The Portable Promised Land Page 10

  Tiffany’s mother knelt to be eye to eye with Solomon.

  “Is this your painting?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did someone help you with it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Darling,” she said, “who helped you with this?”

  “My friend.”

  “Where is your friend?”

  “Inside the painting in the book at my house.”

  “What do you mean your friend inside the painting?”

  Miss Birdsong said, “I saw Solomon make this wonderful painting all by himself.”

  “I’ll give you five thousand dollars for it right now!” Xander’s father said.

  “Jack!” Tiffany’s mother said, offended by his brashness. Then she had a vision of future art historians recalling the discovery of an impossibly precocious prodigy in a kindergarten classroom and the art dealer who let the find of the decade slip through her fingers because of some obscure thing called decorum. “Sweetie,” she said, employing a grand dose of feminine seductiveness, “you don’t want to get wrapped up in the politics of big museums. I can have this on the wall of my gallery tomorrow. I have a client in Beirut who’ll simply love it!”

  “All right, ten thousand dollars!” Xander’s father said.

  The impromptu improvised auction went into warp speed as the ego-heavy pair pushed aside the flabbergasted Birdsong and threw money at the child. As her own little one tugged at her skirt, Tiffany’s mother got Frankfurt on the line and $20,000 came and went, then $30,000, the pair bidding and battling over the extraordinary piece, the novelty of a child-genius, and the bragging rights to this exciting new find. When Mariana finally arrived, Xander’s dad was on the line with his partners at the museum, Tokyo was getting involved, and it wasn’t at all clear if anyone was going to win.

  That night at home Solomon got a piece of paper larger than himself and spread it out on the floor. He used some books to keep the edges down, then organized his brushes, water, and paints. He tried to imagine something to paint. But his mind was blank. He tried to paint freely, but each time his brush met the page he thought of Tiffany’s mom and Xander’s dad and if they would like each stroke.

  After a while he put down his brushes and opened his favorite book. He sat staring at all of his favorite paintings, soaking them in, trying to imagine what Monet, Matisse, and Miró were thinking while they worked. When he felt tired he opened the book to The Block, laid down so that his cheek was pressed across the work, and closed his eyes.

  Once again he became a Beardenized cutout bouncing down the block as a cutout would, past the stores and the churches, right to the shadowy corner where the stranger was standing.

  “I can’t think of anything to do,” Solomon said.

  “Yes you can,” the stranger said. “You can think of ways to please your friends. That’ll be the end of you.”

  Solomon was listening closely.

  “Everything you do must be done for you,” the stranger said. “Just make something you would like if you hadn’t painted it.”

  Solomon opened his eyes and looked toward the window. It was still nighttime. He spread out another giant piece of paper and laid down his brushes, his water, and his paints. This time the brush began moving and his hand fought to keep up with it as a city sprang to life below him. All sorts of buildings in all sorts of colors flowed into view, but they were small, smaller than Solomon’s own fingers, and when nearly every bit of the canvas had been covered with little buildings he watched a giant figure spring up from the middle of the minicity, a watercolor boy who looked a lot like him. The boy was the only person in the painting and he was floating in midair.

  Solomon stepped back from the painting. It had come out of him so quickly it seemed someone else had painted it. Then, careful not to make a sound, he tiptoed through the hall, down the stairs, and into the kitchen. He got three Oreos and a glass of milk with three ice cubes and sat in the dark with his little snack, pulling the Oreos apart and eating one half at a time, then gulping milk while his mouth was filled with Oreo pieces, feeling his teeth get cold as the ice cubes touched them. He snuck back up to his father’s study, closed the big art book, put his head on the cover, and fell asleep with his cheek stuck to that cold, hard, square pillow.

  Soon he was back in Miss Birdsong’s class, seated between Jessica Wolcott and Henry Hopkins, painting again. But in the middle of painting another vision of New York City, a horde of adults poured into the room, men in dark suits and suspenders, women in skirts that covered their knees, some holding fistfuls of money, others thrusting tape recorders and cameras. The well-dressed mob knocked Miss Birdsong down and moved straight toward him.

  “Solomon! You’re so brilliant!”

  “Solomon, are you the new Basquiat?”

  “Solomon, would you do a piece on commission for our London contingent?”

  “I’m trying to paint,” he said.

  “What is it you’re trying to say about New York City in your work?”

  “When will you finish your next painting?”

  “Do you think you’re a celebrity painter and the quality of your work is less important than the fact that it comes from you?”

  “Leave me alone! I have to paint!”

  “Would you take three-hundred fifty zillion for the one with you flying? What about four hundred gakillion?”

  “Let me paint!” he screamed out. “Let me paint! LET ME PAINT!” The suited attackers disappeared. His eyes popped open. He was still in his father’s study. The window let in the dull high yellow light of a still-young morning. He felt himself empty, as if something was gone, though he knew not what. He opened the big art book to The Block and laid his head down on it. He tried to fall asleep but could not. His eyes were heavy, but the more he tried the harder it was. The morning sun was flooding in now. He heard the creak of footsteps on the floor below. He smelled croissants and turkey bacon. Soon Mariana would come and take him back to his regular life. But he wouldn’t go back. He couldn’t go back to a place where people made him live in between the lines when he knew there were places where you didn’t have to.

  He laid down in the middle of his own painting, in the middle of the little buildings and the big boy. He began to fall asleep, then heard footsteps heading toward him. He fought to fall asleep, prayed to fall asleep, but the approaching feet made his heart race. He knew from the sound there were only twenty-three more steps before Mariana reached the door. He tried to ignore her but could not. Steps nineteen, eighteen, seventeen. He forced his eyes closed and his mind blank. Twelve, eleven, ten. He poured himself into falling asleep as he had thrown himself into his two masterpieces. He heard six, and five, and four, but no more. He opened his eyes to a watercolor city. There were buildings, there were trees, there was silence. His shirt was cornerless like watercolors are. His arms were red and his legs were green. He was all alone and he was free to paint and he was happy. Mariana turned the knob and opened the door, but she couldn’t find Solomon anywhere.

  IT’S LIFE AND DEATH AT

  THE SLUSH PUPPIE OPEN

  Have you ever had a Slush Puppie? You know, that summertime syrup, sugar, and conglomerate-confabulated-crushed-ice concoction with grape, cherry, or watermelon flavoring that comes in a flimsy plastic cup with a cartoon drawing of a silly dog standing upright holding a cup that says Slush Puppie? Back in the day it was 85¢ for a small, $1.35 for a medium, and $1.65 for a large of thick colored syrup and so-called ice that cooled you down as it slid down your throat, painted your tongue, and made your head dizzy. And then the sugar rush hit and for a few minutes you could run around faster than ever. It was a two-part high that you overdosed on every September when the good people at Slush Puppie held a tennis tournament for boys called the Slush Puppie Open.

  Throughout the Slush Puppie Open there was a big Slush Puppie machine in the corner of the lobby of the club and as long as you were in the tournament you were allowed to go over as many times as you wante
d and make your own Slush Puppies. You could make one that was all syrup. You could use all the flavors. You could make one half ice and half syrup and wait until you’d sucked out all the syrup because there was always a bunch of ice left at that point and then add more syrup to the little bit of ice left and suck it down real hard before the ice and syrup had mixed together. That was a real sick head rush. The free Slush Puppies alone made the Slush Puppie Open the most popular boys’ tournament in New York, so every good player in the state showed up and played every match as hard as they could so they could hang around as long as possible and suck down free Slush Puppies. That’s why the Slush Puppie Open was the Wimbledon of New York junior tennis.

  And because all the top juniors in the state showed up, so did all those people who could take a young life to another level. The agents, the college scouts, the representatives of Bolletieri and Van Der Meer, men scrutinizing boys’ bodies and minds the way other men microscope yearling horses. To those men the boys who mattered most were the fourteen-and-unders. The twelve-and-unders were seeds in the ground and it was too hard to see if they would grow. The sixteen-and-unders were fully bloomed (or kindof doomed), boys who looked like men and played international tournaments and had already begun lifelong relationships with colleges or agents, if they ever would. But at thirteen or fourteen boys have just begun to mature. A trained eye can tell from the amount of hair on a slender pair of legs how much longer those legs would get, could regard the length of a thumb and compute how he would fare against some Swede’s ninety-seven-mile-an-hour kick serve slicing sharply off the court, could see the pupils of a champion in the eyes of a child, or could at least spot a consistently top-hundred player who would never be known outside the tennis community, but would still rake in good prize money and minor endorsement checks. So every fourteen-and-under understood that doing well in the fourteen-and-unders at the Slush Puppie would change your life.

  That year Kwame Christmas, our thirteen-year-old super-nova, Harlem’s top junior, and the Malcolm X Tennis Academy’s number-one chance to break into the pros, was supposed to win it all, but he was on the lip of a loss, which is why Mr. Killion, the Founder, CEO, and Absolute President for Life of the Malcolm X Tennis Academy, was in the clubhouse cursing, raving, stomping, shouting, and above all losing his mind. Kwame was about to lose, and worse, to someone he was supposed to beat: Paul Flambe, the least-respected member of the Malcolm X family. Paul was a pusher, and in the eyes of Mr. Killion, that was the worst thing anyone could be.

  Pushing is that completely unaggressive style of returning every shot with a lob or something loblike. But to Mr. Killion any sort of baseline game was pushing. “If you sit back waiting for your opponent to miss it’s like waiting for a handout from the white man,” he barked like an African despot in his six a.m. speeches. “That’s Uncle Tom tennis!” He was a five-foot man with a seven-foot aura, a giant potbelly, and a stingy sprinkling of wisps clinging perilously to the sides and back of his shiny, round, brown dome like mountain climbers about to plummet to death. “Attack the weak, my sons! Get into the net and cut their throats with slashing volleys! We’re not here to have points given, we’re here to take them! To attack those whiteboys with a fury! You must play this game the way Malcolm would’ve played it! He would’ve hit the ball hard because he was all about acquiring power for the Black community! He would’ve always held serve because holding serve is like controlling your community! And he would’ve served and volleyed because he loved to attack the white man!”

  After the speech we’d go off to play on the cracked, light-red hard courts of Harlem’s Neptune Park, the pavement like a landscape with little hills and craters. We wore doo-rags, T-shirts, and Air Jordans donated by local drug lord Cheesey Mack. We played in the literal and figurative shadow of the projects, the smell of weed wafting through the park all day long, freshly broken glass here and there, packs of dirty children and dogs roving everywhere, and all ten of Neptune Park’s courts filled with young dreamers, hell-bent on becoming pros or at least getting college scholarships. We jogged, drilled, served, volleyed, had Black history lessons during lunch, then chess classes for strategy, then group creative visualization of a world painted by Black supremacy, then back on the court for more tennis while loudspeakers boomed songs by James Brown, Marvin Gaye, and Bob Marley. When a six-year-old enrolled in Malcom X their parents signed a contract guaranteeing that twenty-five percent of the child’s first pretax million made in tennis would be donated to Malcolm X. Who knows if it would’ve ever stood up in court, but Mr. Killion made people feel he had a God-given gift for teaching tennis, and with him in their corner, a mountain of money was on the way.

  Kwame Christmas was four when he started at Malcolm X. Mr. Killion only took six-year-olds, but Kwame’s two older brothers had been in Malcolm X for years and the three-year-old Kwame had spent many days hanging around Malcolm X because it was cheaper than day care. The day Kwame turned four Mr. Killion took him aside and hand-tossed balls to him and watched with amazement as Kwame took his little sawed-off wooden racquet straight back, met the ball squarely out in front of him, and followed through over his shoulder. He’d absorbed tennis the same way other children soak up languages. Over the years he developed a steady forehand, smooth, compact volleys, and a monster backhand he could rip with topspin or cut under with such drastic slice that the ball would bounce and never rise more than a rock skipping across a lake. At night, when Mr. Kil-lion dreamt, he saw himself at the U.S. Open, in Arthur Ashe Stadium’s friends and family box, watching Kwame dismantle some poor, pale Russian or a hearty, warlike Australian, whipping backhands crosscourt with violence, then closing in to the net to knock a volley into the open court for a crowd-pleasing untouchable winner, after which the cameras flashed to him, Killion, giving Kwame a Black Power fist salute.

  Kwame had been abandoned by his dad, and for him, tennis was about roaring back at the world. It allowed him to exorcise the anger inside of him through using his arm like a bullwhip, swinging hard and free, lashing the ball back into his opponent’s half of the rectangle, lashing at the entire world at once. But he couldn’t deal with a sustained attack by another male. If the going got too tough, the fatalist in him kicked in.

  Paul Flambe was another species altogether. Paul didn’t wear a doo-rag. Paul talked proper. He used big words and pronounced everything all crisply. He’d signed on with Mr. Killion at age seven and developed, in unspectacular fashion, into a fine player who could sit on the baseline for hours and retrieve almost any ball. Despite Mr. Killion’s speeches, teachings, and propaganda, he never felt the need to crush his opponents, never wanted to attack the net, never wanted to end points suddenly. He found joy in stroking ball after ball, often opting against the easy putaway and choosing to place the ball where his opponent could return it so their rally could continue. Paul’s lack of killer instinct drove Mr. Killion to a rage and the coach often singled Paul out during his lectures as a pansy, a creampuff, a Booker T. Washington — a pusher.

  As Kwame stepped to the baseline to serve with match point against him, Paul prepared to return, and up in the clubhouse we all huddled around Mr. Killion, holding our breath. The only sound in the clubhouse was the quiet, slow slurping of a hundred Slush Puppies.

  The ball left Kwame’s fingertips, hovered above his head, and waited for his racquet’s order, with the weight of a hundred destinies on its light green skin. Kwame sliced it into Paul’s backhand, beginning a long series of strokes, the ball spinning tightly back and forth, flowing from Kwame to Paul and back. Kwame, too afraid to attack the net, sat at the baseline, directing balls everywhere, prodding Paul’s arsenal for a chink in his armor, a sort of spin, or pace, or placement that would be unreturnable. But Paul ran down shot after shot, eager to see the potentially final point continue one more second. The clubhouse watched the ball cross the net twenty, thirty, forty times, as Kwame failed to find a hole in Paul’s stingy defense and Paul passed up opportunities to win. T
he stroke count neared sixty, then seventy, and the clubhouse cringed and contorted with each new shot. One by one players on the other courts realized something momentous was happening and stopped to watch the never-ending point — now ninety, one hundred strokes long. Then, finally, Paul tired a bit, or lost a modicum of concentration, or just fell prey to the tide of bad luck floating through the air initiated by the flapping of the wings of a butterfly in Calcutta, and his ground stroke clipped the net, bounced up high, and landed on Kwame’s side, just five feet from the net, a hapless sitting duck. Kwame’s eyes got large and he ran up on that sweet little creampuff, pulled his racket back as though it were a machete, and fired the ball into Paul’s court. Only thing is, his aim was a touch low or his mind was underfocused or some other butterfly somewhere flapped its wings and now his shot clipped the net, jumped up high, and landed delicately in Paul’s court, the big opportunity snatched away by a thread of net cord. Paul moved in to handle his sitter. This one was too easy. He drove the ball away from Kwame, ending the epic.

  The clubhouse erupted, all except for that small pocket clustered around Mr. Killion, who now turned from the glass and began to seethe. This was not the way things were supposed to go. He knew they laughed at him, the other coaches, the agents. They thought his methods crazy. Kwame was the one he bragged about. He was the ace who would prove Killion a genius, who would play Malcolm X tennis at the Slush Puppie and win power and respect for Killion. Now they were laughing and not even behind his back.

  Mr. Killion groaned and gritted, pulled hair and gnashed teeth. “Damn that boy,” he said to no one in particular. “Can’t have Uncle Tom tennis in my way!”

  On a normal day we would’ve climbed into the van right then for the long drive back to Harlem and a hurricane tirade from Mr. Killion. But no one could go anywhere because it was raining biblical rain. The ocean was falling from the sky and the streets were becoming rivers and it seemed that maybe God was bawling. And, well, seeing as He knew what was going to happen next, perhaps He was.