by Aura Xilonen
Aireen’s friendly exclamation interrupts my thoughts. “God, now I really do have to get going. Sometimes I think the world isn’t as bad as it seems, don’t you think, dude?”
I watch her leave through the maintenance room door, carrying the dishes with her.
Without thinking, all bestumbled-like, I leap toward the door in my supersneakers and, confounded as a fly searching for freedom at a windowpane, race after her like a lapdog.
Emerging from the staircase on the top floor of Aireen’s building, you can see part of the city and, beyond it, the hill where the bald lady Double-U lives. Down below is the street, the trees, and the bus stop. There’s the bookstore’s roof and the other buildings. Looking off toward the horizon, you can see the dome of the shopping mall and, in the other direction, the baseball stadium. A little closer, I see the trees in Wells Park. There are tall buildings that block the view west; they have reflective glass that mirrors the sky and the clouds as they pass, like they’re wearing fucking polarized sunglasses. On the roof of the building where Aireen lives are several little rooms jam-packed with junk. To one side are the water tanks, in Indian file, and a jumble of galvanized pipes. Across from those are a stack of boards and some old, broken washing machines that look like they were built in the Stone Age; they’re stained with rust and their copper pipes are green and black. Toward the back is another room secured with a heavy padlock. On its gray door is a sign that says HIGH VOLTAGE. Some plants with fat, very sharp thorns are growing out of a few cracks next to the wall around the perimeter of the rooftop. Fucking bastards.
* * *
[“Fucking bastards,” my aunt over there on the other side used to call them. “Though some people call them ‘pricklyburr.’ They give you a rash if you touch them, see? What does that feel like? Itches like hell, right? Oh, stop whining—pain is for old ladies. It’s for pussy girls, not strong men, you hear me, you runty moron?”]
Off to the left there are some little windowboxes full of plastic plants that have been blistered by the sun. Mr. Hundred is up ahead. He’s a man of about sixty with salt-and-pepper hair, scrotastically wrinkled; he has gray eyes and is wearing a beige vest that matches his canvas shoes; he walks with his legs bowed out at his knees. Behind him is the chickadee, and I’m trailing them.
“And don’t even think about going into that room with the electric transformer—it’ll fry you like a fish, got it?”
Aireen turns to look at me. She smiles.
I still feel like I’m in the clouds, literally, as if I were walking on cotton balls.
Aireen has skipped work because of me. Instead of going to work, she went straight to the building super:
“Mr. Hundred, my cousin just arrived and is looking for a place to stay.”
“And why can’t he stay with you and your grandfather?”
“He wants to be independent, right, cousin?” She looks at me. I nod, a hangdog look on my face. “And maybe you could give him some kind of job. He’s a good worker.”
“Your face looks familiar, boy. You aren’t one of those young reprobates who swarm around out there in the street, are you?”
“Not at all, Mr. Hundred. You can give him a place to stay in one of the rooms on the roof, and in exchange he can clean the halls or whatever you need.”
“I don’t know, Miss Aireen. You and your grandfather are good people, but I don’t know. This kid looks like a troublemaker.”
“Come on, you won’t regret it. Say yes before he finds somewhere else and you lose this great opportunity.”
“So what do you know how to do, boy?”
Aireen and Mr. Hundred both look at me. I don’t know if my cheeks flush. I feel disoriented under their steady gaze. I attempt to clear my throat.
“I know how to read, sir.”
Mr. Hundred lets out a guffaw.
“Well, that’s a lucky thing. A real bonus. But do you know how to scrub floors? Pick up trash?” He looks at Aireen.
“Yes,” the chickadee answers without taking her beautiful eyes off me. “He’s also honorable . . . and very brave.”
Mr. Hundred scratches his head.
“I don’t know, miss . . . Hmm. But I can’t pay you. I’ll just let you stay in the room in exchange for work maintaining the building, understood? If you want money, go out and get a job.”
* * *
[I don’t know how much time has passed. I seem to be turning into a reptile. I feel scales on my arms and legs and the back of my neck. I don’t move so I don’t disturb anybody. I no longer hear the border patrolmen’s footsteps anywhere. Only the wind shoving across the ground, bouncing, as if its teeth were missing. A while back I heard the trucks’ engines start up and roar until they intertwined with the silent horizon.
I’m so tired. I don’t know if the others are still alive or not. I haven’t heard another gunshot, no sudden boom like rifles make. No pow!, ratatatatat!, bang!
Poor Pepe. His wife and kids won’t have a grave to mourn him at. Their souls will never be at rest. Always hoping they might see him or at least his dollars every two weeks. There will be no tombstone pressing down on his bones.
“Look here, paisa,” he told me one day, “these are my little ones and this is my wife. We’re from Tetela, a village in Puebla. A beautiful spot beside a reservoir. Well, the water in the reservoir stinks from all the water lilies, and the water’s as green as fuck, but I’d give anything to be there, wrapped up in their love, gossiping with the family. But there’s no way—you’ve got to take care of the belly first, and then the heart. If you ever visit there, ask for El Pepe. Everybody knows me around there—you’ll be welcomed into the family, and we’ll toss back a couple of nice-cold cervezas, even though you don’t drink, paisa, not even in self-defense.”
And he tucked the rumpled, finger-smudged photo of his family back in his wallet.]
“And here’s the room,” Mr. Hundred continues, slowly opening the moth-eaten, louse-bitten wooden door. “As you can see, it’s a mess at the moment, but you can get it cleaned up. Look, there’s a bed over there. It doesn’t have a mattress, but you can put those cushions on it while you save up for something better. You can gather up those metal rods and put them over there. There isn’t any glass in the window, but you can use some plastic film and pieces of cardboard to seal it off. Early in the morning you’ll need to sweep all the staircases and then dust the railings. I’ll show you as you go along.” He pauses. Scratches his head. “In the meantime, your cousin can help you clean up this mess. You can get it done quicker that way.” Mr. Hundred glances around the hecatomb once more and then tosses me the keys to the padlock of the junk-filled room. “You’d better not be a troublemaker, boy.” He turns around and heads out of the room toward the entrance to the building, opens the door, and disappears down the stairs.
“I think he liked you, ‘cousin,’” Aireen says cheerily as she exhales, her lips spiraling the air in concentric circles that burst on my eardrums like alarconia petals on the pavement—those little flowers that look like dandelions and when they get touched by water or sunlight, they become transparent, weightless. “Can you handle this mess, ‘cousin’?” And she laughs again, like that, seismically.
* * *
[If hell is underground, it must be infernally cold, an absinthic freezer. My arms and legs have gone numb. The effort of coiling myself up in my own rattle has dislocated me in my hole; the blood reaches my skin only in lackluster low-tide waves. Again I feel the fuzz strolling from my ear to my throat. It tickles me. My arms are pinioned so tight, I can’t get one free to scratch myself. At that moment I hear a dull echo, muffled by the pile of earth, rocks, and sand that I’ve pulled over myself as if my own grave could be my salvation.
Bang!
I think of El Pepe and his family—but I think more about him and his crossing to the other side. Is it hard?
It’s easy to die, I think, but is it hard to leap into that abyss?
Bang.
Carajo. Another gunshot.
The echo of the bullets bounces off the stones above me and dies out there, trembling, in the middle of the desert. From that moment on, I think, the dead will have already forgotten everything, even the fact that they’re dead.]
Aireen leaves just like that, laughing, tied to her own waist. I start to gather up all the pipes and place them in a corner, strapping them together with a length of cord I removed from some planks. I find a box of old magazines from the same publisher Jefe uses to fry the rich ladies’ brain cells: Reader’s Digest. I place them on top of a stack of boards. There’s a lot of dust.
I have never been clean.
I once read in that book Double-U bought that poverty is never clean—we poor people, it said, in addition to being poor, are miserable and filthy. Only art can make filth beautiful, and the best asshole artists are those who make a fucking work of art out of tragedy, poverty, neglect, like those pinches photographers who swan into misfortune so they can take a good photograph that’ll win them a goddamn Pulitzer Prize; but here, in everyday life, here, in this fucking country, poor people are hunched, envious, vandalous, and only very occasionally solidary. We eat one another alive while wallowing in our own shit, the gringo intellectual says. And there’s no hope of redemption. But today I don’t know, seems like I’m trying to beat the fuck out of this fucking dust. I lift the bed and drag it toward one of the unpaned windows. I shove all the junk and a few pipes under it. I lay the sheets of cardboard on top of it, and in no time the room looks livable. I go outside and steal an empty can and some plastic flowers. Then I lie down on the cot to test it. The boards are hard and jab me in the ribs. I put one hand under my head and stare up at the bare bulb in the ceiling. I don’t know, damn it; yeah, I think, the world isn’t as bad as it seems after all, or what the hell ever.
I close my eyes and think about Aireen.
* * *
[There in the shadows I feel the snake sliding across my cheeks. Its smooth scales sculpt the outline of my jaw and it slips through a gap to the world outside my hole. Another snake slithers up my calf and follows its companion. I have another one clinging to my back. It wriggles to my left and passes over the nape of my neck. Its tail slides along my ear and it dissolves into the gaps. Another one has encircled my stomach. It seems the odor of shit I’m steeped in has soothed them so they don’t bite me, don’t pierce my soul, my quivering body, with their fangs. Very slowly I free my right hand and start to move the soil away. My whole body’s gone numb. As if the earth were about to give birth, I push hard, panting, and manage to extract my left arm. I exert force, yes, like that, and uncork myself outward, tensing my muscles. Yes, I’m a fucking fetus being born from the guts of hell. Brought back from the grave. The piles of earth and rock are darker now. The snakes emerge after me, in a group, rolled up into little balls, formed into rings. The night emaciates the stars, which pale above me, like a colander full of blackberries draining through white pinpricks. Dawn must be approaching: a blue or green wave is moving across the sidereal space, blurring it. The ants in my numb legs slowly disappear. I wiggle my fingers and toes. Slowly, heat comes back into my body. I exhale as if it were my life’s last breath, and a second later I inhale, like that, cascalitic, filling my lungs with fucking life.]
I descend the stairs of the red building. I dozed off on the plank cot and still have stripes perforating my back. My fucking eyes are drowsy, swollen, my hair standing on end. Outside the building, all the same things are swarming about; it’s as if time has been petrified, and even in movement we have indecorously become mere decorations. Across the street, the bookstore looks exactly the same, dimmed, battered, mammillated at the edge of the sidewalk. I’d like to go in and swipe a few books so I can pass the time. I never thought I’d miss them one day. Jefe is a jerk but not a moron, greedy yet at the same time cavalierly clever. Where could he be now?
* * *
[“Listen up, you erudite weasel. I see you’re getting into the swing of things and have at least figured out where the fucking books are shelved. If you sell some more books, I might even give you a raise, hoo-hoo-hoo.”
Asshole.]
I stand looking at the same streets for a while. I figured I’d come down from the roof to wait for Aireen at the bus stop, but then it occurred to me she might be annoyed with me since she’s so strong on the inside, she doesn’t need heroes defending her on the outside. I’ve also come down to the street because my stomach is squealing with hunger and I can’t keep holding out on it. I eye the knot of scruffs splattered across the scene, whooping at the girls going by with their little shorts, their gorgeous gams; catcalling them, their fantasies tangled with hair and drool.
She won’t be back for a few hours still. That’s what she told me:
“I won’t be long. I’ll be back tonight, ‘cousin.’”
That means I can leave for a while to try to scrounge up a little money, like Mr. Hundred said, and not be a loser and an outcast. I head left, looking for an opportunity that will let me carry my own weight. I know there are some gringos on the outskirts of the city who hire Latinos for under-the-table day labor.
* * *
[That’s what I heard from a guy who was crazy in love and came into the bookstore looking for a book of adventures and sex a while back:
“I want to give it to a babe who makes me wild—you know, man, something to help me bag her without having to spend so much money on flowers and get her real hot.”
“Why don’t you just take her to the movies, sir?”
“No, dude, I want to seduce her without even touching her. Plus, going to the movies is expensive, and since I’m married, it’s better if I can do things without all the flowers and chocolates, you know, to cut down on the extravagances.”
“You shouldn’t be stingy, sir.”
“I’m not stingy, just cautious. If she ends up rejecting me, I’ll only have spent a few dollars and that’s it.”
“What if she says yes?”
“Then I’ll have spent the same amount but I’ll get to screw too, right? Ha-ha-ha.”
Before leaving with his sex book full of illustrated asses and cocks in a paperback Kamasutra that cost $7.50, he winked at me.
“I like you, man. I’m a foreman, and sometimes I need cheap manpower. If you ever need work, come find me on Median Road. The pay’s not great and it’s hard work. But maybe one day you won’t have the strength for this kind of intellectual labor and you’ll be looking for a cement tombstone instead so you can go die out there the way fucking donkeys like me do. Ha-ha-ha!”]
I get to 92nd and head toward the highway that’s known for the median strip where all the Latino laborers congregate. A red-light district where everybody looks the other way and migrants sell themselves to the highest bidder. There’s hardly anybody now because it’s late. It must be after noon—my impetuous shadow is right under my feet. The only person around is an old man with a gray beard who’s sitting on a wooden crate next to a long gas can. Farther along, two guys are unloading some cardboard from a three-ton truck. They look at me out of the corners of their eyes as they keep working, panting like runaway buffalo.
“You’re too late, kid. Everybody’s gone,” the old man says, still staring at the highway. The cars race by and move off into the distance. The sun is ergastulated under the rocks, kicking up burning dust, shards of insolar high tide. “The early bird catches the worm, that’s for sure!” he continues absently, moving only his lips. He’s got tanned skin and large ears with curly white hair sticking out of them. He’s wearing a cowboy hat and huaraches made from old tires.
“Did you get here late too?”
The old man doesn’t respond. Seems like he didn’t hear me. The guys are still unloading the truck and piling the cardboard on wooden pa
llets that a forklift operator moves into a squalid warehouse.
“The only thing we old people are good for is storing worms. And we never get anywhere either early or late. Actually, we don’t even get anywhere in the first place—not even death wants to carry me off. Yet here I still am, waiting but not anticipating anything,” the old man grumbles, as if he’s been suddenly been brought back from his daydreaming. He has just two or three teeth hanging from his gums like stalactites.
“Will anyone else be coming by?”
“Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes they’ve got night work and come looking for cheap labor to spread asphalt on the bridges or highways, but as far as I know, there hasn’t been any work lately. Hardly anybody’s working at night anymore because it’s double the pay and the recession has hit people hard. Back in my salad days, when I was stronger than those two bozos put together”—he raises his eyebrows toward the two kids who are still unloading—“I thought I could drink the entire ocean in one gulp! But everything eventually wears out from use. The same way life slips out of our hands, in the end everything becomes useless.”
The old man is quiet, his wrinkled eyes still gazing off at the horizon.
“Hey, are you drunk?”
The old man looks at me for the first time. His eyes are so wrinkled that his eyebrows tumble slantwise like white vines down to his cheeks. He grimaces and looks back at the highway.
“Everybody’s already gone.” And he sits there like a rock under the embers of the sky.
After hours of waiting here in the heat, it seems nobody’s coming to hire. The old man stays tamped down there atop his crate, staring into the distance. I go reptilicate under a shabby Exxon billboard that’s dribbling a bit of shade. I’m hungry, thirsty and hungry. The guys finished unloading the truck a while ago and have already sifted away through the cracks. The sun’s so strong that it dissolves even my thoughts into a prolonged buzz.