When We Make It

by Elisabet Velasquez

  I tell her that she’s beautiful back.

  PLANNING

  It’s April & it looks like it’s about to pour.

  I’m chillin’ with Estrella & Lala on our new stoop.

  We’re discussing plans to make it out the hood.

  Lala & I think getting good jobs is the move.

  Look at Ms. Rivera. She’s getting paid now, I say.

  & giving back to her community.

  Estrella laughs.

  Ms. Rivera probably don’t even like her job.

  & you know she’s still broke

  ’cuz her acrylics stay chipped.

  Estrella says teachers don’t get paid

  what we think they get paid.

  & who is gonna hire Puerto Ricans

  from Bushwick and pay them enough to get outta here?

  Lala says that all we gotta do is get good grades

  & go to college and we can make a good living.

  I agree. Yo. All we gotta do is prove

  that we can be just as good as anybody else.

  Yo. Better.

  Estrella says she’s not proving shit to nobody.

  & the sky roars as she’s talking

  like a warning or a cheer depending

  on who is listening to the story.

  G

  My neighbor G in apartment 3L sells drugs

  out of his apartment.

  The crackheads always think our door is the one

  with the magic. They leave their wands on the stairs.

  & Estrella and I take turns kicking the crack stems

  out the way with our new Five Dollar Shoe Store kicks.

  I wonder which one of these belongs to Julie.

  TO STEAL OR NOT TO STEAL

  Estrella came home with mad money today.

  She gave Mami some for the light bill.

  & bought me my own Coby CD player

  with FM radio!

  Estrella knows I been sneak switching

  Mami’s radio to La Mega 97.9 FM when she’s asleep

  ever since I learned that salsa music

  is exactly like Pentecostal music

  but with better storytelling.

  How could you afford this?

  She said she found somebody’s wallet

  on the floor of Goldo’s bodega.

  She took the money but returned the wallet

  with all the IDs and shit ’cause she’s not that foul.

  Isn’t that still stealing, though?

  Now we’re taking stolen money?

  Mami searches the drawer for the light bill.

  Give me back your CD player then

  Since you so holy. I’ll give it to somebody who’s grateful.

  But I don’t give it back.

  & Mami doesn’t give back the light bill money.

  ’Cause if we did

  Estrella would still be a thief.

  & our lights would never come back on.

  & somebody else would get to listen to salsa.

  A REAL G

  Estrella and I giggle as we run past G

  who is holding a shotgun in the hallway.

  We take turns teasing, asking G what his real name is.

  Gustavo, George, Gabriel, Giovanni?

  A gold chain hangs a single glimmering letter g

  from his neck. Maybe G is not the initial to his name.

  Maybe g is short for giant, gospel or gangsta.

  Even though we’ve already seen it,

  g hides his gun behind his back

  and yells at us to get back in the apartment.

  Inside, we take turns watching G from the peephole.

  He paces up and down the hallway, shotgun by his side.

  Like a real G. A soldier protecting his castle.

  911 WHAT’S YOUR EMERGENCY

  There is a shootout.

  The bullets are flying

  across our

  rooftops.

  Since our beds are by the windows,

  we slide onto the floor

  and the floor slides into us.

  The splinters in our hands & knees

  are a small price to pay

  for avoiding an accidental bullet.

  Mami tells me to call the cops

  so she doesn’t have to.

  Calling the cops is a dangerous activity

  on multiple levels.

  If the dealers don’t punish you for it

  there’s a possibility the cops will.

  The cops are real reckless with their guns.

  Sometimes as reckless as the dealers.

  The news reports them shooting somebody in the hood

  on what seems like a regular basis.

  It’s almost as if the cops have their own gang.

  The 911 operator hangs up

  & we wait

  For the bullets to stop.

  For the cops to arrive.

  For the morning to lend us enough light

  to remove the splinters

  from our bodies

  like small wooden trophies.

  THIS IS THE DAY THAT THE LORD HAS MADE

  LET US REJOICE & BE GLAD IN IT

  It’s Sunday morning and we are still alive.

  The cops never came through last night

  but here they are knocking on our door at 9 a.m.

  looking like they got some good sleep.

  Mami said not to open the door.

  We might have known something last night

  but we don’t know nothing now.

  Through the peephole I can see

  the ceiling lights flicker

  & the cops lean against the yellow-brown walls

  palms steady

  resting on their guns

  like small steel trophies.

  YOUR SILENCE WILL NOT PROTECT YOU

  The news only reports on our deaths when

  we demand to be heard.

  That’s how come we got to be so loud, I think.

  So people know we in danger if we ever get too quiet.

  TODAY IN BIBLE STUDY

  Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for,

  the conviction of things not seen.

  Faith is mad simple to explain but harder to execute.

  The pastor says we should trust that God will provide

  what we need even when we can’t possibly see how.

  Not all of us possess faith.

  The pastor says the corner boys

  don’t have faith that God will provide, so they sell drugs.

  They put their faith in crack, heroin & people who use them.

  Estrella gives an example to see if she gets it:

  Oh, like last winter when the heat didn’t come up,

  & we prayed for the radiator to work but it didn’t,

  so we put our faith in our coats?

  How does this trick work again?

  Everyone thinks Estrella is being a smart-ass

  but I know Estrella is just being smart.

  WE DON’T KNOW WHO THE LANDLORD IS BUT WE KNOW HE DON’T CARE

  Don’t care about the rats

  racing us to the door.

  Don’t care about the roof & the rain’s

  collaboration to drown us.

  Don’t care about the splitting floor

  and its stabbing ways.

  Don’t care about the front door

  locks that stay broken.

  Don’t care about the bucket

  we use for a toilet.

  Don’t care about the chipped walls

  underneath our nails.

  Don’t care about the s
tairs

  missing steps or the wobbly railing.

  Don’t care about the coldest radiator ever.

  Don’t care about the missing light bulbs in the hallway.

  Don’t care about the crack pipes

  or the syringes by our door.

  The Landlord cares about the rent.

  Tone says the Landlord will evict us if we can’t pay it.

  Which means we may be the only garbage

  he’s willing to throw out.

  THE CORNER BOYS

  Today, the cops arrested Corner Boy Jesus.

  Estrella was chilling with them when twelve rolled up.

  She said he wasn’t even doing nothing

  but doing nothing around here always means trouble.

  Doing nothing around here means you don’t care enough to do something

  which means you must want to die.

  In this neighborhood, if you don’t want to die

  you got to do something.

  Even the cops know this.

  That’s why they took in one of the corner boys.

  So they can say they did something.

  So the corner boys don’t try to do something.

  & this is how everybody stays alive.

  MY LIFE AS A BIBLE STORY

  DAVID & GOLIATH

  Around here, drugs have names too.

  Dust, Perico, Manteca, Snow, Coca.

  G sells Goliath.

  I realize that maybe G never went to Bible study.

  Maybe if he knew how wack Goliath actually was

  he wouldn’t sell it on the block.

  I decide to mind my business & act like

  I don’t know that he’s talking about selling drugs.

  I pretend to be mad excited

  ’cuz David & Goliath is my favorite Bible story.

  Ayo, G, ain’t it wild how David beat Goliath?!

  Even though Goliath was a giant. Like way bigger than David.

  Goliath was such a punk.

  Who gets beaten by a pebble?

  G looks stunned & changes the subject.

  Says to let him know what we need to eat.

  G sometimes hooks the building up with compra.

  I say we ran out of corned beef.

  I hear G tell the corner boys

  to go to Associated & cop us some corned beef

  & to let everyone know that he’s not selling

  Goliath no more

  but he got mad pebbles on deck.

  Yo, ain’t that a trip?

  Here I was trying to make G stop selling

  & all I did was help him market it better.

  I gotta be more careful with my mouth.

  It’s more powerful than I think.

  CAREER DAY

  I know the school year is almost over

  when Career Day comes through

  to get us thinking about our future

  outside of Bushwick.

  Futures with doctors and lawyers.

  Not a job or a side hustle. A career.

  A career is your identity

  & your identity is something you keep.

  The teachers say Career Day

  gets us ready for the real world.

  Lala jokes: Does that mean our world is fake?

  The class is wilin’ again. Yoooo!

  What if we was made up by somebody?

  It’s not so far-fetched.

  Estrella and I make up worlds when we play Barbies.

  Anyways, if we are just a game

  that somebody in the real world

  is playing I wish they’d hurry up

  and tell me if I win or lose.

  IN LIVING COLOR

  Some days Lala & I play hooky

  when Lala’s mom takes an extra shift at the

  hospital. Lala locks the door & digs in her pocket

  for the wrinkled paper with the number to the chat line.

  On the chat line I don’t have to wear loose floral skirts

  to avoid unwanted attention.

  On the chatline we are as safe and gorgeous as we wanna be.

  We giggle and take turns lying to boys

  about our age, height and where we live.

  Since there is only one jack, only one of us

  gets to be beautiful at a time.

  In between turns we watch reruns

  of our favorite show

  and decide on who we’ll be next.

  Today, Lala is Jennifer Lopez, a fly girl

  from the Bronx.

  I am Rosie Perez ’cause she’s from Bushwick

  & sounds just like me.

  ESTRELLA WANTS TO GET PAID TO HAVE SEX

  Estrella likes to shock people so they pay attention to her but today she sounds serious.

  Think about it. She explains.

  You basically just have sex with men,

  which we’re eventually gonna do anyway,

  so we might as well get paid for it.

  Right?

  Women who have sex for free are dumb.

  She won’t even need a pimp.

  Why give your money to a man

  when you did all the work?

  & when Jesus gets out of jail he could get her a burner.

  Just in case she gotta protect herself.

  Anyway, she thinks women who have sex for money

  get a bad rep.

  Why can’t that be a career too?

  Mami has a name for women

  who sell their bodies: sucias.

  Estrella argues that would make the men

  who pay for sex dirty too.

  But the pastor says the men who buy sex have a sickness.

  Just like people who are addicted to drugs,

  & we should pray for them.

  But who prays for the dealers? Estrella says.

  Who prays for the women?

  PRAYER

  Mami just got fired from her job

  at the sewing factory on Dekalb Ave.

  She came home yelling about the bosses

  being un bonche racistas, sucios y malos.

  So maybe Papi doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

  Mami worked hard and it didn’t matter.

  All those days putting up

  with the way they talked to her

  like she wasn’t worth

  the machine she worked on.

  Ms. Rivera once said that

  words are usually a red carpet for actions.

  All Mami did was ask to come in late

  so she could go to her prenatal appointment.

  They told her maybe she should prioritize her pregnancy

  and come back when she didn’t need so much time off.

  Now Mami spends all her days crying

  and looking for a new job.

  Crying and looking for a new job.

  I’m glad Mami & Raffy

  have been working on their issues

  so he can take the job of making her feel better.

  Raffy says it’s bad for the baby to be so stressed

  and says maybe Mami should talk to someone.

  Mami talks to God, she says.

  Anybody who has serious problems talks to God.

  I decide tonight I’m gonna talk to God.

  HOW MAMI LOST THE BABY

  Everything happened so fast.

  In the middle of the night we heard Mami scream

  that she was bleeding. I thought she was tryna say

  that we ran out of toilet paper

  since that’s what we use

  when we get our period

  and when we run
out we gotta

  cut up rags from T-shirts

  & then Estrella & I get into an argument

  about whose T-shirt is worth saving.

  But Mami didn’t ask for toilet paper.

  She asked us to call 911.

  911 for a period is dramatic, no?

  Estrella calls me stupid

  for not knowing bleeding is a dangerous sign

  for a pregnant woman.

  The ambulance took forever to come.

  Then the doctor took forever to come.

  Then Raffy took forever to come.

  The last thing that arrived

  is usually always the first:

  bad news.

  Mami lost the baby.

  GOOD DAYS

  Things have been real quiet around here

  since Mami’s miscarriage.

  Mami spends most of her days cleaning,

  praying and reading the Bible.

  I know she’s hurt but we never see her cry.

  I usually do my crying in the shower

  so nobody asks me any questions.

  Maybe Mami is a shower crier like me.

  Today, Danny is having dinner with us.

  Mami said Danny would be staying with us for a few days.

  The group home allowed it since Tone is never home.

  Mami lied and told them it was our apartment.

  We’ve been eating so good lately

  ’cause Raffy started hustling

  bootleg VHSs on Knickerbocker Avenue

  and stops by with cash.

  & Estrella keeps coming home with random money.

  Tonight we’re having white rice, eggs and corned beef

  with red beans on the side. Mami even added potatoes

  and onions to the corned beef!

  I hate onions so I take them out,

  but onions are a sign it’s a good food day.

  Estrella flings the ketchup packets we steal from school

  and tries to land them between the goal post

  I’ve made with my hands.

  Danny yells at Estrella like he wants to play too while

  Mami carefully wipes leftover food from Danny’s mouth.