by Aura Xilonen
“Yes.”
“And what did he tell you?”
“That I had worms.”
* * *
[“And not just worms, ma’am—he’s not getting enough calcium or any other vitamins and minerals. Just look at those blotches on his skin. The boy’s so malnourished he’s practically anemic. Are you sure you’re feeding your son properly?”
“He’s not my son, doctor, and I give him lots of garlic for the worms.”]
The shelter’s showers are in a cement room at the back of the gym. There’s hardly ever hot water. In fact, the two times I’ve showered it was with cold water. When I get out of the shower, it’s still raining.
After installing the speed bags, Coach Truddy tells me amid the din of the raindrops on the tin roof, “The punching bag . . . with sand and sawdust . . . pieces of wood . . . get a . . . tomorrow. Do you know how to sew . . . ? It doesn’t matter . . . help . . . daughter . . . I’ll take . . . punching bag . . . in the end . . . installed . . . mount . . . tensors . . . hinges . . . ha-ha-ha . . .”
I can barely hear him. The noise of the rain on the roof is earsplitting. But I agree to everything he says, my donkey ears pricked up as if I were listening to it all.
* * *
[“What the hell, boss, next time I’ll kick you in the nuts!”
“And why’s that, greaseball?”
“You stuck me with that pompous ass.”
“Calm down, ape-face. That vato just wants someone to talk to—he’s lonely.”]
I’m reading one of the library’s six books when somebody knocks on the door of my room.
“I’m reading, Naomi. Did you already finish the book you checked out?”
“You have a visitor,” says Mrs. Merche on the other side of the door.
My heart leaps wildly. But before I can even imagine that it might be Aireen who’s come, pleading, to leap into my arms and cut off our breath with kisses, that lady Double-U bounds into the room wearing a platinum-blond wig, a minidress, and gold high heels and carrying a small gold purse bedazzled with little rhinestones.
“Oh, damn, I caught you dressed, papito, what a shame—I was hoping to see you naked again,” she laughs.
Mrs. Merche peeks in and sees my startled face, and I see her disapproving one.
“Everything all right?” the cook asks in her sternest tone.
“Yeah, yeah, everything’s fine,” Double-U interrupts. “Could you just give us a few minutes so we can take care of a little business that doesn’t concern you?”
Mrs. Merche interrogates me with a reproving look.
“I just want to chitchat with my nephew, who’s harder to track down than a kilo of adamantium in firecracker country.”
“I’ll leave the door open in case you want to take off running, son,” Mrs. Merche snarks. She looks Double-U up and down one last time and then goes off grumbling down the hall.
“What gives? You’ve found yourself a cranky mom now, kid? You should have let me know the position was open so I could apply—I’d be happy to breastfeed you!” She lets out the disheveled laugh of a boisterous chatterbox.
“What are you doing here?” I break in, my brow furrowed.
Double-U stops fluttering around my room, where she’s already touched everything—the clock, the wardrobe, the table—and sits down on the bed.
“First of all”—she lowers her voice, as if she didn’t want me to hear her—“I want to apologize for the other night. I shouldn’t have . . . you know, I was very inconsiderate. See, I’ve always been really selfish. I didn’t think about how I might be hurting you, and I did. I’m really sorry about that. Truly. I went out to look for you that night, but you zipped off faster than a snake. I even talked to some police officer friends of mine who patrol the area and asked them to look for you and make sure nothing happened to you, since you’d left your boots at my house. They told me they spotted you and you took off running like a shot, and you’re so slippery, they couldn’t catch you.” She pauses to take a breath. “I’m truly sorry, kid, I didn’t think you’d get so upset. I thought I was doing something big to change things in this fucking country, but I didn’t know how to handle the situation. I was all dazzled from suddenly becoming famous overnight.” She pauses again. She examines her fingernails and then looks up and meets my eyes with hers, which are shadowed in gold and blue and festooned with kilometric curly black eyelashes. “Do you forgive me, kid?”
I don’t say either yes or no. In her masked eyes, like the shoulder of a wide highway traced by eyeliner and mascara, I see sadness—but it’s a hard sadness, as if melancholy or whatever had solidified behind her peepers. Or maybe her sadness is a deceitful regret. I don’t know.
“How did you find me?” I ask harshly.
She half smiles. In that moment, just in that moment, for a fraction of an instant, I see real melancholy, a faint spark behind all her makeup. Then it disappears and immediately the calcareous Double-U is back again.
“Oof, don’t even ask. I went all over the place. I even met your enormous friends from that video they uploaded to YouTube, which has overtaken mine in number of hits. Sniff. Over twelve million and still going up like a rocket . . . You sure gave that crazy vato quite a wallop. By the way, those big guys are looking for you too. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Day before yesterday I waited a long time in front of that building where I found you wearing those gloves, and I saw a really pretty girl arrive; superlative reporter that I am, I thought she might be able to give some hints as to your whereabouts. I asked her about you, and she was nervous at first, but then she told me she did know you but she didn’t know where you were, but that I could ask a friend of hers who’d been there and helped her when you passed out on the street, offering to take you to the hospital in a taxi. Did you really pass out? Anyway, to make a long story short, she gave me the guy’s number and this morning I went to visit him at the hospital and he gave me the address of this dump. That quack isn’t very cooperative. What’s his name? Hang on, I have it written down right here. Leonardo Zubirat? You know him? Is he a friend of yours? ’Cause if he is, oh man, nice bunch of friends you’ve got. But you know how I am. I told him I’d accuse him of kidnapping, attempted homicide, unlawful deprivation of liberty, slander, defamation, being ugly, faggotry, and any other bullshit I could think of in the moment. I’m an expert with that kind of accusation, you know—just ask my ex-husband. Anyway, I was going to come here earlier but the goddamn rain has been a real bitch . . . Oh, by the way, your new mom let me in and she thinks I’m your aunt, all right?” She pauses as a bolt of lightning cracks across the sky and we hear a long roll of thunder. “Is it true you’re going to start boxing to win some money for this dump?”
“It’s not a dump.”
“Fine, then, sassbucket, I take it back.”
She gets up from the bed and goes over to the window. She pulls back the curtains and looks out at the shelter’s courtyard, which is filled with puddles. The rain keeps running down the windowpanes, and the blue of twilight is fading.
“I have a plan! Don’t you want to hear it?”
“No.”
“It’s so you’ll forgive me, kid, and that way you win and I don’t lose,” says Double-U, still staring out the window. The streetlights are lit up with mercury needles like darts falling at random. “Come on! It’s nothing too over the top.” She bends her knee toward the ceiling to rest her feet from those stilts she’s tottering around on, and her skirt scoots a couple of inches higher on her thighs. She’s not wearing pantyhose, and I can almost sense she’s not wearing any underwear either.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“Coming looking for me. Trying to change the world. Making plans and more plans. What the fuck do you want from me? What are you looking for?! . . . I’m nothing . . . I’m a nobody, always
have been, and you are somebody—look at yourself, you’ve got the whole future in front of you, or what the hell ever.”
Double-U looks away from the window, as if she’s suddenly lost interest in watching swampy puddles form in the courtyard, and stares at me instead. It seems like the rain has gotten stuck to her eyes through a transmutation of the elements, because a frail, minuscule, watery thread starts slowly, very slowly, cutting down her cheek till it reaches her fire-engine-red lips.
“You’re wrong about that.”
I don’t know what to think. Other people’s tears are outside my fucking wheelhouse, out of reach of my possibilities. I don’t try to do anything because I don’t know what to do. The lady dribbles a little as she readjusts her skirt to its original position.
“You’re right, this is really dumb.” She starts to leave but then pauses in the doorway and says, without looking at me, “Just do me one last favor, will you?”
“What?”
“Give me an interview about your fight and I’ll promote it for you.”
Double-U doesn’t wait for my answer. She hurries out of the room and I hear her high heels disappear into the rain.
* * *
[“Hey, boss, a guy from the bank really is out there looking for you right now. Should I tell him you died yesterday or the day before?”
“Don’t be a moron, you dodecaphonic shitwit. Tell him I’m traveling or out of the country or to go fuck himself and you don’t know anything at all because you’re a goddamn useless mental midget.”
“Will do, Jefe. I hope they don’t nab you the way they did El Tigre de Santa Julia.”
“Shut up, you variegated varicella, and let me shit in peace.”]
The sky is quiet; the only sound is the moon sucking at the sunken puddles. I thought I wasn’t going to be able to sleep after Double-U’s visit and everything she told me. I start going over it as I lie there in bed, especially the part about Aireen. But before I can get through the whole thing, I am delimbed under the covers like Coyolxauhqui’s twin brother.
It’s my third day of training, and I have to come back to life from the bottom of the rock, from the bottom of my own muscles that have turned into sarcophagi.
3:47.
I leap out of bed.
The sky is limpid, as if the curve of the Earth were a huge retina and all obstacles had been swept away by a giant eyelid.
I feed the chickens, which have contracted head colds.
The garden still has the ravages of the drowned; since there were no flowers to ruin, the downpour ruined many of the plants. I pick up the broom and start sweeping the water toward the drain. Then I keep going with the rest of the roof. I adjust some rotten planks from the planters and tie them in place with wire. Then I go downstairs and keep disheveling the puddles in the courtyard toward the drain. I never, not in a single one of the fucking novels from the bookstore, read about a fucking character working to sweep up the mess around him. Or washing the dishes or callusing his hands with everyday toil. Fucking loser-ass writers see life all clean, without any wrinkles to sully their goddamn white pages.
Wells Park starts to fill up with boys and girls. They come out of the woodwork. It’s as if after the storm comes movement. Some gringas with muddy workout gear clinging to their curves are jogging together. Others are out in hats and sunglasses. Up ahead, people are bending and straightening up. A few chaneques are gamboling and leaping and crouching. I’ve already done one more lap around the park than I did yesterday. My shins are hurting less and less. My sneakers are still damp, even though I put them next to the fire to dry yesterday.
“That lady’s not your aunt,” Mrs. Merche said as soon as I went into the kitchen to drop off the sneakers and get something to eat.
“She’s a friend.”
“She’s a hussy.”
“No.”
“I wasn’t born yesterday, kid.”
“She told me you act like my mother.”
“If I were your mother, I’d have spanked you already.”
“What for?”
“For being a troublemaking mongrel.”
In the park, the birds start simmering in the trees. I leave the path, cross the street, and round the block. I climb up the stone steps and shove open the door. I race up the stairs and knock on her door.
I knock again, louder.
A light goes on inside.
I knock a third time.
“What’s going on?”
I knock again.
Aireen opens the door. Her hair is a mess. She’s wearing pajamas with little pink bears on them. She’s surprised to see me standing there, sweaty, holding a little piece of paper.
“Is someone after you, dude?”
“Is this your handwriting?”
“What?”
I hold out the piece of paper and she takes it in her drowsy fingers. She rubs her eyes with her other hand. She reads it. She looks up. “No, dude. This isn’t mine.”
Without saying anything, just like that, out of the blue, I plant a kiss on her sleepy lips. Like that, swift, adolescent. Taking her face in my hands. A clean kiss, no tongue. Just my lips and hers.
Immediately I turn around and take off toward the street like a bat out of hell.
* * *
[“Didn’t you say you were going to the restaurant right now to eat with the love of your life, Jefe?”
“Yes indeedy, you pitted spermatozoid. You look after the fucking shop. Careful you don’t fuck it up.”
“Oh, that’s great, boss, because your missus just called to tell you she’s on her way with your little misters. Apparently one of them fell at school and broke his snout.”]
I train harder today; my veins bulge from the effort. I deliver a few solid blows to the punching bag stuffed with sand and sawdust that Coach Truddy brought in, sewn by his daughter.
“You hit like the devil, boy, but that’s not enough to win a fight. You also need brains and heart,” the coach says, bracing the bag for me and getting redder with every kick. When he gets tired, he takes me over to the speed bag, panting his guts out. “The speed bag,” he says in a strangled voice, getting in position, “is all about rhythm. Look. One with the right and one and two with the left. Then you change stance: one and two with the right and one with the left. Got it? Like that, slowly at first, really slowly, and then gradually pick up the pace.”
“How’s it going, Coach Truddy?” Mr. Abacuc is coming toward us, holding a few posters.
“Well, I don’t know, Mr. Shine. The boy still hits the bag however and whenever he feels like it, and he still seems a bit too stubborn to learn. I’d say he’s naturally hardheaded. Instructions go in one ear and I watch them sail out the other.”
“Oh dear, Coach Truddy! Do you think he can be ready tomorrow?”
“What? Hadn’t we agreed on the 17th?”
“There’s a benefit fight tomorrow, and they need a competitor. Mrs. Marshall learned about it and asked if we might do them the favor . . . You know how Mrs. Marshall is. I tried to refuse, but she always works her charms on me.”
“What charms would those be? She just uses her influence to beef up donations. The old harpy!” Coach Truddy objects, irritated.
“Don’t be so hard on her, Coach. It’s because of her and her marvelous proposals to the citizen board that we have those big, magnificent holes in our roof.”
“Bah!” Coach Truddy glances up at the leaks, which are starting to look like stalactites.
“I want to fight.” I interrupt their conversation and step in front of Mr. Abacuc.
“Do you feel ready, Liborio?”
I don’t have to think about it long, so I answer with absolute sincerity:
“No.”
“What are you smiling about?” Naomi asks me.
I ignore her
and keep reading. The library has a new patron, a little squirt who spotted the Bambi book and is really going at it as he scribbles on the deer’s horns.
“Is it because you’re going to be boxing tomorrow?” Naomi continues, looking for the gazillionth time at the poster for Saturday’s event that I tacked up on the wall beside the blackboard. “Even though your name isn’t on the poster?”
The poster says in English and Spanish:
Saturday Boxing 6:00 P.M. Sábado de Box 18:00. Ford Foundation Center. Contribution: $1,000.00. Donativo: $1,000.00. For our children. Por nuestros niños. Poverty Association. John Pantos vs. Dulls Jara. Dwight Amir vs. Alanis Stanton. Jerry Knox vs. Will Servin. H. G. Flores vs. Anatoly Plinsk. Jim Vernon vs. Auden Reed. Cocktail dinner after the event. Cena coctel después del evento. Your strength inspires us. Tu fuerza nos ayuda.
The book I’m reading is called 1958-1959 Report on the Government Deficit, and I haven’t understood a word. But it seemed like the most appealing title out of all the ones we’ve managed to acquire for our library.
* * *
[In other words, as Jefe used to say, “When there isn’t any bread, eat tortillas, you pugilistic pain-in-the-ass,” though it’s really hard to find cornmeal on this side of the border and even harder to find tortillas that aren’t cold corn chips from Taco Grill or, in any event, books that touch my brainmeal with their ill-fitting words.]
My eyes keep automatically skimming over the words in English in this old book I don’t actually understand, but I don’t care—I’m thinking about other things. I suck on my upper lip; I touch it softly with the tip of my tongue.
I smile again.
“Or are you smiling like a slug because that book is really funny?” Naomi asks again from over next to the boy at the little table coloring Bambi’s fur purple. She wheels herself over to me. “Could you loan it to me when you finish?”