Bodega Dreams

by Ernesto B. Quinonez

  “Shit, man, she ain’t gold. She ain’t the fucken Virgin Mary.”

  “Blanca’s Pentecostal, bro. Not Catholic.”

  “Whatevah the fuck she is. All the guys really want is to fuck her, so why do they keep her in some fucken glass case?”

  “Yo, respect that shit, Sapo.”

  “Wha’ for? She ain’t no angel. Yo, my aunt was Pentecostal and she, bro, she has fucked half the men in her congregation. Esa ha cojido mas huevos que una sartén.”

  “Respect, Sapo. Blanca believes in that shit, so—” Sapo would cut me off.

  “So you like her, thass all. Because it’s really bullshit. But you like her so you riding that shit, bro. But you know it’s all bullshit. Yo, check this out, my moms prays to her saint, Santa Clara, every day at Saint Cecilia’s. She lights all these fucken candles so the Virgin will give her the numbers. When that bitch saint tells my moms the Lotto numbers, then I’ll believe. Yo, I’ll believe. Yo, I’ll believe so bad I’ll buy Santa Clara a fucken wax museum.”

  •

  MY MOTHER hated Sapo. “I don’t want to see you hanging around with that demonio,” she’d say to me. But I never listened, because Sapo meant adventure. Sapo meant we could steal beer and drink it together. He meant flying kites on the roof of a tenement building, both high on his weed. We loved flying kites but it wasn’t the pot that made the flying adventurous, it was the Gillette blades. We would buy one pack of those thin blades and glue razors onto the edges of our kites. Now we had flying weapons, kites able to cut the strings of other people’s kites in midair. It was aerial warfare. We would look up at the sky and see a kite and then maneuver our kites toward it. Sapo was brilliant at this. He didn’t really have to get that close or as high, all he had to do was get his kite with its blade edges to brush up against the string of the other kite. Then, without that person knowing it, his string would go limp and he’d think that it had just snapped, but no, Sapo had cut it. Then I would run downstairs and track the kite, which would soon come crashing to the ground or on some rooftop or somewhere. I would collect our spoils of war, which we would sell to some kid and split the money.

  My father understood where we were living. He knew, and when I would come home with bruises or a black eye he never lost his cool. I liked my father, and my father liked Sapo. He knew the importance of having someone there to watch your back. It was important to have a pana, a broqui. But my mother didn’t get it. And like my mother, that’s what Blanca could never understand. Sapo was important to me. Sapo had arrived at a time when I needed someone there, next to me, so I could feel valuable. My childhood and adolescent life had been made up of times with him, as I later wanted my adult life to be made up of times with Blanca. It was hard to split the two.

  “You know, Sapo,” I said to him one day as we were preparing to fly kites on the roof of a project, “if we could ride on top of these things, we could get out of here. You know?”

  “Why would you wanna fucken leave this place?” he said with his Sapo smile, showing all his teeth as he glued some razors to his kite. “This neighborhood is beautiful, bro.”

  “Yeah, you’re right, pana,” I said to him, but knew I didn’t mean it. I gave my kite to the wind, which took it with a hiss, and I thought of Blanca and let out more string.

  ROUND 2

  Willie Bodega

  IN the eighth grade I applied to the High School of Art and Design on Fifty-seventh Street and Second Avenue. When I was accepted a lot of things seemed possible. I now left East Harlem every day and without my quite knowing it, the world became new.

  Little by little the neighborhood’s petty street politics became less important. I started to hang out less with Sapo, who had already dropped out. When we did meet on the street it was like we were long-lost brothers who hadn’t seen each other in years. Regardless of the distance created, I did know that he was still my pana, my main-mellow-man. I knew that if I went to Sapo and said some guys wanted to jump me, he’d round up a crew for me, a clique from 112th and Lex or from another block. Sapo knew a lot of blocks. He knew just about all the guys that lived in the neighborhood. Most of them owed Sapo one thing or another, or were just scared of him and would do as he said, no questions asked.

  In my senior year at Art and Design, I learned about the Futurists. I wanted to do something like they had done. The Futurists had been a malcontent group of artists at the beginning of the century who loved speed and thought war was good, the “hygiene of humanity.” To them it was important to begin again. Culture was dead and it was time for something new. Burn all the museums! Burn all the libraries! Let’s begin from scratch! were some of their battle cries, and although most of them were, like their leader, Marinetti, from upper-middle-class backgrounds and not from the slums like myself, I liked them because I could relate to their anger. I realized that by reinventing culture, they were reinventing themselves. I wanted to reinvent myself too. I no longer wanted the world to be just my neighborhood anymore. Blanca thought the same, and when we started going out we would talk about this all the time.

  “Julio, don’t you hate it when people from the neighborhood who somehow manage to leave change their names? Instead of Juan, they want to be called John.”

  “I see your point. But what’s in a name, anyway? A Rivera from Spanish Harlem by any other name would still be from Spanish Harlem.”

  Blanca laughed and called me stupid. Then she said, “I have an aunt named Veronica. When she married this rich guy from Miami, she changed her name to Vera.”

  “That’s wack,” I said.

  “I’m not going to do that. I’m going to keep my name, Nancy Saldivia, and my friends can always call me Blanca. The only time I’ll change my name is when I get married.”

  I could have married Blanca right then and there. Instead we enrolled at Hunter College, because we knew we needed school if we were ever going to change ourselves. We got married the following year. Those were the days when all conversations seemed as important as a cabinet crisis. We’d always talk about graduating and saving up to buy a house. About children who looked like me and slept like her. With Blanca next to me, El Barrio seemed less dirty, life less hard, God less unjust. Those were the good days, when Blanca and I worked hard to invent new people. It was important to have someone help you as you grew and changed.

  •

  THAT’S WHAT it was always about. Shedding your past. Creating yourself from nothing. Now I realize that that’s what attracted me to Willie Bodega. Willie Bodega didn’t just change me and Blanca’s life, but the entire landscape of the neighborhood. Bodega would go down as a representation of all the ugliness in Spanish Harlem and also all the good it was capable of being. Bodega placed a mirror in front of the neighborhood and in front of himself. He was street nobility incarnated in someone who still believed in dreams. And for a small while, those dreams seemed as palpable as that dagger Macbeth tried to grab. From his younger days as a Young Lord to his later days as Bodega, his life had been triggered by a romantic ideal found only in those poor bastards who really wanted to be poets but got drafted and sent to the front lines. During that time Bodega would create a green light of hope. And when that short-lived light went supernova, it would leave a blueprint of achievement and desire for anyone in the neighborhood searching for new possibilities.

  It was always about Bodega and nobody else but Bodega and the only reason I began with Sapo was because to get to Bodega, you first had to go through Sapo.

  Anyway, it was Sapo who introduced me. Sapo would knock at my door at crazy hours of the night.

  “Yo, Chino, man, whass up? You know yo’r my pana, right? And like, you know yo’r the only guy I can trust, right? I mean, we go way back.” He’d rattle out credentials as if I might deny him the favor. Then after recapping our friendship from the fourth grade to the adult present he would say, “So, mira, I have this package here and bein’ that yo’r the only guy I can trust, you know, can I leave it here wi’choo, Chino?”
Of course I knew what was in the paper bag. Blanca did too, and she had fits.

  “You know he’s bad news. Always has been. I don’t want you around Enrique.”

  “What are you, my mother?”

  “He’s a drug dealer, Julio.”

  “Man, you’re brilliant, Blanca. What could have possibly given him away?” The honeymoon had been over for months.

  “What is your problem? You know, Julio, I married you because I thought you had brains. I thought you had more brains than most of the f-f-fucks in this neighborhood.” When Blanca cursed, I knew she was mad. Even when she was angry I could detect some hesitation, a stutter before the curse. Blanca measured her curses very carefully. She didn’t waste too many.

  “Just look at Enrique,” she continued. “He has all these women who sleep with him hoping to rip him off when he falls asleep. So he brings his dope here so you, my idiot husband, can guard it while he has a great time!”

  “So what’s wrong with that? It’s not like we have to change it and make a bottle for it.”

  “Dios mío! Enrique might have some money and drive a BMW but he still lives in the same roach-infested buildings that we do. He can’t leave because his money is only good here. You don’t see him living on Eighty-sixth Street with the blanquitos, do you?”

  “Did you figure all this out by yourself, Blanca?” I acted more interested in looking for the remote, so I could switch on the television.

  “Did it ever occur to you,” I said after finding it under the sofa cushions, “that maybe Sapo likes it here? Maybe, like a pig, Sapo likes the mud. Not everybody wants to go to college, Blanca.” I switched on the TV and began to surf. “Not everyone wants to save up. Buy a little house in the Bronx. Raise some brats. You think everyone wants what you want?”

  “What we want, Julio, what we want.” She pointed at the two of us.

  “Blanca, I hate that supermarket job and I’ve no classes tonight so don’t ask me right now what I want. Right now just let me watch Jeopardy, okay?” She went over to switch the television off. She stood in between the remote and the television so that I couldn’t turn it back on from the sofa.

  “I don’t like that receptionist desk, either.” Blanca stepped forward and snatched the remote from my hand. “But unlike you, I’m almost finished at Hunter. Maybe if you would stop hanging around with Sapo, you could finish up before the baby arrives. We’re going to need real money, real jobs.”

  “Ahh, Blanca, this is all reruns. It’s all been said before. Come on. You may know what to do when you get that degree; me, I don’t care. I’m getting it because I like books and all that stuff. Give me the remote.” Blanca sat down on the edge of the sofa next to me. She was calm, staring straight ahead, avoiding any possibility of eye contact. When she did this, I knew a little speech was coming.

  “Julio, I know how you feel about your studies. I do. But I’m only thinking about the baby. I would have preferred to have waited a year or two after we graduated, but it didn’t work out that way.”

  “Oh, so it’s my fault, right?”

  “It’s no one’s fault. Look, I don’t intend to keep badgering you about finishing school. And who knows what you’ll do when you finish. I wish you’d talk to me about it.” Her tone changed, a bit more angry. “But if you’re up to something, something stupid with Sapo that’s going to get you in some trouble, I want to hear about it. I want to hear it from you.” Blanca faced me. Her hazel eyes stared fiercely into mine. I blinked. She didn’t. She poked a finger in my chest. “I want to hear it, understand? From you and not from someone else’s mouth. From you. So I can decide if I’m going to stay with you or not. I want to know. At least give me that. One hundred percent of that. If you are up to something illegal, you tell me. Let me decide for myself if I want to stay with you, if I’m going to be one of those wives whose husbands are in jail. I’m willing to put up with a lot, but I want to be told. If you keep me in the dark it’s like insulting me. And you know Enrique is trouble.”

  “Blanca, I’m here with you, right? Have I ever been in any trouble? I’m here, right?”

  “But what if one day Enrique doesn’t tell you where he is taking you and actually takes you somewhere bad? What if the police bust him and since you were with him you get in trouble too? That happens a lot, you know.”

  “Sapo would never do that to me.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I know.”

  “Julio, when we were teenagers at Julia de Burgos, I knew guys had to play this macho game and I knew you didn’t really want to play but you had to. Even though you were this kid who just wanted to paint. I liked you even back then.”

  “I liked you too—”

  “No, let me say this, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I remember when they would call you on the loudspeaker to go down to the office and paint this for Mrs. So-and-So, or paint a mural for an assembly. It happened a lot. Sometimes you would miss all eight periods because you were painting something for some teacher. I remember how cool you thought it was that you were singled out and had this special privilege. But I knew you were being ruined by those terrible teachers. You were just a kid. You should have been in a classroom and they didn’t care about you, they only wanted you to make their assemblies look good.”

  “So what are you getting at, Blanca?”

  “Listen, I know this neighborhood, Julio. Just because I go to church doesn’t mean I don’t know this neighborhood. Here it only matters what they can break, take, or steal from you. I know that Sapo is your friend. I know that. But his friends are not your friends. His friends don’t have friends.” I saw her point. It was a good one. But I just played it off as if she was wrong and told her to go to sleep. Without saying another word Blanca handed the remote back and slowly walked into the bedroom. I guess she’d had her say and was leaving it up to me.

  •

  BUT THE fights with Blanca over Sapo only got worse. Finally, during her second trimester, Blanca didn’t even bother, more out of preoccupation with the baby than out of hopelessness. When she knew I was going to hang with Sapo, she would throw her hands up in disgust and ask the Lord for forgiveness. To forgive me, that is, never her. Always me. This also meant I couldn’t touch her. I was impure and her body, round as the moon, was still the temple.

  I can’t say I blamed her. When I asked her to marry me, her pastor, Miguel Vasquez, had warned her that if she married me—a worldly person, a mundane—she’d lose the privilege of playing the tambourine in front of the congregation. That meant a lot to Blanca. At times she’d beg me to convert so she could be in good grace again. Besides, she hated going to church by herself. Now I know about wanting some sort of recognition, of wanting to have some sort of status, but when I think about yelling things like Cristo salva! I get the heebie-jeebies. You don’t know what it’s like inside a Pentecostal church full of Latinos. They really get down to some serious worshiping, with tambourines here, tambourines there, some guy beginning to wiggle on the floor because he has the Holy Ghost in him. The pastor gives his speech, yelling about Christ coming, every week Christ is coming. Christo viene pronto! Arrepiéntete! Arrepiéntete! Then an entire band goes to the platform and begins to jam on some of that religious salsa. It’s like a circus for Christians. But the one thing you could never make fun of about Pentecostals was their girls. They had the prettiest church girls in the neighborhood. You knew their beauty was real because they didn’t wear any makeup and still looked good. And I had married one of the the prettiest. Like with Sapo while I was growing up, I needed Blanca with me so I could feel valuable. No, I didn’t want to mess that up.

  •

  THEN ONE day when I came home from work and was getting my books to go and meet Blanca at Hunter, I got a call from Sapo.

  “Yo, Chino, whass up?”

  “Whass up, man.”

  “So like, can you do me a solid? Like, you my pana, right? You know, like the day Mario DePu
ma jumped yo’ ass at school? Who was there to save you from that fucken Italian horse? I mean, I know you didn’t back down and shit but, like, he was fuckin’ you up pretty bad.”

  “Sapo, I’m in a rush. Are you gettin’ somewhere or just swimmin’ laps?”

  “Yo, I hear that. All right, you know that taped-up paper bag I left wi’choo lass night?”

  “Yeah, but if you picking that up you gonna have to wait, bro. Because I have to go to class and meet Blanca.”

  “Oh, I’m touched, Jane and Joe Night School. How sweet.”

  “Whatever, bro. Look, I have to get off.”

  “Pero, bro, no corra, I call to ask ya if, like, could you drop it off for me?”

  “What the fuck! Sapo, you think I was fucken born yesterday? Yo, I’m not going to do your dirty work, what the fuck. Me letting you keep that shit in my place is one thing, taking it around is another—”

  “Hold your caballos, bro, like I wouldn’t be askin’ ya unless I knew it was somethin’ easy and not out of your way.”

  “Yeah, well it’s way out of my way. I have to go to class, man, I’ll see you around.” I was ready to hang up.

  “Nah, wait! Bro, that’s the beauty of it. You’d be droppin’ those fucks right at Hunta. Yo, I swera-ma-mahthah. There’s a guy in the library. You know where the library at Hunta is, don’cha?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Well, just put the bag in a backpack and he’ll take it. It’s no big deal. You’ll lose the backpack but it’s a cheap fucken bag anyway. My bro, you even know the dude. Tweety, remember him? Tweety from Julia de Burgos? Later on everyone started calling him Sylvester b’cause when he talked he gave you the weather. Remember him?”

  “Ho, shit, that guy still alive?”

  “Alive and spitting. Yeah, so Chino, come on. Some rich white nigga on Sixty-eighth Street ordered all this shit for a party in one of those penthouses by Park.”