by Ryan Gattis
"Looks like you did a good job with those cuts though, just like I taught ya," he said.
"I do need your help. See that tooth?" Normal Jen opened her mouth and pointed at the general area of the pain, barely forming the sounds needed for the words, just flapping her tongue around vacant noises.
"Damn, girl, yeah, I see it." He leaned in close and tipped my head back to the light to get a better look. "I ain't no dentist though."
"Don't worry, my PK kicked in. Just pull it."
I kept my head tilted back and looked up at our brittle skylight that was basically a hole Dad cut in the roof and put glass over. I heard Remo open up his toolbox (of course he brought it) and I heard metal clink against metal. I sat down in the chair but kept looking up at the skylight that held no clouds, birds, or tree branches, just icy sky. When Remo got near to me, he held down my left hand and stepped on my feet and I couldn't help laughing. Normal Jen with her simultaneous mood swing/guilt trip. Cue was still dead. Not allowed to smile or laugh.
But it was a joke even if it was also for Remo's protection. When he pulled a kinfé out of my side once, I kicked him in the huevos involuntarily. Not funny at the time but funny ever after. I felt something cold press against my tongue and hold it down, then Remo released my left hand, so I grabbed the table edge and I felt the tooth wrench right out of my head with a tearing sound that my ear heard from the inside out.
"Fuck! Did you pull out a nerve too?" Blood dripped down my chin as I said the words. I felt it, missed a bit from my slurping so some droplets hit the tile floor.
Remo didn't answer me. He was dumping table salt in a glass and running the hottest tap water into it.
"Spit. Rinse. Spit. Rinse," he said, pointing from the sink, to the glass, to the sink, to the glass. I did as I was told. He wiped my blood from the floor. It bled good for about five minutes, then it settled down but I kept rinsing. I grabbed another glass to spit into. I had Remo save the tooth for a keepsake. Now that it was out I could see the crack that ran from the back enamel all the way around the side. Only a matter of time before it shifted and split really.
THE TOOTH
"Yeah, that's definitely best that we pulled that out, better than it sitting and getting infected," Remo said as he held the washed tooth up for me to see. It would not be put under my pillow for the tooth fairy. It was for Melinda.
"I brought some tuna salad for you so you didn't have to cook for a few days, I need the bowl back when you're done though." Remo ducked outside and came back in with a huge plastic yellow bowl—the same bowl he soaked my hands in—of tuna salad. He always made it funny though. He put in mayo and mustard as well as pickles. I didn't complain though, I nodded and kept rinsing, spitting.
After cleaning his tools, Remo made seven sandwitches with the tuna salad and some of the thin white slices of generic bread that he found in the breadbox. He put one on a plate in front of me even though he knew I wouldn't be eating any time soon. It was just his way of telling me to eat when I could. The other six sandwitches were placed in two bowls that got squeezed into the refrigerator because there were no clean plates left. Then Remo did the dishes and put them on the dish dryer.
"I gotta take off, Mamá needs her dinner. I'll be back to check on that mouth of yours later," he said, and he closed the door behind himself on the way out.
The sadness had already set in before he left though. Without knowing it, I had sat down in Cue's chair at the table for my tooth surgery. Remo had noticed because he was perceptive like that. I'd gone silent so he went quiet too, out of respect. Didn't even attempt more conversation, just made an excuse and left me to myself. I got up and moved to my chair after the door shut hard but somehow that made it worse because it was empty with no Cue there, so I sat in my brother's chair again, and kept rinsing and spitting. Rinsing clear from the full glass and spitting reddish into the empty one so I didn't have to leave the table, or the warmed seat of his chair.
STUFF SINKS IN
Jimmy showed up about an hour after Remo took off Though it was better than before, his face still looked bad. The once-open wounds were scabbed up like little congealing bodies of insects, unmoving brown ants trying to pick at a hardened puddle of honey, but the bruises were starting to spread.
"Have you eaten?" I didn't know about him but I was damn hungry. I was finally ready to have a go at the tuna sandwitch. I'd just have to rinse my mouth out when I was done.
"No," he said.
"Well, when you get hungry, there are some sandwitches in the fridge." I said it around a bite. I was extra careful at chewing everything on the left side of my mouth. My own blood had only been a temporary pardon for my tongue as I was back to tasting Cue's blood, slightly metallic, instead of canned tuna. It didn't matter. I ignored it, ate anyway. Asking where Jimmy had been wasn't exactly an option.
"Is it over now?" He sat down at the table in my mom's old chair.
"This isn't the end of anything, Jimmy." I took my plate and moved over to the couch. "This is the beginning of something. Do the math. With Cue gone we were going to get slaughtered and we still might. There's only one family left that's against Ridley now and we're part of it."
I could only see Jimmy's face, not his body, with the little wall between us. He was still sitting at the table.
"Look, I'm not going to ask you to fight. But I don't have a choice now."
"Let's just go, the both of us. Let's go to my mother's." He forced a smile when he said it. Like he was trying to convince me that I was being hardheaded in vain or something. Like he was trying to forget what he saw me do to 'Fredo's corneyes.
"I can't move away. I can't drop out of school. I can't do anything but stay right here."
"What're you going to do after Kung Fu? You can't just go to college and forget it ever happened." His comments surprised me.
The answer was: I had no idea. The future didn't exist at Kung Fu. Especially with no Cue, my world was microscopic. There wasn't even a tomorrow. There was only my next breath. Because the truth is, there were no outs, not college, not community college, not even trade school. Maybe there was the military. But only because those bastards would take anyone. Fuck that.
"This is so much more complicated than you think it is," I said.
"Explain it to me."
"I can't leave Dad."
"Take him with us."
"He wouldn't leave. And even if he would, it would never happen with Dad not being able to work. I can't believe I'm even thinking about this! It goes deeper, Jimmy, much deeper. If I leave, Ridley goes after Melinda and the Wolves faster than if I was here. And she just saved our lives by taking us in, so I owe her." As disgusting as it was, Ridley liked me, if he did and it wasn't an act or some other game, and that could be played to our benefit.
I sat back into the couch and put the sandwitch to my mouth but before I could take another agonizing bite, Jimmy said: "How's that?"
"Look, you just got here. You can't understand this. But it's my life. And the Waves existed for a reason. We protected each other or Ridley would crush us. So he's finally done it. And he's about to do it again to the Wolves too."
"So what? You're going to get sucked into this revenge bullshit on account of Cue? Alfredo is already dead!" He said it in a kind of harsh whisper. Like everything was even somehow.
"Dammit, Jimmy, it's about more than revenge, it's about survival, our survival. So, no, I'm not going to run away. Not with Cue due to fill up a box in the churchyard, taking up my dad's plot next to my mom. And it's more than just me on the line here. Don't you understand that?"
"I just don't see how you can be loyal to these people. They aren't your real family!"
I stood up.
"If I leave, Mrs. Rodriguez will end up raped in the gutter! Remo will show up in the emergency room with no hands or feet! Everyone that ever fuckin' knew me will be in danger! Not just from the Hunters or Blades—from fuckin' Ridley!" I didn't care if Dad heard me. "Don't give me that look
! Why do you think Ridley killed 'Fredo right in front of us? Because now we're witnesses! Now he's got a reason to do us in."
"So that's why we run."
"Didn't you hear what I just said? He's got an excuse to chase us, Jimmy! He's playing a game. We can't leave. Dad will die. Your mom will die. I'll die. The only one to survive will probably be badass you if you stopped being such a bitch and actually hit somebody."
Jimmy's gaze dropped right off my face and fell hard to the carpet. Like a little suicide, something hadn't survived that drop. I guess it finally sunk in that I didn't regard him as some kind of saint for giving up fighting. At least, not when it put me and others in danger trying to protect him when he was by far the one who should be defending us. That was the raw truth.
Still too upset to apologize, I said it as flat as I could: "The only thing to do now is keep playing the game. Ridley's playing to win. But we're playing not to lose."
That, somehow, Jimmy understood. No more questions got asked. The conversation over, he left the room.
On the news that night they called Cue a gang leader and they made it sound like he got what he deserved. They said he was notorious. They made it out like the city was a better place with him gone. How wrong they were. Serious though, how do you know who the good guy is when everybody's bad? The news anchor flipped her blond hair over her shoulder and they went on to the next story about sudden infant death syndrome.
During the rest of the news, into the weather and into another ballgame, I put the new bed together. But it wasn't for Jimmy anymore. He could have Cue's room. The bed was for Dad. His old one was falling apart. Besides, it was Cue's last project. I could still see where his fingers had sanded the wood soft. I didn't want to leave it unfinished even though the temptation was there to let it sit forever. Like he'd be right back to build it, just after he got home with his protein shake powder. I finished the frame at about eleven o'clock but I'd put the rest together tomorrow, that was what I told myself.
When I got out of the shower, the lights were off so I got ready for bed, assuming that Jimmy had gone to sleep. I was surprised to see him working out in the backyard. I tweaked the curtains so I could see out and just sat on the edge of the couch and watched him: out there in the chill, with no shirt or shoes on, pounding the hard dirt that had a glaze of frost over the top of it. The oven was pumping out the same old cooked-casserole kind of smell that was filling up the house and I was glad to be inside, wrapping my feet in a blanket. Mom had always cooked chicken divan casserole: cream sauce, broccoli, chicken, spices, and melted cheese on top. We loved that dish. She'd cooked it so often in that oven that it permanently smelled of divan with a slight whiff of burning. For me, it was a welcome side effect of the gas being off If I pretended, Mom was still alive and asleep in the next room. Not mad, not arguing, just quiet and dreaming.
I squinted, even leaned forward on the couch. But I still couldn't see the details of Jimmy's forms outside. They were way too fast. I mean, I could identify something that had to be a punch or a kick but the way they flowed into other attacks or defensive postures was smoother than smooth, it felt like watching something sped up. He did forms like the best chef you've ever seen chops with his knife. Blinding fast, and I had no doubt they were flawless. It bothered me though. The combined forms weren't like any specific style I'd ever seen, certainly not any of the ones he was supposedly a near-master of It was almost like he had no style.
But then he did something weird. He slowed down, way down. He started doing his forms in slow motion. It was mesmerizing to watch him do a sideways full-circular kick with a straight leg that extended up to forty-five degrees and then to ninety directly above his head and then to one-thirty-five as he turned just slightly on his standing leg before sinking through the dark to one-eighty and back to standing. I'd never seen anything like it.
I pretended I was asleep when he came back in and hit the shower. I couldn't help it though. I sat back up just to see the marks in the dirt that his movements had made. They were the only things of interest in the empty backyard that held no grass, just a cracking concrete patio that stopped about two feet away from the house foundation and a disused shed in the back corner, all surrounded by a peeling fence about five feet high.
The lamp flicked on behind me, the bent gold one next to the couch. If you weren't careful sitting down, you'd hit your head on it. I tried to turn around but he put his hands on my shoulders. I wasn't wearing a bra. So I held down the front of my T-shirt as the back lifted up and gathered in a clump at the base of my neck. The air still lacked heat, but the fingers that traced the waves of my tattoo were very warm.
Some of those waves, the ink laid in right above bone, never really sat down after I had it done. The skin stayed raised, giving them a ridged texture. Sometimes I run my fingers over the space on the back of my right hip when I'm alone and thinking. It was a completely different sensation when Jimmy's fingers hovered just barely over the skin of my back.
I probably sounded like a stupid little kid but I said it anyway, "Today was the longest day of my life."
He just sniffed and I felt a burst of his breath hit my back: the wind over the waves, almost pushing the boat between my shoulder blades as I got goose bumps and all the little hairs stood up along my spine.
THE FIRST REAL KISS
I was almost twelve years old when we first visited Jimmy in the country. My mom and Jimmy's mom were sisters. Mine was older. She drove us out to the farm. It was five hours away, on the plains, but it felt like more when I was actually in the car. It was a real hot summer, a no-cloud-in-the-sky kind of summer, and, of course, the air-conditioning broke halfway there so we had to roll down the windows. The back ones only rolled down partway and the re-echoed air that bounced around the car and off my ears was just about deafening at eighty miles an hour. So even with no way to listen to her audio book about two lawyers falling in love, Mom kept going. She was the type not to stop once she had her mind set on something. Cue always accused me of being the same way.
I guess I was just a normal suburban kid back then. This was years before Mom died and we had to move to a smaller place closer to the "heart of the city." That's what Dad called it, but then he had his accident and ever since he's just called it a shit-hole. Both were probably right in retrospect. Either way, I had no interest in leaving the house for a trip to some farm in the middle of nowhere during my summer vacation.
Of course, I had no choice. Dad was working and Cue was old enough to decide for himself all of a sudden, "and really, Jen," he said it stern, "Mom needs someone to go with her." It was bullying and it wasn't fair, no matter how hard Mom tried to convince me that the trip would be a great chance for a girls' vacation, you know, a bonding experience, I still wasn't happy about it. She was always positive. Wish she gave that to me too, but she didn't.
So after driving a few hundred miles of yellowed, dried-up-crop flatness, we left the highway, drove through the crappy-looking town of Barguss and its silly-looking blimp floating in the air and made our way to back road X and then back road Y, smelling manure the whole way because the fields had been fertilized. When Mom pulled up in front of the Chang Family Farm, she nearly knocked over the mailbox, with its smaller accompanying blue sidecar of a box for the newspaper. Of course, they all came out from behind their quaint screen door and hugged us welcome, Aunt Marin, Uncle Chun Mao, and Cousin Jimmy. Too picture perfect.
You could tell from the start that Jimmy didn't really get any visitors because he was real excited to show me all around. He was an only child anyway so he didn't know what it was like to fight for the last spoonful of food or be pushed into the community swimming pool and look like an idiot during adult swim. I saw all there was to see on the farm in the space of five minutes: the chicken coops, the empty cornfields that had already been harvested and reseeded, the corn left to die in other fields because of government grants, his favorite tree, and the main house. If they hadn't had satellite TV I would
've made my mom drive us back right then, with or without air-conditioning.
Ultimately, it was fine. I can't even remember everything we did that week, apart from Jimmy teaching me some moves. See, he'd been training for years by that point and already had some national championships under his belt. That was a cool moment though, seeing the living room and all the trophies that were taller than me. They were so huge and fake golden, the biggest ones had several levels that were held up by carved wooden pillars. He showed me all of them and then he just showed me pictures and pictures of him shaking hands with people with medals around his neck. And you know, he never really looked like anything scary or special. Only about five foot four and not stocky in the least, he looked like a regular kid who played sports, not the world champion he was to become.
Jimmy's dad had converted the hayloft of the barn to a training gym. There were bars he did pull-ups on, various tilted benches for sit-ups and push-ups, and there was this mannequin-looking thing that Jimmy did pressure-point strikes on. Each one was marked with a red dot in his mom's red lipstick. His dad had rigged it up to a pulley system that could shift it any direction in a seven-foot radius and even make it jump. Jimmy's dad was a genius. Well, there was also one of those kung fu block/ strike training tools that looked like a big coatrack that had sawed-off coffee-table legs sticking out of it. Even at thirteen, Jimmy could play that thing like a drum set with his block-and-strike combinations.
I watched him a lot. That was basically what I did for a week, just climbed up the ladder and sat watching while he did morning, afternoon, and night training. We talked a lot too. He wanted to know everything about the city. What it looked like where we lived, what it smelled like. Stuff I'd never even thought about before until he asked me really. I think that was the first thing that got me liking Jimmy as more than a cousin. He made me feel important with all those questions. Out of nowhere, I was an authority on something.