by Jaquira Díaz
“Hey nena, long time,” she said.
That was normal for us at Nautilus Middle School. A quick kiss hello, a hug. It was how we said what’s up to our friends, all the other kids we’d known most of our lives, who’d lived down the street for years, who we ran into at the grocery store or the pharmacy or while walking along the boardwalk. Miami Beach was like a small town that way—everybody knew each other, and everybody knew everybody else’s business. But Chanty and I, we weren’t friends anymore. Not really. We hadn’t been for a while, not since her mom decided that I was trouble, a no-good hoodlum from the streets who was bound to end up pregnant, who would spend her life on welfare, or in jail, and that was not the life she wanted for her daughter.
It happened after Chanty got caught skipping, months before. Chanty and I had left school early, went to the beach with her boyfriend, Andre, and his boy Devin, this beautiful, quiet Jamaican boy from some other school in North Miami. We went to the park on the North Shore, and Andre lit a blunt, smoked us all out. We were there for hours, the four of us lying in the sand, finding shapes in the clouds, exploding with laughter when somebody found a cheeseburger or an elephant or an alligator.
“Hey,” Chanty said after a while, all serious, “I have to pee.”
“So pee,” Andre said, not taking his eyes off the clouds.
She got up, slowly, trying to steady herself. She was fucked up.
I shook my head at Andre. “Go with her, you asshole.”
When Chanty and Andre left, Devin and I stayed behind. We sat on the sand, side by side, leaning against each other.
“You wanna climb one of those trees?” he said, pointing at the tallest sea grapes.
I laughed. “No.”
He was quiet for a while, like I’d shut him down, and I could tell he was shy. But he was cuter than most of the boys who went to Nautilus.
“You wanna kiss me?” I asked.
He smiled, but didn’t say anything. He turned to me, leaned over slowly, and I pulled him by his shirt’s collar, pressed my lips against his. I waited, but he didn’t do anything, just kept his mouth there, awkwardly, with his eyes closed. It could’ve been the first time he ever kissed a girl, from the way he was frozen there, but he was mad fine, so I stuck my tongue in his mouth. We kissed, softly, for a while, and then I pulled away.
“What’s your name again?” I asked.
He shook his head, laughed. “Devin.”
We kissed for a long time, the waves crashing in the distance, the wind blowing my curls in his face, and when I stuck my hand down his pants, he pulled his face away slightly, opened his eyes like he was shocked, then smiled. I didn’t exactly know what I was doing, but I did it anyway. I was curious, and a lot of my friends were already having sex, and I was dying to get rid of my virginity, like it was a burden, and anyway by then I was masturbating so much I was sure I was ready. So I kissed him and I slid my hand inside his underwear and grabbed his dick and stroked it for about three seconds before he let out a single long sound, part grunt, part moan, and came in his pants.
“Shit,” I said.
“Damn,” he said, and wouldn’t look at me, or couldn’t. He kissed me again, then tugged on my jeans. “Take these off.”
I slid off my jeans and underwear, and right there on the beach he went down on me, put his whole face in my pussy, and it didn’t take long at all, and I squeezed my legs around his head and dug my fingers into the sand and moaned and moaned and didn’t fucking care who heard or who was watching, and maybe it even excited me a little, knowing that other people could hear me. For a second I worried that maybe Andre and Chanty could hear us, that they would see us as they were walking back from the bathrooms, but then I decided I didn’t care. After I came, Devin kissed me like he finally realized what kissing was, his tongue in my mouth, and I could taste myself, the salt, the cigarette he’d smoked minutes before going down on me, and I felt free, at least for a while. Later, after I’d forgotten the way he tasted, the way his finger felt inside me, all I felt was sadness.
When Chanty got home that night, after skipping most of the school day, her mother had already gotten a call from school, and when she asked Chanty where she’d been, who she’d been with, instead of saying she’d been with Andre, she said she’d been with me. Just me. And her mom, who already thought I was bad news, banned me from her life. Chanty was allowed to hang out with all our other friends, Boogie and China and even Chuckie, the skater kid who sold weed in the cafeteria. But not me. Chanty came right up to me and said hi whenever she saw me, but we barely hung out anymore. I avoided talking about it, just so I didn’t have to remember that I was somebody her mom hated. A loser.
I told Boogie and China, and they both agreed it was fucked up, and that Chanty shouldn’t have snitched to her mom about skipping school with me.
That’s how it was with us, how it was supposed to be. We kept each other’s secrets, wiped each other’s tears, protected each other. We passed notes during class, we told each other everything, our fantasies and our crushes, the latest argument with our parents, the TLC concert we’d been saving up for, the guy who confessed his love while we rode the bus together on a Friday after school. We sat together in the cafeteria, found each other in the hallways. We harmonized to Shai’s “If I Ever Fall in Love” or En Vogue’s “Hold On” while we waited for the bell to ring. We went on missions together, cutting class and catching the bus to the mall, or the flea market, or the beach, singing Whitney in the back of the bus. We snuck out to salsa music festivals at Bayfront Park on the weekends, turning each other to Andy Montañez’s “Casi Te Envidio” and Frankie Ruiz’s “Mi Libertad” until the park closed. We went to birthday parties at Hot Wheels, where we strapped on rented roller skates and cruised around la pista with the disco lights, shaking it to 2 Live Crew.
We wore short shorts and crop tops, baggy jeans and basketball jerseys, big hoop earrings. And no matter what, everybody had opinions about how we dressed, called us tomboys or hood rats or fast girls. Our shorts were too short, our jeans too tight, too baggy, our voices too loud. Everybody wanted to control what we wore, what we did, who we did it with. We were not the girls they wanted us to be. We were not allowed to talk like this, to want like this, were not supposed to feel the kind of desire you feel at thirteen, at fourteen. What kind of girl, they loved to say. What kind of girl, even as they took what we gave, took what we tried to hold on to. Our voices. Our bodies. We were trying to live, but the world was doing its best to kill us.
We would have boyfriends that didn’t last the year, the month, the week, older guys who didn’t go to school, who drove Broncos and Camaros and Cutlass Supremes. We would hide them from our parents, our friends’ parents. When we got tired of them, we would break it off, but sometimes they wouldn’t go, and instead they’d show up at the pool or the movie theater or the roller skating rink uninvited, asking to talk to us just one last time. We were thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and they were men, in their twenties, and no matter how we said no, they would keep coming back. Until we had babies, or abortions, and then they would leave.
We were girls, but we’d spend the rest of our days together if we could. Until one day we realized that without meaning to, we grew up, grew apart, broke each other’s hearts.
I went to my two music classes, the only two periods I felt bad about missing. As soon as I walked into the orchestra room, Ms. Seoane, in her sweet and encouraging way, gave me a talking-to: I was supposed to be practicing for a big concert at the end of the year, where we’d play together with our jazz band and all the Miami Beach High musical ensembles, strings and brass sharing the stage. I was Nautilus’ only advanced bassist, and they needed me. I couldn’t keep skipping school.
I apologized, promised to make up for all my missed practices.
Two periods later, in Piano, I plugged my headphones into one of the Yamaha electronic keyboards in the back of the room. Instead of practicing Bach’s “Minuet in G minor” from my ass
igned sheet music, I spent the whole hour trying to figure out the music for “Candy Girl.” I’d play a few notes, then write them down, filling in a sheet of blank staff paper. I wanted to surprise Chris one day, and I’d spent hours combing the racks for the sheet music at Spec’s and Camelot Music, but I’d never found it. I played “Candy Girl” until the bell rang, then packed my things and strapped on my backpack. Before I left the room, Ms. Seoane handed me a folder with sheet music for our concert, James Swearingen’s “Majestia.”
“Don’t forget about practice,” she said in a singsong voice.
The rest of the day, I kept my head down, avoiding eye contact, taking notes and pretending to work out math problems, going from class to class without slowing down long enough to notice what everyone else was looking at: me. I didn’t realize it until school let out, until I was at my locker turning the wheel on my Master Lock, struggling with the combination. I’d been gone at least a week, but it had been much longer since I’d even seen my locker. After a second try, I leaned against the red metal door, told myself to breathe, just breathe. I straightened myself out, ready to try again, checking out the long, crowded hallway, and that’s when I saw that everyone was staring at me, every face turned in my direction, not one person even trying to fake it. All eyes on me.
Halfway across the hall, J.R. leaned against his own locker, arms crossed. I scanned the crowd, from one face to the next, and then back to J.R. He’d told them. I was sure of it. They’d all been talking about me. He’d probably given them all kinds of details about what our apartment looked like, about how we didn’t have any food in the fridge, about my mother and some guy I didn’t even know. I wanted the world to crack wide open and swallow me.
I held my algebra textbook against my chest, my face and ears and all my insides burning. Across the hall, J.R. was still smiling at me. He wanted me to see him. He wanted me to know that he’d told them all. I imagined chucking the book across the hall at him, how good it would feel to send it flying and knock his ass out with seven hundred pages of math problems. But I thought about Ms. Olga back at the Miami Police station; Alaina, who looked up to me, and who was probably dealing with her own problems at Treasure Island Elementary; and Paula, my court-appointed counselor, who I was supposed to see every week, and whose favorite line was, Jaqui, you’re all out of second chances. But J.R. kept staring at me, that stupid smirk on his face.
Finally, I stood up straight and yelled across the hall. “What the fuck you looking at?”
And then, as if he’d been waiting for this exact reaction, he blew me an air kiss, which made them all explode with laughter, the preppy boys with their piercing white smiles, the headbangers in their dog collars and hair dyed jet-black, three or four rich girls who never talked to me shaking their heads as they shadowed their boyfriends down the corridor, even the one pregnant girl who tried to hide her belly under oversized hoodies, like she was fooling anybody. J.R. laughed, too, like I was some kind of show. When he finally stopped laughing, he pursed his lips, brought his fists to his eyes, wiping off imaginary tears, then he slowly mouthed the words, “Don’t cry.”
I didn’t cry. I made a choice, right there in that hallway: this would not be my life. I was not, and would never be, the kind of person who got bullied or made fun of, because I’d grown up with an older brother who’d whooped my ass since I was in diapers, with a mother who handed out beat-downs like they were life lessons, and if they’d taught me anything, it was how to fight. So no, I didn’t fucking cry. Instead, I dropped my backpack and made a beeline for him, past the stoners and the surfers and the skaters and the wannabe rappers, all of them cackling and snickering and watching me as I gripped my textbook tight with both hands, all seven hundred pages of it, as I swung it at him, as I caught him square in the jaw. He crashed sideways against his locker, slid down onto the floor, arms splayed about, one leg tucked underneath. And everyone went quiet.
When I got to my building that afternoon, kicking stones out of my path and giving people dirty looks as I walked past them, Chris was waiting for me in the parking lot. He was sitting in his car, my mother leaning against the driver’s side, talking to him. When she saw me, she said hi, and quickly went inside.
“Did you give her money?” I asked.
He laughed, shaking his head. “Just a cigarette,” he said. “Wanna go for a ride?”
“You’re such a fucking liar,” I said.
“What’s with the attitude?”
“Why are you giving my mother money?”
Chris’s expression changed, eyes narrowed. “What’s going on? You okay?”
And then, even though I knew our upstairs neighbors were probably all listening, I blew up. “What are you even doing here?!” I yelled. “You’re not my boyfriend! You’ll never be my boyfriend! You ain’t shit!”
We were there for a long time after that, the two of us in that parking lot, just looking at each other. I stood there, my backpack strapped on tight, the sun on my face, my armpits all sweaty, staining the shirt he’d bought me as a gift, staring him down. I could hear the boys in the park across the street dribbling the basketball during their afternoon pickup game, a car horn blaring somewhere in the distance. He didn’t say anything. Maybe he didn’t know what to say. Years later, I’d think about this moment, how I’d meant to hurt him, how I’d said those words only because I knew he wouldn’t hurt me back.
There were things I’d never told Chris about my life, about all the ways I’d tried to make that life bearable. That I wrote songs I belted out in the shower, that my friends and I sang while we rode the free trolley up and down Lincoln Road, that in my dreams, I saw myself playing in some piano bar, or some jazz club, my bass’s pizzicato vibrating through time and space, that I spent most of my days pretending I could sing, dreaming of going on the road with Whitney or Mariah. Or how I filled spiral notebooks with stories about monsters, stole books from the library, skipped entire school days so I could spend sunny afternoons lying out on the beach, reading, and that every time I picked up one of those lollipops he brought me, I thought about that toddler, Baby Lollipops, how they’d found his body, and how I’d written down all the details I could remember, filled pages and pages, and I didn’t even know why.
Finally, Chris turned the key in the ignition. He watched me for another second, then slowly, he put on his dark shades, backed his Tercel out of the parking space, and without another word, he drove away.
That night, I actually did my homework. I read Mr. Williamson’s handout, then got to work, writing feverishly, one page, two pages, three, four. I kept writing, even though it seemed much longer than any homework assignment I’d ever attempted, and when my pen ran out of ink, I picked up another one and kept at it until I finished.
Afterward, I lay in bed with my eyes closed, my whole body vibrating, exhausted like I’d just sprinted across the park. I could hear my mother in the living room, alone, laughing. Usually, around that time, she was getting ready for a night out, heading to South Beach, where she went to score, where she’d been arrested a few times for possession. In the living room, I could hear her talking to herself, then laughing and laughing and laughing.
I remember the first time I’d heard my mother laugh like this, for no reason. It was years before, only a few months after we moved from Puerto Rico. I was eight. We’d just moved to a small apartment on South Beach, a few blocks from Fisher. She’d been making sandwiches when the phone rang. She picked up and talked for a few minutes, then she set the receiver down, stood in the kitchen, and cried silently.
It was a call from Puerto Rico, she told me. Her titi Meri had just died.
She was my mother’s aunt, but had been like a second mother. I had never met her, this woman my mother had loved so much, although I’d answered the phone when she called a few times, and she’d known my name, Anthony’s name, Alaina’s. I’d only seen her in a photograph, her salt and pepper hair pinned into a loose bun on top of her head, face pale and ca
ked with powder, lips painted some unnatural shade of red. I had no stories of her as a live person, no memories of her brushing my hair or giving me terrible handmade sweaters as birthday presents or making Sunday dinner for us. I didn’t even know how she’d died, if she’d had a heart attack or some incurable disease, if she’d been struck by lightning or hit by a car.
Mami had left the sandwiches on the kitchen counter and I’d snatched mine up, watched as my mother held the receiver to her ear, as she set it down and stumbled to the kitchen table, as she pulled out one of the chairs and sat. She had pulled me onto her lap, wrapped her arms around me, and cried into my neck. I was hungry, but I didn’t eat my sandwich. I held it carefully, and worried that I would drop it or crush it as my mother was squeezing me with all that need. I’d held my tongue when it occurred to me to ask if there were other family members that belonged to us, like this aunt I’d never met, out there in the world. The thought of these nameless faceless people, and my mother, breathing my air, her body against mine, needing me so much, made my chest ache. But there was nothing I could give her. So I fed her my sandwich, held it up to her mouth, and she took one bite, chewed it slowly, swallowed with her eyes closed.
Then, a shift in the air. Mami sitting at that table, having just lost a mother, crying softly, silently, into her hands, and suddenly the laughter shattering the silence like a spear. She cupped her mouth, laughing and laughing and laughing.
We’d moved to Miami Beach only months before, and I barely spoke English, but I knew the word “orphan.” I’d watched Annie about a dozen times, and found the idea of being a child with no parents terrifying and thrilling. It had been like a terrible fantasy, something I longed for, something I feared. And years later, this would be exactly how I understood love: thrilling and terrifying, tears and laughter and then tears again. Love, I learned, could destroy you. Love drove my mother mad.