It gets to be late afternoon and I head outside. People cover the steps, laughing, chatting, mugging with selfie sticks. There’re cops in body armor over by the subway entrance, showing off their guns to the tourists so they’ll feel safe from New York. I get a Polish sausage and eat it at the feet of one of the lions. Fortitude, not Patience. I know my strengths.
I’m full of meat and relaxed and thinking about stuff that ain’t actually important—like how long Paulo will let me stay and whether I can use his address to apply for stuff—so I’m not watching the street. Until cold prickles skitter over my side. I know what it is before I react, but I’m careless again because I turn to look … Stupid, stupid, I fucking know better; cops down in Baltimore broke a man’s spine for making eye contact. But as I spot these two on the corner opposite the library steps—short pale man and tall dark woman both in blue like black—I notice something that actually breaks my fear because it’s so strange.
It’s a bright, clear day, not a cloud in the sky. People walking past the cops leave short, stark afternoon shadows, barely there at all. But around these two, the shadows pool and curl as if they stand beneath their own private, roiling thundercloud. And as I watch, the shorter one begins to … stretch, sort of, his shape warping ever so slightly, until one eye is twice the circumference of the other. His right shoulder slowly develops a bulge that suggests a dislocated joint. His companion doesn’t seem to notice.
Yooooo, nope. I get up and start picking my way through the crowd on the steps. I’m doing that thing I do, trying to shunt off their gaze—but it feels different this time. Sticky, sort of, threads of cheap-shit gum fucking up my mirrors. I feel them start following me, something immense and wrong shifting in my direction.
Even then I’m not sure—a lot of real cops drip and pulse sadism in the same way—but I ain’t taking chances. My city is helpless, unborn as yet, and Paulo ain’t here to protect me. I gotta look out for self, same as always.
I play casual till I reach the corner and book it, or try. Fucking tourists! They idle along the wrong side of the sidewalk, stopping to look at maps and take pictures of shit nobody else gives a fuck about. I’m so busy cussing them out in my head that I forget they can also be dangerous: Somebody yells and grabs my arm as I Heisman past, and I hear a man yell out, “He tried to take her purse!” as I wrench away. Bitch, I ain’t took shit, I think, but it’s too late. I see another tourist reaching for her phone to call 911. Every cop in the area will be gunning for every black male aged whatever now.
I gotta get out of the area.
Grand Central’s right there, sweet subway promise, but I see three cops hanging out in the entrance, so I swerve right to take Forty-First. The crowds thin out past Lex, but where can I go? I sprint across Third despite the traffic; there are enough gaps. But I’m getting tired, ’cause I’m a scrawny dude who doesn’t get enough to eat, not a track star.
I keep going, though, even through the burn in my side. I can feel those cops, the harbingers of the enemy, not far behind me. The ground shakes with their lumpen footfalls.
I hear a siren about a block away, closing. Shit, the UN’s coming up; I don’t need the Secret Service or whatever on me, too. I jag left through an alley and trip over a wooden pallet. Lucky again—a cop car rolls by the alley entrance just as I go down, and they don’t see me. I stay down and try to catch my breath till I hear the car’s engine fading into the distance. Then, when I think it’s safe, I push up. Look back, because the city is squirming around me, the concrete is jittering and heaving, everything from the bedrock to the rooftop bars is trying its damnedest to tell me to go. Go. Go.
Crowding the alley behind me is … is … the shit? I don’t have words for it. Too many arms, too many legs, too many eyes, and all of them fixed on me. Somewhere in the mass I glimpse curls of dark hair and a scalp of pale blond, and I understand suddenly that these are—this is—my two cops. One real monstrosity. The walls of the alley crack as it oozes its way into the narrow space.
“Oh. Fuck. No,” I gasp.
I claw my way to my feet and haul ass. A patrol car comes around the corner from Second Avenue and I don’t see it in time to duck out of sight. The car’s loudspeaker blares something unintelligible, probably I’m gonna kill you, and I’m actually amazed. Do they not see the thing behind me? Or do they just not give a shit because they can’t shake it down for city revenue? Let them fucking shoot me. Better than whatever that thing will do.
I hook left onto Second Avenue. The cop car can’t come after me against the traffic, but it’s not like that’ll stop some doubled-cop monster. Forty-Fifth. Forty-Seventh and my legs are molten granite. Fiftieth and I think I’m going to die. Heart attack far too young; poor kid, should’ve eaten more organic; should’ve taken it easy and not been so angry; the world can’t hurt you if you just ignore everything that’s wrong with it; well, not until it kills you anyway.
I cross the street and risk a look back and see something roll onto the sidewalk on at least eight legs, using three or four arms to push itself off a building as it careens a little … before coming straight after me again. It’s the Mega Cop, and it’s gaining. Oh shit oh shit oh shit please no.
Only one choice.
Swing right. Fifty-Third, against the traffic. An old folks’ home, a park, a promenade … fuck those. Pedestrian bridge? Fuck that. I head straight for the six lanes of utter batshittery and potholes that is FDR Drive, do not pass Go, do not try to cross on foot unless you want to be smeared halfway to Brooklyn. Beyond it? The East River, if I survive. I’m even freaked out enough to try swimming in that fucking sewage. But I’m probably gonna collapse in the third lane and get run over fifty times before anybody thinks to put on brakes.
Behind me, the Mega Cop utters a wet, tumid hough, like it’s clearing its throat for swallowing. I go
over the barrier and through the grass into fucking hell I go one lane silver car two lanes horns horns horns three lanes SEMI WHAT’S A FUCKING SEMI DOING ON THE FDR IT’S TOO TALL YOU STUPID UPSTATE HICK screaming four lanes GREEN TAXI screaming Smart Car hahaha cute five lanes moving truck six lanes and the blue Lexus actually brushes up against my clothes as it blares past screaming screaming screaming
screaming
screaming metal and tires as reality stretches, and nothing stops for the Mega Cop; it does not belong here and the FDR is an artery, vital with the movement of nutrients and strength and attitude and adrenaline, the cars are white blood cells and the thing is an irritant, an infection, an invader to whom the city gives no consideration and no quarter
screaming, as the Mega Cop is torn to pieces by the semi and the taxi and the Lexus and even that adorable Smart Car, which actually swerves a little to run over an extra-wiggly piece. I collapse onto a square of grass, breathless, shaking, wheezing, and can only stare as a dozen limbs are crushed, two dozen eyes squashed flat, a mouth that is mostly gums riven from jaw to palate. The pieces flicker like a monitor with an AV cable short, translucent to solid and back again—but FDR don’t stop for shit except a presidential motorcade or a Knicks game, and this thing sure as hell ain’t Carmelo Anthony. Pretty soon there’s nothing left of it but half-real smears on the asphalt.
I’m alive. Oh, God.
I cry for a little while. Mama’s boyfriend ain’t here to slap me and say I’m not a man for it. Daddy would’ve said it was okay—tears mean you’re alive—but Daddy’s dead. And I’m alive.
With limbs burning and weak, I drag myself up, then fall again. Everything hurts. Is this that heart attack? I feel sick. Everything is shaking, blurring. Maybe it’s a stroke. You don’t have to be old for that to happen, do you? I stumble over to a garbage can and think about throwing up into it. There’s an old guy lying on the bench—me in twenty years, if I make it that far. He opens one eye as I stand there gagging and purses his lips in a judgy way, like he could do better dry-heaves in his sleep.
He says, “It’s time,” and rolls over to put his back to
me.
Time. Suddenly I have to move. Sick or not, exhausted or not, something is … pulling me. West, toward the city’s center. I push away from the can and hug myself as I shiver and stumble toward the pedestrian bridge. As I walk over the lanes I previously ran across, I look down onto flickering fragments of the dead Mega Cop, now ground into the asphalt by a hundred car wheels. Some globules of it are still twitching, and I don’t like that. Infection, intrusion. I want it gone.
We want it gone. Yes. It’s time.
I blink and suddenly I’m in Central Park. How the fuck did I get here? Disoriented, I realize only as I see their black shoes that I’m passing another pair of cops, but these two don’t bother me. They should—skinny kid shivering like he’s cold on a June day; even if all they do is drag me off somewhere to shove a plunger up my ass, they should react to me. Instead, it’s like I’m not there. Miracles exist, Ralph Ellison was right, any NYPD you can walk away from, hallelujah.
The Lake. Bow Bridge: a place of transition. I stop here, stand here, and I know … everything.
Everything Paulo’s told me: It’s true. Somewhere beyond the city, the Enemy is awakening. It sent forth its harbingers and they have failed, but its taint is in the city now, spreading with every car that passes over every now-microscopic iota of the Mega Cop’s substance, and this creates a foothold. The Enemy uses this anchor to drag itself up from the dark toward the world, toward the warmth and light, toward the defiance that is me, toward the burgeoning wholeness that is my city. This attack is not all of it, of course. What comes is only the smallest fraction of the Enemy’s old, old evil—but that should be more than enough to slaughter one lowly, worn-out kid who doesn’t even have a real city to protect him.
Not yet. It’s time. In time? We’ll see.
On Second, Sixth, and Eighth avenues, my water breaks. Mains, I mean. Water mains. Terrible mess, gonna fuck up the evening commute. I shut my eyes and I am seeing what no one else sees. I am feeling the flex and rhythm of reality, the contractions of possibility. I reach out and grip the railing of the bridge before me and feel the steady, strong pulse that runs through it. You’re doing good, baby. Doing great.
Something begins to shift. I grow bigger, encompassing. I feel myself upon the firmament, heavy as the foundations of a city. There are others here with me, looming, watching—my ancestors’ bones under Wall Street, my predecessors’ blood ground into the benches of Christopher Park. No, new others, of my new people, heavy imprints upon the fabric of time and space. São Paulo squats nearest, its roots stretching all the way to the bones of dead Machu Picchu, watching sagely and twitching a little with the memory of its own relatively recent traumatic birth. Paris observes with distant disinterest, mildly offended that any city of our tasteless upstart land has managed this transition; Lagos exults to see a new fellow who knows the hustle, the hype, the fight. And more, many more, all of them watching, waiting to see if their numbers increase. Or not. If nothing else, they will bear witness that I, we, were great for one shining moment.
“We’ll make it,” I say, squeezing the railing and feeling the city contract. All over the city, people’s ears pop, and they look around in confusion. “Just a little more. Come on.” I’m scared, but there’s no rushing this. Lo que pasa, pasa—damn, now that song is in my head, in me like the rest of New York. It’s all here, just like Paulo said. There’s no gap between me and the city anymore.
And as the firmament ripples, slides, tears, the Enemy writhes up from the deeps with a reality-bridging roar—
But it is too late. The tether is cut and we are here. We become! We stand, whole and hale and independent, and our legs don’t even wobble. We got this. Don’t sleep on the city that never sleeps, son, and don’t fucking bring your squamous eldritch bullshit here.
I raise my arms and avenues leap. (It’s real but it’s not. The ground jolts and people think, Huh, subway’s really shaky today.) I brace my feet and they are girders, anchors, bedrock. The beast of the deeps shrieks and I laugh, giddy with postpartum endorphins. Bring it. And when it comes at me I hip-check it with the BQE, backhand it with Inwood Park, drop the South Bronx on it like an elbow. (On the evening news that night, ten construction sites will report wrecking-ball collapses. City safety regulations are so lax; terrible, terrible.) The Enemy tries some kind of fucked-up wiggly shit—it’s all tentacles—and I snarl and bite into it ’cause New Yorkers eat damn near as much sushi as Tokyo, mercury and all.
Oh, now you’re crying! Now you wanna run? Nah, son. You came to the wrong town. I curb stomp it with the full might of Queens and something inside the beast breaks and bleeds iridescence all over creation. This is a shock, for it has not been truly hurt in centuries. It lashes back in a fury, faster than I can block, and from a place that most of the city cannot see, a skyscraper-long tentacle curls out of nowhere to smash into New York Harbor. I scream and fall, I can hear my ribs crack, and—no!—a major earthquake shakes Brooklyn for the first time in decades. The Williamsburg Bridge twists and snaps apart like kindling; the Manhattan groans and splinters, though thankfully it does not give way. I feel every death as if it is my own.
Fucking kill you for that, bitch, I’m not-thinking. The fury and grief have driven me into a vengeful fugue. The pain is nothing; this ain’t my first rodeo. Through the groan of my ribs I drag myself upright and brace my legs in a pissing-off-the-platform stance. Then I shower the Enemy with a one-two punch of Long Island radiation and Gowanus toxic waste, which burn it like acid. It screams again in pain and disgust, but Fuck you, you don’t belong here, this city is mine, get out! To drive this lesson home I cut the bitch with LIRR traffic, long vicious honking lines; and to stretch out its pain I salt these wounds with the memory of a bus ride to LaGuardia and back.
And just to add insult to injury? I backhand its ass with Hoboken, raining the drunk rage of ten thousand dudebros down on it like the hammer of God. Port Authority makes it honorary New York, motherfucker; you just got Jerseyed.
The Enemy is as quintessential to nature as any city. We cannot be stopped from becoming, and the Enemy cannot be made to end. I hurt only a small part of it—but I know damn well I sent that part back broken. Good. Time ever comes for that final confrontation, it’ll think twice about taking me on again.
Me. Us. Yes.
When I relax my hands and open my eyes to see Paulo striding along the bridge toward me with another goddamned cigarette between his lips, I fleetingly see him for what he is again: the sprawling thing from my dream, all sparkling spires and reeking slums and stolen rhythms made over with genteel cruelty. I know that he glimpses what I am, too, all the bright light and bluster of me. Maybe he’s always seen it, but there is admiration in his gaze now, and I like it. He comes to help support me with his shoulder, and he says, “Congratulations,” and I grin.
I live the city. It thrives and it is mine. I am its worthy avatar, and together? We will never be afraid again.
* * *
Fifty years later.
I sit in a car, watching the sunset from Mulholland Drive. The car is mine; I’m rich now. The city is not mine, but that’s all right. The person is coming who will make it live and stand and thrive in the ancient way … or not. I know my duty, respect the traditions. Each city must emerge on its own or die trying. We elders merely guide, encourage. Stand witness.
There: a dip in the firmament near the Sunset Strip. I can feel the upwelling of loneliness in the soul I seek. Poor, empty baby. Won’t be long now, though. Soon—if she survives—she’ll never be alone again.
I reach for my city, so far away, so inseverable from myself. Ready? I ask New York.
Fuck yeah, it answers, filthy and fierce.
We go forth to find this city’s singer, and hopefully to hear the greatness of its birthing song.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Begin Reading
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 by N. K. Jemisin
Art copyright © 2016 by Richie Pope
N. K. Jemisin, The City Born Great
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