Kay didn’t believe a word of it. She couldn’t understand how a girl like Coco whose self-centered attitude was one of the things that made her so attractive, could suddenly become so obsessed with making someone else happy. It just wasn’t like her.
“Aren’t you the same girl that used to look down on people who fell in love like this?” asked Kay.
“All right, don’t rub it in.”
“I can’t believe you’d put raising a child and sex on the same level. It can’t be that much fun.”
Coco knew that Kay was right. She felt as though she was making a very big mistake. While Coco was deep in thought, Kay got up to make her a drink, and as she did so, Jesse came home, munching on french fries.
“Hi, Jesse. How ya doin’?” she asked.
“Um, okay.”
“Hey, I got you a present,” she said, handing him a package.
Jesse tore off the wrapping paper and found a toy plane inside.
“I didn’t hear you say thank you, Jesse,” said Coco.
Jesse moved toward Kay to give her a thank-you kiss and suddenly Coco felt a rush of affection for him.
“Thank you…”
Kay’s mouth fell open in disbelief. Coco looked at her, confused.
Kay’s cheek was wet. As he thanked her, Jesse had spit in her face. When she realized what had happened, Coco grabbed hold of him by the collar and tried to slap his face. Although Jesse was smaller than she was, he was a strong boy. She tried to hit him several more times without success, and finally caught him with such a hard slap that it sounded as though the bones in her wrist had broken. Jesse quit struggling. He just glared at her in silence. Blood began to trickle from his nose.
Coco couldn’t quite believe what she had done. She just stood there, rubbing her sore hand ruefully, and tears began to well up in her eyes.
Any regrets she had, however, evaporated when she felt Jesse kick her—hard, in the back.
Coco collapsed on the floor, bent over in agony. She pressed her hand into the small of her back in an attempt to reduce the pain. It hurt so badly that she couldn’t breathe. Jesse was insane. He wasn’t human.
Surely he’d been born by mistake. He was the devil incarnate.
From somewhere in the distance, Coco could hear Kay’s concerned voice calling her name. She looked up and saw Jesse standing over her, the toy airplane still in his hand. His face was expressionless and the blood was no longer just trickling, but pouring down his face, a startling shade of red.
A shiver ran down Coco’s spine.
“What did you do that for?” she demanded hoarsely. “Please, tell me. I don’t understand.”
Without an explanation from Jesse, Coco wondered how she could justify staying there any longer. Surely her love for Rick alone wasn’t a good-enough excuse. Why did she have to put up with all this when all she really wanted was to be with Rick?
“D-un-no.”
“What the hell do you mean, you don’t know? Don’t you know how to thank someone? Didn’t anyone ever teach you how to say thank you?”
“I did say thank you.”
“So why did you spit at her, for Christ’s sake? What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I don’t know. My mama always used to do that to my dad.”
For a moment there was silence. Then Coco burst into tears.
Jesse went to his room and closed the door behind him, leaving a trail of blood that led from the kitchen to his bedroom door. The conversation was over.
When Coco had slapped him, she was sure her hand hurt more than Jesse’s cheek, but she had hoped it taught him a lesson. Now she realized that all she had done was hurt her hand.
“They must have really hated each other, Rick and his wife,” said Kay, gently rubbing Coco’s back. “How can people say all kids are born out of love?”
Coco shivered. Jesse may have been born out of love, but he had been brought up with hate. And Coco was the one who had to deal with that hatred. She wondered what Jesse was really like underneath it ail. She was frightened that if she peeled off the layers of hatred one by one, like peeling an onion, she would find nothing but hatred all the way down to his bone marrow.
For now Coco was able to avoid facing that fear by crying, but she knew she would not always be able to run away. She was grateful that Kay was there to comfort her, but she knew there would when she would have to face her fear alone, and the thought of it terrified her.
When you are kind to people, you expect kindness in return.
That was the way Coco understood the world. Hugs, kisses, compliments—there is a certain beauty in the idea of giving things away and expecting nothing in return. But at the same time, there is a distinct sadness in giving and not receiving. It was for that reason that Coco could not deal with Jesse. She could not show him love and affection if all she got back from him was hate.
Jesse didn’t spit at people anymore, but he continued to run out for hamburgers, ignoring the fact that Coco was cooking, and he treated her like an intruder. Although, to be fair, he treated all of her friends and all of his own friends in exactly the same way. Jesse treated people like objects.
Jesse’s friends were all adolescents, all on the verge of manhood, and when they were around Coco they had bashful smiles that young men get when they are around women. A couple of the braver ones would wink at or sneak a kiss from her as they came and went. They were at the age when they were naturally curious about the opposite sex, and to Coco’s amusement, they were particularly curious about her.
The boys were all much taller than Coco. They left their sneakers strewn all over the hallway and she noticed how much larger their shoe were than hers. As she tidied up their sneakers she began to think about Jesse and how small he was compared with his friends. He was dwarfed by them. They grew as rapidly as if they were willing themselves to grow. Jesse, on the other hand, had no interest in getting older and seemed almost to be suppressing his growth.
Sometimes the boys would watch videos in Jesse’s room. But when there was a love scene, even though it was nothing hard-core, just a part of the story, Jesse always got irritated, stood up, and walked out of the room, leaving his friends jeering behind him.
“Hey, what’s wrong with you, man? This is the best part,” they would holler, whistling at and cheering the girl on the screen, just as grown men did. Then Jesse would storm back into his room, screaming at them to get out.
At first, of course, they didn’t take any notice of him, but when they realized he was serious, they switched the video off, cursing under their breath as they left. Heading back to the hallway, some of the kids would say they were angry with him and swore they would never hang out with him again.
They were all just ordinary boys, all looking forward to leaving home and getting away from the influence of their parents as quickly as possible. But they weren’t able to do that just yet and they didn’t really know what to do with all their excess energy. In a way, they were still just kids, and when they got back home their mothers would be yelling at them to do their homework. At the same time, they were old enough to have their own social network, but because of the way he treated them, Jesse was on the verge of being shut out of it.
Once, Coco looked into Jesse’s room after the boys had left. He was lying facedown on the bed, thinking. He looked so vulnerable that she suddenly felt a twinge of sadness. But that sadness quickly turned to dismay as she realized it was the same vulnerability she saw in Rick when he was just sitting and smoking. Instinctively, she went in and sat down on the bed at his feet. They were unexpectedly large, and she noticed that there was a hole in one of his socks.
Coco just sat there. She felt as though she couldn’t say anything until Jesse spoke. She couldn’t break the silence. Minutes passed, and the silence became awkward, almost painful. She considered mentioning the hole in his sock, but when she looked up, she saw that his face was wet.