The House of Broken Angels

by Luis Alberto Urrea

  El Pato craning around to find La Gloriosa;

  La Gloriosa, refreshed and re-made-up, in charge of getting Lalo’s garage door open for Minnie’s surprise, laughing and flirting and swirling her skirt and swaying her magnificent hair as if her heart weren’t charred within her;

  Pazuzu hunting for Leo;

  MaryLú sitting stiffly, watching Paz and wishing she could leave;

  Little Angel sitting with Ookie, and Ookie muttering, “‘Third stone from the sun’”;

  The Biff/Buffy collegiates actually leaving;

  The African American nephew learning Spanish from seven giggling young ladies;

  The Cookie Monster bent in earnest conversation with his mysterious third cousin;

  A chicken coming from some unknown realm, strutting among the chairs, eating potato chips and pieces of hot dog bun;

  Neighbors peeking over fences;

  A white Audi cruising by slowly in the street; and

  A yellow school bus coming to a stop before the house, the door opening, and the vatos and rucas beginning to shout and whistle.

  * * *

  3:56 p.m.

  There is a minute in the day, a minute for everyone, though most everyone is too distracted to notice its arrival. A minute of gifts coming from the world like birthday presents. A minute given to every day that seems to create a golden bubble available to everyone. But Big Angel could have missed it because he was sore and angry that he couldn’t go to bed. Jimbo did miss it because he had passed out. People on the freeway five miles from the party missed it because they were battling traffic and hating the Mexicans because talk radio told them it was all right because of ISIS and the border wall and the Chargers had betrayed San Diego and evangelicals were howling that sodomy was the new law of the land and their favorite talk show hosts were unable to control any narrative anymore and the drought was going to continue until all of California burned and vanished in dust and the rivers in the West had turned yellow or huge floods were on the way and nobody knew what to expect.

  But Minnie knew all about the minute, though she could not have explained it to anyone. It had come to her on one of those long, lonesome nights. Who knew that a night of bad sleep and discomfort and sad jams on Pandora was a gift? But it was. She found the golden bubble in her own misery.

  “Wait, Daddy,” she said, bracing herself against the wheelchair so her Pops wouldn’t steam away like a grumpy locomotive.

  “Minnie!” he said. “I am tired!”

  “I know. Hold on.”

  “You know?” he snapped. “Nobody knows how I feel!”

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  Perla fretted. “Mija?” she said. “Let him go, sí?”

  “Mami! No,” Minnie said. “Just watch!” It had cost her a large chunk of her savings. She started laughing when she heard the tumult from the front of the house. “Listen.”

  A massive bleat, a fanfare.

  “What is that?” Big Angel said.

  Little Angel stood up and put a hand over his eyes.

  “Happy birthday, Daddy,” Minnie said with perfect timing because she had come into her power and everything she would touch now would be blessed with perfection. She just knew it. So as she said it, the trumpets sounded.

  “Qué?” Big Angel cried.

  The mariachis marched through the garage and burst out in a line, playing impossibly loud, joyous music. All in magnificent black and silver, crimson cummerbunds, vast sombreros. White frilly shirts with red ties elaborately fluttering. Trumpets, violins, guitarrón, guitar. They formed a half circle before Big Angel and Perla, and rocked the universe.

  Big Angel laughed and clapped his hands and laughed and kicked his feet and cried. He sang and sang and sang.

  When they were finished, the mariachis accepted their worship like true stars and tipped their giant hats to Big Angel and trooped back out to their bus and charged into the afternoon.

  Big Angel was still wiping his eyes when he kissed Minnie five times. At the end of the day, all he really knew was that he was a Mexican father. And Mexican fathers made speeches. He wanted to leave her with a blessing, with beautiful words to sum up a life, but there were no words sufficient to this day. But still, he tried. “All we do, mija,” he said, “is love. Love is the answer. Nothing stops it. Not borders. Not death.” He held her hand in his burning fingers, only pulling away when a shaken Perla wheeled him back to his bedroom.

  * * *

  4:30 p.m.

  Minnie turned back and watched her clan. They seemed to be moving slower and slower as she watched. MaryLú—her kids were all clean, smart, educated. Pato—his boys were sweet, even Marco the Metal Beast. Tía Gloriosa—the strongest woman she had ever met, except for Mommy. The little shorties raising hell, the old ladies and men in brown suits. God, they were beautiful.

  A strange stillness fell over the fiesta. People sat quietly, talking among themselves or just thinking. The hilarity was absorbed by the music, it seemed. The density of the day came upon them all. People were murmuring their personal testimonials at every table. Suddenly remembering past moments with the Man, mourning the moment that was surely on its way, sooner than later. Everybody saw it. Everybody knew it.

  Minnie was undone. She rushed inside and locked herself in the guest bathroom and sobbed.

  Lupita and La Gloriosa moved languidly, policing the tables. The neighborhood ladies fussed in the kitchen and kept the empty crates and platters moving. People snuck out of the yard in odd little mincing escapes, as if their tiptoeing would make them invisible. Somehow ribs and barbecue chicken appeared, but nobody could eat any more. Pato decided, however, to give it a try.

  Ookie sat far away from everybody else. He held the pilgrim chicken in his lap, petting it like a puppy. It jerked its head around, watching the people, making small clucks and groans, then put its head on Ookie’s shoulder. It didn’t make a fuss when Little Angel walked up to them.

  “Hi, Ookie,” he said.

  “Hi.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Ookie’s okay.”

  “Did you like the music?”

  “A man hit Ookie,” Ookie said.

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Ookie stold Legos.”

  “Why do you steal Legos, Ookie?”

  Ookie petted his chicken. He smiled slyly. He looked up at Little Angel. “That’s a secret.”

  Little Angel reached out a finger and scratched the chicken’s neck.

  “Ookie and Big Angel has a secret.”

  “Oh?”

  “You are Little Angel.”

  “That’s right.”

  “When Big Angel dies, will you be Big Angel?”

  Little Angel blinked that one away. “I guess I’ll be the only Angel,” he said.

  Ookie put the chicken down. He got up and took Little Angel’s hand. The smaller man’s grip was as dry and hard as wood. He pulled Little Angel to the shed behind the house. He fumbled under his collar and pulled out a key on a length of string and used it to unlock a padlock on the door hasp.

  “It’s a secret,” he said again, putting his finger over his lips and pulling the door open.

  He reached in and yanked a chain, and a single bulb snapped on. It swung on its cable, and shadows jerked back and forth. Little Angel could see what was inside.

  “Ookie made this,” Ookie said.

  “What is it?”

  “Look.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Little Angel said.

  * * *

  Across town, Lalo and Gio are in a panic. The candy-colored Chevy Impala burns off the blacktop and slides into another alley, this one dirt. The engine has the voice of fifty angry cats. Curlicues of saffron dust swirl in the car’s wake.

  “No! No! No! So bad, so bad, so bad,” Lalo is shouting. He’s crying. “What’d we do?” he groans.

  Crows fall upon them like hordes of wasps.

  “Pops,” Gio says. “We didn’t do nothing.”


  Plastered to the passenger window, Lalo is deeply into his rush: the pills and weird powder he drank in a cup of tequila have kicked in, hard, and coruscating colors run down his arms and shoot out of his pants. He thinks he rolled down the window a minute ago and vomited. But the window’s closed now.

  And Lalo remembers: They had pulled into the alley, and he’d said, “Where’s his boys at?” And Gio saying, “It’s that stupid Ruffles and his cuz. I paid them fifteen to go to Subway.” And Lalo feeling guilty that his son had grown up simmering with rage and plotting wicked paybacks. While Lalo kept trying to forget.

  Now he looks at his hands. Are they red? Is that blood? His hands. Is that mud from Iraq on them? Can he smell rotting flesh? The dragon writhes on his leg. He watches in horror as it climbs up into his shorts and lets its tail slip out. Blood dripping from it. Oh my God.

  “Blood flew around,” Lalo says.

  “No, Pops. Chill.”

  “I busted a full clip into that dude!”

  “Chill, goddamn it.”

  His son standing over that vato like he was just saying “Hey.” The gangster smug on his Salvation Army couch in that garage. B-ball cap all cranked sideways on his fool head. Black widow spiders inked on his neck, a 13 along each side of his jaw, and those two blue teardrops in the corner of his left eye. Lalo staring at those teardrops, realizing they stood for Braulio and Guillermo. His mind blinking like a neon sign. Youfuckyoufuckyoufuck. The gangster laying out the drugs on his shipping-crate coffee table. “This what you came for. Best be ready to pay.” And Lalo remembers arcs of blood like weird shiny pebbles that melted when they hit the walls. The slippery floor all greasy with blood.

  “Blood everywhere. Gio! The radios were all static. They couldn’t get to us.”

  “That was the war, Pops, a’ight?”

  “But that dude. Just now.”

  “No, Pops.”

  Gio slams around a corner—cops could be anywhere.

  “You. Killt. My. Bro.” Lalo says. “I said it to his face. Right?”

  Bam, bam.

  “You. You. You.”

  He remembers noises from the gangster’s lungs whistling through his ribs. No, no. That was PFC Gomez, from East L.A. They were holding a sheet of plastic over the gaping wound in his chest and pushing down till his ribs cracked. No way to get a helicopter in that alley. Dogs. Women shrieking. Hajjis on the rooftops all around.

  “Gio, Gio,” he cries, “what did we do?”

  “Pops, knock it off.” Gio is wrestling the wheel, keeping his eye on the mirror in case that culero and his homies are in pursuit.

  “Gio!” Lalo gawks at Gio’s eyes. They’re buggin’ out! His eyes are out of his head, on long pink stalks, waving like a lobster’s.

  He remembers the gangster’s eyes. He had eyes tattooed on his eyelids. Every time he blinked, he was still staring. Lalo didn’t know what he was seeing. It hypnotized him. It was the eyes. The eyes pushed him into his rush.

  The car’s window glass is soft and gooey against his face. Well, ain’t that some shit right there. “Oh Jesus,” he moaned. “We killed that dude.”

  “Shit no. You choked.”

  The car slides.

  “Mijo?”

  “I thought you were a badass,” Gio says.

  Oh my God—this boy is so cold.

  A dog! They hit a dog! No, they didn’t. Lalo watches it escape. Killing a dog, that would be the end. That would be the last frickin’ straw.

  “Payback,” Gio says. “All you had to do.” His voice is suddenly melting and dripping.

  That whole room was melting and dripping. He watched the gangster’s skull rise through his flesh like something surfacing in a swamp. And he stood, and his head kept rising and rising until it was out through the roof above the barrio, in the sky. And Lalo’s in the car, looking at his own fingers. He notices how long they are. So wavy. He holds his hand before his face. It’s a squid. “Where’s my gun?” he asks Gio, and his long fingers claw at his empty ankle holster.

  “You threw it.”

  Lalo flashes: They were both standing above that killer. Just another cartoon character in a Pendleton jacket. Selling poison to little boys looking to be the baddest of the bad. And Gio sliding the slender gun into Lalo’s hand and nudging him with his shoulder. And the man, knowing his moment had come without seeing the gun, obviously wondering why he didn’t have his own gun, dropping the Baggies of dope and pills on the table. The cups from the weird Amazon poisons Lalo had drunk starting to crawl around on the table beside the drugs. The man’s dead eyes going deep with fear for an instant, and hard again. “Yeah?” he said. “This is it, huh?” Chin held high.

  “You kilt my bro.” Yes. Lalo remembers. “Gio,” he says. “I didn’t drop no gun.”

  “You tossed that shit before we booked out of there.”

  “Please,” Lalo pleads with the universe.

  “You gave some wack lecture, then ran, Pops.”

  “No.”

  “Yeah, you did.” The words are stretching like rubber bands and snapping back at Lalo’s face.

  Please, please, God, if you have any mercy for me, let me wake up.

  “I didn’t even guess you were gonna puss out.” And Gio laughs in derision.

  “Oh my God!” Lalo shouts. “You my baby boy, though!” Lalo can’t tell if his tweak is stretching all the sounds like it’s stretching the car now. The car is suddenly rubber. It bends around corners and stretches so his lobster-faced boy moves far ahead of him, then snaps back.

  “You never killed nobody,” Lalo says. “You playact, little man. I killed people, for reals. It was my job. I got blood all over me. Forever. Help me!”

  “Got his stash, didn’t we?” Gio says. “Taught his ass to kill my tío that way, at least. What you worried about?”

  Lalo kicks the mochila at his feet. It’s full of weed and ice crystals and cash and chains. “Help!” he says again.

  Giovanni looks at him and says, quite calmly, something Lalo cannot understand and never will. And still, Lalo tries to answer. But his words make no sense, and spit is cascading from his mouth.

  “We good, Pops. All love. Proud of you anyway.”

  Lalo cranks his molten head and stares out the window. “Bad,” he says. “So bad. Son.” Or he hopes he managed to say this.

  “I forgive you, Pops. You just ain’t that strong.”

  Echoes. Weird bird noises. The meaty sound of punctures and the blood spurts and grunts when the rounds hit, burning the meat of the victims. But it’s Iraq, not California. Check. Keepin’ it straight. Then Lalo sees a black-and-white. “Pigs!” he screeches.

  “Stay cool,” Gio says.

  The cop car turns into 169 cars. Lalo closes his eyes. When he looks again, it is a VW painted like a cop car. Geek Squad. He can put that much together.

  He starts to cry again. “I’m scared,” he says.

  Gio reaches over and clutches his knee. “Pops. Pops! Listen. Are you listening?” He lets go to downshift.

  Lalo stares at him.

  “Snap out of it.”

  Instantly, Lalo remembers: the cool pistol in his hand, seeming as ridiculous as a toy and at the same time apocalyptic. The drug writhing up his veins like some skinny black serpent. The man staring up at him with no expression but with hands shaking. His son saying, “Do it. Cap his ass.” And the pistol just floating in the air, looking to him like some weird airborne tropical fish. And the tattoo. Oh God, it’s the tattoo on his own arm. He’s scratching at it now. Big Angel. That dumb smile. That hair. POPS 4EVER.

  “What did my brother do to you?”

  “Nothing. He got green-lighted, and I did what I was told. Just doing business.”

  All time stops for Lalo.

  POPS 4EVER.

  And Lalo has been a hostage all his life. Trying so hard to be Braulio. Trying so hard to be Pops. Not able to be either one. Ashamed of his father—what a silly old man. Afraid of his brother�
�so much more macho than he’d ever be. And all this time trying to convince people he was just like this piece of shit sitting before him.

  He extends the pistol again. The man falls back and closes his eyes. And all Lalo can feel is sorrow.

  Lalo feels so sorry for the world, for everything in it, all of them dying and turning to dust. He feels the drugs, feels the rush. He feels a wind and remembers how his hair would lift when he was playing baseball, how the sun felt, and how Pops cheered for him in embarrassing polyester bell-bottoms, with mustard all over his stupid mustache.

  And Lalo hears his own voice again, sounding alien, as if it were his father’s voice, saying: “We got to stop. We just running in circles. Payback, payback, payback. You ain’t never gonna pay nothing back.” The pistol drops to his side. The man on the couch opens his eyes, sees the gun has dropped away from his face, and suddenly deflates with disbelief. He is revealed: a middle-aged loser who has disfigured his own face and is not a threat to anyone in the world. Not even worth shooting.

  “This ain’t what we are, homes,” Lalo says. “This is not us. This is the story they tell about us, but it’s not true.” He jerks the pistol back up. The man flinches and that flinch is the worst moment of all for him.

  “This is us.”

  Aiming above the man’s head, Lalo pulls the trigger, emptying the clip into the wall. The man falls back, clutching his chest and kicking his legs in the air, shouting in terror. Each round sounds flat and hard as Lalo fires. The smoke choking and blue. Plaster showering down on them until the gun clicks, empty. And he whips it across the room as the man ducks and weeps.

  Then Gio is grabbing him and they’re running. “Jesuschrist, Pops! What was that”

  Lalo feels the world burning all around him. And he snaps back into the immediate moment and finds himself staring at Gio’s hands on the wheel. The wheel looks like it is made of soft licorice.

  “I’m going to hell, Gio. Signed, sealed, and delivered, I’m serious.”

  Lalo sees his grandfather’s ghost climbing in through the windshield before he passes out.

  Ookie’s Surprise

  How could they know what Little Angel’s home had been like?