Names I Call My Sister

by Mary Castillo

  But I wasn’t expecting to do this. Instead I have my handout with steps toward becoming a lawyer, tips on how to choose and get into a decent law school, and the pros and cons of the most popular specialties. Now when I have to blow out of here at three o’clock on the dot, these kids are going to hate me because they didn’t get out of this what they wanted. And I’m a corporate lawyer to boot, not a criminal attorney. Yeah, thanks a whole lot, Michelle. “So what’s going on?” I ask.

  “We be hanging in the park, right,” says Echo. “And the po’s always steppin’ to us, tellin’ us we gotta keep it movin’.” Every English teacher the girl’s ever had should be gathered at Madison Square Garden and hung from the rafters to send a message to the next round of recently hired teachers: This will happen to you if you fail our children. “But we’re, like, yo, this is a public park. As long as we ain’t doing nothing wrong, we should be able to chill here for as long as the place stays open.”

  Echo does have a point. If they’re not doing anything wrong. “So what do you go to the park to do?” I ask.

  Cindi says, “We just sit on the benches and shoot the shit.”

  “Do you eat?’

  “We can’t. Food’s not allowed in the park. If we get hungry, we bounce.”

  “Do you smoke? Tell the truth.”

  “Nah.”

  “Stop lyin’,” says the Boy with the Brim over his face. He finally pushes back his cap, revealing sharp cheekbones and brilliant dark eyes.

  “Not in the park, stupid!” says Echo.

  I’m beginning to like this girl. “Okay, do you ever bring a radio with you?”

  “No, we can’t.”

  “The only thing we do is, like, talk….” says Cindi.

  “…And take some goofy pictures with our cell phones…” adds Echo.

  “…And try and holla at the dudes playing basketball,” says the BWB.

  Echo slowly twists in her seat and fixes her eyes on him. “You just mad ’cause ain’t nobody hollering at you, Christian, so don’t speak unless spoken to.” It’s official. I do like her. She turns back to me and says, “Look, Ms. Saez, we ain’t breakin’ no laws or rules or nothing. We just chillin’ there.”

  A girl in the back of the room says, “We do get a little loud though, sometimes.”

  “No matter! It’s the park. That’s what it’s there for.”

  Now Christian says, “What? The playground’s right there by the expressway. We can’t hear each other if we don’t shout.”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” says Echo, and the kids start yammering about the “po” trying to chase them out of the park when they should be harassing the drug dealers.

  Cindi jumps to her feet. “Let me tell you why they’re doing that, though.”

  Echo waves her hands to quiet down the group. “Let my girl speak.” They hush, and it amazes me the command she has over them. Especially since it’s not an obedience born of fear. The girl is tough and feisty, but she’s not a bully. Her peers listen to her out of respect.

  Cindi says, “The reason why the cops are on us is ’cause that fat-ass councilman is running for reelection. I saw him on TV the other day saying that he’s been bugging the police commissioner to put more cops in this neighborhood. Talking about controlling the ‘youth element.’”

  “Maaan,” says Echo. “Fuck Cuevas.”

  “Echo!” my sister calls from the back of the room.

  Echo gives a little smile and brings her fingers to her lips. “Sorry, Ms. Saez.” Then she turns to me. “Sorry, Ms. Saez.” Then she giggles at having to repeat her apology to two women with the same name.

  “Call me Jennifer,” I say. Is that my imagination or did Michelle just give me a dirty look? I would think that she’d prefer that I be informal with the kids. “Tell me more about this Councilman Cuevas.”

  Michelle says, “He’s running unopposed on a tough-on-crime platform.”

  “Well, I ain’t no freakin’ criminal,” says Echo, and a bunch of the kids respond in agreement. “What’s the point of having a park in the neighborhood if we can’t hang out there?”

  “Why these politicians are always making a big deal about hiring more cops anyway?” Christian asks. “You’d think we lived in the wild, wild west and shit. There are other things that he could do for the neighborhood, you know, like reopening that community center in Soundview so we don’t have to go all the way to Castle Hill to play ball.”

  “See, Ms. Saez, that’s why we be in the park,” says Cindi. “That center’s far.”

  Echo says, “And it’s always mad crowded.”

  “You’re all making good points,” I say, “and I’d like to answer Christian’s question because it’s a good one.”

  “What question?” he asks.

  Patience, Jen. “Why politicians on the campaign trail always take a tough-on-crime stance, as Mi—I mean, as Ms. Saez put it. When you’re an elected official, you only have a few years to show your constituents that your leadership has a positive impact on your community.”

  “Because if they don’t see it, they don’t vote for you again, right, Ms. Saez?” asks Echo.

  “That’s right, Echo. So you tend to focus on things that the voters can see right away. People immediately notice when there’s a new beat cop on the corner of their street that wasn’t there yesterday. They notice when the trash gets picked up an extra day every week or if the street in front of their house is repaved or the graffiti on their building is removed.”

  My sister says, “But if Cuevas were to succeed in getting the city to reopen the Soundview Community Center, the voters would see that, too, no?” What’s Michelle doing? Challenging me, or feeding me a lead?

  “That’s true,” says Echo. “They would have to watch and listen to the construction every day.”

  “Yes, but until the center actually opens and proves to be a positive change in the neighborhood—which can take years—most people will either tune out the construction or complain about the noise and debris.”

  Echo sucks her teeth and yells, “People are stupid.”

  “It’s not that they’re stupid,” says Michelle. “It’s that when you live in a neighborhood where there are so many needs, you start to lose hope. For example, it takes a long time to turn around a failing school, so people become conditioned to settling for the quick fixes.”

  Hey, Michelle, I work alone. I say, “You have to let the people in charge know that there’s enough of you who are going to hold them accountable for what they do or don’t do.”

  “What does that mean?” asks Cindi.

  But Echo says, “We tried that already.”

  “What do you mean? What did you do?”

  Michelle grins. “They organized a group and went to the precinct that covers the park.” She’s so proud. She must have had a hand in it. The kids probably complained to Michelle, and that’s what she advised them to do. Not bad, sis. “After another cop chased them out of the park, Echo and Cindi rounded up their friends and headed to the precinct to complain.”

  “And how’d that go?”

  “The clerk called the community affairs officer, and he met with us.”

  “Really?” I underestimated these kids.

  “He was nice at first….”

  “No, he was just trying to blow smoke up our ass,” says Echo. “He kept trying to say things like, well, we must be doing something we weren’t supposed to, and that the park is for everyone, and that even if we don’t mean to, we’re probably acting in ways that’s, like, scaring off the nannies and shit. Whatever!”

  Cindi says, “And we weren’t disrespecting him, Ms. Saez, I swear. We were just like, no, that’s not it. But it’s like the community affairs officer got tired of talking to us, so finally he said something real smart-ass. Something like, well, if you don’t like it…”

  “Write your councilman,” Christian finished her sentence, punctuating it with a hiss.

  Not a bad idea. “And di
d you?”

  “Yeah!” all the kids yell at me.

  Damn, I really underestimated these kids. They remind me of the time back in high school when I started that petition in defense of an alumna named Catalina Marte. My sister’s class had extended an invitation to Catalina to be the keynote speaker at their graduation. When I found out who she was and all that she had accomplished, she became my idol. After graduating from St. Catherine’s Academy, she went on to earn her bachelor’s and law degrees from St. John’s University, and today is the first Latina to head the American Civil Liberties Union.

  As if that did not already make the principal, Sister Mary Lucille, a bit nervous, she also discovered that between law school and the ACLU, Catalina served as the general counsel of Planned Parenthood. Oh, and that she was a lesbian. And that her life partner Stefania was born male and was once named Steve. Don’t ask me how Sister Mary Lu uncovered that last bit of intelligence. Sometimes I think the archdiocese has an investigative arm that would green the CIA with envy.

  So without first informing the class of ’93, Sister Mary Lu contacted Catalina Marte and rescinded the invitation. Michelle (who was secretary of the senior class) and the rest barked among themselves and then rolled over. I was so livid, I wrote the petition and began to collect signatures at lunch the next day.

  When I reached Michelle’s table, the snobby president of the senior class looked at me and said, “What do you care, Jennifer? You’re not even a senior.”

  “That’s exactly why I care,” I said. “If we let Sister Mary Lucille tell you who you can invite to your graduation now, what’s to stop her from trying to do the same to us three years from now?”

  Michelle sighed and took the petition from me. “She’s right.” And then she signed it. Once she had the guts to sign it, so did other members of the senior class, minus a few brown nosers. Sister Mary Lucille called my sister and me into her office, laughingly told us that we had confused St. Catherine’s Academy for a democracy, and tore up the petition in our faces. Then she told us if we felt that strongly about her rescinding Catalina Marte’s invitation to speak, we could always exercise our First Amendment right to boycott the ceremony and not go to graduation, although she was sure that would deeply disappoint our parents after they sacrificed so much and worked so hard to afford to send us to a parochial institution.

  Not only did Michelle attend her graduation, so did I. Our entire family was there. Until then I had no idea we had enough cousins to populate a small island.

  I look at Michelle now, and I just know that she’s remembering the same thing. Except that she’s not smiling. I stand up and lock my briefcase. “Well, it’s time for you to follow up,” I say to the kids.

  “How?” asks Christian.

  “Lobbying. That’s what the councilman did when he pressured the police commissioner to assign more officers to this district. Now you make an appointment to see this Cuevas, and at that meeting, you state your concerns and make demands. Tell him to ask the precinct commander to order his officers patrolling the park to lay off you guys, and request that he secure the funding to renovate the Soundview Community Center so it can be reopened to serve the youth of this neighborhood.”

  “I’m down, I’m down!” The kids bubble up again.

  “But you gotta come with us, Ms. Saez,” says Cindi, and the rest of them call out in agreement. “You can, like, coach us on what to say and do, but you gotta be there to have our backs. Cuevas may try to run some politician bullshit, so we need someone there who can tell us our rights.”

  “Shit, if Ms. Saez is there, ol’ Cuevas ain’t even gonna try and run no game on us,” says Echo. “She’s, like, the Puerto Rican Hillary Clinton and shit.”

  Chapter 3

  Once Echo likens her to Hillary Clinton, I know Jennifer is hooked. Introducing herself as the legal representative of several constituents with some concerns about community policing, Jennifer calls Cuevas’s office the next morning and makes the appointment herself. She tells me it’s to ensure that Cuevas’s staff took the request seriously. I’m not sure that’s totally true, but I still respect the stealth tactic.

  Because she also had a big case to resolve at her firm, Jennifer asks me to do some research on Cuevas in preparation for the meeting. My only interaction with the man has been to send him a thank-you letter several years ago when he enabled us to buy several computers for the library. Every City Council member is awarded a pot of money each year to allocate in his or her district, and during budget season every community organization and cultural institution in the area vies for a slice of this pie. Elaine informs me that the library is lucky to ever get a grant because discretionary funds are very much a political issue.

  “Every politician has his pet projects, and almost all of Cuevas’s pork goes to the Throgs Neck Center for Independent Living and the Castle Hill Youth League,” she says. “He gives the center money because the residents are seniors, and they vote. Cuevas funds the league, however, because not only is the executive director his longtime buddy, he also harangues the kids to volunteer on Cuevas’s reelection campaigns. You know how you have to collect about a thousand signatures from registered voters in the district in order to make the ballot? Well, I hear that overseer at the league pressures the kids to carry petitions for Cuevas.”

  I quickly learn that it’s worse when I call Jennifer to share the results of my research a few days after her visit to the library. I convey how Cuevas distributes his pork, and she says, “That’s not only unethical, it damn well might be illegal.”

  “Really?”

  “If I’m correct, the people who collect the signatures themselves have to be registered voters who live in the district.” Before I could ask Jennifer how in the hell did she know that, she asks, “Are these kids at least eighteen years old?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sure some are. But most probably are not. The center’s geared toward kids in high school.”

  “I bet anything most of them are not eligible to collect signatures.” I think I hear a copy machine whirring in the background, but it’s probably just the churning of Jennifer’s ambition. “Which means many of the signatures are invalid. Sneaky fuckin’ bastard.”

  If that’s what he’s doing, Cuevas is more than a sneaky fuckin’ bastard. He’s a classic poverty pimp, a self-proclaimed community leader who pretends to have the interest of the poor at heart when he makes his own living off of their continued poverty. Cuevas keeps these organizations dependent on his discretionary funds so they will expend whatever resources they have to keep him in office—resources that are best galvanized on behalf of the people the organizations are supposed to serve.

  The more I learn about Cuevas, the more I worry about the kids. I have no concerns about Jennifer. But what if Councilman Cuevas refuses to meet with them or makes the appointment only to shrug them off on his chief of staff? Or worse…what if he does meet with them and demoralizes them, annihilating their fledgling civic proclivities? I didn’t invite Jennifer to meet with my kids for her ego to lead them into a spiritual massacre. “Jen, if Cuevas ODs, you have to protect the kids,” I say as I feed a copy of his legislative voting record into the fax machine.

  “If Cuevas what?”

  “ODs.” Then I remember that while Jennifer may be the one who’s smart, I’m the one who’s hip. “As in overdose.”

  She picks up the smugness in my voice. “Okay, ’Chelle, how old are we?”

  I spend so much time around the kids, I sometimes soak up their slang, and it bursts unpredictably through my interactions with other adults. The other day Elaine made a catty remark when I refused to stay an extra hour to help her process some new arrivals. I told her I couldn’t be late for my date, and she mumbled, “Cleopatra can see you anytime,” referring to the black kitten I recently saved from a life on the streets.

  I spun around and said, “Just because I choose to stay late every once and while, don’t get it twisted. I have a life.” At lea
st, I do now that I’ve found Whipped. “So don’t hate.”

  I don’t go out of my way to speak like that. It just happens. Although because of this one man I meet at Whipped who has granola gentrifier-meets-hood-rat fantasies, it happens more and more often. I may be thirty years old, but I still think I pull it off. “At least, I used it correctly.” I punch in the number for Jennifer’s fax machine at home.

  “Well, translate.”

  Jennifer’s smart enough to deduce from the context. I mean, isn’t that what lawyers do? But I don’t want to waste my time arguing with her about this. “If Cuevas steps out of line, put him back in place.”

  “Oh, that goes without saying,” says my sister, and of course she’s right. “Besides, he’s not going to do or say anything to alienate these kids.” When my fax machine connects with the one at her home office, I can hear it in ringing in the background.

  “I don’t know, Jennifer,” I say. “He’s supposed to be a real piece of work. Why don’t you take the meeting with Cuevas?”

  “You with the dual masters in library science and adolescent psychology are suggesting that I speak on behalf of these kids as if they can’t speak for themselves?” Jennifer scoffs. “I can’t believe how adultist you’re being, Michelle. Doesn’t being a good mentor to young people mean allowing them to make decisions and take risks instead of doing everything for them?”

  If I could reach through the phone, it’d be a wrap for my sister. This is the same woman who did not even want to meet the kids. Now that they treat her like the second coming of Johnnie Cochran, she thinks she knows how to deal with them better than I do? I think not. “Let’s get something straight, Jennifer. Sometimes being a good mentor to young people means recognizing that they are still young and should not be thrust into adult situations no matter how eager or ready they might think they are. Look, I didn’t say to uninvite them to the meeting with Cuevas. All I’m saying is that since they’ve never lobbied an elected official before, maybe you should bring them along just so they can observe how you do it instead of pushing them on him.”