by Barb Johnson
The second he’s in the car, Luis sees that the radio, which for sure was there two nights ago, is gone, just gone. He checks the back floorboard where he’s been stashing his schoolbooks. Nobody’s touched them. Figures. No way he’s gonna win the science fair now. Probably somebody’s gonna make a poster or some rock candy and win. Which is how the world is. The same losers win everything because the good stuff gets jacked before you can get to it.
Luis reaches under the driver’s seat for his new catechism book. Still there. When he told his mama he needed a new book, she just wanted to talk about how money don’t grow on trees. Everybody knows money don’t grow on trees. Luis wonders why people go on and ask you if you think it does. It gets on his nerves. “Ask Junior for the money,” his mama told him, but Luis isn’t about asking Junior for anything.
He could’ve bought a new book with his own money, but he’s been saving up for in case he gets confirmed next week. Father Ben said don’t count on it. But he also said Luis might be able to pass if he turned in the rest of his assignments. Luis felt like asking Father Ben how was he supposed to turn in his assignments if his book was lost. Priests don’t understand regular things, though, so Luis just went on and got a new book off a girl in his class. She doesn’t really need a book. She’s got her some big, thick glasses. No way you could read a book through those Coke bottles. Besides, girls get confirmed automatically because they’re good.
Luis wants to tell Miss Delia about how he might be getting confirmed in case maybe she’ll come to the party. People pin money on you at your Confirmation party, and probably Miss Delia’s got a lot of it. But maybe not paper money. Sometimes Luis helps her count quarters out of a big bucket in the back room of the Bubble. Maybe she would bring that bucket to his party. She also has this shiny scar on her forehead, and she can aim it at things and make them work right, like broken washing machines and wrong-acting children. Luis wonders if maybe she would use it to bring him good luck for the Confirmation party.
Junior says Confirmation is for suckers, and no way is God gonna let a little liar like Luis get confirmed. He told him flat out no when Luis had mentioned that maybe there should be a party for his Confirmation. He said, Oh no, Louise—Luis hates it when Junior calls him that—we ain’t havin all those cholos over here. Luis hadn’t even been talking to Junior at the time. He’d been talking to his mama, trying to get her to call his abuelita and tell her about the party because his grandmother knows how to get things done.
Abuelita is even smaller than Luis, but she’s no saint. She will kick your ass if you cross her, and she’s not scared of Junior like Luis’s mama is. Which is why she’s not invited to the house on Palmyra Street. Luis has to visit her at Hosea House, the old people’s home a few blocks away, and that’s probably for the best. Whenever Abuelita and Junior get around each other, it’s never quiet for long.
The day Luis asked his mama about the party, she just shrugged her shoulders like she does for everything. She won’t go against Junior. That’s all right. When Luis gets confirmed, he’ll be a man. He and his mama can leave Junior’s ass, get in the BMW and go, and God can send Junior whatever he’s got coming.
Luis sits up straight in the front seat of the car, stretches himself so he can hang his elbow out the window, then gives the steering wheel some serious attention. Lookin good. His feet don’t touch the pedals when he sits like this, and Luis worries that he will never be taller than his mama, who is a girl after all. When he flips the visor down, a pair of sunglasses falls into his lap, and he puts them on in the dark car. Smooth. Occasionally, Luis goes through Junior’s pockets and takes things. Sometimes money, which Junior accused him of doing way before Luis actually started doing it, and sometimes things Luis knows will drive Junior crazy. His sunglasses, for example. Junior can’t keep track of things like that, like sunglasses. But money? Well, Luis has several shiny pink scars on his head where hair should grow but won’t. If Junior’s gonna hit him whether he’s done anything or not, Luis figures he might as well take a little payment for it.
He crawls over to the backseat and puts on his miner’s light so he can see. Father Ben said if Luis misses this last assignment, he’ll for sure get left back and have to get confirmed with the babies in the class behind him. He says there won’t be any cheating, either, because cheating is a sin, and God won’t stand for any sinning. Luis thinks God needs to make up his damn mind. If cheating is a sin and God loves even sinners, then God loves cheaters, which just goes to show how easy it is to get over on God. Luis guesses if it was just God standing between him and his Confirmation, no problem, but Father Ben don’t play.
Write about the saint you most admire, the assignment sheet says. Luis digs around for some paper and finds the math worksheet he was looking for a while back. He erases the numbers, then taps the paper with his pencil for a while to make his thoughts come out. Father Ben likes ink, but that’s because Father Ben has a nice fountain pen, and there ain’t nobody at the rectory trying to get it away from him.
It takes Luis a couple of hours, but, when he’s finished, there aren’t any scratch-outs or misspelled words. There’s not one thing Father Ben can say against it.
SAINT LUIS OF PALMYRA
The saint I admire is call Saint Luis of Palmyra. Saint Luis live way along time ago. Like before television. The reason I admire him is because he’is a good guitar player. And he dont take no lip. Also because he’is not like those other crazy kinda saints always boo-hoo somebody kilt me for loving Jesus. Even though Saint Luis love Jesus, he just dont talk about it all the time. He keep his stuff private. He just like make music and do some good deeds like if a old lady need to cross the street or something. Also he built that place California where everbody can go and just play music or videos and be on tv. This place is like Heaven and everbody look tight and can play music. Like all kinda music. Saint Luis is a good saint because if somebody hurt him, like a giant, he dont just stand there and ax for more. He would make a plan and smite that giant. He will help himself and his family and not wait around and see if the bad people are stop being bad. Or if Jesus gonna make a miracle out of it. The end.
Luis folds the essay just the way Father Ben likes it and slips it into his catechism book. He kicks back in the seat and puts his feet up in the open window, imagines himself at his Confirmation party in a new suit. All his relatives are there. His jacket is covered in money, and there’s Miss Delia with a whole bucket of quarters. Luis hasn’t mentioned the party around Junior again because Junior will only let the Krewe of Idiots come to the house. Luis is sure he can get Abuelita to make a party for him, and his other relatives will come if she’s there.
Around midnight Luis jerks awake in the backseat when a car drives by, slow, music thumping. He quick rolls to the floorboard in case there’s gonna be shooting. After the car passes, he looks out in the street. No one. The Bubble is dark except for the snack machine. It glows like a nightlight for Palmyra Street.
Luis meant to go across before Miss Delia left. After she closes at night, she unlocks that snack machine to put the new stuff in and take the money out, and sometimes she lets Luis pick something to eat or keep some quarters if he helps her put the change in those little paper wrappers.
He gets his catechism book and crosses to look at the snack machine through the Bubble’s big window, at 3C, animal cookies, his favorite. If you keep the elephant heads, you can make a wish and toss them over your left shoulder for good luck. If he’d been awake before Miss Delia left, he could’ve got a whole handful of elephant heads and then maybe he would’ve found a radio on the way home, like one nobody was using.
When he gets back to his house, it’s dark except for the TV light. Luis was hoping Junior would already be passed out, but he’s still on the couch, which is Luis’s bed. The Idiots are slouched and slumped all around the living room, all of them snoring like it’s a contest. One Idiot, the skinny one called Pudge, is laid out in the bathroom doorway like he’s been
murdered. He’s got a big wet spot on the front of his pants that makes Luis want to kick him.
Junior’s watching a fight on TV. Got a bottle of Wild Turkey parked on the coffee table, a glass of it wedged between his nuts. Luis hates that, how Junior puts everything where he has to touch his nuts to get at it.
Luis can tell that Junior’s been waiting for him. If he doesn’t give that fat cabron what he wants, he’ll just go after Luis’s mama, and that’s always some hitting. It’s better just to do the deal and get it over with. Junior usually falls straight to sleep after, and then everybody can get some rest.
Luis puts his catechism book on the upside-down milk crate by the front door. He’s mad about the science project. He should’ve checked some other cars. Like earlier in the week. Then he could’ve done that radio thing, no problem. But winning the science fair is for little kids anyway. The prize is just like a ribbon, and they say your name on the intercom at school. Big deal. Passing catechism and getting rid of Junior will be ten times as good as some candy-ass blue ribbon.
Junior’s scratching his nuts, following Luis with his eyes. His head jerks on its neck like a sprinkler that can only turn a little at a time. What a moron. He probably couldn’t make a science project or pass catechism, either one. Luis tries to picture Junior in a suit and tie or hooking up a radio at the science fair. What a joke.
“What you laughin at, hijo?” Junior asks, his eyes going hard all the sudden.
“Nothin.”
“Well, either I’m crazy or you’re lyin because I just saw you laugh. You see somethin here you think’s funny?” Junior fingers the glass between his legs and runs his thumb up his dick. He makes that face at Luis, the one that says come on and don’t make any noise.
“No sir. It ain’t nothin funny.” Luis kneels between Junior’s legs, thinks about the bottle on the coffee table. In his mind, he picks it up and smacks Junior over the head, then slits his throat with the jagged broken edge.
Luis is late for school the next morning, and when he walks in, Mrs. Green—Luis calls her the Jolly Green Giant because she’s like ten feet tall and got some bad breath on her—says, Boy, you don’t get your shit together, there ain’t gonna be no junior high for Luis Hernandez. Teachers always say that kind of thing to him, but he hasn’t failed one time yet. The Giant says his name like LEW-iss, even though he’s told her that’s not how it’s pronounced. She’s too lazy to say a Spanish word, though.
The Giant tries to make science class boring with all her bullshit. She just wants to hang a string in a glass of sugar water and then you got rock candy. Candy is for babies. They’ve been doing that same experiment since like third grade. Luis wants to do the ones about sound waves, but you need some of those tuning fork things, and that would mean the Giant would have to get off her ass and go find some. No way that’s gonna happen. In the book, though, it says if you hit that C fork, then you could hold it next to another C fork, and that one’ll start making the C note, too. Without anyone even touching it. It’s because they’re the same. Things that are the same vibrate when they get next to each other.
All those experiments are way in the back of the book, though. They’ll never get to them by the end of the year. They have science three days a week, and that’s playtime for the Giant. Time to get that nail polish out.
The science fair is after lunch. Luis eats with his class, but when they go out for recess, he just keeps walking until he’s out the gate. He pinched a sandwich for his mama off a girl’s plate in the cafeteria. Not the screaming kind of girl, the quiet kind that will just cry but not tell. Grilled cheese is his mama’s favorite.
When Luis gets to his house, he stands outside the kitchen door, listening. Quiet can be good. Or it can be trouble.
In his mama’s bedroom, she and Junior are asleep on their sides, facing the open doorway, Junior with his pig arm pinning Luis’s mama. She’s got a brand-new cast that starts right above her knuckles and goes all the way up under her armpit. Luis wouldn’t mind poking one of those tuning forks in Junior’s eye. Hit another one and make that thing vibrate in his head. Long as you had a tuning fork, that fat cabron couldn’t come near you.
Luis decides he’s gonna get his mama something nice, like a present. He looks around for Junior’s wallet. Before he can take a step, though, his mama opens her eyes. Looks right at him. Says don’t do it with just a look. It’s a scared look, and it vibrates in Luis.
Later that afternoon, after Junior goes to do a little business with the Idiots at the vacant house down the street, Luis sits with his mama. “I won the science fair,” he tells her. “They said my name on the intercom. And then the mayor came. He said if we move to California, they got an apartment there for us. Free.”
Luis’s mama stares out the window like she can’t hear him.
“I can stay with you instead of going to catechism,” he tells her.
His mama reaches her hand out toward him. “Give me a couple of those.” She points to a bottle of Vicodin on the nightstand. When he hands her the pills, she flips them into her mouth, chews them up. Almost right away, she’s asleep again.
Catechism is clear across Mid-City at Our Lady of Prompt Succor. Luis has to weave through a bunch of second-graders who are walking home from school. The little knuckleheads keep stopping to look at stuff. Invisible stuff on the sidewalk or in the air or way up their noses. Then: Bam! They all take off running for the corner where two girls are in a fight. There’s one left behind, a chubby little boy. He’s got a great big cuff turned up on the bottom of his navy blue pants in case he ever gets tall enough to match up with how wide he is. And the kid’s wearing the whitest shirt Luis has ever seen. It won’t be white for long, though. Gordo’s got a bag of cheese puffs, and Luis knows he needs to make his move. A clean shirt will impress Father Ben, who unlike God has the power to keep Luis from making his Confirmation.
Luis does a fast walk, gets in front of the kid, then ducks into an alley.
“Hey, kid,” he says when the fat boy walks past.
The boy stops and looks down the alley, his hand moving like a piston, up-down, up-down, from the bag of Cheetos to his mouth. When he sees Luis, he tries to put the bag behind his back, but his fat little arms won’t reach.
“I don’t want your food, man. I need your help.”
“My help?”
“Yeah, I need to borrow your shirt for just a minute.”
Luis’s shirt is the color of mop water next to this kid’s, and he drops it right there in the alley, then unbuttons the other boy’s shirt. The kid starts crying. Luis can feel Gordo shaking like a fat-boy tuning fork as he removes the clean white shirt from the kid’s roly-poly back. Luis looks away in case the boy’s eyes are gonna say don’t, in case all that shaking is gonna make him shake, too. Luis imagines that God must be testing him with all these bad feelings. When he gets confirmed, when he’s a man in God’s sight, then God will realize that Luis did all of this for Jesus, who is love, and maybe He will stop giving him bad feelings.
“All right, now,” Luis says, turning toward the street. “You wait here. I’ll be right back.”
The kid says okay, but in a whisper, like it’s a secret. Little kids are so stupid. It’s like somebody gave them drugs the way they’ll just believe anything.
When Luis’s classmates are dismissed to go to confession in church, Father Ben, who’s still at his desk filling out Confirmation certificates, tells Luis to hold on just a second. He’s got Luis’s essay in his hand. “What’s this?”
“That’s my essay,” Luis tells him.
“I know it’s your essay, but who was St. Luis of Palmyra? I’ve never heard of him.”
“It’s all in there about who he was.”
“Well, Luis, why do you think I’ve never heard of him even though I’ve been a priest for fifteen years?” Father Ben rolls up the essay into a tube and pops Luis on the head with it, but in a friendly way, not a mean way. Like he just told Luis a joke.
“Well, yeah,” Father Ben says, “I can see how that would be a problem after a while.”
Then Father Ben says but and stops like he’s thinking, so Luis has to stand there and wait to hear what kind of mess is gonna be on the other side of that but. Anytime somebody says something good and then says but, it’s bad news.
When he can’t wait any longer, Luis asks, “But what?”
Father Ben opens and closes his mouth, but no words come out. He unrolls the essay and reads down the whole page. “But nothing,” he says finally. Luis waits for more, for the part where the priest is gonna say the essay isn’t good enough and Luis should try again next year. When Father Ben puts out his hand, Luis is so shocked he just about leaves the priest hanging, but right before it’s too late, he shakes it like a full-grown man.
Father Ben smiles at Luis. “Congratulations, my friend. You handled your business, and you passed catechism.” Then Father Ben reminds Luis that the bishop will slap him during the Confirmation ceremony Sunday, but he shouldn’t hit back. The slap is to remind Luis that he should be ready to suffer, even to die for what is right.
Luis wonders which right Father Ben is talking about. It looks to Luis like nobody’s ever talking about the same one.
“When you get confirmed, Luis,” Father Ben adds, “it means that God is on your side, and having God on your side will give you the strength of a thousand men and the Wisdom of Solomon.”