Newcharlie shrugged. “It was a long time ago. How am I supposed to remember stupid stuff that happened a long time ago?”
“You remember.”
Newcharlie sniffed but didn’t say anything.
I swallowed and stared out past his head. “The thing I ain’t ever tell you and Ty’ree is that Mama did wake up that morning. When the paramedic guys put this thing against her chest that sent electricity to her heart. They did it twice while Miss Roberts and me stood back. Miss Roberts had her arms tight around my shoulders. The first time nothing happened. But the second time Mama’s eyes opened, just for a minute—maybe not even that long. They opened and her lips moved. Like she wanted to say something. But then her eyes closed—only halfway but enough for me to know she wasn’t gonna open them again. She let out a breath, a high used-up sound like right before a song ends.”
“Why you tell—telling me ... now?” When I looked at Newcharlie, he was crying, gulping but not making any other sound. Tears were moving down into his mouth and dripping from his chin. He sniffed and bit his bottom lip.
“ ‘Cause I never said it to nobody. I been carrying it around. Like ... like a monkey on my back. You weren’t here for me to tell it to. None of it.”
I took the pictures out of my back pocket and sat down beside him. “I didn’t kill her.”
Newcharlie moved the plastic bag away from his eye so he could get a better look. He hadn’t seen these pictures probably in years and years. I’d kept them hidden from him, afraid he’d get them and burn them up too. But now I held them out so he could see, not afraid anymore. It was like the pictures were chiseled into my brain.
“You tried to kill the memory of her,” I said. “But she’s too deep inside of us.”
Newcharlie winced, and I wondered if it was because of his hurt eye or what I was saying. He sniffed again.
“You want to burn these, too?”
Newcharlie took the pictures from me. He stared at them. I could see his eyes filling up again, but he wiped at them with the ice bag. After a long time he handed the pictures back to me.
“I ain’t gonna burn them.”
“Charlie,” I said, “that vet guy said you did the right thing. That dog was hit too hard.”
Charlie bit his lip again and held it. He blinked hard and nodded. “It ain’t the dog,” he whispered. “It’s just ... it’s just when that cop put those cuffs on me, it reminded me about the last time. About how that was the last time I got to see Mama living. I wish the last time had been something else. I wish it had been me sitting on the couch next to her making her laugh. I used to make her laugh all the time. I wish that was the way she got to remember me. Not with no handcuffs on.
“I should’ve been here,” Charlie whispered, his voice breaking up. He stared down at his feet, his whole body shaking.
“She used to all the time tell me about Bayamón,” I said. “About what it was like there when she was a little girl—how the birds and frogs were always making noise outside her window and everything was green and warm.”
Charlie smiled. It was real tiny but I could see it.
“El Coqui,” he whispered. “That was the frog she used to talk about. Remember that song? El Coqui, el Coqui, el Coqui.”
He sang a little bit of the Spanish part. Charlie knew more Spanish than me and Ty’ree ’cause he used to beg Mama to speak to him in Spanish. He said it was so he could rap to Puerto Rican and Dominican girls, but I knew it was ’cause he loved listening to Mama speak it.
He stopped singing and stared down at his feet again. “She used to all the time say we was gonna get back there someday,” he whispered. “All four of us ... on a plane to Bayamón.”
“We never had the money though.”
“I was gonna get us tickets,” Charlie said. “Take us there.”
“To Bayamón?”
Charlie nodded. “Paradise.”
I swallowed and stared out over the block. Paradise, I kept thinking. Charlie wanted to take us to Paradise.
“That why you robbed that store?”
“Yeah.”
We didn’t say anything for a while. Charlie took a piece of ice from the bag and started chewing on it. He held the bag out to me.
“Nah. I could make you copies of these last two pictures, Cha.”
“That’d be cool.”
I moved a little bit closer to him. We sat there like that for a while, staring out over the block without saying anything. I could hear some girls singing about the man they were gonna marry. And real far away, I heard an ambulance siren. Across the street a woman was watering her window boxes, and me and Charlie watched her, watched the water drip down.
After a while I could see Ty’ree coming down the block. He was walking fast, like he had someplace important to be, but he stopped at a couple of stoops to say hi to people. Charlie wiped his eyes.
“What are y‘all up to?” Ty’ree asked when he got to our stoop.
Me and Charlie shrugged. Ty’ree looked from one of us to the other and sat down on the step below ours.
“I saw your boy Aaron,” Ty’ree said.
Charlie frowned. “He ain’t my boy.”
I wanted to ask Charlie what it was like to be in that room with all those gang guys, if he was scared when he had to fight. I stared at him, wanting to know what he was thinking when that first punch landed.
“He was your boy though,” Ty’ree said.
“Yeah,” Charlie said. “But that was a long time ago.”
Yesterday, I thought. Yesterday was a long time ago.
“You feel like trying to catch that movie again, Laf?” Ty’ree asked.
I shrugged. “Yeah, that would be cool.”
Me and him looked at Charlie.
“Some lame art film?” Charlie said, but he smiled, then winced and held the ice bag to his lip.
“Either that or sit on the stoop for the rest of the night.”
Charlie leaned back against the railing and thought for a moment. The ice was melting through some holes in the plastic bag and down his arm. He wiped it on his T-shirt.
“This is art, though, ain’t it?” he said, waving his hand over us. “Sometimes I feel like our life is one big work of art—it’s everything.” He stared down at his bare feet. “And nothing.”
I looked at Ty’ree and raised my eyebrows. I had no idea what Charlie was talking about. Maybe something in his head got knocked loose in that gang fight.
But Ty’ree nodded. And the two of them stared out over the block like it was the most interesting thing in the world. I tried to see what they were seeing but couldn’t.
“This isn’t art,” I said. “It’s our block! It’s our life.”
Charlie put his arm around my shoulder. It felt strange. Familiar strange. Good strange. I didn’t want him to ever take it off. Ever. Ty’ree smiled and winked at me. I winked back. B to B to B.
“I saw a picture once in this gallery,” Ty’ree said. “It was of this man sitting on a stoop just like we’re doing now. And it was selling for like four thousand dollars.”
“Shoot,” Charlie said. “Somebody could take a picture of me and sell it for that much. They could take a hundred pictures of me!”
I touched my back pocket where the pictures of Mama were and didn’t say anything. I would never sell them. Not for a million dollars.
Charlie and Ty’ree went back and forth talking about life and art and things that cost lots of money I listened to them, feeling good and safe and free. The sun was almost gone now and the block was quieter. Charlie had set the plastic bag next to him, and I watched the water pool underneath it. He kept his arm around my shoulder. Maybe the moment wasn’t ever gonna end.
“Mama used to say she’d buy three more of us if she was rich enough,” Ty’ree said.
Charlie pulled me a little bit closer to him. After a long time had passed, he said, “What else did she use to say?”
When Ty’ree started talking, his voice was lo
w and even, like he was reaching way back to remember. Me and Charlie leaned forward, leaned into our brother, to listen.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to the many people who helped me get this story on the page, including my very patient editor, Nancy Paulsen; my very patient friends Toshi Reagon, Catherine Gund, Teresa Calabrese, Linda Villarosa, Vicki Starr, and Michelle Adams; the women at Hedgebrook, the young men at The Connelly Juvenile Detention Center in Massachusetts. Y para mi otra familia, including my oldest friend in the world, Maria Ocasio (con recuerdos de Titi Alma).
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