Portrait of a Borough Boy,
New York
The year is 1970-something. Somewhere before Sid Vicious ODs, but somewhere after The Exorcist has been released. Street address: scram, kid. The projects are full, and the overflow is at high tide. His full name is a twelve-syllable nightmare so he goes by “Mike” instead of “Michele” and divorces his confirmation name for the sake of saving time. He is the youngest child of the Trimboli family—an Italian family living smack in the middle of Brooklyn.
Mike’s brother, Sal, teaches him to walk. Not walk-walk, but walk, the New York way, with his shoulders squared, taking on seas of people like a WWII torpedo. Sal tells him to carry a stiletto knife; they’re a fraction quicker than switchblades, and when rival gangs chase Mike down the block, seconds can be his savior. Mike takes his advice, and Sal takes a boy’s arm and snaps the bone for calling him “Sally” during a pick-up game, grinding the boy’s sternum into the ruddy ground. Mike watches from the pitcher’s mound in silence. Crying never gets out bloodstains, anyway. Mike’s sister, Gina, gives him a fine-tooth comb, and it sits in the front pocket of his chinos, always greasy. This is the style—a leather jacket and ducktail with pomade. Mike likes jock-rock, weed, and women. He likes Bob Dylan and the local stray dogs a whole lot more. Frank Sinatra is infused into his bloodline; the lulls of Ol’ Blue Eyes and his father’s cigarettes, hatted with ash, are burned into his brain. Even twenty concussions into his latest hobby of boxing can’t take this from him—not yet. First, Mike wants to ask out Norma, the pretty Puerto Rican girl from school, and listen to Gina hum flirty pop songs. He will not mention his sister’s music taste to their devout mother whose back was broken by Sal when he fell from the second-story fire escape. He had been in hot pursuit of Mike and slipped. Their mother saw them as she was returning from errands, then reacted with warp speed the way good mothers do. Sal tumbled onto her below, her open arms useless against his gravity.
In the projects, everyone has that uncle they don’t talk about. It’s always the uncle that shows up to parties with the latest European wristwatch, the one who puffs on foreign cigars and is outfitted with sharp charm and manners—the one who probably packs a gun in the glovebox. Mike and his friend Tony talk about this over beers, holed up in Mike’s shoebox of a room, paint peeling, records spinning. Mike sends away to England for his records and plays them until their flimsy, paper covers deteriorate or rip, leaving the vinyl exposed to the world. He tears the covers fairly often, and Gina says it’s because he’s a klutz. Once, Sal had even pushed Mike out a window in a fit of rage for calling him “psycho,” and their parents believed Sal’s “Mikey tripped.”
Tony says his dad has a tattoo of an elephant’s head above his crotch. “The trunk is his dick,” he laughs and splashes beer on Mike’s sunken-in mattress. Tony is a giant; his brain isn’t as good as Mike’s, but that’s alright because his brawn is gold. Mike’s seen Tony throw guys down whole alleys. A friend of theirs even started carrying a tape measure to check how far the guys go; Mike and Tony call him “Professor,” even though Mike’s the one with the highest IQ, the one who tears through Kerouac and eats Vonnegut for breakfast. It’s okay. If Professor is the Superego, Mike is the Ego, Tony is the Id, and they’ve made survival into a sport. Every gang needs a strategist, and Mike delivers. Who else is going to think of hiding emergency weapons in cinder blocks and pipes?
If they’re ever caught alone, the Italian kids have their call for help: “Volare” by Dean Martin. They bellow, “Volare!” at the top of their lungs and nearby respondents follow up with a “Woah, Woah,” to let the caller know backup is on the way. They’ve all used it at some point, and all come flying down the block to save a neighbor or take some blows.
Tony suggests they drink on the fire escape. He opens the window above Mike’s mattress and barely manages to squeeze out. Mike could suggest Tony go out sideways, one broad shoulder at a time, but this is funnier; Mike wants all the comedy he can get. The boys at school don’t hang out with them as much now, mostly because they’re at that ripe age where everyone keeps getting shot, arrested, or bludgeoned to death.
Under the quiet moonlight—above the skinny dogs digging through garbage—Mike questions what allowed him to get this far. His entire, sixteen-year-old life is Bleecker Street beneath his sneakers, soaring over rooftops, leaping like his heart and bleeding as red. Their little neighborhood is surrounded by black and Puerto Rican gangs, and there’s always war between factions, boys with oiled hair versus sons with shining, dark skin. Everyone’s got rage.
From their spot on the fire escape, Mike can hear his father listening to the radio, some update about Vietnam slipping out the cracked, living room window. Mike considers the sensation of jumping from a plane, weighted with military gear. He’s not scared of falling. Nobody makes it past twenty here—guns have never made the reaper’s job easier. How much worse can the military be? He’s already fighting for free; he might as well get paid.
Tony twists the cap off another green-glassed beer, then flicks it from between his fingers. It sails down, down, down, and Mike drinks to ignore that he’s still aging after it bangs against the dumpster.
He’s not supposed to belong to someone, but he does. Norma, beautiful and brown, speaking rapid Spanish to match Mike’s Italian makes him glow. They meet in the middle of their mother tongues, have enough similar words to understand when they want to ignore English. He wants her to want him so he asks her out to a baseball game, ignoring that their skin color doesn’t quite match, hoping she’ll do the same. When she says yes, Mike walks home with a jig in his step.
They’re waiting on 161st street for the subway home when Mike notices some guys sizing them up. Norma stays lax, but her chatter about the game dwindles to silence. She squeezes Mike’s hand and asks if they should go back, wait a while at Yankee Stadium. When the tallest of the group turns toward them, Mike can see he’s covered in tattoos—he’s even got one on his forehead—and his skin is the same dark, tea-color as Norma’s.
Norma asks if they should leave. Then she says it as a statement, pulling at the sleeve of Mike’s leather jacket. He tells her, go. Now. Get help. Call his family. Norma doesn’t ask why—she already knows. “Volare” cannot save him; underground, there’s nowhere to fly, no backup waiting down the block. Maybe he should’ve run, too, but what’s new? He’s got a plan. He’s the strategist. Norma bolts out of the subway and Mike hears her start yelling for help as the guys rush him. He holds onto the sound of her voice as he puts all his weight behind a punch. He doesn’t feel his fist crunch one guy’s nose—his adrenaline is singing too loud, lighting up his pulse—and he doesn’t see when one of the guys withdraws a pipe from God knows where. But he does see the guy go to swing, opening up the front of his abdomen for Mike to kick. His foot never lands. At least, not on the guy’s body. The leader, whose forehead tattoos spells “ANGEL” in script lettering, throws something at Mike’s face. When the pain hits, Mike’s ready. Everything blurs, a hissing burn overtaking his sense as he falls to the ground, unsure if Norma’s still shouting.
Mike wakes up in the hospital with bandages around his face, unable to speak. A gang member threw acid in his face, Mike’s uncle with the nice wristwatch explains. “They saw you there with your dame. The dark-skinned one. Didn’t like that she was with a dago.”
Mike doesn’t cry. He’s not even sure he can with all the gauze. When his uncle asks what cracked his skull, Mike doesn’t remember—he was too busy thinking his eyes were melting—maybe it was the pipe, maybe it was the subway platform. All he knows is that after the acid, the leader and his jackals sent him to the ninth ring of Hell. As a Catholic, Mike’s got an idea of what that should feel like.
Dad never swears, and still doesn’t when he sees Mike mummified in the hospital bed. From beneath the cocoon of gauze, Mike hears his dad and uncle whisper. With her bad back, his mother stays when she can, brings him gifts he can’t see, flowers he can hardly smell. The world is pure white noise. The doctors say he’ll need glasses when the bandages come off. His eyesight won’t be the same.
He can talk again before he can see. His dad asks who did this to him, who exactly, and Mike recounts the huddle of boys with tattoos. The leader, a guy Mike recognizes as a Puerto Rican gang member, had that stupid tattoo, “ANGEL;” it was one of the last things Mike saw before he fell.
His father grunts. The scent of smoke lingers on his breath, “Angel, huh?” His dad mutters in disapproval. God-given bodies should not be vandalized—that’s how Dad thinks. “Don’t worry, Mikey,” Dad uses a rough hand to pat Mike’s leg, “He’ll get his, angel or not.” Then, Dad’s hand is gone, voice gruff and low as he drifts toward the door, “God rewards all.” Mike can almost hear the air part when Dad makes the sign of the cross, knows Dad’s doing it quick and sure because he always does. The footfall of Dad’s worn shoes echo as he leaves.
“Open it.”
The box is slight in Mike’s freshly unwrapped hands. It’s been a couple minutes since the bandages came off and seconds since his uncle has come into the foreground of his vision. Everything else is out of focus; Mike squints and makes out his parents standing behind his uncle. His uncle’s wristwatch reflects the harsh, hospital light, so Mike looks to the present on the lap of his gown. It’s small, wrapped with glossy, white paper. There’s a thin, red, satin bow tied around the package—the work of his mother, no doubt. Mike takes the present between his sweaty fingers, which are soft and white from being bandaged so long.
“Ah! How many times we gotta tell you, Michele?” His uncle fumes and shakes his head. Despite his impatience and blurry face, Mike knows his uncle’s grinning—he can hear it. His uncle prods again, “C’mon. Open it.”
Mike tears the paper despite trying to rip it neatly. The ribbon unravels and coils itself on his thigh. The lid slides from place with ease. There’s something flat inside, curling at the edge like warped newsprint. Mike’s fingers shake. He goes to pick it up and nearly drops the box.
His uncle laughs, “Do you like it?” The light caught by his watch shoots a tiny halo on the ceiling. Mike nods, eyes adjusting, and lifts the piece of tan, serrated skin from the box and reads, “Angel.”
Gabriela Everett is a creative writing undergraduate at Columbia College Chicago and presently lives in the South Loop. Everett’s previous publications include prose and poetry in Santa Fe University of Art and Design’s lit mag, Glyph, and Columbia’s Hair Trigger 2.0.