performed with a child’s elasticity, and pouts.
Bucktooth Felix leans on a parked Mustang, refreshing his warm butt on its cool fender. “C’mon Sigh. We go through this shit everyday. Put your foot in, or we’re gonna have to hear his fuckin’ bitchin’ all day. You know how he is.”
Fat Frankie runs up close to Bucktooth Felix. “Fuck you, asshole!”
Bucktooth Felix shoves Fat Frankie, bares his teeth soaked in spittle. “Fuck you!”
Fat Frankie doesn’t budge even to wipe his face. “C’mon Sigh, can we just put our feet in?”
Sigh extends his right foot, plants it firmly on the ground. The others follow, each foot pointing towards Ricky’s. They enter poison ball, phase one: determining the first to be ‘it’ through eternal and simple puzzles and riddles even stupid adults can understand. When they were really young it was ‘guess a number between one and ten,’ but that soon gave way to the ever-controversial ‘enie, menie, mynie, mo.’ Eventually they graduated to ‘Odds and Evens.’ Of course, they never completely ceased practicing the classics. Every now and then someone suggests doing ‘one of the baby ones,’ for old times sake. However, over the past year older puzzles and riddles have by and large receded in favor of ‘There’s a Man In the Grass With a Bullet Up His Ass.’
Sigh sighs. “I don’t even know why we’re doing this. You know Felix is gonna be ‘it.’”
Errant spittle hurtles towards Sigh. “Fuck you! I defended you against Fat Frankie, fucking asshole!”
Sigh wipes his face. “Bucktooth muthufucka! Look some other way when you talk!”
Behind them they hear a squeak, worn brakes struggling on old tires, a short skid, a back tire bouncing off asphalt, gum loudly chewed, blown then popped, and the sucking of sharp teeth. Cross Eyes hears booing somewhere off in the heavens. Shake, formerly known as Thousand Shakes Angel, glowers at them. He leans onto his chrome dirtbike’s handlebars and whispers, “Whattup bitches?”
The gang lower their heads, and dejectedly mutter back, in unison, “Whattup Shake?”
They break the huddle, but don’t scatter. They stare at their toes, look up to the sky, pretend to observe everything but Shake, hoping he won’t discern their current intentions. In poison ball, whoever’s it at any given moment must launch his ‘it-ness’ with all his might at whoever’s not it, with a hard rubber ball that is purchased—usually by Fat Frankie—for twenty-five cents at Church Josie’s father’s bodega. It is widely suspected the ball is also used in games that other people play, but it is equally held that Church Josie’s father is secretly a bandido who occasionally knocks over military trucks and steals as much rubber hardware he can get his hands on while discarding the big metal guns because he can’t fit them in his five year old busted-ass jalopy Chevy Nova trunk. Whichever way, whatever’s looted gets booted at la Bodega en Nudo, where Church Josie’s father routinely conducted business wrapped in a towel in those early summers before he could afford an air-conditioner.
It doesn’t count if the ball first bounces off the ground before striking a player. It has to be a straight line of injurious nastiness hurled between whoever’s it and whoever’s not it. The muthufucka who really likes to get down will call “Heads only!” But Shake takes games to another level altogether. He deliberately and specifically aims for faces—forget heads—at brain-damaging velocities even when “Heads only!” hasn’t been called. It’s why he went from Thousand Shakes Angel to Shake in a shorter period than Sighin’ Ricky went to Sigh. He’s a real muthufucka. The gang long vowed never to play with him.
Shake looks at them. They look at Shake. They all observe each other observe themselves. Sweat accumulates. Throats clear. Cross Eyes coughs. Fat Frankie struggles to contain a fart. Shake sneers, “Were you guys about to get into a game?”
Bucktooth Felix, bigger than Shake but not as skillful or infamous, turns to answer. Sigh stretches out his arm and blocks him. The drenching sweat of Bucktooth Felix’s tongue could have dire consequences. Bucktooth Felix, anxious to graduate into any nickname other than the dreadful ‘Bucktooth,’ was aware of all the potentialities but the unanimity of his peers’ cautious position: Bucktooth Felix could, and likely would, get his big buckteeth knocked right the fuck out his big bucktooth mouth. Sigh does a slight jiggling strut, playing it cool. “Nah Shake. We juss’ chillin’. Whach’a doin’?”
Shake grins, baring sharp incisors flanking two shiny gold crowns. “I’m doin’ what I feels like doin’. Fuck it looks like? I’m riding my bike! Why you all up in my shit?”
Sigh nervously laughs. The others follow. He stammers, “Oh, right. Yea.”
The universe is deep and profound. The cosmos turns inexplicably. The sun rises and sets and no one really knows why. Some days one smiles at death incarnate and walks away with a busted lip or black eye, pants pulled down, shirt stolen right off the back in broad daylight. Today, however, out of character, Shake’s unusual taste for cruel public humiliation is quickly slaked. He goes on his way, peddlin’ his busted-ass ten year old bicycle held together by copious adhesive tape, disdaining to mutter anything more than a “Wack pussy bitches!” to be remembered by. He brakes at the corner, clumsily turns behind him, defiantly raises his fist, and says out loud in no small terms to any who can hear, something about returning someday. He turns the corner.
Somewhere off in the heavens, Cross Eyes hears a faint collective sigh, then faint and light applause.
Church Josie asks, “Does he even live on this block?”
Fat Frankie answers, “Who knows, who cares? Hurry up, put your foot in.”
They huddle again, stick their right feet in. Fat Frankie crouches, his rapid counterclockwise hand taps each foot to the syllabic chant of
There’s a man in the grass
with a bullet up his ass.
Stick it in, stick it out,
do you want to be a scout?
N-o spells no (or ‘y-e-s spells yes’)
And that’s why my mother told me
To pick this one.
Celebratory “alrights!” and “oh, snaps!” follow each disqualification. Fat Frankie taps his own foot and the possibilities whittle down to a certainty. Bucktooth Felix stands last.
The others quickly scatter, each calling out, “Bucktooth is First It!” Fat Frankie tosses him the poison ball and flees. First It vengefully returns the poison ball hissing towards the left cheek of Fat Frankie’s legendary buttocks. “Fat Frankie’s It!”
Fat Frankie straightens squealing, grabs his ass, grimaces heavenward, and spots the poison ball ricochet towards the sky. He wobbles chasing it down the block. “Fuck! I’m always the first to get It after being Not It!”
Somewhere indiscernible, behind a window on the block, a finger rakes a turntable needle on high-powered speakers. A crackling hiss like eggs being fried in heaven follows. Sigh skips, shouts, “Pause muthufuckas, pause.” The boys freeze in their tracks. The gang crane to and fro across the multitude of windows above them, seeking MC Invisible. Frenzied, they whisper guesses on DJ Unknown’s upcoming selection. The intro to Gran Combo’s “Tú Me Hiciste Brujeria” swells over the block.
A gravelly old but earnest voice calls out from behind a window, “Weeeeeeepa!” The scattered drug dealers palm their products to dance in place. The celebration of sadness and the sadness of celebration stirs all hearts, lifts arms, spins heels, shakes hips, coolly nods heads and twists necks.
Que me habra echado esa chica
que me tiene arrebatado
que me tiene medio loco
que ya estoy enamorado
quizas seran sus ojitos
o tal vez su caminao
o quizas esas cositas que nunca se me ha dado
Distant voices swell behind open windows and parted curtains. The men sing,
Que tu me tienes temblando de noche y de dia
And the women,
tu me hiciste brujeria
The pavement rhythmically cracks. The ground rumbles with each collective stomp, and la memoria de la gente dances like the palpitating heartbeat of God buried alive.
Me quiere mandar para la tumba fria (tu me hiciste brujeria)
Brrrrrrrruuuuuja, bruuuuuja, brujita (tu me hiciste brujeria)
Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu, demonio (tu me hiciste brujeria)
Me echaste, no se que en la comida (tu me hiciste brujeria)
Siento una cosa fria (tu me hiciste brujeria)
Que baja por aqui se sube por alla si (tu me hiciste brujeria)
Y vuelve toda esa brujeria (tu me hiciste brujeria)
The gang gyrate their hips, puff their chests and cheeks, and swing their arms sans cohesion or pattern, pantomiming more a scuba-diving disaster than an actual dance. Ricky calls,
Me quiere mandar para la chocha fria
And the gang responds,
Tu me hiciste puteria!
And the little reckless ones sing along,
Puuuuuuuuuta, puuuuuta, putita (tu me hiciste puteria)
Puuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu, cabrona (tu me hiciste puteria)
Me echaste, no se que en la camita (tu me hiciste puteria)
Siento una chocha fria (tu me hiciste puteria)
Que baja por las bollas se sube pa’ tragar si (tu me hiciste puteria)
Y vuelve toda esa puteria (tu me hiciste puteria)
Several voices hidden behind windows and parted curtains break off singing to laugh. Even the drug dealers, scattered along the four corners, relax their criminal scowls.
Thunder. “Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiicky!”
The turntable needle scratches. The music abruptly ends. The Ineffable MC groans in the distance. The hidden singers continue a cappella for a split-second more, ending in groans and awkwardly muttered syllables. The drug dealers stop dancing and return to business, earnestly hawking their wares, beckoning potential victims passing by. The gravelly old but earnest voice whispers, “¡Ay dios! ¿Vamos pa’ la mierda otra ve’?” The gang slowly turns and spiral their glances upward 63 TenEyck Street’s eight floors. They—and half the neighbors—freeze upon seeing Ruth Rivera. She leans out the window atop the tallest building on the block. Her locked arms rest on the windowsill. Her long black hair—Church Josie calls it ‘the cape’—flutters in the wind like an errant angel’s magnificent wings chained to the invisible will of something entirely more powerful. Lightning flashes above, syncing to her words. Felix snottily whispers, “She sounds like an ambulance siren.” Ricky is too afraid to move to slap him.
The wind blows downward from Ruth to Ricky. Her furious eyes peek out from behind her menacingly undulating hair. “Ricky, what were you saying? ¿‘Decía malas palabra’?”
Ricky fidgets. “No mommy! Of course not.”
“Are you lying to me?”
“No mommy! I’m not lying. Of course I’m not lying. I’m not cursing. I didn’t say no bad words. I’m just playing poison ball. Can’t I just play poison ball? Why can’t I just play poison ball? Why do I always get blamed for something? Why am I getting punished for something I didn’t do?”
“Oh, reeeeeeeeeeally, Riiiiiiiiiicky?”
Felix leans towards Ricky, “She thinks she’s Queen Mother of the Block, or somethin’!”
“Stop talking about my mommy like that, bucktooth muthufucka!”
A thousand-fold ambulance siren almost cracks the firmament separating the Earth from the heavens. “Riiiiiiiiiiickyyyyyy!” Windows shutter. A car alarm goes off. The gang cowers, shield their heads. Ricky instinctively prostrates. “Ricky! What do we say?”
Ricky looks to his friends for moral support. The Queen Mother of the Block sighs, laments the unsuccessful years of hard rearing with intermittent near-coma inducing beatings that had yet to breed instant and favorable responses from her son.
“Aw, c’mon, mommy!”
“Say it.”
“Mommy, please!”
“Say it!”
Ricky’s head droops back. He closes his eyes, and whispers, “Thank you God for delighting me along my path.”
Someone chuckles from a nearby window.
The Queen Mother of the Block stands straight behind the windowsill, her head almost bumping the lifted windowpane. “What? I can’t hear you.”
Ricky’s head droops forward. “Thank you God for delighting me along my path.”
The windows shake with laughter.
Lightning flashes. “Out loud, pendejito!”
The windows across the block almost dislodge from their cheap wooden panes. Garbage cans rattle. Dogs howl in the distance. Far away ambulance sirens swell into barely audible levels, then quickly recede into the normal buzz of things.
“THANK YOU GOD FOR DELIGHTING ME ALONG MY PATH!”
Raucous laughter swells from behind windows. The gang cackles at Ricky under the gaze of the Queen Mother of the Block. She points at them, electric sparks crackling under her fingernail. The wind’s direction suddenly shifts, swirling around the gang. She warns, “Funny, ha? I’ll make you say it, too!”
Everyone recoils, turns from her glare and shuts the fuck up. The wind pushes litter along the curb. A sad and faint whistle blows in the distance. They watch Ricky cautiously look up, then they all straighten and look. The cheap curtains of apartment 8L flutter in the open window.
Church Josie spins on them, “Stop sayin’ bad words so loud. If my mother hears or finds out, she’ll make me go to church on Sunday.”
Fat Frankie, “She makes you go anyway.”
Cross Eyes observes someone approach from the block’s northeastern corner. Silently, he raises his finger towards the purple-haired being.
Bucktooth Felix follows Cross Eyes’ raised finger, gulps, then spits out, “Oh, shit! Look!”
The gang step onto the sidewalk to better look at the young explorer with red glistening eyes. He treks confidently over the cracked pavement and blasted curb. He observes everything around him with amazement and wonder. He briefly pauses to analyze an open trashcan’s contents. The strip of hair comprising his flaccid mohawk alternates bouncing off the left and right sides of his face with his every stride. Bleach stains pattern his tight blue Levi’s like clouds on a denim sky. His jeans end in cuffs slightly above his burgundy ten-eyelet Doc Marten boots, white laces squeezing them tight onto his ankles like sullied surgical stitches. Shirtless, he sweats under an ornately studded black leather motorcycle jacket. His chest is heavily tattooed. His jacket is densely decorated with various band names, separated by various anarchy symbols and slogans. The gang hones in on one thick-lettered phrase, “I COULD GIVE A FUCK ABOUT PATTI SMITH’S SINS.” Eyes wide, mouths open, the gang gawks at him. Bucktooth Felix wipes his chin.
The drug dealers momentarily suspend their petty but despicable rivalries. They quickly huddle at the block’s south end. Occasionally, a head pops up to check the status of the white man’s approach whenever comments are punctuated. One breaks the huddle to retrieve something in a nearby car. The neighbors, having stepped outside for a smoke and chat or to feel the sun, retreat back inside. Men are rustled out of bed. Women check on their children. Faces emerge from behind curtains, peek out windows.
Ricky looks straight up and spots wayward locks of black hair lilting in the breeze. “Mommy?”
Ruth pops her head out. “¿Qué?”
The young white man passes Ricky.
“Mira, mommy. ¡Un blanco!”
She gnashes her teeth and squints her eyes, but rumbles barely louder than a stomach growl. “¡Cayate pendejo! ¡Que no te oyes!”
The punk almost stumbles as he turns to Ricky, unable to mask his American accent, “Si, soy blanco, pero tambien soy amigo.” He smiles. His teeth are perfect but dirty. Ricky smiles back. The punk slows to look up at Ruth. He smiles again.
A fog rolls in, swallowing the children, trash cans, parked cars, street, front stoops and doors to tenements. Ruth nervously smiles. “Perdon, mister. My son habla mas than he should, you know?”
“No se preocupe, señora.” He grabs his leather jacket’s lapels. “Hací son los niños.” He laughs, salutes her and Ricky and continues walking. He passes the amassed drug dealers quietly and intensely observing him. He turns the corner.
Suddenly, nearly incoherent with rage, “¡Aaaaaahhhhh! ¡Por favor, Dios! ¡Aaaaahhhh!” A fully clothed, filthy, gold-skinned, foul smelling full-grown man climbs out a broken window slightly above the surface of the fog at the abandoned 72 TenEyck Street building. Panadin scatters the fog as he lands on the ground with outstretched arms and howls again.
One of the drug dealers turns towards him. “Ah, solid. Thanks Panadin. Just what we needed. Thanks for showin’ up now.”
Panadin runs up close to the drug dealer, nearly kissing him. “¡Aahhh! ¡Por favor, Dios! ¡Aaahhh!”
The other drug dealers scatter, laughing. The offended dealer trips trying to strut away. “Damn! Dirtbomb muthufucka! Go take a bath, get a job, get a woman, get a home, get a life!”
Panadin continues howling, receiving no further challenges.
The fog completely recedes. The woken men go back to sleep, and the women go about their business. Neighbors go back outside to smoke and chat.
“¡Sube arriba!”
Ricky strategizes avoiding subiendo. He could beg. He could scream. He could raise his arms to the gathering clouds above and implore having Ruth struck down.
“Why, mommy?”
“¡Almuerzo!”
“But I just came downstairs. How can it be lunchtime already?”
She glares at him.
“But mommy, if I go upstairs, then the guys will go around the corner to play, and when I come back downstairs, they’ll be gone. I’ll have no one to play with. It’ll be just me, and Panadín.”
Panadin turns towards his name. He stares at Ricky, then looks up at Ruth. Ricky imagines their eyes shooting laser beams that nullify in cataclysm above him. He considers taking shelter under the awning of Church Josie’s father’s bodega, underneath where it says “Finest Puerto Rican and American Goods For Sale.” Ruth and Panadin break off contact, rolling their eyes in mutual contempt.
“I don’t care if they go play around the corner. You’re comin’ upstairs right now to eat lunch.” She withdraws from the window, her undulating black hair snapping as it follows behind.
Sigh turns to the gang, “You guys are gonna stay outside, right? I’ll be back in a few minutes, I swear.”
They nod their heads and Church Josie lies, “Sure, Sigh. We’ll wait for you.”
Sigh goes back upstairs.
Returning to business off in the distance, DJ Inscrutable puts Bad Brains’ “Pay to Cum” on the turntable. Ricky hears it from the stairway inside,
I make decision with precision lost inside this manned collision
Just to see that what is to be perfectly my fantasy
I came to know with now dismay that in this world we all must pay
Pay to write, pay to play
Pay to cum, pay to fight
And all in time, with just our minds, we soon will find what's left behind
Not long ago when things were slow we all got by with what we know
The end is near. Hearts filled with fear. Don't want to listen to what they hear
And so it's now we choose to fight to stick up for our bloody right
The right to sing. The right to dance. The right is ours... We'll take the chance
A peace together, a piece apart.
A piece of wisdom from our hearts

The song ends when Ricky reaches his door.