by Bethany-Kris
Renzo stuffed his hands in his pockets, and eyed the quiet streets. Across the way, a man slept in the mouth of an alleyway tucked inside a dirty sleeping bag. Every day, that man and his pigeon stayed in the same exact spot. And every fucking day, it was a reminder to Ren.
He’d been there.
More than once.
Shortly after his birth, his mother sucked on a meth pipe, blew a positive, and got kicked out of the shelter where she’d been staying with him. She called it an act of kindness that the shelter hadn’t called CPS for four-week-old Renzo.
He just called it bullshit.
At thirteen, he slept inside the tunnel of a slide at one of the city parks, and used a public bathroom to wash his face every morning.
His sister, Rose, had been around then. She cried all the damn time. She was cold, and hungry. Sometimes, their mother showed up with enough money to keep them warm in a pay-by-the-hour motel but that was just as much a blessing as it was curse.
Especially when they had to step out of the hotel room every so often, and listen to the sounds that slipped out from under the door when each new man would randomly show up.
Renzo made a choice, then. That was the first time he went out on the streets, and looked for some kind of work to give him money to keep his sister warm, and feed her. At first, it’d just been chasing dregs and homeless away from businesses that didn’t want that kind of problem in front of their windows. One day, a guy in a leather jacket handed Renzo a package, and asked if he’d run it up to the man sitting in a bakery in Queens.
No questions, he’d been told.
Don’t open the package, he’d been warned.
He ran that package, and without ever knowing what it was, had a thousand dollars in his hand by the time he got home.
That man was Vito,
Vito came back, too. Renzo kept saying yes to jobs. He put money away, worked from the time the sun came up, until the streets were pitch black. He kept walking and moving and running for people who wore better clothes than he did and drove vehicles he could only dream about because they paid well, he didn’t ask questions, and he needed to do better.
He needed to do better for his sister, and then later, his brother, too.
The rest was fucking history.
His life was not a pretty one.
It was the only he was given.
And fuck anyone who said he didn’t try because he did. All he ever did was try.
“I’ll get your shit to sell,” Renzo told the guys, “right after I make a trip into Brooklyn.”
Noah and Perry nodded like that was enough for them. Diesel, on the other hand, decided he wanted to test Renzo’s already thin patience by running his mouth. As he usually did.
Nothing new.
“Say hi to Rose for me, yeah?” Diesel punctuated that smartass comment with a smirk. “Haven’t seen her in a while.”
Renzo turned a bit, ready to leave, but not before tossing a remark over his shoulder he knew would cut the other man. “Rose ain’t coming back to these streets for nothing, man. And everybody knows those who walk these streets aren’t going anywhere but right on these goddamn streets. Where she is, you’re never going.”
He’d made sure of that.
Dropped every cent he had into lodging and food and books and whatever else his sister needed when she won that scholarship to a private school in Brooklyn for the arts. No matter what, he was going to keep making sure Rose could stay right where she was for as long as she wanted to be there.
“Like you, too, right?” he heard Diesel shout out behind him. “You’re walking these streets, too, Ren. Where the fuck are you going, huh? Right here, man.”
Was that supposed to hurt?
It didn’t.
It wasn’t news to Renzo where he was going to live and die. These streets had been mean to him for his entire life. Maybe they’d be kind when they finally killed him.
He wasn’t holding his breath.
• • •
Renzo stepped off the city bus, and kept his head down as he walked through the people waiting at the bus stop. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he always felt out of place when he wasn’t walking his own streets. Maybe that shit was all in his mind, but it still felt very real to him and not something he could escape.
It didn’t take long before he was passing a row of brownstones with carefully manicured flower pots on the steps, and shined railings leading up to the front doors. Rose was already waiting at the very end of the block on the front steps of a brownstone that had been converted to an apartment of sorts for students of her school. Like a dormitory off school grounds. Rose could stay at the private school, and it would be cheaper, but the rooms were full. They had to make due elsewhere.
Renzo dropped down on the steps to sit beside his seventeen-year-old sister, and handed over a doggy bag full of sweets from her favorite bakery in the Bronx. He made the trip up to visit her once a week just to make sure she was okay, and had everything she needed. Usually, he dropped off cash and took care of whatever it was she needed until he would be back around again. He never forgot to bring those sweets, either.
Rose smiled as she peeled open the bag to peek inside despite already knowing what would be there waiting for her. “Smells like heaven.”
Renzo laughed, and leaned back on the steps. “Diabetes is in your future, Rose.”
His sister shrugged. “Whatever. I’ll die happy, then.”
“Pretty sure that’s not how diabetes works, actually.”
“Stop judging me.”
She said that through a mouthful of half-eaten puff pastry. Renzo could only shake his head, and enjoy the moment he had with his sister. All too soon, he was going to need to catch another bus, head across the city, pick up a package of drugs, and get back home so he could put Diego to bed. Tomorrow, he’d get up before the sun had even risen in the sky, and get out on the streets to make sure his guys had their product to deal, so no one was chasing his ass for that. He’d get to his own territory, and wait to make some extra cash, too.
It was a never-ending cycle.
“How’s Diego?” Rose asked.
Renzo sighed. “You know how everybody says the twos and threes are terrible for a reason?”
“Not really.”
“Well, they do. The fours aren’t much better.”
Rose grinned a little. “But he loves you.”
Good thing.
Next to Rose, the only person Diego cared for was Renzo. He blamed that on their neglectful, addict mother, honestly. She barely looked at Diego when she did show up at their apartment, and that was usually just long enough to sleep before she was gone again. Although, lately, she’d been around more.
It was just enough to make Diego hope his mother would stick around, and then she’d take off once more. Renzo was left picking up all the broken pieces of a four-year-old boy who was learning far too young that there was nothing in this world for people like them.
Not even love.
“How’s school?” Renzo asked.
“Good. I painted a naked man yesterday. That was interesting.”
Renzo’s head snapped to the side, and his gaze narrowed. “What?”
Rose let out a laugh. “Relax. Art class. They’re professionals.”
Professional what?
Nude people?
“He was like forty,” Rose added. “Chill out.”
That only made it slightly better. Renzo decided to just keep his mouth shut, though. What else could he do? His sister was in a far better place than he and Diego were at the moment. His goal was, hopefully, by the time Diego started school … Renzo might have enough money to put him in a decent school that would keep him busy for the day.
He just needed to keep Diego out of trouble, right? Make sure his little brother never had a reason to go out on the streets like he did to make up the difference, and take care of his family. Diego wouldn’t have to do that at all if Renzo was doing it for him.
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That’s all that mattered.
Rose offered him a donut, but Renzo shook his head. He brought those for her, not for him. He should have grabbed food at some point over the day, but he ended up getting busy and shit like feeding himself fell to the wayside. He’d make sure to have something for Diego later, and maybe then he could eat for the first time all day.
But even that was a toss-up.
“So, hey,” Rose said, closing up the bag of sweets and giving her brother all her attention again. “I was talking to someone …”
She looked like their mother, he thought. Soft-features, dark hair like his, and brilliant green eyes with gold flecks. He’d taken their father’s russet eyes—darker than night itself. Renzo also took his sharp, strong jaw from their shared father, but everything else—high cheekbones, and straight noses to even the way their eyebrows quirked with a mind of their own—came from their mother. But you know, before drugs had taken away the beauty their mother had once been, dulled her skin, and took all the life out of her eyes.
“You were talking to someone, huh?” Renzo rolled his eyes, and shifted his shoulders a bit to get more comfortable. “Didn’t I tell you that talking to people gets you in trouble?”
Rose smacked him lightly with the back of her hand. “Just listen. It was my counselor at school. She said there’s a program at the Y coming up. High school equivalency, you know.”
“I don’t have time for that.”
And he didn’t.
Rose grumbled. “Don’t say I didn’t try.”
The knot between his sister’s brow tugged at his heart in a painful way. She worried about him far more than she should. He wished she wouldn’t concern herself over him and his affairs at all. It would be easier on both of them.
Pushing up to sit straight, Renzo bumped Rose’s shoulder with his own, and grinned in a way that had her smiling back. “Remember, kiddo, I look out for you. That’s how this has always worked. Not the other way around.”
“But someone’s gotta look out for you, Ren.”
“Maybe, but it isn’t you.”
With that said, he stood from the steps and dug inside his leather jacket to pull out a yellow envelope. He held it out for his sister to take. Rose did, but not before eyeing it first. This was their thing—a few minutes of chit chat every week, he handed over some money, and then he left her to her life until he came back around again.
It was better that way.
“Where did the money come from this week?” Rose asked.
“Does it matter as long as it keeps you here, and not in the Bronx?”
His sister didn’t reply.
Renzo didn’t need her to.
• • •
Renzo ignored the way the grease on the underside of the fast food bag seeped through to his palm as he balanced it with the rest of the shit he was carrying, and tried to unlock the door of his apartment. It took him entirely too long to realize he didn’t need to unlock the door at all because it was already unlocked.
Fuck.
Bad sign number one.
The second bad sign was the mess he walked into as soon as he opened up the front door. Papers and takeout containers scattered across the entryway floor. Discarded clothes beside the laundry basket he’d left out to wash later after Diego went to bed.
And the smell …
Sickly sweet.
Too sweet.
Renzo knew that smell, and it instantly turned his fucking stomach. As much as the smell of meth made him sick and angry, it also made him concerned. He dropped the bags he was carrying onto the chipped countertop in the kitchen as he passed through, and headed right for the living room on the other side.
Sure enough, he found his mother strung out on the couch. One leg had been tossed over the arm of the couch, while the other was bent at an ungodly angle under her backside like at one point, she’d been sitting up straight and fell over. One of her arms hung limply over the side of the couch, while the other was wrapped around her middle. Sunken in cheeks moved with each shallow breath Carmen took, and her hair looked like she hadn’t washed it in a couple weeks.
She probably hadn’t.
Her scant clothes didn’t look much better.
Meth made people stay way up.
So, when he saw her sleeping, he instantly looked for signs of something else. His mother was predictable that way. Without trying very hard, Renzo found the reason why his mother wasn’t up and climbing the fucking walls with paranoia.
A track mark in her arm dried with a dot of blood, and a forgotten needle that had somehow rolled under the couch. The burnt spoon on the coffee table and rubber band that had loosened and fell down to her wrist was just more proof.
Carmen went way up.
But then she had to balance it out, and go way down, too.
It was a dangerous game. How many times had Renzo called for an ambulance because he found his mother overdosed? Too many to count or care, anymore. It got to the point that he now kept a couple doses of Narcan on hand, but his mother always raged whenever she woke up after he used it.
Narcan put her right into withdrawals, and she was fucking mean, then. Mean, and violent, and sick.
He couldn’t help it, though. Maybe he should let her die—God knew she wasn’t doing anything to help them like she was. She only caused her kids heartache and pain time and time again.
Except he couldn’t just let her die. There was a part of Renzo that still clung onto hope that someday—maybe—his mother would wake up from whatever hell she was in, and want better. That she would want to do better. That she would somehow remember she made three people, brought them into the world, and in a way, they still depended on her.
Life hadn’t always been like this, either. Renzo could remember brief bouts of time where his mother somehow got herself sober, gave a shit, and tried. Usually, when she was pregnant or even shortly after the birth of her kids. Well, for Rose, anyway.
Maybe that was the stupid part of him. That was the part that kept clinging to hope Carmen would get better.
He checked her pulse quickly—a slow, but steady, beat thundered against his fingertips. He took a moment to look her over, and wonder if he should get the Narcan out, but everything pointed to the fact she was probably going to be fine, but strung out all damn night.
Too bad she wouldn’t find another place to do this at. She knew the rules—he paid for this place, and his damn name was on the agreement. She wasn’t supposed to come here high, and fucked up using it as a place to sleep. He didn’t want Diego seeing that shit anyway.
Diego.
Shit.
“Diego!” Renzo darted through the one-bedroom apartment to the room he kept for his little brother. It was tiny as hell, and all he kept in there was a small double bed, a banged up dresser, and a few scattered toys that Diego wouldn’t give up for the world. He found the bedroom empty. “Shit.”
“Get the fuck up, Carmen,” Renzo snarled, heading back into the living room. His mother barely reacted to his shouting at all. Not that he was surprised. He leaned over her, and shook his mother for all he was worth. He slapped her cheek a couple of times with his palm until her eyes started to flutter open. Already, he could see the drugs staring back at him. Confusion, and disorientation. “Where the fuck is Diego?”
“W-what?”
Renzo tried his hardest not to kill the woman right then and there. He’d put up with a lot of shit from Carmen, and had for most of his life, but Diego was not one of those things. Ever. That was his hard line.
“Diego, Ma,” Renzo snapped. “You promised to pick him up from the shelter tonight when the daycare closed because you knew I was going to see Rose. I wasn’t going to get back until late. You said you would pick him up. Where the fuck is he?”
Carmen blinked.
Too many stupid, high blinks.
He knew she was going to drift out again before she would even answer him or explain herself. Tomorrow, when she woke up again
, she probably wouldn’t even remember what she had done, and it would be pointless to argue with her about it then, too.
He should have known better than to trust her to pick up Diego, but he really didn’t have a choice today. No one else was available, and she had been trying to stay clean. Or so he thought.
“Is he still at the shelter?”
“What sh-elter?” Carmen slurred.
Fuck.
Renzo stood, and turned fast to head for the front door again. Fuck his mother. She could die there tonight for all he gave a damn.
Someone more important needed him.
Diego would always be more important.
THREE
Laurie chatted on as her arms swung out one way to show Lucia something, and then just as quickly gestured the other way at something new. The woman was a fast talker, and she walked at just about the same speed she spoke. Lucia found she either had to pay close attention to everything Laurie said, or she missed far too much.
“Fridays and Saturdays, the shelter has a group of tutors who come in for the women that need an extra boost to pass their high school equivalency.”
“Could I help with that, too?” Lucia asked. “On Fridays, since I won’t be working weekends, I mean.”
Laurie shrugged. “You could, if you have time between everything else you’re doing. I don’t see why not.”
“And you said the kitchen is open seven days a week?”
“Yes, and you’ll get a schedule for two weeks ahead that show which shifts you’re helping out in there. It might seem a little overwhelming at first, but …”
Lucia just laughed as the woman trailed off. Overwhelming was not really the best way to describe this place. It was kind of amazing, honestly. The shelter housed twenty women who were very much in need of help to get back on their feet. Nearly all of them had at least one child, but Lucia had noticed a couple with more than one. A great portion of the women were young—some close to her age, and others, only a couple years older.
As Laurie had explained when they first began their walk-through tour of the facility, it was not her responsibility to tell Lucia the different women’s stories and what caused them to end up in the shelter. If they felt comfortable enough, they would explain it to her themselves.