A Nation of Amor

by Christopher McConnell

  I circle back to Division Street and drive east towards Lincoln Park. She removes her sunglasses and ponders the scenery. Yes, she has been listening. She lifts her arms and stretches, like a cat, rolling her thin shoulders and turning her neck.

  “I guess I never saw it that way,” she murmurs.

  “No, you couldn’t. Could you?”

  Division Street crosses the Chicago River at Goose Island, 150 acres of sandbar overgrown with abandoned factories, a rusty curtain drawn between the gentrified district of Lincoln Park and the squalor of Westtown. Division Street is the only thoroughfare on Goose Island. Disused rail tracks still jut through the pavement from the time when the river and rails were the most efficient method of transporting raw materials and finished products. Now, drivers pause here only at night to solicit prostitutes. To encourage trade, some whores have taken to advertising with ignited flares, projecting their wares through the pall of the streetlight-free avenue.

  I ease my car between a dumpster and the foundation of an abandoned factory. We enter a brick corridor and drive upon a rail track towards the heart of the works.

  Once, when I took another woman to Club Lucky, she was frightened of the long passage of towering brick on either side of the rail path. She didn’t believe that we were actually going to a club. But this woman sits placidly in the passenger seat, stone-faced, naturally impervious to the industrial decay. The path opens to a courtyard with loading docks; two other cars are parked near a windowless, metal door.

  As we walk towards the door she slides her hand in the back pocket of my khakis.

  “My name, by the by, is Sara.”

  Beyond the door is a gutted sweatshop. The brick walls are adorned with massive, unframed abstract paintings which fade into the murky light like opaque backdrops on a dimly lit stage. Dusty tarpaulins nailed to the window frames secure the room from daylight. In the center of the room, nearly reaching the 20-foot-high ceiling, is a sculpture of an immense phallus. Over four feet in diameter, the shaft is randomly punched with hundreds of pinholes that swirl about the circumference. From within the phallus, colored lights of red, violet, and yellow revolve on a pedestal. A fractured spectrum of primary color seeps through the tiny holes casting a kaleidoscope over the smoky room. In the corner is a makeshift bar and I order two beers. Elongated sectional couches are littered about; all appear to have been salvaged from bordellos. Easing the stifling heat of the closed space are four industrial fans blowing from each corner of the rectangular room.

  Sara takes a long pull from her beer then rubs the frosty bottle across her forehead, leaving a smear of moisture under her hairline. Before I can say anything more to her, James, the person I’ve come to see, joins us on the couch. I introduce Sara to him but she refuses his hand, politely nods, and rests her palm on my thigh.

  “James is the proprietor, of sorts. He locates space for illegal clubs.”

  Sara smirks at him. “You have shit taste in art, James.”

  She produces a cigarette from her bag, lights it, and commences to flick ash on the floor.

  “James and I want to get something more permanent, say, an old tavern in Westtown.”

  Sara rises from the couch and wanders about the space, peering at the canvases, examining the sculpture, backing away from things to find them in the light.

  “Where did you find her?” James asks.

  “Westtown brother, Westtown.”

  Sara turns away from the phallus; grimacing, she offers me a disdainful shrug of her shoulders. I walk to her and take her hand.

  “I’ll show you something truly beautiful.”

  I lead Sara up the stairs to the top floor. From there we can see the last sliver of a burning orange crescent peeking over the horizon. The streetlights spark on, an incandescent glow creeping evenly along the grid of byways, forming a checkerboard of light.

  “Look, over there … You can see where we were, there near the park where it is all black, the lights around it and that’s my house at the tip.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Sara murmurs, “I never seen it like this before.”

  The city sleeps so differently from my suburb, from my childhood home. There, everything rolled up inside itself, eerie and static in the darkness. Every car in its garage, doors closed and locked, bulbs on porches extinguished like night lights next to drowsy children. Homes in a line, like rows of uniformly spaced dormitory beds, their inhabitants sinking to sleep between the folds of crisp sheets. Each child squirming into a comfortable, bedtime niche, cloaked in the suburban quiet of a thick down comforter, the nocturnal sounds of insects in summer, then, a final drowsy refrain of sighs from each child drifting to sleep.

  But Westtown prepares for bed with the clumsy plod of a drunk lurching over the pavement, foraging toward the vacant lot for a cushion. Wearing the layers of his possessions, he aims for an ancient, moldy mattress, eventually hitting it with the force of not sleep or acquiescence, but anesthesia or catatonia. He wheezes amid the yawning streetlights, blinking neon, rumbling buses, and howling sirens that are no different from the day. With his eyes shut, the still humming organs of the city dance upon his beaten face, a dirty screen reflecting the blinking neon message projected from the all-night currency exchange; checks cashed checks cashed checks cashed checks cashed …

  I pull Sara toward me and we kiss. I rub my hands down the length of her back to her hips and she straddles my thigh. I kiss her cheeks, her eyes, shoulders, chest, and she throws her neck back for a moment.

  “We gotta go back …”

  “Soon, soon …” I answer.

  “Now. For real.”

  “Can I see you again?”

  “Yeah,” she gasps, “I wanna see where you live.”

  MARIZA DEL RIOS

  October 19, at home

  Mano says,

  “My PO fixed it with the judge. But I gotta stay in Uncle Rey’s school or they lock me up.”

  Why does he get kicked out of school to get kicked back into school? School’s the for real jail. If he let me go with him I could have told the judge he has to find a job to support his family. This never would’ve happened. But I chill. Knowing that they say it is always hard for young couples at first. Seen that many times before. I will have to take care of him through these hard times. Mano won’t be a gangbanger forever. I could help him to study, school was always easy for me. After he gets his GED he could go to night school. Yeah, college, then go for an even better job. He could even go to art school, but art jobs don’t pay so good.

  His eyes aren’t laughing so much anymore. Before, his quiet mouth and loud eyes made me feel better. If a guy ain’t talkin’ shit too much all the time, means Mano must be smarter than the rest. No other way now, he’s got to go back to the corner gangbangin’ and sellin’ reefer, ’caine, we need the money. We’ll never see each other. He’ll have to work at night and it’s night now. Mano gets up from the chair.

  I sit on the back porch where I can see him on the corner, running back and forth from the cars. Husky the cop passin’ by, so dangerous and shit. Mano’s not for fightin’ but too proud to go without and not work at anything he can to make ends meet. Mano my love, you’re so small and light to be gangstering and have Folks after you. The gangsters beat on you, cops beat you, jobs beat you, school, that fuckhead judge. When he starts comin’ back I run inside and real quick jump into bed so he thinks I’m asleep all this time. Mano comes in and shoves me to the side of the bed real hard with his shoe.

  Mano says,

  “Your fuckin’ sister pass by today?”

  His eyes crazy like he’s gonna jack me up. I try to look at him and smile. It must be hurtin’ him too.

  Mano says,

  “I don’t want her or nobody else around when I’m not here.”

  He kicks at me again.

  I say,

  “Don’t kick at me, you!”

  I can feel the room heating up from him, anger coming out of his body. He throws me to the floor.


  Mano says,

  “You don’t talk at me like that.”

  Kickin’ me all over and in the stomach too, like he doesn’t know me and I’m somebody on the street that looked at him wrong. I curl up like a ball and wrap my arms around my stomach. Kick me in the head, kick me in the head, anyplace, just don’t kick me in the stomach. But he won’t stop so I crawl under the bed.

  Mano says,

  “Come outta there!”

  I say,

  “You’ll kill the baby.”

  He stops, breathing real hard, I can feel him sitting on the bed and I come out on my knees in front of him. He slaps me across the face. Just eyes glowing at me in the dark. He takes off clothes and throws them at me, his shoes and pants and shirt and the belt buckle scratching across my cheek.

  He laughs, lit for real on something. I’m stinging, not like it hurts, but getting pins and needles in my arms and legs. I’m, I’m, all his …

  But this baby is mine. I could live forever and be his or somebody else’s and that won’t change. This baby could be something that is mine and if he kills it then I’m just his chair, or his car, his cunt. So if I keep him from killing this baby I still have something for just me to love. But it comes out different in words.

  I say,

  “I love you Mano. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

  And we be married. If I ever talk to any man I get killed, if I ever talk to my friends I get killed, if I go out of the house without him I get killed, if I mouth back I get killed, if I talk to his brother I get killed, if I talk to anybody when we’re out I get killed, if the laundry ain’t done I get killed, if the food’s no good I get killed, if there be messes around I get killed.…

  He’s talkin’ all crazy and fast but his hands are off me. Then he gets up and pushes me back on the bed real hard and shoves my nightgown up. He’s got a flashlight, a little one like a pencil, makes me spread my legs at the end of the bed and lie back there and he sticks his fingers and the flashlight up inside me.

  Mano says,

  “This be my shit. Nobody else gonna be in my shit.”

  He feels all around inside me, sayin’ it over and over.

  “This be my shit. Nobody get into my shit.”

  His fingers dry and dirty, rough inside of me. What if he can? Maybe he could reach all the way up to the baby? Can he see my baby’s face? Or arms? Or anything? Can he see everything I save for myself?

  Mano says,

  “Nobody else in my shit.”

  But when we do it I can feel where he can’t go. Where the round of him ends somewhere inside me. Motherfucker, look all up in me cuz you’re seein’ what you think is all of me. The hole ends and won’t let you see my insides. All you want is a hole? Take it.

  Mano says,

  “My shit, my shit.”

  No fingers or flashlights gonna touch my baby before she’s born. His fingers are close to my stomach, inside where the baby is growin’. When I first knew Mano I felt funny in my stomach sometimes. Sitting on the window ledge in my old bedroom, waiting for him to pass by in the car. Dizzy until I could see his car in front of the house. When he honked the horn some kind of charge, right up through me. But he doesn’t touch what used to give me nerves no more. I put my hand on my heart, my legs up in the air like at the doctor’s office, some kind of wall inside me that he can’t reach his hand up and touch my heart either. Heart beatin’ real hard and crazy, my head telling it to chill. People talk shit about broken hearts in songs …

  Mano says,

  “Ain’t nobody in my shit.”

  Is this unhappiness comin’ inside me? A broken heart about bein’ in love and losin’ something? Tears of having no love anymore? I listened to slow jams in the dark and never dreamed about being stuffed with fingers and flashlights. So fuck that shit. A heart ain’t nothin’ but what keeps time, a drum machine in my chest. Got nothin’ to do with bein’ broken or love and cryin’ about men, hearts run on and on and when they stop, if they break, then you’re dead. It’s my head, my stupid head, singing love dreams, not my heart.

  REYNALDO MATOS

  October 25, in the classroom

  “The Latin Kings were formed because a nine-year-old boy refused to wear a pair of red mittens clipped to the sleeves of his winter coat.”

  Eyes bug, jaws succumb to gravity’s pull, my student body is suddenly a mass audition for the lead in the Steppin’ Fetchit Story. This truth kicks fiction three times in the ass, a Reader’s Digest serialization is on order for the bedtime story these jovenes have requested. Because if I had to pick a Cleaver, the founding Latin Kings more closely resembled Wally than Eldridge.

  A week of school orientation, chock-full of motivational sermons, anemic assessments, school handbooks, and personal counseling sessions; all swept aside by a single question. Surprisingly, it wasn’t Flaco or Mano to proffer the gauntlet. Awilda, reedy, lippy, bright, and obviously at the behest of the mob, was the one to confront me with the only lesson any of them are truly interested in learning from me. She asked me why I had been in jail.

  That, my dear, is a very good question … I danced the soft-shoe, slipped on a banana peel, bent over to split my pants, and all but dressed in drag in hopes of kindling an interest in school. And what do I get for my troubles? A sucker punch. A low blow in the twelfth round and I lose on points. An authoritarian overreaction at this tender stage of academic reapplication could lose me a shot at a rematch. But the punks tipped their hand, allowed me to see a chink, a way to barter my way beyond the fortified walls of their minds.

  My fair deal square deal: a spelling test every other Friday. If the entire class gets a C or above, the reward is an episode from the continuing saga of Reynaldo Matos, “This Is Your Life.” During lunch today, Awilda personally coached Mano through the vocabulary list. I’ll gladly cough up the first installment. In any competition, the winner best understands the rules. To win this game these kids must pass the GED Exam in June, and I don’t give a fuck how they do it. My third grade teacher taught me the multiplication tables by promising me a new pair of gym shoes if I got an A in math. 13 X 14 = 182.

  “When I was about five years old, my mother took me to where the first Puerto Rican community in Chicago used to be, an abandoned railroad yard near Chinatown. Back then, it was just a spooky graveyard for disused boxcars. Chinatown and the Chinese community, by the way, are still there.

  “Even at five, I had a monkey on my back, or more precisely, in my hand or mouth. I didn’t travel well as a child, and the only way to minimize my bellyaching was to buy me a box of animal crackers. A true gangster is born, not created.

  “My mother had no easy time prying my attention from the cookies to the boxcars on the train tracks. In hindsight, my appetite eventually led me down the shining path of Puerto Rican consciousness. It occurred to me that the boxcars obsessing my mother resembled the cookie-filled circus caravan in my greedy little grip. The ensuing food fantasy drove me to the brink. I imagined circus caravans the size of boxcars carrying life-size animal crackers for me to devour. I dreamt of it for weeks, circus animals in cages, cookie caravans transported from place to place on railroad tracks.

  “But my mother really brought me there to show me where my father had lived when he came up from Puerto Rico. She took me because the rail yard was soon to be torn down in order to build a public housing project. She never talked about my father much. He pulled up on us when I was born. All she did tell me was the story of my father coming to Chicago and living in boxcars stationed in that rail yard.

  “You see, my father, alongside other Puerto Rican men, unloaded goods from the boxcars. The last boxcar of the day was home. The men would pack into it, then they were locked in for the night. A watchman had the key and only unlocked the door if somebody needed to take a leak in the bushes.

  “After a year of this, my father saved up a little money and sent for my mother. That was during World War II so all the blanco men were away
in the army. Every Puerto Rican man that moved on from living in the boxcar would send for a brother or cousin to come and take his place. The foreman told my parents where to rent a little apartment. But you could only rent from somebody who knew where you worked, knew how much money you made, knew just how much to charge you each month for rent. If my father stepped to the foreman he would lose his job and his home. This was the easiest way to keep him in line because Puerto Ricans can’t be deported.

  “When the war ended, all the blanco soldiers returned, and my mother and father had to leave the apartment. The owner of the building no longer had to rent to Puerto Ricans.

  “By then my father had become a ‘Puerto Rican Tradesman.’ Somebody loaded his back until his knees buckled, then told him where to carry the stuff. So my parents moved northward to Lincoln Park, nearer to where my father could get a job in one of the warehouses on the river. We rented an attic above a garage. Our doorway was on the alley. All the other Puerto Rican families moved there as well. Black families lived there too, but a little south of us. After the war there was a space of about six square blocks between where the blancos would live and where the blacks lived. They let the Puerto Ricans have it. That was the second location of the Puerto Rican community in Chicago.

  “Remember the first day of kindergarten? All those little kids crying and carrying on? Not me bro’. Sure, I was just as scared, but more so of my mother if I embarrassed her in public. My mother took no shit, one of those hands-on-her-hips Puerto Rican women. My mother was so bad, if I was promised a beating and she was too tired after work, she’d take me around Tía Lucia’s house because my aunt would be fresher and they could tag team. Of all the Puerto Rican women around, my mother spoke the best English. So she headed up the posse of Puerto Rican women and children and led us into the kindergarten classroom.

  “I saw my first blanco smile that morning. A toothy, cracked-lip, humorless expression of veiled civility that possesses the intimidatory presence of a pit bull. Blue eyes magnified behind rhinestone-framed bifocals … Mrs. Kmet, my first teacher. One time she bent over and I thought that white wave of drawers would drown me.