Eraser Tattoo

“Eraser Tattoo’s” central conflict is a private, intimate one, as Shay and Dante—who have been together as best friends and then as romantic partners since early childhood—must face the pain of a forced separation. Through this personal story, “Eraser Tattoo” also tells the story of a larger, societal conflict, as the story uses metaphor to draw connections between Shay and Dante’s private grief and the larger disruptions that come from gentrification and displacement.

Jason Reynolds uses imagery liberally to paint a vivid picture of life in Brooklyn. He writes that the neighborhood is “Alive, full of sounds and smells. A car alarm whining down the block. An old lady sitting at a window, blowing cigarette smoke” (3). This description gives a sense of the comfortable chaos of Brooklyn that the locals embrace. Later, Reynolds describes Shay’s childhood home. It’s a “small, two-bedroom, third-floor walkup with good sunlight and hardwood floors. […] Ugly prewar bathroom tiles, like standing on a psychedelic chessboard. This was where Shay took her first steps” (5-6). Reynolds’s descriptions convey a sense of familiarity and home, and of a family and community deeply rooted in their neighborhood. This descriptive imagery and the feelings it evokes ultimately help drive home a sense of how devastating it is for Shay’s family to be forced out of their home, and how disruptive gentrification is to the community at large.

In addition to imagery, Reynolds also uses dialogue and metaphor to elaborate the story’s ideas. “Eraser Tattoo” never states directly that Shay and Dante are Black, yet the relationship between Race and Gentrification is a key theme of the story. At one point Shay says, “Somebody gotta care for all of the stuff underwater that nobody can see. It’s a beautiful world down there, full of living things that most folks don’t understand” (7). Here, Shay (like the other characters) uses African American Vernacular English, which clues readers in to the fact that the characters are Black and living in a predominantly Black neighborhood, evoking the cultural richness that may be lost to gentrification. This line of dialogue, though, is most important because of the metaphor it contains. Shay’s description of marine life is a metaphor for people in America who are disadvantaged by racial and economic disparity. Just as underwater beings are invisible to most, Shay’s family and Dante seem invisible to the white people moving into Shay’s house. On a greater scale, people like Shay and Dante—people of color who are lower to middle class—may as well be invisible to the wave of affluent white gentrifiers who completely wipe out entire communities, in New York City and elsewhere.

Though, again, the story never mentions gentrification directly, the narrative often uses metaphor to convey the idea that the characters are victims of a societal issue wider in scope than just their own lives. In the opening paragraph, Reynolds writes, “Moments later, another truck pulled up to the same spot—a replacement. Double-parked, killed the engine, toggled the emergency blinkers, rolled the windows up until there was only a sliver of space for air to slip through” (3). Calling the new tenants’ truck “a replacement” parallels how the new tenants themselves are trying to “replace,” and, by definition, displace, Shay’s family. In addition, the phrase “sliver of space” is repeated again at the end of the story, when Shay’s mom can barely back her car out because the tenants didn’t leave her any room. The repetition of this phrase indicates its importance—it’s also a metaphorical reference to the community as a whole. Gentrification is closing in on Brooklyn and leaving the locals with less and less space in their own neighborhoods.

Many of the story’s conflicts (Shay and Dante parting ways, Shay’s family leaving, the neighborhood changing) ultimately tie back to The Inevitability of Change. When Shay kisses Dante, she likes the sound it makes—“like something sticking together, then coming unstuck” (5). This description of the sound is a metaphor for the changes the characters will soon undergo. Shay and Dante will soon come “unstuck” from each other, as will Shay’s family come unstuck from Brooklyn. Though these relationships—to Dante and to the neighborhood—have defined Shay’s life up to this point, she has no way to prevent them from being severed. Instead, she accepts that nothing lasts forever and prepares to embrace her new life in North Carolina. The fact that Shay likes this sound of “coming unstuck” contributes to her characterization by implying that she is more accepting of the change coming her way than Dante is (another sign is that Shay refuses to get Dante’s initial tattooed on her skin while Dante insists on getting hers). “Coming unstuck” suggests a newfound freedom—the chance to become something or someone new.

Though the story of Shay and Dante’s relationship serves as a vehicle through which to tell the larger societal story, it’s also significant on its own as it illustrates some of The Challenges of Young Love. The eraser tattoo Shay gives Dante has the double meaning of representing white people “erasing” Black communities, and symbolizing the lasting effect that Dante and Shay have on each other. The story closes with the lines, “He knew the sting wouldn’t last forever. But the scar would” (13). “The sting” refers to the pain of losing his first love, and “the scar” to the permanent ways in which Shay shaped Dante over the years. Again, these lines have a double meaning. “The sting” also refers to the acute pain Shay’s family and other families experience when they are forced to leave their beloved homes. “The scar,” on the other hand, represents the lasting damage that gentrification causes to Black communities, culture, and identity.

When Dante looks at his tattoo and sees that the skin there looks white, he thinks, “White where brown used to be” (13). This is another phrase that is repeated throughout the story. Dante thinks the same words when he remembers looking at the wounds on his knees, which Shay used to kiss. The phrase alludes to the fact that white people are taking over a community previously dominated by Black people. It’s notable that both cases involve Dante being physically wounded, which points to the suffering that white people inflict upon Black communities. The fact that Dante’s skin literally turns white in those places also suggests an erasure of Black identity as white people impose their own culture on historically Black communities.

“Eraser Tattoo” uses metaphor and other literary devices to communicate the devastating effects of gentrification through the lens of a young couple going through a personal crisis.