Drown (6 page)

I don’t always find her; she spends a lot of time at the Hacienda, with the rest of her fucked-up friends. I find unlocked doors and Dorito crumbs, maybe an un-flushed toilet. Always puke, in a closet or on a wall. Sometimes folks take craps right on the living room floor; I’ve learned not to walk around until my eyes get used to the dark. I go from room to room, hand out in front of me, wishing that maybe just this once I’ll feel her soft face on the other side of my fingers instead of some fucking plaster wall. Once that actually happened, a long time ago.

The apartments are all the same, no surprises whatsoever. I wash my hands in the sink, dry them on the walls and head out.

CORNER

You watch anything long enough and you can become an expert at it. Get to know how it lives, what it eats. Tonight the corner is cold and nothing is really going on. You can hear the dice clicking on the curb and every truck and souped-up shitmobile that rolls in from the highway announces itself with bass.

The corner’s where you smoke, eat, fuck, where you play selo. Selo games like you’ve never seen. I know brothers who make two, three hundred a night on the dice. Always somebody losing big. But you have to be careful with that. Never know who’ll lose and then come back with a 9 or a machete, looking for the rematch. I follow Cut’s advice and do my dealing nice and tranquilo, no flash, not a lot of talking. I’m cool with everybody and when folks show up they always give me a pound, knock their shoulder into mine, ask me how it’s been. Cut talks to his girl, pulling her long hair, messing with her little boy but his eyes are always watching the road for cops, like minesweepers.

We’re all under the big streetlamps, everyone’s the color of day-old piss. When I’m fifty this is how I’ll remember my friends: tired and yellow and drunk. Eggie’s out here too. Homeboy’s got himself an Afro and his big head looks ridiculous on his skinny-ass neck. He’s way-out high tonight. Back in the day, before Cut’s girl took over, he was Cut’s gunboy but he was an irresponsible motherfucker, showed it around too much and talked amazing amounts of shit. He’s arguing with some of the tígueres over nonsense and when he doesn’t back down I can see that nobody’s happy. The corner’s hot now and I just shake my head. Nelo, the nigger Eggie’s talking shit to, has had more PTI than most of us have had traffic tickets. I ain’t in the mood for this shit.

I ask Cut if he wants burgers and his girl’s boy trots over and says, Get me two.

Come back quick, Cut says, all about business. He tries to hand me bills but I laugh, tell him it’s on me.

The Pathfinder sits in the next parking lot, crusty with mud but still a slamming ride. I’m in no rush; I take it out behind the apartments, onto the road that leads to the dump. This was our spot when we were younger, where we started fires we sometimes couldn’t keep down. Whole areas around the road are still black. Everything that catches in my headlights—the stack of old tires, signs, shacks—has a memory scratched onto it. Here’s where I shot my first pistol. Here’s where we stashed our porn magazines. Here’s where I kissed my first girl.

I get to the restaurant late; the lights are out but I know the girl in the front and she lets me in. She’s heavy but has a good face, makes me think of the one time we kissed, when I put my hand in her pants and felt the pad she had on. I ask her about her mother and she says, Regular. The brother? Still down in Virginia with the Navy. Don’t let him turn into no pato. She laughs, pulls at the nameplate around her neck. Any woman who laughs as dope as she does won’t ever have trouble finding men. I tell her that and she looks a little scared of me. She gives me what she has under the lamps for free and when I get back to the corner Eggie’s out cold on the grass. A couple of older kids stand around him, pissing hard streams into his face. Come on, Eggie, somebody says. Open that mouth. Supper’s coming. Cut’s laughing too hard to talk to me and he ain’t the only one. Brothers are falling over with laughter and some grab onto their boys, pretend to smash their heads against the curb. I give the boy his hamburgers and he goes between two bushes, where no one will bother him. He squats down and unfolds the oily paper, careful not to stain his Carhartt. Why don’t you give me a piece of that? some girl asks him.

Because I’m hungry, he says, taking a big bite out.

LUCERO

I would have named it after you, she said. She folded my shirt and put it on the kitchen counter. Nothing in the apartment, only us naked and some beer and half a pizza, cold and greasy. You’re named after a star.

This was before I knew about the kid. She kept going on like that and finally I said, What the fuck are you talking about?

She picked the shirt up and folded it again, patting it down like this had taken her some serious effort. I’m telling you something. Something about me. What you should be doing is listening.

I COULD SAVE YOU

I find her outside the Quick Check, hot with a fever. She wants to go to the Hacienda but not alone. Come on, she says, her palm on my shoulder.

Are you in trouble?

Fuck that. I just want company.

I know I should just go home. The cops bust the Hacienda about twice a year, like it’s a holiday. Today could be my lucky day. Today could be our lucky day.

You don’t have to come inside. Just hang with me a little.

If something inside of me is saying no, why do I say, Yeah, sure?

We walk up to Route 9 and wait for the other side to clear. Cars buzz past and a new Pontiac swerves towards us, a scare, streetlights flowing back over its top, but we’re too lifted to flinch. The driver’s blond and laughing and we give him the finger. We watch the cars and above us the sky has gone the color of pumpkins. I haven’t seen her in ten days, but she’s steady, her hair combed back straight, like she’s back in school or something. My mom’s getting married, she says.

To that radiator guy?

No, some other guy. Owns a car wash.

That’s real nice. She’s lucky for her age.

You want to come with me to the wedding?

I put my cigarette out. Why can’t I see us there? Her smoking in the bathroom and me dealing to the groom. I don’t know about that.

My mom sent me money to buy a dress.

You still got it?

Of course I got it. She looks and sounds hurt so I kiss her. Maybe next week I’ll go look at dresses. I want something that’ll make me look good. Something that’ll make my ass look good.

We head down a road for utility vehicles, where beer bottles grow out of the weeds like squashes. The Hacienda is past this road, a house with orange tiles on the roof and yellow stucco on the walls. The boards across the windows are as loose as old teeth, the bushes around the front big and mangy like Afros. When the cops nailed her here last year she told them she was looking for me, that we were supposed to be going to a movie together. I wasn’t within ten miles of the place. Those pigs must have laughed their asses off. A movie. Of course. When they asked her what movie she couldn’t even come up with one.

I want you to wait out here, she says.

That’s fine by me. The Hacienda’s not my territory.

Aurora rubs a finger over her chin. Don’t go nowhere.

Just hurry your ass up.

I will. She put her hands in her purple windbreaker.

Make it fast Aurora.

I just got to have a word with somebody, she says and I’m thinking how easy it would be for her to turn around and say, Hey, let’s go home. I’d put my arm around her and I wouldn’t let her go for like fifty years, maybe not ever. I know people who quit just like that, who wake up one day with bad breath and say, No more. I’ve had enough. She smiles at me and jogs around the corner, the ends of her hair falling up and down on her neck. I make myself a shadow against the bushes and listen for the Dodges and the Chevys that stop in the next parking lot, for the walkers that come rolling up with their hands in their pockets. I hear everything. A bike chain rattling. TVs snapping on in nearby apartments, squeezing ten voices into a room. After an hour the traffic on Route 9 has slowed and you can hear the cars roaring on from as far up as the Ernston light. Everybody knows about this house; people come from all over.

I’m sweating. I walk down to the utility road and come back. Come on, I say. An old fuck in a green sweat suit comes out of the Hacienda, his hair combed up into a salt-and-pepper torch. An abuelo type, the sort who yells at you for spitting on his sidewalk. He has this smile on his face—big, wide, shit-eating. I know all about the nonsense that goes on in these houses, the ass that gets sold, the beasting.

Hey, I say and when he sees me, short, dark, unhappy, he breaks. He throws himself against his car door. Come here, I say. I walk over to him slow, my hand out in front of me like I’m armed. I just want to ask you something. He slides down to the ground, his arms out, fingers spread, hands like starfishes. I step on his ankle but he doesn’t yell. He has his eyes closed, his nostrils wide. I grind down hard but he doesn’t make a sound.

WHILE YOU WERE GONE

She sent me three letters from juvie and none of them said much, three pages of bullshit. She talked about the food and how rough the sheets were, how she woke up ashy in the morning, like it was winter.
Three months and I still haven’t had my period. The doctor here tells me it’s my nerves. Yeah, right. I’d tell you about the
other girls (there’s a lot to tell) but they rip those letters up. I hope you doing good. Don’t think bad about me. And don’t let anybody sell my dogs either.

Her tía Fresa held on to the first letters for a couple of weeks before turning them over to me, unopened. Just tell me if she’s OK or not, Fresa said. That’s about as much as I want to know.

She sounds OK to me.

Good. Don’t tell me anything else.

You should at least write her.

She put her hands on my shoulders and leaned down to my ear. You write her.

I wrote but I can’t remember what I said to her, except that the cops had come after her neighbor for stealing somebody’s car and that the gulls were shitting on everything. After the second letter I didn’t write anymore and it didn’t feel wrong or bad. I had a lot to keep me busy.

She came home in September and by then we had the Pathfinder in the parking lot and a new Zenith in the living room. Stay away from her, Cut said. Luck like that don’t get better.

No sweat, I said. You know I got the iron will.

People like her got addictive personalities. You don’t want to be catching that.

We stayed apart a whole weekend but on Monday I was coming home from Pathmark with a gallon of milk when I heard, Hey macho. I turned around and there she was, out with her dogs. She was wearing a black sweater, black stirrup pants and old black sneakers. I thought she’d come out messed up but she was just thinner and couldn’t keep still, her hands and face restless, like kids you have to watch.

How are you? I kept asking and she said, Just put your hands on me. We started to walk and the more we talked the faster we went.

Do this, she said. I want to feel your fingers.

She had mouth-sized bruises on her neck. Don’t worry about them. They ain’t contagious.

I can feel your bones.

She laughed. I can feel them too.

If I had half a brain I would have done what Cut told me to do. Dump her sorry ass. When I told him we were in love he laughed. I’m the King of Bullshit, he said, and you just hit me with some, my friend.

We found an empty apartment out near the highway, left the dogs and the milk outside. You know how it is when you get back with somebody you’ve loved. It felt better than it ever was, better than it ever could be again. After, she drew on the walls with her lipstick and her nail polish, stick men and stick women boning.

What was it like in there? I asked. Me and Cut drove past one night and it didn’t look good. We honked the horn for a long time, you know, thought maybe you’d hear.

She sat up and looked at me. It was a cold-ass stare.

We were just hoping.

I hit a couple of girls, she said. Stupid girls. That was a
big
mistake. The staff put me in the Quiet Room. Eleven days the first time. Fourteen after that. That’s the sort of shit that you can’t get used to, no matter who you are. She looked at her drawings. I made up this whole new life in there. You should have seen it. The two of us had kids, a big blue house, hobbies, the whole fucking thing.

She ran her nails over my side. A week from then she would be asking me again, begging actually, telling me all the good things we’d do and after a while I hit her and made the blood come out of her ear like a worm but right then, in that apartment, we seemed like we were normal folks. Like maybe everything was fine.

AGUANTANDO

1.

I lived without
a father for the first nine years of my life. He was in the States, working, and the only way I knew him was through the photographs my moms kept in a plastic sandwich bag under her bed. Since our zinc roof leaked, almost everything we owned was water-stained: our clothes, Mami’s Bible, her makeup, whatever food we had, Abuelo’s tools, our cheap wooden furniture. It was only because of that plastic bag that any pictures of my father survived.

When I thought of Papi I thought of one shot specifically. Taken days before the U.S. invasion: 1965. I wasn’t even alive then; Mami had been pregnant with my first never-born brother and Abuelo could still see well enough to hold a job. You know the sort of photograph I’m talking about. Scalloped edges, mostly brown in color. On the back my moms’s cramped handwriting—the date, his name, even the street, one over from our house. He was dressed in his Guardia uniform, his tan cap at an angle on his shaved head, an unlit Constitución squeezed between his lips. His dark unsmiling eyes were my own.

I did not think of him often. He had left for Nueva York when I was four but since I couldn’t remember a single moment with him I excused him from all nine years of my life. On the days I had to imagine him—not often, since Mami didn’t much speak of him anymore—he was the soldier in the photo. He was a cloud of cigar smoke, the traces of which could still be found on the uniforms he’d left behind. He was pieces of my friends’ fathers, of the domino players on the corner, pieces of Mami and Abuelo. I didn’t know him at all. I didn’t know that he’d abandoned us. That this waiting for him was all a sham.