Drown Read online

  I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew Rafa was kicking me and saying, Let’s go. He looked like he’d been hitting those girls off; he was all smiles. I got to my feet in time to kiss Tía and Tío good-bye. Mami was holding the serving dish she had brought with her.

  Where’s Papi? I asked.

  He’s downstairs, bringing the van around. Mami leaned down to kiss me.

  You were good today, she said.

  And then Papi burst in and told us to get the hell downstairs before some pendejo cop gave him a ticket. More kisses, more handshakes and then we were gone.

  I don’t remember being out of sorts after I met the Puerto Rican woman, but I must have been because Mami only asked me questions when she thought something was wrong in my life. It took her about ten passes but finally she cornered me one afternoon when we were alone in the apartment. Our upstairs neighbors were beating the crap out of their kids, and me and her had been listening to it all afternoon. She put her hand on mine and said, Is everything OK, Yunior? Have you been fighting with your brother?

  Me and Rafa had already talked. We’d been in the basement, where our parents couldn’t hear us. He told me that yeah, he knew about her.

  Papi’s taken me there twice now, he said.

  Why didn’t you tell me? I asked.

  What the hell was I going to say? Hey, Yunior, guess what happened yesterday? I met Papi’s sucia!

  I didn’t say anything to Mami either. She watched me, very very closely. Later I would think, maybe if I had told her, she would have confronted him, would have done something, but who can know these things? I said I’d been having trouble in school and like that everything was back to normal between us. She put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed and that was that.

  We were on the turnpike, just past Exit 11, when I started feeling it again. I sat up from leaning against Rafa. His fingers smelled and he’d gone to sleep almost as soon as he got into the van. Madai was out too but at least she wasn’t snoring.

  In the darkness, I saw that Papi had a hand on Mami’s knee and that the two of them were quiet and still. They weren’t slumped back or anything; they were both wide awake, bolted into their seats. I couldn’t see either of their faces and no matter how hard I tried I could not imagine their expressions. Neither of them moved. Every now and then the van was filled with the bright rush of somebody else’s headlights. Finally I said, Mami, and they both looked back, already knowing what was happening.

  AURORA

  Earlier today me and Cut drove down to South River and bought some more smoke. The regular pickup, enough to last us the rest of the month. The Peruvian dude who hooks us up gave us a sampler of his superweed (Jewel luv it, he said) and on the way home, past the Hydrox factory, we could have sworn we smelled cookies baking right in the back seat. Cut was smelling chocolate chip but I was smoothed out on those rocky coconut ones we used to get at school.

  Holy shit, Cut said. I’m drooling all over myself.

  I looked over at him but the black stubble on his chin and neck was dry. This shit is potent, I said.

  That’s the word I’m looking for. Potent.

  Strong, I said.

  It took us four hours of TV to sort, weigh and bag the smoke. We were puffing the whole way through and by the time we were in bed we were gone. Cut’s still giggling over the cookies, and me, I’m just waiting for Aurora to show up. Fridays are good days to expect her. Fridays we always have something new and she knows it.

  We haven’t seen each other for a week. Not since she put some scratches on my arm. Fading now, like you could rub them with spit and they’d go away but when she first put them there, with her sharp-ass nails, they were long and swollen.

  Around midnight I hear her tapping on the basement window. She calls my name maybe four times before I say, I’m going out to talk to her.

  Don’t do it, Cut says. Just leave it alone.

  He’s not a fan of Aurora, never gives me the messages she leaves with him. I’ve found these notes in his pockets and under our couches. Bullshit mostly but every now and then she leaves one that makes me want to treat her better. I lie in bed some more, listening to our neighbors flush parts of themselves down a pipe. She stops tapping, maybe to smoke a cigarette or just to listen for my breathing.

  Cut rolls over. Leave it bro.

  I’m going, I say.

  She meets me at the door of the utility room, a single bulb lit behind her. I shut the door behind us and we kiss, once, on the lips, but she keeps them closed, first-date style. A few months ago Cut broke the lock to this place and now the utility room’s ours, like an extension, an office. Concrete with splotches of oil. A drain hole in the corner where we throw our cigs and condoms.

  She’s skinny—six months out of juvie and she’s skinny like a twelve-year-old.

  I want some company, she says.

  Where are the dogs?

  You know they don’t like you. She looks out the window, all tagged over with initials and fuck you’s. It’s going to rain, she says.

  It always looks like that.

  Yeah, but this time it’s going to rain for real.

  I put my ass down on the old mattress, which stinks of pussy.

  Where’s your partner? she asks.

  He’s sleeping.

  That’s all that nigger does. She’s got the shakes—even in this light I can see that. Hard to kiss anyone like that, hard even to touch them—the flesh moves like it’s on rollers. She yanks open the drawstrings on her knapsack and pulls out cigarettes. She’s living out of her bag again, on cigarettes and dirty clothes. I see a t-shirt, a couple of tampons and those same green shorts, the thin high-cut ones I bought her last summer.

  Where you been? I ask. Haven’t seen you around.

  You know me. Yo ando más que un perro.

  Her hair is dark with water. She must have gotten herself a shower, maybe at a friend’s, maybe in an empty apartment. I know that I should dis her for being away so long, that Cut’s probably listening but I take her hand and kiss it.

  Come on, I say.

  You ain’t said nothing about the last time.

  I can’t remember no last time. I just remember you.

  She looks at me like maybe she’s going to shove my smooth-ass line back down my throat. Then her face becomes smooth. Do you want to jig?

  Yeah, I say. I push her back on that mattress and grab at her clothes. Go easy, she says.

  I can’t help myself with her and being blunted makes it worse. She has her hands on my shoulder blades and the way she pulls on them I think maybe she’s trying to open me.

  Go easy, she says.

  We all do shit like this, stuff that’s no good for you. You do it and then there’s no feeling positive about it afterwards. When Cut puts his salsa on the next morning, I wake up, alone, the blood doing jumping jacks in my head. I see that she’s searched my pockets, left them hanging out of my pants like tongues. She didn’t even bother to push the fuckers back in.

  A WORKING DAY

  Raining this morning. We hit the crowd at the bus stop, pass by the trailer park across Route 9, near the Audio Shack. Dropping rocks all over. Ten here, ten there, an ounce of weed for the big guy with the warts, some H for his coked-up girl, the one with the bloody left eye. Everybody’s buying for the holiday weekend. Each time I put a bag in a hand I say, Pow, right there, my man.

  Cut says he heard us last night, rides me the whole time about it. I’m surprised the AIDS ain’t bit your dick off yet, he says.

  I’m immune, I tell him. He looks at me and tells me to keep talking. Just keep talking, he says.

  Four calls come in and we take the Pathfinder out to South Amboy and Freehold. Then it’s back to the Terrace for more foot action. That’s the way we run things, the less driving, the better.

  None of our customers are anybody special. We don’t have priests or abuelas or police officers on our lists. Just a lot of kids and some older folks who haven’t had a
job or a haircut since the last census. I have friends in Perth Amboy and New Brunswick who tell me they deal to whole families, from the grandparents down to the fourth-graders. Things around here aren’t like that yet, but more kids are dealing and bigger crews are coming in from out of town, relatives of folks who live here. We’re still making mad paper but it’s harder now and Cut’s already been sliced once and me, I’m thinking it’s time to grow, to incorporate but Cut says, Fuck no. The smaller the better.

  We’re reliable and easygoing and that keeps us good with the older people, who don’t want shit from anybody. Me, I’m tight with the kids, that’s my side of the business. We work all hours of the day and when Cut goes to see his girl I keep at it, prowling up and down Westminister, saying wassup to everybody. I’m good for solo work. I’m edgy and don’t like to be inside too much. You should have seen me in school. Olvídate.

  ONE OF OUR NIGHTS

  We hurt each other too well to let it drop. She breaks everything I own, yells at me like it might change something, tries to slam doors on my fingers. When she wants me to promise her a love that’s never been seen anywhere I think about the other girls. The last one was on Kean’s women’s basketball team, with skin that made mine look dark. A college girl with her own car, who came over right after her games, in her uniform, mad at some other school for a bad layup or an elbow in the chin.

  Tonight me and Aurora sit in front of the TV and split a case of Budweiser. This is going to hurt, she says, holding her can up. There’s H too, a little for her, a little for me. Upstairs my neighbors have their own long night going and they’re laying out all their cards about one another. Big cruel loud cards.

  Listen to that romance, she says.

  It’s all sweet talk, I say. They’re yelling because they’re in love.

  She picks off my glasses and kisses the parts of my face that almost never get touched, the skin under the glass and frame.

  You got those long eyelashes that make me want to cry, she says. How could anybody hurt a man with eyelashes like this?

  I don’t know, I say, though she should. She once tried to jam a pen in my thigh, but that was the night I punched her chest black-and-blue so I don’t think it counts.

  I pass out first, like always. I catch flashes from the movie before I’m completely gone. A man pouring too much scotch into a plastic cup. A couple running towards each other. I wish I could stay awake through a thousand bad shows the way she does, but it’s OK as long as she’s breathing past the side of my neck.

  Later I open my eyes and catch her kissing Cut. She’s pumping her hips into him and he’s got his hairy-ass hands in her hair. Fuck, I say but then I wake up and she’s snoring on the couch. I put my hand on her side. She’s barely seventeen, too skinny for anybody but me. She has her pipe right on the table, waited for me to fall out before hitting it. I have to open the porch door to kill the smell. I go back to sleep and when I wake up in the morning I’m laying in the tub and I’ve got blood on my chin and I can’t remember how in the world that happened. This is no good, I tell myself. I go into the sala, wanting her to be there but she’s gone again and I punch myself in the nose just to clear my head.

  LOVE

  We don’t see each other much. Twice a month, four times maybe. Time don’t flow right with me these days but I know it ain’t often. I got my own life now, she tells me but you don’t need to be an expert to see that she’s flying again. That’s what she’s got going on, that’s what’s new.

  We were tighter before she got sent to juvie, much tighter. Every day we chilled and if we needed a place we’d find ourselves an empty apartment, one that hadn’t been rented yet. We’d break in. Smash a window, slide it up, wiggle on through. We’d bring sheets, pillows and candles to make the place less cold. Aurora would color the walls, draw different pictures with crayons, splatter the red wax from the candles into patterns, beautiful patterns. You got talent, I told her and she laughed. I used to be real good at art. Real good. We’d have these apartments for a couple of weeks, until the supers came to clean for the next tenants and then we’d come by and find the window fixed and the lock on the door.

  On some nights—especially when Cut’s fucking his girl in the next bed—I want us to be like that again. I think I’m one of those guys who lives too much in the past. Cut’ll be working his girl and she’ll be like, Oh yes, damelo duro, Papi, and I’ll just get dressed and go looking for her. She still does the apartment thing but hangs out with a gang of crackheads, one of two girls there, sticks with this boy Harry. She says he’s like her brother but I know better. Harry’s a little pato, a cabrón, twice beat by Cut, twice beat by me. On the nights I find her she clings to him like she’s his other nut, never wants to step outside for a minute. The others ask me if I have anything, giving me bullshit looks like they’re hard or something. Do you have anything? Harry’s moaning, his head caught between his knees like a big ripe coconut. Anything? I say, No, and grab onto her bicep, lead her into the bedroom. She slumps against the closet door. I thought maybe you’d want to get something to eat, I say.

  I ate. You got cigarettes?

  I give her a fresh pack. She holds it lightly, debating if she should smoke a few or sell the pack to somebody.

  I can give you another, I say and she asks why I have to be such an ass.

  I’m just offering.

  Don’t offer me anything with that voice.

  Just go easy, nena.

  We smoke a couple, her hissing out smoke, and then I close the plastic blinds. Sometimes I have condoms but not every time and while she says she ain’t with anybody else, I don’t kid myself. Harry’s yelling, What the fuck are you doing? but he doesn’t touch the door, doesn’t even knock. After, when she’s picking at my back and the others in the next room have started talking again, I’m amazed at how nasty I feel, how I want to put my fist in her face.

  I don’t always find her; she spends a lot of time at the Hacienda, with the rest of her fucked-up friends. I find unlocked doors and Dorito crumbs, maybe an un-flushed toilet. Always puke, in a closet or on a wall. Sometimes folks take craps right on the living room floor; I’ve learned not to walk around until my eyes get used to the dark. I go from room to room, hand out in front of me, wishing that maybe just this once I’ll feel her soft face on the other side of my fingers instead of some fucking plaster wall. Once that actually happened, a long time ago.

  The apartments are all the same, no surprises whatsoever. I wash my hands in the sink, dry them on the walls and head out.

  CORNER

  You watch anything long enough and you can become an expert at it. Get to know how it lives, what it eats. Tonight the corner is cold and nothing is really going on. You can hear the dice clicking on the curb and every truck and souped-up shitmobile that rolls in from the highway announces itself with bass.

  The corner’s where you smoke, eat, fuck, where you play selo. Selo games like you’ve never seen. I know brothers who make two, three hundred a night on the dice. Always somebody losing big. But you have to be careful with that. Never know who’ll lose and then come back with a 9 or a machete, looking for the rematch. I follow Cut’s advice and do my dealing nice and tranquilo, no flash, not a lot of talking. I’m cool with everybody and when folks show up they always give me a pound, knock their shoulder into mine, ask me how it’s been. Cut talks to his girl, pulling her long hair, messing with her little boy but his eyes are always watching the road for cops, like minesweepers.

  We’re all under the big streetlamps, everyone’s the color of day-old piss. When I’m fifty this is how I’ll remember my friends: tired and yellow and drunk. Eggie’s out here too. Homeboy’s got himself an Afro and his big head looks ridiculous on his skinny-ass neck. He’s way-out high tonight. Back in the day, before Cut’s girl took over, he was Cut’s gunboy but he was an irresponsible motherfucker, showed it around too much and talked amazing amounts of shit. He’s arguing with some of the tígueres over nonsense and when he d
oesn’t back down I can see that nobody’s happy. The corner’s hot now and I just shake my head. Nelo, the nigger Eggie’s talking shit to, has had more PTI than most of us have had traffic tickets. I ain’t in the mood for this shit.

  I ask Cut if he wants burgers and his girl’s boy trots over and says, Get me two.

  Come back quick, Cut says, all about business. He tries to hand me bills but I laugh, tell him it’s on me.

  The Pathfinder sits in the next parking lot, crusty with mud but still a slamming ride. I’m in no rush; I take it out behind the apartments, onto the road that leads to the dump. This was our spot when we were younger, where we started fires we sometimes couldn’t keep down. Whole areas around the road are still black. Everything that catches in my headlights—the stack of old tires, signs, shacks—has a memory scratched onto it. Here’s where I shot my first pistol. Here’s where we stashed our porn magazines. Here’s where I kissed my first girl.

  I get to the restaurant late; the lights are out but I know the girl in the front and she lets me in. She’s heavy but has a good face, makes me think of the one time we kissed, when I put my hand in her pants and felt the pad she had on. I ask her about her mother and she says, Regular. The brother? Still down in Virginia with the Navy. Don’t let him turn into no pato. She laughs, pulls at the nameplate around her neck. Any woman who laughs as dope as she does won’t ever have trouble finding men. I tell her that and she looks a little scared of me. She gives me what she has under the lamps for free and when I get back to the corner Eggie’s out cold on the grass. A couple of older kids stand around him, pissing hard streams into his face. Come on, Eggie, somebody says. Open that mouth. Supper’s coming. Cut’s laughing too hard to talk to me and he ain’t the only one. Brothers are falling over with laughter and some grab onto their boys, pretend to smash their heads against the curb. I give the boy his hamburgers and he goes between two bushes, where no one will bother him. He squats down and unfolds the oily paper, careful not to stain his Carhartt. Why don’t you give me a piece of that? some girl asks him.