When I get home I run to the bathroom with a sense of exhilaration I don’t remember having since childhood. I pee on the stick and watch the second hand on the clock tick by in slow motion, waiting for the results. The longest two minutes of my life.
Cristo
The house smells different without Mami. Not better or worse, just different. It smells like somebody else’s home. Lucho moved in but she didn’t bring anything with her, and Mami didn’t take anything away when she left, so it looks exactly the same. But somehow it’s not.
I get home early on the last day of school and find the apartment empty. I shouldn’t be surprised, but it’s weird for the place to be so quiet. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the living room with nobody in it. I’m hungry since I didn’t eat at Teacher’s party, but there’s nothing in the fridge. I check the cookie jar but the money and the WIC checks Mami usually keeps there are gone, so I hope Lucho remembers to stop by the market after work. If not we’ll have to eat next door with Miss Wendy and everything she cooks tastes like dish soap and cigarettes. I shoulda said yes when César asked me to hang out after school, but I didn’t want to deal with all his questions about Mami and when she’s coming back and who’s watching us now. I love that kid but sometimes he just doesn’t know when to shut up.
I leave the kitchen and try to forget how hungry I am. The sun is shining so bright in my bedroom, I don’t even have to turn on the light. A rich lady would use this room as a closet, but we got a bunk bed, a crib, and a dresser taller than I am all jammed inside. We used to have a desk for coloring or homework, but when the baby came we had to get rid of it to fit the crib. But a small room has its good points. When Trini used to wake up in the night because she lost her chupete, I could always find it and pop it back into her mouth without even getting out of bed. That’s why I took the bottom bunk, so I can be there in the night if she needs me. I used to sleep up top because I’m the oldest and I liked to touch the ceiling, but Luz is pretty worthless at night. She sleeps like a dead person until you wake her up, then she kicks you in the stomach and says she don’t remember nothing in the morning.
Even though she’s a year younger than me, Luz and I are in the same grade. She’s smart, just like my friend Marco, so they moved her to Regular Ed two years ago. We never been in the same class. With the scores she gets and the books she’s always reading, I’m surprised she hasn’t skipped a grade yet. Some people think we’re twins because we’re the same size, but I don’t think we look that much alike. I look just like Mami and everybody says Luz gets her coloring from my father. I think that’s why Mami’s so hard on her. She must look at Luz and think no matter how far she goes, she’s never gonna really get away from him.
I still call her a baby but Trini is three already and she’s the happiest little kid you ever seen. She laughs all the time, like she’s always telling herself jokes, and she’s got these great dimples when she smiles. She’s too old for a crib, but when we moved her into Luz’s bed when she was two she kept climbing back in during the night, even though we were using it as a laundry hamper. Eventually we gave up and put her back in the crib. Her hair is so light it’s almost blond in the summer and she has a voice just like a bird. She’s half Puerto Rican and half question mark because her father don’t know where he comes from. Scottie calls himself a mutt, which is what the nuns at the orphanage used to call him and his sister after their parents died in a house fire. He says he don’t look like anything but I think he looks like everything. If he changed his accent he could convince you he was from a dozen different countries. He says that’s a pain in the ass but to me it seems like fun. Almost like wearing a mask on Halloween—you could be anybody.
When Lucho gets home I turn off the TV and pretend to be reading a book. She walks by me without saying anything and heads to the kitchen. From the doorway I watch her unload a bag of groceries straight into the fridge: a six-pack of beer, three types of milk—regular, chocolate, and coffee—juice boxes, peanut butter, eggs, frozen waffles, cheese, and mayonnaise. Then she puts a few cans of beans, two boxes of cold cereal, a bunch of bananas, and some crackers in the cupboard. She tosses a bag of white bread onto the table and walks out of the room, leaving a trail of aftershave behind her.
What I like about Lucho is that she don’t yell; the downside is she sometimes don’t talk for days. That kind of silence scares me more than yelling does. Her other problem? She disappears. Just leaves for work in the morning and we don’t hear from her for the rest of the weekend. But she always comes back, that’s the important thing. She used to do the same thing when Mami was here, something about her needing to breathe different air. At least that’s what Mami told me the first time she left.
She also told me Lucho’s not just her friend. She’s her girlfriend, just like Krystal and me. The men on the corner say it’s wrong because somebody has to be the man, but all you gotta do is look at Mami to see that she’s happier with Lucho than when Scottie was living with us. When Lucho first started coming over I used to walk into the living room and find them sitting on the couch just looking at each other. The TV was off and they weren’t even talking. Mami would smile at me and then go back to looking at Lucho. Luz told me she read in a book that when people are in love they don’t have to talk, they just sit and stare at each other and it makes them feel better. I guess I never been in love ’cause I don’t ever feel better just by staring at a girl.
I’m sitting at the kitchen table cutting coupons out of a flyer from Star Market when Lucho walks back into the kitchen. She’s out of her jumpsuit from work and has on the white tank top and jeans she usually wears. Her hair is cut short and combed straight back so if you didn’t notice the sports bra that flattens her chest you might guess she was a man. Sometimes I think she wants people to think that. She sits down in a chair across from me and peels a banana, giving me half.
“You seen your sisters?”
“They’re still next door, I think.” I stare at the tattoo of two masks on her arm: one happy, one sad. When I asked her about it once she said, “My two faces—never know which one you’re gonna get.”
“Ain’t it dinnertime?” She eats her half in one bite.
“I can go get them,” I say, standing to leave.
“Wait,” she says, putting her hand on my shoulder. It’s the first time she’s ever touched me. “I want to talk to you. Alone.”
I sit down. My heart pounds loud in my chest.
“Your mom, she’s not coming back right away. You know that, right?”
I nod. I keep hearing the last thing Mami said to me, about the presents being with the birds, but I still can’t figure out what it means. I think about telling Lucho but she’s got enough to worry about.
“She could be gone for a few months, maybe even longer.”
I look at the chunk of banana in my hand. It suddenly doesn’t seem ripe enough to eat.
“That’s a long time to be without your mother.” Lucho throws the banana peel into a garbage can with no liner. “Are you okay with that?”
I shrug. “I guess I have to be.”
“It’s not going to be easy. For you or your sisters.”
“But you’re here,” I say to her.
She looks at me.
“You’re here, right?”
“Sure, kid, I’m here. But I’m nobody’s mother, you know what I mean?”
“Yeah, sure. Okay.”
“And if your sisters ask any questions, you tell the truth, okay? Kids get fucked up when you lie to them.” She gets a beer and opens it with a bottle opener that’s screwed into the countertop. With her back to me I speak again.
“Hey Lucho…you must like my mom a lot, to do this for her.”
She shakes her head and tries to hide a smile. She has a gold cap on her front tooth that makes her look like a gangster. “I don’t like your mother, Cristo. Like is for puppies and ice cream sandwiches.” She squeezes the neck on her bottle of beer. “I love your mother. I’d
do anything for her. I’m not her husband and I’m not her boyfriend, but I’ll take care of her better than any man ever has. No prison’s going to change that.”
Then she walks into the bedroom, using her foot to shut the door behind her.
For dinner I make my sisters waffles with peanut butter and honey and fried eggs. Usually Mami won’t let me make breakfast for dinner, but Lucho doesn’t care what we eat, so long as we clean up right away so the roaches don’t come out.
Lucho sleeps through dinner but I wake her up later when the landlord comes by looking for the rent. I’ve seen him before, walking around the neighborhood by himself, headphones blaring, but up close he looks like even more of a freak. They say he’s an albino, so even though he’s black his skin is completely white, and he has these bright blue eyes that look like they run on electricity. It’s hard to look at him for long, but once you get past his eyes, it’s not too bad. His head is shaved smooth like a cue ball and he has a goatee, perfectly white like it was painted on his face with snow. People say it’s the only hair he has on his whole body.
It’s eighty-five degrees out but he’s wearing a hooded sweatshirt and cargo pants. Fuck if I know what his real name is but everybody calls him Snowman. I used to think it was mean but now it just makes sense.
Lucho sends us out to play since the days are getting longer and it’s still pretty light outside. Luz takes Trini to the sandbox in front of our neighbor’s house, but I hang back on the porch, trying to hear their conversation. I can’t hear much because Lucho’s not talking and this Snowman guy whispers, but I do hear him ask about Mami. Lucho offers him a beer but he says he don’t drink. When she offers him a chair he leans against it instead of sitting down. He says that somebody owes him money and I hear the word evict several times. Finally Lucho leaves the room, and when she comes back she hands him a stack of money. He folds it into an envelope and says, “I’m sorry,” as he takes it, looking like he actually means it. She shakes his hand hard like a man.
“I’ll get you the rest,” Lucho says, looking him right in the eye.
He smiles and nods and doesn’t say anything. I’m surprised she doesn’t look pissed. When I see him heading toward the door I back up and try to make it look like I was just walking up the stairs.
“You should be careful on these streets, little man,” he says to me as he’s leaving. “Some kid just got shot on his front stoop. Right in the projects on Hartford Avenue.”
“You mean a drive-by?”
“No, it was an accident. His own uncle shot him. Right in the head, too. That’s fucked up.”
He leans over to tighten the laces on his Jordans. They look brand new, like he scrubs them every night with a toothbrush. They’re almost as white as he is.
“I heard about that,” Lucho says. “They were fighting over a parking space and the gun went off. It was a little kid, too, like no more than ten.”
“Who was it?” I ask, figuring I know almost all the kids in that project.
“I don’t remember his name. Something Spanish. At first the cops thought it was this white kid from Johnston or something because he was a redhead and had all these freckles. But then his grandmother came out and said he lived there with her and that it was her son who shot him.”
Redhead. Freckles. Grandmother. My heart is suddenly pounding. “It wasn’t César, was it? César Martinez?” My stomach drops as the pieces fall into place.
“I don’t know, maybe,” Lucho says. “All I remember is the red hair.”
“He’s short and kind of chubby and he’s always saying crazy things.” I wish I had a picture of him but we don’t even own a camera.
Snowman shrugs. “You should call the hospital if you think it might be your friend.”
“I’ll call,” Lucho says quietly, walking into the house.
“And they say the projects get a bum rap.” Snowman takes the porch steps two at a time. “We can’t even keep a kid safe in his own frontyard.” He puts on his headphones and walks away, shaking his head.
I call out for Luz to bring Trini home. She says, “Just a minute,” but keeps playing so I yell back, “Right now,” and something in my voice makes her listen. I watch as she lifts Trini out of the sandbox and cleans off her clothes. That sandbox is the most popular toy on our block, but the truth is it’s just a pothole. A while back it was small like a box of kitty litter but every winter it gets bigger from all the cars driving over it, and now it’s the size of a car itself. A big truck from the city filled it with sand one day, promising to patch it up, but that was two years ago and they still haven’t come back.
Luz asks me what’s wrong but I don’t want to scare her so I say nothing. We go inside and wait for Lucho to get off the phone. When she hangs up she tells me she’s sorry. She says the hospital wouldn’t tell her anything, so she called her aunt who lives in the projects and she said it was César. She said he’s in surgery right now.
“That’s good,” Lucho says softly. “That he’s not dead already.” She looks like she’s reaching for me, but then she puts her hand on the wall instead, her fingers spread wide. It makes a hollow sound, like it could crumble under her touch.
I shut myself in the bathroom to be alone. It’s the only door in the house with a lock that works from the inside. I feel like I’m gonna faint or puke or shit my pants. I close my eyes and the room starts to spin so I grab onto the sink to keep from falling. Everything inside me feels hot and tight. I make a fist and punch the wall. It feels good so I do it again. The second time hurts. And the third. Luz knocks on the door. I hear her call my name but I don’t answer.
My hand is throbbing. I turn on the sink and run the cold water over it. It feels nice for a second, but then it starts to burn from being so cold. When both my hands are numb I turn off the water. I hold onto the sink but I can’t feel anything. It looks like a toy in my hands. I try to tear it off the wall but it don’t move. I wish I was strong enough to break things. When I see my reflection in the mirror I start to cry.
After a while Luz knocks on the door again. She tells me that Teacher’s on the phone. I don’t want to talk to anyone, not even her, so I don’t answer. Luz knocks again, softer this time, and I watch the doorknob turn. The latch is locked so the door doesn’t open.
“Damn you, Cristo,” Luz says through the closed door. “You’re not the only one who’s scared.”
I’m not scared, I want to yell through the door, but then I look at my face in the mirror and know she’s right.
Luz
Ever since César got shot that’s all my brother wants to talk about. How great his friend is. Whatever. I’m sorry the kid got shot but truth be told he’s annoying, hyperactive, and a bad influence on my brother. Okay, okay, and he’s also pretty funny. But to make him out to be a saint? I don’t think so. Saints don’t leave chewed bubble gum on the doorknob to the girls’ bathroom, or stick a wet finger into your ear while you’re waiting in the lunch line. I really hope he doesn’t die. Then everybody’s going to rewrite history and say he was a perfect angel and could have grown up to be president.
They take him to Hasbro Children’s Hospital and he ends up staying in the ICU for a week. The doctors perform eight operations in five days and they still can’t get the bullet out. They say it’s stuck in his scalp, above his right ear, and for now it’s better to just leave it there. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to walk around with a bullet in my head, thank you very much. But he’s still alive so I guess he can’t complain. Not that he’s saying much of anything. They keep telling us he’s not in a coma, he’s just unconscious, and they say other funny things like he’s “out of the woods” even though it’s still “touch and go.” It reminds me of hospital scenes in soap operas, which sometimes make me feel like none of this is real. No matter what they say, all I know is this: we can talk to him as much as we want and he still won’t respond. Which is a first for César. It must be killing him to be so quiet.
When
we get to the hospital Cristo won’t even walk into the room. He stands in the hallway with his hands in his pockets and peeks in through the window. I’m not sure what he’s looking at, since most of it’s covered up by get-well cards the kids in his class made. At first I think his grandmother put them up, though she isn’t the sentimental type, but later I overhear the nurses saying it was their idea. Miss Valentín says it’s sweet but I think it’s kind of pathetic. César’s not even awake yet. And when he is, he’s going to have a lot more to worry about than where to hang those silly cards. I bet most of the kids won’t even come to visit him.
I stand by the candy machine and try not to be seen. It works for a long time, but then Miss Valentín notices me and asks if I want to see him. I don’t, but I don’t want her to think I’m a baby so I say, “Yeah.” I thought the room would be quiet but it’s real loud inside. One machine has a steady, high-pitched beep that sounds like a smoke alarm when the battery’s dying. Another one vibrates so much I can feel my teeth shaking. The walls are a blinding white that makes my eyes water like I’m crying even though I’m not. But I bet this room has seen a lot of tears. The only color in the room is from a bright red teddy bear sitting on the windowsill. The bear stares out the window like he’s looking for someone to take him away from here.
I glance around the room slowly, looking at César last. He’s the smallest thing here except for the teddy bear. I take a deep breath and walk right up to the side of the bed. My sneakers squeak against the floor with each step. No way did I think I would ever hold hands with César Martinez, but his fingertips are peeking out of the covers and they seem like they need to be held. His skin is warm and it feels kind of nice actually, a reminder to me that he’s still alive. I know it doesn’t really count but I can tell people I’ve held hands with a boy now, if it ever comes up during Truth-or-Dare at a sleepover. Not that I go to sleepovers. But still.
This Side of Providence Page 6