An Island Like You

by Judith Ortiz Cofer

  When I crash through the door at home, Mami comes out of the bedroom looking like she just woke up from a deep sleep. I lie down on the sofa. I am sweating and shaking; a sick feeling in my stomach makes me want to curl up. Mami takes my head into her hands. Her fingers are warm and soft. “Are you sick, hija?” I nod my head. Yes. I am sick. I am sick of following Yolanda into trouble. She has problems that make her act crazy. Maybe someday she’ll work them out, but I have to start trying to figure out who I am and where I want to go before I can help anybody else. I don’t tell my mother any of this. It’s better if I just let her take care of me for a little while.

  Even as she feels my forehead for fever, my mother can’t help humming a tune. It’s one I used to know. It’s a song about being lonely, even in a crowd, and how that’s the way life is for most people. But you have to keep watching out for love because it’s out there waiting for you. That’s the chorus, I mean. I keep my eyes closed until the words come back to me, until I know it by heart. And I know that I will keep watching but not just watching. Sometimes you have to run fast to catch love because it’s hard to see, even when it’s right in front of you. I say this to Mami, who laughs and starts really singing. She is really into it now, singing like she was standing in front of hundreds of people in Carnegie Hall, even though I’m the only one here to hear her. The song is for me.

  1.

  Harry came personally to Kenny Matoa’s apartment to invite him to that night’s bash at his place. Kenny’s mother was furious at her son for even letting Harry into her house. Basura, she called his friend, “trash.” Kenny left Harry waiting in the living room, with his little sisters pestering him, while he changed into his party clothes: blue jeans, Tiburones T-shirt, and black leather jacket. His mother followed him into his room.

  “Kenny.” She spoke his name in a tone he knew meant a sermon was coming, so he stepped inside his tiny closet and dressed in the dark while her voice droned on.

  “This Harry is trouble. Trouble, hijo, of the serious kind. Do you want to end up in jail, or maybe dead?”

  She went on and on about Harry. Horror stories she had heard in the barrio, featuring drug dealers and drive-by shootings. In her version Harry played the part of the devil, tempting innocent barrio girls and boys with free drugs and easy living until they were “hooked.” Then they paid the price.

  Kenny groaned loudly in the closet, hoping she’d get the message and leave him alone. He came out with his hair sticking out in all directions from having to maneuver among clothes and shoes. She was still talking nonstop as he sat next to her on the bed to put on his combat boots. He shook his head in disbelief. His mother lived in another world. She went to her job as a housekeeper for a businesswoman out in the suburbs, saw how the other half lived, and then came home at night to tell him and his sisters that if only they shared meals as a family, watched educational shows on public TV, and got regular checkups at the dentist, they too could be a normal American family. Right. Actually she just fantasized about it, since she herself had gotten regular doses of reality in the barrio, like getting rolled for her watch at the bus stop in daylight just last month, and other incidents she blamed on good barrio kids being corrupted by bad influences, like Harry, from the outside. She had an attitude about Harry, who’s twenty-five and throws parties at his place once a week, by invitation only. She was under the impression that he wanted to lure her son into his criminal world, then make him his slave. Too many bad movies on the Spanish channel, Kenny figured.

  She was pleading with him now. “Por favor, hijo. Kenny, think about what you’re getting into,” she said, trying to put her arms around him. Since she’s five inches shorter than he, all he had to do was stand up to avoid her grasp. He jumped off the bed without looking at her. She got on his nerves with her continuing melodrama about the dangerous streets. And he didn’t want to hear her suspicions about Harry anymore.

  “Mami, I’m just going to a party. Give me a break, willya?” Kenny said, turning his back on her to comb his hair at the cracked mirror. He moved his head until he found an angle from which it wasn’t split by the crooked line that ran across the mirror like a winding road on a map. It had been his father’s shaving stand, an old-fashioned piece of furniture with a hanging mirror his father had brought home one day because he couldn’t get a turn in the bathroom when he needed to. The crush of three kids and a wife in a two-bedroom, one-bath apartment had finally been too much for him. Add to that the constant nagging about a “better life” and a man can go a little crazy, Kenny thought. One day he just didn’t come home from “the office,” as he called the kitchen at the Caribbean Moon, where he cooked greasy snacks for the customers.

  “Drunks get hungry after midnight,” Kenny had heard him say. “They like to eat late at night so they can have something to throw up in the morning.”

  Kenny finished slicking his thick hair into a black slash dividing the razor-shaved sides of his skull like an exclamation point. Then he placed his comb in the porcelain bowl on top of his father’s old rusting razor and blades that were stuck to the bottom. His old man hadn’t taken anything when he left — probably couldn’t stand the thought of seeing his wife looking like a widow at a funeral, like she did right now. Kenny glanced at her in the mirror. She was crying quietly. Sitting on his bed, a chubby woman with a pretty face and thick curly hair like his own. Her hands, folded on her lap like she was praying, were red and peeling from the chemicals she had to use to clean the rich woman’s house. Even rubber gloves couldn’t protect her skin from the hard work of killing other people’s germs. That’s not what he wanted for himself, Kenny had decided long ago. He didn’t want to come home at three in the morning, smelling of old cooking grease and stale garlic, and he didn’t want to spend his day polishing somebody else’s silver and gold. He pretended to take a last look at himself in the mirror as he watched her slip off his bed. He saw her looking tragic, like he was breaking her heart or something. Their eyes met for a second, and he could tell she was scared. It made him angry that she wanted to keep him at home like she did his sisters, like he couldn’t take care of himself out in the world or defend himself against “bad influences.” He ignored her until she padded slowly out of his room. In her terry-cloth slippers and baggy housedress, she looked like a woman who’d given up on almost everything, including her looks. Kenny sometimes thought that she could’ve done something to keep her man home. Fixed herself up a little maybe, or tried to be more cheerful. But that was old news.

  “Matoa! I ain’t got all night. You comin’?” Harry called out from the living room over his sisters’ giggles. He could tell Harry had worked his charm on them.

  2.

  Harry’s place is a mess after the party. Paper cups like party hats on everything. The TV, still on the music channel, is blaring out one rap song, the disc player, another. Matoa laughs as the words get all tangled up in his head. The coffee table is laid out like a buffet of party trash; Harry himself has passed out on the sofa. Matoa feels disconnected from the scene like he has just finished watching a good action movie and the lights have come on in the theater. Time to leave. He takes a last look at the place — what you’d call a well-stocked situation, he thinks. A real apartment, in an apartment building, not a decrepit tenement like El Building. Harry has the latest in electronic equipment, and the furniture is all glossy black and white leather. He had shown Matoa his closet too. It’s almost as big as Matoa’s bedroom and crammed with the kind of clothes Matoa’s only seen in magazine ads. He’d whistled in amazement when Harry pulled out a pair of Italian shoes he said cost him two hundred bucks.

  It’d been a small party, only ten or fifteen people, all older than Matoa. He’d felt out of place at first, especially with the women, who looked like high-fashion models in their tight dresses and high heels. But they’d all been real friendly, and after a few drinks and some of Harry’s samples, it’d changed. Matoa began to feel at home. The women no longer seemed so tall and in
timidating, and the men treated him like his brothers in the Tiburones did.

  Matoa steps out into the hallway. There’s a winding flight of stairs in front of him — for a minute it looks like a giant slide, but it’s just that the dark carpet makes the steps seem to disappear in the dim light. He puts one hand on the banister on the way down, still feeling pretty good.

  Matoa walks home to El Building on instinct. He doesn’t know what’s finally kicked in, but he’s begun to feel that he’s in the middle of a whirling cloud of colors and lights: headlights leave a trail as they speed by, and streetlights connect one to the other in gold tracks. Matoa leans against a wall, trying to steady himself. The building sways. He covers his head, thinking the building will fall on him. He laughs, and the sound of his laughter rolls down the sidewalk, bouncing like a can pushed by the wind. It’s like someone’s turned up the volume in his head to the max.

  As he waits for his brain to tell him where his feet are, Matoa glues his eyes to the front door of El Building, but it keeps slipping away. He’s standing still and everything else is going around and around.

  It’s late. The only thing on the streets is the trash to be collected in a few hours. It looks like a landscape of mountains and valleys to Matoa — all the bags and boxes and beat-up, rusted cans. The one he is now leaning on smells pretty ripe. He concentrates on getting to the door. But when he focuses on a pile of trash bags closer to where he wants to go, Matoa sees what looks like a mirror. By squinting hard, he can see that it’s fancy, framed in white wood. He takes a few steps toward it but retreats to the wall when he sees something in motion reflected in it.

  Matoa feels like he is being dragged underwater by a strong undertow. He’s having to fight the heaviness of his body to move, but he has enough sense to know that if something or someone is around at this hour, he’d better lie low. He’s in no shape to mess around. He decides to take a little break. He sinks to the ground and props his back on the wall. He tries to focus on the white mirror, but he’s dizzy. He closes his eyes for a minute. When he opens them, he sees that the face of the mirror has become a sort of TV screen. He rubs his eyes, thinking he’s either dreaming or tripping. Either way he’s still feeling all right. He decides to take in the show.

  He thinks he sees human figures moving in the mirror. It seems to be the reflection of something taking place in the alley. He squints, trying to get a clearer picture, wishing he could concentrate now. As it is, it’s like watching the late movie and waking up at different times, so things sort of make sense and sort of don’t. Anyway, it looks like a little guy is getting rolled, but good. The one doing it has him down on the ground and is finishing up the job with his feet. Matoa feels a wave of nausea pass over him, but he doesn’t move. There is a kind of thrill in watching the action from the sidelines. He’s trying to stay awake for it. But his eyes keep rolling back in his head, and he has to force them to focus on the mirror. Funny thing, though, there’s no sound. You’d expect some cursing, or at least a little grunting from the one on the ground. But, Matoa thinks, it could be that he’s just too screwed up to hear it. He pushes the MUTE button on his imaginary remote control and laughs aloud. Startled at the sound of his own laughter, he scrunches back up against the wall, into the shadows. He doesn’t want them to hear him. This is one time he’d rather just watch.

  The little guy raises an arm as if begging for mercy. He’s wearing a black leather jacket; Matoa can see it’s just like his own, down to the patch of the Puerto Rican flag that he’s sewn on his. This is getting too weird, Matoa thinks. “Hey, get up!” He thinks he’s said this out loud, but he might have just thought it. He tries to get a look at the guy’s face but can’t make out the blood-smeared features. Then the little guy falls down and lies real still. The other one kicks him a couple of more times, crushing his face with his combat boot. “Hey!” Matoa yells out before he can stop himself. Although he doesn’t hear any sounds, he can almost feel the bones crunching under the boot, which is army issue, the kind you can buy at the surplus store, just like he and his friends wear. You can do a lot of damage with a steel-toed boot like that. He tries to get up to do something to help the little guy. He can’t just let him get murdered. And besides, this may be a home boy. There’s something definitely familiar about him, about both of them. But suddenly everything goes black for Matoa.

  He must’ve passed out, because when he opens his eyes it’s almost light. He sees Tito, the building’s super, moving around in the basement. The lights are on; Tito is probably checking out the boilers. Matoa doesn’t want his mother to find him sprawled out like a bum on the sidewalk when she leaves for work. She’ll make a scene right there on the street. So he pulls himself up by sliding his back up the wall. Then he spots the mirror leaning on a trash can. What he had seen in the alley comes back to him in a rush. A dream, he decides. Matoa scans himself in the mirror — top to bottom. Wow, hombre, he says to himself. Man, does he look rough! His jacket is stained with something oily. He hopes it’s not grease. He comes closer to the mirror and inspects himself, noticing his scraped knuckles — had he fallen down on the concrete? He had obviously wiped them on his jacket. His boots are leaving a trail of dark tracks on the sidewalk. Matoa flicks a piece of wilted lettuce from his shoulder. He looks around in the alley, but there’s no trace of any action. Then the dizziness hits him again. His head feels like it’s been run over by a Mack truck.

  Matoa decides to sneak into his apartment and try to sleep it off before his mother and sisters get up. He’s taking the mirror with him, though. It’s a find — if he doesn’t get it, someone else will. Matoa tries lifting the mirror, but it’s heavy, heavier than he’d expected. So, looking around to make sure nobody’s watching him, he hauls it up on his back and starts dragging the load, which bends him double. He catches a glimpse of himself in it over his shoulder — not a pretty sight.

  Good thing he has only one flight of stairs to climb. The mirror weighs as much as he does. Shaky and out of breath, Matoa struggles with the lock, hoping he won’t wake his mother and have to explain about last night. It’s gotten to the point where Matoa can’t come in the house without getting interrogated, so now he just tries to avoid talking to her and his silly sisters, who’re always pointing at him and giggling. He can’t wait until he has a place of his own and doesn’t have to explain anything to anyone.

  3.

  Matoa balances the mirror on the floor in his room, flopping down on his bed with all his stinking clothes on, too wiped out to care how he looks or smells. His heart is pounding in his chest like a fist. He squeezes his head with his palms, trying to drown out the crashing waves of his blood. Too much fun, he says to himself. Finally he falls into a fitful sleep that lasts minutes or hours — he doesn’t know for sure — until he sits up in bed and sees that the sun is bursting through his window. “Man, this night already lasted two or three days,” he says aloud, just to make sure he’s really awake. He struggles to sit up, feeling an urgent need to throw up. “Ay, ay,” he cries out involuntarily from the pain in his head and in his churning stomach. He’s learned his lesson: next time he won’t experiment so much. Mixing gives you bad dreams and a rocking hangover. He moans involuntarily and curses himself. The last thing he wants is to talk to anyone right now. But it’s too late. He hears voices and footsteps heading toward his room. “Whaddaya think’s wrong with him?” he hears one of his sisters say out in the hall. “Whaddaya think?” another answers sarcastically. “Glub, glub, pop, pop,” she adds. Laughter. Matoa hears his mother’s concerned voice admonishing them. He wants to get up and lock the door, but can’t seem to feel his legs under him.

  Matoa tries to push himself off the bed but falls back, unable to gain his balance. Then he happens to glance into the mirror facing his bed. His head reels as he watches it dissolve into colors, then resolve into a familiar scene. “No, no!” he howls, as the bloody spectacle from last night starts to play itself out again. He can’t take it right now. But hi
s eyes involuntarily follow as the two guys tear into each other. It’s all happening just as it did before, except this time he sees them clearly. He knows who it is in the mirror. The two faces are the same. Sucked into the scene by some invisible whirlpool he’s too weak to fight, he hears himself scream.

  When his mother and sisters burst into his room, Matoa is flat against the wall, on the far side of his bed, his eyes bugging out of his head. He yells at them, “Look! Look!” But when they turn their eyes to where he is wildly pointing, all they see is their Kenny reflected in a mirror they’ve never seen before. But he’s somehow transformed; instead of the tough guy they know, he looks more like someone who’s out of his head, or maybe seen a ghost. One of them says they have to call 911. His mother leans over him, calling out his name, reaching for his face. But Kenny Matoa crawls away from her roughened fingers, turns away from her sad, frightened eyes. “Leave me alone!” he yells at her. “Get out!”

  He shuts his eyes tight against the intense light ricocheting off the white mirror like a laser beam aimed straight at him. It feels like it’s burning a hole through his skull — and his mother’s voice keeps calling him back, worming its way into his head, tracking him down to the dark corner where he hides.