Yelena Moskovich - Virtuoso

Zorka kept staring until, finally, Deandra turned around and said, “What’s the matter. You ain’t never seen a black person before?”

“Yes I have,” Zorka replied.

“So what’s your problem?”

“You look like rapper Missy Elliott.”

“You kiddin me?”

“No, I know you are not. I say you look like.”

“Hell, nah, yo Tiff, check out this Spice Girl over here calling me Missy cause she can’t tell no difference between us black folk!”

Tiff leaned over and turned towards Zorka.

“You think she look like Beyoncé?” Deandra said turning her thumb to Tiff.

“No,” Zorka said.

“Well, we think yo ass look like a Russian Spice Girl.”

“I am not Russian.”

“Shh,” the detention monitor said and all three girls turned to face forwards.

The detention monitor walked up to the three girls and nodded at each one. They all lowered their heads back to their homework and began to write. As the monitor walked back to the front of the class, Deandra snuck her eyes back over to Zorka and Zorka slid her eyes down at Deandra.

When the detention bell rang, Zorka walked straight up in front of Deandra and Tiff and stood at their desks.

“So… I can hang with you now?”

Deandra looked up at Zorka, then over at Tiff, then burst out laughing.

“Tiff, am I going crazy? Am I losing it, or is this Spice Girl over here be askin us if she can hang with us?”

“Dee, I think that’s really what she be askin tho.”

Deandra looked Zorka up and down.

“Okay, Spicey, tell me, why you wanna hang with us?”

Zorka thought about it. Then she shrugged.

“Cause you are like – revolution,” she said.

It’s true that most people referred to Zorka as “Carrie” or “Psycho”, but both Deandra and Tiff had their share of names as well. Tiff had a soft-spoken lisp and acne scars on her cheeks, and in middle school her grandma made her carry around the Bible and it became a game to try and make Tiff use God’s name in vain or say a cuss word. To this day, Tiff never used a cuss word, even if Dee threw them around as easily as she threw her fists around whenever anyone had a problem with the fact that Tiff was “her girl”.

…there’s fire… in the windows…

Big pieces, little pieces –

“We can’t go to my house. But Tiff live with her granny. You can come over. But we gotta take the bus,” Deandra said.

The three girls took the 14 bus Southridge bound and got off at Cesar Chavez Drive and walked the rest of the way.

“Otherwise it’s two buses,” Tiff explained, “and that’d take over an hour.”

Deandra added that, once they got a car, they could be there in fifteen to twenty minutes tops.

Cesar Chavez Drive was definitely in the Latino neighbourhood, Zorka observed. Across the street from the bus stop was a Taqueria Los Comales and a Church-type centre, tan stone with two-pronged towers and, built into the exterior, two golden tubes with a golden-shaped flame at the top, between which the letters spelled out La Luz Del Mundo, the Light of the World.

They walked past 20th, 21st, 22nd… up until West Lapham Street to a long five-storey apartment building. The exterior was lined with grainy cement between each floor. All the sliding windows on all the floors were identical, in between each window a bit of brown-red wall. The yard was punctuated with a series of oblong-trimmed shrubs, which looked as if they were embarrassed by the building, hunching into their own twigs.

Inside, the floor was thin, and somewhat rubbery, spotted with flecks of brown, and the matching maroon and brown carpet led to the elevator. They went up to the fifth floor, took a left, and went to the last door near the window facing the building opposite.

“My granny’s still at work. So no one’s home,” Tiff said, unlocking the door.

Zorka walked around the living room and picked up a photo of a young man, about sixteen, wearing a track uniform, shoulders wide, the muscles pushing out of his smooth dark skin, his face even, with eyes looking far, far out.

“He’s super fine,” Zorka said.

“That’s Ray-Ray,” Deandra said. “He dead.”

“Shit.” Zorka put the photo down. “Total shame!”

“For real,” Deandra continued. “He was super fine.”

“He got shot?” Zorka asked.

“Girl, you need to update yourself on some shit, seriously. You killing me with this racist feedback.”

“What?”

“Not all dead brothers be dead cause they got shot.”

“Oh ok,” Zorka replied. “I understand.”

“Ray-Ray was a star athlete and good grades, academic. He was gonna go to Harvard or some shit like that, plus he was fly as fuck. All the girls be chasing Ray-Ray… like even the white girls don’t know what to do with theyselves when Ray-Ray come around…”

Tiff came back in with a two-litre bottle of Sprite and three glasses, and Deandra got quiet. Tiff stopped and looked at Deandra. These girls could feel each other’s emotions like drops in the same river.

“Spicey just be askin about Ray-Ray…” Deandra admitted.

“It’s fine, Dee,” Tiff said. She set down the glasses and untwisted the cap to the Sprite. The bottle hissed. Deandra reached over and said, “Here I’ll do it,” and took the bottle in her hand and started pouring everyone a glass.

Tiff looked up at Zorka. “Ray-Ray was my big brother, so…”

“I sorry, Tiff,” Zorka said. “I say to Dee, he look so super-fly, I am sad to hear.”

“Man, I remember how all the girls be crushin on Ray-Ray, that’s when Tiff was all skinny and didn’t even pay me no attention, ha – Tiff don’t even remember too! But I saw Tiff right away, my heart near damn burst open right then and there!”

Deandra looked over at Tiff. Tiff caught her eye and dipped her chin gently down, smiling privately to herself.

“I saw you…” Tiff said quietly.

“Nah, you didn’t, I was like acting up all the time in front of you and you ain’t even be turning your head—”

Tiff looked over and gave Deandra a self-conscious smile, then bit her lip and looked down as if she’d have a laugh, but just stayed smiling.

Deandra gave a proud one-sided grin and said, “Anyway…”

Her face was warm and drifting for a second. It floated over to the photo of Ray-Ray. Then when it landed she picked up her thought.

“He was gonna get a scholarship, like first Milwaukee public brother to get a full ride to an Ivy. Cause he was smart too. Keeping his grade up. Plus he was the only Freshman on Varsity and by the time he was a Junior – shit that boy could sprint that final stretch! There was this white kid, Jacob somethin, he clocked in at like eighteen minutes something, like 18:42 or something, for the 5,000 metres, at the Washington Park meet, right? Well Ray-Ray fuckin shaved that kid, broke the goddamn record PERIOD, 18:08 right? That’s the photo, it was in the papers, like front and center, with them big letters, “RAYMOND THOMSON, THE LIGHTNING BOLT”. We all be going to them track meets just for him, to see him run (well, ’cept for me, cuz I had my eye on Tiff, ha!), but yeah it was like magic, I mean he was like floating across, but his legs cutting through the air… But then he just drop dead. Right in front of all our eyes too. It was at Jackson Park, the one between Forest Home Avenue and Jackson Park Drive, and 43rd cuts it off on the West, you know which one I’m talking about? Anyway it was the two-mile run, and everyone was waiting around the intersection of 43rd and Forest Home and the flags were all set up and shit, and of course who do we see on that home stretch but Ray-Ray sprinting his last yards, like a bullet with his chest out and his legs slicing the air in front of him, he was coming towards us like the Goddamn-Messiah!”