Coco next saw Cesar when she was walking to the store. Cesar blasted out of a nearby pool hall, chasing a man he stood no chance of catching. As he passed her, he spit out a Now and Later candy in a spray of blood, and a stream of obscenities followed. It turned out that the man had wrongly accused Cesar and his friends of overturning his car, which he’d parked in front of the pool hall, and when Cesar had cursed the man out, the man had pistol-whipped him. Now Cesar was scrambling for backup, trying to mobilize The Andrews Posse. The challenge was, as always, to get the boys organized. “Ooh,” Coco remembered thinking, “my baby’s gonna fight.” Coco was a member of TAP’s unofficial auxiliary. Boys needed girls at times like these as decoys. Police were less likely to stop a boy accompanied by a girl. Coco grabbed the arm of a boy her sister used to like.
And that’s when Cesar noticed Coco—which placed her in a quandary: she didn’t want Cesar to think she had a boyfriend besides Wishman, but if she let go of the other boy’s hand, he could get into trouble, and that would be her fault. To her relief, the moment dissolved in the ensuing commotion, all the yelling and jostling and undirected threats. Everyone assembled, eventually, but by then the pistol-whipper had long since fled.
Yet the incident did its deeper work: the outburst relieved frustration and gave the bored teenagers something new to talk about. Revenge provided an excuse to connect, and another sort of hormonal communication replaced the desire for a fight. Cesar did not speak to Coco, and Coco kept the most important questions to herself. Did he have a girlfriend? What did he think of her? Darkness descended over University and it was growing cold, but the headlights from the cars felt summer bright.
The smallest hope had a way of vaulting Coco into overdrive; just on speculation, she broke up with Wishman. She needed him out of the way in case Cesar wanted her. Wishman acted unconcerned, but Wishman’s mother, Sunny, told Coco she was sorry to hear of the split. She liked Coco: Coco struck her as the type of girl who could anchor a restless boy like Wishman without expecting too much. Sunny had hoped for this match, since trouble seemed the destination of this particular son. Sunny, who was large and easygoing, could tell that Coco had heart—that she could hold her own in a fight—but she also possessed a sweetness. Coco wasn’t greedy. She didn’t curse. She was happy to feed Sunny’s baby and change a diaper and go to the store to buy Sunny a loosie when her Newports ran out. Sunny would never tell Wishman what she thought—she did not want him all into her business, either—but she memorialized her hope for his softer landing by taping Coco’s photograph to the refrigerator door. Now Wishman would be reminded of Coco every time he got a drink.
Coco lived in the heart of the inner city, but to her it was more like a village: her world was made up of roughly five square blocks. Its emotional center was her mother’s apartment on the top floor of a six-story building off University Avenue. Just down the street was a high-rise housing project that staggered back toward the Deegan Expressway. The projects were another country; Coco traveled there only with her mother, Foxy, and her stepfather, Richie, who liked to do battle on the handball courts. Coco visited other outposts more often: the emergency rooms of North Central and Bronx Lebanon, where Coco waited for hours whenever her younger brother had a seizure or her older brother had an asthma attack; her grandmother’s apartment, a five-minute walk away; the apartments of friends, who were mostly relatives by blood, and who hosted birthday parties, baby showers, christenings, and coming-home parties whenever the prison let somebody’s son or boyfriend out. There was Burnside Avenue, where Coco went shopping whenever her mother had money for the big purchases—shoes and coats. There was Fordham Road, where she attended school.
And yet there were important distinctions within this circumscribed world. Church people generally lived their lives separate from the people who hung around outside. Some working people kept their kids on lockdown to protect them from the street; some kids stayed outdoors, afraid of what awaited them inside. Everyone traversed the same stairwells and corner stores and bus stops, but sometimes moving in opposite directions. There was a kind of swing shift: the hanging-out folks straggled home as the working people headed out; the working people returned just as the streets were heating up. Even within households, these tensions persisted: Foxy worked full-time, while Richie, her longtime boyfriend, was a heroin addict; Coco loved the street, but her older sister, Iris, was a homebody.
Trying to do right wasn’t necessarily rewarded: the bulk of the housework fell to Iris. In fact, Iris also shouldered a fair share of the parenting: Foxy managed a clothing store called the Rainbow Shop, and she didn’t get home most nights until ten or eleven. Iris cooked, fetched Coco from the corner, and fielded phone calls from the schools, where Coco and Hector, the youngest, were always getting into fights. Foxy liked to say, “I have to kick Iris’s ass outside and kick Coco’s to stay in.”
That fall, however, Foxy was easing up on Coco because she had more pressing worries; Iris was pregnant, at fifteen, and threatening to move out. Foxy liked Iris’s boyfriend, Armando—the teenagers had met at a summer youth program, and Armando was devoted and responsible—but Foxy didn’t see how she could manage without her eldest daughter; Iris made it possible for Foxy to work.
Iris didn’t want to abandon her mother, but she longed for peace—a peace she hadn’t even known was possible until she’d spent two quiet weeks with a family upstate one summer, as a camper with the Fresh Air Fund. She hated the constant fighting at her mother’s; someone was always taking someone else’s something, someone needing or getting hit or crying or complaining or bickering. Iris had enjoyed the refuge of Foxy’s sister Aida, who lived in New Jersey, but Aida had recently started using drugs, overwhelmed by problems of her own. Before she fell in love with Armando, Iris hid out in the bedroom she shared with Coco and entertained herself by rearranging the furniture and changing the clothes on her Barbie dolls. Now, she hid out in Armando’s room.
Iris also hated Foxy’s boyfriend. Richie was unemployed, and because Iris stayed indoors, she got the brunt of his restlessness, some of which he subdued with heroin. Iris was tired of serving him—preparing his coffee, watching his nature shows instead of cartoons, and after he nodded out, dousing his cigarettes. Once, Richie overdosed in the bathroom while Foxy was at work. Coco screamed hysterically, and their older brother, Manuel, ran to get a neighbor, but Iris prayed that Richie wouldn’t make it.
Iris had hated her own father, too. She remembered doing cartwheels in the hall at school when she received the news that he had died. Coco, who was eight at the time, scratched her face until she bled. She had been his favorite. When Coco was younger, and he tossed her in the air, Iris would try to distract him, so he would drop her. Or Iris would hide beneath the bed with the cat, tease the cat to the point of torture, then throw it at her father’s feet and watch him get clawed. She cooled his diabetes medication in the freezer. When Foxy finally kicked him out, Iris was secretly pleased. But as far as Iris was concerned, Foxy had simply traded one useless man for another. Now Iris’s pregnancy made her more outspoken, and she disrespected Richie to his face.
Coco, on the other hand, concentrated on Richie’s positive qualities. He was handsome—light-skinned, with blue eyes—and he and her mother matched: Foxy had green eyes and platinum-blond hair. They looked beautiful together when they danced, and he made her mother happy sometimes. Richie also took the time to teach Coco the Hustle. He was intelligent; he read books; he registered Coco for her first library card, and he helped her with her homework. Ever since Iris had come out pregnant, Richie had been warning Coco to guard herself and aim for a better life.
Exactly how she was supposed to do this was unclear, but Coco might have instinctively understood that success was less about climbing than about not falling down. Since there were few real options for mobility, people in Coco’s world measured improvement in microscopic increments of better-than-whatever-was-worse. These tangible gradations mattered more than the c
lichéd language of success that floated blandly out of everyone’s mouth, like fugitive sentiments from a Hallmark card. Girls were going to “make something of themselves” as soon as the baby was old enough; boys were going to “do right” and “stay inside”; everyone was going back to school. But better-than was the true marker. Thick and fed was better than thin and hungry. Family fights indoors—even if everyone could hear them—were better than taking private business to the street. Heroin was bad, but crack was worse. A girl who had four kids by two boys was better than a girl who had four by three. A boy who dealt drugs and helped his mom and kids was better than a boy who was greedy and spent the income on himself; the same went for girls and their welfare checks. Mothers who went clubbing and didn’t yell at their kids the next tired day were better than mothers who did.
Whenever Richie asked Coco about her plans for the future—whenever he asked her even a simple question—she’d say, “I don’t know,” and he’d say, “‘I don’t know’ is gonna be your middle name.” Richie wanted Coco to think ahead, but his advice was vague: “Always have a plan A, and behind that, always have a plan B.” When it came to garnering heroin money, Richie worked the entire alphabet. He had once fallen off a fire escape while attempting to rob a neighbor and broken both his wrists and ankles. He had then filed a lawsuit against the landlord, claiming that the fire escape was unsafe. But Coco could see that even the most inventive plans routinely failed and that Richie’s needs still often came down to Foxy’s salary. Sometimes Coco would hand over her allowance to stop the arguing; she couldn’t stand to see Foxy upset and Richie heroin-sick.
That chaotic autumn, Coco’s only plan was Cesar, who had yet to speak to her.
At first, Cesar noticed Coco the way he noticed all kinds of girls. She was pretty, “real short and thick.” He wanted to have sex with her. His friend B.J. told him to forget it: Coco was a virgin. Cesar wanted her even more.
The high days of virginity put a girl in demand. For the girls, it was not simply a state but an asset that gave them a rare and coveted form of power; virginity could put sneakers on your feet. Ideally, it was something that a girl could make up her own mind about, something that really mattered. And, unlike good looks or real fathers or money, virginity was democratic. Even skanky girls who had it—while they had it—possessed something tangible and clean. For boys, catching a virgin was an accomplishment. It was like winning the dice games—hope skimming the sidewalk, playing calculated odds. Getting a virgin, they told one another, meant a lifelong open door: girls always held a soft spot for their first.
“Yo, forget about her, man,” B.J. said to Cesar, “she won’t give no sex up.” Wishman had not had any luck.
And Wishman had tried. Coco had once given sex to Kodak, he reminded her. He’d say, “You let Kodak. You know I shoulda been your first.” Coco agreed. It had mortified her that her brief, disappointing encounter with Kodak had been broadcast along her block like a street fight or a bust. She had since resolved to keep her romantic interests to herself. Coco may no longer officially have been a virgin, but she was as close to a virgin as you could get. Her pact of privacy did not exclude confiding in Dorcas about Cesar, however, both because Coco was no good with secrets and because they were best girlfriends, best friends for life.
Cesar wasn’t the only boy who had noticed Coco’s chunky figure and appealingly sassy attitude. Her body had long generated unspoken acknowledgments. But now she’d entered the dangerous age, stepped into the open marketplace, and the desire behind men’s eyes came out in compliments and crude remarks. Smooth offers chased appraising glances. Boys lobbed aggressive comments, begging for a response. Older women warned her off:
You think he’s so wonderful? He ain’t so wonderful, ask him where he been!
Let me tell you, baby, he might buy you sneakers but he ain’t gonna pay the rent!
Check you out, Shorty!
Look at the way she walk!
Whatchu do, paint on those pants?
Their banter supposed that men never passed up sexual opportunity and that young girls were good for little more than waving the chance at them. Men will be men. Boys were worse. Girls were naive, stupid. To Coco, the women’s warnings sounded like jealousy, as if they wanted their dire predictions to come true. They seemed eager for the girl to lose what made her powerful. If older girls and women were supposed to have the knowledge and teach girls about love, the way they went about it wasn’t right. Coco noticed such discrepancies.
Cesar thought Coco sounded like a challenge, and he loved challenges. His friends were always daring him to do crazy things. Once, to Rocco’s great amusement, Cesar had undressed at the dry cleaner’s and walked home, along Tremont, in his underwear. Cesar already had a way with women—real women (his mother’s friends), young women (Jessica’s friends), and girls his age. He varied his approach—from nice guy to bully—depending upon the girl. He bet B.J. $100 that he could have sex with Coco within two weeks: her panties would be the proof. And although he had never even spoken to her, Cesar promised B.J. that Coco would deliver the evidence herself.
Freed from school one afternoon, Coco and Dorcas headed for the bodega on Andrews Avenue. Coco had her black hair pulled up severely, with a dollop of Vaseline on her bangs to tame the curl, and two lollipops stuck in her ponytail. Her skin shone. She used Vaseline as a moisturizer, but also to protect her from scarring if she got into a fight. Conspicuous signs of wear were shaming in the ghetto, which was partly why Coco liked her clothes neat and new. “That was one thing, my mother always tried to keep us in style,” Coco recalled. She preferred shirts that exposed her midriff, and tight pants or short-shorts that showed off her thighs. The pants in style were called chewing gums because they stretched. Foxy bought Coco a pair in every color—blue, red, green, yellow, black, and pink. Foxy got a 30 percent discount on everything she bought at the Rainbow Shop. Coco was extremely proud of her thickness, which the chewing gums did right by. She said, “I used to rock those, they used to cling to my butt, I used to love it.” That day, Coco wore a turquoise Spandex pair. She swished her way into the bodega. The cleats on her tiny feet clacked against the floor.
“Yo, what’s up with that girl?” Cesar asked.
“Yo, what’s up with your friend?” B.J. asked Dorcas. “My friend thinks she’s nice.”
Coco returned to the sidewalk, and Dorcas filled her in. “Why can’t he talk for himself?” Coco said pertly.
“I can talk for myself,” Cesar said.
“So what happened then, why you telling my friend?” Coco asked. She pursed her lips in one corner, lifted her thick eyebrows, and leaned into her hip. On a woman the position would have looked caustic, but not on Coco. Her nose was small and turned up. Her eyes looked happy and playful; there was hope in them, maybe even trust. Cesar held a pack of Mike and Ikes and sunflower seeds in his big hand. A smile formed on those bee-stung lips. Within seconds, the words spilled out.
“We began to conversate,” Coco recalled. Soon, Coco began cutting school.
Cesar found himself actually liking Coco, and so he defaulted on his bet with B.J. He liked her more each time they spoke, and they’d spoken every day. They always had things to talk about. He spent less time robbing and mugging, preferring to visit with her instead. A girl could save a boy from the street, but Cesar wasn’t looking to be saved, and Coco wasn’t looking to rescue him. She liked the excitement and wasn’t thinking further than that. She waited for Cesar in the lobby of Dorcas’s mother’s apartment building. They talked and talked and then they began to kiss and kiss. They kissed in Dorcas’s mother’s lobby, in stairwells, on sidewalks, against graffitied walls and ravaged trees. They kissed with Cesar sitting on the hood of a car, bent over Coco’s uplifted chin. They began to make love and Coco stayed silly and happy, not scared and sad like other girls he’d been with. She was spontaneous, which was like being with a new girl every day. “It was never the same-old with Coco,” Cesar said. “She was a
dventurous.” Cesar wasn’t ashamed to introduce her to his friends. Once, Cesar brought a friend to Dorcas’s mother’s apartment for Dorcas, but the friend wasn’t interested. “She was too fat,” Coco said, and Dorcas’s clothes were stained and worn-out. So Coco outfitted Dorcas in new clothes that Foxy had brought home from the Rainbow Shop. Coco’s generosity exasperated Foxy—perhaps because it was a flaw they shared. Then Cesar found a fat friend for the spruced-up Dorcas, and everything worked out.
A few months after Coco and Cesar got together, after kissing throughout one early-winter afternoon, Cesar announced, “Coco, I want to take you somewhere.”
“Where?” she asked.
“I want you to meet my moms.”
It was a big moment. Coco had never been in Cesar’s mother’s house. Cesar had not spoken much about his family.
On University, Cesar flagged down a livery cab. They climbed in. Off they went, sinking into the cushiony backseat for the bumpy ride to the east end of Tremont Avenue.
Lourdes placed her hands on her hips and raised one eyebrow as she scrutinized the short girl who sat beside her Cesar on his queen-size bed. The weight of Lourdes’s beeper made the string of her apron sag. There had been plenty of girls in and out of this bedroom, but she could tell that her baby cared for this one: he’d tucked a picture of Coco in the edge of his mirror. The girl’s feet were swinging. They didn’t even touch the floor.
Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bro Page 5