Rickie Trujillo

by Nicholas Bradley

  “He’s that punk from Benton.”

  “Hey,” Claudia says angrily, interrupting before anything more can be said. “This is a wedding and he isn’t doing nothing to you. So smoke your mota and chill.”

  She marches Rickie past them into the backyard. His body has grown tense.

  “They’re going to come looking for us,” he says.

  “I know. Let’s see if they got a back gate.”

  They step carefully across the backyard in the dark.

  “I hope they don’t have dogs,” Claudia says. “These are new shoes.” She laughs.

  Rickie glances over his shoulder. No one is following them. They will, he knows. He squints his eyes to see in front of them. “I wish I had a flashlight,” he says.

  “I think I see a break in the fence.

  They approach the fence carefully. The boards are dry and splintery. Maybe kids or a heavy dog has pushed the fence apart. Or maybe on one of those nights when the winds howl out of the canyons and sweep across the valley floor, the old fence was rocked back and forth and was finally forced to give way. Claudia discovers that if she pushes one side and pulls the other, she can create a big enough gap to escape into the neighbor’s backyard.

  The boards creak as Rickie holds them apart for her.

  “Watch your dress,” he whispers. He gathers the material and tries to wrap it around her, but there is too much. A dog starts to bark inside the house in front of them. Floodlights on a motion sensor click on and cover the yard with light. They remain still, Claudia halfway through the fence.

  “Should we go back?” she asks.

  “No, wait. Let’s see if anyone comes.”

  No one moves in the house, no shadow crosses in front of the light, no noise of footsteps.

  “Go on,” he whispers.

  They clear the fence and walk quickly across the yard to the gate. The dog continues to bark, but no one quiets it. There is something hollow and forlorn and abandoned in the sound.

  “Poor dog,” Claudia says.

  The gate along the side of the house is not locked. They open it carefully and walk into the front yard. Light from the street shows a yard rank and wild with weeds and untended Saint Augustine grass stretching a network of runners onto the walkway, nearly covering it. Someone has laid a square of sod near the sidewalk, but it has browned and dried.

  “I think that fool, what’s his name, the mayate, Herbie, that’s the one, he lives here.”

  “I don’t know him,” Claudia says.

  “Yeah, you do. He sells. He must be out on the job tonight. Look at this place. For all the money he makes, you’d think…” Rickie doesn’t finish his statement. A car approaches slowly. They move closer to the wall that parallels the driveway and watch the car go by. An older couple, no threat. Rickie goes out to the curb and looks up and down the block.

  “C’mon. It’s not that far.” He takes her hand and begins to trot down and around the block.

  “What?” she asks, gathering up her dress with her free hand as she follows.

  “An empty house. I was there today getting high with Alex.”

  “Do you have any with you?”

  “No, Alex had it.”

  “Don’t run too fast. These shoes…”

  Rickie looks over his shoulder at the empty street and slows down. When they get to the house, he leads her past the broken glass on the driveway and in through the rear door. The pale blue light from the street stretches across the floor of the living room and softens the bleak emptiness of the room.

  They sit where he and Alex sat that afternoon, backs against the wall. She kicks her shoes off.

  “My feet hurt,” she says.

  “Here. I’ll rub them for you.”

  She looks at him for a moment with mild disbelief because he so rarely offers anything, and then she crosses her right leg over her left so he can rub that foot.

  “Feel my leg,” she says. “It’s smooth. I shaved.”

  He runs his hand along her ankle and her calf. She rubs his back.

  “Why don’t you take your shirt off? I want to feel your back.”

  Rickie unbuttons the top buttons of his shirt and pulls it over his head. There is no fat on his body; baseball has kept him lean.

  She begins to rub his back, but absently. He turns to look at her. She gives him a sad, fleeting smile; tears have filled her eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks.

  “Nothing,” she says, rubbing his back again, quicker now, as though wanting to get it done. “I was thinking how much I love to rub my little sisters’ backs, and their pudgy feet. They have the softest skin.”

  They sit without speaking for a minute.

  “Do you love me, Rickie?” she asks, and he hears the resignation in her voice. She knows to expect the same perfunctory answer she hears her aunts and her cousins get from their husbands and boyfriends, and they seem to laugh it off. She will, too, Rickie knows.

  “Yeah, of course I do.” He keeps his back to her.

  “Would you rub my back?”

  “You’ll have to undo your dress. I can only get your shoulders.”

  “You unzip it.”

  She turns so that her back is to him. He unzips her dress. She slips it off her shoulders and onto her lap. The tops of her breasts are pale and smooth in the dim light. He reaches around and cups them with his hands.

  “Not yet, Rickie,” she says. “Rub my back. You said.”

  He withdraws his hands and places them on her shoulders, massaging lightly with his thumbs.

  “That feels good. I wish we had something to smoke,” she says. “Or drink. I’m too … nervous.”

  “You don’t have to be. We’ve been together a long time,” he says, gently massaging her neck.

  “Don’t mess up my hair. I’ll never put it right again. My mom will know something’s gone on if my hair is messy. She thinks you’re dangerous because you’re so quiet.” She giggles.

  “I’m not dangerous,” he says and bites her neck. “I’m just a vampire.”

  “No hickies,” she says pulling her shoulder away. “I’ll get killed.”

  “Then let me bite your lips.”

  She turns sideways, and he takes her bottom lip with his lips.

  “Kiss me, Rickie,” she says and opens her mouth for his tongue. She turns against him and places his hand on her breast.

  “Do I feel good to you?” she asks at last.

  “What do you think? You’re driving me crazy. I want you.”

  “Do you have anything?”

  “No, of course not. I didn’t think anything was going to happen. I was on my way home, remember?” He wants to feel blameless.

  “Oh, I thought boys always had something in their wallets,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

  They don’t speak for a moment; he does not touch her.

  “If we do it, you know, don’t let yourself come inside me, okay? Maybe we’ll be okay,” she relents. She rises to ease off her dress. She stands before him self-consciously in the pale light wearing only her bra and panties, her body fully a woman’s. He stares at her.

  “Don’t,” she laughs nervously. “What about you? Are you just going to sit there and stare?”

  He take off his shoes and socks and stands, undoes his belt and lets his pants fall. He stands before her fully erect.

  “Oh, my God,” she says softly. “Come here.”

  Everything happens quickly and awkwardly. Both of them know the place is wrong. Other people have the backseat of a car at least, or someone’s bedroom when parents are away. Not this, not the hard floor of an abandoned house.

  He wishes they had gone slowly, kissing and touching and enjoying one another’s bodies the way he has seen lovemaking in movies. But they hadn’t. Too soon they are lying on the floor on her clothes spread out beneath them. Then it’s over. He doesn’t remove himself.

  Almost immediately they are up and dressing. They don’t speak. Claudia goes carefu
lly to the bathroom where she finds toilet tissue still in a holder on the wall. When she comes back, she inspects the dress for stains, holding it away from her and checking the material carefully.

  “I might get pregnant, you know. You were supposed to come out.” She tries to keep the disappointment and the anger and the sadness out of her voice, but she can’t. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t really hear her. He has his own disappointment: what has been built up as some great experience has proved to be not much different from masturbation—the pleasure too momentary and leaving a reverberating hollowness when it’s over, like a walk down a long and dark and empty corridor.

  “It happened too fast,” he says.

  “Would you like to be a daddy?” she asks, hoping to salvage some tenderness from this moment.

  “I don’t know. Maybe,” he adds. He knows that’s the answer she wants. A kid won’t be his responsibility. She and her mom will take care of it. That’s the way it is with all of his friends.

  “I wonder if you’ll be a good one,” she says.

  “It hasn’t happened,” he says curtly. He ties his Nikes, adjusts the laces neatly and stands. “C’mon, we gotta get back before they send people after us.”

  They walk back to the party. They do not speak except when she asks him to take her hand.

  “Remember, I’m a little shaky in these heels,” she says, looking for comfort. He says nothing, but he does take her hand. The night is cooling rapidly. She walks close to him. They follow the loud music back to the party.

  When they get to the gate, she asks him if he’s hungry or wants to dance.

  “No, I’m going to go.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. Home, I guess. Maybe Alex’s.”

  “Stay with me.”

  He looks at her blankly, slightly disgusted by her too wide smile, her lips that are too full, and her full body. She has been just as he thought she would be—too easy. He will come back when he wants her, but he will never love her. As soon as he thinks this, he feels the beginnings of tenderness towards her.

  “No,” he says softly. “Your parents hate me. They don’t want to see you with me. I gotta go.”

  He turns and walks away with his hands in his pockets. He doesn’t look back to see the desolate look on her face.

  “That punk’s a fool,” one of the security guards says to Claudia. “He doesn’t know how to treat a fine girl like yourself.”

  “I’m still here, baby,” his partner at the gate says. “I’m a hell of a lot better than him. You should try me out.”

  “Sure thing,” Claudia says. She manages a smile and looks more closely at the two of them. Both are tall with close cropped hair and little goatees. They are in their mid twenties. Their bodies are lean and muscular from lifting weights.

  “Maybe I’ll bring you guys something to eat later on. Are you hungry?”

  “Only for you,” the first one says.

  She laughs and walks by them.

  “You’re so full of shit,” his partner says when she’s out of earshot.

  “Maybe, but I bet I get laid tonight. Man, she is fine.”

  Rickie sprints home, as much to escape the sense of deflation and failure that wraps around him and weighs him down as to get out of the unfriendly neighborhood. He wishes now that he had gone straight home with Alex.

  SUNDAY MORNING

  CHAPTER 14

  Berta rises at her usual hour. Sunday. Church day. Today she thinks she might leave a little later so that she can sit alone in the back. It would be insulting to Father Bernal to arrive early and sit there. He would find a way to say something. “Why do you sit so far away, Berta? Do you feel like communing with God on your own today?” he would say and laugh, but she would feel a gentle criticism behind the laugh and the soft words.

  Today she will arrive just as the doors are closing. She does not want to sit up front in the crush of ladies with their fans and squirming children and the young boys and girls making eyes at one another. She wants to be by herself. Is that wrong? Will Father tell her it is vanity to want to sit alone and enjoy the dimness at the back of the church and the quiet and the cool air that smells like candles and incense and prayer books, and the breath of a thousand prayers and mournful sighs that smell like Father’s breath when he speaks so close to you? He is a soft man who feels sorry for himself, perhaps because he doubts his faith and calling but cannot find the courage to act. She can see it in his face, in his soft cheeks that sag into jowls, the black stubble of his beard against the pastiness of his skin, in his eyes that bully you with a perpetual squint behind his thick wire-frame glasses.

  Berta wants to be apart from everyone else today, she doesn’t know why. She wants to let her eyes roam from one sunlit window to the next without feeling Father’s eyes squinting in accusation at her.

  So she will arrive late and sit in the back and allow the dim coolness to envelop her and carry her through the kneeling and standing, praying and responding, her Rosary familiar and comfortable in her hands, in a kind of dream state that will take her drifting on the drone of Father’s words and the music and prayer, oblivious to everything in particular except for the sound of Father’s voice and the responses of the congregation, and cool air and the smooth wood of the back of the pew in front of her, polished by the hands of hundreds of supplicants on the way to or from their knees. And if Father Bernal asks, she will say she rose late, that’s all.

  Berta busies herself in the kitchen, making herself a small pot of coffee. There will be enough for another cup after service today. In a few minutes she will brush her hair and wash her face and put on her church dress. She will walk to church slowly.

  She looks about the kitchen with its old wooden cabinets painted yellow by Osvaldo years ago, and she does not find anything to straighten or put away. Everything is in order, and she is satisfied. She will sit down when her coffee is ready and relax for a minute or two. She does not even want to hear the TV. She goes to the back door to check the morning.

  As she opens the door, a man wearing a worn black sports jacket who has been sitting on the top step with his back against the screen door springs up, banging the screen door as he does so. Berta lets out a startled cry and draws back. The man stumbles off the steps on to the hardened dirt of the backyard.

  “¡Ay, Madre de Dios! You scared me, ‘Amá. I must’ve fallen asleep in the sun,” he says as he peels off the jacket. “Too hot.”

  “Ricardo? What are you doing here?” Berta asks.

  “Can’t I visit my own mother?” he asks. He shades his eyes with one hand as he looks at her standing in the doorway. She is surprised to see that his hair is still black and his face unlined. His eyes are large and moist.

  “You don’t seem happy to see me,” he says peevishly.

  “I know that men who go away unannounced and return unannounced do not go and return from love,” she says, not moving from behind the door.

  “I’ll go away again,” he says, but they both know he does not mean it.

  She opens the door and scans the backyard as though checking for someone else.

  “No one else, ‘Amá. Just me.”

  She moves aside to let him enter, and then she sits down at her place at the table. He stands in the center of the kitchen and looks around.

  “Still the same.”

  “Why should it change? Who would do the work?” she asks, threads of disappointment and accusation in her words.

  Ricardo does not respond. “What time is Mass?” he asks finally.

  “Now. And at eleven.”

  “I’m hungry. I’ll take you to breakfast. Can you go to the eleven?”

  She is going to protest, to tell him it will be hotter later, the cool air will be gone, but she does not. She knows her son has returned to ask for something, and she is curious to know what it is.

  They drive without speaking to the same restaurant where Daisy and Rickie went the day before. The radio in the car i
s tuned to the American music station. When Ricardo sees her frown at it, he snaps it off.

  One time she had gone through Rickie’s notebook as it lay on his bed. She found what looked like a poem in Rickie’s own handwriting. She struggled through the first few lines and was disgusted by what she thought she read there. When she asked him about it later, he told her it was a song.

  “A song? With words like that?” she asked. She was sitting in her usual chair at the kitchen table.

  “That’s how songs are these days.” He stood at the refrigerator with the door open.

  “Did you write it? Close the door. You will let all the cold out.”

  “No, I didn’t write it.”

  “It is not right. It is disgusting and tells lies.”

  “It’s just a song,” Rickie said. “It doesn’t mean anything.” He closed the refrigerator door and leaned against it.

  “I don’t want you to think about women with those words. You should be respectful. Those people hate women.”

  “You shouldn’t go through my stuff,” Rickie said.

  “You are my grandchild. You live in my house.”

  “But still…”

  Though she reserved the right to do it, she did not go through his backpack or his dresser drawers again; she did not want to know more than she could truly comprehend. He was more careful where he left his notebook and papers as well.

  Berta sits across from her son at the little table. She remains un-speaking, hands folded in front of her and eyes cast down, with a stillness that is like prayer. She waits to discover why he has finally come to see her. She and Osvaldo sacrificed much to give him a chance in America, but she knows he has not been able to accept life’s hardships as she and his father had, nor has he been strong enough to make the sacrifices they made. She blames herself.

  He stands quickly when he is called to pick up their food, clearly relieved that the spell of silence is broken. After he returns and places the empty tray on the next table, he sits down and eats hungrily. She watches him without comment.

  He pushes his plate away and wipes his mouth with a bunch of napkins he tears absently from the dispenser. She picks through her burrito and removes fatty pieces of pork, placing them at the side of her plate.