Chico didn’t remember the left hook. He couldn’t have remembered his name if you asked him. Halfway through the round his legs were making wobbly journeys around the ring. He did toss some slaps and chicken-wing flutters, but at the end of the second round he looked so winded you couldn’t have put a baby to sleep in his arms.
In the third round Chico tried to duck a jab and come inside, but instead ran smack into Malcolm’s elbow, and was knocked out cold. They had to carry him out flat on a blanket. People’s eyes widened as they took him out the exit doors. His own eyes were ditched back inside his head, and he was slobbering all over one of the blanket carrier’s hands. A smart aleck from the rafters yelled out, “Emergency! Emergency!” That got a big laugh from everybody, except Coach Rogers, who shoved his way up the bleachers and gave the guy the heave-ho out of the gym.
Right away talk turned to Boise and Lencho. All the excitement became sharp as a cone.
What happened first, though, was that the leader from the Berets, a guy named Miguel, wearing a cadet’s starched khaki uniform, took over my job at the corner just as I was putting Lencho’s gloves on. “Take a seat, Ace,” he said, and without so much as an Excuse Me, he swished the towel off my shoulder and draped it over his own.
I tried to say something in Lencho’s ear about uppercuts and strategy, but Miguel pushed me away. Lencho was too nervous to listen, anyway. And no wonder. Miguel right away started nudging him on the ribs, nodding up, and reminding him how many people were in the audience. Lencho’s face wrung stiff as a twisted rope.
In the other corner, Coach Rogers and Boise seemed like two cozy sweet potatoes in the dirt. Boise’s face was smooth from his warm-up, dark and shiny, like an icy glass of Coca-Cola. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and a tiny sapphire necklace of sweat strung across his lean belly. Just another fight to old Boise, I thought. Cool, that’s what he was, cool, with nothing jumping around in his face and nobody in his corner giving him the jitters.
Lencho and Boise being about the same size, and the two guys in the school whose muscles were the most crowded together, it was natural that people would get excited about pitting them against each other. Seeing Lencho, proud and ready for action, you couldn’t help but back him. And then there was Boise. He didn’t strain against the threads of his clothes like Lencho, but he was what everybody in the Boys’ Gym called “ribbed.” He even looked like a boxer, his nose square and puffy around the eyes, like he’d just awakened from a dream of beating up people.
The referee was Coach Mazzini. He had this big watersack gut that got in the way of everything, but otherwise he knew what to do, which was mostly to keep fighters from chickening out of the ring. When Mr. Hart clanged the bell announcing the start of the fight, everyone screwed their butts tight to their seat.
After a moment of staring at each other hard enough to shove a crowbar across a table, Lencho right away began wrenching left hooks and long winding right crosses; Boise ducked and uppercutted to the body. It was a mean fight, a blur that even if you slowed it down by half, it would still be a blur. Even Coach Mazzini, fat belly and all, sprinted out of the ring and didn’t go back in until Mr. Hart smacked the bell ending the first round.
The whole gym busted open with screams and foot stomping that almost brought the bleachers crashing down. Lencho came back to the corner, breathing huge and proud in his sweaty T-shirt, a fat grin on his face.
In the bleachers, it was a circus. Guys were dancing and girls collapsing over each other. The girls pawed over the guys and the guys pretended to hug them as they fainted on their laps. But then needling stuff, like arguing and weasely bragging, sparked between some black and brown guys. A few even began to shove each other and spit into arguments. Then the bell to the second round clanged and everybody right away sat down.
Boise was still calm, a gob of Vaseline dangling on his chin. At first he’d dip his shoulder and ease over to the side when Lencho charged. Then he began grinding punches into Lencho’s belly, and suddenly, like a tidal wave, rise up to hammer him on the side of the head. A queery smile smeared across Lencho’s face a couple of times.
That’s when he began to shy away, stirring his gloves in the air like he was waving away flies. To show he wasn’t stunned when he came back to the corner, he sunk his lips into a confident smirk. You could tell, though, that this was a sloppy excuse. In the bleachers, it was so quiet you could practically hear people breathing.
Whatever Lencho’s plans were for the third round, they weren’t very good. Boise began laying up for him, butting him on the jaw with jabs and swinging catapult blows against his ribs, making him grunt deep. To protect himself, Lencho crossed his arms and began stepping back, stubbornly jerking his chin from side to side to avoid blows. When Boise sledgehammered him on the side of the ear, his shoulders stiffened and his jaw squinched like a little electricity had run through it.
My heart was jerking around inside my chest, I was so nervous. My eyelashes were tiny wings beating in a fevery air, yet my face felt frozen, as if blasted by an arctic wind. I couldn’t tell if my mouth was smiling or grinning.
Lencho didn’t even bother coming in anymore, but just stood there gritting tighter on his mouthpiece, following Boise around the ring with beaten eyes. You could tell then that he was finished.
I pressed the sides of my cheeks to settle the nerves down, but my face kept on jumbling. Miguel, beside me, was yelling for Lencho to go forward. “Come on, Lencho! Come on! Attack! Attack!”
I felt like screaming for him to shut up. The truth was, I was afraid that Lencho would go down. If he did, I didn’t know what I’d do. I had expected and wanted so much from him, that for him to disappoint me then would hurt, really hurt. I suddenly realized that the whole fight shouldn’t have been given so much meaning. When pumped up with pride, something so ugly as a boxing match could only grow too cruel to maintain; it could only burst, right in everybody’s faces.
When old Mr. Hart finally clanged the bell, ending the fight, I was relieved. It was obvious who had won. Coach Rogers gave Boise a big bear hug of victory. Then he rushed over and—real corny!—like he really meant it, cupped Lencho behind the neck like a proud father, staring into his eyes.
Miguel left the ringside in a hurry to talk with the Beret guys standing over by the exit doors. You could see their faces had hardened against showing what they really felt. Later, when it was all over, after they had analyzed it and all, they decided to kick Lencho out of the Berets. They said that he brought embarrassment to them, and worse, caused a loss of unity between them and their black brothers.
But that was later. Right then no one was around, except me, and Lencho kept searching for somebody to take off his gloves. Even when Boise came over—his own gloves off and, with his two naked hands, shook Lencho’s arms—Lencho looked down at his gloves sort of funny, the way you look at a dog that has just dug up your garden, halfway angry at the dog and halfway sad about the garden. A hunk of concrete weighed on my chest and gopher teeth were gnawing at my heart, but I went over and began peeling the tape and undoing the laces—because Lencho wanted somebody to take off his gloves.
8
Family Affair
The day we took Magda to the hospital, the wind against my ears sounded like sizzling, it was so cold. I remember tears of ice dripping from the trees and frozen pools clasping the blackened soil near the roots. My fingers felt like snapping off the bone when I opened and closed them. Across from the hospital was the bus stop made of mortared cinderblocks. When we got off the bus, a scrap of paper tumbled up the sidewalk and stuck on the wrought-iron gate of the hospital entrance.
We went to the hospital because Magda had come home crying with pain. She splashed vomit on the front step, and when she tried to rise, swooned and crashed against the screen door. Mom and I were in the kitchen. She was sewing a button on a shirt, and I was scraping the dirty moons under my fingernails. Mom jumped up right away and rushed out the door screaming in panic. Not know
ing what the screaming was about, I thought something crazy had happened, like maybe some rabid dog had snuck into the kitchen or a giant rat poked its head out of a hole, two things of which I knew my mom was terrified. I dashed out behind her.
At first I thought Magda had gotten hit by a car. The crosswalk over by Walnut Street had no stop sign, and the street winds around a curve so sharp that cars boom down on you before you know it. But the way she was cramping and bundling her stomach, I thought it was food poisoning, like my aunt Letty, who came back from Mexico with amoebas. But Magda didn’t look stiff and glassy-eyed like I’d seen dogs that had been hit by a car look, and she wasn’t moaning in a way that showed amoebas had knotted her up. When I got close, I noticed a red carnation of blood blooming on the lap of her dress.
Mom had her suspicions. She pulled me over and told me to help drag Magda inside. Gossip had a way of spreading around the housing projects quicker than dry burning grass.
Mom’s suspicions proved right. Magda was losing a baby. Mom figured it out by the stiff way Magda clutched her belly which you could see was swollen even under the loose dress. Mom had lost two babies herself; one was born dead; the other birthed too early to start life complete, and died in the hospital incubator after only a couple of hours of sucking air. Mom said you could have put her little baby girl inside a shoebox, she was so tiny.
We dragged Magda, muscle stiff and clumsy, across the cement floor to the bathroom. She was hooking her fingers into tiny crevices in the air and whenever she whined, a menthol chill the size of a maple leaf touched on my neck.
It took some pulling to drag her to the bathroom, but as soon as we stopped, Mom said to me, “Get out!,” and grabbed my arm to shove me back through the door. I didn’t know why we were in the bathroom, or what the hell exactly was the matter with Magda, so I sort of wrestled with Mom there at the door. I didn’t really try too hard, and she was strong as a bear. She slammed the door against my hands.
I stood outside not knowing how long and not really thinking about anything. Then I opened the door. Magda had her coat off, and her head was leaning against the toilet. Right beside her, as if it had just spit out between her legs, was this tiny baby laying there like a slimy puppy with a big head and no hair and smeared in a dirty blue-purple jam. Its mouth was puckered shut, its teeny arms were raised and tight like a wrestler flexing victory, and its bitsy fingers spread out as if to grab a marble. Mom fumbled a little with the braid it was tied to and threw the baby in the toilet.
On the bus ride to the hospital, Mom cried and moaned about not following her instincts and asking questions. She should have pulled the bruta, my sister, weeks ago by the hair and demanded explanations. She was only thankful to the Lord that Dad wasn’t home. She forced her voice through gritted teeth and warned me not to tell him.
Hearing Dad’s name, Magda started whining and blubbering, and people on the bus turned around. The way the nosy bus driver eyed us in the rearview, I could tell he thought we were some crazies. I gave him a criminal stare, and showed all the people in the bus that we weren’t a family to be messed with.
It was after we reached our stop in front of the hospital and began steering Magda toward the Emergency entrance that I noticed the cold. It was warmer in the Emergency Room, though. While Mom filled out the admission forms, I sat with Magda on the scratchy orange seats made of plastic and black tubing. Her hair was sweaty and plastered on her forehead, and she kept drawing up her legs, cradling herself small. She shuddered and moaned, and every time she did, a shovel blade churned earth inside my stomach. Once I made the mistake of touching her head, and she whimpered, loud.
The receptionist, a Mexican lady like us, kept sighing and shaking her head. Mom kept opening and closing her old lint-bally coat, then finally took it off. She had tried for months to get Dad to buy her a long beige coat with buttons big as fifty-cent pieces that she’d seen at Penney’s. Dad mostly refused, raising his hand as if to visor his eyes against the sun. Sometimes he’d promise to buy her one at the end of the month, knowing that the bills would always manage to wedge in between her and the coat. One day she came home saying that she’d gone to the store and the coat wasn’t there. The saleslady said they’d run out of stock. It didn’t matter, Mom said. She’d gotten used to wearing her old linty coat and double sweaters. You could tell by the watery way her voice sounded, though, that she hated that coat. She just didn’t want to give my dad the satisfaction of denying her something he knew she wanted.
She came out from behind the cubicle and creeped over to whisper in my ear. “That lady could make Santa Claus grumble,” she said, pointing to where the receptionist was watching.
That was just like my mom, I thought, always making jokes about things people did to us. She’d tell it later to our neighbor Sophie, for sure, like it was the funniest story in the world. When she said this about the receptionist, I knew then that the lady’s sighs were not out of sympathy, or embarrassment, or even curiosity; they were sighs of disapproval.
In the waiting room, there were two people with sick, droopy faces, and another with a broken finger or wrist. Sitting next to us was a man with a gash on his head. He was pressing a ball of baby diapers against his forehead. His wife told us that they’d been standing on a curb when one of those plumbing trucks cut around the corner, and a pipe sticking out of the back hit her husband smack on the forehead, knocking him out. She said she was terrified and couldn’t find help. She thought at first that the guys in the truck didn’t notice, but now that she remembers it, she did hear the engine winding down as if to stop, then pick up speed again. She said it was funny how she didn’t remember this before, and how her memory came back to her at that very moment. Her husband, with his one eye peeking, gave her a look like, Oh, please.
She made me nervous, that lady, the way she kneaded her hands and fussed over her husband who got all steamed when he heard how those guys gassed the pedal after knocking him out. What made it worse was that he couldn’t talk. Every time he widened his throat to say something, a tiny trickle of blood streamed down the lobe of his ear. He couldn’t tilt back on the seats either, because of the angle of his wound. So he just sat there, shoulders straight and forehead pointing to the ceiling.
After a while, Mom grabbed my arm and said Magda needed to go pee. I helped walk her down the hall. We were so busy keeping her head from flopping over that we walked into the men’s restroom. I knew right away by the stink, and no doors on the toilet stalls, and all the crappers sprinkled with gold drops.
Before we could pull Magda out though, she fainted, and Mom panicked and ordered me to get the receptionist. As I ran out, sliding on the tile floor, I noticed Magda’s head lying near some black heel scuffs.
I ran over to the receptionist, who was sitting stiffly behind her desk. She must have heard Mom shout, but looked at me without a smidgen of sympathy.
“We gotta get a doctor,” I said when I reached her desk. “My sister’s fainted. She’s right there on the floor, fainted.”
“Is that the men’s restroom you went into?” the receptionist asked.
“Yeah, but…”
The receptionist surveyed me up and down, her face a windless puddle of water. She picked up some papers on her desk and shuffled them carefully in order, then removed an ink pen and flat marble penholder and placed them inside her desk drawer. She jiggled out a key from her pocket and locked it. Looking at me, her lips pressed and eyebrows like black lightning bolts, I couldn’t tell whether she was embarrassed or angry.
When I got back to the restroom, Magda was on the floor, her muscles slack as water inside a balloon. I thought she was dead. The receptionist, who didn’t seem panicky at all, stood straight over her with her arms and legs set in triangles. “She’ll be all right,” she said. “She’s just weak, that’s all. Once we get her inside the doctor will fix her right up.” She tried to say this cheerfully, but when she saw my mother’s face, she put her frown back on.
Mo
m stuck her hands under Magda’s shoulders and lifted. “Let’s go, honey, let’s go see the doctor.” Her hands kept sliding out from under Magda’s armpits, and she kept drooping back to the floor. “Manny, get over here and help me,” she said. “We got to get her inside the clinic.” She turned to the receptionist and said in the politest voice she knew if she could please get a wheelchair.
“Okay, I will, but I’m sorry you won’t be able to see the doctor right now.”
My mother started to stand up but didn’t. If she had, Magda’s head would have whacked on the floor.
“It’s only that the doctor can’t see her right away,” the receptionist explained. She had her eyes fixed on the scuff marks on the floor, blinking, her lips firm. “If you just go back to the waiting room, as soon as he’s free, I’ll call him, okay?”
Before Mom could answer, the receptionist snapped her eyes from the floor and rushed out, saying something I couldn’t hear.
I was trying to get a hold under Magda’s shoulders when the receptionist came back, slamming a wheelchair against the hydraulic door, making me jump from the sudden bang and hiss.
I guess the receptionist hadn’t finished with her lecture about the doctor, because as soon as she came in she started in on how all the doctors work nonstop ten hours a day, sometimes nights, how the whole staff are so dedicated. She knew, because she herself had typed up the duty rosters. She blew some more smoke about how people like us expect everything to be fed to them on silver spoons. How we never take responsibility. She said that’s why we’re so confused and screwed up. Only she didn’t say “confused” and “screwed up,” but said “neurotic” and another medical word I couldn’t make out.
Mom’s shoulders began twitching, and any minute I thought she was going to jump up and tear the lady’s hair out. But she was too busy grabbing Magda under the arms and trying to prop the wheelchair, which kept slipping, against the door handle.
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