SALT: A HEIGHTS NOVEL

by Mara White

  “Chico is gonna take us out to Jackson Heights in Queens. His cousin is having a party over there that’s supposed to be popping.” They giggled, the two girls, and Tiago wondered if they felt as nervous as he did, or if this was all a joke to them and Salana brought her friend Justine along to see how shitty they all lived.

  “Is there going to be a sober driver?” Salana asked him. Her lips were full and pink, silky blonde hair blowing into her lip gloss.

  “What?” Tiago asked her. What the hell kind of question was that? Hopefully no one would be sober. At a party?

  But then Chico honked as he slid up along the curb by Tiago’s building. The car was a giant couch, tree air fresheners and reggaetón. Tiago smiled mischievously as he watched his friend check out the other chick. She was fine too, brunette with big tits. Probably solid gold under her skin. The girls looked at one another and Salana’s expression was panicked. Tiago put his arm around her waist to help her chill out; he wasn’t even hitting on her, just figured she might be scared and needed a little bit of reassurance. She smiled shakily and he put her in the back with her friend Justine. Maybe he should have brought a friend with more game? Not everybody had a car, or a party for that matter. Chico was what they got so they’d have to live with it. It was the best he could offer.

  He got drunk. So drunk he was sloppy. He riffed with Chico about private jokes and slurred things in Spanish the two girls couldn’t understand. But he managed to keep a protective arm around Salana and ward off all other prospects. If there were a way to put her off, he was certainly doing it. Maybe it was subconscious sabotage—maybe it was totally on purpose. Mostly, he was surprised that she had actually come to the city to hang out with him. The girls were drunk too, but managed to retain more dignity. Not hard, considering they only drank beer while Tiago and Chico had mixed in shots of hard alcohol. The music was loud, the boisterous chatter of at least thirty people crammed into Chico’s cousin Manuel’s house, even louder. The place was trashed, the cigarette smoke so thick inside that he’d never get the smell out before his parents came back on Monday. But if the girls were critical of the house or the party, they couldn’t tell. They were kind during introductions and gracious about the beer.

  “You from around here?” a girl covered in tattoos and wearing thick nerdy glasses asked Justine.

  “We’re from Connecticut—Greenwich,” Salana offered.

  “How’d you meet these punks?” she wanted to know.

  “Crystal, your girlfriend is looking for you,” Chico covered. Neither of them wanted anyone to know that they took advantage of the inner-city kid’s programs.

  Maybe the girls had come for the adventure and bragging rights to later impress the kind of people they usually hung out with. But as he drank and watched her interact and engage, Tiago didn’t think it was a joke to Salana to seek out their friendship. She seemed nothing but genuine and truly open to the exchange. She punched Chico in the arm when he was stupid, asked Tiago his opinion about music and sports. She even asked questions to all of their friends they introduced her to.

  “Salana, you go to a lot of parties?” he asked her. It wasn’t easy to form words. Tiago flexed his arm around her neck and pulled the top of her head to his mouth. He kissed her hair while she giggled at his affectionate drunken headlock.

  “A lot of functions maybe, not really parties like this.”

  “Marry me!” he said into her ear. Salana’s friend Justine burst out laughing, covered her mouth with her hand.

  “But I didn’t even finish high school yet,” she said and swatted him away. “Oh my God, Santiago, we have to go. It’s after midnight. Do the trains stop running?”

  He liked how her big blue eyes widened with worry. He wanted to kiss her lips, but felt like she wasn’t there yet. He didn’t want to ruin his chance at having her company.

  “Mani, your girl is fly,” some passing asshole said.

  “She’s my best friend!” Tiago slurred with his fist up.

  “Let’s go,” he stood and then nearly fell over from the head rush. Tossed the car keys to Chico and Justine cupped her hands around Salana’s ear and whispered.

  “No one is driving, we’ll take the subway,” Justine said. She tackled Chico for the keys and he loved every minute of it.

  “Nobody calls it the subway,” Chico said with a snort. “It’s the fucking train!”

  They jumped the turnstiles in the bright fluorescent light, all of them laughing hard. Salana and Justine crawled underneath in a squat and the boys used both hands to leap over the turnstiles. From the oncoming rumble they could tell the train was seconds away and no one had a card. The distracted attendant yelled after them as the train rushed into the station. They piled on hysterically and fell into the nearly empty car out of breath and laughing. Chico swung from the bars and belted out his best Tarzan; he swooped down to where Justine was standing and slid his arm around her back. A second later he was kissing her. Tiago swallowed, pulled Salana closer into his side. How could Chico be smoother than him? That was usually fucking impossible. But this girl made him more hesitant than he liked to be. Why’d he have to question shit? ‘Cause Salana was money and he was never gonna be, that’s why.

  “Your parents gonna kill you for coming home late?”

  “Justine’s dad has a pied-a-terre in Chelsea. My parents think I’m at her house tonight.”

  He wasn’t sure what that meant and he didn’t want to ask. He would have liked to ask to stay with her, but he didn’t want to scare her away or do anything that would make her regret reaching out to him. The way she looked at him, with her blue eyes full of wonder, carved a hole in his chest and made him want to be something he wasn’t—a guy who was going places, someone her family would approve of, the person to give her what she deserved and whatever she desired too. But he was a million miles away from even coming close, and the reality was nearly painful it hit him so hard. He finally really liked a girl and she was untouchable. An unreachable star.

  “Come with me,” he said, a spontaneous idea striking him suddenly. He always carried around thick black sharpies, and on occasion, a can of black spray paint in case he really felt like marking. The train was racing past a local station and the momentum made a tipsy Salana wrap her arms around Tiago for stability. When they reached the door that led between cars, Tiago unzipped his backpack and pulled out a can of paint. He shook it until he could feel the burn in his bicep. Salana’s face fell as if he’d just announced to her they were going to commit grand larceny. She probably wasn’t too hype on vandalizing.

  “It’s just for a tag,” he whispered to her pout.

  “I wondered what you had in there. I heard stuff clanking around.”

  “Gotta be prepared.” He smiled at her with a devious grin.

  The paint felt ice cold against the tip of his pointer finger. He laid down his tag with ease. His wasn’t gang affiliated or from neighborhood turf wars, he just used it to mark a memorable night or place, leave a piece of himself behind in a city where individuality got lost in the sheer number of people.

  “Tiago,” she whispered, still holding fast to his arm. She probably couldn’t read the hyper-stylized script, and even though he could feel her speedy heartbeat against his shoulder, she didn’t scold him for doing it. He hesitated only a second, then realized the night was important to him because he’d spent it with her; he wanted to commemorate it. He lifted his can and wrote again.

  S-A-L-T he spelled underneath his own name. It was also stylized, but readable enough. The black paint dripped beneath the letters like industrial blood.

  “Salt,” Salana stated frankly. “That’s me.” Tiago nodded without saying anything.

  “La sal de la tierra,” his grandmother always said when someone went out of their way to be kind.

  Salt of the earth.

  They made their way back to their seats quickly as the train screeched to a stop at the first train station in Manhattan. Other people finally filed
on, breaking the magic spell of their empty train car and the intimacy it gave them. He put his arm around her back and Salana laid her head on his shoulder. He watched the way people looked at them and he cradled her with confidence and great affection, in defiance of their stares. The delinquent and the debutant. “Shut the fuck up,” his head screamed at the obvious scrutiny. Her stop was coming up and Tiago didn’t want to let go. Justine had already pulled away from Chico, reapplied her lipstick and straightened her shirt. Chico yawned. Tiago was more alert than a dead man walking his last steps to death row. He wanted to drive deep stakes into the shallow ground of this moment, set up camp and stake his claim. The train car was crowded, but the paint from their names hadn’t even dried yet.

  “I had fun tonight,” she said and broke up their silence. “With you,” she clarified. He moved his arm and she turned to look at him with candor.

  “Come back then,” he said.

  Their eyes locked and he felt the ground move beneath them.

  Chapter 4

  Tiago

  Their correspondence continued over the next year, irregularly and sparsely, via text and email. She’d ask him questions and he’d bite back, teasing her. The first time she reached out, she asked about Chico. Tiago hoped it was an excuse to get to talk to him and not genuine concern because she liked that chubby pussy better than him.

  “He’s dead,” Tiago replied. Salana took a moment to reply.

  “I hope you’re kidding…?”

  “Text him if you want to find out. How’s Connecticut?”

  He didn’t want to talk about Chico. He wanted to imagine that long blonde hair on his chest, his hands grabbing her ass. Kissing her sweet face and waking up in her arms.

  “Late, I’m studying for exams. How’s school for you?”

  “Dropped out, too many absences.” He wasn’t kidding about that, he didn’t finish eleventh grade. Despite knowing it was a stupid thing to do, his exhausted body won out over his responsible self every morning. Maybe if he didn’t have to pay for most of the bills. Maybe if he’d been born into money like her, he could concentrate on his future. “When you coming home?” He still wanted to see her even though she was a rich bitch and would never let him in her pants; he felt comfortable enough around her to feel like they were at least friends. He would take friends over nothing and she’d never give him more. To her maybe he was a diversion, a rebel streak to throw her parents into an uproar.

  “My parents are making me go look at schools in Switzerland over the holidays.”

  It was never gonna happen, he needed to squash those fantasies before he got carried away. Reality was a cold corner at seven o’clock in the morning, dealing, wheeling, and stealing, as his boys liked to say. Not boarding school in Switzerland or skiing in the Alps during holidays.

  Life went on and on and on and on. Contact dwindled to nothing. He’d sometimes do a double take when a natural blonde walked by him, like something inside him gravitated to the idea without him consciously being aware of it. He thought of her too when his grandmother got so sick with a cough he was afraid she wasn’t going to make it through the night. Her chest rattled when the cough would seize her and she looked so frail and so old that Tiago felt prematurely lonely, almost orphaned. He bought expectorant from the pharmacy and some special tea from the Botánica, but nothing he did worked, not even forcing her into a steam bath, her neck and clavicle covered in Vicks VapoRub. He took her into the emergency room, had to carry her down the stairs because the fucking elevator was stuck in the basement and she couldn’t walk. He couldn’t get a yellow cab to stop as he tried to hail one, the whole time holding her up. Powerlessness he was used to, but being completely alone wasn’t something he wanted to experience any time soon.

  “Fucking assholes!” he yelled. A cab with its fare lights on passed them, splashing water from the gutter onto his shoes and pants.

  “No te desesperes, mijo,” his grandmother said. She patted his back reassuringly.

  He wondered if Salt and her family ever had to wait six hours in a beat-down emergency room, getting turned away every time they asked how long it would be before someone admitted his grandmother. As the night wore on and the chaos began to fade, he wondered who the hell would take care of him if she didn’t make it. He wanted to sue them all for negligence already. If she passed, no one would take the blame. Likely they’d criticize him for not bringing her in sooner. He was still a minor and both his parents were MIA. The last thing he wanted to do was get swallowed up by a system that already didn’t care.

  “Hey Ma.” He shook her gently. “Ma, open your eyes.” She blinked a couple of times and opened them. “They brought you breakfast. Try an’ sit up and eat something. I’ll help you,” he said. He could feel her shoulder blades through the thin cotton of the dressing gown. She’d been losing weight. Lifting her up felt as taxing as supporting hollow bird bones.

  “Hay sopa y galletas.” He broke the crackers into her soup. Medicare wouldn’t cover all this, but he pushed it to the back of his mind and willed it away. “You gotta get your strength up, doctor said so himself. They not gonna let you come home unless you put on a couple pounds.” He passed her a cup of tapioca pudding he’d snatched off of a cart in the hall when he went to the bathroom. Might as well get their dollars’ worth before a collection agency was calling every night about the bill.

  Her eyes were watery as he lifted the spoon to her lips. He’d feed her like a baby bird, carry her around from here to there if that’s what it would take. She was all he had left in this giant, shitty concrete tomb. If his grandma died, he’d be alone and then who would give a shit about his weight, or his shoes being clean, or the saving of his blessed soul? “Santi, hay que rezar. Dios siempre provee.” Provides for what? Those who got the cash to lubricate the hand that feeds. It was bullshit, all of it.

  He interwove his fingers and brought his thumbs to his forehead. Prayed the fucking rosary over her sleeping form to the tune of the gasping ventilator. Every breath she took sounded like a death rattle. He prayed to God and swore up and down that he’d straighten out his shit if the guy could spare her life. Alls she ever did was work hard and pray. If anyone is your devoted disciple, it’s this lady here with the chest full of rocks. She got up every night to feed me and to change my diaper, while my dad was out pushing drugs and my ma was shooting an arm full of it. She had me baptized, confirmed and dragged my rachet ass to church at least once a month. She was the only reason I ever had a clean shirt and a decent haircut. If anyone deserves a second chance, God, this here’s your girl. Please don’t take my grandma.

  He fell asleep on the awful little plastic couch that was too short for his body. Woke up the next morning with a crick in his neck that made him want to put a fist through the wall or even the doctor. But the rattle had lightened up and she seemed alert and even smiled.

  “She’s going to need the antibiotics for a while, this strain of pneumonia is fairly resistant. A follow-up with her general practitioner in about two weeks. Make sure she’s drinking the supplementary nutrition shakes, and PT should be here in a minute with the walker. This is her blood pressure medication, the antibiotic and a topical for the sore on her leg.”

  Holy fucking shit, he wasn’t even remotely qualified. But his ma would do it all and more if the tables were turned. He wrote down notes from what the nurse said in the notebook they gave him. He nodded and nodded and wrote down every damn thing they showed him so he wouldn’t fuck up when he did it at home. She’d been there for him every single time and he wasn’t gonna not show up for her.

  Tiago tuned them out and stared at his grandmother, who was smiling fiercely at him. He realized he wasn’t the only one who was alone—she too would be lost without him. His grandmother’s shrewd eyes had been the one constant of his childhood. To his parents, he could lie, they never knew because they never cared. But his grandmother could smell a lie as far off as Staten Island if it was coming her way. She saw through Tiag
o’s shit when he was just a little kid, knew to give him a hug when he was pretending to be tough, her bony arms holding him down and whispering reassuring words when his father showed up drunk and hit whoever got in his way. He’d raged, and cried, and passed out in her tiny, strong arms more times than he could count.

  She shuffled out of the lobby rather smitten with her new walker. Tiago’s arms were loaded down with instructions and Ensure bottles, even some adult diapers. He’d been off of the corner for almost two weeks. The pale winter sun made him feel like a vampire waking up from a dead sleep. All he’d heard in that sterile and sleepless place were the beeps of monitors, the swoosh of the ventilator, his grandmother’s ragged deep lung cough and his own desperate, whispered prayers. When the going gets tough, the tough start praying just like the rest of ‘em. But those prayers were to a silent God, who apparently, thankfully, still watched over guys like him.

  “Estoy tan orgullosa de tí, mijo,” his grandmother said. Her white hair wasn’t styled into its usual bouffant and instead stuck straight up out of her head like a newborn baby bird’s. “You are such a good boy, Santi. I can’t wait for the rest of the world to see.”

  She coughed again as Tiago tried to wrangle a cab. It wasn’t easy; one look at them and the taxi drivers sped up. He crossed his fingers in his jean pocket and counted the ones. He’d have to hit the streets tonight to make up for what they’d lost. Guilt. It was as heavy as the weight of the universe. But he carried it dutifully just like he carried his circumstances.

  “Don’t be too proud a’ me, Ma. We ain’t even made it home yet.” But she smiled at him as if he were her sunshine instead of a young street punk trying his best just to keep his head above water.

  Chapter 5