Efrain's Secret

by Sofia Quintero

  I go to tell Nestor that I quit.

  Inextricable (adj.) hopelessly entangled

  I get back to Nestor’s apartment to find a new twist on the usual commotion because now the drama is about me.

  Marlene throws open the door and hollers over her shoulder, “Here he is, estúpido!”

  Then, as I step into the apartment, Claudia pushes past me while shaking a few drops of baby formula onto her wrist. She says, “Efrain’s home now, Nestor, so you can shut up and give me the baby.”

  Nestor darts out of the living room, bouncing Claudia’s crying baby in his arms. His eyes cut into me as he hands off the baby to his sister. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Who are you?” I ask. “My father?”

  We notice Marlene standing beside me, hands on hips, lips all pouty. “Mind your business, Marlene,” shouts Nestor. “Go do your homework.”

  “You ain’t my father either, Nestor!”

  “That’s right, I ain’t Papi. And you lucky, too. He would’ve given you a galletazo across that smart mouth of yours by now.”

  “Whatever.”

  “E., I need to speak to you in private.” Nestor starts down the hallway toward his bedroom, and I follow. He hurls a few curses at the hole where his knob used to be and slams the door behind us. “Where the hell have you been, man?”

  “What do you mean where’ve I been? Where I always am. In school.”

  Before I can correct myself, Nestor beats me to it. “I heard you got kicked out this morning.”

  “Not kicked out. Suspended. Yo, who told you that?”

  “Never mind who told me. They said you had some beef with stupid-ass Lefty and got thrown out of school around ten o’clock. Where you been all this time?”

  “Not that it’s any of your business—”

  “No, you wrong about that, E. It is my business. It’s totally my business.”

  “—but I came over here first, and nobody answered the door.” I feel like an idiot for even telling him that. Since when do I answer to Nestor?

  “Bullshit. They finally sprung me about eleven, and I’ve been here ever since. Not once did I hear the buzzer.”

  “Well, that’s not on me. Maybe you were asleep.”

  “Damn right I was sleeping. I just spent almost thirty-six hours in jail.”

  “Oh, and I didn’t have to sleep in a cell?”

  “At least you got to walk—”

  “Walk? This might ruin everything I’ve been working my whole life for!”

  “—without posting no bail. My daddy didn’t come rescue me.”

  I shove him. “Fuck you, Nestor!” Then I punch him in the chest. “At least your father didn’t beat the shit out of you. Your mother never put you out in the street. Why the fuck do you think instead of being home with my family, I’m here in the middle of you people and your never-ending bullshit?”

  Nestor looks down at his chest and places his hand where I punched him. We just stand there heaving, and the entire apartment is frozen in a rare stillness. Then he walks over to the lounge chair and eases himself into it. “E., I’m sorry I came out of pocket like that, but you gotta understand that this isn’t a good look, okay? Not for me, not for you—”

  “What the hell are you talking about already?”

  My question chases away his momentary calmness because he jumps up and screams again. “I’m talking about you not showing up on the block just hours after we got arrested!” Nestor throws up his hands. “Damn, E., if you’re so freakin’ smart, why you make me explain every little thing to you? Use your common sense, bro. Do you know how that looks? The cops have all this intel about things getting hot between Snipes and Hinckley, and everyone’s wondering who’s snitching, and guess who’s Suspect Number One?”

  “Me?” My stomach does somersaults. “I didn’t know a damn thing about Hinckley to be flapping to nobody, let alone the police. Why ain’t they looking at Lefty? I ain’t down with Snipes like that.”

  “Wrong again, Efrain. First of all, that shit with Lefty happened a ways back. Second, I’m down with Snipes, and you’re down with me. I brought you into this—”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “—because you asked me to!”

  I know he’s right, but with the stakes at an all-time high, I can’t bring myself to just cop to it. “Don’t front now like you weren’t stressing me.” And then all these feelings I had when Nestor tried to recruit Chingy come back to the surface. “You weren’t always checking for me like that. You only stepped to me because you figured that when I get to college, I could hook you up with some students, and you could stack more paper and climb the ranks or whatever.” It burns so much to say aloud that I expect steam when my words hit the air.

  Nestor lowers himself back into the leather recliner and rubs his hands over his face. After a long exhale, he finally looks up at me. “You got it twisted, E. I always wanted you to be down with me. But when Chingy shut me out, I wasn’t trying to lose another friend.” He breaks eye contact but keeps saying his piece. “I ain’t got too many of those left, you know. I mean, bona fide friends who truly got my back ’cause it’s my back, you feel me? Not because they want something from me or because it’s good business. Just you, E. I know that you’re down for me whether I’m on the corner slinging or making pizza down the block or whatever. That’s why eventually I did step to you. I needed at least one person in all this bullshit that knows me like that.”

  “Nestor, man, I gotta quit.” It feels so selfish to break this to him now, but I know this is the right thing to do, and doing the right thing should never wait. “I never meant for this to become my way of life. I only got involved because I needed the money for school, and now the only thing I ever wanted from all this is the very thing that’s on the line. I can’t risk it.”

  Nestor exhales again, leaning back in the recliner, folding his arms behind his head and closing his eyes. A minute later, he sits back up and plants his feet on the floor. “I hear you, E. I really do,” he says, his voice soft and heavy. “But I don’t think you’re hearing me. You can’t quit right now. Forget about college—”

  “Forget about college?”

  “There’s something way more important at stake, E. Snipes called a meeting tonight in an hour. I know that you didn’t know anything about what’s going down between Snipes and Hinckley. You didn’t need to know. Didn’t want to know. I didn’t want you to know for your own protection, but all that’s irrelevant. If you don’t show your face tonight, you ain’t showing it at Harvard in September. You ain’t making it out of AC, you hear what I’m telling you? And since I’m the person who brought you into the organization, if you go down, you take me with you.” Nestor leans back in the chair, propping an ankle on the opposite knee like a Corleone. “Now, I ain’t afraid to die,” he says with a quivering voice that betrays his gangster lean. “When I got involved in this, I didn’t fool myself into thinking that I’d be some kind of exception to the risks and pitfalls. But you and me, for all our different goals, ambitions, or whatever, we’re not that different, least of all now.” His eyes travel toward the closed bedroom door, which barely muffles the endless chaos that marks his people. Marlene and Melo arguing over the television remote. Claudia singing along with Rihanna on the radio to her babies. And in a rare appearance, we can even hear their mother yelling in Spanish for all of them to quiet down. Nestor says, “Just like you, the main reason I got into this whole thing is the very thing that’s on the line right now.”

  The weight of the circumstances forces me to lower myself onto the bed. Nestor and I sit there in silence for a few minutes. I finally say, “I’ll go to the meeting tonight, but the second the heat is off, I have to quit, Nestor. When the time comes—and it has to be soon—we have to convince Snipes to let me peace out.”

  Nestor nods. “Good lookin’ out. I appreciate that.”

  “I can’t leave you hanging.” And in that moment, both Efrains are at a tem
porary peace with each other. They both know that the decision to attend the meeting is not completely selfish. Both of them take pride in being a good friend. And with the same forcefulness that Nestor came at me when I walked through the door, I announce, “And then the next step is to get you out of this shit, too.”

  Nestor gives me this smile that for a split second reminds me of Rubio. It takes a moment to place it, but it eventually comes to me. Rubio would give me the same grin whenever I believed in something he knew to be untrue but didn’t want to spoil my wishful thinking, like when I found money under my pillow and thought the tooth fairy left it there. Nestor looks at his watch and then lifts himself out of the recliner. “Look, I’m headed to the block.”

  “When’s the meeting?”

  “Not until six, but a soldier has to show up on the front, especially since I’ve been running around for the past two hours looking for your behind.” Nestor laughs. “Let’s go.”

  “Nah, man, I’m going to have to meet you at Snipes’s.”

  “C’mon, bro—”

  “I’ll be there, I swear. Go back to the block and spread the word that Scout’ll be in the house,” I say. “But I have to head to AC and meet Candace. We haven’t spoken since everything went down. I gotta see her.”

  Nestor is satisfied with that. “I like her for you.” He walks to his door. Before leaving, he shouts, “And don’t even think about being on time. Be early!”

  And just like that, I’m more caught up than ever.

  Renunciation (n.) rejection

  I wait outside the school until the tutoring program ends. Chingy comes through the door and holds it for someone behind him. Candace. My gut smolders as if I’d swallowed a crust of lava. Candace listens to Chingy with the same intensity that he’s speaking. Should I be comforted or bothered by the seriousness of their conversation? Are they discussing me? If they suddenly were to laugh, would I feel better or worse about their closeness?

  I catch up to them as they reach the corner and call out Candace’s name. They stop and turn. Chingy says something to her and continues on his way. As I near Candace, the fury surges over her cheeks and into her eyes. When I reach for her, she backs up a few steps and tries to storm off. “C’mon, ma, don’t be like that.” I grab her arm. “I can explain everything.”

  “What’s there to explain?” she yells as she swats at my hand. “You’re a drug dealer.”

  The words slam me in the gut. Even though I always knew I was committing a crime, I still never thought of myself as a criminal. “I’ve wanted to tell you the truth for the longest, but this is exactly what I was afraid of.”

  Candace sticks her finger in my face. “You should’ve been! Just when people in this school have stopped calling me that K-Ville kid so close to my back that I actually hear them, my boyfriend gets arrested for selling cocaine on the street. Now the same gossips who never had two words for me are in my face twenty-four/seven asking me questions.” She starts to walk away from me. “I’m not doing it, Efrain! I won’t go through that again. Not even for you.”

  I grab her hand. “What are you talking about?” She tries to pull away from me, but I hold tight. “What do you mean you won’t go through this again?” I struggle to check my sudden rage at the idea that Candace is making me pay for someone else’s mistake. “Sounds like you’ve got secrets, too, Candace!”

  We stand there in the middle of the cold street, fuming at each other. “You’re right, Efrain. I do have secrets. Want to hear a secret? Do you remember all those people who broke into stores and stole things after the hurricane? The ‘looters’?” Candace sarcastically squeezes quotation marks in the air. “I was one of them. I didn’t break the window. I didn’t haul off a DVD player or television set. But I stole things. Things that I could. Whatever I could carry to share with other hungry people.”

  I don’t know what hurts more—that Candace didn’t tell me this before or that she believed I would judge her for it. I reach out for her hand one more time, and this time she doesn’t pull away. “Candace, you did what you needed to survive.” I pull her toward me, and she leans into my chest. “Nobody knows what they would do in a situation like that until they’re in it.” I think about how often people are too busy judging what others in dire straits are doing when they should be giving thanks that they are not in a position to know with absolute certainty that they would not do the same. I say, “I totally understand, ma. Trust me, I do.”

  Suddenly Candace pushes away from me. “You don’t have a clue, Efrain. Lie to yourself if you want to, but there’s a big difference between you and me. I didn’t steal those groceries because it was the difference between Hunter and Harvard, so don’t you dare act like we’re peas in a pod, because we’re not.”

  “How are you going to judge me, Candace?” I say. A voice inside of me orders, Square your shoulders, son, and tell that fickle chick to fall back. “You know what? I’m not going to argue with you. I’m doing what I have to do because I’m out here on my own.” Now I’m the one who starts to back off. “I thought you knew something about that, but I was wrong. I always suspected it, too. That’s why I didn’t say anything, so forget you.”

  I brace myself for her to run after me and wild out. I want her to. Cuss me. Grab me. Maybe even hit me. Instead, she yells, “No, Efrain. Forget you.” Even though I don’t turn around, I can see Candace standing there, shaking her head at me. “You didn’t say anything because you wanted to do what you wanted to do even though you know it was wrong. Just like your father.”

  In a flash, I’m in Candace’s face again. I grab at her, but she sees me coming, and slaps my hands away, her eyes locked on mine. The girl is not the least bit shook. “What you gonna do? Hit me? I’m not scared of you.” I reach, Candace blocks. “I stood on the Crescent City Bridge and had the racist-ass Gretna police stick a shotgun in my face to keep me from crossing, so just what do you think you’re going to do to me, Efrain?”

  I fall back, and for a second, Candace actually looks sorry for me. We are more alike than ever, striving to be something good only because others can be so bad. Candace and me, we’re so eager to march forward alone even if we stumble out of bounds. Not for its own sake, though, because pride and independence are virtues. Only because we decided that we cannot rely on anyone to step up for us. It’s not a good look.

  That true voice says, Tell her you’re sorry for the way your actions affected her. But it seems trifling. I’m trifling, putting my hands on her like that. So desperate to touch her, knowing all along if she reached out to me, I would push her away. Why hasn’t Candace walked away from me? I make it right by doing what she won’t.

  I walk away, and because we’re more alike than she thinks, Candace just watches me go.

  Conformist (n.) one who behaves the same as others

  When I hit the block, Nestor says, “Yo, E., LeRon’s got something for you.” He has a cheesy grin on his face, so I suspect his efforts to salvage my name are working. I walk over to LeRon. “What’s up, L.?” I give him a pound and notice the folded sweatshirt draped over his shoulder.

  “Yo, Scout, check it.” LeRon unzips his parka, and who pops out at me but Frazzle. That’s right. Homeboy’s wearing a sweatshirt with that Muppet’s bushy-eyed grille on it.

  “Oh no!” I laugh for the first time in days. “Where’d you get that?”

  “My sister made it for me when I told her how y’all be doing me.” LeRon starts counting the ways on his fingers. “She says I look like him, talk like him, act like him…. Nigga’s even afraid of the dentist like me.” LeRon is so serious, I crack up some more. “What you laughing at, man? Ain’t you ever seen that movie Marathon Man?”

  “No.” I had never even heard of it until now.

  “Peep that shit and see if you ever go to the dentist again.” Then LeRon tosses the sweatshirt hanging over his shoulder at me. “This one’s for you.”

  I catch the sweatshirt and unfold it. Kermit the Frog. I have to s
mile. At least, it ain’t Elmo. LeRon clowns me. “But Kermy’s cool, though,” I pretend to argue. “He writes books, does movies…. He’s, like, a Renaissance frog.”

  LeRon gives me a look like we’re debating capital punishment. “His girlfriend’s a pig, yo.”

  “You don’t know my shorty, so keep her out of it.” My argument with Candace crashes back into my consciousness. I shouldn’t take out my problems with her on LeRon. Least of all now, with all the postraid chisme in the crew, but if he volunteers …

  “Ah!” He points at me. “You were about to wild out, weren’t you? Aha!”

  I head back to Nestor, yelling over my shoulder, “Yo, Frazzle, one more thing. You need to go see the dentist before your teeth start falling out. That be the point.” Nestor’s cracking up. Guess he knew about Kermit before I did. “It ain’t that funny, Elmo.”

  “Nah, I ain’t Elmo, kid.”

  “Yeah, you are. You’re simple, you’re ticklish, you’re stuck at the age of three….” Nestor unzips his leather jacket. “Yooo … it’s Fozzie!” I just lose it. “Man, you cats are taking me back. I forgot all about Fozzie.”

  “Yeah,” says Nestor. “Wocka, wocka, nigga.” It’s a miracle I don’t piss myself, I’m laughing so hard. It’s insane that I’m laughing at all. An alarm on Nestor’s cell phone sounds. “It’s time, y’all.”

  Nestor and I walk down the block, and as we pass the other guys in the crew, they fall in behind us while, across the street, Hinckley’s boys sneer. Nestor elbows me and cocks his head in their direction. “The second we’re gone, they’re going to be all over our side of the street, but that’s all right,” he says. “For the next hour, we grantin’ amnesty, and that’ll be the most paper they’ll see all month.” He holds out his fist, and I give him a pound as I glance over my shoulder. LeRon and a dozen others swagger behind us, blazing mugs across Hunts Point Avenue at the competition. I catch eye with that punk Julian. He spits from the corner of his mouth, but I scoff right back to his face before killing eye contact.