Mami must have caught me studying her because she stopped what she was doing and gave me a smile, maybe her first one of the night. Suddenly I wanted to go over and hug her, for no other reason than I loved her, but there were about eleven fat jiggling bodies between us. So I sat down on the tiled floor and waited.
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.