Don't Make a Scene

by Valerie Block

  “She's not staying. It really is just dinner.”

  He had, it seemed, gone out of his way to make her nervous about this woman. Why? He began to squeeze her upper arms. “Come on, Diane, I have a crust on you.”

  She began to laugh. “Crush. You have a crush on me?”

  She noticed again the deep, abstract headache in the center of her forehead. It was an oppressive fog, and she would carry it home with her.

  Not home: Glenfield, Glendale, Glenwood.

  “Do you have aspirin?” she asked, and he led her back in.

  “Beyond the pain and humiliation,” Javier asked as he dropped the fifth enormous rock on the left side of the field, “is there a point to this exercise?”

  “Hurtado: Do you want to spend all of tomorrow picking up these rocks and bringing them back over there? Then shut up.”

  In fact, the whole month had been a series of outrages, frustrations and disappointments. But he had a pass to go home at four p.m., his first pass in six weeks.

  Just after dismissal, Javier saw Martínez, the drill instructor, leaning over Yusleidis in the corridor; he had one hand on the wall, and one hand on the front of her neck. A cold electric current ran down the front of Javier's own neck.

  “Hey!”

  After a moment, they both looked over at him.

  Javier controlled his anger, as he had learned to do. “I will see you in your office, now,” he ordered Martínez—an adult, a Sergeant, and the Officer in charge of Javier's own barracks.

  Martínez raised an eyebrow, then threw his head back laughing.

  Javier told Yusleidis to go wait for him outside the cafeteria. When he turned to go, she held his hands, detaining him; he told her they would talk later, and followed the swaggering Martínez down the hall to his office.

  The sergeant sat at his desk under a photo of Fidel Castro delivering a lecture. Javier did not sit down, nor did he stand at attention.

  “Yusleidis is a sophomore and you're a drill instructor,” he said. “Even if you aren't bright enough to teach anything, you're a figure of authority here.”

  A smile displaced the man's enormous mustache. “You're a bigger fool than I thought you were,” Martínez said. He might have been over thirty, at least six feet three and the Commanding Officer of his unit, but his smirk enraged Javier.

  “I'm not talking to the officer,” Javier said. “I'm talking to you, the man—if you are a man.” Javier had had several years of karate and a few months of aikido. But he wouldn't physically attack him: that was the lowest of all forms. “What were you doing to Yusleidis? Account for yourself!”

  Martínez came around the desk to swat at him. Javier leaned back, caught the slapping arm in one hand and pressed against the elbow in the wrong direction with the other. This caused a sharp pain, which registered on the officer's face as surprise and fear. Fidel Castro continued lecturing on the wall.

  “Stop!” Yusleidis burst into the room, her heart-shaped face aghast.

  Javier released his hold. Martínez held his right elbow in his left hand.

  “I'm leaving,” Javier said in a cool voice. “Keep your hands off her.”

  He led Yusleidis out to the hall as Martinez shouted: “YOU WILL STAND BEFORE THE TRIBUNAL IN TEN MINUTES TO ANSWER CHARGES OF AGGRESSION AND LACK OF RESPECT TOWARD AN OFFICER!”

  This is the end of my military career, Javier thought, and kept walking. He didn't want a military career. But was this the end of any career?

  Yusleidis stopped him. “Didn't he just say you had to stand trial?”

  “If I'm expelled, I'm expelled. I don't have to hang around waiting to hear them tell me. What more could they do to me?”

  She inhaled. “Listen, Javier. You shouldn't have done that.”

  He looked at her. “How did you let yourself get into that situation?”

  “You know, I can take care of myself.”

  “I'm sorry I protected you, if you were so interested in that toad.”

  “Fuck you, Javier.”

  He stared at her, without comprehension. She turned around and walked back. She walked back to the administration building!

  Javier passed through the gates before someone noticed and dragged him back into the cesspit of stupidity that was the Camilo Cienfuegos Military High School of Capdevila. He kept up a good pace until he got to the roundabout, where he waited on a line beneath a billboard that read SOCIALISM OR DEATH. He was starving again, and he reflected that one didn't really have to choose.

  He'd managed to sneak out each weekend of detention to visit Yusleidis, whose family lived about two miles down the road from the stinking institution. For six weeks, she'd been driving him crazy in her room. He'd been so close to getting her to complete the transaction. Now this. There was a shortage of females at the school, about one girl for every four guys. Of the girls they had, very few were attractive; Yusleidis had her pick of any camilito she wanted and, apparently, any officer, too. Javier had shaved his head the previous weekend out of boredom and a misguided belief that it would make him look cool. Did his new look have anything to do with her behavior?

  There was a long line of people trying to get downtown for Friday night; he waited two hours before he could get on a truck, and it broke down halfway, so he had to wait another hour. His hunger was acute. By the time he got to Miramar he had no desire to be home. He got off six blocks farther and went to see Paco, who knew all the dance moves. With his white, white head and surfeit of ears, Javier had better learn to dance really well.

  Paco and Néstor were smoking on the front steps; they pointed at his head and laughed. They were on their way to a concert, and he joined them; nobody had a ticket—they were going to talk their way in. Néstor was very good at that. The group began walking to the Karl Marx Theater in high spirits.

  A big crowd had already gathered in front of the theater, and Javier saw a police officer's gaze lock onto Néstor; it would be only a moment before he started harassing him, demanding to see his ID card. This happened every time he was out with Néstor now: Néstor was black and wore his hair in long braids and had grown about a foot since Javier had seen him last. But mainly, he was black. As he predicted, two cops pushed their way through the crowd and stood in front of Néstor.

  “I-car,” demanded one cop.

  “Hmm?” Néstor asked.

  “I-CAR,” demanded the policeman again.

  Néstor was mystified.

  “He wants to see your ID card,” Javier said, “but he doesn't know how to pronounce it. Isn't that right?”

  “YOU!” the cop yelled at Javier, pointing his nightstick at him. “I-CAR!”

  “Okay, okay,” Javier said, as he and Néstor produced their ID cards.

  People around them were scattering to avoid the scene.

  “What's this?” The cop pointed to Javier's ID card. Javier had replaced his awful ID picture with another photo, in which he looked better. He realized his error: he'd replaced the official black-and-white photo with a color snapshot. Also, the official raised seal was missing. He was trying to explain this to the one cop; meanwhile, the other cop was handcuffing Néstor.

  “Why are you handcuffing him?”

  “He's a citizen with characteristics,” said the second cop.

  “He did nothing!” Javier shouted, and before he realized it, the cop had slammed his head onto the hood of the police car.

  “Spread your legs!”

  He opened his legs and exchanged a terrified look with Néstor, whose head was also on the hood of the car. Javier began to sweat.

  The cop kicked his right leg open farther.

  “Ow! My legs are spread! They're spread!”

  “Shut up, camilito” said the cop, and kicked his left leg.

  Who was watching? Did it matter? They could do anything they wanted.

  There was an impasse at the police station: they had no place to put juveniles. After twenty minutes of standing in handcuffs in the middle of the station,
Javier and Néstor were led down a series of ever-darker hallways and finally pushed into a fluorescent-lit cell that stank of urine and sweat. A mulatto with a snake tattoo climbing up his neck watched them with wordless hostility from one corner, where he sat on the floor. The jailer locked the cell.

  Whatever they did now was critical, Javier decided. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a cigarette.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Néstor pointed to a No Smoking sign on the wall, next to a photo of Fidel making another point, finger in the air.

  Javier lit the butt with one eye closed, looking straight at his cell mate, who was thin but strong and had the most enormous Afro he'd ever seen.

  “HEY!” someone yelled. “Who's smoking?”

  The cop who had kicked his legs and handcuffed him arrived at the cell. Javier blew a stream of smoke in his direction and then slowly ground the butt onto the floor. The cop opened the door to the cell. “Little camilito with a big attitude,” he said, and slapped Javier's face hard. He locked the gate.

  “His grandfather is a Colonel,” Néstor called after him.

  “Shut up,” Javier whispered.

  Their cell mate had a very heavy aura about him.

  “What are you in for?” Néstor asked the fellow.

  What the hell was Néstor doing? They were dead meat!

  “I won't bother you,” the cell mate said, slowly. “Don't you bother me.”

  Javier and Néstor sat on the floor, not looking at each other. Néstor was shivering.

  Now that Javier was taller than his grandfather, it made no sense that Pucho hit him. Pucho knew how much he resented it. He knew he'd taken karate, aikido. The entire household made no sense. Ever since his grandmother Alicia had moved back in after the divorce, Mercedes, Pucho's girlfriend, sat on the patio all day like a queen while his grandmother cooked meals and cried in the servant's room. His aunt and her husband had nasty, screaming fights. His five-year-old cousin, Hanoi, was all over his things, ruining important cassette tapes and getting guava paste on his books. His mother was constantly hounding him. Whatever he was doing, she was there to tell him he should be doing something else. There wasn't a moment of peace.

  After a period that could have been five minutes or three hours, the two cops who had arrested them came in. They had been drinking.

  “Get up, Aurelio,” they said to the cell mate.

  The man in the corner didn't move, but glared to tremendous effect. The one who couldn't talk yanked him to a standing position. Javier began to shake. Aurelio let out a growl, threw himself at the cop and knocked him across the cell. Aurelio would not leave the cell! He was giving the cop hell! The second cop came in, leaving the door ajar. It occurred to Javier to use the moment to escape. But they had his ID—what was the point? He and Néstor backed up against the wall to avoid getting hit in the commotion.

  The cops dragged the man out of the cell to a little clearing, where all three of them caught their breath.

  “What's the matter, Aurelio, you tired?” They began taking turns, one to hold him down, the other to kick and punch him.

  Javier walked a few steps, sank to his knees and began to heave.

  After what seemed like an eternity, they threw Aurelio back into the cell. He stayed where he fell, bloodied and panting, beneath the fluorescent lamp.

  “Are you okay, brother?” Javier asked, and gave him his handkerchief.

  Aurelio took it with a slight nod and dabbed at his nose and mouth. It suddenly occurred to Javier—and apparently to Néstor at the same time, because they exchanged a petrified glance—that they might be next. Aurelio was sleeping—or had he passed out? They were sitting on the urine, blood and vomit of other prisoners. Tension mounted.

  “I cannot believe this is happening,” Javier said, sitting back.

  “This is exactly how I imagined it,” Néstor said.

  They shifted uncomfortably on the floor. Javier wanted to sleep. He wanted a very long shower. He had probably been expelled again, the second school in two years. He had done a very stupid and unnecessary thing; it was Forgery, or Destruction of State Property, meaning official punishment as well as whatever Pucho would mete out. Yusleidis had clearly moved on. The fluorescent light was relentless. He had reached the nadir of his life.

  “You,” an unfamiliar cop said, pointing at him.

  It was morning; he'd fallen asleep leaning against the wall.

  Néstor was gone. Aurelio was gone. The cops from the previous evening were gone. The taste in his mouth was atrocious. Javier stood up, and was taken through a series of halls and offered a chair in a room with a row of desks and a partition, beyond which were seats for the public.

  “I hear you have a big mouth and an irregular ID card,” said a new cop, a thin white man with a reddish mustache.

  “I can explain,” Javier said, and saw Pucho beyond the partition, wearing an olive green uniform that didn't fit him anymore and a thick, official face.

  The floor of his nadir had just dropped.

  “You say this is your ID card,” the cop said, “but you could have stolen it.”

  If Pucho beats me today, Javier thought, I'll deserve it.

  “I'll identify him, Officer,” Pucho called, and stepped up to the partition, showing the cop his National ID card and Army ID card.

  There was a dialogue, during which the cop justified taking Javier into custody, and Pucho agreed with the decision; the cop held up the evidence to examine it in the light, and Pucho praised him for his care in observing procedure; the cop explained the policy on forged ID cards and Pucho commended him on his diligence.

  “He'll be hearing from me. He's my grandson,” Pucho said. “I shouldn't have to do this, but his father is a nonperson. Antisocial scum.”

  The cop applauded Pucho for not being afraid of old-fashioned discipline, and Pucho accepted the compliment and griped about the decline in parenting standards, all the while fingering the buttons on his jacket and clearing his throat violently, a noise that Javier could not, could not stand. After fingerprints, photos and signatures, Javier was released into the custody of his grandfather, who marched out of the station as if about to inspect a line of troops.

  The light outside was blinding.

  Pucho glanced at Javier with disdain. “Tuck in your shirt: you'll get a demerit.”

  Another issue to deal with. Javier got into the Chevrolet.

  “You may be the luckiest moron I know. We're visiting Mercedes’ sister in the hospital. You and I will have a long talk when I get back.”

  Terrific. He could now sit at home and anticipate the humiliation.

  “And I don't need to tell you that you can't go out,” Pucho said, pulling up to the house, where Mercedes waited, wearing her lemon-sucking face. “You'll be arrested again for not having ID. I'll see you this afternoon.”

  Mercedes didn't look at him as she took his place in the passenger seat.

  He walked up the steps into the house and opened the front door.

  “Oh my God!” His mother fell to her knees at his feet, sobbing.

  “Is that necessary?” he asked.

  In one motion she got up and slapped him across the mouth. This was really too much. She was yelling again. He walked out of the house, although he badly needed to use a bathroom and hadn't eaten since lunch the day before. He had to get this uniform off, and he wanted to sleep, in a room without light.

  Paco was sitting on his stoop playing his guitar.

  “What happened, brother?” he asked.

  “I'll tell you if you let me take a shower.”

  Paco led him inside, past his sister and her boyfriend, his grandmother and the television, which was showing another Roundtable Debate. Nobody ever mentioned how the table itself was rectangular, or how nobody disagreed. There wasn't much hot water or soap, but Javier felt so unclean he stayed under the cold water for as long as he could. Joining Paco in his room, he gave him the details of the night before. Paco was
riveted. Javier felt a little better, but he couldn't turn the experience into a lighthearted tale.

  “What did they want in the first place?” Paco asked.

  “They had it in for Néstor. And he's so naïve, he doesn't get angry.”

  “He's not naïve, he's dense,” Paco said, and picked up his guitar. He was always playing the same irritating song that he had written.

  “But he should get angry!” Javier said, feeling hot all of a sudden. “We all should! I don't know what is Left or Right anymore, but wherever Fidel Castro is located, I am 180 degrees at the opposite pole.”

  Paco's face was immobilized. “You didn't just say that.”

  Just because Paco played the guitar and wore his hair long, and just because they had drunk rum and talked about girls together, what made Javier suppose that Paco, son of high-ranking Party members, would be receptive? And where was Paco while he and Néstor were pressed facedown on the squad car?

  “No, I didn't say that.”

  “Good, I didn't think so. You going to that party tonight?”

  Javier wanted to sleep for five or six years. “No, I think I'll skip it.”

  “Okay. See you around.”

  When Javier walked in, his grandfather was strutting around the kitchen.

  “What did I tell you about going out?”

  Bang. A blow to the head.

  “Do it again,” Javier told him, and his grandfather lifted his hand in a gesture of dismissal. “Do it again, Pucho. Come on, right here. I will knock you flat on your nasty, fat, arthritic ass. Watch me.”

  “Listen how he talks to his grandfather!” Mercedes squawked.

  “Shut up, you lazy bitch,” Javier told her.

  Pucho came at him in a rage. Right there, in the middle of the kitchen, in front of his mother, his aunt, his grandfather's whore, his cousin and his grandmother, the usual passive spectators, he performed the move he had chosen. It was quick, it was light—it was almost like dancing. Pucho lay on his back on the tiled floor, stunned.