I ain’t know that a berry, you say.
That ain’t no berry, Abu says.
Nigga, read the sign.
Abu reads the caption stenciled in negative light. So what? Yo mamma a berry too.
Yo greasy grandmamma.
Abu slaps you across your nape.
Punk. I’m gon kick yo ass.
Try it. You can’t catch me.
Yo fat ass can’t run.
Run fast enough to keep up wit yo mamma.
This ain’t no time to be talkin bout nobody’s mamma. We can do that later. Look and learn.
The paruru species is an extraordinarily poor volunteer. It is difficult for this variety to spread quickly without a very active crusade on its behalf.
How come everything got a foreign name?
How come you got a foreign name?
My name ain’t foreign. It’s black.
You move inside a giant stone head. Speak through its hollow mouth.
Abu, tell Geraldine she can’t live in here.
Tell Sheila that.
You enter a hall of flowing mirrors that pull you along — powerless, let go, ride it out — swim your shape into shifting images of possibility. From the crest of a waterfall, you look down on a miniature of the city. Tar Lake loops around all five boxes of the city. Slims at the state line. Your eyes roam all points of the compass. They sharpen. The city stretches. So vast and yet so small that your eyes can take and piece together snatches of geography, yards, alleyways, rivers.
See, you say, that’s Central.
That’s where we live.
Yes.
Can you see my house?
No.
There go Eddyland to the west. Abu’s eyes spin like compass arrows.
That’s where my Uncle John live.
North Park to the north.
That’s where my sister live.
Porsha?
Who else.
South Lincoln to the south.
Kankakee County just south of it.
That’s where my aunt Beulah live.
Where?
Kankakee County. Decatur. She old. Real old.
Kings to the east. Liberty Island, a shapeless object stuck in Tar Lake, completely surrounded by plastic water.
That’s where Gracie live. And Jesus. They jus moved there.
In all that water?
Yeah. But Uncle John know how to make the lake stay away from they do.
Buildings backward, you walk through century-old cobblestone streets. Board old streetcar trains iron-bolted to the floor. During the morning several negroes amused themselves by riding up and down in the various cars. We are unable to discover any reason or justification on the part of a few young men in creating riot and discord. A whistle burns blue air to black ribbons. Whistles were used as signals. One toot mean, Train approaching town. Two toots mean, We passing through. Jus passing through. Ain’t stopping. And the conductor stood in the caboose, swinging his red lantern. A locomotive works its rapid elbows. You and Abu dodge the big mean-looking steam eye. Climb into the black engine room. The sound of a train always reminds me of the clanging of steel doors, Sam said.
You got that right, Dave said.
Grab at the slow smoke of the engine.
One man stood on the track waving a warning light. When the train stopped, the armed robbers boarded the train and robbed the passengers of $20,000. Authorities couldn’t track their mobility. They were everywhere and nowhere.
Look over there.
You look. Shield your eyes at the brightness of a silver-fluted monster.
That’s a rocket, Abu says.
No it’s not. You need glasses. That’s a streamliner.
Zephyr. The first diesel-powered engine, 1934.
You think you know everything.
Matter cannot move itself.
Kinetics. The science of movement.
Physics. The study of movable bodies.
Theology. The study of the immovable mover.
Metaphysics. The study of—
Blackness calls. Find yourselves armored in oxygen. Moonscape shadow. You two walk slow-motion. Jump. Float. Float on. Float over old Cadillacs, balloon-round.
Running boards glimmer under hot lights. Chrome bumpers shine one against the other. Engines churn black ink. It’s all here. The world’s first cars look like carriages. Cars of the twenties like trains. Forties, cars. Fifties, missiles. Sixties, jet planes. Seventies, speedboats.
That’s Uncle John’s car.
No it ain’t.
He used to have one of those.
How you know?
I heard. I seen pictures. I rode.
Look. Abu indicates the World War II fighter planes spider-suspended at slanted angles from the ceiling, silk-seen, on invisible strings.
You and Abu run swiftly beneath them, guarding your heads. You pilot Abu through an iron tunnel to the battleship.
This gotta be the destroyer we saw on the bus.
Battleship.
Sight deceived: CLOSED FOR REMODELING.
Damn, it’s closed.
Double damn.
You study photographs that line the corridor. (They study you.) Fighter jets on a vast deck like insignificant mosquitoes. Ant-small men swab tunnel-long guns. Damn. Look how big that ship is.
Yeah. And look at them big guns.
Yeah. Real big. Bigger than this battleship.
Bigger than this whole museum.
Bigger than the whole damn neighborhood.
Bigger than the whole country.
Bigger than the whole wide world.
The iron tunnel opens onto a maze.
A bunker. That’s what this is, a bunker.