And even though it hurts, I am glad for it. I am glad that he responds to each of my words with another blow, to my gut, to my chest, to my face, to my head. I’m glad for the thunderous pain, for the metallic taste in my mouth. I’m glad for the blurriness of my eyesight and the sense of falling into a deep black hole, the rest of the world getting farther and farther away, the sound of Rey and Nestor and Chico and those other two guys fading with the dim light in that room.
“That’s it, Chico, just like that . . .” I whisper. “Good job.” He is sitting on my chest. He is wrapping his hands around my neck. And even like this, even in his anger, I see a tenderness in Chico that makes me want to cry every single time. “Good job . . .” I say. His gaze meets mine for just a second, but that’s all it takes. I smile and suddenly he stops. He gets off me. And I lie there staring at the ceiling, gasping for breath.
Laughter and clapping fills the room. “Wow!” Rey yells. A long, sharp whistle sounds and makes my head feel like it might crack in half. “That was spectacular!” More whistling. Rey comes and stands over me. “Yes, yes, you two will do just fine,” he says. My vision blurs as he keeps splitting in two and merging back together. “Get up,” he says, grabbing on to my arm and pulling me up. “I’ll see you two tomorrow. Nestor will pick you up, same as today. Got some things lined up for you.”
“We won’t say anything, please . . . please . . .” I say, hoping he will understand what I don’t have the nerve to say aloud. Please don’t pull us into this. Please let us go.
Rey knows exactly what I mean. And he looks at me, shakes his head.
“I want you to know a couple of things. These two.” He looks over at the guys who have been next to him this whole time. “They’ve watched you sleep. They’ve watched everything you do. That little fire where you burned your clothes, smart. The little mattress where you sleep like a fucking stray dog,” he says to Chico, “I know all about it. So you boys have two choices: be my friend or be my enemy. I think you know which one will work out better for you, right?”
One of the guys smiles, then whistles a soft little tune. The same whistle we heard outside our window that night.
And I know it’s useless. I know we really only have one choice.
I nod.
Rey smiles. “Good! I have big plans. I am building something special. And I need my army.” His eyes are gleaming. “Welcome, my little soldiers.” Then he motions to Nestor, who leads us out and takes us home, the radio blaring the whole way.
* * *
~~~
The ride doesn’t feel real and each pothole splits my head more and more. But before I know it, I’m getting out of the car in front of our house. The sun blinds me. I hear Nestor driving away, the music receding with the car. I smell the dust, mixing with the musky smell of car freshener still in my nose. All of it makes me queasy.
Chico is next to me, holding me up as I sway back and forth in the heat. Mamá is supposed to be at work, waitressing at one of the restaurants of Amatique—the nearest resort. But even so I make sure the patio is empty of her motor scooter before we go inside.
I wash my face carefully, rinse my mouth, checking for any loose teeth. Chico runs to the store and gets some ice. It feels like he’s gone forever. It feels like he’s gone only a second; I blink and he’s suddenly back, standing over me on the burning-hot couch, baggies of half-melted ice in a towel. I put it on my face, hoping the swelling and bruising won’t be too bad.
Neither of us says a thing.
There are no words.
Even if there were, I don’t even know if we’d need them.
We both knew this would happen one day. Living on this land is like building a future on quicksand. You know you’ll go down. You know it will swallow you up. You’re just not sure how or when.
Now we know for sure.
No, there are no words, only feeling. And I feel something sharp in my chest. I keep trying to breathe through it, hoping the pain there will shift and smooth out. I wonder if one of my ribs is broken and poking my heart. But I don’t think that’s it.
The fight with Chico, the words that came out of my mouth and cut right to the core of him slashed through the tissue and fibers of my heart as well. Everything here comes at a price.
I’ve tried to fight against my artist’s heart, to make it steel instead. But I can’t. The realization brings a new wave of panic. All I can do is let my heart tear and rip. Tear and rip. My mind flashes with the red, blue, pink—the diagram of a heart we drew in class earlier this year, the striated muscle and the tissue. And then I remember something my teacher told me about torn-up tissue. How it becomes scar tissue and how that scar tissue can affect the sense of feeling.
Maybe that’s what I need—to wrap my heart, myself in scar tissue. I think of the blood coagulating, the tissue fusing together. I think of a thick scar forming over that tear. Over and over again. Over and over again. Until any pain is just a small, fleeting thing.
Maybe that way it won’t shatter. Maybe that way it won’t rot.
I think of Rey’s heart, black and deteriorated.
I think of Mamá’s heart, how it will ooze with bright red pain.
I feel myself sinking deeper into the couch, falling into the black, so I focus on pink and blue. The soft pink of heart valves, the deep pulsing blue of veins.
Something, anything to keep me from total darkness.
Pequeña
At the market, I hear it over and over again. “¡Felicidades! ¡Felicidades, Pequeña!” From the vendor, from neighbors, from Mami’s friends. They all know I’ve had the baby, they are all asking about the baby, they are all so happy for me and the baby.
I want to laugh and never stop. I want tears to fall from my eyes like water breaking through a dam and sweep all of them away in a gushing current. I want to whisper my horrible nighttime prayers into their ears, ask them if they know girls pray such things, see what they say. Will they have the nerve to congratulate me then?
But I know if I utter one word of it, I’ll never be able to stop. And I’ll be whispering those prayers forever.
So instead I say gracias and continue on my way to the drugstore.
Leticia greets me as I come up to the glass counter of the pharmacy where she works. “Hey, Pequeña. What are you doing here?”
She gets up from the small stool where she was sitting, fanning herself, and adjusts her jeans. She shuffles over to me, her sandals scraping the dusty floor, and offers me a smile.
Leticia was once a beauty. She wore electric-blue eye shadow that glimmered even indoors. And she lined her eyes perfectly in thick black eyeliner. She reminded me of a telenovela actress, and when I was a little girl and came here with my mother, I always left in awe of Leticia’s perfect eyes and the small black beauty mark just above her lips on the left side of her mouth. I was jealous of how her boyfriend looked at it, her lips, all of her. He was always there, leaning at the end of the counter, waiting for her to be done with a customer so he could have her all to himself again. It was like he couldn’t stand not seeing her, and because he was handsomer than even Gallo, I’d once thought her the luckiest girl in the world.
“Just picking up some things,” I tell her. She nods and waves the fan in front of her. Leticia still does her eyes in the same electric blue, lines them in the same black. She still has the beauty mark positioned in the exact same place.
But she is not the girl she was ten years ago.
* * *
~~~
Ten years ago, Leticia was sixteen. I know her story the way we all know each other’s stories around here. Her father left for the States years ago and never came back. Her mother, like my mother, raised Leticia by herself and with the friendship and support of other women. Leticia had a baby when she was my age, too, a little girl she named California. And her handsome boyfriend left for the States, promising h
er the world. For years, all Leticia would talk about to anyone who would listen was how she and her baby girl would meet him there one day soon, and they would live in a pretty little house there someday, and she was going to be una americana.
Her boyfriend never came back.
California is nine years old now, still waiting to live in a pretty little house that doesn’t exist for her. Her name a reminder of broken dreams, the place Leticia never reached. Sometimes I hear Leticia calling down the street, California, come here. California, wait for me. And it always sounds like a sad wish. And now Leticia looks like so many of the girls around here who became wives and mothers by pretty lies or ugly force. Old beyond their age. Tired. A little dead.
I stare at her, wondering how long before I look like that, too. She stares back.
“You need something for the baby? How is he? Congratulations.” This is what she says, but her eyes look at me with pity.
“Leticia . . . I need your help.”
“Of course, my love, what is it?”
“I need something that will . . . dry up my milk.” She gives me a look, but I make myself continue. “And I need some birth control pills.”
She puts the fan down, looks at the wall of pills and medicine behind her. She pulls a few packages.
“I don’t have anything especially made to stop the production of milk,” she says. “But these might help. Of course, it’s not scientifically proven or anything.” She rolls her eyes and pushes them my way. “And here is a pack of contraceptive pills.” She leans on the counter, begins giving me directions. But all I can concentrate on are the people coming in.
What if Rey walks in? Or one of the guys he has who keep track of whomever Rey wants to keep track of? Or one of Mami’s friends? Or what if Tía Consuelo gets off work and stops by here and sees me?
I nod at whatever Leticia says, keeping tabs on those around us. Then she looks at me again. “But you know, no guarantees with these, either.”
“I know.”
I can feel her gaze on me, but I don’t look up. She reaches again to the wall of pills behind her, grabs another package, and sets it down on the counter in front of me. A guy walks in and seems to look straight at me. I don’t recognize him as one of Rey’s guys, but I don’t know all of them. I look away as he heads down an aisle.
“If something should happen . . . if you think you might have gotten pregnant, you can take this pill,” Leticia whispers. “But it has to be taken right away, within the first few days after having unprotected sex.”
My hand shakes as I reach for it and read the information. I think of how I wish I’d known about this ten months ago. How I wish I’d known about all of this then. I think of how I wish I’d never admired beauty, and how I wish I had never wanted a guy to look at me like Leticia’s boyfriend looked at her.
“Do you need anything else?” she asks gently.
I’m about to shake my head, but then I see the razors under the glass counter. “Those,” I tell her. “And that.” I point to the small switchblade knife next to the razors.
She gives me another look, but retrieves both from under the counter, throws the items in a little blue plastic bag.
“And I need you to do me a favor,” I tell her as she adds up the price of those items on the pad in front of her.
“What is it?”
“I need you to give me all this stuff on credit. Mami will pay for it, you know she will. But, she can’t know I bought these items. Not yet. I need you to charge her for it next month.” I could pay with the money Rey gave me. I could. But I can’t. Even if it means Mami will hate me. Because I need that money for later.
“Ay, Pequeña . . .” she says, shaking her head and looking at me with pity. “You know we don’t do store credit.”
“I know, Leticia, but I can’t pay for this stuff, so maybe this once . . .”
“Dios, Pequeña . . . how much trouble are you in?” Her eyes are sympathetic, but not surprised. I shake my head. “Talk to your mami,” she says. “She understands these things. She’ll help you.”
“No, I can’t . . . I can’t tell anyone,” I say. “Something bad will happen.”
Leticia’s face flickers with fear. Emotions I’ve been keeping in check start to come up. But there’s no room for emotion now. I won’t start weeping here, in front of Leticia. I won’t let the tears fall, fill up this store, be drowned in their pool. I look at her and imagine stripping away all my emotions. Like the reeds of a sugarcane. But then what does that leave except the sugary sweet of my pulsing heart?
My hand on the counter trembles.
Leticia looks at the way it shakes. It almost looks as if it has a mind of its own, like it’s not even a part of my body. I try to control it but I can’t. I stare at the way it flutters and flutters on that countertop, like a dark, frenzied moth.
I watch as it transforms right before my eyes.
Its ginormous wings open and close, hypnotizing me. It grows antennae and large black eyes, fixes its gaze on me. From somewhere in those eyes, from inside its delicate mottled body, I hear a strange, high-pitched sound.
Cuidado.
I look at Leticia, wondering if she, too, hears the moth’s warning, telling me to be careful. If she sees what I see. If that is why she suddenly puts her hand over that omen of death, presses down on its wings, holds it very, very still and tells me to be calm.
“Tranquila,” she says. “Tranquila. I’ll do it. I’ll tell your mami, next month.” Now she is looking at me. “Is there anything else you want me to tell her on that day? Another message?”
I close my eyes and picture Mami coming into the store sometime next month. I see her, coming in with that baby. Her face a little more dead. And tired. I see her asking Leticia for a canister of baby formula. I see Leticia charging her for it, and then, gently, telling her about these things I purchased a month earlier and kept secret. I see Mami’s face, asking Leticia, What else? What else did she say? Anything? Tell me.
“Tell her . . . I’m sorry, to please forgive me. That I love her. Very much. And that I will see her again one day.”
Leticia nods. “I’ll tell her, Pequeña,” she says. “But mira, look at me.” Her hand is still on mine, and I stare into her beautiful, tired eyes. “Que te vaya bien, amigita.” And the tenderness with which she wishes me well, the way she looks at me when she does—like she’s speaking to my soul—both breaks me and gives me strength. I look at her and nod. She lifts her hand in goodbye, and I see my hand is my own again.
As I grab my bag and turn to leave, I wonder how many girls before me have come to Leticia asking for the same items. I wonder if it’s coincidence that the razors and switchblades are in the same area of the pharmacy as the birth control and morning-after pills.
* * *
~~~
At night, I go to sleep thinking of ways to be deadly. How to cover my body in razors. I imagine them covering my body like scales. I imagine anyone who touches me being cut and sliced and pierced.
A warning.
Nobody come near me.
Pulga
When your mamá screams, and you wake up to her face looming over you, you see flashes of yellow and orange.
“¡Mi hijo! Dios, Pulga, what happened to you?” she says. She kneels down next to me on the couch where I fell asleep. Her eyes are instantly filled with tears. And panic. “What happened? What happened?” she demands. I have to stop and think.
Rey.
The warehouse.
The fight with Chico.
“Just a fight,” I say quietly. It’s evening. Mamá is home from work.
“With who?!”
“Some guys at school . . .” Chico stands meekly in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room.
“¿Pero quién?” she demands. “Who did this to you?”
I shake
my head. “Don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry? You come home looking like this and you think I’m not going to worry?”
She spots Chico. “Tell me.”
“Es que some guys were talking about mi mamita again,” Chico says softly. “Pulga jumped in and they . . .” His voice trails off as he shakes his head and starts crying.
“Again?” Mamá asks, and I can hear the doubt in her voice. She turns to me and searches my face for the truth.
I keep my gaze steady. “Yes,” I tell her.
“What are their names? I should speak to the principal.”
“No, Mamá. Just leave it alone. It’s done,” I say. If she starts digging into our story, if she pokes the hole of the anthill and disturbs it, everything will cave in on us.
She stares at me.
“It was just a stupid fight, Mamá. Please, just let me sleep a little longer,” I tell her. I smile to show her it’s no big deal, but Mamá gets very quiet. She sits on the edge of the couch and puts her soft hand on my head. It makes me wince, but also feels good.
“No more fighting,” she whispers.
“Okay,” I tell her. “I promise.”
* * *
~~~
I fall asleep again. And when I open my eyes, it is dark. The front door is closed with the wooden plank set across it. For the first time in a long time, I’m not in the same room as Chico. A fan whirs and I see Mamá has moved the fan from her room into the living room and positioned it my way. My body feels like I’ve been run over by a truck.
It makes me think of the time I saw a boy riding on the back of a big truck filled with watermelons. Mamá and I rode behind him on her scooter; I was only about eight years old. He was perched on top like a bird, when the truck hit a pothole and he tumbled down, falling from that great height onto the street. Mamá had been driving far enough behind to bring her motor scooter to a stop.
We Are Not from Here Page 8