Efrain's Secret

by Sofia Quintero

“Yeah, but you gotta, like, become a model citizen and whatnot.”

  “I can do that.”

  “Yo!”

  We stop in our tracks and turn toward the bark. Julian, Lefty, and three more of his boys cross the boulevard on a diagonal. “Go ahead, E.,” says Nestor. “I got this.”

  As much as I want to jet, I can’t leave Nestor alone in this situation. “He wants me,” I say, the truth burning sour in my dry mouth. “Dude’s been trying to get at me for a minute.”

  “Well, tonight’s not his night, so go home.”

  But a mixture of fear and loyalty freezes me in place. Julian and his boys touch down on our curb and slow their swagger. They stop a few yards from us, and as if moving on instinct, Nestor steps in front of me. “What’s up, Julian?”

  “Fall back, nigga,” he says. “This ain’t with you.”

  “Any beef you’ve got with Scout you got with me,” says Nestor.

  I come out from behind Nestor to stand beside him. “Why you got beef with anybody is beyond me,” I say. My heart pounds as if it wants to leap out of my mouth and scurry for safety. “Ain’t nobody knocking your hustle.”

  Julian steps closer to me, his finger pointing above my head. “Your very presence knocks my hustle, son.” Lefty sneers at me, and I just know he’s the reason behind the static on street. No matter what Nestor wants to believe, I think he’s the police informant, and my arrival on the block made it easy to point everyone’s suspicions in my direction. Lefty has it in for Snipes, and I bet anything he isn’t even that loyal to Hinckley. I have no idea what game he’s running. All I know is that I’m not playing anymore.

  I find the courage to say, “Look, bro, I don’t know what y’all heard about me, but I think you should question the credibility of your sources.” Lefty sucks his teeth, but Julian’s eyes flicker. He’s actually considering what I’m telling him. “Why do you keep checking for me when I’m not the one jumping back and forth across the street?”

  “Real talk,” says Nestor.

  Lefty yells, “Yo, J., I know you ain’t gonna let this Boy Scout son you, man!”

  Julian snaps, “I check for you ’cause I don’t like the cut of your jib.”

  Cut of my jib? Dude’s been watching too many pirate movies. Charge it to my nerves, but this picture of Julian as Captain Jack Sparrow flashes into my head, and I start to laugh. The harder I try to stop, the more I laugh, and Nestor gets it because he mumbles Yaaar! under his breath.

  “You see that?” Lefty says to Julian. “That’s what I’m talking about right there.”

  I collect myself barely in time to see Julian reach into the back of his waistband for a chunk of silver metal.

  Nestor sees it, too, and before I can yell, he leaps on top of me. A girl’s scream from across the street, the pop-pop-pop of Julian’s gun, the fading thud of his posse’s kicks against the pavement—everything that occurs in those seconds lashes into my brain. A burn rips through my side as Nestor’s weight slams against my chest. My hip cracks as our bodies hit the cold pavement.

  “Yo, E.?” Nestor sounds as if he’s the one with a hundred twenty-five pounds pinning him to the ground. “E., you all right?”

  “I’m straight,” I lie. The pain in my side bustles toward the back of my head, which just bounced off the street. “You?” All I can see is the sooty underpass of the Bruckner Expressway above us.

  “I’m good.” He tries to laugh, and that’s how I know he’s lying, too. “But, yo, I think it’s time we found another line of work.”

  This time I let Nestor have his way. “Word is bond,” I say.

  “Nah, man,” says Nestor, more for himself than to me. “Word is born.” I wait for Nestor to laugh again, but if he does, I can’t hear him over the sounds of sirens and screaming. Then I don’t hear anything more.

  Compunction (n.) distress caused by feeling guilty

  I see nothing yet feel everything. When I try to shift my mind off the pain in my side, I realize that my entire back aches. Only pain exists behind the darkness of my eyes, so I make the mistake of opening them.

  My mother, her eyes red and swollen, nestled in crow’s feet. She realizes that I’ve come to and sobs out my name and strokes my hair. Rubio appears behind her. That smile—the same one that tells me he knows something I don’t—fades onto his face. Then the images fast-forward to Nestor sitting in his leather slice of heaven with the same smile only to settle into slow motion. Four shadows crossing the boulevard. Julian’s scowl. A flash of silver. The underpass of the Bruckner Expressway. A flattened wad of gum on the concrete. The darkness again. I flutter my eyes to chase it away.

  “Nestor?” I ask. “How is he?”

  My mother lets out another sob, and Rubio walks away.

  I close my eyes again, yearning for the darkness now. With it comes one of Nestor’s urban legends. He and I are on an elevator with Mrs. Colfax. We are men in suits, she an old lady clinging to her purse. I am the mayor of New York, he is my chief of staff, and we laugh at her failure to recognize us. The elevator stops, and Mrs. Colfax flees. We laugh at her some more, Nestor doing his little dance. The elevator stops again, and I step off. I turn around to say something to Nestor, who is still in the car. Suddenly the doors slam shut and the car plunges, Nestor’s screams fading as it plummets down the shaft. Even though he is already gone, I lunge for him as if I can still save him. Instead, I fall into the shaft, hanging by one hand for my life, my side tearing, my voice echoing Nestor’s name.

  I wake up alone in the dark, calling his name and gripping the bloody bandages over my side.

  Acquiesce (v.) to agree without protesting

  A few days later, they let the kids see me.

  First, Awilda comes with Serenity and the baby. As Junior sleeps on the shoulder of my good side, Serenity bombards me with questions about what happened. “Serenity, that’s so damn rude,” Awilda yells. “You’re embarrassing me.”

  At first, I dodge the questions, patting Junior’s back and thinking about Nestor. He was so wrong about what makes a man. Nes wasn’t a man because he took care of his family by any means necessary. He was a man because he cared enough about them to come home every night. Being there to soothe Melo’s nightmares and not being too macho to kiss him, that’s what made Nestor a man. He was a man for blocking men like Robby who would take advantage of his sisters. Only a man could recognize, never mind appreciate, GiGi for being as smart as she was pretty. I hope Nestor realizes he was wrong and is doing his laugh dance all the way to heaven.

  I finally tell Serenity one of Nestor’s urban legends. She eats it up, at one point yelling, “No! That’s not true. You got that from a movie or something.” She can’t help but giggle, wanting to believe every word I say.

  “You’re right. I’m making it up,” I say. The truth is worse. “Still, you don’t want to end up like me, so listen to your mother.” I don’t care if she only did it to gain favor with Rubio, and she will never hold a candle to my mother, but Awilda is here. Not Chingy. Not Candace. Awilda, and she brought Serenity and Junior with her. And as if she can read my mind and wants to prove her sincerity, she says, “We have to go now, Serenity, so give your brother a kiss and tell him that you’ll see him tomorrow.”

  Then Mandy comes. She just bursts into my room and leaps on my bed. “Efrain!”

  “Ow, kid!”

  Moms appears breathless in the doorway. “Amanda!”

  “It’s okay, Mami.” The first time my mother let me hold her, I was six, my sister about five months. The family kept telling me You’re a big brother now, Efrain. It’s your job to look out for your sister. They put it in my head that I now had some responsibility for Mandy that was different but just as important as my parents, and yet no one would allow me to hold her. I finally complained to my mother, and she called me over and showed me how to hold Mandy, cupping my hand behind her neck to support her soft, tiny head. She felt so heavy in my arms, but the sense of obligation to protect her had
been drilled into me. Even though my arm had fallen asleep, my legs were tired, and the small of my back was aching, I refused to put down my sister.

  That same feeling comes back to me now as Mandy buries her head into my chest. “You’re so stupid, Efrain!” She tightens her grip around me, pressing her forearm against my wound. The pain is excruciating, but I take it. She sobs and repeats, “Why are you so stupid?”

  Even as I wince, I reach up to stroke her hair as she cries. “I know, kid.” Inside I thank Mandy for sharing my bloodlines, for releasing me from the obligation to put on a brave face, for giving me the permission to break. She keeps calling me stupid as she wails into my chest, and every time I kiss her head, I sob, too. “I know.”

  Condolence (n.) an expression of sympathy in sorrow

  “Hi, Efrain.”

  GiGi walks into my hospital room. She has on no makeup, and like a true Halle, she doesn’t need it. In fact, she looks so much prettier without it. No tight jeans or high heels either. Just a pink sweat suit and simple tennis shoes, all with no brand name I recognize. For the first time, GiGi looks like a girl who is pacing herself toward eighteen rather than racing toward twenty-five. She wears her true age well.

  “Hey.” She starts to sit down on the chair by the window, but I say, “No, come here.” I pat the bed beside my knee. “Just promise not to move around a lot, okay?”

  “Okay.” She comes over and eases herself onto the bed. “Do you need anything? Water or something?”

  “No, I’m good, thanks.”

  “Man, I’m so rude. I didn’t bring a card or flowers or anything.” She seems genuinely embarrassed. “I’m so sorry.”

  “That’s all right. I don’t need any of that. You’re enough.” I reach out and pat GiGi’s hand as we allow her tears to flow. We sit there for a few seconds, her gentle sniffles occasionally seeping onto the silence. “You and me, we have a lot in common, GiGi. That’s why we should be friends. I know there was a time you wanted more, but I don’t know … You kind of scared me.”

  “Me?” Her shock surprises me. Don’t girls like GiGi know they’re scary? I thought that knowledge fueled all their sway. But then again, if GiGi knew that about herself, she wouldn’t have been so hurt when I distanced myself from her. “Why would you be scared of me?”

  “I’m not sure, to be honest with you.” It seems like one of those things that takes experience to understand, never mind explain to someone else. “On some level, I just knew that Candace was the better girlfriend for me and Nestor was the better boyfriend for you. Not because he was street or anything like that. Just because Nestor, for whatever reason, wasn’t afraid of all who you were. I mean, he could appreciate it in a way that I don’t think any of us—not me, not Chingy, none of us at school-were grown enough to even see.”

  But GiGi just looks down at her hands, smiling to herself. She probably understands better than I do. Maybe that’s why she came to see me low-key, leaving all the makeup and gear at home. “Nestor loved you like a brother, you know that, right?” Her words switch on my tears, so I just nod. “Before we got together, I had bumped into him at the Hub, you know, and I told him that I had seen y’all on Fulton Street, shopping for clothes or whatever. He said that he lied to you about your boss wanting him to take you to get some new gear. He said, I just wanted to hang out with E. You know, off the block. When we were all broke, E., Chingy, and me, we’d go to the Hub and look through the windows all the time.” GiGi giggles. “I told him that was no big deal, but he felt so bad, Efrain. So when he asked me out, I said yes. I figured He’s friends with Efrain, right? He can’t be bad.”

  Then she brings her hands to her face and starts to sob. I just lie there, staring at the stained tiles on the ceiling of my room. GiGi eventually wipes her face and clears her throat. “What makes this so hard is that we almost did it, Efrain.” I don’t think this is something I can stand to hear right now, but I can’t stop her. “Between you and me, I think we could’ve saved him. Nestor told me about how you guys talked about getting an apartment together once you graduated from AC. He was so excited about that, Efrain. And I said to him, Well, don’t think you’re going to move in with E. and still be slinging while he’s going to college. And he said, I know. But then Nestor said maybe y’all shouldn’t bother ’cause in a year you’d be transferring to another school and moving to Massachusetts or Connecticut or someplace like that. So I said to him, Maybe if you and me are still together when Efrain moves, I can move in when he transfers. But you know, Nes, we’re not going be together if you’re still working that corner. I mean, why go to college if I want to live like that, right?”

  “No doubt.” I truly had GiGi all wrong. A lot of us guys did, Nestor included. Funny how I judged her in the same ways I never wanted anyone to judge me even when I made the choice to live down to the stereotype. I say, “Thanks for coming to see me, ma.”

  She squeezes my hand. “That’s what friends are for.”

  Atone (v.) to repent, make amends

  Just when I accept that he’s not coming to see me, Chingy shows. He bops into my hospital room as if I lived here. “S’up, son?” Then he tosses a bulky knapsack onto my bed.

  I ricochet into a seated position. “Ow!”

  “That’s what you get for almost getting yourself killed.”

  “What you got in here, kid?”

  “Your books, fool.”

  “Oh.” I had hoped that Candace would bring them to me, but she still hasn’t so much as called my home to ask my mother about me. “Thanks.”

  “On top of everything, you’re not going to drop out,” says Chingy. “Messing up my senior project…”

  Yeah, I’ve been lying here thinking about the Rashaan Perry College Admission Probability Calculation System when not agonizing over the fact that Chingy hadn’t come to see me. “Well, stick to that 1650 I got on the SAT in October. I was supposed to retake the exam the weekend after I got shot, so …” I try to imagine myself back at school. I see the eyes of the other students staring at me in class. I hear their whispers as I limp down the hallway. Before my first crack at the SAT, when I would go to bed at night after studying, I would fall asleep to visions of myself wearing my cap and gown and giving the valedictory speech at graduation. I can’t see any of that anymore.

  Chingy doesn’t know what to say, but I’m not mad at him. He points to the backpack. “There’s some other stuff in there, too. Cards and notes and stuff from the teachers and kids at school.”

  “Yeah? Thanks.” I unzip, then reach into the bag. The first thing I pull out is my civil rights textbook. I had used Candace’s paper as a bookmark, penciling checks in the margin next to facts I wanted to cite in my own project on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. “You’ve seen Candace around?”

  “Just at school.”

  “How’s she holding up?”

  Chingy sits on the edge of my bed. “She didn’t come to school for a day or two, and I didn’t see her at Nestor’s funeral.” The wound in my side burns at the reminder that I missed my chance to say goodbye. Did Snipes pay for it? I bet LeRon and the others represented even though none of them have come to see me. “Then she came back, and people had a lot of questions, thinking she would have the answers, but they meant well, though. Not like last time, when, you know—”

  “I got arrested.”

  “Yeah. Things did get a little hectic today. Leti was sweating her. You gotta know something. Your man got shot, and you don’t know nothing? Why don’t you tell the truth? GiGi even told Leti Back up off of Candace already, and you know Leti’s her girl, so … Anyway, I’ve just been hanging out with her. You know, walking with her to school, taking her to class, just to make sure nobody bothers her.”

  “Leticia’s going to start saying that you tried to off me so you could hook up with my girl.” I remember seeing Chingy and Candace so cozy after school that day. Let it go, E. Let it all go. “Good lookin’ out, though.”

  After a few se
conds of silence, he asks, “Have the cops talked to you yet?”

  “Yeah. You?”

  “Everybody. That’s how I found out what happened to you, bro. They just showed up at my place asking questions.”

  “They probably went over to Candace’s, too.” No wonder she hasn’t come to visit me. Any love the Lamb matriarchs had for me is dead.

  “Well, I had nothing to tell ’em, but they didn’t believe me. Not that I care what the po think.” Chingy pauses, then asks, “They asking you to give up the dude who shot y’all? Do you even know who did it?” I nod. “So …” I hesitate to respond. “Man, I know you’re not even thinking about letting that fool get away with what he did to Nes!”

  Chingy’s reaction would knock me off my feet if I weren’t already laid up in this hospital bed. I expected him to be lackadaisical about it. To say cold things like Nestor reaped what he sowed. But here he is telling me to snitch on Julian. “I don’t know, man…. You know the code of the streets.”

  “You’re not from those streets, and you never were!” he says. “Nestor snatched your life back from those streets.” He paces like running water refusing to freeze. “You need to man up and stand tall for our boy, E.” Chingy finally stops, and, for the first time since he arrived, he looks me straight in the eye. “Streets or no streets, code or no code, cred or no cred. Nestor would speak up for you. E., please.” I realize how much Chingy needs to convince me. Justice for Nestor is atonement for him. But it could mean death for me. He may never have done any time on the streets, but Chingy knows how much this is to ask of me, and yet ask he does.

  I knew Nestor. He wouldn’t want me to give him up because of all the trouble it would cause me. Yet Chingy’s right. If Julian’s bullet had found its target, Nestor’d do it for me. And no one would have stopped him from coming to pay his last respects to me. Not Snipes, not the police, no one. So while I’m happy that it will bring Chingy some peace, I will do this for Nestor. But then I’m going to have to go away for a very long time.