Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bro

by LeBlanc, Adrian Nicole

  John, on the other hand, had publicly claimed Elaine with his anniversary gift—a thick gold chain, studded with her sons’ birthstones, and earrings that matched. “What’s ten years from now? A house? A car?” Elaine joked. “Westchester County, baby,” she said.

  Jessica’s move to Hunts Point was a demotion by comparison. Once, Jessica’s little cousin Daisy had been dumped there in the dead of night by a disgruntled date. Prostitutes milled around the corner from Jessica’s apartment. Even Spofford Hall, Cesar’s old juvenile detention center, had graduated to a better neighborhood. The stench of fumes from the incinerators seemed ominous, like the risks the area posed for both mother and daughter—invisible, yet pervasive. For Jessica, though, the ghetto’s familiarity might have been its greatest threat—the danger that felt like home.

  Boy George’s letters had finally reached Jessica. “So tell me, how was your transformation from convict to Jane Doe Citizen?” Was freedom similar to being reborn? What kind of food did she eat? Had she finally learned to drive? “I’ve had all types of things run through my mind upon a possible release date. I believe I’ve thought of 1000 things I’m going to put on my priority list, buy a couple of dogs, get a couple of nice cars, take a vacation, raise a baby boy, just live, Jessica.”

  He’d heard that she’d finally reunited with Serena, and he congratulated her. He hadn’t heard much about Luciano, his firstborn, since his arrest. George had effectively disowned his other boy. The teenager had ignored the primary lesson his father’s grim life could teach. “He’s into some heavy hoodlum shit,” George said with disgust.

  In fact, George’s son was the rule rather than the exception. George’s old Chinese supplier, who was also still in prison, marveled at the staying power of Boy George’s legend. “Twenty-two-year-olds coming in from the Bronx still idolize him: so young, so much money, girls, cars. He becomes like a bedtime story,” the supplier said. Like George, the supplier was baffled by the youngsters’ shortsightedness. “I feel sad by the fact that these kids don’t know what they are getting into. He’s doing life in jail—what about that point?”

  Jessica read George’s letters aloud to Serena. Serena blamed George for the anguish she and her sisters and brothers had been through; she wrote to him and told him how much she’d hated her mother’s incarceration. Jessica forwarded the letter to George, wrapped inside her own. He responded to mother and daughter separately.

  In his letter to Jessica, George acknowledged that he’d abused her and told her how humiliating it had been to hear the wiretaps (“To say that I was deceived,” he wrote, “that would be the understatement of the millennium”). He marveled at the brazenness of her cheating and mused, “I knew you were just crazy cause God couldn’t save you if I would have found out. Who knows scholars would probably say he did, and that’s why I was arrested.” He reminded her that she had deserted him just when he needed her most. But his concerns about the future outweighed his grievances about the past. He encouraged Jessica to stay on track and suggested that she periodically reassess her progress and her goals. “You are a good person and a smart person who has suffered,” he wrote. “Now hold your head up and move on.” He hoped she could let go of the bitterness she held for him.

  In his letter to Serena, George asked her to set aside her preconceptions and reintroduced himself: “My name is George.” He acknowledged that he truly loved her mother, but that they both had been living the fast life and couldn’t commit themselves to one person. “If I could’ve seen into the future I swear I would have declined to meet your Mom, but destiny took its course and so did the misunderstandings. Serena, just as there is evil in my past deeds with your Mom, so too there were good ones.” He apologized for the pain he had caused her and her sisters and acknowledged that she might not accept his apology. The cordiality of his parting words recalled the George who’d driven up to Tremont thirteen years before: “I hope that one day upon my release I can be of assistance to you.”

  When Serena’s sixteenth birthday rolled around, she had been at Priscilla’s for almost two weeks and Jessica wanted her to come home; Serena wanted to celebrate her birthday there. Máximo advised Jessica to try reverse psychology. “Act like a bitch; have an attitude; play her own game; show Serena that you’re not interested,” he said. But Jessica thought Serena already believed she wasn’t interested. “What Jessica did to her mom, Serena’s doing back to her,” said Máximo. “She throws the past at her, and Jessica will give in too easily. Jessica had all that time incarcerated to dwell on what she did. Serena, as a young child, was always grabbing Jessica’s leg and saying, ‘Don’t go’—that plays a lot on her mind. All that time, Jessica ain’t going to make it up to her.”

  It was a sunny summer day in 2001 when Jessica walked to Southern Boulevard to buy the party supplies for Serena’s surprise sweet sixteen. Jessica had abandoned the formal celebration—Serena had flunked out of summer school—but Jessica wanted to acknowledge that Serena had made it to the age of sixteen with her virginity intact. “I’ve got to give her credit for that, come on,” Jessica said. The party would be a small family affair, but Jessica had rented a limousine for afterward.

  That morning, Jessica first went to the ATM—she’d promised Serena $100 for a new outfit and she wanted to get a money order for Cesar’s commissary account. With the baby, Giselle was struggling. Jessica, too, constantly worried about cash: she had to order a cake, party favors, corsages, a keepsake, and pay the balance on the cell phone she’d put on layaway for Serena’s gift. An old prison pal let Jessica charge the limo on her credit card, which gave her a month’s reprieve on the $300 bill. If Jessica calculated right, she could pay for most of the party and still cover her monthly expenses. Elaine had offered to pay for the food. Lourdes would cook.

  Jessica climbed the steep stairs to the party store, which felt like a relic from another era. The cartoon figures for the party favors dated no later than the Ninja Turtles. Garfield hadn’t even replaced Felix the Cat. No Powerpuffs, no Stone Cold, only the staples—Barbie and Tweety Bird. The Saran Wrap–covered display of fake-flower corsages was powdered with dust. A middle-aged woman was sitting behind the counter wielding a glue gun, affixing miniature bottles and pacifiers to an enormous corsage. Her husband mulled over a crossword puzzle in the breeze of an industrial fan, balloon streamers whipping above his head. Jessica wandered through the graveyard of milestones. Precious wedding trinkets were tucked safely in an enclosed glass case, but toy babies were accessible everywhere—on open shelves, beneath the counter, in plastic bins, in the protruding bellies of clear plastic storks.

  Jessica decided on traditional ribbon corsages and votive-candle favors. She chose Serena’s keepsake with extra care—a girl, pert at a vanity, holding a brush, turned away from the mirror, with a vacant expression on her face. Everything would be in Serena’s favorite colors—pink and lavender. As the lady tallied the bill, Jessica perused a clutch of photocopied pages, like a tattoo book, and chose a design for the balloons: a solo Minnie Mouse to match the cake.

  The Minnie Mouse theme was reminiscent of Serena’s sixth birthday, the last party Jessica had given her. Jessica had been twenty-three then, free on bail while awaiting sentencing. Serena had worn a brown mother-daughter dress, with flowers planted along the trim, even though Jessica wouldn’t wear hers because she was going out partying afterward. The next morning, Lourdes told Jessica how Serena had refused to take off the dress after they had gotten home; she’d even slept in the thing. Now Jessica could barely get Serena’s attention.

  Serena was back at the apartment, waiting for Jessica’s return so that she could go shopping for a birthday outfit. Her cousin Tabitha was there for the weekend, and her friend Monique had spent the night. Serena called Jessica’s cell phone. “When you coming back with the money?” she asked.

  “And good morning to you,” said Jessica. It was after one o’clock.

  As Jessica headed for home, no man called out or turned to
watch her pass; she’d gained another thirty pounds and felt self-conscious about her figure. But when Serena and her girlfriends hit the sidewalks a few minutes later and retraced Jessica’s steps to Southern Boulevard, the attention was fierce.

  “Que familia bella,” said one man. That’s a beautiful family. The girls walked in the shadow of the Bruckner Expressway. They passed the old man scooping mango ices from his silver cart. They floated through a smoky cloud of sidewalk shish kebabs. Tabitha and Monique wore halters; Serena wore a baby-blue T-shirt. All wore tight jeans and topknot ponytails. They ducked into Jimmy Jazz. Serena held a pair of Mudd jeans at arm’s length and, without ceremony, bought them. The store didn’t have a dressing room.

  It had plenty of T-shirts, though, with a chorus of messages not much different from the sidewalk calls. Angel Outside. Rebel. Princess. Too Sexy to Stop Here. Beside a cell phone: Call Me. Beside a strawberry: Pick Me. Kiss Me—a rainbow over lips. Boys Lie. Monique pointed to one that read I’m so sorry. You looked cute from far away.

  “That’s something you’d say,” Monique said to Serena. But Serena wasn’t bold with the sneaker clerk. She badgered Tabitha to ask for a pair of zebra-striped Jordans in her size and beckoned her cousin over to the cashier so she wouldn’t have to stand in line all alone, feeling stupid. At the register, a vast rack of sneaker laces hung like a million mini-nooses. Serena, who was as short as Coco, had to stand on her toes to pay the clerk.

  Robert met the girls at the corner with the car; he didn’t want them walking home. Jessica, who sat in the passenger seat, reached for Serena’s bag as the girls crowded in. “Let me see,” she said. “More sneakers?” She pulled them out and inspected them critically. “They ugly.”

  “They’re mine,” Serena said.

  “Don’t go complaining to me when you can’t find nothing to match,” Jessica said, tossing them back in the box. Neither did she approve of Serena’s jeans. They cost $30.

  “She found the same ones cheaper,” Tabitha said.

  “Why you pay thirty dollars for them, then?” Jessica asked.

  “Because I already got them, I didn’t know,” Serena said. Jessica wished that Serena had spent the money on an outfit; she wanted Serena to look pretty at the party, not regular.

  “Don’t go asking me—” started Jessica.

  “Ai, Mommy,” Serena said, exasperated. “My father’s coming to pick me up at twelve.” She was referring to Jessica’s ex-boyfriend George. George still called Serena. “I ain’t calling for you,” he’d tell Jessica. “Put my daughter on.” He’d promised to pick up Serena that night, at midnight, after he got out of work. Serena assured her mother that George would help her out with money for an outfit.

  “You better get money from George. Cuz you don’t have nothing,” said Jessica.

  “I’ll fight for it,” Serena promised as she gathered her things to get out of the car.

  “You better take out your boxing gloves,” Jessica said.

  “No boys in the house!” Robert warned.

  Jessica called out after Serena, “Vacuum your room!”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  On the morning of Serena’s birthday, Priscilla’s thirteen-year-old brother gave her a half-eaten bag of M&M’s. Reluctantly, the five-year-old handed her a Twinkie. “You gonna eat it?” he asked.

  “Not now,” Serena said.

  “Can I take it back?” he said.

  The day was windy. Derek surprised Serena with a bouquet of flowers down by the bench. Serena was wearing jeans and one of Monique’s halters, which she partly obscured with a black sweater. He glanced down at her cleavage. “Button up,” he said.

  Derek’s Charlie Brown T-shirt dropped below his knees. He had extremely long, curled-up eyelashes and the makings of a beard. He was always on the move—hopping over the fence that lined the driveway, striding down the sidewalk to get high near the school, dancing around Serena like a Harlem Globetrotter dazzling a basketball. The need between them rose and fell in shoves and bear hugs. Desire got presented as a mock threat, affection as a taunt; touch was so conditional that half the pleasure was in the tease.

  “Come here!” Serena shouted. He’d try to kiss her. “Stop!” she’d yell. But then if Derek walked away, she’d chase him down and drag him back.

  “You making it too easy for him,” Priscilla said critically.

  By late afternoon, the wind chilled, and Derek got a kiss. Serena pulled on an oversize sweatshirt. She tucked her knees beneath her and sat on the bench. She pulled Derek’s hands into the tunnel of extra sleeve. “Your hands is sweaty! You nervous?” she said sweetly.

  A few hours later, Jessica stopped by Priscilla’s carrying Serena’s gift. She hesitated outside by the fence. Serena and Derek were sitting on the steps of the front porch, shaded by the grapevines that made a room of leaves.

  “Your mother, Serena,” Priscilla whispered. Serena broke free, ran over, and sprung open the gate. Serena had clipped her hair back, and stray curls framed her open face. The dark brown strands still showed reddish tints from the summer that Jessica had dyed it blond. Serena was glad to see her mother. Her eyes were bright.

  “You look all busted,” Jessica said.

  “Nah,” Serena replied happily. She lifted up her sweatshirt to show her mother the halter.

  Jessica raised her eyebrows and laughed. “You’d better leave that on,” she said.

  “Derek told me to put it on,” Serena said agreeably. Jessica and Serena hugged. Jessica rocked side to side.

  “Ooh,” Jessica sighed sentimentally.

  “Ma!” Serena said, embarrassed.

  “Sixteen years ago you weren’t even a thought,” said Jessica affectionately. “Seventeen years ago!”

  “Ma,” Serena said. She grabbed the bag with Jessica’s gift. She read the card from Máximo and the one from Jessica.

  “You’re welcome,” Jessica said, hurt.

  “Thank you,” said Serena, and kissed Jessica’s cheek. Serena hurried over to her friends and showed them the cell phone. Jessica stood awkwardly in the driveway. She was still wearing her work outfit: a white polyester blouse and navy polyester suit. She clutched her purse beneath her arm and toyed with her pendant, an oval piece of jade. She sat on the warped bench. “Serena!” Jessica yelled. Serena didn’t hear her. “Serena!”

  “Whaa!” Serena said.

  “Serena, get over here,” Jessica said harshly.

  Serena plopped down beside her. Derek approached and left almost as quickly, as if he were making a U-turn on a skateboard. Jessica called after him, “Your parents don’t believe in giving you condoms?” She turned her head away, feigning a disgust she knew he couldn’t see. She’d spotted his hickey.

  Serena started after him. “Serena, come here!” Jessica said, calling her back. “What’d I tell you? What’d I tell you?”

  “Whaa?” Serena moaned.

  “I told you. I don’t like that. I don’t like you giving boys hickeys. I—”

  “What about you and Máximo?”

  “Me and Máximo?”

  “I don’t like it, and you don’t care.”

  “I am thirty-three years old. I don’t have them on my neck. I am a grown woman. I work and I pay bills.”

  “I don’t care. It’s none of your business.”

  “Serena! Please!”

  “Ma, look at you. Catching an attitude,” Serena said, then caught one herself.

  “I told you I didn’t like you giving boys hickeys. Tell him to come over here. Tell him, now,” ordered Jessica.

  “Why, you gonna say something to him?” said Serena, alarmed. “What you gonna say to him? It’s me.”

  “And what’s that?” asked Jessica, flicking Serena’s neck, where a strawberry spot had begun to fade. “I don’t like that,” Jessica hissed. “Gimme the phone. I’m gonna tell Máximo to come and get me and take me home.”

  “Ma, you are wrecking my birthday for real,” Serena cried. She ran into t
he house. “My mother is ruining my birthday!” she howled to Priscilla, who stood in the kitchen baking Serena a birthday cake. Priscilla went downstairs to smooth things out: yes, Jessica could threaten to cancel the surprise party, but what good was punishment for something Serena didn’t even know about?

  Jessica thought she understood Serena’s motive for the hickey. “When he goes to see the baby’s mother, Serena wants her to know where he’s been. My daughter ain’t stupid,” she said.

  Serena rejoined her gang on the stairs just as Máximo pulled up for Jessica, who stepped into his car, slammed the door, and left. A blast of Metallica punched out the window as they sped away. Night fell, and the steps where the kids sat became a tunnel of love.

  Derek rested his back against the house, and Serena, who sat between his legs, leaned her back into his chest. Derek tenderly chided her about the hickey. He hadn’t wanted one. He knew that he was going to meet Jessica, and he felt the hickey was a sign of disrespect.

  “I don’t care,” Serena said.

  “She did care, though. I felt stupid,” Derek said.

  “I wish she wouldn’ta been stupid and leave. She walks all around with hickeys all over her and I don’t like it, and I tell her, and she don’t care. So why I gotta care?”

  The surprise birthday didn’t surprise Serena; Kevin had broken the news when he’d asked Serena for directions to Lourdes’s. Jessica was livid, but at least her daughter didn’t know about the limousine, which would appear at the party’s end. The guests lolled beneath the balloons and a misspelled banner reading “Happy Sweet Sixxteen!” For Serena’s entrance, Máximo blasted “Suave,” Lourdes’s dancing song; Lourdes upstaged Serena, leading her granddaughter in, with Jessica self-consciously pulling up the rear. Serena immediately picked up a baby to deflect attention. A friend of Serena’s from upstate had brought down Milagros and both sets of twins. Brittany and Stephanie had demanded that Milagros dress up, and she appeared in a halter and tapered jeans. Robert arrived in a shirt and tie. Máximo came straight from the gym in sweats, which irritated Jessica. Serena wore a patchwork denim miniskirt and halter with her new sneakers. When Elaine bustled in, she said, “You’re half-naked! Turn around!” Serena turned slowly. “Where’d you get it?” Elaine asked, then raised her hand and high-fived her niece.