Aquaboogie

by Susan Straight

  I’m fixing to do these math problems cause the first train ain’t even came yet. They so easy it don’t take but a couple minutes. Right when I’m finish she come to correct them and start smiling. “I knew those were too easy for you. I’ll go get the next level.”

  Then it was cool for awhile, she watching me do these problems, more plus and take away but bigger numbers. We start on another part where she axing me questions, putting zeroes on the paper, and she say, How much is this, how much is that? Stupid stuff. I told her a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand. A hundred thousand. Then I look at the next one and I know it’s coming but I forgot to get ready. I know what the number is but I ain’t saying it. Max real name. I try thinking how Grampa watch the Million Dollar Movie all the time after we came to live with him. I keep looking at all the zeroes and don’t want to hear it. Max real name Maxmillion. I can’t hang with this.

  “Come on, Demone, you said you liked math better. Look at how well you’ve been doing. Don’t close up on me again.” She waiting. “We have to finish…” It ain’t even time to be thinking about him again. “You don’t want to start the writing, do you?” She say it like she fixing to make me. Math is cool—the numbers don’t change what they mean. Just move around when you do a problem. I told her I don’t like writing. Got all them rules and change every minute. You suppose to write it this way and then go home and don’t nobody talk like that. I forget all the rules. She ain’t leaving. “Demone. One thousand, ten thousand…” See. It’s one grand, ten grand, hundred grand. Million. I can’t hang no more, so I go out the door and Miss Jackson talking about, “You can’t leave the room until recess, Demone, you know that. Come on back, now. Please.” I walk around the playground, but I stay close to the portables where we are, way far at the end so nobody won’t see me. Portables like trailers and you could hear coolers drip down the sides. After the portables is the fence, then the tracks. I was walking for awhile and she didn’t even call the principal to bust me, but I remember the train fixing to come soon and I don’t want to see it, so I go back in the class.

  She sitting at the other table with this white paper, don’t say nothing to me. I can feel the train coming from way off, close my eyes, but close or open don’t help. If they close, I can see anyway. The train shaking the ground all the way past the orange groves, past all the new houses around this school, and he have to blow the horn cause before the school is Third Avenue. He blow at all the streets. The horn sound different on different trains. When you far away, they sound clear, but this one fuzzy like somebody car stereo if he don’t have no woofers to bring out the bass right. Now the train shaking the walls hard cause we in the portables, not the real classes. I ain’t fixing to cry. I don’t never cry.

  Everybody quiet cause of the train. I feel the floor shaking, the chair, the wheels bamming on the tracks. I ax Max why he say he gon kiss the train, and he start laughing, hold the Super Kool like it was a lizard and he just catch it. We use to catch lizards and fight them. “Don’t you remember them three dudes was looking for me?” I told him yeah, I know, it was Lester and Jimmy and that real tall dude they call Birdman. “You know Lester a serious rock daddy. He don’t play. He gave me some shit to sell, talking bout I could start this week.” I told him I seen it, little rocks, and they ten dollars each. “I never tried no rock-cane candy before. I tried a couple and then me and Roger smoke the rest.” I told him Lester and them forget, he could go to L.A. and stay with Mama til Lester forget. “Lester want his money and I ain’t got it.” I told him it’s only a hour to take the bus to Mama house in L.A., come on, I’ll come, too. He start laughing again. “Mama don’t want none a me. Or you. She got that baby by Robert and he don’t want us in the house. Don’t even let your mind trip like that. You so young.” He rolling the Super Kool around. “Ain’t this a bitch. All that rock candy I had and now I gotta smoke this nasty shit just to get me set up. This shit is for wackheads.” I told him don’t he remember that dude in the playground and he say, “Lester got a .357. I rather do it myself instead of wait for him do me with that.”

  I can’t never open my eyes, this train still coming, shaking the table, but it Miss Jackson shaking the table when she sit down. “What’s wrong, Demone? Are you feeling ill?” I don’t want to look at her. All these other dudes sleeping and she ain’t ax them are they ill. Everybody sleep in Educational Handicap. When I came last week all they heads look up like them dogs be on the dashboard in lowriders. Mrs. Linders bring me here from my regular class. I could hear the trains and I didn’t do my work. I didn’t know she was bringing me to the portables and they even closer to the tracks. Miss Jackson be walking around the room and talk to everybody so they won’t sleep, but some dudes been smoking weed before school and ain’t nothing keep them awake.

  She put her hand on my arm, and it feel like when my mama use to wake me up in the morning. Miss Jackson hand soft and her fingernails red. Mama use to call me real soft when I was in first and second grade and then me and Max walk to school in our neighborhood, on the Westside. We have to pass that coyote-dog name Sin next door, and then walk by the tracks to school. The rocks all smell like trains, like smoke and wheels, and sometimes we seen flat pennies that got ran over. But then Mama marry Robert and go to L.A., and the next year I had to come on the bus to this school in Hillgrove. Mostly white kids and some Mexican kids can’t speak English, and our bus from the Westside.

  Those numbers on the paper still in front of me. Miss Jackson push the paper around and all the zeroes in a row like them flat pennies on the tracks. One grand. Two grand. Lester said he make two grand in a week. He making big cash, serious ducats, Max said. “Do you feel better now?” Miss Jackson ax me. “I’ve got an idea. We’ll stop the math now and do some writing. We can write about anything you want. What were you thinking about so hard, with your eyes closed?”

  She put out some line paper and two pencils, put her hand on my arm again. “Anything in your head, sweetheart.”

  I tell her, “Training.”

  “Okay, training for a job? What kind of job?”

  “Uh-uh. My brother Max went training before. He got on one train and went all the way to L.A.” I see them gold freckles way inside her eyes. She start smiling, look at the end of the pencils where they sharp.

  “Did you watch trains when you were younger? Do you watch them now? My brother and I used to wave at the engineer where we lived in San Diego. Do you and your brother ever do that?” She fold her arms so her fingernails look like big drops of blood on her skin. “Write all this down, Demone. All about trains, everything you think about them. Anything is a good start.” I see them pale blue lines on the paper and then the door open behind me, the hot air blow in from outside. A teacher bringing in this girl so Miss Jackson get up from the table. Everybody head look up at the door. “I think we need to talk about her,” the other teacher say, and Miss Jackson tell me, “I’ll be back, Demone.” She always say that.

  It’s a lot of paper she brought. Everything about trains. I write 9:30 and 11:00. I put the pencil down cause it slippery in my fingers. After recess the train come at 11:00. Now it’s May but every day hot. The only cool place in Grampa house is the bathtub and at night when I sleep in there, I hear the train blow the horn, echoing in the tub all around my ears. Do the engineer blow the horn? I wonder. We never wave at the engineer. We threw lemons at the wheels and they go flying like hand grenades on TV. Me and Max go down to the packing house, where they put the oranges in boxes, and you could find free ones on the ground. Sometimes the train slow down there and that’s where Max jumped up on one of the cars when he rode to L.A. He didn’t come back for three days. He said wasn’t no trains coming back to Rio Seco and he got a ride with a truck. Grampa beat him with the belt.

  Miss Jackson still talking to the new girl. She fixing to give her the first diagnostic tests I had last week. She start out axing a lot of questions about what do you eat for breakfast and where do you sleep. She give you papers to
take home, but Grampa don’t never look at them. They on the table by the TV. I didn’t tell her I sleep in the bathtub, not in me and Max bed.

  She gon be busy for a long time. Recess be soon and then the 11:00 train. The longest one. It go out of Rio Seco and in the desert, past Arizona, Max told me.

  “I’ma kiss the train,” he said. “Ain’t no other way.” I ax him could I have some Super Kool, too, if he fixing to go, but he smoked it and start picking up rocks to scare me. He can’t talk so I understand him. “That Kool be like a pit bull and don’t let go,” he said, and then his mouth moving around but nothing come out right. But he could still throw. I tried to stay but the rocks hurt my legs. I went behind a big palm tree, and if I came out he hit me again. I heard the horn from way up Third Avenue, the 11:00 train. That palm tree all rough against my hands, something wet on my legs. The horn blowing a long time when the train get close, blow over and over, and I was scared to look even if he didn’t throw rocks. I didn’t see nothing but I heard something little. I don’t know what it was. The train start screeking the brakes, and I ran back to Grampa house. I didn’t see nothing. Something soft drop on my neck, a hand touch me, or a bird falling out the palm tree, maybe Max shirt flying in the air, and I knock over the chair. Cause it Miss Jackson again, and every time she touching me it pull me out from where I am. Scare the shit out of me. She looking over my shoulder. “Demone, I’m disappointed. It’s time for recess, and this is all you’ve written? 9:30 and 11:00?”

  I’ma go to the door, but she pull my chair back up, talking about, “I think you should write at least one good sentence before you go to the playground.”

  “I’ma write later,” I told her.

  “No, I want you to write one now. We have to get you into better habits.”

  “You gon be busy with the new girl.”

  “That’s not true. Come on, sweetheart.” She holding a can of 7-Up. Once I was sick and Max make me tomato soup, thick up with milk, like blood getting lighter and lighter. But then I was so thirsty and he went to the store, bring back a 7-Up. I never taste anything so good in my throat since that soda. “Demone,” she say, and sit down next to me again. I write, “I never rode on a train.” I go outside to the playground and it’s all the other kids near the fence. I keep looking at the tracks and then climb the fence, so I can walk home. All the kids start yelling about they gon tell the yard teacher. I got some rocks, fixing to throw them, but they smell like smoke, so I just keep one and walk down the tracks, land on every next piece of wood so I have to take big steps.

  hollow

  NACHO / JUNE

  FOR A MINUTE, IT looked to Nacho like the city was gone, Rio Seco erased from the valley below and only a dirty smudge left, like when he’d gotten mad at himself and wiped out a drawing instead of just throwing the paper away, rubbing hard with the eraser so that even the trashman couldn’t see how bad this one was. The bus started down the long slope. Most of the other riders had been sleeping the hour since L. A., but Nacho was used to night-shift time, and he’d been awake while the sun rose in front of them to tint the smog.

  It hung thin-layered as dryer lint, not graying the entire sky like fog or clouds, just a blanket of June haze held together by car exhaust. The bus was still up in the blue, and Nacho knew once they got into Rio Seco, the smog would just be air, but he stared now. He’d been gone, what, a year and a half?

  Past the city, the smog misty and reddish in the new sun, mountains rose up to the east, separating it from the desert, each craggy outline lapping the next. If he took a picture of this and asked the white guys, the janitors he’d worked with back in Amherst, they’d never guess where it was. Layers of layers, like mystical lands he’d seen in books at the university library—Nepal, Bolivia, the high mountains of Kenya. California—the only thing the other janitors asked him about was Hollywood and the beach, and they didn’t believe him when he said he’d never seen either. Never been out of Rio Seco except twice to Compton, to visit some girls with Snooter. Nacho smiled. The Irish guy had asked him about blondes and bikinis, and the other guys got mad. Nacho wasn’t supposed to be looking at that, native Californian or not, being a nigger.

  He wouldn’t tell his father and Snooter about the harassment, or how he quit the job. He’d just say he got tired of winter, which Snooter was expecting. Snooter—yeah, one of my hundreds of cousins. Zadnek, his boss, had said, “Willie Horton, that’s your cousin, right? I thought all niggers were cousins.”

  The river-bottom was mostly dry but for a ribbon of grayish water near the center. Past the bridge, the downtown offramp curved around, and then Nacho was outside the bus station, heading up Sixth Avenue, passing new office towers with sleek, aqua-mirrored windows rippling in the light. Then a square building with salmon walls and mint-green railings—serious Miami Vice. He wondered if his father had cleaned up any of the construction sites, if he’d had to hire one of the winos from Lincoln Park for day work. Probably still cussing if he had to give the dude lunch.

  Under the dank freeway overpass, he shivered, and then smelled the old orange packing-houses, tangy scented ground beside the street. Just past the warehouses was Lincoln Park; he saw the circle of men around a fire, more flopping feet dangling from car doors. It would be warm today, and pretty soon they’d abandon the fire for the shade of the carob trees. “What up?” called someone, and Nacho squinted. Victor Miles, he’d gone to school with Nacho. “Not much, homes,” Nacho said.

  The Westside. Nacho walked slower, listening to the way haze muffled sound. He would have known it was gray without opening his eyes, just by the softened noise. DaVinci Street, Vincent, Van Gogh, Pablo. Picasso. He was going to have to get on the truck first thing. They’d talk big shit, Snooter and his father. He knew they heard him when he turned the corner. It wasn’t but six on a Friday morning, and nobody else would be up; his feet crunched over a shimmer of brown glass. Their voices stopped. His father and Snooter sat on the rusted folding chairs in front of the house, drinking coffee, looking the same as when he’d gone. I’m ready to sleep, he thought, not in the mood to go to work. I’ma tell Pops I need some rest before I start talking. He slung the duffle bag off his shoulder onto the driveway.

  They glanced at him, lifted up the coffee cups. Nacho waited. Okay, it’s on me. Why am I back? Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies. That’s what you always say, Snooter. Nacho circled his teeth with his tongue.

  Snooter turned to Nacho’s father. “Uncle Floyd, you seen Ed? Nigga done lost his whole grille.”

  “So I heard. Roscoe told me.”

  Nacho shook, a tiny tremor like a dreaming dog. He’d missed each word and syllable, all those months in Amherst with the Polish and Irish guys whose voices fit together flat and tough as puzzle pieces. All the “niggers” sharp as triggers in his ears. He dropped the bag on the dry grass. “You a lie,” he said. “Who hit Ed’s truck?”

  Snooter looked long at him, but his father watched two dogs troop up the street. “I ain’t talkin about his truck, cuz,” Snooter said, bending to lace up his workboots, and Nacho felt the fatigue from days on the bus; he wanted to lie down in the grass, curled on his side. Am I supposed to wait until you decide to jam me up? I don’t know the code no more.

  “Huh,” Snooter pushed through his nose. “Truck!” He leaned his chair against the stucco and smiled. “That dude Ed workin with punched him in the mouth, homes.”

  Rubbing the hair around his forehead, stretching the skin, Nacho couldn’t see what he was meant to see. “So?”

  “Front four, man. The grille. It’s missin when he smile at you.”

  Nacho shook his head, laughing, when Snooter walked to the truck. Snooter was going to test him. “You comin?” his father said, standing up.

  “Where y’all goin?” Nacho asked.

  “Where we goin. To work, lazy nigga. Don’t matter where we goin, it ain’t fun. Where we ever go? We don’t take art classes and travel across the country. We just work.” He and
Snooter had put their coffee cups on the hood of the small Toyota pick-up in the driveway, and Nacho knew his mother would take them inside when she came home from the graveyard shift at the hospital. She’d be in her uniform, hair a perfect cap around her face, gold chains and rings gleaming against her penny-bright skin. The blood came back to his head, where it kept leaving after the hours of flashing-past telephone poles and shifting bus gears. He left his bag in the Toyota’s cab and got into the big truck after Snooter.

  He could tell—when they headed up Third Avenue toward Hillgrove that they were going to the dump first, and he dipped his head in annoyance. The truck, a 1955 Ford, groaned up the hill because, as usual, his father had piled rubble to the top of the wooden gate—concrete chunks, Sheetrock, plaster. The iron would be gone, given to Leo, who collected scrap metal, and the wood was piled in the backyard for winter. They must have cleaned up another construction site. Nacho smelled his father’s coffee breath, Snooter’s coconut hairdress, but no one spoke, and he closed his eyes, feeling the painful, scraped tingle in his palms already: his gloves had been gone from behind the seat for a year, and Snooter and Daddy would only laugh if he asked to borrow theirs.

  “Rest your artistic ass, man,” Snooter called from the window. “We’ll be back.” Nacho’s fingers pulsed from the rough concrete, and his knees felt as though webbing tightened around the caps. Inside, his mother was asleep on the couch, one long earring trailing around her lobe. She heard him, though, and swung up from the cushions. “My baby’s home!” Nacho smiled and hugged her. Angie and Pam were only thirteen and fifteen, but they were her “girls” and he’d always been her baby.