Roachkiller and Other Stories (2 page)

“Hello, parrot,” Nancy said.

“She’s getting big,” Negron said. He sat on his stool behind the counter. He was once a big man but was bent over with age. He rarely moved from the stool, but the store was always well stocked and neat. The parrot was silent behind him, munching on one sunflower seed after another. Newspapers were spread out under its cage.

“Tell me about it.”

Iris told Negron about her plan and assured him that she would still play numbers with him.

“Don’t worry. They got business for everybody,” he said.

“What about Benny?” she said. “I know he’s a big shot.”

“He don’t care,” said Negron. “He got plenty business. He don’t care about little people trying to make some money. He’s not like that. I been here fifteen years, and he comes in here all the time, and he don’t say nothing. But listen—”

Negron reached under the counter, balancing himself with one hand, and took out a cracker tin. Inside it was a greasy rag, and inside the rag was an old, dented .38 revolver. “Sometimes there’s trouble,” he said. “You need any help, I got this. Okay?”

The gun looked evil to Iris, as if it had its own heartbeat, its own ugly soul. She watched her daughter, who was staring at the parrot. “I don’t like those things, Negron,” she said.

He nodded. “In case,” he said, putting it away.

Walking home, Iris thought about some of the ladies at the elementary school where she used to work who liked to play the numbers. She went to visit them the next day. “So you got your own numbers game,” said Mrs. Killian in a thick South Carolina accent. Killian was a large black woman who taught second grade. “You’re an enterprising woman, Iris. I like that. I always play 731, because the first time I hit the numbers it was July 31. So I’ll play that straight and combination.”

“Ay,
Iris, god bless you,” said Olga, another one of her old coworkers. “The woman I used to play with moved to Queens. I hope you bring me luck!”

*  *  *

A few days later, Iris got back from the school with Nancy, and the girl’s father was sitting on the couch in the living room, having a beer. The light was off, but his sad, handsome face was lit by the television.

“Papi!” Nancy jumped on the couch and hugged her father around the neck. He kept his eyes on the TV. Iris turned on the light.

“What’s new?” he said to Iris.

“I hit the number.”

“Baya.
Let’s go celebrate! We could go to the Copa.”

“Asi?”
she said, pointing to her belly. “No, thank you. That’s my money. I’m going to start my own
bolita
, I decided.”

“What you gonna do that for?”

The little girl tried to sit in his lap. The father sipped his beer.

“So I can make some money. In a little while, I’ll have enough to buy a restaurant.”

“That’s crazy. Pregnant women are crazy. They get crazy ideas.”

“Don’t call me crazy, Juan,” Iris said.

“What if somebody hits big. They’ll take your whole bank.”

Iris had met Juan years ago at a club. He got her pregnant but he wouldn’t marry her. He hung around, giving her some money for a while. He got her pregnant again but then hadn’t given her any money in months. Iris would tell him she needed to buy groceries and pay rent, but she got tired of asking and knew she would get the money on her own anyway, somehow. She fought with him, but not so much she would push him away.

“That’s not gonna happen,” she said. “No one’s gonna hit that much.”

“And what about Benny?”

“I don’t got to worry about Benny. He doesn’t notice the little people trying to make a little money.”

“That’s what you think.”

Nancy squirmed on her father’s lap. “Papi, are you coming to see me sing?”

Juan moved his daughter off of him and got up. “Get me another beer,” he said to Iris.

“Get it yourself.”

He got up and went to the kitchen, where Iris was smothering the defrosted pork chops with
adobo
.

“You’re a rich woman now. You can support me,” he said, turning on the radio. A slow, melancholy love song was starting. Iris heard it and cursed under her breath.

“You never supported me,” she said.

“I don’t want to argue, baby.”

Just as she thought he would, Juan took Iris in his arms and began to dance slowly with her, humming to the old Johnny Albino song. Iris was stiff at first, then her body melted and she molded herself to his body, her round belly up against his taut stomach.

“You’re my baby, and you got my baby in there.”

They danced slowly in place, shuffling on the kitchen linoleum. Nancy watched from the doorway and giggled, covering her mouth.

*  *  *

Every morning Iris picked up the morning and evening editions of the
Daily News.
Two three-digit hit numbers came out every day. The daily number came from the track handle—the amount of money bet at the races—at whatever track was featured in the
News
that morning. The nightly number came from the handle at Yonkers.

When Nancy was at school, Iris would sit by the phone and her customers would call in. Maribel would play only a quarter every day on 561. Mrs. Killian would play up to ten dollars in numbers, and always 731.

That first week Iris made a hundred dollars.

She went to the kitchen cabinet and took down the ceramic pitcher she’d received as a bonus when she’d worked for the Prince Spaghetti factory in the neighborhood. It had closed a long time ago. She kept her money inside the pitcher in a tight roll, wrapped by a rubber band. She sat down and laid out her original six hundred dollars and her newest earnings on the table. She lit a cigarette and looked at the neat piles. The radio was on low.

“My god,” she said.

If this kept up she would have no problem paying rent, for the first time in months. It meant, she hoped, that she wouldn’t have to go crying back to Guayama ever again. She had worked for this. So what if it was illegal? Everybody was a crook. Everything was okay as long as she didn’t get caught.

“Wow, Mami.”

It was Nancy, standing in the dark doorway.

“You should be sleeping.”

“That’s a lot of dollars.”

“That’s right. This is our money. This is for us.”

“And for Papi. And my baby brother.”

Iris lit a cigarette. “Go to sleep, Nancy, please.”

“I’m hungry.”

Iris got up and poured a glass of milk for her daughter. As her daughter drank it, she said, “You want to go shopping tomorrow?” Iris said. “We can go downtown to McCrory’s and the toy store and get you a new dress for when you sing.”

“Really really?”

“Really. Now go to bed.”

“How about Papi? Is he coming for the play?”

The girl’s father hadn’t called or come around all week.

“Ay,
Nancy. You know your father.”

“I miss Papi. I want him to see me sing.”

Iris barely remembered her own father. All she had was an old picture that someone had crumpled up.

With a cigarette dangling from her mouth, Iris brushed her daughter’s hair with her hands. She began to make pigtails. “I know, m’ija. I know.”

“I’m going to sing ‘Silent Night’ just for Papi. I learned all the words.”

“That’s good,” Iris said. “You got a beautiful voice. Why don’t you sing it for me now?”

“Okay, Mami.”

Her daughter began singing in a tiny voice. She was very shy and her voice rose barely above a whisper. So Iris began to sing with her, and soon Nancy got louder, and then both of them sang. They sang the song through three times, loud, louder than the radio.

Afterward, she put Nancy to bed, and then Iris went back to the kitchen and picked up the phone. Then she put it down. She wanted a beer but instead poured herself a glass of milk. She shut off the radio then picked up the phone again.

Juan sounded tired, half asleep.
“Que?”

“Juan. It’s me.”

“Why you calling me?”

“What happened? Where have you been?”

“Don’t call me here. Don’t ever call me.”

“You got a daughter here who loves you and misses you. And you got a son on the way.”

“Don’t call me.”

And then he hung up.

“Juan!” Iris took a big drag on her cigarette.
“Come mierda,”
she said, but she collapsed, crying, into the chair.

On the day of Nancy’s Christmas pageant, the little girl cried when she saw that her father wasn’t there. She threw herself on the floor and refused to sing.

*  *  *

It had been snowing. Every day Nancy asked her where her father was, and Iris had to lie, had to say he would be coming soon. She knew that no matter what she said her daughter’s heart was breaking every day. Christmas was around the corner, at least, and Iris was happy—after a few weeks with her
bolita
, with some people hitting now and then, she was doing pretty well.

She dropped her daughter off at school then picked up the
Daily News
at Negron’s in the morning and came home. Because of the snow, Yonkers was closed. The track handle that day came from Tampa Bay. The number was 731.

“Oh shit,” Iris said.

Yesterday Mrs. Killian said she was feeling lucky and had played two dollars on her favorite number.

“Coño,”
Iris said.

Iris got up slowly—the baby was due any day. She went into the cabinet and got out the pitcher from the high shelf. She put it on the table and got out the roll of money. Something looked wrong.

She didn’t want to think about it. She took off the rubber band and it snapped on her hand.
“Coño!”
It left a red mark. She counted the money. Then she counted it again.

“Coño,”
Iris said. Mrs. Killian’s hit meant she won twelve hundred dollars. The last time Iris had looked at her money, there was more than thirteen hundred dollars. Now there was less than seven hundred. Had she bought something? Did she put it somewhere else? She couldn’t seem to remember right.

The phone rang.

“Iris! Good morning.” Mrs. Killian. “It is a good morning.”

“Hola. Cómo estás?!”

“I am
esta
muy
boo-eno, Iris. 731 hit! I hit!”

“Congratulations,” Iris said. She could think of nothing else to say.

“So when you coming ’round with the
premio?
I could use it this month, with the holidays and all. You coming at lunch? After work? You want me to come get it?”

“No, no, I’ll bring it to you,” Iris said. “But I may not get a chance today. The baby . . .”

“Don’t tell me that, Miss Iris. I need that money. Don’t make me come get it now,” Mrs. Killian said and she laughed. But it was not a funny laugh.

“I’ll bring it to you. Don’t worry.”

Iris hung up and went to the window and looked out at the big elm and the backyard. Before she came to New York, she had never seen snow. During her first snowfall, she thought it was pretty, the way it covered the dark, low brown buildings of Brooklyn, the way it seemed to turn the neighborhood into something from a fairy tale.

She turned, put on her coat and went to Negron’s store. She just needed to talk to him, to understand what to do next.

The snow blew in her face, and it was hard to see ahead more than a few feet. But as she crossed the street it looked like Negron’s door was open. Snow was mounding in the entrance. For the second time that day, Iris felt something wrong.

Iris went to cross the street. A car sped right toward her and swerved to the right, spraying gray slush, to avoid hitting her. She did not hear its driver screaming at her.

Inside the store, Iris was shocked. Negron was on the floor in front of the counter, facedown. She was shocked first to see him out of place, to see his whole body, laid out on the wooden floor. Then there was blood. It was dark red and leaked from under him.

“Negron!” she called.

“Negron!” the parrot called from behind the counter. For a crazy moment, Iris thought the parrot sounded worried.

She got on her knees and touched his shoulder. Then she bent and moved him. He groaned. She turned him over.

“Negron!” the parrot called.

“Buenos dias,”
Negron said.

“Que paso?”

“And it’s near Christmas,” he said.

Blood poured from a big gash in his head and was all over his shirt and face, but he was conscious. “It was Benny,” he said. Benny and another man he didn’t know had come in while he was cleaning. The man pulled a gun. Negron was going to laugh.
“Sin verguenza,”
Negron had said, looking at Benny, shameless. But then that man had laughed at him and pulled the trigger.

She called an ambulance and then Negron’s nephew, who worked in the neighborhood.

When the ambulance came, she asked them if Negron would live. They didn’t know. His nephew told her to go, that he would wait for the cops, if they ever arrived. While the nephew was busy, Iris made a decision. She moved to the back of the counter and got the .38. She put it under her coat.
“Dios te vendiga,”
she said to no one in particular and then left.

She went to the corner and called a car service.

*  *  *

The car service took her to an address in East New York. Iris told the car service driver to wait.

She was not surprised when a woman answered the door, keeping it barely open. From what Iris could see, the woman was pretty, a little on the heavy side, and very young. She looked familiar.

“May I help you?” the lady said.

Iris considered pulling the gun in the lady’s face to make her open the door. But then she looked down—and saw that the woman was pregnant, too.

“I’m here to see Juan,” Iris said.

The woman said nothing. She stepped back and opened the door. The house was cold—Iris couldn’t hear the radiators working. She stepped in and for a second the two women faced each other, big bellies pointing forward. Then Iris followed the woman’s turning gaze to an inner door.