Bodega Dreams (5 page)

“Nah, she’s wack. She was hot once, not anymore,” I said, happy that the conversation with Bodega was stalled. As I watched Sapo, I hoped that Bodega would get down to the point. I wanted Bodega to just tell me what this had to do with me. But right then, it didn’t matter as much because a nice joint was coming my way and since the day I had married Blanca, I hadn’t had a good smoke.

“Nah, Bo Derek is still usable,” Sapo said.

“Not like when she had those little
trensitas.
You know, when she had those little braids like Stevie Wonder. Back then she was fine. That shit should come back. White girls look fine with their hair like that,” I said.

Sapo continued to smile. “You know, Iris Chacón in huh prime never posed for
Playboy.
Thass a fucken shame,” he said.

“Now that,” I agreed, “would have been worth paying for.” Iris Chacón was my wet dream, as she was for many. When she danced, she prostituted your blood, masturbated your soul. She was a gift from the mother island to remind us of the women that were left behind, the girls that were not brought over to Nueva York and were left waving goodbye near
las olas del mar, en mi viejo San Juan.

“But I don’t care,” Sapo said. “Iris Chacón or not,
yo las cojo a to’a’.
I take ’em all, from eight to eighty. Blind, crippled, and crazy.” I laughed with him. Sapo hammed it up. “If they know how to crawl, they’re in the right position.”

I laughed. “Nigga, you’re crazy.”

“If they can play with Fisher-Price”—Sapo was on a roll, grabbed his crotch—“they can play with this device.”

“Dude, shut up, get help,” I said, laughing.

Just when Sapo was about to crack another snap—“If they watch
Sesame Street
they can”—Bodega came back to life. “So, Chino, like I was telling you …”

Sapo quieted down and I let out a deep sigh because I wanted to
talk about something else. Even hearing Sapo’s mad crazy snaps would have been a welcome relief. Bodega picked up on my boredom, smiled, and went right to the point.

“Nazario needs help. It would be good if he had you. You know, a smart guy, like an assistant, Chino.”

“Hey, man, it’s cool but I’m not interested in this business.”

“Did I say anything about pushing rocks?” Bodega looked insulted. His voice sailed a notch. “I told you Nazario is a lawyer.”

“Look man, I know you gotta do what you gotta do,” I said. “I got nothin’ against you or what you’re doin’. I don’t believe in this ‘Just say no’ shit because there ain’t too many things to say ‘Yes’ to in this fucken place. But I can’t.”

“Nah, hear me out, Chino. Hear me out, don’t interrupt me. Check it out. You know those three buildings on 111th between Lexington and Park, right in back of us and right in front of P.S. 101, you know, those newly renovated tenements?”

“Yeah, so wha’?”

“Those shits are mine.”

“Yours?” I didn’t believe him and looked at Sapo for confirmation. Sapo nodded.

“Those shits were condemned but look at them now,” Sapo said. “It’s like the fat girl no one wanted until someone took a chance on the bitch and put her on a diet, and now everybody’s sweatin’ her.”

“But thass not all, Chino,” Bodega continued. “I got a line of them that are being renovated on 119th and Lexington. And Nazario is working with his contacts in City Hall on getting me more. Housing. Housing, Chino. Thass how I’m going to do it. Thass the vision.” The phone rang. He cursed at the air and answered it.

“Yeah … What botanica? You mean you fucks don’t know what botanica? San Lázaro y las Siete Vueltas, what other botanica do you think? Now go!” Bodega hung up, shook his head. “Like children,” he whispered to himself, “like fucken children.”

Sapo kept rolling. Sapo could roll real good. A joint from him looked like it came out of a pack of Camels. I looked back at Bodega, who was still shaking his head. He muttered something to God or maybe to himself and continued.

“Like I was telling you, Chino, when Nazario acquired the first buildin’, the cops would drive by and see Puerto Ricans workin’ on tryin’ to renovate a building. The cops would laugh. They said we had no ingenuity because we were Puerto Ricans. They would say things like, you guys ain’t Incas, you have no Machu Picchus in San Juan; you guys aren’t Aztecs, there ain’t no pyramids in Mayaguez. You guys are Tainos, dumb mothafuckas. There ain’t no ancient ruins on that island of yours cuz you guys can’t build shit.”

Bodega stopped, and held his index finger in front of his eyes. “But Nazario, he saw. He knew. He knew better.” He moved his finger to his temple. “He’s a lawyer, but he hustled. He can still hustle because he never forgot he is street. He hustled like all of us who started stealin’ a hubcap here and a radio there until we owned the car. Nazario was hustlin’.” Bodega cupped his hands around his mouth as if he was going to shout.

“ ‘Yo! Anybody knows someone who’s an electrician? A plasterer? A plumber?’ ” He dropped his hands and continued. “Nazario was in the street hustlin’. In Loisaida and in East Harlem. ‘Yo! I’m tryin’ to renovate a buildin’ here! You know anybody who would do it for the love of his brother or at least for cheap?’ And soon, the community answered him. ‘Yeah, my brother is an electrician, he’ll help out; yeah, my sister is a plumber; my cousin does roofin’.’ And then, Chino, a blue plastic chute dropped down the side of the buildin’. Bricks began to fall. Pipes were cut. The roof was stripped. The buildin’ was gutted. Like a fucken fish, it was gutted. And the cops stopped laughin’. And then Nazario was hustlin’ again. Only this time it was with the fire marshal at City Hall. ‘We haven’t broken any fire codes. This building is safe. You can come see for yourselves.’ And they came and they checked. And they declared the buildin’ safe. And the fire department backed off. And you know what I did?”

“Wha?”

“I placed fourteen families in the buildin’, cheap rent, too. You know what that means, Chino?”

“You a sweetheart?” I said, smiling.

“Yeah, that too. But what it means is fourteen families that would riot for Bodega. Fourteen families that would take a bullet for Bodega.
Yeah, they ain’t stupid, they know where the money is comin’ from. They know who their real landlord is. They know what he does. But they’re getting a slice, right? See, Chino, I see it as a grant. Just like IBM issues grants, like Mobil issues grants. Do those places really want to give money away? I don’t think so. But it helps their image, it’s tax deductible, and the government backs off some. In order for me to keep my slice, I also got to issue grants. But I take care of the community and the community will take care of me. They must, because their shelter depends on me.” Bodega banged a fist on the table, then pointed a finger at the wall as if he were pointing at the people outside. As if he were pointing at the neighborhood.

“So if Doña Ramonita can’t pay her rent, I take care of it. The community center needs a new pool table, I take care of it. Casita Maria’s Peewee League needs new uniforms, I take care of it, bro. They all come to Bodega. The word is out. It’s out all over El Barrio. Baby needs a new pair of shoes, go speak ta Willie Bodega. My daughter is getting married, and I need a big cake from Valencia, go see Bodega. My
fritura
stand in La Marqueta burned down, go see Willie Bodega, he’ll help ya. Any shit like that. What I ask for is their loyalty. If something happens to me, people will take to the streets. Bro, there will be Latinos from 125th Street to 96th Street with congas and timbales twenty-four hours a day stopping traffic, overturning cars, setting fires, yelling, ‘Free William Irizarry! Free that brother, that sweet, sweet brother! Free Willie Irizarry and lock up some fucken stockbroker!’ I’m talkin’ major riots here. Do you see what I’m talking about?”

As he asked me this I looked at Sapo again. He had finished rolling two joints. They were lovely: long, thin, white, like the fingers of a model. It seemed a shame to light them, but Sapo lit one up anyway. Toked it. Got up from the dirty sofa and handed it to me. I followed.

“One problem, Bodega,” I said, holding the smoke in my lungs.

“Yeah?”

“Yo’r sellin’ that stuff”—releasing the smoke—“to your own people.”

“Fuck that!” He banged a fist on the desk again, only this time it was hard. I just ignored it and passed the joint to him.

“Nah, enjoy.” He waved the joint away.
“To’a’ pa’ ti,”
he said, so I knew he couldn’t be too mad.

“See, Chino, any Puerto Rican or any of my Latin brothers and sisters who are stupid enough to buy that shit …” He motioned with his fingers for me to come closer as if he was going to tell me a secret. I leaned toward him. Then he whispered, repeating, “Any Puerto Rican or any of my Latin brothers who are stupid enough to buy that shit, don’t belong in my Great Society.”

I wanted to laugh. Who did he think he was, Lyndon Johnson?

Back then, that night, to me he was a joke. I was surprised he had come this far. But I knew it couldn’t have been pure luck. No one gets this far on luck. I was to discover that I was living in a rare moment when a personality becomes so interlocked with the era that it can’t be spoken of in different sentences. Bodega was a lost relic from a time when all things seemed possible. When young people cared about social change. He had somehow brought that hope to my time. It was hard to define it at first because I thought no one could possibly believe any of that, not anymore. But Bodega didn’t just believe it, he was actually practicing it. He had learned from the past and knew change couldn’t just come from free love, peace, and brotherhood. Extreme measures would have to be taken, and all you could hope for was that the good would outweigh the bad.

“Great Society?” I repeated after him, shaking my head. “I don’t know, Willie, that sounds like something out of the sixties, know what I’m sayin’? Something about declaring war on poverty and Spanish Harlem being a prisoner of war. Now, I don’t know when that war ended, all I know is they never came looking to free us.” I toked the joint again, laughing. I was about to get up and pass it to Sapo but I saw Sapo had lit his own joint. So I guessed this one was all mine. I smiled.

“Yeah, well I’m a throwback, m’man.” Bodega returned my smile. “I’m glad you picked up on that, Chino.” He was beaming. “You were just a puppy, Sapo was just a tadpole when the neighborhood was a joy. It was a joy because there was pride and anger and identity. The Black Panthers in Harlem were yellin’, ‘Power to the People!’ Us here in El Barrio saw what they were doing up in Harlem. We began to ask ourselves, why can’t we do some shit like that here? Somethin’ had to be done, otherwise we were goin’ to kill one another. So then came Cha Cha Jimenez, a cat from Chicago. He started speakin’ about Puerto
Rican nationalism and soon formed the Young Lords. Us here in East Harlem took that movement and ran with it.” Bodega began to pace the room with excitement. “The Young Lords were beautiful, Chino. El Barrio was full of hope and revolution was in the air. We wanted jobs, real jobs. We wanted education, real education, for our little brothers and sisters, b’cause it was too late for us. We wanted lead paint out of our buildings, window guards so our babies wouldn’t go flying after pigeons, we wanted to be heard. But first we knew we had to get the community on our side. So what did we Young Lords do?”

“Wha’?”

“We cleaned the streets. Everybody, Chino, went home and got a broom, bought bags, rakes, Comet and Ajax for the graffiti walls, trash cans, and soon the community was for us. Soon they were cleaning the streets with us. No one feared us. They all loved us. Later we said to ourselves, hey, we didn’t start the Lords to fuckin’ clean the street. So one day we all put on our Sunday best and ambushed Gracie Mansion. To talk with Mayor Lindsay about jobs, education, housing, training programs. When we arrived at the gates of Gracie, Lindsay’s aide said to us, ‘Any complaints must be filed at City Hall.’ We said, ‘We’re not here to complain, we’re here to talk.’ But Lindsay wouldn’t see us. He could not believe that there were hoods in suits out by the gates who were not stabbing each other. Who weren’t there to rob his house. Who had organized to make their neighborhood better. He couldn’t understand that East Harlem, only a mile away from where he lived, had the capacity to see itself in the mirror and say, ‘We need a change. Let’s go and see the man.’ Eventually, Chino, we all went home and did what Lindsay’s aide had said. The next day we went to City Hall and filed our demands. And you know what happened the next month, Chino?”

“Nah, tell me,” I said, knowing he was going to anyway.

“The next month, they hiked the subway fare from twenty-five cents to thirty-five cents.” He shrugged. “So we waited, and we waited, and we filed and we filed. Finally, when we knew our demands weren’t going to be met, when we knew Lindsay wouldn’t get back to us, the sanitation department wouldn’t even lend us brooms to clean our
streets, we had no choice but to take over the streets of East Harlem.” Bodega’s cool was betrayed by excitement. “Those were the East Harlem garbage riots of sixty-nine. We used garbage cans and thrown-out furniture to blockade 116th Street from Fifth Avenue to First. And Mayor Lindsay, the biggest fraud this fucken city has ever known, but with enough charisma to charm Hitler, sent his fucken city officials and his police goons after us. So we started stackin’ guns inside a church we took over by 111th Street and Lex. Thass right, inside a fucken church. And we began preaching Que Pasa Power.” Bodega kept pacing around the room with the energy of a shadow boxer. “All over the neighborhood, Que Pasa Power! Even old ladies started to smuggle things for us, b’cause Mayor Lindsay’s dogs would never think of frisking them. Old ladies, Chino. Old ladies would do this for us b’cause they knew, they knew where we were comin’ from. Yo, it was remarkable. Que Pasa Power was what was happenin’.
Pa’lante
was our horse, a newspaper we pushed our ideas with.” Bodega stopped pacing and returned to his dirty desk. He sat down, facing me. “But just like now, there was the eternal hustle.” He looked at me quietly for a second. The sadness had returned, mixed with anger. “The eternal hustle, Chino. The decision to either be a pimp or a whore, thass all you can be in this world. You work for someone else or you work for yourself. And when the Young Lords got too high and mighty they began to bicker among themselves. Later they even changed their agenda and became somethin’ else. I was broken. Chino, bro, I left and knew that the only way for me was to hustle. So I hustled enough heroin to knock out all the elephants in Africa. And then I met ma man Nazario. He was just gettin’ out of Brooklyn Law School back then. And from those days on, Nazario and me—” I saw some light in his eyes as if hope had returned. He then joined his two fingers as if they were glued together. “—Nazario and me, brothers.
Panas.
And now we’ve got bigger things in mind. You see,” he continued, “you either make money with me or you make money for me. Thass what I tell my boys. Either way I win.”