Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bro (70 page)

That same March, Jessica and Lourdes traveled to Troy for the custody proceedings. They stayed at Milagros’s. The following morning, Milagros went to work and planned to meet them at family court. Serena fed and dressed her twin brothers and put them on the preschool bus; then she, her mother, and her grandmother watched the movie
Gremlins.

Serena and Jessica cuddled on the love seat. “You didn’t notice my new tattoo,” Jessica prompted Serena coyly. She lifted her chin to the light and showed the mole. “You like it?”

“I told you already,” Serena said, brushing her away good-naturedly.

Jessica told Serena that the friend who’d given her the mole had promised to make over the six Boy George tattoos for free. She outlined her revamped body with her fingernail—the poem on her shoulder she’d cover with a butterfly. She then turned, gracing her shoulder with her chin; she’d blacken the
George
in the heart high on her right thigh. She wanted a new tattoo on her ankle: the two masks of drama, the inscription inverted—
Cry now, Laugh later
—in recognition of her new approach to life.

“What are you gonna be,” Lourdes asked, “a newspaper?”

“That’s art,” Jessica said.

“That’s fucking disgusting,” Lourdes said. “When a man kisses you—”

“If a man can’t handle it, that’s his problem,” Jessica interrupted.

“—
Property of George
across your ass?” Lourdes finished. She kept her eyes on the TV.

Serena went upstairs and dressed. Serena’s bedroom walls were covered
with magazine cutouts of Puff Daddy, Whitney Houston, Ginuwine, and Lauryn Hill. Beside them she’d hung photographs of Coco with her cousins, and of Jessica, alongside drawings Jessica had mailed from prison. In one, a melancholy angel dropped a handful of hearts from a sorry cloud. On the old entertainment center that she used for a bureau was a favor from her cousin’s
quinceañera
: a virgin bride afloat in a champagne glass, purple and white ribbons spilling from the rim. Serena and Jessica had already started to plan Serena’s sweet sixteen—two years would give them time to save. Jessica wanted to rent a hall and a limo. Serena daydreamed about passing out pamphlets the way promoters did for nightclubs; about the banner, announcing her party, ribboning behind the Goodyear blimp. She wished Cesar could be her ceremonial father, but he wouldn’t be out in time. Jessica popped in a house tape she’d brought, which Máximo had lent her.

“Jessica! Serena! Turn down the music!” Lourdes yelled. Then she joined them upstairs.

Serena outfitted her grandmother in a pair of sweats and guided Lourdes’s aching feet into sneakers, a gift from Cristobal. Lourdes shimmied to the music. Serena giggled. “I don’t know how I got to fit in my granddaughter’s shoes,” Lourdes said dramatically.

Cristobal had also given Serena a necklace that read
I Love My Baby,
but she couldn’t wear it because the clasp had broken. Serena chose Mickey Mouse earrings and the nameplate necklace Jessica had given her; Jessica had bought all her girls gold nameplates with the money from the lawsuit that hadn’t gone into George’s car. Serena liked jewelry, but she forbade her mother to wear the necklace with the boxing-glove charm that Jessica had retrieved from Lourdes; Serena had heard about how Boy George used to mistreat Jessica, and she didn’t like what it represented.

Everyone at family court but Serena agreed that Serena should finish the school year in Troy. Serena would also stay with Milagros for the summer and complete her internship at The Ark. The Ark, a nonprofit art, technology, and job preparation center, operated out of a first-floor apartment in a high-rise project. The mood of the space was airy, even though there weren’t many windows, and not much natural light. Serena loved going there. After school, she would drop her bookbag and plunk down in front of a state-of-the-art computer. As she waited for the modem to connect, she spun around on the office chair. Self-portraits of public-housing kids surrounded her, alongside message posters—
Keep It
Afloat
—and African proverbs and quotes from Olive Schreiner intended to boost the teenagers’ self-esteem.

One project involved developing her own Web site, on which she posted her autobiography, divided into sections—past, present, and future, as though the categories were conceivable and clear. It read, in part:

My name is Serena. I am 14 years old. I am Puerto Rican, 100%. . . . My favorite subjects are English and Math. Lunch is my favorite time of the school day because I get to talk with my friends. . . .

I lived in the Bronx for 8 years. I miss it. Whenever I have vacation, I go down to my grandmother’s house. . . . I always go to the corner store to buy candy. The candy is much cheaper down there than up here. . . . My birth mother was put in prison when I was five years old. . . . I decided to move in with my twin sisters’ godmother because they were living with her. She took me in with no problem. None of us are her real kids, but she still took all of us six kids in and raised us as her own. My birth mother is now out of jail, and I am moving with her to catch up on our relationship. . . .

In the future, I would like to be a teacher. I would first like to finish high school and go on to college. When I’m done with school, I would like to work on getting a nice house and getting a good job. Then I would like to get married and have two kids, a boy and a girl. Then I just want to raise my kids. When they are all grown up, I want to travel the world.

I want to teach kindergarten class because they are easier than older kids. I would like to go to Fordham University. It is in Bronx, NY, where I used to live.

Serena never finished her Ark internship, though; her grades in school were so awful that Milagros made her quit. As soon as the year finished, Serena moved to the Bronx.

F
rankie’s heady weeks as a doting father had for the most part ended by the time Coco took a job at Ames. Frankie still bought things for La-Monté, but during Coco’s shifts at work, Mercedes was in charge. She was exhausted, like her mother, and cranky. She lost her temper with her sisters, and sometimes she hit them—hard.

Meanwhile, a measure of peace characterized Cesar’s days. He was receiving a lot of visitors. Elaine loved to drive. She took her sons and Jessica’s girls to visit their uncle; when she could, Elaine took Justine and Giselle and Gabriel as well. Much to Lourdes’s disgruntlement, Elaine didn’t always invite her along on these expeditions. After Jessica got clearance from probation and a proper ID, however, Elaine arranged a family reunion. It was the first time Lourdes and her four children had been together in almost ten years.

Upstate, the twins would brag about the visits and show Mercedes the latest Polaroid photograph of Cesar. Her cousins seemed to know more about her father than she did. Giselle was pregnant, and her belly was bringing her closer to Cesar’s sisters, especially Jessica. Coco fumed, “So much they talk about family. Why they pushing my daughters to the side?” In July, the fighting between Frankie and Mercedes reached a crisis point. Desperate, Coco sent Mercedes down to spend a few weeks with Foxy.

Foxy was living with Hernan, the Vietnam vet, of whom Coco still disapproved. Hernan had moved from his barren room in a boardinghouse to a small studio off the Grand Concourse, which Foxy had transformed into a cozy nest. She had been approved for SSI because of her psychiatric condition, and her matchmaking days were done. By all appearances, Foxy was enjoying retirement: she had her new homegirls and her Newports and her bottle of Yoo-Hoo. Hernan, a few yards over, had his beer and his buddies and his dominoes. It was summer; the women from his block didn’t know her personal history; they hadn’t witnessed her hard times, and Foxy kept the conversations light.

Mercedes found staying with Foxy peaceful but dull. She accompanied her grandmother to the stations that comprised an older woman’s life—medical appointments and visits to the hospital to visit Foxy’s own
mother, who had been for months moving in and out of consciousness. A few times the old woman called out for Mercedes; another time, she became agitated and begged Foxy to take care of an overdue debt at the corner store. At night, Mercedes and Foxy watched pro wrestling and cheered for their favorite contender, Stone Cold. But nights with old people ended early: Hernan sometimes drank, and Foxy’s medication knocked her out. Coco worried about the combination of Hernan, her mother’s heavy sleeping, and her young daughter; Coco didn’t have a phone then, so she bought calling cards and checked in with Mercedes by pay phone. Ordinarily, Hector would have kept an eye on her, but he was locked up on a drug charge. Coco assured herself that her daughter was the type to speak out if anything was wrong.

Mercedes worked the phone: she called her Abuela Lourdes, who complained about her ailments; she called her Títi Yasmin, but she and Tío Manuel had broken up, and Yasmin had her hands full with their new baby (Tío Manuel’s oldest two had been placed in foster care). Mercedes called her godparents, Rocco and Marlene; she wondered if they could come and get her for an overnight, but no one called back. Coco explained, “They aren’t together no more.”

Mercedes replied, “That ain’t got nothing to do with me.” Mercedes also called Serena, but Serena and Jessica were busy with Cesar’s new family.

Cesar had wanted to be sure that his marriage would survive before having another baby, but he also felt he had to prove his commitment to Giselle. He said, “I feel that the only way she’ll ever believe in this marriage is if I believe in her, that I’m not going to search anymore. She’s set on having that baby. I figured, ‘Well, you know, because you the one out there. Well, I’m behind you one hundred percent.’ ” Giselle believed the pregnancy reinforced Cesar’s commitment to a positive future for himself. “I think it helped a lot when I got pregnant,” she later said. “That was a reality hit right there.”

Cesar was doing so well that the authorities reduced his security status from maximum to medium. Among the privileges of good behavior were festivals, which were like high school field days for prisoners. By coincidence, one festival took place while Mercedes was in the Bronx. Cesar already had tickets for Jessica, Serena, Giselle, and Gabriel; Mercedes desperately wanted to go along, but it was too late to include her; the reservations had to be made months in advance.

Soon afterward, Mercedes announced that she wanted to come home
early. Because of work, Coco couldn’t travel down to get her. Foxy suggested a guy who offered to take Mercedes for $40—he drove upstate every day to deliver fruit. Although Mercedes seemed anxious to return to Troy, Coco refused to take the risk of sending her anywhere with a stranger. On payday, Coco wired a money order to Manuel, who agreed to escort Mercedes back by bus. The fare ate up almost all of Coco’s check.

Back in Troy, Mercedes exploded. She swore she’d hang herself if her mother didn’t kick Frankie out. “I’m stuck between my man and my daughter,” Coco said. Frankie tried to dodge Mercedes’s fury: he stayed outside a lot and kept to his room. Two weeks later, Serena called, bubbling with the latest news: Mercedes had a new baby sister—Giselle Alana. Cesar sent Mercedes a prison Polaroid of himself with the baby. Mercedes responded by mailing her father a photograph of La-Monté, around which she’d wrapped a note: “Please accept this picture as I accept yours.”