This Side of Providence (24 page)

“A guy named Jimmy came by looking for you, back in the summer. Said you owed him a significant amount of money. His word, not mine.”

“How much he say?”

“A couple grand.”

“He's lying. It was only one.”

“Good.” Scottie's smile takes up half his face. “'Cause that's all I paid him.”

“You didn't have to do that.”

He shrugs. “I didn't want him to keep coming around the kids.”

“So you're a saint now?”

He looks at Trini, and then back at me. “Gotta protect what's mine.”

“We ain't been yours for a long time.” I look him in the eye when I say it. He smiles at me.

“Things change.” He grabs the zipper on my sweatshirt and slowly zips me up. I stop his hand at my chest.

“That won't.”

He drops the zipper and puts his hands in his pockets. “No sweat,” he says. “You can figure out another way to pay me back.”

As if giving him my baby wasn't payment enough.

On Christmas Eve Kim brings home Chinese food and we eat with chopsticks right out of the boxes. The doorbell rings halfway through dinner and Luz runs to the door, convinced it's Santa Claus. That fat white man was the one thing I ever got her to believe in and even at ten, she acts like he's real. Turns out
she isn't far off since it's that teacher Cristo loves from school and she has a whole bunch of presents in a shopping bag.

“I'm on my way to the airport,” she says, trying to catch her breath, “but I wanted to drop these off.” She hands Luz the bag.

“Look, there's even one for you,” Luz says, waving a small box at me. She carries the bag into the living room and arranges the packages neatly on the floor.

I walk to the door. “That isn't necessary, you know,” I say. “You done enough.”

“I just wanted to make sure…” She clears her throat. “I wasn't sure when you were getting home and if you'd have…time to shop.”

“Well, here I am. We got everything we need.”

“Yes, I can see that.” She looks over my shoulder into the apartment. We don't have a Christmas tree, but the kids hung up the paper stockings they made in school as a way of decorating. And now, with her presents, it's starting to look like we're actually celebrating a holiday.

“Do you want to come in?” I ask her.

“Oh, no, I'm running late as it is. Just tell Cristo I said Merry Christmas.”

“Tell him yourself,” I say, opening the door to let her in. She steps into the hallway carefully, like she thinks she's gonna break something. I call Cristo, who comes running to the door like a puppy.

“Hey, Teacher.” He hugs her.
“Feliz Navidad
.”

“Feliz Navidad
,” she says. “I should have just brought them to school, but I didn't want the other kids to feel bad.” She looks at me, saying something with her eyes.

“No big deal,” I say. “Everybody loves Santa Claus.”

“No,” she says, “not everyone. Your children are…special to me.”

“They're special to me, too.”

She smiles down at Cristo. “Okay, I really should be going now.” She pinches his cheek. “I'll see you in the new year, Cristoval.”

“Feliz Año Nuevo
,” he says, giving her another hug. “Have a
nice trip, Teacher.” He walks out to the porch with her, standing in his socks. “Thanks for the presents.”

“You're very welcome.” She's talking to him but looking at me.

He watches her get into the car, still waving as she drives down the street. When he comes back inside, I lean out to grab his arm but he's too far away for me to reach.

After dinner I tell the kids they can watch the Charlie Brown special on TV but Kim makes them clean up the kitchen first and by the time they're done the show is almost over. Kim sits with them on the couch and I have to sit on the floor between their legs, which is good because I like to keep touching them. In the movie the kids are teasing Charlie Brown about the Christmas tree he bought.

“Those kids are mean,” Luz says. “A tree is a tree.”

“And we don't even have that much,” Cristo says.

“You guys want a tree?” I say. “I can get you a tree.”

“I thought we agreed a tree was too much work,” Kim says. “Cleaning up all those needles.”

“And they're dangerous. My teacher says they're a fire hazard.” Cristo laughs at the TV, his face lit up in the darkness.

“I don't mind cleaning,” Luz says, her head in a book even though we all agreed to watch the special together.

Kim tells me I can stay as long as I want, but I already know there's not room for the two of us in this apartment. My children only have one mother and I need them to be clear about that. It was okay for her to help out while I was gone, but now that I'm back they don't really need her.

Before we go to sleep Cristo and Luz beg me to make
pasteles
for Christmas dinner. It's a traditional Puerto Rican dish, made out of meat and root vegetables. It's easy to make, but it takes a long time, so most people don't eat it too often. My mother taught me how to make it before she died, even though she was so weak in the end that she had to sit on the kitchen floor while I peeled the vegetables. She didn't want me to be motherless and not know how to cook like a real
Boricua
. When they were little I used to make it all the time, but I can't even remember the last time I made it. I'm actually surprised they even remember what it is.

After the kids are asleep I decide to surprise them. Kim don't have any of the things I need, so I borrow her car and drive over to the meat market in my old neighborhood. The old man acts like he remembers me from other late-night trips and he gives me a good deal. In the morning I get up real early to start cooking. Everybody else is still asleep. I shred all the vegetables by hand, scraping my knuckles over the peeler just like my mother used to, and then I brown the meat in a small frying pan. I mix the meat and shredded vegetables together, and place a spoonful of the mixture in the center of a banana leaf. I wrap each one up like a Christmas present—just how she taught me—and tie the string in several knots so it won't come apart in the boiling water. I boil them for twenty minutes and then turn it off to cool, watching them bob in the water like dead fish.

When everybody wakes up we open presents and eat day-old doughnuts Chino brings over from the Jewish bakery on Atwells. It feels good to see my cousin and he hugs me for a long time, lifting me off the floor. I call Scottie and he promises to bring Trini over after breakfast, but a few hours later he calls again and says she ate too much and is too sick to come. When I start to curse him out on the phone he hangs up. I call right back but he doesn't answer. I'm so pissed I throw the phone against the wall and break the mouthpiece. Cristo picks it up and tries to fix it. When I say I'm sorry he tells me it's okay.

“We can see her tomorrow, Mami.” He puts his arm around me, trying to make me feel better. “Christmas two days in a row, how sweet is that?”

Fighting with Scottie makes me want to take a fucking drink, but then I see what a mess Kim is from drinking half a box of Zinfandel by herself every night and I tell myself I'm gonna be okay without it. I didn't think it would be this hard to live with someone who was still partying all the time, but so far it sucks. All I got left is food and cigarettes, so I spend all day going back and forth between the two. Kim passes out on the couch before dinner's ready, so we eat without her, stuffing ourselves with hot rolls and
pasteles
until we can't eat anymore. We wrap the leftovers in a plastic bag and put them in the freezer for a cold spring day, just like my mother used to do. Then I go outside
to smoke a cigarette.

“Next time, will you teach me how to make them?” Cristo reaches for my hand and follows me onto the porch.

“Me, too,” Luz says. “Every Puerto Rican girl should know how to make
pasteles
.”

“When we have our own apartment,” I promise them. “Then we'll make our own traditions.”

I know it's gonna take time, but I decide right then to do whatever it takes to get a place of my own. For years we've been living in other people's houses, and I want to give my kids their own home. I don't want to lie to them or make promises I can't keep, so I don't say anything out loud. But in my head I'm working out all the angles, figuring out exactly how much room the four of us will need and how much cash I have to get.

I smoke my cigarette as fast as I can, the wind blowing so hard I think it's gonna go out. My kids huddle around me, and even though it's freezing, I feel warm inside just being able to touch them. I close my eyes and say a prayer for Trini—to have God tell her I love her—and to show me the way back home.

 

       
S
HE SEES
the girl in front of a stove. Her belly is round, full with life. She peels a ripe mango with a knife. Eats the fruit while she waits. The chicken she made goes cold on the stove. Her husband is late again. He comes home in the dark with apologies. He smells like beer and sweat. She doesn't want him to touch her. He blames the bar, and the baseball diamond. He doesn't want to grow up. He doesn't want to lose her. She takes a bath alone. He falls asleep at the kitchen table. When he wakes up, she's feeding his dinner to the animals. He yells at her to stop. She yells at him to be quiet. He smacks her with the back of his hand. She tastes the blood in her mouth.

Cristo

A
few weeks before Christmas vacation, César stops coming to school. He doesn't call in sick or send his grandmother by to pick up assignments, he just stops showing up. Mrs. Reed keeps calling his name every day during attendance, but when it's time to pick Secret Santas she takes him off the list. I draw Esteban's name, but I decide to make César a mix-tape instead. I find an old tape of Lucho's and record over it, erasing some Mariah Carey album with all our favorite songs off the radio. I finish it two days before Christmas, and bring it over to his grandmother's place to surprise him. It starts to snow as I'm walking so by the time I get there there's a thin layer covering the ground. The snow is like magic. It makes even the projects look clean.

The door's half open, but I knock anyway. His grandmother lets me in without saying a word. She has crochet needles and a thick chunk of yellow yarn in her hand. She continues to knit as she walks back to the living room. The needles move so fast it looks like she's in a sword fight with herself.

I walk myself to the back bedroom César shares with his uncle Antonio. The same one who shot him. César says they don't really talk no more, even though they sleep in the same room. Antonio feels so bad he won't even look at him. Whenever he tries, it makes César feel worse. All they ever do together now is play cards, since they only have to look at the deck and not each other.

I step into the room and hear a man's voice on the radio
singing in Spanish. César's on the floor, playing video games on a small black-and-white TV. It's afternoon, but he's still in his pajamas. The stubble on his head is growing back in, like a soldier on leave. He's wearing a flesh-colored leather patch over the eye he just lost.

I sit down on the edge of the bed. “Hi.”

“Hey,” he says, without looking at me.

“Here, I brought you something.” I hand him the tape but he doesn't take it.

“Just put it on the bed.”

“Don't you want to listen to it?”

He looks at me. “My stereo's broken.”

“Maybe it just needs new batteries. Remember the last time you thought it was—”

“It's broken, all right? I'm not an idiot.” He walks over to his dresser, opens a drawer, and pulls out a plastic bag filled with pieces of the broken stereo. It looks like he's showing me a bag of Legos.

“Oh. Sorry.”

“No biggie,” he says as he closes the drawer. He sits down on the bed. “I dropped it from the Route 6 overpass. I watched it break into a hundred pieces.”

“Why?”

He shrugs. “I didn't want to be the only thing broken in this house.”

I don't know what to say to that, so I don't say anything. I try not to move.

“How's school?” he finally asks.

“We're on vacation. Till next week.”

“Oh yeah. It's hard to remember what day it is, since I'm not always writing it down.”

“You ever coming back?” I try to sound casual, like I'm asking him what time it is.

“Maybe. They say I don't have to yet, not while I'm on all these pills. They mess up my stomach so bad I'd have to move my desk into the bathroom.” He's making a joke, but neither one of us laughs.

Then he grabs a shoe box from his night table, lifting the
lid to show me all the pill bottles inside. They're all the same type—those see-through orange plastic ones with round white lids—but there's a bunch of different sizes, depending on the pills. Some are big and dark like chewable vitamins, but others look just like Tic Tacs, all shiny and white. The small ones look like the pills I saw in Kim's purse, and the ones in the pizza boxes I delivered for Charley. But I don't say that out loud.

“They look like candy,” I tell him.

César nods. “But they don't taste like candy.” He opens one bottle and pours it into his hand. The pills are long and round, kinda like the licorice they sell at the movie theater, but these are a mix of half white and half red.

“They're for the seizures,” he says. “They stop my brain from freezing up. But if I took them all at once, it would kill me.”

I must have a weird look on my face because then he says, “Not that I wanna do something crazy like that. But I'm just saying. That's what would happen.”

“What
do
you want to do?” I ask him, watching carefully as he pours the pills back in the bottle. Then he puts the bottles back into the shoe box, lining them up straight. I see his name printed on all the labels, over and over again.

He lies back on the bed and looks up at the ceiling. “I want to be able to see,” he says. “That's what I want.” After a few seconds he turns over to face me. “You wanna check out my eye?”

I guess a part of me is curious, but the bigger part is worried about passing out right onto the carpeting because it looks so gross. But fuck if I know how to say no to him.

“Okay, if you want me to.”

He moves to the edge of the bed and sits right next to me. Outside I can hear the beeping of a large truck as it backs up. I feel my pulse beating in my neck. He peels off the patch and carefully slides it onto his forehead. He closes his good eye, and exhales before turning toward me.

I glance over at the missing eye, and then quickly look away. The wound is a deep pink, like raw meat. I'm surprised that there's no blood, even though it's been healing for weeks. I take a deep breath and look back. The scar that holds the eyelid
together is smooth and thick, with several thin scars crossing it from top to bottom. His eyelashes are gone. The eyelid skin is so thin and pale I can see the veins running underneath. He reminds me of a newborn baby or a little bird, something that can't take care of itself.

“Pretty gross, huh?” César opens his left eye to look at me. The right one flutters, but doesn't open.

“No, it's not that bad,” I say. With his good eye, he sees me look away.

“It still hurts. Deep inside, where I can't get to it.” He runs the tip of his finger under his eyebrow, patting it gently. It's the only part of his eye that isn't damaged. The skin is perfect actually, like the outside of a hard-boiled egg. I'm thinking of a way to tell him that when he speaks again.

“They say the pain will go away later, when my nerves forget, but sometimes I think they'll never forget.”

I'm still looking at the scar. The eye socket looks deeper than the other one, like some of the bone was scraped away too. I try to imagine what it looks like inside, under the skin. His eyelid flutters again, like it wants to open up. I wonder what they did with his eyeball.

“How long you gotta wear the patch?”

“As long as I want,” he says. “Forever, probably.” Then he pulls it down from his forehead to cover the scar. It's easier to look at him now, even though I know what's under the patch, like putting a sheet over a dead body.

“
Vamonos, César, es muy tarde ya,
” his grandmother calls from the kitchen.
“Esta tiempo para cocinar, bien?”

“I gotta go,” César says. “Now that I'm home my grandmother expects me to help out more. She's got me cooking almost every night, like I'm a girl or something.”

“But you just got home from the hospital.”

César shrugs. “Just another mouth to feed.”

He walks out, leaving me alone in the bedroom. I realize I'm still holding the tape I made him. It feels strange, like a toy I don't know how to play with. I read through the titles of the songs, but now the words mean nothing to me. I can't even hear any of the music in my head. I decide to leave it for him,
even though he doesn't have a way to listen to it. I put it on his pillow, like how Abuela used to put the Bible out to remind herself to read to me before bed.

When I pass through the kitchen I see him bent over the sink, squinting to read the label on a can of black beans. I wave good-bye but he doesn't see me.

There's already an inch of snow on the ground as I make my way home, and the small, steady flakes continue to fall. A few people pass me on the sidewalk, all looking up at the sky. The streets look clean under the fallen snow, making the neighborhood look almost pretty, as if we live on the nice side of town.

I see a girl ahead of me, her head in a book as she walks to the bus stop. She's wearing a pink hat that looks familiar and when I see her brown skin, dark against the background of snow, I figure out I'm looking at Graciela. I want to say hi to her, but when I pass by she's looking down so I don't say anything. Her voice startles me.

“Weren't you even going to say hi?”

I turn back to look at her. “Didn't want to scare you.”

“I don't scare that easily.”

I tuck my hands into my pockets. “Hi,” I say.

She smiles. “Hi yourself.”

I want to ask her about the book she's reading, and what she wants for Christmas, and if this is the first time she's ever seen snow. Instead I say, “You waiting for the bus?”

“Yeah. I have a piano lesson.” She looks down at her feet.

I want her to tell me something about Colombia, about how she likes the food here compared to back home, and maybe how long it takes her to braid her hair that tight, but the words won't come out. Instead, I ask her where she's going.

“The east side,” she says. “The ride's not too bad.”

I nod my head. “Good thing you got your book.”

“I always have a book. That way I'm never bored.”

I watch the snow as it falls on her face and turns into droplets of water.

“Well, have a good lesson.” I turn to go.

“You in a hurry?” she asks.

“No, not really.”

“You could wait with me, just until the bus comes. It shouldn't be long.”

“Okay.”

The snow keeps falling as we stand together at the bus stop. My sneakers are wet and I can't feel the tips of my fingers but I hardly notice anything but her smile, as white and clean as the blanket of snow now covering our feet.

It's weird living in a house with two different moms in charge. I know Mami doesn't really like it here, because she's always closing her eyes and shaking her head or just walking straight out of the room. Sometimes I hear her talking to herself, repeating things under her breath like she's praying. She and Kim don't fight though. They usually aren't even in the same room together. Mami told me she's on a waiting list with some agency to get a nice apartment in a better part of town, but we just don't have the money right now. She doesn't know about everything I made working for Snowman and I'm not gonna tell her yet. I'm waiting to surprise her when we really need it.

Most days she hangs around the apartment, but sometimes she has to go to meetings, usually with her parole officer and other people who want to help her stay out of trouble. It's funny to have her here when I get home from school or the library, like she's one of those moms on TV now. The kind that figure out the problem before you even tell them what's wrong.

One day in January I come home and she tells me that it's time to pack up because we're moving out. She says she's on her way to a meeting, but that I should get my things together tonight so we'll be ready to go in the morning. Sammy and Kim are away for the weekend, and when Mami leaves it's just Luz and me in the apartment. Just like old times. I make macaroni and cheese for dinner and when we're eating I tell her she needs to start packing.

“I'm not leaving,” Luz says. She doesn't even bother to look up from her bowl.

“What do you mean? Mami says it's time to go.”

“For her, maybe. For you if you want. But not for me.” Luz jabs at the macaroni with her fork, stacking as many pieces as she can onto the pointy tips.

“Don't be crazy, Luz. You're coming.”

“I'm serious. I already asked Kim and she said it's okay.”

I push my bowl away. “You want to stay with Sammy and Kim but not with us? Kim's drunk all the time and she doesn't even leave her room. She can't take care of her own son, but you want her to take care of you?”

Luz nibbles on the macaroni at the end of her fork. “I'm just sick of moving around.”

“We have to stay together. That's what we promised.” I try not to sound like I'm begging.

“I just want to stay in one place for a while, to be somewhere familiar. Why is that too much to ask?” Luz looks like she's going to cry.

“Mami's more familiar than this place.”

She looks down at the table. “Sure. But for how long?”

I shake my head. “Don't say that, Luz. Don't even think that.” I might have the same thought, in the way way back of my head, but I'd never say it out loud.

“She hasn't even been home a month,” Luz says, “and here she is, already leaving. Is that supposed to be encouraging?”

“Listen, she's trying to make us a family again.” I grab onto the table, needing to hold something solid.