The Cost of Knowing, page 20
He’s so jittery as he points from his face to mine. His head bobs slightly unnaturally. I hold out my hand beside me so Isaiah knows to stay behind me. He rolls his eyes and blows air through his lips, finding it hilarious that I still don’t recognize him.
“Eli?” he offers. “Zaccari?”
I look closer at his face, at his high cheekbones and chin that ends in a sharp V like Mrs. Zaccari’s, and his thick red eyebrows like Mr. Zaccari has.
“Eli?” I say.
He nods, and then a laugh spills out of his mouth.
“Yeah,” he says. “Long time no see, on Facebook anyway.”
He steps closer to me, and my first instinct is to lean back and get away from him, but he’s so close now, leaning in and looping his hands around my arm. I can smell the cigarette smoke on him now, and the body spray.
“I just need to tell you something,” he says. His hair sweeps against my neck as he leans in close to my head and whispers, “You’re not like these other people. You need to leave. Now.”
He shoves something crinkly and plasticky into my sweatshirt pocket and whips around so fast I don’t have time to answer him before he slips between the rows of screaming people and his red hair vanishes. I’m standing here stunned, trying to process what the hell just happened. Of course, the first thing I do is reach into my pocket to figure out what that thing is, and when I pull it out, I find a small plastic baggie with three tiny discs inside—one blue, one orange, and one neon yellow, pill size. The chalk is wearing away in spots, and the powder coats the inside of the bag. Each of the pills has a tiny smiley face stamped on it.
I see a vision of me turning the baggie over in my hand.
“What is it?” asks Isaiah.
I’ve heard of so many things being offered at so many different concerts that I recognize them immediately. They’re Smartees. E-bombs. Egg Rolls. Scooby Snacks. Dancing Shoes.
Ecstasy.
“Nothing,” I say. “We need to find a trash can.”
Now.
Whatever Eli meant by you need to leave, I don’t know. Maybe he was too strung out to realize what he was saying, or realize he was handing me some valuable product. Maybe he meant to hand me something else?
Whatever the case, I want this shit off me and as far away from both of us as soon as possible. I’ve never tried any kind of drugs, not even cigarettes, but if I get caught with this in my pocket, security will treat me like I have, meaning Isaiah and I could get kicked out of this place and arrested, or worse. I fully realize my position as a Black kid with this baggie. If I’m caught, if Isaiah is caught, we could both be dead.
This guy just handed me a live grenade.
And I realize he might not even know it. I realize he was probably trying to get us to leave. For what reason, I don’t know. Clearly something’s about to go down. Something he doesn’t want us here for. My throat closes as I realize this is definitely where it’s going to happen. Tonight has to be the night. We’ll get that worst-fear experience we’ve been looking for after all. I try to reach for any shred of hope that I’ll get to go home tonight. I remember my vision of looking down at Isaiah’s grave, and I wonder if those were my shoes in the grass, with me looking down into the hole, or if, like my vision of my car sinking into water one day, I was someone else.
And I remember Shaun.
I remember his face. I remember when I realized there was a real possibility that I’d be with him when he met his end, and I remember running. I remember saving my own ass at the cost of his security, and I remember that the last thoughts to go through his head might have been wondering what he did to lose me. And I won’t do that to my brother. We’re not leaving this place until we’ve faced enough of our fears to get rid of these visions, whatever’s about to happen. Isaiah deserves a chance at a life without being weighed down by the past, however short. After all the shit he’s been through in just twelve years, he deserves this joy.
Joy in the face of oppression is its own kind of bravery.
We’re staying right here, and I’m going to live the rest of my life knowing I did everything I could to make him understand that he’s not alone.
Even if the rest of my life is only a few more minutes.
“Come on, man,” I say, guiding him between the cheering, screaming bodies that smell of sweat, fragrances, body odor, and hot breath. Someone with a shrill, screechy voice lets out a sharp whoooo! in my left ear, and I can’t tell if it’s by accident or to intentionally punish me for having to squeeze past them. Don’t they see I have a kid with me? Can’t they just assume I have to take him to the bathroom and be a bit kinder?
We reach the aisle and walk the whole thirty feet up the ramp, where there’s a big black trash can waiting for us. I’m glad it’s so dark in here. The stage lights are flashing like lightning, and between the bass line that pulses with the lights, I yank the bag out of my sweatshirt pocket and toss it into the bin.
Crisis averted.
But now we’ve lost our spot in the crowd, a spot that was close enough to the stage that we could see the sweat on DeNola’s forehead and the individual LED lights in his shoes. I look over my shoulder at the stage. Now we can barely see whether he has dreads or braids. But it’s comfortable back here. This is how I’m used to seeing concerts. From a distance. From behind my phone screen until now, but this is the next safest thing. Where it’s comfortable and easy not to touch people or things, where I can stand next to Talia in peace, where the crowds are sparser and the seats are cheaper, and I can take up as little space as possible.
It’s safe back here.
“Are we going back down there?” asks Isaiah.
Guilt sinks in my stomach like a stone. If we’re supposed to be here to face our fears, to face whatever Eli may have planned tonight, then we have to go back into the crowds. Back into what scares us most. Just as I’m about to answer, DeNola finishes the song and raises his mic into the air, and the lights all shut off.
Perfect chance.
“Go!” I urge Isaiah, grabbing his wrist around his sweatshirt sleeve, canceling the vision of him darting forward into the crowd in his sweatshirt. “Go, go, go!”
We race through the darkness, barely making out where the seats end and the aisle begins. I follow close behind him, watching his glowing fingertips in the dark. We reach GA again, where everyone’s morphed into a single flailing entity made of heads, arms, flashing cameras, cell-phone lights, glow sticks, glow bracelets, and hands with glowing LED fingertips. Slowly, we reenter the fray, carefully, weaving past bodies again. I layer my apologies.
“Sorry, excuse us, sorry, excuse us, sorry, excuse us.”
And finally we get near the front again, just as the stage comes to life. Several strobe lights are on, turned directly to DeNola.
“Y’all my family,” he says, breathing heavy into the mic, “and I appreciate you.”
He kisses two fingers and raises them to the crowd, and everyone erupts in cheering all over again. I glance down at Isaiah to make sure he’s there. His face looks indifferent. He’s not looking at the stage. He’s looking around.
But then…
“Y’all ready for the king?”
Hysterics like I’ve never heard before in my life swell around us. Voices are cracking now in protest of the volume demanded by their owners. I let out a yell myself.
“Haa!” I bellow. Isaiah looks up at me and grins.
The Dragon’s roar.
“Haaaaaa!” he yells, his voice higher than mine, but just as powerful.
Hell yeah, we’re ready.
What if a bomb goes off? ask my deepest, darkest thoughts. What if it’s anthrax? What if the stage collapses? How fast a death would each of those be? A bomb would incinerate us in seconds. Anthrax would have us coughing up blood for hours. One of these amps could fall and crush us immediately, or it could leave us gasping for air under rubble for days before we asphyxiate under layers of bodies.
There are tears in my eyes. I remember Aunt Mackie’s words.
And you, Alex, have been a stellar example to Isaiah of what it means to be a man. Even when it’s scary.
“Even when it’s scary,” I whisper to myself. I’m definitely scared. I’m fucking terrified. I look around me at all these faces. Any one of these people could be the catalyst. What if the guy behind me happens to be bored with life and decides to stab us in the back? What if we both get kidnapped and thrown in the back of a van and driven to some field somewhere?
Breathe, Alex. Remember your anxiety steps.
I take a deep breath.
I hold my breath and count to ten.
I don’t have time to count to a hundred.
I can’t lie in corpse pose here.
I can’t get a glass of water without losing our spot again.
I can’t get fresh air. This is an outdoor venue. This is as fresh as the air is getting.
I stare up at the ceiling, which is actually the night sky, starless, full of smoke from the pyrotechnics.
This helps a little.
I can’t see them, but I know the stars are up there, somewhere, and even though I don’t believe in God, I like to believe Shaun is up there too.
I curl my index fingers and fold my middle fingers, weaving all of them into the letters S-H-I-V. I’m not going anywhere this time.
“I’m staying right here,” I whisper to him.
The lights go dark. The whole place goes black. I reach down and find Isaiah, pressing my hand against his back to make sure he’s there. I brave the vision of the stage exploding in blinding white light, which illuminates his face, his mouth open in anticipation of what’s to come, and expanding into a smile as he sees him up there—the king himself. In my vision, Isaiah’s sitting with a perfect view of the stage, a few feet higher than anyone else in the crowd so he’s looking through flailing arms instead of around torsos. His pupils dilate. His eyes close, and he throws a fist into the air as the recognition of his favorite song settles into him like hot chocolate on a cold winter’s day.
Bangin’.
Ballin’.
Bobbin’.
Bouncin’.
Bumpin’.
Black.
Dragon.
I know that face. That gleam in his eyes. That look of longing, wishing, hoping. The look that says that could be me one day.
And I know I have to give him a view he won’t forget.
I end the vision, reach down, scoop him up under his arms, and hoist him onto my shoulders before he knows what’s happened, before anyone else knows what’s about to happen. And then it happens.
The stage is so bright, and the voice is so loud, deep and raspy.
“CHICAAAAAGOOOOOOOOOO!”
I catch a glimpse of the king between two people’s shoulders. He’s facing the back of the stage, mic raised in a fist. He’s wearing his classic black tank top with the black harness all over him, and silver chain-mail shoulder pads. He’s got black skinny jeans that are ripped at the knees, all the way around. I don’t know how he keeps the shin parts of those from slipping down. They must be attached somehow, but the optical illusion is freaking cool. If I were a millionaire, I’d have a pair of those in my closet for every day of the week. He looks like a badass, ripped-out-of-his-mind Michael Jackson, and when he turns around to face us, as if we’re all unexpected guests in his house, we all respond in kind. I can hear the cheers around me melding into a low, rhythmic “Black Dragon, Black Dragon, Black Dragon, Black Dragon!”
I squeeze my arms tighter around Isaiah’s shins and bump him higher on my neck to alleviate some of his weight sitting right on my upper spine. I’m feeling the weight of every single one of those pizza bites he’s eaten in the last month. But I’m happy. So happy that my heart is racing. So overwhelmed that my hands are tingling. So mesmerized that I can’t take my eyes off the stage.
Shiv walks out to the front, saunters even, super casual. He’s close enough that I can see the insignia on the chain around his neck—a silver medallion with the dragon glyph, covered in glittering diamonds. I’m sure it costs more than everything I have to my name. It’s perfect. He’s perfect.
He sinks down low into his knees and launches himself into a six-foot vertical leap, yanking his knees up to his chest at the highest point. When his feet come back down and connect with the ground, the stage erupts in fireworks, and the screen behind him flashes to white. Two black silhouettes now block the screen, maybe thirty feet high. One, a skinny man with his hands tucked inside a baggy sweatshirt with a hugely oversize cobra hood, stands casually on the left. The other, a mammoth man with a round bald head and huge hands—one hanging at his side, and the other holding the neck of a guitar—stands to the right of Shiv. There they are. Cobra Katjee, Leviathan, and Shiv, the Black Dragon himself. I can’t believe this is real.
Wherever Talia is in this arena, probably somewhere in GA like us, I hope she’s loving this as much as I am.
However she feels about me.
Shiv raises his hand to the screen, which flies up, revealing Cobra and Leviathan, who bound down the backstage stairs to the front of the stage. Leviathan leaps off the last step and lands next to Shiv with a thud that shakes the whole place. Katjee darts forward, sinking to his knees and sliding all the way to the front, so close I can see the silver insignia on his red bandanna. He’s looking straight out at the crowd, but if he looked down right now, he could see us.
The whole arena is glittering with flashing cell phone lights and glowy finger gloves.
And then I remember.
Lying in bed
The morning in the graveyard.
The evening I spent sitting in my chair.
The whole next day in darkness.
The evening lights flickering through my jacket pocket.
This concert must be the lights, flickering through my jacket pocket right now. It has to be. That just leaves…
More darkness. The morning in the graveyard.
Isaiah rests his hands on my forehead for support, and I wonder if his abs are getting tired from sitting upright like this on my shoulders. I bump him up again as the three gods on stage launch into the song I already know is coming—the song everyone in this place probably knows by heart.
“Bangin’, ballin’, bobbin’, bouncin’, bumpin’ Black Dragon.
Got them bottles poppin’, yeah we hoppin’ in the station wagon.”
God, they’re wicked live. Isaiah is bouncing himself up and down on my neck now, his thighs so heavy on my shoulders I’m afraid I might break my collarbone. But I adjust one of his legs, and I keep going. I can’t put him down, not when we’re in the middle of the first Shiv song we rapped together.
“Bitch, yo’ Lam ain’t paid off, made of money? More like made o’ debt. Bet.
Call me when yo credit score is set like Aquanet. Yeh.”
What other rapper out there finds a way to make money management sound hella tight? I read in Rolling Stone once that he owns exactly two cars—a 2014 Tesla and a white Range Rover SUV, which were a combined $150,000. When other rappers are out here driving half-million-dollar Lambos and multimillion-dollar Bugattis, dropping a hundred Gs on a single piece of jewelry, modest is a tragic understatement.
“Let my crew find out you slingin’, bringin’ Crissy to my shows, bruh.
Shit turn you a zombie, leave yo body for the crows, bruh.”
At this lyric, Leviathan drops his huge ass into the Harlem Shake—the real one. He’s from Harlem, actually. Born Leon Hamilton, he had his own stint with crystal meth that landed him in prison for twelve years, and he’s been clean for as long as he’s been a Dragon. My chest swells. This is more than just a Harlem Shake for him. This—what he’s doing right now, with his mouth open wide as he swings his arms and shoulders wildly—is a victory dance.
I wonder if Mrs. Zaccari even knows what Crissy is. If she knew Shiv was out here, damning everyone who brings crystal meth to his concerts, she might feel differently about him. She might even relax her paranoia about these people around me—several of whom are actually white people in their twenties—staying in our neighborhood.
“Niggas think they’ll catch me slippin’, sippin’ on this juice, mayne.
Cobra got my keys cuz had enough to get me loose, mayne.”
Cobra Katjee, the short, spry guy who I’m pretty sure has never said a word out loud, slinks up behind Shiv and swipes a literal pair of keys out of his back pocket, holding them up to the audience and jingling them, before tossing them out into the crowd, sending them flying over Isaiah’s head and mine. Laughter overwhelms me, and I wonder how many of these people think those are his real keys. There might very well be a bloodbath behind us over some plastic silver baby teething keys. That jingling sound effect was just part of the song.
Shiv steps forward, crouching down at the edge of the stage and looking down into the sea of arms with glowing finger gloves and faces lit up by the stage lights. He reaches an arm down into the crowd and a rainbow of arms rises to meet him, like anemone tentacles. They’re so wild I’m surprised they don’t yank him down into the audience. I’m sure security is losing their shit at how intimate he’s being with them. That’s Shiv—big. Real. Authentic.
Calmly, as if he’s sitting in a library somewhere, and not standing onstage with hundreds of thousands of eyes on him, he slips something out of his pocket and into his mouth, his chest slowly expanding as the crowd erupts in even more furious screams. He stands. He clasps his fists. He breathes out through his nose.
Smoke plumes from his nostrils, cascading a strawberry scent down over the crowd. We’re close enough to smell it.
The Black Dragon has arrived.
“Y’all ready for a twist?” he asks, as the beat goes on. A twist? Like what? New music? Lava rising from the floor? New collab? Wait… is he going to bring his grandmother out onstage? Shiv’s grandma has been rapping since the eighties. The Rappin’ Granny, they call her. An absolute legend. I know that whatever Shiv’s got planned, it’s going to be big. I look around the stage, waiting for a plume of flames, or synthetic hail, or fireworks. But Cobra is beckoning to the crowd with his hands, his unnaturally long tongue hanging out of his mouth, walking forward like he sat on a horse for a tad too long. Leviathan has his Shaq-size hand raised into the air.
