As we went to the Apocalypse, we heard, “Get out of the way!” and “Clear! Clear!” and here come four police officers with their hands on their guns, running the opposite direction of us. It was kind of odd that they were yelling, “Clear! Clear!” since there was hardly anyone walking the wide concrete paths of Six Flags.
The officers were making brief contact with everyone they passed and asking them questions, running backward during these interactions and when they got to us it was a black, female cop who asked the questions.
“Have you seen a short Mexican boy with a gun?”
“A Mexican boy with a gun?”
“What’s your name, young lady?”
“Clarity.”
The woman is leaning into Clarity’s face.
“Where are you coming from, Clarity?”
“The people mover.”
This woman screwed up her face.
“The people mover? What the fuck is that?”
“The Orient Express? It’s number 12 on your map.”
“Are you trying to be smart with me young lady?”
Clarity laughs.
“No.”
“Then why are you laughing?”
The cop un-snaps her gun and puts her other hand on her radio.
“Why are you laughing?”
“ ‘Cause. Everyone knows what the people mover is.”
“Are you insinuating that I’m new here? That I don’t know how to do my job?”
“I’m not insinuating anything.”
“What about you, Bucky Boy, you coming from the people mover, too? What I need to know,” she says, before I can answer, “is whether you’ve seen a short Mexican boy with a gun.”
“I haven’t seen anyone with a gun,” I say.
And Clarity says, “Why, did somebody shoot someone?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, a short Mexican kid shot his friend in the eye.”
“Why do you keep saying, ‘Mexican?’ ”
“Because this kid is a fucking Mexican!”
“But I mean? Hispanic? Latino?”
“Are you trying to be a smart ass?”
“I’m trying to be respectful.”
“Well in my line of work we don’t always have time to be respectful. My job is to make sure this Mexican punk doesn’t shoot anyone else in the eye. We might have to close the park.”
“No, please. My sister has an audition today and we drove all the way from Phoenix.”
“What’s she auditioning for?”
“Wonder Woman.”
“She got the kind of looks that part requires?”
“Yes, ma’am, she does.”
Then this rude black cop looks at Clarity a little too long and you can tell she’s thinking that Clarity’s sister must have got the Wonder Woman genes in the family because there ain’t no way this girl here could play Wonder Woman.
“She’s a lot prettier than me,” Clarity says.
“Well we’ll try not to shut the park down if we don’t have to.”
“Thanks. I mean this is her shot. If she gets this job she can move to LA and..you know..live her dream.”
“No offense, but you don’t get out to Six Flags that often, do you?” this cop says.
“No.”
“Well, look. Good luck to your sister and everything, and I hope she gets to live her dream, but this isn’t the best place to work these days. Six days out of seven we have to shut down the park ‘cause some dumb Mexican shoots someone.”
“Six days out of seven?”
“Are these fatal shootings?”
“Yes, six days out of seven and yes, they are fatal shootings. You don’t know anything about this neighborhood, do you?”
“No.”
“Well it used to be white. All white. And back in them days there wasn’t no shootings at no Six Flags. There was the occasional rollercoaster derailment but you expect that when you go to an amusement park—am I right? What you don’t expect is for some Mexican punk to shoot some other Mexican punk over the fact that one of ‘em touched the other one’s girlfriend or jumped his place in line. That’s the kind of thing that white people definitely do not expect when they go to an amusement park. And black folk, we just glad to get out of Compton and shit ourselves on some rollercoaster with a bunch of white people, you know?”
“All I’m saying,” says Clarity, “is that Mexican is likely not the right word to describe this kid—”
“This kid who shot his friend in the eye?”
“Whatever. If he was born in America, then he’s an American.”
“Lemme see inside that purse.”
“Why?”
“ ‘Cause I want to know what’s inside.”
“There’s no gun, if that’s what you’re looking for—”
“You need a warrant to search her purse anyway,” I say.
“Not if she consents. Do you consent for me to search your purse.”
Clarity’s purse is this tiny white thing. I’m having trouble imagining a gun that would fit inside it.
She shoves it toward the officer.
“Unzip it.”
The officer looks inside.
She looks up at Clarity with her eyebrows raised.
“Mistys?”
“Yes, Jesus fuck, I smoke Mistys. First he’s giving me a hard time about it and now you’re giving me a hard time about it. Yes, ok, I smoke Mistys. I smoke Parliaments, too. What’s the big stigma about Mistys? They’re thin. They come in a rainbow package. Do you interpret that as a symbol of gayness or something?”
“Are you asking me?”
“I’m asking both of you.”
The cop looks at Clarity, then at me, then back at Clarity.
“Is he your boyfriend?”
Clarity snatches her purse back to her chest, zips it.
“No he’s not my boyfriend and no you can’t search my purse. Why don’t you get back to finding that short Mexican who shot his friend in the eye so you don’t have to close the park and my sister can have her audition.”
“Well, I’ll say this,” says the cop. “Good luck to your sister. I hope she becomes Wonder Woman and gets to move to LA and live her dream. But in my opinion you’re better off staying in Phoenix and living your dream there. They’re gonna raze this place to the ground.”
“Six Flags?”
“Yes Six Flags. Now that this neighborhood is all Mexicans and motherfuckers keep gettin’ shot, nobody wants to come here anymore..‘cept more Mexicans. Yeah, pretty soon this park is gonna close. Move it to somewhere safer, where the white people is. White people don’t mind a couple niggers in their park but they don’t want it to be eighty percent Mexican. You two be careful.”
She tips her imaginary hat and goes down the path yelling, “Get out of the way” and “Clear! Clear!” to a mostly empty path, looking for this young murderer.
“That was weird,” Clarity says. “Do you really think someone shoots someone almost every day in here?”
“I think she’s part of the act.”
“What?”
“You know, like a character. Purity is Wonder Woman. They have some girl playing a princess. Maybe those cops are just characters designed to give the place a more realistic feel, so that people from urban areas don’t feel uncomfortable because they haven’t been harassed by cops throughout the course of a single day.”
Purity looks at me like I’m off my axis.
“I will take one of those faggoty-ass dyke lesbian Mexican Mistys, though.”
Clarity snorts, and a little bit of snot comes out her nose.
“Fuck! You made me snot myself. You fuck-nigger! There’s actual snot coming out my nose!”
She wipes her face with the hem of her shirt and hands me a cigarette.