by Yamaya Cruz
“Look at you, shivering like a rabbit caught in a cage. Chill out. It’s not that serious,” the boy said blowing out smoke from his cigar. He looked at it then looked at me.
“You smoke?” he inquired. I shook my head.
“Well, I don’t mean to be a bad host, but I got some work to do in the other room. The remote is sitting on the table, and you can eat anything in the fridge. “Mi casa is tu casa,” he said smiling.
Where have I heard those words before? I looked over at the flashing numbers under the television. It was two-o-clock in the morning. My eyelids were getting really heavy. I needed to sleep.
“Oh my bad. Let me get you a blanket and a pillow so you can relax on the couch,” he said.
I sat on the couch and took my shoes off.
I laid down in the fetal position and closed my eyes before he was even able to get me a pillow and blanket.
I opened my eyes and looked around me. I sat up like a patient awakening from a coma. My head felt woozy and my lips were dry. I looked at the clock. It blinked four thirty. I had only been asleep for two and half hours. It felt like two weeks. The living room had a large veranda with glass doors that led out to a balcony. It was still relatively dark and I could see the stars twinkling. I eyed something that was sitting in an accent chair. I squinted to adjust and made out an outline of a shadowy figure. It leaped forward like an animal on all fours and clamped down hard on my mouth. I was terrified.
“Don’t you dare fucking scream,” it demanded. I knew this voice all too well. It was Nico. He had found me, and Ali wasn’t here to protect me.
“Hey Cabron, Cabron,” Nico yelled.
The Fatboy came rushing out of the bedroom and switched on the lights.
“Get you fat ass outside and guard the door. If anybody comes in here, blow their fucking head off,” Nico said scooping me up into his arms and carrying me into the bedroom. He kicked the door behind him shut and dropped me on the floor; my head crashed against the head post.
“What did I tell you Mija, I told you that you were going to regret the shit you did,” he said while unbuttoning his belt.
“It’s only a matter of time before you demons catch up with you,” he said, pulling his belt through his pants hoop and whipping it around like a circus trainer. I sat on the floor and just stared at him. He leaped at me, but I scurried away, like a feral feline who was afraid to get eaten. I hovered in the corner and looked at him wide-eyed. He leaped at me again, but this time he managed to grab me by the waist.
“What’s this shit?” he asked, patting my back pocket. He dug his hand in and pulled out the wade of money and Maria’s ring. He sat back and just looked at it.
“Where did you get this from?” He demanded.
“M.m.maria. S.s.she gave it to m.m.me,” I stammered while crawling away.
Nico got off his knees, standing up and observing the ring as if it was a sacred heirloom.
“That’s bullshit,” he said looking at me.
His eyes were black and beady and bulging out of his sockets. I had lived with Nico for a short period of time and learned that he did not believe in traditional forms of torture. No, Nico wasn’t the kind of guy who poured salt in wounds. He had other ways of making you talk. I closed my eyes and remembered the nightmares, the haunting dreams that I couldn’t escape no matter how hard I tried.
“This is the ring that I gave Maria,” he said twirling it around in his fingers. His mood seemed to have changed. There was a sudden peacefulness about him now.
“I remembered the first time I saw her. Man. She was pretty,” he said smiling to himself.
“I knew that she was going to be my wife and the mother of my children,” he said stuffing the ring into his pocket.
“But she was just like everybody else. A fucking liar. I married Maria because she was strong, but she couldn’t handle it. She just didn’t have the stomach to deal with my life,” he said.
“But you’re different. Your abuela and momma, even your faggot ass brother, they were easy to break. But you, shit, you’re as stubborn as a fucking mule.”
He walked over to me and rested his hand on my head. I flinched.
“Look at you. You’re a fighter,” he said stroking my hair.
“Your always fighting something or somebody, you’re so busy fighting that you never took the time to love,” he said sitting down next to me.
“Get away from me,” I said with my teeth chattering. Nico laughed gently and scooted closer to me. He ran his fingers through my hair. I couldn’t look at him head on, so I just stared at his profile. He caressed my cheek and chin; my body tingled from his touch.
“You’ve took a lot of beatings from life. But life don’t have to be hard, baby. No. You just need to stop fighting and trust in me, and then all the pain you feel inside here will disappear,” he said while resting his hand over my heart. I didn’t move; it was almost like his energy was coiling around me like a snake. I felt an impending sense of doom, like at any moment he would swallow me whole like an Anaconda.
“You want to be loved, but you keep holding back.” He kissed my neck, and I felt a weird sensation in my private area.
“But being loved is all about surrendering. It’s all about putting someone else in charge of your fate,” he said, brushing his lips against the side of my face. No. What was he doing? He reached over and unbuttoned the top of my blouse and gently fondled the mosquito bites that I had for breasts.
“Love is the most powerful thing, because you either trust enough, or have suffered enough, to give up control,” he said placing his hand over my heart.
“You see, it beats for me,” he said smiling.
“Come on Nina, stop fighting me. All I’ve done was love you, I was the only one who loved you,” he said while leaning close to me so that his lips were very close to mine.
“I want to try and love, but you dig up all these awful things,” I said trying to resist him by pulling away.
Nico just chuckled before he replied. “That’s just it. Love ain’t free baby. You got to give something in order to get it. But I’ll tell you what, if you give in to me, I’ll make sure that you are taken care of,” he said.
“Me and my brother?” I asked. “Yeah,” he replied.
“And Maria too?” I asked. He looked at me in a funny kind of way. Then he smiled and shook his head.
“Maria too,” he said.
I sighed. I didn’t think that Nico was asking for too much. Besides, he was the only person in the world who was willing to love me, to care for me. I could get used to the nightmares. In time, they wouldn’t even bother me anymore, because I would be loved. I inched forward and pressed my lips against his, they were soft and wet. He pressed against mine firmly, sticking his tongue deep into my mouth. I was surprised by my body’s reaction; I pulled him close to me and managed to let out a few moans.
I felt like nothing existed except for the moment. There was no future or memories of the past. I tucked my fingers between his. It was my way of bonding, of feeling like I was finally going to be complete. My blouse was pulled over my shoulders. I felt woozy, almost like I was drunk off of love. I lay on the bed with my bra and jeans on. I began to shiver from my near nakedness. I reached over and stroked his hair while he continued to plant kisses on my body and lips.
We embraced, and rolled around in the bed. The sheets beneath us felt as soft as silk, and the room was so warm. I loved this feeling. I wanted it to last forever. He grabbed my hand and brought it toward his private area. He looked me in the eye as he coached me on how to massage it. I pulled back when it got hard. He chuckled lightly. I surrendered and waited. My heart began to pound. I started to breath heavy. I was dying with anticipation. My body ached with passion. I closed my eyes and waited for the moment when I would finally be a woman. I leaned my head back and moaned.
Suddenly, Nico jumped and hurriedly crawled off me. I sat up and saw Maria standing in the doorway. She looked like she was ready fo
r battle, her feet were shoulder width apart, her mouth was twisted, and her fists were balled up and placed at her hips.
“Get out of here!” she yelled with her voice reverberating throughout the room like a ripple of thunder. I moved quickly. I didn’t have time to put on my clothes, so I wrapped a sheet around my body, picking my garments off the floor as I headed toward the bedroom door. I squeezed past Maria and looked back. She was fuming.
“Oh no baby. Calm down,” Nico said holding out his hand as Maria made her way over to him. I couldn’t watch anymore. I ran out of the apartment. Suddenly, a feeling of repulsion came over me. Then, I felt embarrassed. I felt shamed and violated, like I had participated in a sleazy celebrity sex tape that had just gone viral. My stomach jerked, and I vomited outside in the front yard. I tried to gather myself. I was shaking as I looked for the holes in my shirt. I shimmied into my pants, lost my footing and fell down on the ground. I jolted when I heard an explosion of shattered glass.
I looked with a mixture of awe and fear as I watched Nico plummet from the second story window. I was holding my breath as he smashed to the ground with fragments of glass scattered around him. I looked up and saw Maria’s head peering out of the empty frame. Shards of glass stuck to Nico’s clothes and skin, making him look like a human pincushion. He stood up, and using the earth as his footplates he took off running.
Maria came strolling out of the building. She adjusted her black purse on her arm as she made her way to the car.
“Let’s go,” she said through clenched teeth. We rode in silence.
“Maria, I am sorry,” I said.
She didn’t say anything; she just clenched the steering wheel and pressed down harder on the gas pedal.
“I left because I didn’t think that you wanted me,” I said with tears rolling down my face. She didn’t look at me; she just adjusted her strap and kept her eyes on the road.
“I left because I needed to know the truth about Ali, about my momma. I left because I needed to believe that there was someone out there who still loved me,” I said. The car was completely dark, with occasional flashes of light that came from oncoming cars and street lamps. Maria slammed on the brakes. She closed her eyes and rested her head against the steering wheel.
“Maria?”
“Take the money and the ring that’s in my purse and get out of the car,” she said.
“What?”
She flung her black bag and me and screamed.
“Get out of the car! Now!” I flinched and quickly got out of the car.
Maria peeled off and did a whole 360. She turned out her headlights. I stood there, watching silently, wondering what Maria was doing. Then, I saw it. Maria turned on her high beams and two siphons of light glowed onto Nico’s face. He was hunched over and hiding behind a large tree. Maria pumped on the gas, and the car’s engine roared as it propelled forward. Nico moved from behind the tree and the race began. I felt like I was on a roller coaster ride. My stomached dropped as I saw Maria rip around corners at wicked speeds. She followed him closely. While Nico tried desperately to lose her by zigzagging and running amuck on wobbly legs.
My heart was beating faster, not from passion like before, but from fear. Watching Maria go after Nico was worse than probing for landmines. You never knew when you were going to find one that was going to explode. The care kept jerking forward. There was a few times when Maria was inches away from hitting him. Maria’s car pounded on trees, devouring bark and steel but not Nico’s flesh. I couldn’t stand to watch anymore. I buried my head in my hands.
When I looked up, I saw that Maria’s front end was totally smashed, smoke rose from the trunk, and the tires were flat. I looked to my left and gasped with amazement as I watched Maria running as awkwardly as a cripple with two prosthetic legs. She was chasing Nico through the open field, running top speed like an African Rhino. She leaped forward, grabbed Nico by the waist and wrestled him to the ground. I ran to get a closer look. For the second time since I’ve known her, there were tears in her eyes. They streamed down her face freely.
“You took everything from me!” she screamed while choking Nico. He lay on the ground, almost motionless as he struggled to loosen her grip.
“My kids, my momma, my soul, you took everything.” Violent sobs rocked her body, but she kept her grip on Nico’s throat.
“No more, No more,” she continued.
There were gunshots. Maybe it was my imagination, but I could see the bullets flying through the air. The rounds pounded into her flesh, like raindrops into a stream. I screamed, as the strong, steel spine, Maria, that I had known as a mother for the last four years, fell to her death.
~ ~ ~
Chapter Twenty
Nelly 290 days before I turned eighteen, and it looked like I was going to spend each one of those days at the hospital. It was movie night. Yay! The attendants at the hospital wanted to find ways to reward our good behavior while keeping up the morale. There was only so much they could do. They tried to take us for walks, but a lot of the patients would wander off. They also tried monthly outings and spiritual retreats, but there were always one or two opportunists who figured out how to escape. They only thing that they could do was get us to watch movies, the same movies, over and over again. Besides, it was only a matter of time before a sane person went crazy in the psych ward. Like, Simon, a middle-aged gentleman who was still considered only a part-time nut. Unfortunately, he suffered from delusions of grandeur. For a couple of hours each day, he would become Zeus, Theseus, or some other Greek hero.
His behavior turned frightening when he would walk around fervently chanting, and rehashing back-stories of his epic battles and heroic tales of war. Then there was Pamela, a transitional loony, who had entered the hospital on a gurney. Her crime, an accidental overdose. Or that is what they called it when she woke up the next day and realized that she wasn’t dead.
Then there was Peter, the catatonic who spent most of days strung out on prescription pills. He would sit for hours, with his brows arched, forehead furrowed, stricken with a severe case of intestinal flatulence. He had a difficult time with controlling his bowels, and he could never figure out if he just had to fart or take an actual shit. The outcome was always deadly, resulting in everyone fleeing the room. We left the overstuffed, camel-colored chair empty, just for him.
My eyes shifted back to the television. There was a succession of images, thoughts, and sounds, passing through my mind. I couldn’t focus on anything anymore. It was just too hard to watch television. I blinked a couple of times and asked myself what was happening to me.
“Split mind,” a voice said. “What?” I mumbled.
“Split mind,” the voice repeated. I looked around the room; feeling like God had spoken to me from the heavens. I focused on the television and leaned forward in my chair. There were two lovers engaged in a heated conversation.
“Set them on fire, burn them away. That’s the only way to get rid of the shadows,” the woman in the movie said.
“Yes, set them on fire. Let them burn,” the man hissed. “Burn what? Burn who?” I yelled at the television. “Shush!” someone beside me said.
The woman on the screen turned and looked at me. Her eyes were wide and pleading. “Go back and burn them alive,” she said. “No! No! No! No! I can’t do that!” I screamed while shooting up from my seat.
“Okay, alright, settle down everything is okay,” an attendant in scrubs said as he walked over and grabbed my arm.
“No, everything is not okay. They want me to burn, they want me to burn myself alive,” I said wavering on my feet. I couldn’t stand. I was terrified, the shadows were out to get me and they weren’t going to stop. They weren’t ever going to stop until I ended it all.
“Easy now, I am going to take you back to your room for a little while, so you have some time to settle down,” the attendant said, tugging on my arm.
“I need you to help me; I need someone to help me,” I pleaded. “We’re here
to help you, for now I need to separate you from the group. I’m going to call Dr. Ontarian and you’ll be able to sit with her in about thirty-minutes. Do you think that you’ll be okay until then?”
I shook my head.
“I am not going anywhere. I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” he said reassuringly.
I looked back at the television. Someone had hit the pause button. However, the lovers who were engaged in a passionate argument were gone. The screen was now black. I could see my reflection in it. I didn’t recognize myself. I turned to face it head on, and squinted as the reflection changed. It got bigger and then began to pulsate as if the TV was about to short circuit. Then I saw flashes of an image, a giant woman with curly black hair. She stood with her hands on her hips with her feet spread wide apart.
“Split mind,” she yelled, and her voice was so penetrating that it brought me to my knees.
“Burn them up. Burn them up. Burn them up!” Maria yelled through the television.
“No, I can’t do it. I can’t do it alone. I need help. Please. Please. Please. Someone help me,” I cried while holding my hands over my ears and dropping down to the floor.
~ ~ ~
Chapter Twenty-One
Maria Nelly, you don’t know me. That’s the problem with you kids today. You don’t know shit. I don’t blame you though. You don’t know that it takes twice as much work to suffer, to feel sorry for yourself than to try and make things better. Trust me, Nelly, I know, I rolled with the best of them. I was married to Nico for years, and I watched as my life turn into shit. I have a lot of regrets, mostly that I didn’t listen to my own momma. I never knew how lucky I was to have someone like her.
You are a lot like your great abuela, but dumber. She knew about the power that was stored inside of us, and she damn well knew how to use it. She wasn’t pretty, but she knew how to get what she wanted. Folks said that she was a saint, a gift from God. People would stop her on the streets and thank her for miraculously curing a sick baby, or protecting someone from evil, or bringing back a lost lover. Your great abuela would just shake her head and say, it’s God’s work. Its God’s work.