An Exaltation of Larks

by Suanne Laqueur

  His hand rested wide on Javi’s crown and his smoky mouth bussed above his son’s ear. His expression was serious as he looked over the submission papers, his finger scratching his bushy eyebrows while keeping the cigarette out of the way.

  “Javito tells a good story,” Rafael said.

  “That he does,” Mr. Durante said. “So let’s get him in front of a wider audience.” He shook hands around and headed off down the street.

  Rafael looked at his watch and frowned at the boys. “Who’s working delivery tonight?”

  Each cousin pointed at the other.

  Rafael exhaled a ribbon of smoke. “Nesto, you deliver. Javi, I’m short a dishwasher tonight. Get in the back, it’s already piled up to the ceiling.”

  “Maldita madre,” Javi muttered, which got him a hard but loving whack on the ass.

  “Go,” Rafael said. “Do a good job.”

  Of all the adults, Rafael fretted the least about Money. Like a sunbeam through Miguel’s perpetual clouds, he measured success in contentment, not dollars. He believed it was important to have something to show for the long hours spent working, besides cash under the mattress.

  “Do a good job,” he always said to Javi. “No matter what you do, be excellent at it.”

  Rafael believed the goal of excellence was achievable by a strong work ethic. Still, he always bought a lottery ticket on Fridays.

  “I’d like to be excellent at having no job,” he said, ruffling Javi’s hair.

  In the hellish, humid kitchen, up to his elbows in hot water and soap, Javi decided he would submit the Naria story. It was his best job so far. Scrubbing pots and lids, his head played with words and his heart swelled with excellence, wanting to work harder at his gift. His words were the ingredients for mamajuana and his stories were the bottles. He could open them and slice through Miguel’s thunderstorm like a ray of July sunshine, making his home calm and magical and almost pretty.

  “It tastes like cologne,” Nesto said, passing the squat bottle choked with leaves and twigs to Javi. “Cheap cologne.”

  Javi couldn’t disagree. Naroba wore a cloying perfume called Violetta di Parma and he imagined a swig from that bottle wouldn’t be much different than mamajuana.

  He was disappointed. He and Nesto had contrived quite the commando mission to swipe a bottle out of the kitchen cabinet and steal away with it to the roof. For all that trouble, the least the mythical drink could do was taste good.

  He took another chug, wincing at the burning sweetness and passing the bottle back to his cousin. Leaning elbows on the brick parapet, he closed his eyes and let his sweating skin become one with the thick night.

  “What are you going to do with the prize money?” Nesto asked.

  “I haven’t won yet.”

  “You will. Durante likes you.”

  “It’s not like he’s judging the contest.”

  “You’re cute when you get all bashful around him.”

  “Shut up. I just respect the guy.”

  “Yeah, the kind of respect that makes you blush.” Nesto knocked Javi’s arm and gave him the bottle. Javi gave it a vigorous swirl before taking a drink. It helped: less sweet this time. He could taste more things going on and it didn’t burn as bad.

  Nesto belched. “Mets play San Diego tonight?”

  Javi grunted, squinting toward the northeast. They were on the edge of Corona with not much obstruction from taller buildings. On a clear night you could look across the diamond artery of Grand Central Parkway and make out the blue-and-orange blob of Shea Stadium. To the east were the World’s Fairgrounds, the silvery globe of the Unisphere lit up like Venus.

  “She’s sad,” Javi said.

  “Who?”

  “The sphere.”

  “What are you talking about, she’s the queen of Queens.”

  “Yeah, but she’s out there all alone. It’s like the fairgrounds are haunted.”

  Nesto’s hand curled around the back of Javi’s neck, giving him a little shake and a squeeze. “I love you. You’re so weird.”

  They talked baseball a while, passing the booze. Nino Espinosa had been traded to Philadelphia in the off-season. With no Dominicans on the mound at Shea, the Gil deSotos pledged their loyalty to the Panamanian relief pitcher Juan Berenguer. With his long hair, mustache and ninety-mile-an-hour fastball, the man was badass.

  Their speech got looser. Sloppier. Broken up by fits of laughter. Baseball being a metaphor for sex, they started talking girls and the humid night got a lot juicier.

  “Cristina Cardenal let me touch her tits,” Nesto said.

  “Bullshit. Her blouse doesn’t unbutton below her collarbones.”

  “Had ‘em right in my hands.” Nesto ran a palm up Javi’s chest, squeezing an imaginary breast.

  “You’re full of it. Nobody gets past Cristina’s brothers anyway.”

  “Oh man, those guys kill me. They’re so fucking hot.”

  “Who?”

  “The Cardenal brothers. It hurts to look at them. Hurts not to look at them. It’s so fucking unfair.”

  “You’re weird.”

  “I’m drunk,” Nesto said, his head lolling on Javi’s shoulder.

  Javi rolled his lips in, chewing around their numbness. “Me too.” The tarred rooftop swayed beneath his feet and the streets below rippled. “Mamajuana,” he said, giggling.

  Nesto hiccuped loudly. His hand was still on Javi’s chest. Born days apart, he and Javi shared a crib and were incarcerated in the same playpen. Javi’s earliest sense memory was napping with his cousin to the rumbling whine of a box fan in summer. Chubby Nesto jammed tight into Javi’s side, slack-limbed and sweaty.

  As they got older, Nesto shed his baby fat and became lean and bold. By adolescence he was brash and tough, swaggering around Queens with a posse, making himself known. But alone with Javi, his plate armor of arrogance dropped away and he drifted back into Javi’s side, leaning on his shoulders, soft and tactile. Putting his feet in Javi’s lap. Always wanting to be touched.

  “Scratch my back,” he said now.

  Javi ran his fingernails along the unreachable edges of Nesto’s shoulder blades.

  “You been over to see Leni?” Nesto asked. Leni Rivera owned a beauty shop a few blocks away and Javi sometimes unloaded boxes for her. Among other things.

  “Last Tuesday,” Javi said, smiling.

  “You fuck her yet?”

  “No, she won’t let me until I’m eighteen.”

  “What the hell happens on your eighteenth birthday that makes you fuckable?”

  Javi laughed. “Maybe it’s being able to vote?”

  “That’s bullshit. What does she do in the meantime?”

  “Everything else.”

  “She jerks you off?”

  “All the time.”

  Nesto grabbed his wrist. “She blow you, too?”

  “Mm.”

  “Goddamn.” Nesto laughed then. “Shit, look what you did…” His hand slid down and squeezed the tent pitched in his shorts.

  “What I did?” Javi felt the words coming out of his mouth but it seemed to be someone else talking. His brain was split down the center—one half trying to keep up with the conversation, the other wandering around the stockroom of Leni’s shop, where he’d gotten his first blow job. Like a movie he watched her sink onto her knees, unzip his jeans and pull them down. He stopped the movie and ran it backward, watched her pull his pants up, zip them and stand again. Then he started over.

  Leni went up and down like a marionette, reliving that one delicious moment. Knees. Zipper. The pulling. She’s not. She is. She’s actually going to… He’d stop, rewind and play it again.

  Now he had an erection, too. A giant one, sinking down roots that coiled up his spine. The hot night writhed in frustration around him. It was the worst kind of horniness. An unreachable itch, exacerbated by wanting something he didn’t quite have a name for yet.

  “Mine’s bigger,” Nesto said.

  “Th
e hell it is.”

  “Oh yeah?” And then he had it out.

  Javi barely blinked. Nesto had been making jokes about the size of his dick since he learned what an inch was. He didn’t need being drunk as an excuse to whip it out at Javi. It was practically a greeting.

  “Put that away, asshole,” Javi said, laughing. “Before you hurt someone.” He made a backhanded motion, as if to… Well, he guessed as if to swat it away. But Nesto stepped into the swat.

  And then it was in his hand.

  How’d that happen?

  The night threw back its head and laughed, flung delighted arms around Javi and enveloped him in violet-scented rum. It drew him close, intent on brewing his soul from twigs and leaves into magic.

  “Qué lo qué,” he heard himself say as fingers slowly opened.

  “No se mueva.” Nesto’s hand slipped under the hem of Javi’s T-shirt and inside his shorts. A warm hand on his cock then. A strong hand. Better than a woman’s hand because it was a knowledgeable hand. One that knew exactly what to do here.

  A thought tapped his shoulder. Maybe not a good idea.

  His dick, thinking it was an excellent idea, told his thoughts to fuck off.

  “Holy shit,” Nesto said. “Yours is huge.”

  “Tengo un suape,” Javi said, just to get it on the record. To make sure the night knew he was shit-faced and had nothing to do with this. Mamajuana was entirely to blame.

  Nesto chuckled low in his chest, his hand moving. “Yo también…”

  His breath whispered strong and sweet on Javi’s face. Javi licked his lips, aware of his teeth and tongue and the damp desire in his mouth. He was a piece of the night, soft like velvet and hard like glass. A curtained window. Skin dripping with a heated certainty yet drawn up tight with goosebumped trepidation because maybe, really, this wasn’t such a good…

  “It’s only me, man,” Nesto said. “We’re blood. This is nothing.”

  “Nothing,” Javi said. Then Nesto kissed him and it wasn’t nothing. Javi felt their blood boil up and overflow in his mouth and behind his closed eyes and beyond his pounding eardrums. The last shreds of the night dissolved and Javi was left only wanting something, wanting what had no name, wanting this hot sweet in Nesto’s mouth and the burning grip of his fingers.

  “You won’t forget about me when you get famous,” Nesto said. “Will you?”

  Javi shook his head, breathing hard as he stared at the curve of Nesto’s bottom lip. Thinking it would feel good between his teeth. His hand pushed aside air to slide in the hair at the back of Nesto’s head, damp and soft through his fingers. Nesto groaned and moved in closer.

  “Touch me,” he whispered, his lip caught in Javi’s gentle bite. Pulsing steel filled Javi’s other hand and his fingers closed up tight and began moving, knowing exactly what to do.

  Then an iron crash sliced the rooftop in two. The night screamed and fled cringing into a corner as the dragon presence of Tío Miguel filled the doorway to the stairwell. He unfolded, tall and terrible as he took in the sight of his kissing nephews, each with the other’s parao in his hand.

  Javi was instantly sober.

  And he knew after tonight, it would no longer be about The Money.

  December 1979

  Queens, New York

  Mr. Durante was pale as he lifted the ice pack off Javi’s forehead, inspected the egg underneath, and replaced it. “You can stay here,” he said. “We’ll figure something out.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Mrs. Durante said, swabbing Javi’s cheek with peroxide. “You poor thing.”

  Javi winced as his cuts and bruises were tended, but he pressed his lips tight and made no sound. The slightest loosening of his jaw and he would start crying like a fucking baby. He focused on the Durantes’ Christmas tree, staring hard until the twinkles from the colored bulbs blurred together.

  “We should call CPS,” Mr. Durante said. “This is unacceptable.”

  “No,” Javi said behind the wall of his teeth. “I don’t want anyone knowing about this.”

  “It’s all right. I’m sure it will blow over,” Mrs. Durante said. Her fingertip was gentle as it dabbed Bacitracin on his lip.

  Javi shook his aching head. “No it won’t.”

  His teacher exchanged a glance with his wife, who got Javi two aspirin, then led him to the spare room where he could lie down. Alone, Javi still made no sound, but the tears spilled out of his eyes and he made no attempt to stop them.

  Nothing could have prepared him.

  He wondered how he could have been so naive about his own people.

  The one-upmanship talks about sex and girls. Racking up conquests. Bragging about the size of your cojones. Whipping them out if you had to prove a point. Javi thought nothing more of it than an aspect of being male.

  He didn’t know it was a central tenant of being a Dominican male.

  Five months had passed since the night on the rooftop. In that time, Javi learned a lot about tiguerismo: the Dominicans’ standard of masculinity. Men were raised to be tigers. Predators of love. In matters of the heart, the ideal man was passionate but strong. Sexually commanding and confident. Above all, macho.

  Pájaro, or bird, was an endearment for a girl. It was the worst kind of slur on a man. To be gay or even perceived as gay not only went against the laws of God and man, but went against everything it meant to be Dominican.

  The tiger did not suffer weakness.

  The tiger’s tribe did not tolerate outsiders.

  It was nothing, Javi kept insisting that night on the roof. They were drunk, it was stupid, harmless fooling around. It didn’t mean any—

  That was when Tío Miguel threw him down the stairwell. Javi was lucky he didn’t break his neck. He guessed being drunk made him loose enough to absorb the shock.

  He looked to his father for help but Rafael was comforting Rosa, who was wailing into her hands. Tío Enrique and Tía Mercedes were dragging Nesto away and Nesto wouldn’t meet Javi’s eyes.

  He never spoke to or touched Javi again.

  Javi wondered how he could’ve been so wrong about his cousin.

  Nesto had the harder heart, the faster reflexes and better survival skills. He seized the high ground of the battlefield with a three-word opening salvo: Javi started it. By throwing the first words, he gave Javi no chance at the last words. He brought in the cavalry of his friends, who joined the campaign of taking down a pájaro with macho glee.

  Stunned by his cousin’s betrayal, Javi could only stumble through the bombardment, zigzagging to avoid fire as the family, his friends and the entire Dominican community in Corona rose up and shunned him as a foreign abomination.

  It had to be a joke. He kept waiting for the punch line. Kept waiting for the law to be laid down, this was never to happen again, don’t ever let us catch you again…

  “It won’t happen again,” he said to Rosa, who ignored him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to Rafael, who didn’t answer for a long time. Javi watched his father twist his hands together, fingers callused, nicked from knife cuts and spotted with burn scars. His smile had deserted him. He was smoking more and his soft voice had splintered into a rasp. His disappointment in Javi hung about the apartment like toxic clouds, worse than the Miguel’s cuffs and punches.

  “Second chances are given or made,” Rafael finally said. Javi put his head in his hands and wished he were dead. Then his father touched his back, broke through the pain in a slender lifeline of hope.

  “You make this one, Javito,” Rafael said.

  Javi was sure he could. Sure he would make it right. He just had to tough it out. He’d be told to go to confession and do penance for his sins. He’d get the silent treatment a couple weeks at home. He’d endure the fights and bullying at school until something bigger came along to divert everyone’s attention. He’d ride it out. This too would pass.

  Long, abusive weeks passed.

  Then his father passed. One October day, he clutched his chest a
nd went down in an avalanche of pots and pans in the restaurant’s kitchen. Nobody failed to see the metaphor: Rafael Gil deSoto died of a broken heart, leaving a grieving wife and daughter, a disgrace of a son and a mountain of debt still owed to Miguel.

  Javi was utterly alone. Naroba loved him, but she was easily dominated and totally under Rosa’s control. Rosa in turn was falling further under Miguel’s control, and Miguel continued to poison the well of the apartment building until this morning, when a manila envelope arrived from Cricket magazine. Inside was the December issue with Javi’s winning story and a check for $500.

  The victory was bitter. Rosa demanded he sign the money over to Miguel. Javi refused and for once, Naroba displayed a backbone and took his side. The warrior queen Naria had won the prize, and it was Naria who seized the check out of her mother’s hands and made a run for it.

  Then it was war. Miguel beat up Javi, which he could’ve handled if Rosa weren’t beating Naroba at the same time. Not the typical open-handed swats of their youth, or the sterner licks of a wooden spoon. Rosa had one of Rafael’s belts doubled up in her hand. Naroba was screaming under the blows, curled in a ball with the Cricket check clutched in her fist. The coffee table fell over. Kitchen chairs toppled. The Christmas tree swayed dangerously back and forth. Through a bloody fog, Javi looked at the destruction of his life and knew he would never win back what had belonged to him. He surrendered.

  “Stop,” he cried, curled in his own ball against the kitchen cabinets, bottles of mamajuana rattling within. “You can have it. You can have all of it. Just stop.”

  He crawled to Naroba, his fallen queen, and pried the check out of her fingers. He signed the back, Paid to the order of Miguel Gil deSoto. He threw clothes and notebooks into a backpack and he left.

  The Durantes made a haven for Javi until the end of February, when Mrs. Durante’s mother had a stroke. She had to come live with them, filling the spare room with her hospital bed, visiting nurses, medications and equipment. Javi assured his teacher he could find digs elsewhere.

  “Finish school,” Mr. Durante said, a stern finger by Javi’s face. “A little less than four months left. Tough it out and finish. Promise me.”