by Achy Obejas
Yuri keeps nodding. He takes a couple of joints from his pocket and gives them to the man, who then heads to the back room.
“Gimme one,” I tell Yuri.
“No,” he responds. “No, unless you pay for it.”
“Fuck, man, I’m your brother.”
“Debt between brothers is the worst thing in the world.” Voices.
The man’s voice. I think I also hear the boy. I’m not sure.
They took Daniela out of my sight. Two of them grabbed the other girl. Héctor pumped up the volume.
I didn’t look at her face as I unbuttoned her jeans. Or as I pulled them down. Or as I pulled down her panties. Her navel was pierced. It was a tiny Chinese lion’s head, with a miniscule gemstone. Maybe it was just some piece of glass. Yeah, that’s probably what it was.
I felt the tip of Héctor’s boot on my butt.
“Not like that. Fuck her from behind. So she’ll feel it. So you’ll both feel it, you and her.”
They turned her around. They bent her over the hood of the car.
I realized the best thing to do was get it over with as soon as possible, and I acted accordingly. She was good. She didn’t scream.
“Okay,” Héctor said as I zipped up my fly. “Tell your brother to keep his paws off my business. You were great, really. Just ask her.”
I turned around, very slowly.
Daniela was behind me, at the garage door. Two of them were holding her; she had a handkerchief stuffed in her mouth. They’d held her there the whole time. Her jeans were at her knees. A third guy, at her back, moved away.
Daniela heaved as if she’d been holding her breath for hundreds of years.
The guy pulled up his zipper.
I don’t know what was worse: that she saw me or that I saw her. Or knowing that she’d seen me, or knowing that she knew that I knew she’d seen me, or knowing that she knew I’d seen her.
Maybe I should have asked the other girl, her little friend, what was worse.
But I didn’t. I never saw her again.
The woman leans against the doorframe, her hip pointing. “Hey, Yuri, what about me? Are you gonna pay me or what? Look, I don’t want any trouble with you but you can’t disrespect me.”
Yuri stretches in his chair.
“I’ve got your stuff, girl. But it’s not time for me to give it to you yet. I’m about to make an investment, and I could need it at any moment. I’ve got a live one. Let it go for now, come back Thursday. Look, I’m not lying.” He takes a wad of bills and fans them out. “Your stuff is right here, but listen to what I’m telling you…Of course, if you really need it, I’ll gladly…I mean, you know that, right?”
“You know how it is, Yuri…” She comes in and stands by my side.
She smells divine.
“I don’t think there’s a problem waiting till Thursday.”
And she heads for the back room.
Yuri puts the bills away and lights a joint. He blows the smoke in my face.
“Don’t look at me like that. You just never had the balls for business.”
That’s true.
I’m just Omaha, you know.
Omaha, with the happy face.
The one who crosses the street without a lick of sunlight. The one who doesn’t get wet at the beach when it rains. The one who knows how to talk to kids. The one who sells his only pair of shoes today and then tomorrow somebody gives him a motorcycle. The one who never pays but always invites. The one who leaves for church and comes back from the cabaret. The one everybody knows, and who everyone thinks tastes like honey. Or like really cold beer. Or smoked cheese. Or snapper. It’s a matter of taste. The one who came to stay. The one who’s always leaving. That one, yes, Omaha. The one you want to be.
It just won’t stop raining outside.
But I have to go out.
Or I’m going to go crazy.
The rain masks La Gloria’s stench so that it’s bearable. She doesn’t realize I’m behind her, staring at her ass while she’s absorbed in her excavation, until a few minutes later. She turns to me with her arms full of empty bottles.
“Hey, c’mon, gimme a hand.”
To her surprise, I say yes.
We put the bottles in a sack, already about half full with God knows what crap. We drag it one, two, three blocks in the rain, until she says, “We’re here.”
I follow her into the dark hallway. Stairs. She goes first. I miss a step and fall flat on the sack. It’s a little softer than I’d imagined. We go on. Door, lock, key.
“Come in.”
I manage to find a bench and sit down. La Gloria throws me something that feels like a towel and suggests I take off my shirt. I obey. She turns the light on and the first things I see are her tits.
Beautiful tits.
“You look like a wet cat,” she says, throwing her sweater on the floor. “C’mon, you must have come for something.”
She goes through a door and turns on another light.
The first room is a warehouse full of bags and trash. It didn’t surprise me. But this one does. There are books to the ceiling, piles of them, lovingly stacked. In the corner there’s a shiny hotplate. In the other, a naked mattress. In the other, a few things on hangers. That’s all.
And La Gloria, nude.
I didn’t see when she took off the Lycra and her tennis shoes. I’m still slow, very slow.
“We have to hurry,” she says. “My man will be here soon.”
Why not? All women have a right to get some, even the Glorias.
“What does your man do? Does he dumpster-dive too?”
“No way. My guy’s big, he has his own thing. He’s a businessman.”
“Oh, c’mon. What businessman is gonna wanna be with a little pig like you?”
“Hey, I’m telling you. My man’s the king of the neighborhood. His name is Héctor. Don’t tell me you don’t know him.”
“Héctor, the blond guy who sells weed?”
“That’s the one. You’re surprised? There are a lot of men who like women like me, women who know how to move. He doesn’t sleep with anybody else. I’m the one he likes. He’s always bringing me gifts.”
I approach her. She opens her arms to me.
I slap her twice, in rapid succession, across the face.
She collapses on the mattress, dripping blood from her nose.
“Son of a bitch! Cocksucker! What the fuck is the matter with you?”
“I don’t like women like you.”
“You’re crazy, faggot.”
“If Héctor asks, tell him it was Yuri.”
“And who the fuck is Yuri?”
“I’m Yuri,” I say, and leave her there, bleeding.
It was me who invited Daniela and her friend to the theater that night. Should I feel guilty about that? It was me who said, “Let’s go down the street.” Should I feel guilty?
Yuri’s right at the door, brow furrowed.
I peer inside.
There are four guys playing dominoes. Two smoke and look out the window without speaking.
The sergeant is in the middle of the hallway that goes to the back, and he’s making an effort with the Nintendo DS.
“I hate it when it gets like this,” Yuri says to me. “Too many people hanging out. But since it’s raining…If we only had two or three more…It’s actually a good day to make money but I don’t have many offers…Got any ideas?”
I shrug. What am I going to come up with?
A man walks out of the room in back and moves past the sergeant. Yuri signals another guy, who hurries to the back. The one who’s just come out of the room talks to Yuri.
“You should clean him up.” And he leaves in a hurry.
“Omaha, do me a favor, fire up the water heater,” Yuri says. “And fill the bathtub. And grab a couple of clean sheets out of my closet too.”
I obey.
Yuri’s closet shares a wall with the other room, the one in the back.
Some
thing can be heard.
Not much, but something.
In any case, I don’t stick around.
I’m tired of hearing it.
Dani spent more than a week without speaking, without crying, without stepping outside. Practically without eating or sleeping. “I can’t stand it, Omaha, I can’t stand it. Why didn’t you do anything?”
I told her to go to the doctor, to get drunk, to get some sleep. She ignored me.
“Are you going to be much longer?” Yuri peers in from the bathroom door. “Two more guys just got here, and one of them pays really well.”
“I’m almost done,” I respond.
He could care less, and he leaves.
I stick my hand in the water. It’s still warm.
The boy looks up at me for the first time.
I return his gaze. It’s easy. Too easy.
“Get in here…Sit down…Lean forward so I can wash your back…Stand up…Raise your leg…Now the other one…Sit back down…Now turn around…Close your eyes so you won’t get shampoo…”
It’s too easy.
And I like that.
I dry him, I dress him, I push him out, I leave him in the back room and go signal Yuri. Without missing a beat, he calls over to a man who could be our grandfather.
“He has a couple of bruises and some scratches,” I tell Yuri. “So I turned off the overhead light and just left the lamp on. You know how some clients don’t like that.”
“You’re learning,” he says.
And it’s true. I’m learning. Finally.
Not much, but something.
Enough.
At least, I hope.
Today, when Daniela told me she wanted to have some ice cream and then go to the movies, and then to the theater to see some friends rehearse, I felt so good.
Now I feel so stupid.
The sergeant throws the old man out of the back room, slapping him disdainfully, but not too hard. We all have bad days. We can all have a bad day followed by another bad day. We’ll all have a worse day. Until the end of days. Until the end of us.
The old man leaves, crying.
The boy’s on the bed facing the wall, and he’s shaking.
Yuri brings him some pills. I look at him suspiciously, so he explains: “To get him up.”
I nod. To get him up, whatever that means. Whatever those pills might be. Amphetamines. Tonics. Something for high-performance athletes. For desperate economists. Antidepressants. Hallucinogens. For housewives. For new wave santeros. Analgesics. For everyone. Maybe all at once. They’re different kinds of pills. It’s a lot of pills.
Or maybe just placebos.
Probably.
“There’s fresh coffee in the kitchen,” Yuri tells me. “Bring me a glass.”
I go, serve the equivalent of one cup, and come back.
“I said a glass,” Yuri says, raising his voice. “A whole glass. Filled to the brim.”
I go, pour, come back.
Yuri makes the boy turn around and sit up at the edge of the bed while the sergeant crushes the pills with his fingers and sprinkles them in the coffee.
Maybe they’re not placebos after all.
The boy just looks at the floor.
“Here, drink this.” Yuri brings the glass to his face.
After a bit of a struggle and some splattering of the coffee on the sheets, the glass is empty. There’s some sediment at the bottom. It’s quite thick. Yuri hands the glass to the sergeant, who goes to the kitchen and then comes back stirring it, full again.
“C’mon, don’t play dumb.” Yuri starts the second round.
The boy surrenders even more. After he empties the glass, he coughs.
“Bring him a soda, carbonated,” Yuri demands.
I go. While I’m at it, I grab a beer for myself. I down it in long swallows while the boy drinks avidly.
“How many left?” Yuri asks.
“Two,” the sergeant answers.
Yuri nods and holds the boy by the shoulders.
“Okay, everything’s all right. Act like a man and I’ll give you a present later.”
The boy doesn’t say anything. Yuri takes his silence as a good sign and the three of us walk out, leaving him alone.
Hanging out by the window, I stare at my hands. For the first time, I notice that my little finger is slightly separated from the rest at the base, and it begins a little lower. I wonder if everybody else’s hands are like this. Or maybe I’m deformed. Curious, I try to get a look at Yuri’s hands. I can’t manage it. He has them in his pockets. I try to see the sergeant’s hands but he’s always making fists.
I try to remember Daniela’s hands.
It’s useless.
The only thing I remember—I think—is that they were weak.
How much strength do you need to stab yourself in the head with a pair of scissors?
How long do I have to wait?
“Forget about it.” Yuri appears at my side. “Forget about Dani. Have some balls and forget about it.”
I think I detect sadness on his hard face. I start to feel an intense regret. Who knows, maybe things won’t turn out so well. The sergeant is strong but I’ve never actually seen him work. I’m sure he can take two, even three, maybe even four, but who knows. Héctor is the king of the neighborhood. And there are so many people in the neighborhood. And Yuri…Yuri’s my brother. He’s as skinny as me. That’s why he has the sergeant. My only sibling now. I should…
“In any case, she was a whore,” Yuri says. “She was a whore, that Dani. A helluva whore. It’s better this way.”
I stare at him.
“I started fucking her back when you moved to Grandma’s house. Dani liked it. She also loved it when I took pictures. I told the guys, I showed them the photos. Then one of them asked me if he could fuck her. I thought he was joking but he was serious. He said he’d pay, so that it wouldn’t screw up our friendship. I said yes. Then came the other guys. Dani still liked it, not as much as before, but she still liked it. Later, some woman brought me a little girl. She was her husband’s daughter, not hers, and she’d leave her with me on Wednesdays, when her husband had to do his turn at neighborhood watch. She said we could split the profits. I thought that was all right…That’s how we started. One day, when Dani was older, she said she wanted to stop. I told her that was okay, that I didn’t need her anymore. She asked me not to tell you, ever. I said okay to that too. But that’s not important anymore…Can you imagine? She loved it when I called her my little dove, the way you do…It’s so strange that after everything she took up each hole, that she cracked from being forced…Yes, I heard about it, though neither of you said anything to me. I also heard you were showing off…but it doesn’t matter…Do you wanna see the photos of Dani from when she was a kid? I still have them.”
I don’t think I see anything on Yuri’s face anymore. It’s just a hardened face. That’s all.
“Seriously, do you wanna see the photos?” he insists. “You can even keep them. For real. Consider them a gift. If you don’t want them, I’ll give them to the sergeant.”
I tell him no. I tell him I don’t need them. He can do with them whatever he wants. I look outside to the street, to the corner, and tell him I have to go to the bathroom.
While we were watching the rehearsal, I noticed that Dani had been quiet for a while, absorbed in something. I thought I knew what it was and put my arm around her.
“What you have to do is tell yourself that nothing happened. If you say it enough, it’ll come true. Because it’s the truth. Nothing happened. For me, you’re still Daniela, my little dove. And if you want, when you feel better, I’ll tell Yuri, and you’ll see how that sergeant guy he has in the shadows shoves Morro Castle up Héctor’s ass and then does the same to the others…” I was on my ingenious little speech, of which I was very proud, so I smiled when she said, also smiling, to wait for her a minute, that she was going to the bathroom.
I was still smiling when the lights
went out.
I was smiling still when the lights came back on, when somebody screamed in the bathroom, when everybody began running around.
How stupid.
I’ve lost sight of Héctor and his animals from my perch by the window; they’re probably at the door. They’re about six or seven, the animals. That’s why I’m not so sure what’s going to happen now. I’m not even sure what it is I want to happen.
Voices. Screams. La Gloria’s name. Screams. Daniela’s name. More screams. The thud of a fist on a table. Another thud. More screams. The volume drops. Then some more. Voices. Isolated words.
Silence.
I leave my post and move to the living room.
Yuri and Héctor are sitting at the table. There are a few bills between them. A bottle of rum. Glasses. Grave but serene faces. Men at the table. Business matters, men.
“When I catch whoever hit my baby’s face, I’m gonna cut off his balls,” Héctor says, and he seems to be repeating it for the fourth or fifth time. “Nobody hits one of my women like that…and much less while trying to fuck with a business associate…” He looks at Yuri. “The truth is, it’s not your fault you had such an asshole for a sister.”
Yuri nods: “You don’t get to pick your family, as much as you may want to…About the other thing, business, let’s meet tomorrow at the bar, and we’ll talk about it then, with our heads cleared. You’ll see that we come to terms.”
“Damn right, damn right.”
“Omaha.” Yuri shakes his head in my direction. “Go up to the corner and get us a coupla bottles. My buddies here are soaked and we have to warm them up. Take that.” And he points to the bills on the table.
The sergeant and the animals huddle around to look at photos the former is holding. They laugh. They click their tongues. In one of the photos, I see can Daniela’s smile shining. A dumb-blonde smile, like Britney Spears, the kind she knew would make me laugh.
“The good stuff or the cheap stuff?” I ask Yuri as I pick up the bills.