by Jaquira Díaz
“You have no future here,” his father said. “If you stay here just for a girl, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”
A few weeks after he left, his father picked up the bed, the dresser, and the TV. Exactly three months after that, I was evicted from our apartment.
II.
We talked about Miami Beach like it belonged only to us, convinced that the tourists and spring breakers who came down to swim in our ocean and dance in our nightclubs were fucking up our city. We were seventeen-, eighteen-, nineteen-year-old hoodlums, our hair in cornrows and too-tight ponytails, too much hairspray and dark brown lip liner, noses and belly buttons pierced, door-knocker earrings, jailhouse ankle tattoos. We didn’t have time for boys from Hollywood or North Miami, busters who drove their hoopties with the windows down because they didn’t have A/C, who called out to us trying to get phone numbers as we crossed Washington Avenue or Lincoln Road, our chancletas slapping the sidewalk.
What did they know about surfing during hurricane winds, fucking on lifeguard stands, breathing under water? What did they know about millions of stray cats pissing in the sand dunes, entire flocks of rogue seagulls dropping shit torpedoes, about refugees and kilos of cocaine and bodies washing up on our shores?
We were the ones who knew what it meant to belong here, to be made whole during full moon drum circles, dancing, drinking, smoking it up with our homeboys. We knew what it meant to bloody our knuckles here, to break teeth here, to live and breathe these streets day in, day out, the glow of the neon hotel signs on the waterfront, the salt and sweat of this beach city.
One night we parked Brown’s old Mustang behind the roller skating rink on Collins and hoofed it to the beach. We took our bottles of Olde English and Mad Dog 20/20, the six of us passing a blunt and listening to 2Pac’s “Hit ’Em Up” blaring from somebody’s radio, and every time they sang, Grab your Glocks when you see 2Pac, the boys grabbed their dicks and we all laughed our asses off. Brown started dancing and stripping off his clothes while we cheered him on, me and A.J. hopping around, keeling over, slapping our knees. Flaca, China, and Cisco climbed to the top of the lifeguard stand, singing, “Go, Brown! Go, Brown!” When everything but his boxer briefs had come off, Brown gave up, and we all booed him, threw our balled-up socks and sneakers at him.
Cisco changed the song, and Flaca and China came down from the lifeguard stand and the three of us ran toward the shore, dipping our feet in the water. I kicked at the rolling waves, splashing them, and China screamed. I kept splashing them, dipping my hands in the water and aiming it at their heads, but China took off, running up the beach.
“You’re gonna fuck up my hair!” Flaca yelled. She splashed me back, kicking and kicking her long legs at the small waves, holding her quart in one hand. She was laughing, her brown hair in a bun high up on her head, the baby hairs on her forehead and temples plastered to her skin with so much hairspray that not even the saltwater would mess it up. She took a few steps back and gave me the middle finger, and for a moment, she looked just like she had when we were fifth graders.
China and Flaca and I had been in the fourth grade at Fisher when we met, and we’d always been close friends. Flaca’s dad and Papi knew each other, had been friends for years. He was also close friends with my uncle Junior. As kids, we’d spent every October 31 at the Lincoln Road Halloween street party, dressed as hippies, punk rockers, witches. We’d spent the last year going on missions, riding the bus to the mall, borrowing China’s mother’s car and riding to Grand Prix Race-O-Rama, where we spent hours playing Mortal Kombat, riding go carts, shooting Lil’ Hoops, and posing for ridiculous pictures in the photo booth. When we all got together, we’d go back to being those same kids.
Flaca and I laughed and laughed, until suddenly, out of the darkness, Brown appeared, wearing nothing but his underwear, and started walking into the ocean.
“Sorry, but I have to pee,” he said.
We exchanged looks, then Flaca and I both yelled, “Ew!” and ran back up toward the lifeguard stand to find China.
We found China, dancing around with Cisco and A.J., a bottle of Mad Dog in one hand. When the music stopped, she took one sip, then another, and another, and somebody yelled, “Chug it!” and then she was chugging, and all of us joined in, clapping our hands, calling out “Chug it!” and screaming when she finished the bottle, held it upside down for all of us to see.
Out behind the lifeguard stand, me and A.J., sand between our toes, feeling for each other in the dark. We ran around laughing and laughing, and I took his hand and danced circles around him in slow motion.
I don’t remember when A.J. first told me he loved me, or even if he told me, but I knew. I felt it every time he came around, every time our thighs touched while sitting together on China’s couch, or when the six of us had to squeeze into Brown’s Mustang and I had to sit sideways on his lap, trying not to put all my weight on him, my lip brushing against his ear, his arms around my waist. Or when we stayed up all night talking even though he had to get up early for school the next morning—something I didn’t have to worry about since I was a high school dropout. Or on nights when the liquor and the weed made my head spin, the heat and the high coming down on me all at once, and only A.J. around to keep me from falling.
Down by the shore, Brown was so fucked up he dropped to his knees, then lay down sideways on the sand. Later, we would all carry him back to his car. Flaca would drive us to her place a few blocks away. We would all stagger up the stairs to her little studio, put Brown to sleep in the bathtub, and smoke Newports on the balcony. He would wake up with the munchies an hour later. “You got any cheese?” he’d call out from the bathroom. A.J. would grab an entire pack of Kraft Singles from Flaca’s fridge, and the two of us would toss them into the tub, slice by slice, while Brown tried to catch them in his mouth.
But before all that, the six of us dancing and running around on the beach, China chugging on that Mad Dog, Flaca and Cisco kissing on the steps of the lifeguard stand, and A.J. looking at me under the moonlight, a cloud of smoke all around us, I wrapped my arms around him and said, “Don’t let me go.”
We were laughing, hitting the blunt.
We were the faraway waves breaking, the music and the ocean and the heat rising rising rising, like a fever.
We were bodies made of smoke and water.
The truth was that I wasn’t into A.J.—we were just friends. I’d spent the last few months waiting for Cheito, bitter, getting blackout drunk, snorting coke, fighting, and sneaking into clubs on Washington Avenue. I’d gotten my GED and started taking classes at Miami Dade Community College, but was failing every one of them because I almost never went to class, and when I did, I was drunk or high or just not interested. I’d been sleeping on my father’s couch for months.
After Cheito finished his MOS school, he’d come home on leave. We stayed in a hotel for two weeks. That first night, he asked me to marry him.
I’d just turned seventeen, and was madly in love and so happy to have him back, even if only for two weeks, and we were half naked, kissing in bed, when he pulled out a small white box. A ring.
The day before he had to fly off to Marine Combat Training, we went to Miami Beach’s Old City Hall and got married.
For the next year, married life was Cheito in Camp Lejeune, training, and then school, and then shipped off to Okinawa; and me, sleeping on Papi’s couch, not going to class, only getting up to go to work or go get fucked up, and then coming home and passing out on the couch again.
Most nights I hung out with Flaca and China. Occasionally A.J., Brown, and Cisco would join us, and we’d all go to Society Hill, this hole-in-the-wall dive bar on Washington that had no cover and served us drinks and never asked for ID. The place was all painted black and dark green and had some of the regulars’ names tagged on the walls in spray paint, South Beach legends, people we’d grown up with that everybody knew. Society Hill was so small you could barely dance in there, but someone would
always fire up a blunt and pass it, and we’d all end up dancing anyway, our bodies close, dodging elbows to the face and pushing back dudes who tried to grind on us from behind. Afterward, we’d end up on the beach, smoking until the world slowed down, dancing like we had something to celebrate. While we were together, we forgot we were kids with adult problems. Some of us were already married, some of us already had kids, some of us had dropped out of high school and had no choice but to work, some of us had parents facing deportation, some of us had lost our mothers, some of us were living on our own, trying to make rent. While other girls were saving up for prom dresses and graduation pictures, I was saving up to make a deposit on a small apartment on West Avenue, which was taking longer than expected since I was spending half my paycheck on drugs and alcohol. Flaca was working so she could afford to pay her half of the rent. China was working to take care of herself, and her brothers and sister. Everybody had some shit going on. But those nights on the beach, we pretended we were kids again, taking pictures with Flaca’s camera, writing our names on the lifeguard stands, always leaving something behind, wanting the night, the beach, to remember us, as if somehow we knew these moments were precious, fleeting. As if somehow we knew we were running out of time.
And we were. High school was ending for them, and it had already ended for me. For them, there would be grad weekend, trips to Disney World. There would be a big deal on prom night, when I’d spend hours doing Flaca’s and China’s hair and makeup, helping them get ready. I wouldn’t go, because something about seeing all those people again after being unhappily married and flunking out of college made me feel like a failure. But afterward, we’d go to the beach, Flaca and China kicking off their heels and running on the sand, their long skirts flapping in the wind, the rest of us chasing them, and I’d think, This is just like the movies, and catch myself feeling hopeful.
But that wouldn’t last long. There would be another night, all of us sliding into another friend’s car, all of us driving north to Grand Prix Race-o-Rama, me riding shotgun, and everyone else packed into the backseat of his Chevy Impala.
He was older, in his twenties, and he sold scutter and meth to make rent. He called me every Friday, asked if I wanted to go out, and I’d feel guilty, but also, I resented Cheito for leaving me, so I did. I always brought China and Flaca, got him to take us out to eat, take us dancing, buy us drinks. He did everything I asked, bought us Taco Bell, brought me bottles of Palo Viejo, brought me pre-rolled blunts laced with scutter or stank. He called me Jaquira, saying it the right way, rolling his R’s, and something about that made him seem familiar, made him seem safe. His name was Nate, and the only thing I liked about him was how he said my name. And that he brought me drugs.
That night he would bring me two blunts—one for my friends, and one special for me, laced with so much stank the whole car smelled like Elmer’s glue for hours after I smoked it. We would get to Grand Prix, play arcade games for a couple hours, and then I’d snort so much of his powdered meth I would be gone, completely gone. There would be pictures of that night, Flaca and China and I making faces in the photo booth, looking like girls. High school girls. And then the night would start to fade, my heart pounding in my chest, the feeling that I would die, that I wanted to die. Flaca and China and Nate would take me outside, and I’d rip my hoops out, fling them across the parking lot because my ears were on fire. They’d put me in the backseat, and when the car started rolling out of the parking lot, I would try to jump out until somebody grabbed my collar, my arms, my legs. And then, my whole body on fire, in the back of the car, Flaca on one side, China on the other, the two of them would hold me, try to rock me to sleep, keep me from reaching for the door handle while Nate drove me home. Flaca would yell at him, What the fuck did you give her?! And Nate would lie, say, Yo, that’s on you, girl. I didn’t give her shit.
And later, after Cheito and I are separated and I’m living with Nate, after Nate beats my ass in the street and I try to leave, after he drags me from the hallway back into his apartment and into his bedroom, after I reach for the phone and he rips it off the wall, wraps the telephone cord around my neck, promises that if I leave him again he’ll kill me, after I wait for him to fall asleep or take a shower, after I run next door and knock on the neighbors’ windows and make phone call after phone call after phone call, it would be Flaca who’d show up in her boyfriend’s mother’s car in the middle of the night. She’d take my backpack and toss it into the backseat and check out my face, my neck, say, That fucking asshole. She’d get back in the car, and as we pulled away, she’d say it again. That fucking asshole.
I wouldn’t tell her that I’d done this all before. That the last time I’d called my father, and he’d pulled up to the back of the building, his friend riding shotgun, both of them determined to kick Nate’s ass, until I said, Let’s just go, before someone calls the cops, and got in the van, all their bravado fading. I wouldn’t say that the next morning he’d called, sorry, so sorry, and that I’d let him pick me up from work, went back to his apartment. Or that it had only been a week.
We wouldn’t talk about it at all afterward. But the next time I heard from him, weeks later, he was calling collect from Dade County Jail. I accepted the call only because I wanted to ask how long he’d be locked up.
“Ten months,” he said.
“Good,” I said, then hung up.
And that was the last I ever heard from him.
A few months after I turned eighteen, the six of us were all sitting around China’s living room passing around a Philly, China, Flaca, A.J., Brown, Cisco, and me, listening to music and occasionally jumping off the couch to shake it to D.J. Laz’s “Esa Morena.” It was still early in the night, and we were all waiting for Society Hill to open so we could walk the eight blocks to Washington.
Cheito had been in Okinawa for almost a year. I couldn’t see a future for us. I couldn’t really see any future at all. I was still exactly where I’d been a year before, sleeping on my father’s couch, a high school dropout with a GED and some failed community college classes. All I’d done over the past year was drink and smoke and snort coke. I’d done more drugs than homework, barely even made it to classes, spent every night at Society Hill, and then the beach. It was all the same. The same people standing outside the club, the same people passing blunts across the dance floor or trying to grind on you or trying to get your phone number, forgetting that just last week you’d said you weren’t interested, or that the week before that they’d walked up trying to look cute and spilled a drink on your tits. Nothing had changed. Alaina was in high school, and she was living with Papi, too, but I barely ever saw her. After school, she worked at a surf shop on Lincoln Road, selling T-shirts and bikinis and surfboards. Anthony was waiting tables at some tourist trap restaurant on South Beach. Papi was dating a couple of different women, who all hated me. Abuela was cooking and cleaning, chain-smoking on the balcony, and watching novelas. Mami was living in Normandy Isles by herself, getting evicted every couple of months, and crashing with Mercy when she needed a place to stay. And here I was, doing absolutely nothing, with a husband somewhere at the other end of the world. I was failing at life.
I’d been thinking about it for a while, but it was right then when it occurred to me—all of us heading in the same direction, working odd jobs or failing out of school or just going through the motions. China and Flaca both working full time, barely making enough to make rent and buy sneakers and pay their phone bills. And not one of us knew where we were headed.
That night, I followed China and Flaca out the back door, where we lit some cigarettes and sat on China’s steps, joking and laughing, and when I finished mine, I snubbed it out on the bottom step, then tossed it. It would be the last one I smoked. I was done.
“Hey,” I said, “I think I figured out what I’m gonna do with my life.” Cheito had done it, and he got to get the fuck out, see the world. Why couldn’t I? “I think I’m going into the military.”
&
nbsp; They both looked at me, blinked. “Say what?”
Battle Stations
We arrived at the Great Lakes Naval Recruit Training Command in the summer of 1998, the summer of Armageddon and The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and Michael Jordan’s game-winning fadeaway jumper during his final five seconds as a Chicago Bull. We arrived on buses, fresh off our flights from Miami, from California, from New York, tired and sweaty and restless in our seats. We were eighteen, nineteen, early twenties, our hair cropped short, our family photos tucked into our backpacks, our friends’ addresses scribbled on notebook paper, folded into the pockets of our jeans.
When we stepped off the bus, the petty officer on duty smiled at every single one of us, and then, once everyone was standing outside, he yelled, at the top of his lungs, “Attention!”
We stood at attention, like our recruiters taught us, some of us excited, some of us terrified. The petty officer smiled again, walking up and down, checking us out, then he took a step back to see the entire group, some of us women, most of us ordinary girls.
“What a sad, sad bunch of recruits,” he said. “Welcome to Great Lakes, or as some of you will come to know it, Great Mistakes.”
We filed inside the processing center, got our assignments, picked up our uniforms, our boots, sheets for our bunks. We were there for a future, most of us, recruited with promises of college funds and medical benefits and seeing the world. Some of us were military brats. Some of us just wanted to prove something, make our parents proud. By the time I got to Great Lakes, I’d come to think of the military as the only way I could save myself.
In the navy, I became a completely different girl. I took orders. I followed the rules. I worked hard—harder than I’d worked my whole life. I earned the recruit division commanders’ trust and respect. They made me a section leader. I aced my safety classes, personnel inspections, physical fitness tests. I aced the firefighter training, the gas chamber, weapons training. I felt like I was a fucking superstar. I would ace Battle Stations, the final test of all our navy skills, and before I graduated, I’d get a meritorious promotion.