Fresh Ink: An Anthology

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Middle Grade | Published in 2018

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“Tags”Chapter Summaries & Analyses

“Tags” Summary

Willie and Big Eddie, two dead African American teens, are tagging a wall (writing their nicknames in stylized graffiti on it) in a “dingy urban hallway in some dingy urban city” (72). Big Eddie says he was told that as long as someone remembers you, you live on. He and Willie are tagging the wall in an effort to get people to see their tags as a way for them to live on in the afterlife. Big Eddie explains that he died in Marcus Garvey Park. He thought he could sell five pounds of weed, but it was a setup by the cops, and he was killed after pulling his gun.

They discuss how dying is a “funny feeling.” Big Eddie accepted his death only when people set up a vigil for him, but the sanitation department removed the offerings. Willie says they did the same for him, with a “Rest in Peace” sign. He comments on how, in death, they aren’t “resting,” as they continually tag walls to stay ahead of those cleaning them. D’Mario arrives and tells the two boys that a chemical spray now lets them easily clean walls. Willie says that it can be avoided if your tag is nice, as people see it as art and leave it up. Lastly, J-Boy joins them.

Willie tells the boys that he died trying to buy cigarettes. The bodega owner kept looking at him strangely, and Willie thinks the owner thought he was trying to steal something. To spite him, he wagged his gun in the store owner’s face, but the owner grabbed it and the gun accidentally fired, killing Willie.

D’Mario says he died in a drive-by shooting while sitting at home on his stoop with his sister. He adds that about a week before his death, he was in this hallway trying to buy drugs. When someone came rushing in, he reacted by shooting him, but it turns out the guy was just someone who lived in the building.

J-Boy interrupts, exclaiming that D’Mario killed him. He was rushing into the building to use the restroom and remembers the flash of a gun but nothing else. D’Mario says that J-Boy’s “boys” got him in revenge, but J-Boy is adamant that he has no “boys.” Claiming that the hallway is “spooked,” the boys begin to leave. When only J-Boy is left, he starts sobbing and then wipes away each of the tags left by the other boys.

“Tags” Analysis

This story takes the form of a play. It’s written in the supernatural fiction genre, as it follows four boys who are dead as they tag buildings in the area where they died. The use of this genre conveys how each boy feels about his own death. The boys explore their deaths through their conversations in the afterlife. Two of them, Big Eddie and D’Mario, died in relation to drug deals: Big Eddie sold weed to undercover police officers and got shot when he threatened them with his gun, and D’Mario was killed in a drive-by shooting after previously buying “blow” and killing someone during the deal. A third, Willie, was racially profiled by a bodega owner and, in response, started brandishing his gun out of “spite,” but the gun accidentally fired, killing him. These three deaths, all related to lives involving drugs and guns, are tragic in their own right. Even if one argued that the boys each brought their deaths upon themselves, it’s significant that their situations in life, situations that systemic racism enabled and exacerbated, resulted in their early deaths. Each character is a boy of color, only 16 or 17 years of age, living in what the stage directions call a “dingy urban city” (72). Growing up in poverty in an urban environment, encountering systemic racism at each turn, forced these boys to turn to a life of drugs and violence.

Although deaths like these are often politicized, with groups arguing against racial profiling, police brutality, and gang violence, the supernatural genre humanizes these deaths. The fact that this play is set in the afterlife allows for a revelation in the climax that the fourth death, that of J-Boy, resulted from his needing to use the restroom. As he rushed into his apartment building, he was shot by D’Mario, who assumed that he was a police officer. J-Boy responds adamantly that the drive-by shooting that killed D’Mario wasn’t retaliation, as he claims that he “didn’t have no boys” (84), meaning that he didn’t belong to a gang or group that would perpetrate violence as revenge for his death. As a result, the play ends with three of the boys departing, leaving only J-Boy left to “sit and bur[y] his head in his hands” while “sobbing” (85). Often, through politicizing the deaths of young boys of color (either using them as a symbol for needed change or blaming them for their own deaths), people forget that these boys existed as very real, very human people. As J-Boy’s story (and the humanization of his death) illustrates, change is needed, not because of politics but to help fellow human beings.