by Xenia Ruiz
“Ma, I told you. He’s an adult. I can’t watch him every day.”
Eli had inherited his father’s good looks and flirtatious nature. During high school, he had had many girlfriends and my biggest fear was that I would be a grandmother before I was forty. Sometimes I wondered if he would have been better off joining the air force despite the imminence of war instead of a college campus crawling with hot-blooded females.
“Tony, just talk to him, counsel him. He still needs guidance.”
“Am I my brother’s keeper?” This was his usual line of defense.
“Yes, you are,” I told him sternly.
“Okay, okay,” Tony said quickly, knowing he had gone too far with his comment. “I spoke to your ex-husband.”
“How is your father?”
“He’s fine. He has a new girlfriend.”
“That’s nice.” Anthony’s personal life had ceased to concern me long ago. Of course I cared about him, for example, if he got seriously sick or hurt, but the details of his private life were of little significance. The only thing I had asked of him when we split up was that he stay involved in his sons’ lives, unlike my own father.
“Have you talked to Grandpop?” he asked.
“No.”
“What do you tell us? ‘Just because he doesn’t call you doesn’t mean you shouldn’t call him.’”
“Hmmm.” I hated it when my words came back to haunt me, especially when they came from the children I raised.
“I hope you’re using this time wisely, like to finally find yourself a man,” Tony commented. “Now that we’re not in your hair, you can concentrate on making yourself happy.”
“I am happy,” I said defensively. “You know what Titi used to say: ‘Don’t count on anyone—’”
“‘To make you happy,’ I know,” he finished for me. “But you’ve got to admit, it might make life a little less lonely.”
“Sometimes. Sometimes you can be with someone and still be lonely.”
“True.”
I smiled, and thought proudly of how my eldest son had grown in the past few years. Our relationship had changed since his early turbulent teenage years, when he was fifteen and I had discovered he was dating a twenty-year-old woman. I promptly called the young woman’s mother—because she was still living at home—and told her that I would call the police if her daughter ever came around my son again. Tony accused me of ruining his life shouting, “You’re just jealous ’cause you don’t have a man!” Now, at nineteen, he had been saved for over a year, seriously concentrating on his education, with little time for love.
“Have you been to church down there?” I asked.
“Yes, Mother.”
“Are you staying away from those college girls?” He didn’t answer right away and for a moment I panicked. I knew Tony was a serious and sensitive soul. The year before, a girl from church had broken his heart and it had taken him several months to recover. Until then, I never realized that men suffered from rejection just as much as women. My fear was that he would fall in love again too quickly and drop out and get married before graduating. “Tony?”
“Ma, I don’t have time for women. I have a full course load, and my job.”
“How’re your classes?”
I listened as he talked about his classes and his professors before closing with our usual, “God bless you. I love you.”
Before I could reach the back door, the phone rang again.
“Hey, Ma! Miss me?” It was Eli.
“Who is this?” I kidded, sitting down again.
“Ha-ha. You’ve become a comedian in your old age.”
“Don’t make me go down there, boy.”
Eli was the comic relief in the family. He was the one who kept me laughing whenever I thought I was going to fall apart. Nothing seemed to faze his good humor. When his father and I divorced, Eli, at three years old, asked, “Is Daddy taking the big TV?” After Victor moved out, thirteen-year-old Eli had matter-of-factly said, “Now we’ll have more food left over.”
“How do you like college so far?”
“It’s raw! I’ve been to three parties since I’ve been down here. And the females? Girls, girls every night. I think you should know, I’m not a virgin anymore.”
“Elias!” I warned as he cackled into the phone.
“I’m kidding, Ma. I haven’t been a virgin for years.”
I ignored his little confession. “Have you been to church?”
“Maybe next week.”
“Maybe, nothing. You better go.”
“Si, Madre,” he said sarcastically in his phonetic gringo Spanish.
“Ready to come home?”
“Like you want me back. You know you want to have that man over.”
“What man?”
“The one you been hiding.”
“Yeah, right.”
After we said our good-byes, I decided I had had enough gardening for the day. I had plenty of paperwork to do, but working at the computer at home did not appeal to me after staring at one most of the workweek. I printed out hard copies of the college brochure I was editing and an editorial I had started a week ago to the Tribune regarding the inappropriate transferring of students with behavior problems, then packed a bag for the lakefront. I changed out of my overall shorts and T-shirt and into my weekend incognito attire: an Indian sari made of bronze gauze with a matching scarf, which I used as a headband to hold back my hair. Wooden bangles, amber shell earrings, and leather sandals completed my ensemble. If I had my choice, and if the ground wasn’t so polluted, I would go barefoot.
I drove to Montrose Harbor, my favorite spot. Before my mother died, my parents would take us here for picnics to escape the suffocating city air. About twenty-five feet above the lake, there were man-made limestone revetments arranged to resemble steps. Maya and I used to call them cliffs, chasing each other up and down the steps, pretending we were orphans who lived on the beach while our parents cuddled at the very top. Swimming and diving was forbidden because of the rocks below the water’s surface, but every year, inevitably there were news reports about some foolish teenager or drunken adult who thought they were invulnerable and ended up with a crushed spine or fatal injury.
The lakefront was filled with people walking, running, sunbathing, and playing sand games. Farther down the coast, boats of every size and model were cruising back to the marina as the skies darkened. As I settled on one of the available stepstones, reviewing and proofreading my work, I couldn’t help but get distracted by the magnificence of the horizon in the distance. Right after the divorce, the lakefront was the first place I brought the boys after returning to Chicago from North Carolina, to contemplate my future without Anthony. Tony took one look at the horizon and asked, “Is that heaven, Mommy? Is that where we go when we die?” Ever since then, the lakefront was where I escaped when I needed to talk to God. If I closed my eyes and concentrated really hard, all the noises around me would wither away: traffic, voices, barking, and momentarily, the world would be as God had originally intended, and would one day return—peaceful, like paradise.
My reverie was interrupted by the sound of drumming coming from the dog beach, which had just opened up. Regretfully, I thought about King and wished I had brought him. Shoving my papers into my shoulder messenger bag, I made my way in the direction of the familiar Afro-Caribbean beat. A small crowd was forming a semicircle around the three percussionists playing two congas and a bongo. Instinctively my head began to bop in appreciation and nostalgia, though I didn’t dare move the rest of my body.
“Muevete, Morena!” called one of the conga players. I realized he was speaking to me since I was the only dark-skinned person in the crowd. He was bare chested, his shirt tied around his head like a turban. I knew if Maya or Simone were around, they would have no problem dancing in public. The conga player kept grinning in my direction, urging me to move, tempting me with his hands as they banged furiously on his conga. He was a handsome Hispanic, brown li
ke me, and too young, but still I could not help but feel a connection, even a slight attraction. I glanced hesitantly at the off-beat dance moves on the part of some of the onlookers and I thought, These people don’t know me. I had my shades on and my weekend outfit so no one would recognize me.
As I moved into the circle, swaying my hips and shoulders, I recalled an old Puerto Rican dance my mother had taught me as a young girl called bomba, a dance with strong African roots. During the days of slavery in Puerto Rico, bomba dancers would form a circle and take turns challenging the drums with their raised skirts to ridicule the fancy attire worn by plantation ladies and to poke fun at the slave owners.
At first I felt embarrassed, wondering if the onlookers were thinking, Minorities sure know how to dance, but then I didn’t care. It had been so long since I had danced to the music of my youth. I lifted my skirt just above my knees, shaking it in the direction of the copper-colored congero, who laughed and whistled, shouting the call-and-response phrases that are the style of the bomba dance.
Just as I was getting into the beat, and the drummers were taking turns banging out solos, lightning lit up the sky, followed by thunder. Then the rain fell. The musicians stopped, protecting their instruments with their shirts.
When I stopped dancing, a couple of the onlookers complimented me as they dispersed. I took my time walking to my car, not caring that my hair would soon frizz up.
“You made it rain, Negrita!” the conga player yelled, running past me, his shoulder-length braids slapping his face.
I smiled. It had been a long time since anyone had called me Negrita, a term of endearment my mother used for me because I was the darkest in the family. For one brief moment, I felt liberated, free from the mundane worries in my everyday life: work, irrational thoughts, men. In my car, I closed my eyes and leaned back against the headrest, listening to the rain slapping the car’s exterior like a car wash.
A tapping at the window startled me and I looked up to find the conga player grinning at me as the rain drenched him. Cautiously, I manually cracked the car window.
“You wanna go dancin’?” he asked in a thick Chicago accent that reminded me of the first Mayor Daley.
His question caught me completely off guard, and I was temporarily speechless. I looked at his wet, goateed face, at the beads of rain clumping his eyelashes, then down at his bare tattooed torso, reed-thin without an ounce of body fat. Raindrops were splashing through the crack and hitting my face. Five years ago, the old Eva would have taken him up on his offer. Five years ago, I would not have given the consequences of my actions a second thought. The new Eva knew dancing was the last thing on his mind. And the new Eva blamed me for encouraging him with my dance moves.
“I’m Christian,” I replied, hoping to scare him away.
“Yo tambien,” he said, lifting the gold crucifix from his neck toward me.
“Estoy casada,” I told him, using my old lie that I was married to keep unwanted men away.
He held up his left hand to show me a ring and grinned. “Hey, me too.”
“Go home to your wife,” I told him disgustedly, and rolled up the window.
He pretended to look dejected, holding his hands together in a begging gesture, the grin never leaving his face. I started the car and backed out of the parking space, glancing in the rearview mirror as he ran toward a waiting van.
There were some days when I felt I could wait for a man of God as long as He wanted me to wait. I would remember my mother’s favorite proverb: Be careful what you ask for, you might just get it, and back off in fear of what might come my way. I would tell myself I didn’t necessarily need a man to complete my life, just to complement it. Because marriage wasn’t something I was ready to commit to again, and because I had no intentions of becoming intimate without marriage, my predicament was even more complicated. I had yet to date a man who hadn’t eventually expected sex as part of the package.
There were other days when I could keep my craving at bay by imagining the worst that marriage had to offer—the never-ending housework, the disproportionate compromising, usually on the part of the woman, the whole patriarchal institution of it all. In the end, I would resolve that I was better off single.
But then, there were the days when the emptiness in me was so intense, the pain so acute, it cut like a razor blade and all I wanted to do was cry. I would feel the need to pray continuously and intensely, attending every service at TCCC until I felt rejuvenated by His awesome presence. I would think, Okay, Lord, if you command me to wait some more, then Thy will be done. I would be invigorated for the next few days, enough to get me through the nights, a week. But then, my spirit, which was very willing, was overwhelmed by my weakened and fervent flesh.
And I could feel myself growing weaker every day.
CHAPTER 4
ADAM
IT WAS FRIDAY and I had been thanking God literally from the moment I woke up that morning. Most days I loved my job, but sometimes when I saw kid after kid coming in and out of my office, day after day, week after week, year after year, I wondered how much difference I was really making.
Ronnie was fifteen years old in a six-foot-one-inch, two-hundred-pound body full of misplaced hate. He wouldn’t even look at me when I spoke to him, just stared out the window like he couldn’t wait to brag to his partners that he had beaten the rap—no juvey, just probation. I was used to being yelled at, cursed at, even attacked, so being ignored didn’t bother me much. I had read somewhere that even though teenagers appeared not to be listening, they always were.
“Ronnie, are you hearing me?” I asked the boy sternly.
He turned up his lip, still staring out the window. He was just one of many and although they all basically had the same history—products of single mothers-absent fathers, poor schools-rough neighborhoods—I saw them as individuals. The critics would say that thousands of kids were brought up under similar conditions but didn’t end up in trouble. But those kids didn’t concern me; I wanted to help the ones that slipped through the cracks. I didn’t dwell on the fact that the parents were partly responsible for the way their children turned out. Out there somewhere were fathers who, for whatever reasons, had no contact with their sons, forcing the boys to choose between the street and the rest of the world. I couldn’t do anything about that. I had long since given up assigning blame. I was more about finding solutions.
Like them, I was still angry at my father, so I could relate. I knew what it was like to be dismissed and abandoned, to be an afterthought in a parent’s selfish life. I didn’t want to be their fathers, or a father figure, but I wanted them to see that there were good men in the world, that it was possible for them to be worthy men despite their circumstances.
“Three years’ probation ain’t no joke. You got to keep your nose and your urine clean, stay away from your crew, those so-called knot-head friends of yours, finish school, get a part-time job, and report to me once a week,” I ran down the list of rules.
When I met with my clients, I usually took off my suit jacket so I didn’t come off as too authoritarian, but as soon as I got acquainted with them, I rolled up my sleeves to show them I meant business. With Ronnie, I knew I had to bring out the big guns. I unbuttoned my shirt and stripped down to my T-shirt. I could see him turning his head slightly, watching me. He had a couple of inches on me, but I had muscles and years on him and if necessary, I would show him I wasn’t about to take any mess from him. Inside, I was harder than he was.
Walking around my desk, I came around and sat on the edge. I scratched my upper arm, pushing my short sleeve up just far enough so he could see my barbed-wire tattoo. I kept the tattoo of the Star of David on my other arm hidden.
“I know you think you got an easy sentence but let me tell you something. Staying straight is harder than serving time, man. Probation is worse than juvey. You know why? ’Cause you got to report to me.”
Through all the pretense, I could see he was just a scared kid trapped insi
de the body of a man. He had probably cried himself to sleep upon hearing his sentence, probably wet himself. Knowing that made my heart soften for him.
“Look, man, I ain’t trying to be yo’ buddy,” I said taking it down a notch, but regressing to street talk. “I ain’t trying to be yo’ daddy. You just do what you got to do, and I’ll do what I go to do. It’s as simple as that.” I crossed my arms so that my chest expanded. “You understand?”
Ronnie finally turned away from the window slowly and cocked his head at me, his lip still curled. “We thu?”
“Yeah, man, we’re through. Get outta here.”
He jumped up, the first proof of life. I held out my arm to stop him. “You need anything, you call me, you hear?”
In his eyes, I saw the slightest hint of docility as he barely nodded his head, before the hard look returned almost as quickly.
“See you next week, man.”
As he rushed out, he bumped into Derek Cote, a fellow probation officer, in the hallway. Ronnie tried to walk around him, but Derek was built like a fullback, not to mention he was bald, Black, and intimidating. It didn’t help that his wife had recently died of breast cancer and he was still angry at the world. He reached out a huge beefy arm and blocked Ronnie’s way.
“Hey, young man, the word is ‘excuse me.’ Use it,” Derek said in his baritone voice.
I couldn’t hear Ronnie’s voice but I knew he had complied.
“Knucklehead,” Derek muttered as he walked into my office. “We still on for lunch?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said putting my shirt back on and sitting at my desk. “How you doing? You doing okay?”
“I’m alright, I’m cool,” he said dismissing me with a wave of his hand, ready to talk about business.
Derek and I had known each other for five years, ever since I started working at the agency. He took over most of my cases when I was out on medical leave, and I in turn, covered his when he took a family leave to deal with his wife’s death. I hadn’t seen too many men cry in my lifetime, and the first time Derek broke down in my office, I was stunned. Before his wife died, he would talk about her like she was someone special, made out of rare diamonds. The way he used to romance her, even after twenty years of marriage, amazed me. Sometimes he’d talk about her like she was still alive, in the present tense. Teresa likes it when I wear this shirt, he’d say. It made me wonder if loving a woman with that much intensity was possible.