Javier
He hasn’t held a bat, or a glove, or even stood on a baseball diamond in more than ten years, but there is something about him that makes him seem like a ball player. His eyes dart around a lot, never staying focused too long, and he has a habit of standing on his toes, as if at any moment he could get the signal to steal second. He drinks too much, but he is still quite lean, though the only exercise he gets is walking to the mailbox at his mother’s house—a half-mile down a winding dirt road that she can no longer navigate with her cane and artificial hip—and his shoulders, at one time so strong he could do consecutive dips for more than three minutes, are still coiled with muscles; the tanned skin that covers each deltoid is taut, as if concealing a hard ball.
When he thinks of himself, he sees his body in a baseball uniform: the tight polyester pants that were always too long, their tapered ends tucked into his socks; the loose jersey with stiff block letters across the front and thin, round buttons as smooth as lemon drops; the fitted cap, always a dark color like navy or black, with its brim bent into a perfect C. When he’s bored, lonely, or sad, he imagines himself in his windup, slowly dropping back to the mound, or trotting off the field after striking out the cleanup hitter, barely aware of the applause, or even doing something as mundane as putting on his jacket to keep his arm warm between innings, and he instantly feels better, as if the memories are enough. But they aren’t. He knows those moments were the best of his life—at eighteen he had reached the apex—and he will never feel that comfortable, that confident, that controlled, again.
When he gets the letter from Arcelia he doesn’t know what to do. He can’t bring himself to open it, but he doesn’t want to let it out of his sight. He carries it in his pocket for three days, rubbing it with his fingertips during breaks from work, his calloused hands barely able to feel the difference between the paper and his blue jeans. When he finally reads it, he is sitting in the empty bleachers of a stadium where for three summers in a row he played baseball for the local farm team. He realizes, with some sadness, that he has never actually sat here before, that he has never watched a game that he didn’t play in. But this is where Arcelia always sat, when she came with her cousins to the games on weekend afternoons and spent each inning stomping on the aluminum benches as she cheered for him, calling his name and number until her voice broke.
He has to read the letter several times, particularly the parts written in English, which he never learned to read very well. He can tell that she was crying as she wrote it, partly because she admits to being unhappy in the letter, but mostly because he can feel several puckered spots on the paper where her tears must have dried. He is glad to know that he can still make her cry. She talks in circles in the letter, telling and retelling the story of why she left, how she’s survived, and how she ended up having to serve six months in a prison in Rhode Island. Of course she is in a women’s facility, but every time he reads the word prison, he imagines her locked up with hundreds of men, and a rage builds in his chest that makes his pulse quicken and his mouth water. He wonders several times if he’s going to be sick.
Most of the letter is about their children. She tells him that at eleven Cristo is still small and wiry, like his father, but that he’s confident, funny, and quick. She says that he is brave because he isn’t afraid to swim in the ocean in March, or walk alone down a dark street, and that he takes care of things around the house like a man. She talks about how smart Luz is, how she’s already in the Regular classes and reads books by famous American authors, how she can sit for hours in the same spot on the sofa, sometimes reading an entire novel in one day. She tells him how beautiful she is, how she still has his brown skin and dark eyes, and how her hair is thick and black like molasses. She tells him about Trini, her baby, who she had with an American man, describing how sharp her dimples are and how she laughs all the time, even though she hasn’t seen much in this world worth smiling about. She says that she wishes Trini were his child, too, and that she used to watch her sleep for hours as a baby, wishing she had never left Puerto Rico.
The biggest surprise of the letter comes at the end, when she tells him that she has forgiven him. For the fights and the name-calling; for all the nights he didn’t come home; for the two times he hit her, once while she was pregnant and yelled at him about gambling away his paycheck, and once when he accused her of cheating on him with the butcher’s son; for not standing up to her father when she wanted to borrow money to buy a house; for giving up on baseball after his knee injury; and for not following her to the States, even though she never invited him and, in fact, threatened to disappear forever if he followed her. And, of course, she wants to be forgiven, too.
Most of it he thinks he can do. He can forgive her for not being a virgin on their wedding night; for drinking too much and not keeping the house clean; for convincing him to move out of his mother’s house before they had saved enough money; for letting him give up on his dream of pitching in the Major Leagues; for being young and foolish and turning to drugs and easy money in order to survive in the States. But forgive her for taking his children away? For having another one with another man? For not talking to him for more than five years?
He’s not so sure he will ever be able to forgive her for that.
The last time he saw his son was at the airport in San Juan. Cristo was five years old and was just learning how to read. He wanted to read every sign along the way: the street signs on the newly paved highway, the flight information at the check-in gate, the magazine covers at every newsstand. He held his ticket in both hands and tried to read every word printed on it, even the minuscule terms of agreement at the bottom of the paper. Javier had borrowed a friend’s car to drive to the airport, and as they walked to the gate he kept looking at his watch; the friend had to be at work in an hour.
The flight was delayed due to thunderstorms in Miami, and for several minutes he thought about leaving Cristo with an older lady flying home to New York. Eventually, he decided he should wait. He knew it would be a long time before he saw his son again.
His mother had packed food for the boy, enough for several meals even though the flight was only four hours, but when Cristo asked for a basket of tostones, Javier couldn’t say no. He bought the largest size and asked the lady for the crispiest pieces, and he and Cristo sat together on a wooden bench in front of the window and ate the entire basket while watching other planes take off and land. Javier licked the salt off his fingers one by one, and pretended not to notice later when Cristo did the same thing.
When they finally announced his flight over the loudspeaker, Javier handed Cristo the backpack he had been carrying. Inside was the food, Cristo’s teddy bear Chachi, several children’s books, and a set of dominoes in a walnut case that Arcelia had asked his mother to pack, a wedding present from her grandmother and the only valuable thing the two of them owned. Cristo put the backpack on, tightening both shoulder straps, and tried not to bend under the weight. When they got near the front of the line, Javier slipped off his jean jacket. He tucked a twenty-dollar bill into the pocket before handing it to his son.
“I know it’s too big, but it will be cold up there,” he said. “Like you’ve never felt.”
“Si, Papi.” Cristo held the jacket against his chest, as if already bracing for the cold.
After the attendant collected his ticket, Javier knelt down in front of his son. He gave him a long, hard hug and a quick kiss on the cheek. Cristo smiled up at his father, who turned away at the last minute so his son wouldn’t see his eyes well up with tears. He reached out, lightly cupping his hand over Cristo’s head, and felt his soft, curly hair for the last time.
“Adios, mijo,” Javier called after him, as Cristo walked down the jetway. He lifted his arm to wave but Cristo never turned back around. The last time he saw his son, he was walking away from him.
Javier waited at the gate so he could watch the plane depart, even though he knew he would be late to return his friend’s c
ar and would have to buy him a pitcher of beer at the bar later that night. He stood alone in the window, apart from the others, so that if Cristo had a window seat, and was looking out of the plane trying to find him, he would be easier to see.
He left the airport a few minutes later and has never had a reason to go back.
The sun has set now, and the lights in the stadium are already turned on, huge fluorescent spotlights that can be seen from the next town. The whole park was recently remodeled, after a hurricane leveled much of the town. The stands have filled up slowly, with families coming out to watch a high school championship game, but Javier hasn’t moved; when the players take the field he is still sitting in the bleachers, the letter from Arcelia tucked into his back pocket.
He watches the home team warm up; the first baseman throws ground balls to the infield while Javier wonders how he should respond to his wife. Should he take his time before writing back, at least a month or two, or should he hop on a plane and fly to Providence right away, to see her at the prison during visiting hours? Should he pick up the phone and call her? Can she even get calls? And if he did get through, if he heard her voice on the phone, what then? What could he possibly say?
The pitcher is tall and skinny, and has a funny way of tucking his hand into his glove during the windup that seems to be throwing off the batters. He strikes out the first two and then ducks as the third one hits a line drive straight into the second baseman’s glove. Javier watches the pitcher jog off the field and disappear into the dugout, a huge smile on his carefree face. He wants to leave, to go to his mother’s house for dinner or catch an American football game with his friends at the bar, but he can’t bring himself to walk out in the middle of the game. He remembers what it was like to play in front of a crowd, to feel important, and he doesn’t want to rob these boys of their evening of glory. It’s only a few more hours, he tells himself, certainly not a lot in the span of his life. He can spare that for these kids, his hometown team, even if he doesn’t know any of them personally.
A man sitting next to him buys ice cream cones for his three children, who sit in the row below. He passes the cones down to them one by one. Javier wonders if his children eat a lot of ice cream, and what their favorite flavors are, and if it is too late for him to learn such insignificant things. The little girl sitting in front of him drops her cone, crying out as it hits the grass below. Her brother tries to comfort her, but she doesn’t stop crying until her father has given her the remainder of his own cone. Javier smiles at the father when he catches him staring. The father shrugs and throws his head back with a laugh, smiling up at the night sky.
Javier turns away and has to bite the insides of his cheeks to keep from crying.
Arcelia
They finally agree to let me out of this dump, just in time for Christmas. First I gotta go to an appointment with discharge planning, where a lady who looks like she don’t know how to laugh gives me a bunch of papers with names and addresses of agencies I know I won’t visit. The first name on the list is AIDS Care Ocean State, some place that helps people with AIDS get housing, free food, and clothes. I ask her if I qualify, even though I only have HIV.
“Yes, of course,” the lady says without looking up.
“And they can get me an apartment?”
“They’ll put you on the list right away. Depending on what you need it could be a month or several months before they find you something. Do you have anywhere to stay in the meantime?”
“I can stay with my cousin for a while. He’s been watching my kids.”
She nods and writes something down in my file. “Sounds good,” she says after being quiet for a really long time.
The lady gives me the name of a doctor I’ll be seeing at RI Hospital, a different one from the guy I’m seeing in here. She tells me he’s used to the same population—IV drug users—as if that means we’ll understand each other. The card she gives me has his name and address printed on the front, and the date and time of the appointment written out neatly on the other side. It looks like she tried to write it out as clear as possible, so she won’t get in trouble if I don’t show up.
She hands me three small bottles of pills, a one-week supply, and tells me that I have to fill my prescription as soon as I get out.
“They warned you about med adherence, right?”
“Yeah. But what’s that mean again?”
“That means you have to keep taking your meds, even though you feel fine, because if you stop and then try to get back on, they could stop working for your body.”
“It’s medicine. I thought it either works or it don’t.”
“It’s not that simple, Arcelia.” She checks the clock on the wall. “You can ask the doctor about it if you have more questions. Our time here is almost over.” She looks through the rest of my file. “What are you planning as far as work?”
I shrug. “I don’t know yet.”
“Do you have any job experience?”
“I got lots of experience, lady. But maybe not in the right kind of jobs.”
She stares at me like she hates her job. “Okay,” she finally says, putting her hands flat on the desk. “What did you do before you came here? Aside from what you got arrested for.”
“I was raising my kids. I’ve got three of them. That’s triple the experience, right?”
She bites her pencil. “Child care is probably not going to work. They want your record to be crystal clean. But what about food services, have you ever been a waitress?”
“I used to work at a 7-Eleven.”
“Okay. Are you still in touch with them? Anyone that could give you a reference?”
“I got fired. Plus, it was like five years ago. In New York.”
She shuffles some papers on her desk. “I think they’ve got some space in a janitorial training site in Cranston. Cranston or Warwick, I can’t remember which. Do you have a means of transportation?”
“A what?”
“A way to get there?”
“All I got is my legs.”
“Well, your case manager at AIDS Care should be able to get you a bus pass. I’ll jot down a note about it in your file. You might want to mention it yourself, though, just in case. Sometimes the files get held up.”
She writes something down on a Post-it note and sticks it in the file. I know right now if it ever gets lost, I won’t say anything.
“Okay, that pretty much wraps it up for us. Do you have any other questions?”
She looks at me, while questions go off in my head like gunfire.
How am I going to feed my children?
How will I stay clean on the outside?
How sick am I?
How much time do I have?
What do I do if I miss the life I had in here?
But I don’t ask any of them out loud. I shake my head and walk out of her office, jamming the papers into my back pocket like a dirty rag.
The night before I leave, I pack my things into a small duffel bag Kim and Chino brought me the first time they visited. It’s weird that I can pack up all my crap in three minutes, even though I lived here more than six months.
Candy comes by earlier than usual, right after lights out, and slips into bed with me for the last time. We fool around a little, but halfway through she stops and hides her face in the pillow and starts to cry. I don’t know what to do, since Candy isn’t the type of girl who usually cries, so I ignore it at first, hoping she’ll stop on her own. When she don’t stop, I put my arm around her and hold her as tight as I can and tell her that everything is gonna be fine and that soon she can go home like me.
A while later, with her back against me and her knees curled into the cement wall, she finally speaks.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me you were positive?”
I was gonna tell her a few weeks earlier, when she saw me standing in the med line, but I never thought of a good way to bring it up.
“Is that why you’re crying?”
&nb
sp; “Yes,” she says, wiping her nose on the sheet. “Not because you have it. Because you didn’t trust me enough to tell me.”
“Sorry,” I tell her. “I thought it was too much.”
She hugs her knees, rocking like a baby. I wonder if Trini still rocks like that.
“Everything is too much in here,” she says. “It’s not like one thing is going to make a big difference.”
“But it’s a big thing.”
“Why? Because you’re sick?” She finally turns over to look at me. “We’re all sick. And we’re all going to die eventually. What’s the difference if it’s next week or next year? Nobody’s going to outrun death. Especially us.”
I close my eyes and bury my head in her chest. I breathe her in—a mix of hair oil, vanilla, and cigarettes that’s become as familiar as her face in the dark. She rubs the back of my neck with her fingertips. I pull up her skirt and kiss her naked belly. Goose bumps spread over her skin as I touch it. She pulls my head to her breast, guiding my mouth to the stiffness of her nipple. It softens against my tongue as she raises her chest to me. As soon as I hear her moan I know I been forgiven. If only it was this easy to wipe away all my sins.
Later, when she’s almost asleep, I ask her a question I been thinking about since we met.
“Why Candy?” I whisper into her ear.
“What you mean?” She pulls away from me to look at my eyes.
“Why not Caramel or Cocoa or Cinnamon?”
She laughs, coming back to kiss me. “Candy’s not a stage name. It’s short for Candace.”
“Candace,” I repeat it slowly, like a foreign word. “I never heard that name before.”
I hear her yawn. “Well, it’s mine.”
Something changes after that. Knowing her name makes everything we’re doing suddenly real, and it scares the hell out of me. I don’t want to be real to her. Most days I think the people we are in here don’t really exist, we just make up a person we think can survive this. Once I get out, I figure I can make up a brand-new person, some lady who’s totally different from who I been. And who knows, maybe it will be the person I really am.
This Side of Providence Page 21