Efrain's Secret (11 page)

“No!” I yell. I may suck at physics and may not be as good at math as Chingy or Candace, but I know damn well that averaging my scores will kill me. “Wouldn’t it be more accurate to weight the second one more than the first one?”

Chingy considers it. “You might be right.” He tinkers with the spreadsheet, changing
SAT
to
SAT1
and adding a row named
SAT2
. “But let me tell you something, bro. You better rip that sucker ’cause if you don’t do as well or better the second time around, it’ll hurt your odds more than if you never retook it, ya feel me?”

As if physics weren’t enough to worry about. At least I’m feeling better about my chances now that I’ve registered for that SAT prep course. Not that I bring that up with Chingy in case he asks me how much it costs and other questions I don’t want to answer.

Corroborate
(
v
.) to support with evidence

“Man, E., what you keep smiling about?” asks Nestor. “All ear to ear and whatnot.” Then his mouth pops into a big
O
. “You finally got some!”

“Shut up, yo.” But my face hurts from grinning so much. I can’t control it.

Nestor laughs. “You be all secretive, Efrain, but I knew it all along. I figure in time you’d spill the beans. GiGi González?”

“No, nope, sorry.”

“Yeah, she ain’t trying to mess with you.”

As stupid as it is, I get upset. “What’s wrong with me?”

“Same thing that’s wrong with me. You ain’t Snipes.” Nestor gives me a slight shove. “Why you getting bent out of shape? Two seconds ago when I asked if you were going out with GiGi, you were all
Hell no!
Now you offended.”

“Whatever.”

“Come with me to Fratelli’s. I’ll treat you to a pizza or a hero or something.” Nestor starts to walk east on Hunts Point Avenue. “So what’s her name?”

“Candace.”

“No wonder you’re whipped! Candace is, like, the title of a female ruler in ancient Africa,” says Nestor, a huge grin busting across his face. “Sisters who be running shit like the queen of Sheba.”

While I like the idea of having a girlfriend with a name of distinction, I’m not too crazy about being called whipped. “Shut up.”

Nestor, of course, keeps on. “For real.
Candace
is the Latin version of
Kandake
or something like that. Is she Boricua?
¿Dominicana?”

“Black.”

“Ah!” And the clown breaks out into his jig. “I should’ve known.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I should play cool and keep it at that, but I can’t help myself. “I got me a nice Southern girl.”

“You’re going out with some chick from Brooklyn?” Nestor laughs as he dodges my chop to his neck. “Yo, I’m only messing with you. I may be a high school dropout, but I know where the South is. So is she, like, from Texas, Alabama, Georgia, or what?”

“Louisiana.” I hesitate for a second, wondering if I should say more. Candace might not like me putting her on blast even to one of my closest friends. But I want to tell someone about her, and I don’t plan on introducing Nestor to Candace anytime soon. “New Orleans.”

Nestor’s eyes open. “K-Ville? Yo, was she living there when Katrina hit?” I nod. “Damn …” He gets an extra bop in his walk. “How did she get out?”

“I don’t know. We haven’t talked about it yet.” I increase my stride to keep up with him. “We’re still getting to know each other, so I don’t know where she is with all that. I’m afraid to ask her and stir up any painful memories, you know?”

“I feel you.” Suddenly Nestor punches his hand into his fist. “You know that jail barge I was telling you about? It was built in NOLA.”

“Get out.”

“For real, kid. Cost, like, 160 million.” We walk a few paces in silence. Then Nes gets angry. “You see that, E.? All that money for a jail in the ’hood, but folks in K-Ville still living in trailers.”

“If that,” I say. Candace’s family is hardly the only one spread throughout the country. I wish she would talk more about it. Or at least give me some kind of permission to ask.

“What Kanye said on TV during that fund-raiser?” says Nestor. “That was truth right there.”

“Real talk.”

Nestor and I get to Fratelli’s and order a couple of sausage heros. After grabbing some sodas from the refrigerator, we decide to wait outside while they prepare our order. Nestor asks, “And what about Chingy? Who’s that player messing with these days?”

I don’t like dodging him, but I like the idea of betraying Chingy’s confidence even less. “Never mind Chingy. What about you, kid? Who’re you seeing?”

Nestor shrugs. “I hit this one here, smash that one there. Nobody worth naming, you know. As nice as it would be to have someone official like that, a brother in this game can’t keep a decent female. If a girl knows you’re slinging and still wants to be with you, you have to wonder….” Nestor walks over to a parked car and leans against it. “Does she like me for who I am or what she thinks I can do for her?”

“But if the girl doesn’t know how you make your paper,” I say, “no need to worry about that.”

Nestor takes a deep swig of his soda. “But then what do you really have if you can’t be real with her? A man is what a man does, you know?”

“That’s not true.” I pace the sidewalk in front of Fratelli’s. “A man is more than what he does to make ends meet.”

“I didn’t say that was all he was, but…” Nestor gets off the car. “Okay, what does Rubio do?”

I give him a dirty look. “Don’t talk about him, yo.”

He throws his hands up. “What I say? Did I say anything bad about your pops? No. I just asked you what he does for a living.”

Nestor knows the man’s a mechanic. Before his father bounced, he used to take his car to Rubio’s shop all the time. Those two probably used to swap boasts about their jump-offs. “I heard what you asked, and I’m saying leave Rubio out of this conversation.”

Nestor sighs, then says, “Okay, what does Chingy’s father do?”

“He works for the Department of Labor in some office at the Hub. Something to do with veterans.” It comes back to me. “Yeah, he helps other veterans get jobs.”

“Right. Okay. When he’s not at work, what kind of things does he like to do?”

I have no idea where Nestor is taking this, but I have to admit he has my attention. “He and Mrs. Perry like to go to Atlantic City every once in a while. And he’s part of that bowling league. In fact, he’s the captain of his team.” All those trips to Harlem Lanes come back to me. It’d be just us guys, and, man, would we have fun! Nestor’s father even came along from time to time. Mr. Perry always invited Rubio, but he could never be bothered. I remember wondering out loud to my moms if it was because he was prejudiced. She had a fit.
How could you say something like that about your father? Do you think he would let you be friends with Rashaan if he were a racist? Do you think he would’ve married me?
And on and on and on. She lit into me, but then later I eavesdropped behind their bedroom door as she went after Rubio. Telling him things like the Perrys were
buena gente
, that he was offending them by never going bowling with us, and how did he think it made me feel to be the only boy whose father never went…. Rubio said that he was a grown man who could choose his own friends and had the right to spend his free time in whatever way he pleased without anybody’s assumptions and judgments. What Moms and I didn’t know then was that all those friends were
females, and all that running around on her didn’t leave Rubio any time or energy to go bowling with me.

Nestor starts to count off on his fingers. “Okay, Mr. Perry’s a husband, a father, a veteran, a … What do you call it when you work for the government?”

“A civil servant.”

“Yeah, that’s it. He’s a husband, father, veteran, civil servant, bowler, gambler….” I shoot him a look. “What? I didn’t say it like
that
. Like he’s Pete Rose or some shit. I meant it like the bowling. A hobby.”

“A’ight.”

“So Mr. Perry is all those things, but let me ask you this, E. Where does he spend most of his time?”

“At his job, I guess.”

“So the man spends most of his waking hours at the Department of Labor helping veterans find jobs. That’s his primary role in life. No, the man’s not only his job, but the job is the main part of who he is.” Nestor pauses as if to give the point time to sink. “And if you think about it, E., it makes perfect sense. A man’s job says a lot about him. It tells you what he’s good at, what kind of people are around him most times, who relies on him for what…. Man, just the fact that he has a job—no matter what it is—says something about the kind of man he is. So, no, how a man makes his ends may not be the end-all, be-all of who he is, but it’s a big part of it, E. A real big part. So when I say a girl gets with you knowing that you’re slinging, you gotta hold her suspect—”

“And what if your girl doesn’t know?” I ask.

Nestor thinks about it for a second. Then he just shrugs. “Then I guess the one who’s suspect is you.” Then he lifts himself off the car and heads back to Fratelli’s. “Hope them heros is done, ’cause I’m starving.”

Buttress
(
v
.) to support, hold up

From the first meeting of my SAT prep course, I feel a thousand times slicker. These instructors got tricks, yo. Like I can increase my score just by
skipping
entire sections of the test. I mean, I still have to boost my vocabulary and memorize mathematical formulas and whatnot, but this so-called aptitude test is as much about how to take the exam as it is about what material is on it. If I bust a score of 2200 in January, I basically paid two bucks per point. That’s a steal, if you ask me.

I feel so good when I leave Fordham that when I jump off the Bx19 bus, I head straight to Candace’s place. After a few more chaperoned visits with rentals and takeout, Ma Dukes finally agreed to let me take the girl off the block. Candace is mad excited. Even though her moms forbids us to leave the Bronx, she insists I take her someplace downtown. At first, I was having none of that, but Candace pleaded and schemed, and I finally agreed to take her to this restaurant called the Delta Grill so she can have a taste of Louisiana. I kind of like that my “nice Southern girl” has an edge, and I want her to feel the same way about her valedictorian. Could never have been able to afford that restaurant tutoring, that’s for sure.

When I arrive, her aunt lets me into the apartment. “Child, you’re a half hour early,” says Miss Lamb. “Candace hasn’t returned from her doctor’s appointment yet.”

She never mentioned any appointment. “Is Candace sick?” I ask.

Miss Lamb’s eyes open with the realization that she spoke out of turn. She nudges me back toward the door. “It’s probably best that you wait at home and come back in thirty minutes,” she says. “A lady doesn’t like to be caught off guard by her suitor, Efrain.”

What else can I do but step? When I get home, I reach out to Chingy, but his mother says he’s playing hoops at St. Mary’s. So I trip for the next half hour. Why would Candace keep something like that from me? Does she have an illness or disability that I can’t see? Is this why Candace said that sometimes she gets sick of people being nice to her?

I freshen up and arrive at her building on the hour. Instead of buzzing me in so I can head upstairs, Candace comes down to meet me. On sight we both know what’s up. She knows I know about her aunt’s slip of the tongue, I know she knows, she knows I know she knows. Just one nerve-racking metaphysical mess of a moment, man.

I say, “Ready to go?”

Pretending to fuss with her jacket to break eye contact, she just mumbles, “Yeah.”

“Still wanna go downtown?”

“Uh-huh.” Usually when Candace and I hang out, I take her hand or she links her arm through mine. It happens naturally. But today when we walk toward the subway, a yard of tension hangs between us. “Hey, how was your class?”

I tell her, trying to muster the same enthusiasm I had when I left the campus. I fake it long enough for the 6 train to come. Once we find seats on the subway, I finally ask, “How’s your day been so far?”

Candace takes a deep breath. Then she smiles. “Your ears must’ve been ringing, because I was talking about you.”