Lola

by Melissa Scrivner Love

  “Look, I’ve told you everything I know. I don’t know where the cash is.”

  “I believe you,” Lola says, and she’s telling the truth, just as Mila is.

  “Can you talk to the leader? Garcia? Can you tell him I’ve told you everything?”

  “Garcia’s not the one you have to convince.”

  “But…he’s the…banger. He wants credit. You said.”

  “I didn’t say he was the leader.”

  “Then who—”

  Mila doesn’t get to finish her question, because Lola shoots her between the eyes.

  Lola watches the last of the chicken empanadas sizzle and pop in the orange Teflon skillet Garcia bought her last Christmas. The skillet and its companions—smaller skillet, Dutch oven, grill pan, all orange—came from a set endorsed by a celebrity chef on the Food Network. The woman on the skillet’s packaging wore a flowing orange floral top that matched her cookware, her smile stretched into a grin on the glossy cardboard. White teeth, fake tan, loose-fitting top to hide the rolls that spilled over her too-tight jeans—white people would classify her as “cute.” Lola wondered how much time the woman had spent trying to outrun cute and reach pretty before she embraced who she was and made a fucking killing.

  Lola has never seen the lady’s show, but as she fries dough in oil now, she narrates in her head the way she imagines this woman does. “The key is to make sure you let your oil get hot enough before adding the empanadas. Otherwise you end up with a greasy mess. Bad for your tummy in more ways than one.”

  It’s seven a.m., and the day of Mila’s death has dawned. It’s early for empanadas, but Lola likes to cook after she kills. She made the same empanadas almost three years ago to the day, in this same kitchen, after her first body dropped.

  From the living room, she hears men shifting their weights in stiff chairs, the creak of a floorboard, a lone cough and an immediate, “Sorry.” Tension. The men of the Crenshaw Six aren’t speaking. Garcia is with them. Lola knows he’s sitting in the hunting armchair, its deep red cloth dotted with horses and hounds. Someone dropped it on a curb in Bel-Air a couple years ago. Garcia brought it home for Lola, even though they could have just as easily dropped some cash at a Crate and Barrel for something more classic.

  The pattern on the chair was a foxhunt, Garcia had explained to Lola. During a hunt, he said, fat white men rode their horses into the ground to trap a small fox. The fox, meanwhile, ran from the hounds set after it by these very same fat white men. When Garcia had finished speaking, Lola had taken a black marker to the men in the pattern. She had scratched out their eyes and their red jackets and their sausage-casing thighs scrunched into tight white pants. The horses and hounds she left unmarked. It wasn’t their fault some entitled motherfucker got bored and decided to turn them against the fox.

  All people everywhere, rich or poor, skinny or fat, are animals. Looking for a fight. Looking to turn everyone against the weakest.

  Mila was weak, but thought she was strong. Lola killed her because she had gotten everything she could out of her—she bled Mila dry before she shot her between the eyes. And yet, Lola hadn’t lost any sleep over Mila. She may only have seventy-two hours left on Earth, but she needs her rest if they’re going to have any hope of getting the cartel’s four million and Lola’s life back. She also needs her rest to deal with Hector.

  This morning, before the kill, she had sent Hector home, thanking him for his willingness to sacrifice himself for the rest of them to escape the scene. Still, she heard the nagging voice in her head—he wouldn’t have had to sacrifice himself if he hadn’t fucked up and warned Blondie. He had gone back to his apartment with a clear conscience, because Lola, whom he still sees as his sister, not his leader, hadn’t punished him then. Hector thought this meant she, his sister, had forgiven him. In truth, or at least the truth she tells herself, she merely had other things to do, like shoot Darrel King’s girl.

  The reality is Lola was too tired to punish him. She had known she would have to deal with her baby brother with a clear head. Of course, the clear head would only make what she knew she had to do more difficult. Spent and hungry, she could ravage anyone. Rested, fed, and caffeinated, balance restored, she was more forgiving.

  Together, after the kill, she and Garcia had brushed their teeth side by side in their cramped bathroom, and Garcia had left the toilet seat up after he peed. They didn’t mention Hector or the drop again as they fell into bed, backs down, watching the ceiling fan whir through the thick air above them. Garcia had started snoring within two minutes, but Lola hadn’t been able to stop thinking—not about Mila or Hector, but about the blond meth head and her stick legs and her shoulders sagging under the weight of so much heroin.

  Now, two hours later, Lola hears Garcia’s voice, deep and sure, from the living room. It rattles the skillet. The empanadas shake. “We did what we set out to do. We kept that shithead Darrel from getting his supply.”

  Lola hears murmurs in response. Damn straight. Fuck yeah, we did. Same old shit. Tension dissolving into stale ghetto air saturated with fry grease and engine exhaust. Garcia can do that. Let the tension out of a room with a few words. But her part, the punishment, is still coming.

  Standing over this sink, its cracked white enamel showing thin black veins, Lola thinks back to three years ago. She was making the same dish, empanadas, but on this day, that was her only duty. Sure, Carlos let her serve as lookout, which she’d done on their last heist a couple days before, the one that landed Jorge at the Bell Police Department with no alibi till Lola showed. In the other room, she’d heard Carlos giving a pep talk, similar to the one Garcia is giving now, albeit with lower stakes—glad our homeboy Jorge’s home. Home, home, home, Lola remembers thinking. She was moving in a trance that day, too, and again because of her brother. Because of Hector.

  Now, there is a whine at Lola’s feet. Valentine looks up at her, eyes green like olives, chestnut brown coat. When Lola hoisted the pit over the fence to freedom, Valentine’s ribs were showing. Ribs on a pit bull should never show. If they do, you know someone’s training them to fight, starving them, making them mean with the promise of food on the other side. Food or death. Those are the choices. Her mother taught her that, at least. The knowledge has kept her alive.

  Lola turns to the Dutch oven, where two chicken breasts, boneless, skinless, bland, boil in rolling water. Lola lifts them from the pot and shreds them with two forks. She is always amazed that flesh comes apart so easily, crumbling under tines. She mixes the chicken with white rice and adds a pinch of salt. She wants Valentine’s stomach to accept the food, so she keeps it bland and easy. She spoons the concoction into Valentine’s pink bowl and sets it in front of the dog. She has done this for her dog every morning since she stole her from that fighting ring a year ago.

  “Stay,” Lola says. The pit keeps her eyes on Lola’s. Lola wants the pit to know she doesn’t have to fight anyone for her food. She doesn’t have to knock Lola over to get to it. Lola will let her have it, if she just pauses to accept her circumstances. “Okay.”

  The pit sticks her snout in the pink bowl and gobbles. Lola gets down on her knees and scratches the dog’s ears. Lola wants her to get used to having people bother her while she eats. She doesn’t want Valentine turning on anyone because she needs food. Lola vows in the pit’s ear now that she, Lola’s girl, will never want for food ever again. Is she promising to keep herself alive, then? Will Garcia remember how much Valentine eats and when and which brand? If you change a dog’s food, it can fuck with their stomachs.

  Valentine gobbles her food, oblivious to the promise, but Lola leans against the counter, at peace.

  “We kept Darrel from his drugs. We sent his new supplier’s courier running scared.” Garcia now. Calm. Sure. But he has nothing else to say, because everything after the running scared, they fucked up. Her baby brother fucked up.

  That was not the case three years ago, when Lola knew Carlos was holding up a shot glass with one hand
and pouring tequila for the soldiers with the other. Today, we have something to celebrate, she remembers hearing him say. Today, we are not the Crenshaw Four, but the Crenshaw Five, because today, we welcome Hector into our ranks.

  When Lola had peeked around the corner, she had seen the men surrounding her baby brother with their pungent shots and piercing barks of congratulations. Lola had seen Marcos dole out a gut punch to Hector as her brother took a shot. She had seen her brother choke on it, and she had seen Carlos laugh. She had seen Jorge catch her looking and lower his glass. He knew that, for her, her fifteen-year-old brother’s indoctrination into a gang wasn’t something to celebrate. Garcia had seen her, too, and done the same.

  The condition for her moving in with Carlos years before had been that he wouldn’t touch Hector. He had agreed. She had believed him. For years, he had kept his word, through Lola’s college classes, through her suggesting ideas for his gang to do more—There are six corners, she had told him, that no one in Huntington Park wants to touch. You can do more than stick up other gangs. I do more, Carlos had said. Then let me, Lola had responded. And he had let her serve as lookout on the job in Bell a few nights before he came after Hector. He wouldn’t change the gang name from four to five for her—she was a woman, she cooked his food and washed his shorts, which up until she found econ and business and chemistry had been fine. But he would let her keep watch from the bushes outside the rival gang’s living room window. He would let her peek through the bars to watch the stickup go down.

  But once Jorge, Garcia, and Marcos had taken the money and run, Carlos had stuck behind. Lola had watched her man, the man with whom she’d shared a bed for years, kick another man, this one bound and defenseless, until he told Carlos something. Carlos had disappeared into the hallway, but Lola followed him on the outside, from the living room to the front bedroom, where Carlos took a knife to the rival gang leader’s mattress. Lola remembers being able to spot the wet pools of drool or some other bodily fluid on the sheets all the way from the window. She remembers wondering what the hell Carlos was doing. And she remembers the mountain of cash that jolted upward from the force of Carlos’s knife.

  Great, Lola had thought, more for everyone. Except later that night, when the men sat drinking and dividing their profits, Carlos never told the other men about the cash. Lola didn’t mention it then, but when she was sitting at the same vanity she uses today, brushing her hair before bed, she had met his eyes in the mirror and asked him if he was going to tell the others about the cash. Carlos had laughed and smoothed her hair and asked didn’t she want to live in a castle. He had kissed her and soothed her, and she knew from his kindness not to mention it again. So she didn’t.

  Still, the next night, she had caught Carlos in the living room, showing Hector how to load an automatic. She had half expected Maria Vasquez there too, offering Hector the spoon and the flame and the powder. Is this what motherhood is, Lola had wondered, trying to stop the devil? She had dropped her backpack on the floor and gone to start dinner while, in the other room, Carlos was doing what he promised Lola he never would—bringing her baby brother into the gang. Carlos was trying to punish Lola for knowing his secret.

  Now, on the day she is to punish her brother, Lola hears silence in the living room. The empanadas are ready. She doesn’t want them to burn, so she scoops them up with a flat spatula, rusty from wear and wash, blots them on store-brand paper towels that don’t like to soak up grease or coffee or blood. She has no platters or chipped china that’s been passed down through generations.

  “What we didn’t anticipate was losing the merchandise,” Garcia says, continuing to the bad-fucking-news portion of his speech.

  Valentine tilts her head, spying the plate of empanadas Lola hoists in her taut arms. It is time. The pit trails Lola into the living room. Green shag carpet, rickety white wood tables, and dim lamps. Their shabby home. Their home. Nothing else matters.

  “And Darrel’s girl,” Garcia says.

  “Mila,” Lola says, soft. Hector looks at her—he heard. But he turns back when he sees she didn’t want anyone to hear.

  Lola stays quiet as she moves through the room, offering empanadas to each member in turn—starting with the least powerful. She cooks to delay the inevitable.

  Hector takes only one with a murmured, “Thank you.” As she moves up the chain of command, the men take two, even three. She understands Hector’s appetite well enough to know he was too scared to take more, so she circles back to him before she gets to Garcia. The men will leave three on the platter for her. Hector takes a second empanada with a grateful smile.

  “We didn’t get the shit,” Garcia continues. He doesn’t mention Hector’s fuckup. He doesn’t have to. “And Los Liones doesn’t give a shit how we get it back. But we in for some serious heat, ’less we make this shit right.”

  “What kind of heat?” Jorge says, mouth full. Marcos grunts his approval of Jorge’s question. The ex-con eats bent over, shoulders protecting his food as he shovels it in with no time for air.

  Garcia looks to Lola, then, his eyes on her, says, “We have till Thursday to deliver the cash and the drugs.” He is not telling the whole truth.

  “Or…what?” The whole room shifts to Hector, who looks surprised he spoke.

  Garcia looks to Lola again. She gives a slight nod. She wants this part to hurt.

  “Or they take Lola.”

  Somehow, the sentence makes Lola want to laugh. The cartel still thinks she is the girlfriend, but if they take her, they’re sure as shit never getting their currency back.

  “Take her,” Hector repeats, and the confusion in his voice angers Lola. She doesn’t know what she wanted—tears in a room full of bangers wouldn’t do anything to further Hector’s position here. Still, she wanted her baby brother to be smart enough to realize “take her” encompassed any number of action verbs—cut her, maim her, rape her, kill her. She wants Hector to understand that, because he couldn’t pull a gun on Blondie, he has saved one lousy tweaker’s life only to jeopardize his own sister’s.

  “Valentine.” Lola gets the pit’s attention. Lola lowers the last empanada to the ground, leaving it under the pit’s nose. “Stay.” The dog does. Then, “Okay.” Valentine gobbles up the empanada. It’s gone in two neat bites. Everyone’s stopped eating to watch Lola and Valentine’s act. The entire room holds its breath, sticky thigh skin pressed to edges of rickety chairs.

  They are all awaiting their leader.

  Lola turns her back on Hector and pads into the kitchen. She peels the paper towels damp with grease from the now-empty empanada platter. Valentine nuzzles and sighs at Lola’s feet, where she drops into a circle of brown fur, exhausted.

  No one in the living room has spoken or moved. They are waiting for her.

  It wasn’t like that three years ago, when Lola could hear the celebrations and the fucking around and the male preening. Carlos wanted her to hear Hector’s happiness. Carlos wanted to punish her for knowing he was stealing from his own men.

  Lola knew where Carlos kept the guns. She had gotten one from the safe that morning, waking up knowing Carlos had trapped her brother. Guns and money are like drugs. One taste and you’re hooked. There was no going back for Hector, just as there would have been no going back for him had Maria succeeded in giving him his first dose of heroin. But Lola couldn’t—and still can’t—punish her mother.

  That day three years ago, Lola had turned the empanadas just as she had today, not wanting them to get anything past golden. She had figured she had about two minutes, three tops, if she wanted to get back to the kitchen in time to move them from skillet to plate.

  She had marched into the living room while Carlos was speaking.

  “Gonna go far, my man,” Carlos was saying to Hector, his arm around the boy’s shoulders even as Lola put a bullet between his eyes.

  Was it premeditated? Lola didn’t know. She still doesn’t. She had gotten the gun from the safe hours before, yes, but had she k
nown what she was going to do before she was relegated to kitchen duty while Carlos tried to take her whole world away?

  “The fuck?” Marcos had said as the bullet wound between Carlos’s eyes seeped blood. Lola hadn’t known they would need a tarp. Maybe she hadn’t known what she was going to do.

  “Why?” Jorge.

  Garcia had placed a hand on Hector’s shoulder and pulled him back from the carnage.

  “He was stealing from us,” Lola said, and when she returned to dump the extra cash, a hundred grand, on the coffee table, Garcia, a quiet soldier Lola had known since her high school days but barely noticed, was the first to bow his head to her. Jorge followed Garcia’s lead. It was only Marcos whose loyalty was still in question. Hector was Lola’s brother. Hector was a given, and with her as leader, she thought, she could protect him.

  By the time Garcia and Jorge had rolled Carlos’s body in a plastic tarp, burned off his fingerprints, and deposited him deep in the Angeles National Forest, the city’s most popular body dump, Lola had added herself to the gang’s roster. Carlos never let her join in any official capacity. Still, despite his death, she had decided to keep him in the count. Not to do so would make the neighborhood suspicious. Besides, Crenshaw Six sounded better than Crenshaw Five.

  She had picked up the phone and called Kim first. Had she seen Carlos? He didn’t come home last night. Okay, okay, she would let the cops know. Two Huntington Park PD detectives had come to ask rudimentary questions. They wore suits and ties and complimented Lola on her coffee, then exchanged knowing glances when she mentioned Carlos may have ripped off a few people he shouldn’t have. Right now, he was just a missing person, but Lola knew something worse had happened. At least she was sticking mainly to the truth, she had thought. The detectives did not disagree with her theory that Carlos might have been killed, but there was no body. Lola had asked if it was true what she’d seen on those cop shows, that it was almost impossible to solve a murder without a body. The detectives had said yes, that was true. Then they had closed their notebooks and promised to be in touch. She had given them coffee in Styrofoam cups to go. For a couple of months, they had called to update her about their lack of updates on Carlos’s case. What they never said to her was that it was no fucking wonder Carlos went missing after sticking up gangs for their loot, that they’d bet their pensions his killer was the last dude Carlos stole from, and that maybe he should have considered the consequences to his actions. Lola appreciated this omission on the detectives’ part. She also appreciated that they’d solved the case in their own minds, and with the police department budget and resources what Lola knew they must be, that had to be enough. Lucky for her, since she was the real killer. The only wild card now, three years later, is Kim. If Carlos’s sister ever finds out Lola is the true leader of the Crenshaw Six, she’ll be gabbing to the cops before Lola can shoot her between the eyes.