“You like sauerkraut too,” Mina pointed out.
“Yeah, cause I’m trying to be white,” Rubio said and laughed. He passed her the blunt he kept cupped in the palm of his hand.
Mina took a hit. “Let me ask you something,” she said. “Doesn’t it bother you that I’m white? I mean don’t you feel like you should be with Puerto Rican girls? Or, I don’t know, not a white girl?”
“For what?” Rubio said and stopped walking. “I’ve been wanting to be with a white girl for a long time, and I ain’t never met a white girl like you.”
Mina was unprepared for what it felt like to have it not matter that she was white. She was unprepared for the way the part of her that she kept ashamed and folded up inside, like a note passed in class—the part where the candle of love and hope for Octavian still burned—unfolded.
“I’m telling you,” he said. “You’re the one. You’re the one I’ve been waiting for.”
Mina thought about what it was like to wait for someone for so long. It made her wonder what it would feel like to be the one someone was waiting for, instead of the one who was still just waiting.
As if Rubio knew the shaky ground on which Mina now stood, he wrapped his strong arms around her. Slowly, he bent down and kissed her and her mouth filled with the cold taste of Newports, her nose with the tang of his Nautica cologne.
Behind them, a jittering, garbage-bag clad crackhead careened down the sidewalk and yelled that Jehovah was coming. They stopped kissing and watched him pass.
Mina said, “My girlfriend Clarissa has a cousin they called Porkie because he was so fat, and when he became a crackhead and got super skinny, they still called him Porkie.”
Rubio chuckled and pulled Mina close to him again. “My next-door neighbor in the projects was a girl called Chuletta. That means pork chop in Spanish.”
They laughed and their laughter made it feel a little like love.
That summer Mina moved into Rubio’s apartment in Woodhaven, Queens. It was really a single, ill-lit basement room with a kitchenette and faux-wood-paneled walls. On the first day she was alone there, Mina stood up on the couch to look out the tiny windows and only saw one set of feet pass by. She felt a strain of fear that she was making the wrong decision and sat down. She couldn’t call Clarissa. Clarissa would tell her the same thing the voice in her head was still telling her, Yes, you definitely made the wrong decision, get out of there now. Plus, these days, whenever Rubio found out she’d talked to Clarissa, he got mad, told her that if she loved her friends in St. Louis so much, she should go back there. Mina watched cable until Rubio came home and found her crying from an acute state of boredom and fear. Rubio told her not to worry, he would take care of her. Then he looked away.
The apartment was an hour-long commute on the J train to Mina’s internship at a publishing company in the Village. The trip was shorter if she took the A train, but then she had to change trains in the East New York subway station. And in the East New York station, Mina learned that that story she’d always told herself about how comfortable she was being the only white face in the crowd was untrue.
East New York was a place of everyday life, filled with people who moved in and around each other to get to where they needed to go. Families on their way to visit friends pulled children to the side, to let old women shuffling home from a long day of work, pass by. Young couples walked fast, holding hands, on their way out to dinner. Boys and fathers walked together, aunts pulled at dawdling nieces. People rushed in different directions. Others had no reason to rush.
In every other situation where Mina was the only white person, she was also always with friends: Makeba, Clarissa, Octavian, Ursula. But, alone in East New York, Mina was no different from the fat, blonde lady behind the token booth, or the cop that stood with his back against the iron gates. There, she became aware of how her eyes blinked, how her teeth set. She experienced the pink-mottled length of her arms and wondered if her gait gave something away. She felt as if every set of eyes were on her but, other than the Dominican girls with tight ponytails and tight jeans, who seemed to burst out laughing when she passed by, no one else even noticed Mina. Mina scolded herself for not being able to act like she did in Grand Central Station, but her feet fumbled underneath her and she tried not to fall.
Little by little, things with Rubio began to change. He no longer dug what he said he loved about her. Why did she still wear those baggy jeans? And her oxblood Doc Martens? She needed to dead them shits. And damn, how long did it take white girl’s hair to grow? People on the train probably thought she was some kind of lesbo or something. And could she do a little more to clean up around the place? I know it’s not your white mother’s fancy three-story house in St. Louis, but damn.
Mina shed it like an unwanted skin. Put on the gold bamboo earrings and the dark-brown lipstick and went out to Jamaica Avenue to buy Timberland boots. As she laced them up, she pressed the mute button on the voice inside her head, and let herself believe that everyone thought she was Puerto Rican.
But when Mina asked Rubio to take her to the South Bronx, he laughed. “I can’t take you to the Bronx,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because you’re white.”
“So,” Mina said and swallowed down, feeling the familiar knot in her stomach that she’d forgotten still existed.
“So something might jump off. Don’t forget, the Bronx ain’t St. Louis.” He took a drag off his cigarette and gave Mina a cold smile. “It ain’t even East New York.”
Mina blamed the way things were changing on the fact that she didn’t know how to make rice. If she could figure out how to make rice, she was sure things would go back to the way they used to be. The first time she tried, she followed the instructions on the back of a box of Uncle Ben’s the way Kanta did. Rubio dropped the entire plate in the trash and told her that Uncle Ben’s was nigger rice—didn’t she see the old nigger on the box? He was Puerto Rican and therefore ate Puerto Rican rice.
The next day Rubio came home from FoodTown with a giant bag of Canilla rice and told her, “Don’t forget to wash it.”
“Wash it?”
“Three times,” he said and left.
Mina washed the rice and used the special pot that Rubio bought, but it still came out burned on the bottom or stuck together in a massive clump or it crunched with every bite. Rubio asked her what the hell good was a college education when she couldn’t even make rice, and Mina burst into tears. Rubio muttered something and left.
Mina took the heavy bag of rice back out and slammed it on the counter. The directions didn’t say anything about washing at all, but there were directions in Spanish on the other side, and Mina thought perhaps those directions included a step about washing. She poured a cup of rice into a bowl and covered it with cold water. As she pressed the hard grains against her palm, her eyes filled with tears. The water in the bowl turned a murky, milky white, and Mina thought about packing her stuff and walking the four blocks to the J train. She drained the bowl and filled it a second time.
Mina thought about calling Bones. He would help her, tell her to come home, and he’d probably give her a job, but for what? So she could watch Octavian come into Rahsaan’s with other girls? Back when she and Clarissa still talked, Clarissa told her about how Octavian was doing a lot of drugs after she left, but then he started getting better and was painting again. Mina was sure he had a new girlfriend by now. Mina dumped out the water that was less murky this time and filled the bowl again. She thought about going to Kanta, just across the Hudson. But Mina would rather figure out how to make the fucking rice.
An hour after she’d thrown another inedible batch of rice in the trash, Rubio returned with a girl with a long black ponytail and big boobs.
“This is Chuletta,” Rubio said. “She’s going to teach you how to cook.”
Mina didn’t know whether to be furious or relieved.
Rubio pulled Mina to him by h
er belt loop and brushed his lips across hers. “I love you, Blanquita,” he said and walked back up the stairs and out the door.
She told Mina to call her Chula—which, at this point Mina knew meant cute, and which suited her much better than anything resembling a pork chop. In the fluorescent light of the kitchen, Mina saw a razor thin scar that started at the corner of Chula’s right eye and ended at the corner of her mouth. It pulled her face into a pretty, perpetual smirk. Chula saw Mina staring at her and her smile turned kind.
“Damn. No te preocupes, Mamita,” she said. “It’s only rice.”
TRACK 20
This Broken Heart
WHEN OCTAVIAN GOT HOME from Trinidad, he quit working at Rahsaan’s and began bartending at Blueberry Hill where the money was so good he didn’t have to work so much and he could spend more time painting. He was part of a group show at a gallery in the Art Lofts and sold three pieces—one of them to Brendon, who had gone back to school to get his MBA. The gallery owner told him he was wasting his time in St. Louis.
“You should be in a bigger city,” she said. “You’re too talented for this town.”
There were two places Octavian should be, she said—either New York City or Chicago. Mina was in New York—or at least he thought she still was, and even though her letters had stopped coming the year before, he decided he should probably go to see her. Tell her what happened since she left. See if maybe she still loved him. But when he asked around nobody knew where she was.
“What do you mean you haven’t heard from her in over a year?” Octavian asked Bones. “And Evan doesn’t know and neither does Ivy.”
Bones stopped stacking CDs and said, “You tried Clarissa?”
Octavian nodded. “She said they kinda fell out. That Mina stopped returning her calls after she went to live with some Cuban guy. Now the number she had for her is cut off.”
Bones nodded. “I paged her a while ago, but she never called me back.”
“Pager? You mean like a beeper?”
“Umm-hmm.”
“Why didn’t you tell me Mina had a beeper?”
Bones gave Octavian a look.
“Well, what the hell does she need a beeper for?”
“I’ll give you the number if you want. Not sure if it’ll work, but you could try.”
Octavian turned over the new OutKast album and read the back. “I’m going to New York anyway,” he said. “Whether I get to see her or not.”
Bones nodded. “Well if you do, hug her tight for me.”
Octavian waited until he got to Brendon’s cousin Peaches’ apartment in Brooklyn where he was staying to page her. He used code 007 and the phone rang right away.
His voice trembled in his throat when he picked up the phone and said, “Hey. It’s me.”
On the other end, a man’s voice said, “Al?”
“Al? No, this is Octavian.”
“Octavian? Who the fuck is Octavian?”
In the background he thought he heard a girl’s voice say, “Octavian?” There was a click and the line went dead.
Octavian stared at the phone and tried to convince himself that the voice in the background wasn’t Mina’s. It was probably someone else’s number now, or maybe he dialed it wrong and should try again. The horn-filled bass line of Jay-Z’s “Friend or Foe” boomed out of a passing car and Octavian decided to take a walk first. Go to the bodega and get a beer, sit and drink it on the stoop like a real New Yorker. Then the phone rang again.
Most likely it was a call for Peaches, he thought. Or it maybe Peaches herself calling to see how Octavian was doing. He picked it up.
“Octavian?”
“Peaches?”
“Who the fuck is Peaches?”
“Mina?”
“Octavian.”
He took a long slow breath. “Hey, Mina girl,” he said.
He heard her light a cigarette.
“I’m here,” he said.
“Here like in New York?”
“Yes,” Octavian said. He felt loose at the edges and looked out the barred windows. “I came to see you,” he said.
She laughed a little. “You’re pretty fucking late,” she said.
Hearing her voice made things feel urgent, necessary. He had wanted to play it cool, but instead he said, “Can I see you?”
“Tonight?”
“Yeah, tonight.”
“Not tonight.” She said it like she was looking over her shoulder.
“Tomorrow?”
“I have to work.”
“What time do you get off?” He hated that she was making him do this, but he wasn’t going home without seeing her.
“We’ll see,” she said.
Octavian waited on the corner of Eldridge and Houston. Old men with withered faces, dark pointed stares, and tight-drawn mouths rushed past him. Exhausted women with covered heads, children, and pulley baskets of groceries moved by slowly. There were lots of girls who could have been Mina, but there was no Mina. Octavian gave up and went into the bar alone.
It was a lounge with big soft couches and low tables. He’d found it the night before as he walked through the streets of the Lower East Side and he knew Mina would like it there. When she called from work to tell him she could meet him, he asked her if she knew where it was.
“You mean Sapphire Lounge?” she said.
“Is that what it’s called? There was no sign.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I ain’t been there in forever.”
Behind the turntables, a good-looking kid, with hair cut close to his scalp and fierce cheekbones that reminded Octavian of Francis, played Donald Byrd’s “Rock Creek Park.” Octavian ordered a whiskey and soda.
Behind him, he heard a voice say, “Tave.”
He would have been able to recognize her voice in a crowded room, but he didn’t turn right away. He let his name, as she said it, hang in the smoky soul-filled air. When he turned around only one girl stood behind him, but she didn’t look like Mina. She had a long, brown ponytail and she wore thick, gold hoops, tight jeans, and brand-new Nikes. Only when he looked closely and saw her dark-gray eyes was he sure.
Octavian pulled her to him and hoped that even though she looked like someone else, she’d still feel the same, still smell like Mina. She didn’t. She smelled candy-sweet and she stiffened in his arms and waited to be let go. When he looked at her again, he felt himself smile, but she had already turned to the bartender.
“Ay yo,” she said. “Can I get a Heineken?”
The song changed to Roy Ayers “Searchin’” and they sat silently on one of the low sofas.
Octavian finally said, “Hey, Mina girl.”
“What up?” she said, keeping her eyes on her brown painted nails.
“You stopped biting them,” Octavian said.
“Nah, these ain’t mine. Got ’em from the Koreans. They’re acrylics.”
“You got fake nails?” Octavian tried again to get her to look at him.
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. They look really real.”
Mina took a sip of her beer and glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. He smiled and she quickly looked away. She took a pack of Newports out of her jacket pocket and lit one. She offered the pack to Octavian and he took one, but didn’t light it.
“You know, Frankie used to call these genocide cigarettes,” he said.
“I know.”
At the mention of Francis, Octavian felt a crack in the ice around her and she met his eyes for longer than a beat before quickly turning her gaze towards the dance floor, where two white girls were pretending to grind on each other and laughing.
“Yo, G,” she said. “This place has gotten wack.”
Octavian laughed and said, “Did you just call me G?” He waited for her to laugh too, but she sucked on her Newport and didn’t even smile. For a moment, Octavian wished he were with the girls laughing on the
dance floor. Anything, he thought, would be better than this.
The DJ put on Funkadelic’s “This Broken Heart” and Octavian laughed a little. “Remember how we used to sing this at the top of our lungs?”
She shrugged. “Not really,” she said.
Octavian could tell she was lying. “I heard you have a boyfriend.”
“I told you I wasn’t gonna wait no more,” she said. “In my last letter, I told you.”
The sharp menthol smoke of the Newport in his lungs was cold, and he felt like George Clinton, like no other heart could love her like his broken heart could.
“Are you happy?” Octavian asked.
He thought he saw her swallow a little before she said, “He’s mad cool. He’s from Puerto Rico—or, well, his parents are. He grew up in the Bronx, in Patterson Projects.” She paused and Octavian could tell she wanted him to be impressed, but he only felt sad.
“Did you meet him at school?” Octavian asked.
“Barnard is an all-girls school,” she said. “I met him at a club.”
“What does he do?”
“What does he do?” she mimicked him, and now she laughed. She took a long sip of her beer. “He hustles shit. He works sometimes, but mostly him and his boy get stuff off a backs of trucks—big shit like appliances—not no Goodfellas cigarette shit. And he makes mad money selling boosted cable boxes. Sometimes he moves weight, but that’s just sometimes.”
“Mina,” Octavian said.
“What?”
“Are you for real? I mean, I don’t know, I keep waiting for you to bust out laughing and tell me this is a joke. But you’re serious, aren’t you?”
She looked directly into his face and said, “Why are you here, Octavian?”
Octavian took a deep breath and said, “Because I miss you. Because I finally understood what you said when you left. I can’t stay in St. Louis, and the first place I thought to go was here. To you. To where we made those plans.”
“That was a long time ago. Things have changed.”
“I can see that,” he said. They watched the girls stumble together into the bathroom. “Why did you come, then? You obviously don’t want to see me. You didn’t have to come here.”
There You Are Page 24