To the Last Man I Slept with and All the Jerks Just Like Him (18 page)

For a second I tripped out. Mr. Santos had never talked to me before. I had never even heard him talk to anybody. I was thinking maybe he was a fag and he was getting me confused with Danny or somebody. But I went through his gate and up to the steps to see what he wanted.

“Hijo,
you see that grass?” He pointed to his yard. “I got a lawn mower in the back. I’ll give you ten dollars to mow that grass.”

He only had the kind of mower that you push, with no gas, but that was cool. His yard was real small, so it was easy. After I finished, he told me I could sit on the porch and rest. I thought, aw, man, now the faggot stuff’s going to start. But it didn’t. I just sat there and Mr. Santos started telling me stuff. Not lecturing me, like you would expect, but just stuff about his life and everything. I figured he was just bored living there all by himself and wanted to talk to somebody. So I chilled out for a while and listened. He was kind of religious, but I didn’t mind. All in all, it wasn’t too bad.

The next day I was walking around that area again. Across the street from Mr. Santos’s, Mrs. López was in her yard with her walker. She called out in a little crackly voice,
“M’ijo . . .
could you come here, please?” So I went.

She said she saw how I did such a good job on Mr. Santos’s yard, and could I please do her yard, too. I said okay. I had to go borrow the mower from Mr. Santos. Her lawn was even smaller than his, and while I mowed it she just scooted around on her walker, scoping out her plants and stuff. When I was finished, she told me, “God bless you,
m’ijo.”
She only had five dollars, but that was cool.

I was walking around, wondering what I should spend my money on. I was thinking maybe I could get some ham and cheese from the Vietnamese store and take it to the house. Maybe my dad would want some, too.

All of a sudden, this guy I know, Crazy Tony, comes up to me saying “Hey, Eddie, man, got some tickets here. I’ll sell you two Metallica tickets for a hundred each.”

I told him to get his lying ass away from me. He said okay, he’d sell them for fifty. I just laughed. He started begging, saying he really needed the money. So I played along, saying, “All right, man, but all I got is fifteen bucks.” He looked at me for a long time, like he was thinking about it. He was blinking real hard and the side of his mouth kept going up like it does sometimes. Finally he said, “Okay, man, but hurry up before I change my mind.”

I took the money out of my pocket because I wanted to see what he had that he thought was two Metallica tickets. I figured I’d wait until the last minute and then tell him I wanted Air Supply tickets instead. He reached in his pocket and took out . . . Damn! I thought. He took out two Metallica tickets! And not old stubs, either. Real tickets, for the show the next night. I grabbed them, gave him the money, told him thanks, and took off. I was going to go find Chuy and tell him so he could go with me to the concert.

But on the way to Chuy’s dad’s, I saw Jesse and two of his friends going down Washington. I was going to just play it off and not say anything, but he told me “What’s up,” so I stopped.

He was just talking to me real normal, like that stuff with our mom hadn’t happened the other day. I could tell he felt bad about it. I did, too. So all of a sudden I told him that I had two tickets to Metallica and asked him if he wanted to go.

There isn’t a lot to tell after that. We went to the concert. Fifteen minutes into the show, Jesse tried to yank a chain off this white chick’s neck. She started cussing him out and scratching him. He hit her. Then her boyfriend and two of his friends jumped in. What else could I do but jump too? They would have beat the shit out of Jesse. When the security guards got there, everybody had taken off except me and the chick’s boyfriend. I was the only one who got arrested.

I had some prior arrests so I thought they’d try me as an adult. But since I was young and it was mostly just minor stuff, they ended up putting me here.

It’s not too bad. I’m one of the oldest ones, so nobody messes with me. I only have a few months to go. I figure, with Jesse’s record, they would have had to give him the electric chair if they’d caught him. Not really . . . I’m just kidding about that. But he definitely would have gotten a lot longer sentence than I did.

So maybe it’s better this way. I know you’re probably thinking that I should be real pissed off at him. At first I was. But now I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, and I realize that he’s just a kid. A lot of fucked-up shit happened to him in his life, and he just wasn’t old enough to cope with it. So that’s why he’s the way he is. He can’t help it.

Anyway. I got a letter from my dad the other day. He got a new job at some kind of organization. He says he likes it there. It sounds like he’s doing okay. He said Tina got married to some guy from the church. I figure that’s why she hasn’t written. She probably doesn’t want this guy to know she has a brother in jail. I can understand that, so I won’t mess it up for her. My dad didn’t say anything about Jesse, so I’m taking that to mean he’s okay, too. I guess they’re all doing good.

See, like I said . . . I’ve had a lot of time to think in here. I figure, our family just had some bad luck. We were going through a phase or whatever, and I happened to get the worst part of the deal. But that’s all right. Stuff like that happens to people all the time. In a few months I’ll be out of here, and everything will go back to normal, like it used to be.

Meanwhile, I’m just going to kick back for a while. I may as well, right? I’ve been needing a vacation, anyway.

Alexandra and Me

I
know it’s evil, but we stole the midget. Sorry—the little person. Or is she a dwarf? All I know for sure is that it was Alexandra’s idea. Sure, I said that I wanted to carry the tiny woman around by the waist, holding her high and far from my body like a trophy or a doll, taking her higher and lower on the balls of my feet. But it was Alexandra who wanted to steal her, to finger her tiny barrettes and rings. To question her. To ignore her answers and drape her in the Indian fabric we bought on Interstate 59. And I went along with it. Alexandra is awfully gorgeous in her constant anger, and I can’t deny her anything.

“Please . . . why are you doing this to me?” the tiny woman cries. Her name was Holly, I think.

“Shut up. I’ve been here for months. Let me out, you bitches!” rasps the bus driver I tied up in the corner, actually only six weeks before. But, no, it wasn’t because I was angry. Only lonely and a bit disappointed by life, and dripping more than usual inside from that time of the month. Who doesn’t want to possess a tiny, swarthy man with haunted eyes? He smiled at me, so I took him home and paid for him to get high. When he couldn’t keep it up, he started to slap me around. I know I should have just let him go, but the way his hair fell into his eyes made me feel tender, and I decided to keep him, instead. Renting this house with the basement was the best plan we ever had. So what if the flood had given it a bit of mildew? Now it was even more of a testament to our bargain-shopping prowess.

I sigh and walk over to caress my bus driver’s cheekbone and neck, to press a leftover piece of pizza to his soft, sharp lips. “You fat, fucking whores,” he moans as he chews, tears rolling over the pockmarks. “You big devil bitches from hell!” I kiss his ear, but neither of us is cheered, and I put the pizza back on the paper plate.

“Save it for the midget,” says Alexandra. “I want her hair to grow.” The man cries, the midget cries, and Alexandra doesn’t care. She’s often angry, but I don’t get scared. We’ve both been hurt. Broken. Used. I understand her. She’s me, but turned inside out. She doles out the harsh justice that I, guilt ridden save for myself.

Together, we’re strong. We listen to each other, protect each other, lie for each other, believe in each other. When we’re together, the skinny sluts don’t snicker until well out of earshot. The sticky men think twice before reaching out with their tentacles. Everyone else just stares. Look at the fat chicks. The big girls. The amazons. Angry and sad but cackling like thunder—shaped by epic cruelty—aren’t we exactly the same as every goddess you’ve ever heard of? When we’re smiling at someone’s expense, distracted for a moment from our own inner workings, you can almost see the pretty potentials we used to be.

Alexandra works her jaw, deaf to the whining as she unconsciously pinches the midget’s ear. Her eyes flash yellow in the light of the TV, which is playing a sappy teen romance. I go to her, close my own eyes, and lean in for the kiss that has eluded me so far. But then the cat cries out upstairs. Alexandra lumbers up quickly to tend to it. “I’m coming, Booboo! Mommy’s coming!”

I follow, softly closing the padded door behind me. It’s okay. Later she’ll want to brush and style
my
hair. I’ll finish hammering out the necklace I’ve been making her. We’ll eat cheap pastries and plot and laugh. We’ll watch a sappy teen romance and, when it’s over, we’ll cry ourselves to sleep, together in the dark.

Tina

T
he radiator had made it too warm to cover herself with a sheet, but Tina did anyway. She felt it chafe her clammy skin, but pulled it higher, up to her mouth, as she heard the crackling again. This time it came from the bag of soda cans. She could tell because the crackle was metallic and rustling at the same time. It sent little needles of fear and disgust into the back of her neck and down through her spine, all the way to her toes, which she pulled up further under the sheet. She lay there and listened.

There. Another one. This time skittering across a stack of newspaper. She grimaced, thinking that it must have been something big for her to hear it on the paper. Not a roach, then . . . a rat.

It was Sunday night, the night before school would reopen after the Christmas holidays. It was the first time she had slept in her own room in two weeks. She thought wistfully of the night before, which she’d spent at her friend’s house in a nice, queen-sized bed. She had many friends, and had managed to spend every night of the vacation somewhere else. And now it was over. She peered into the dark corners of her room. Was that another one?

Before Christmas, she had survived by working as late as Mrs. Vargas would let her, then hanging out with the more nocturnal of the neighborhood kids, until she was so tired that she would get home and immediately fall asleep, deaf to the noises. Then, of course, on the weekends she slept over at Jennifer’s, Adriana’s, or Melissa’s. Now that the winter had finally kicked in, it was too cold to be on the street, unless she wanted to try to keep warm with the thuggiest of the thugs. And it seemed that this winter was worse, verminwise, than ever before.

Summer vacation was the best. She could sleep somewhere else every night, sometimes even with Mrs. Vargas’s family at the marina. She didn’t have to be at work until noon, so even if she felt she was starting to wear out her welcomes, she could just stay up all night, walking through the church grounds or the park. Sometimes she ordered a pizza from the phone booth across the street. Sometimes she met up with one of her peers, maybe even one with a car, and so had companionship and conversation for the night. She remembered, with a mixture of pleasure and regret, the previous summer when she’d been “going” with Manuel. The nights had never seemed long enough then. She would return to her house when the sun rose, and sleep peacefully while the rats and roaches hid from the light of the day.

A loud, skittering crackle, this time combined with a squeak, erupted two feet behind her and frightened Tina out of her memories. She hopped off the couch and ran out into the hallway, stubbing her little toe on a box of old newspapers on the way.

The house where she lived had, many years before, been a six-suite apartment building. Each suite had one tiny living room/bedroom with a walk-in closet and a radiator, a bathroom with a footed tub, and a long, narrow kitchen with a porcelain sink and real wood cabinets in either peach or pale green. The floors were wood. The walls were all real sheetrock, except in the hall, where there was also wood wainscoting and paneling. The house itself was built of many shades of brown brick. With extensive renovations, it might have made a nice office building, especially being so close to downtown. Her father had bought it for his mother in better days, and being a landlady had given Grandma a nice little income. Then, when Daddy had lost his job and his wife, Grandma had turned out all the tenants (most of whom were illegal immigrants, used to relocating on short notice), so that her son and his three children could move in. One of Tina’s uncles had already been living there on and off, rent-free, and other family members moved in shortly after they had.