This Side of Providence (16 page)

During siestas, while everybody sleeps, he comes into my room and pushes the dresser in front of the door. He says I will get in trouble if I tell—that it's my fault for being pretty and wearing flowers in my hair and thin cotton dresses—and I believe him. The first time he just jerks off in front of me, but then he makes me touch it—first with my hand and later with my mouth—and when he comes he leaves a stain on the quilt I can still see even weeks after I wash it out. I don't think I ever really stop seeing it, even after I get married and leave everything in that house behind.

When the counselor asks about my husband, I tell her about our wedding night, how we sleep together for the first time in the bed he grew up in, with only a thin wall separating us from his parents. It feels good because he takes his time and waits for me to be ready, and he keeps whispering my name over and over again like a lullaby. I'm so in love with him I can feel the ache all the way down to my toes. I want him so badly I can't look into his eyes. I try to block out the flashes, but as soon as Javier is inside me, I think of the first time with my cousin, of a shower so hot it burns my skin, of running as fast as I can even though I'm standing still. I feel other hands touching me, other people taking things that were only mine to give.

We met when we were fourteen and I told him I was a virgin, but when I don't bleed on our wedding night I know he thinks I'm a liar. He says it doesn't matter but he's quiet afterwards. He rolls off me and pulls the sheet up around his naked body like he's cold, even though it's hot in that room, with only one small window to catch the breeze. Years later, during a
fight when I'm pregnant with Luz—our second child together—he tells me he knows I wasn't a virgin on our wedding night and that he never trusted me after that. Sometimes he wonders if these kids are even his.

“How did that make you feel?” the counselor asks me. “When he said that your kids might not be his.”

“I didn't feel anything.”

She stares at me till I look away. “I don't know,” I finally say, sitting up in my chair. “I felt like there were too many feelings and they blocked each other out.”

“Did you tell him that?”

“No. I didn't tell him anything.”

She folds her hands together. “Why not?”

“'Cause then I'd have to remember it myself.”

“And that's dangerous, isn't it?”

I don't say anything, just stare out the window behind her desk. The wind is blowing and I watch dark red leaves fall from branches as black as dirt.

“We had a garden,” I tell her. “At our first house. We used to put Cristo and Luz to sleep in the swing and water the plants together at night. It was the only time we had alone, just the two of us.”

She nods. I can see she wants me to say more.

“We used to eat tomatoes straight off the vine, like apples. They were sweeter than any fruit you can find in this country.”

I don't tell her about the bad times. How he got so drunk he used to throw baseballs at me. How he yelled at the kids when they couldn't dress themselves. How he disappeared for days in a row. I don't tell her how I started to separate myself, testing to see what life would be like without him even before he was gone. Just like when my mother got sick and I used to hide in my bedroom for days, pretending she was already gone—ignoring her coughing fits, the clumps of her hair in the sink, her bloodstained towels hanging over the tub—just to see if I could survive without her. I did the same thing with my husband, creating a world where I didn't need him so I wouldn't miss him when he left.

But he got so comfortable with the distance he never had
to leave. He used to threaten to go away forever, but he always came back a few days later, without a word, like he had just been at the market buying meat. So I knew it was gonna have to be me. At first I thought a different house would be enough, then a different city, but I really didn't feel like he was gone until I put an ocean between us—and even on the streets of New York City I used to look for him in the crowds. I still look for his face and I always find it—every time I look at Luz.

“Are you in love with him?”

She's not even looking at me when she asks the question, so I look away when I answer.

“I love him. I think I always will.”

“And you're comfortable with that?”

“Lady, I'm not comfortable with anything.” I cross my legs and then uncross them.

She smiles. “You know what I mean.”

“It was hard when I first left him. Like I was trying to breathe under water.”

“Like getting clean?” she says.

I nod. “But I'm okay now. I survived.”

She drinks from a tall bottle of water. “Are you surviving now?”

I shrug. “Some days better than others.”

“You never answered my question, about being in love with him.”

I cross my legs again, trying to keep myself in the chair. “I don't know. Maybe.”

She leans back in her chair, waiting for me to say more.

“Maybe I didn't get over him, but I got on without him. That's what matters.”

“Have you ever fallen in love again? With someone else?”

“Sure, I slept with lots of other people.”

“I'm talking about love, Arcelia.”

Fuck love, is what I want to say to her. But instead, I tell her the truth. “I thought I did once, with my baby's father. But it wasn't really love. Not like with Javier. I guess I was faithful to my husband in that way.” I untie my shoelaces just so I can re-tie them tighter. “You think that means I'm still in love with him?”

She finishes the water in her bottle. “Only you can answer that.”

“It's been a long time. Five years since I last saw him.”

She smiles. “In the grand scheme of life, five years isn't a long time.”

I wrap the shoelace around my finger, cutting off the blood. “I got close with Lucho but it's not the same. I don't love her like I loved my husband. I love her like I loved getting high.” I watch my fingertip turn purple. “At first I thought it was because she's a woman, but now I think it was just my heart.”

“What about your heart?”

I unwrap my finger and bend it to make sure it still works. “I won't let myself love like that again. It took too much from me, to love that hard.”

“What about your children? You love them.”

“That's different. It doesn't take anything away from you to love your kids. It makes you bigger.”

The counselor smiles to herself as she writes something in my chart. Then she puts the pencil down and sits back in her chair.

“You've had a lot of pain in your life, Arcelia. A lot of bad things have happened to you. It makes sense that you want to numb yourself. That you've tried to run away from everything.”

My feet start tapping the linoleum floor. I want to run right now, but there is nowhere to go.

“Leaving Puerto Rico helped, leaving your husband, and, of course, getting high. That was a good escape. But you can't run forever. You know that, don't you? And you can't run away from yourself.”

“I can try.”

“You're right. You can. And how do you think that's working out so far?”

I turn away from her, feeling my face get hot. My feet are still tapping. I steady my knees with my hands, trying to be as still as the tree outside her window. The leaves keep falling, the branches bend, but the tree itself don't ever move.

With Candy I don't have to worry about things like love. We talk about old TV shows and stupid movies and all of our best highs, but we don't talk about ourselves really. There's no place for that in here. We're just friends—friends with benefits the white ladies call it—and even when we have sex, we don't really share anything. After we're done we lie together in the dark for a few minutes, catching our breath and staring up at the dirty mattress on the top bunk, rubbing our legs together, sharing a flimsy pillow, sometimes falling asleep. That's when I feel closest to her.

I finally go to the infirmary and end up having that cracked tooth pulled. The doctor says I can get a root canal and have a fake tooth put in after a long, painful surgery that will cost the state plenty in insurance premiums, or I can be sensible and just have them pull it out. He offers to give me twice the pain meds I'd get for the fake tooth, and promises that my sacrifice will earn me plenty of brownie points with the staff—which could pay off in extra dessert, longer visiting hours, and the guards looking the other way if I have any nighttime visitors. I know I might regret it later, when I'm back in the real world with a nasty gap in my smile, but I take the pain meds and the brownie points and never think about that tooth again.

I give the meds to Candy that night after they pull my tooth, as a thank-you for her kindness, and she shows her appreciation two times in a row. After, when we're lying in bed like two lazy cats, she asks me about the magazine clippings on my wall.

“You a gourmet cook or something?”

“Nah. I just like looking at pretty things.” I stare at her, hoping to make her blush, but her skin is a shade of brown that makes it hard to see.

“Well don't look at me then.” “What are you talking about,” I whisper. “You're pretty.”

“Yeah, when I was eight. I look old now.”

“You're twenty-one.”

“You know how we age…the drugs, the late nights.” She rolls over and buries her face in the pillow.

“Quit messing. You look like a teenager.” I tickle her until
she lifts her head.

“And you look like your little boy.” She kisses me on the nose. “Show me the pictures again.”

I reach under the bed for my notebook, pulling out the pictures that teacher sent. Candy nods when she looks at Cristo.

“Yep, just like you.” She stares at the picture of Luz. “Your daughter's pretty. A little angry maybe, but pretty.” She's right—Luz is staring into the camera like it's a rifle.

“She doesn't look like you,” Candy says.

“She looks like her father.”

Candy plays with my hair, wrapping it around her finger like a ring. “Where's he at?”

“Puerto Rico.”

“You ever see him?”

I shake my head.

“The kids ever see him?”

“Not since we left.”

We're both quiet for a while. Candy picks broken hairs off the pillow and sprinkles them onto the floor.

“Was that his idea or yours?”

I don't know how to answer that so I don't say anything.

“Does he know you're in here?”

I shrug. “I didn't tell him.”

“All those letters you write and none for him? Seems kinda unfair.”

“Why? I don't owe him anything.”

“I mean for your kids. Maybe if he knew you were in here he'd want to help out, come visit or something.”

“I doubt it.” I turn over and pull the covers up, shrinking into the bed for warmth.

“Only one way to find out though.” She presses her body against mine from behind, warming every spot she touches.

She leaves around 5:30 and instead of falling back asleep I get dressed and sit at the desk. I open my notebook to a clean page. The room is still dark so I use the light from an alarm clock as a lamp. I hold the pen above the paper, waiting for the words to come. Finally, when the sun is almost up and there's enough light in the room to see that my roommates are still
asleep, I write
Querido Javier
, and begin the letter I been needing to write for months.

Cristo

A
fter working for almost three months I get my first paycheck from Snowman. It's not a check, really, but that's what he says when he hands me the cash.

“Here, kid, your first paycheck.”

The bills are so new they stick together. They feel fake, like Monopoly money. I have to lick my fingers just to count the twenties—five of them—which is more money than I've ever had. I keep thanking him over and over again.

“Don't thank me, you earned it.” He squeezes my shoulder. “Hey, don't you have a wallet or something? You can't just walk around holding it in your hand like a concert ticket.”

I fold the cash in half and tuck it into my front pocket. Then I run my fingers over the bulge on the outside of my jeans, making sure it doesn't disappear. I keep doing that during the day, until I get back to Kim and Chino's place and hide it in a couch cushion so I can sit on top of it all night long.

I guess I should call it Kim's place now, since Chino moved out last week. But who knows—it's probably not even Kim's. All I know is Chino's gone and the rest of us are still here, acting like nothing changed. I keep waiting for Kim to come out of her room and ask us to leave since he was our only connection to her, but nothing's happened yet. Mostly she just nods like a mute if one of us asks her something. She spends all her time in her bedroom with the door locked and the stereo on, playing Michael Bolton songs on repeat. She stopped buying food and usually forgets to bring home dinner, so we've been getting by
with the WIC checks I forged and anything else I can get for free. I guess I could buy us some food now, but it seems easier just to keep on stealing it so I can save the money for an apartment when Mami gets out. A hundred dollars might seem like a lot, but when you got rent and food and clothes to buy it runs out pretty quick. Fuck if I know how anybody gets by without stealing or asking the government for help.

I stopped cutting my hair back in August and now it's long and curly like boys I used to see at the beaches in Puerto Rico. Before it was so short I didn't even know I had curly hair. Now I want it to grow out into a big Afro like Snoop Dogg or Kobe Bryant. Sometimes I wish I was black. Not black-skinned, but black on the inside, just like Snowman. I want everybody to think I'm black. It wouldn't be hard really, I could just stop speaking Spanish on the street and only eat rice and beans when I'm inside. I could say my father lives in Brooklyn, nah, maybe Harlem sounds better, and Mami is from one of those southern states like Alabama where she couldn't go to school with white people. And if they asked I could say my grandmother still lives down there, on this huge farm with pigs and dandelions and no cotton. I could have people from both the city and the country be my family, and they'd all be some shade of black, and they'd all be American.

Mami says Puerto Ricans aren't real Americans, we're like people who live together without being a family. Even though we got the same blood as black people, it's different 'cause they been in this country for hundreds of years. That's what gives them the right to be American. I want to know how long I gotta be here before I can say that. Sometimes I think even if I spend my whole life here it still won't be enough, and I'll never feel like I really belong.

When the first-quarter grades get handed out in October, I find out I'm failing fifth grade. Mrs. Reed says I don't turn in enough of the homework on time and I got to do better on quizzes and class participation. And then she says that even
though my reading and writing has improved, my math and geography are as weak as the kids who just got here from Guatemala or Peru. I tell her that Teacher would never fail me and she says it doesn't matter because Teacher's not my teacher anymore. She sends me back to my desk and calls another student up, talking to each one alone until she makes it through the entire class. With everybody else she smiles at least once, and with César she holds his shoulder the entire time and looks like she's trying not to cry.

“No worse than last year,” César says as he shows me his report card, a line of Ds marching straight down the page. He laughs as he puts the paper away, but it's a quick laugh, not like the one he gave last year when he asked Teacher if her typewriter key had gotten jammed. He tries to act the same as before the accident, but it never works. It's like he's trying too hard to be himself. He wears his helmet tilted back on his head like a baseball cap, and all I can see is the bullet still inside his skull, messing up the insides and covering up the part of his brain that made him who he was. He's having another operation to remove the bullet next week and I keep hoping that when it's gone, my friend will finally come back.

There's a new girl in our class named Graciela and on her first day she smiled through every lesson and never said a word. She's got a pretty smile. She just moved here from Colombia and she's the darkest girl in our class. And just like Luz, she's always reading. Even in the middle of class she has a book open on her lap. And she always has that smile on her face, even when she's not looking at anyone. Last year I woulda probably asked her out, or at least sat next to her at lunch or on the bus, but now I don't have time for that type of kid stuff.

Besides, I usually try to save a seat for Marco during lunch, even though he has new friends from Regular Ed and he usually eats with them. Sometimes he asks me to sit with them, but none of those kids speak Spanish and they all bring their lunch from home and make fun of anyone who eats the cafeteria food. Like we have a choice. I try not to blame Marco 'cause I know it's not his fault he's smart and had to move into Regular Ed, but lately I feel like everybody else is moving forward and
I'm the only one standing still.

After she gives us our report cards Mrs. Reed tells us about a new assignment we're spending the rest of the year working on. She tells us we're each gonna make a book of our favorite poems, with a cover and page numbers so they look like real books. Then she says we're gonna have to work on it outside of school, too, at the public library or whatever, since our school library is only open a few times a week and doesn't let us check out any books. When the bell goes off I try to sneak out of the classroom, but she calls me over to her desk. She stares at me over her glasses like I got something she wants.

“So?” Mrs. Reed leans forward.

“So what?”

“What do you think about the assignment? The poetry book?”

I shrug.

“I was hoping for more enthusiasm than that. If you do well on this it can really turn your grades around.”

“Okay.”

She takes off her glasses. “You do want to pass the fifth grade, don't you?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you should be thanking me. I came up with this assignment for you, Cristo. I thought it would be something you could work on in your own time.”

Fuck if I know what she means by that. I don't really own anything.

“I expect a lot from you with this project. I hope you don't let me down.”

Thanks. No pressure.

After class I see Graciela in front of her locker and when I say hi I guess I startle her because she drops all her books onto the ground. I kneel down to help her pick them up and when I hand them to her she pushes one at me. “You should keep that one, I already read it like ten times.”

“No, thanks. I'm good.”

“But you haven't even looked at the title.”

I look down and pretend I'm reading the title. “No, I've
read this already.”

“Really? I didn't think any boy would read it.”

“I don't want your damn book.” I shove it into her arms.

“Fine, you don't have to yell.” She walks away from me, holding her books with both arms like how Trini holds her teddy bear.

I run to catch up to her. “Look, I'm sorry. I just don't like reading books. In Spanish I'm okay, but in English…I'm not that good.”

My heart is pounding like I just ran five blocks.

“I could help you, if you wanted. I taught my brother how to read and he's only five.”

“I know how to read. I just don't have time…to practice or whatever. To read a whole book, you know?”

Her eyes are wide when she looks at me.

“How do you expect to get better if you don't practice?”

I jam my hands into my pockets. “I read other things.”

“Like what?”

“Signs, movie posters, ads on the sides of buses. Candy wrappers.” I look at my feet, realizing how crazy this must sound.

“How about menus?” she asks.

I look up to see if she's just messing with me. Nope, she's serious.

“Sure,” I say. “But not at Chinese restaurants.”

She laughs and I can feel my face get hot.

“I can see why you drive the teacher crazy.”

“Yeah, well…it's a tough job, but somebody's gotta do it.”

“I think the teacher's got the toughest job,” Graciela says. “She has to stand alone in front of a room full of kids every day and try to sound smart. And stay calm. I could never do that.”

I never thought of it that way before, that teachers have to try to do something. I just thought it was something they are.

“Don't you think it's easy for some of them? Like getting up to dance.”

“Even dancing is work,” she says. “It takes time to learn all those steps. And practice.”

“Okay, okay, I get it.” I can't stop myself from smiling. “It's
all about practice.”

She hides her smile in the top of her books. “If you say so,” she says, finally turning to leave.

The stairwell is empty by now and I watch her climb the steps two at a time. When a book drops from the stack in her arms, she doesn't stop or bend down to pick it up. She looks at me near the top of the staircase, making sure I saw it, and then disappears around the bend.

I walk over and pick up the book.
The House on Mango Street
. I tuck it under my arm, like I dropped it myself, and head back to my locker. It's the first book I ever wanted to bring home.

César calls me at Kim's house the night before he's scheduled to go into the hospital for surgery. His voice is so low I can hardly hear him.

“You busy?” he whispers into the phone.

I put down the book from Graciela I was trying to read. “Just watching TV.” No point having him laugh at me too.

“Can you come out?”

“Now? It's ten o'clock.”

Luz lifts her eyes from her book to look at me.

“I thought you don't have a curfew,” César says.

“I don't.”

“So what's the problem?”

“Nothing. I'll meet you at Anthony's in five.”

I hang up the phone and grab my sweatshirt off the floor. Luz doesn't say anything. Then she picks up the remote and turns up the volume on the TV, covering up the sound of the door closing as I sneak out the front. It's cold for the end of October and there's already a bunch of leaves on the ground. I zip up my sweatshirt and tuck my hands into the sleeves, wishing I had a winter coat.

When I get to Anthony's, César is waiting for me in the parking lot, sucking on a lollipop. He's wearing a fleece pullover and a blue ski hat with the New England Patriots logo on it, but he still looks cold. He pulls another lollipop out of his
pocket and hands it to me.

“Here. They only had grape.”

“Grape's good.” I tear off the wrapper and shove the lollipop in my mouth. It takes me a while to taste the flavor, my mouth warming up slow like tap water.

“So what's up?”

He shrugs. “Nothing.” He pulls at his hat, stretching the folded rim to cover the awkward shape of his helmet. I'm actually surprised to see him wearing it.

“You wanna walk around the block?”

I figure maybe I'll warm up if we keep moving. César shrugs, then follows me down Manton. Sections of the sidewalk are torn up so we walk down the middle of the street like we're part of the traffic. Like we can stand up against a two-ton car.