The Flowers

by Dagoberto Gilb

  “Yeah,” I said, “but no. Thanks anyways.”

  “You don’t want one?” Bud asked.

  “No,” I said. “I’m all right.”

  “I’d never turn down a beer if I got asked at your age,” Bud said.

  “It’ll grow you some pubic hair,” Cloyd said.

  Bud laughed.

  Cloyd sucked at the tip of a cigarette with a metal lighter. “You lit any of these up before?”

  I didn’t answer. I let him know I didn’t answer.

  “Have you ever smoked?” Cloyd asked.

  He thought I didn’t understand the question the first time?

  “Probably not.” Bud answered for me.

  They chuckled in some tough, we’re-big-men way, like they were so wise and so experienced. I knew right then they’d been talking about me. I wanted to do something, anything.

  “Did you want something?” I asked Cloyd.

  “Whadaya mean?” he said.

  “You called me in here.”

  “You did,” Bud agreed, but smiling at me.

  “Damn,” said Cloyd.

  They laughed.

  “You were asking him about them blacks,” Bud told him.

  “Oh yeah,” Cloyd said. “You were outside there when he was showing one of his cars.”

  “I was painting,” I said.

  “Yeah?” said Cloyd, taking a long drag on his cigarette.

  “I finished it too,” I said.

  “The painting?”

  “Yeah, the painting.”

  “You put the ladder and brush back in the shed this time?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You clean the brush?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Last time I had to do it for you.”

  “It’s that I went to get something and forgot.”

  “And so I had to clean things up and put them away.”

  “Whatever. Sorry.”

  “What’s with that clown selling to them blacks anyway?” Bud said to me. He turned to Cloyd. “Guy looks like a circus freak.”

  I wished I could tell him how he was the one with the clown face. He could kick my ass so easy, and I didn’t want it to happen easy.

  “I don’t like it,” said Bud. “I don’t like them being around my home.”

  “He’s making money on them,” Cloyd said.

  “Who cares? I don’t like to see them standing around where I live.”

  “Gonna have to get used to it,” Cloyd said.

  “You wouldn’t let them move in here, would you?”

  “I didn’t say I would,” Cloyd said. “Fact I wouldn’t. But that don’t mean they aren’t coming. They’re all around us, multiplying like Mexicans.” He heard himself say that and he looked up at me, embarrassed for a couple of seconds, and then lifted his beer bottle. “At least for Mexicans it’s because they’re of the Catholic faith.”

  “Why can’t they live where they live,” said Bud, “and we can live where we live? They got their shithole neighborhoods, why don’t they keep themselves over there? All they gotta do is clean up after themselves.”

  Home was where we used to live. Where my old friends still lived. I guess home was when I had a bed and a bedroom and called them mine. But I didn’t want to live there no more. I didn’t want to go back there. I was like my mom—new. And I was a boy then and now I wasn’t. It’s that I was seeing big money. I was seeing Cindy, and I was in love with Nica, and, yeah, confusing. I lived here and I was sitting on the cement walk—with apartment windows and doors with numbers on them, stairs and walkways and rails and carports. The Cloyd went on talking hillbilly with that Bud. I could hear them. Talked about my mom. When they started talking about me, said my name once, I went farther away. I was wishing I could say fuck you in French. Foquez-vous. Saying that in French made me smile and feel stronger and even laugh about shit. The dude owed me. Maybe I would have cared more if I hadn’t found that drawer with the money. Yeah, now I was scheming. I was like making reasons why it’d be okay to lift it, you know? Like, didn’t I need some coin too? I was working around here, doing a good job of it, a fine job of it, and I’d been spending mine and that wasn’t right either. He should pay me like he promised and then I probably wouldn’t be thinking nothing. He shouldn’t be laughing at me with that muscle-head from #7.

  No, the building didn’t need sweeping but it was all I could figure to do. I got the push broom out of the shed and went to sweep around the carports, where I’d never been. I was avoiding the grease puddles when Bud’s wife pulled in. She didn’t have a baby with her either. I was still trying to figure out when they had this baby around, if they had a baby. Getting out of her squeaking car, she had that already-an-old-lady face she wore most of the time, her body about as wild as that plain dress she wore.

  “And how are you?” she asked.

  I almost couldn’t hear her.

  She had bags of groceries. I knew I was supposed to ask if she needed help. I went on sweeping instead. I don’t think I even heard her get so close to me.

  “Is Bud with your dad?”

  “Cloyd Longpre’s not my dad,” I said. She smelled like old lady powder, dusty and stale. Definitely not like a baby just diapered.

  “Okay, that’s right.” You could tell she really was sorry because she got almost scared that she’d said something I didn’t like. “I should have said your stepdad.”

  I was trying to seem polite.

  “I hope Bud isn’t getting drunk tonight,” she said. “Is your mom with them?”

  I nodded.

  She got tight, kind of pissed.

  Then I said, “Not with them. She’s doing something else, she’s out.”

  “That’s good,” she said.

  It was happening everywhere, everything was about taking sides.

  “Cloyd drinks,” she told me, cutting off some of what she was going to say. “Bud comes back drunk.”

  What’d I care? I had stopped sweeping to be polite. I felt really stupid standing there, both of us stiff and stuck like we were waiting in line. I was like uh, uh, trying to move on, but then nothing was coming out of my mouth.

  Finally she started grabbing at her grocery bags like she’d never lugged any up before. I had no choice. “I guess I can help,” I said, “if you want.”

  She did want that. There were four and I got three of them and followed her up the stairs. Mr. Josep was sitting out on his chair. He waved at me with the back of his hand, either because he wanted to talk to me or he was saying hello, I couldn’t tell. Mary didn’t seem to see him, she was so focused on the keys going up and opening the door. “Right here, please, right here,” she said. “Thank you so much, thank you so much.”

  I put the grocery bags on their dining table. There was a cat, and the apartment stunk like a really dirty catbox. The cat was making noise and following her, jumping up, then down. My eyes were checking around this place they lived. Kind of like when I was alone and did it, but I wasn’t.

  “I know you missed me,” she told the cat. “I know my baby missed me.”

  Baby.

  “Let me give you a coke,” she said.

  I told her no.

  “No?” She was surprised and scattered and worried. She wanted me to have one. “It’s the least I can do.”

  I didn’t really feel like it. “It’s that I’m sweeping down there.”

  “You can have one. I know you can. It’ll be okay.”

  She had uncapped a bottle and was holding it. I couldn’t not drink it.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “You can have one.”

  I didn’t know if she thought I wasn’t allowed or I was very bashful.

  “So,” she said.

  She was wanting me to say more than I possibly could or would. And that’s what I meant. I didn’t feel like this. I didn’t want to have to listen or say anything back and be all polite.

  “Your mother’s very attractive,” she said. “She’s beautiful.”

/>   What was I supposed to say? Was I supposed to if I thought something? I wanted out.

  “Everybody thinks so,” she said.

  I figured if I nodded, it’d be enough. So I did.

  “Beautiful clothes.” She was unpacking the grocery bags. The cat was on the table, craning and stretching to be petted.

  “She buys them in stores.” Maybe that came out more sarcastic than I intended, or maybe more honest than polite.

  “Of course,” she said.

  I drank the coke like I was thirsty, like my brain didn’t need much else. I’d tipped the bottle and chugged, and when I was done I clunked it on the table and made out that I was born to be gone.

  “Well, I couldn’t have gotten these up here without you.”

  “No problem.”

  “My husband was too busy,” she said from behind me.

  I was already turned away and moving toward the door.

  I was sweeping near Tino’s dented GTO—I just missed him, still didn’t know what he looked like for real, because the car wasn’t there before—fading black, with black bucket seats coming apart along the seams, and on the driver’s side the foam rubber was leaking out. There were empty beer bottles and fast food trash on the back floorboard. A plastic hula Virgin Mary swung from the rearview mirror. For whatever reason, I’d started sweeping faster and sloppier until I put the push broom back in the shed and rushed by and ignored Mr. Josep when he began to wave at me to come up and also, when I passed #2, that Gina, who pushed open her curtain to look at me and probably say something “nice” though maybe not, who knows. I pretended I was too much in a hurry to hear her or stop.

  Cloyd and Bud were loud drunk, sitting in the office, and my mom was in the living room. On the maple supper table was a bucket of fried chicken, and I was hungry, and there was plenty and there were a couple of jalapeños that maybe my mom got because of me. It made me feel almost happy, believing she got some food I might like so I could eat there. I took a plate to where she was and she shook her head no no at me, like we’d already been talking, like there was a secret. Like them, she had a drink going too. The TV was on but too low to hear unless those guys drinking in the office were quiet, which they were not. She made a secret between us, eyes toward the other room where they were. I ate near her without saying anything. It was almost never that I was around my mom like this. Even before, at home, she was always either out or moving around getting ready to go out. And we never ate anything like fried chicken, though it wasn’t like she was eating any. She didn’t like fried chicken.

  “Hey, Sil!”

  She made one of her faces at me, nodding like, Here it is finally, then shook her same head without moving from the chair.

  “Hey, my luv-ly wife!” he yelled from the office.

  She still didn’t flinch. It wasn’t like she was really watching the TV show she had on, only pretending. She was far away. She was taking side streets, making turns that kept her going. She was scheming too. It’s where I learned it.

  I was eating fried chicken. It was good too. My mom was touching my hair and we didn’t have to say anything to each other. I turned the volume up some. There was no way we could hear it if it wasn’t turned up.

  “Sil?” He scared us both when he came around from the hall side and found her. He was blasted. He had the dumbest look on his face ever, smiling like—well, I’d heard him do that a couple of times. He’d cut one, then say, Speak again, sweet lips, I’ll find you! He thought that was the funniest shit ever.

  “You feelin’ better, Sil?” he said like I wasn’t even sitting there. I couldn’t see what kind of face she made. I ate the fried chicken, and then I got up to see if there was any orange juice in the fridge. I really did like orange juice, and if it was around I didn’t think anybody’d notice if I drank some.

  * * *

  The neighbors on the other side of the fence had their television close to a window. They talked with accents I didn’t think anyone anywhere could understand. They sounded old. I wasn’t even sure they were speaking English, though they at least did when what sounded like the grandma would yell at a child who was there too. You stop! You be good! No! Unless that was to a cat. It couldn’t be no dog. Sometimes I thought I heard a little kid voice in the muffle. They might laugh about something they would see on TV—the TV never went off. There was mumbling between the old woman and the old man, and first only their sound would stick to me. And then it was sounds a little closer or farther, and every day I listened one and the other got louder than before, and the night world of this room I slept in closed and expanded into another into what wrapped me like a blanket I’d mummy myself in. Those noises swirling up into air and off the boulevard blew onto me like wind, like static or exhaust fumes or cooling puffs from a bird’s wings, or the hot breath of a loose dog panting. I could even hear a spider—I am telling you I could hear it—I could even see the sound the same as I could see the wind that came in blue-white through tree branches, and silver leaves shook, floating down yellow, crumbling into brown under a gray cat’s creep through blue overgrown grass. The walls of the bedroom and ceiling creaked with a fump fump fump from above, not just water swooshing up or down or in or out but moving white through the space between the wall on my side and the wall on the other and through the air I heard it somewhere, not where it really was. I could hear the kind of air that didn’t move, if I listened for it. There was music in it, and the sounds spun lines, squares and triangles and circles, colliding and crossing and twisting into new shapes, and then I’d be dreaming. I could feel it like a boat or a train or in a car, wandering on sand or floating on a rubbery raft or staring down from the edge of a steep mountain, hanging there like air floated me, until I’d ride a bicycle I found as fast as I could, bouncing on some path cut out, parting in front of me, or stepping on some rocks hot on my feet and I’d see so many people there until there was only one left who would pass me as I went on and then I’d feel alone, be alone, sometimes scared that I had dreams, except they were good like I’d eaten an orange or a tangerine.

  “I never remember any dreams,” said Mike.

  “I do,” Joe said.

  “Oh yeah,” said Mike. “Those wet ones.”

  “That’s not what I meant, pero, you know, now that you mention it.”

  “You should see his magazine collection,” said Mike.

  Joe slugged Mike.

  “Sonny won’t think it’s bad,” said Mike. “Do you, Sonny?”

  “Nah.” I told them how I’d taken those magazines from the mail slot. I don’t know why. It just came out. They wailed big ays and quelas because they thought it was dangerous.

  “It’s not shit,” I said. “It’s not.”

  “I couldn’t fucking do it!” said Mike.

  “If you bring yours sometime, we’ll show you ours,” said Joe.

  Mike gave him a look.

  “Sonny won’t think it’s bad,” Joe said. “Huh, Sonny?”

  Mike gave him a look again.

  Joe shook him off. “We got this collection.”

  I didn’t say nothing. I was listening.

  “There’s this one,” said Joe, “where this ruca with the biggest titties you’ve ever seen is like bent over, like ninety degrees, and they touch la fucking tierra!”

  Mike wasn’t happy about Joe talking about this. He was rolling his eyes while he was cleaning his glasses.

  “These magazines are the really serious everything-goes kind, not like the ones you’re ripping off,” Joe said. “Like they show the chicks’ pelitos down there, and they show their legs open a la madre, really wide too.”

  “Can we talk about something else?” said Mike. “My brother talks about anything. You know, some things you don’t have to tell everybody.”

  “I’m not saying anything so much,” said Joe. “My brother makes it seem like he don’t like to look, and he looks, I know.”

  Mike shoved Joe. “Shut up, will you? Will you shut the fuck up?”<
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  Pink was under the hood of a Bel Air outside The Flowers when I was walking by. It was a good-looking one, even jacked up in the back a little. He had tools out and grease on his white white arm with the sleeves of a dark satiny dress shirt rolled up. His hair, which was both bristly and long at the same time, had a streak of white in it, which made the yellow rest of it look even more fake.

  “This one’s yours, you want it, little brother,” he told me.

  “I wish.”

  “You gotta move yourself up, my man. You got to, you wanna get anything or get anywhere.” He pulled himself out from under the hood. His smiling teeth were whiter than you could imagine, and they were big as show-off jewelry—which made you realize he was not really a small dude. Because his skin was so colorless—the pink scar was it—his size wasn’t what you usually thought about.

  “You have a buyer yet?” I asked.

  “Maybe. It’s why I do this. All it needs here is a tune job. But see I sell my automobiles to black folk, as you know, and this kind here is not their brand. That’s why I’m thinking of you. You gotta own this automobile, you got to. You a good young man and I’m cutting you a deal. You tell your mama to get her new daddy to buy it for you. I say the fine lady could sugar him up to anything she wanted sugared, including buying you these wheels.”

  “I’m not really old enough. I don’t even got a license.”

  “Shit, you told me, didn’t you, and I didn’t remember. But no matter, no matter, I wasn’t no sixteen when I started to drive. Where I came up, it don’t much matter.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Why you asking?”

  He turned and answered so quick, the blow of it hit my face. “Nothing, just curious,” I told him, “just wondering.”

  “You’re not asking ’cause of Longpre, are you?” He was talking like I was pushing and he was about to hit a wall except I saw a lot of open street behind his back. “Is Longpre asking questions about me?” That got him a little too agitated, and he backed off and stepped forward. He even shut his eyes when he shook his head to disapprove of himself. “Listen to me. We’re buddies, ain’t that so?”