Taína Page 17

  Salvador said that this would mean that atoms were sentient, atoms were alive and could think. He said this was not so. I said to Sal that it was a possibility, I didn’t know. How did we know if anything could think? I said to Sal, a rock or a fish or a lobster or a pencil, there were atoms inside those things, too, like there were atoms in us. Like the atoms in Taína’s body. All it took was just one, one of them to rebel. But in his eyes I saw he didn’t want to talk about this. It wasn’t important to him. Like everyone else, after what Peta Ponce had discovered, the case was closed.

  Before leaving me on the street that night, Salvador said, “Listen, papo, if Taína believes in two angels arriving at night fighting to be Usmaíl’s father, it’s fine.” And he placed a bony hand on my shoulder. “If you believe that a revolution began inside Taína’s body, inside, way inside, where atoms live, that is okay, too, papo. The world is big enough for everything,” he said, and right before his long legs took him away, he looked at me kindly. “You know, papo, you are my only friend. I never had that many friends. In all my life I never had that many. Maybe none. Thank you, you know, for everything, papo.”

  I didn’t go straight home that night. I took the elevator to the roof of the building. I looked at the Manhattan skyline and wondered if anything I had just heard and saw made sense.

  And then I saw something.

  I was no longer on the roof.

  I was walking around Central Park’s north side. There was ozone in the city air. The pond was clean. Kids were fishing by the Charles A. Dana Discovery Center. On the benches and on the grass, there were people of many colors and countries, Africans and African Americans as well as Latinos from all over the Americas, all taking in the sun. And I saw things.

  I saw a crystal city.

  Skyscrapers built out of glass.

  A city of light, color, and endless possibilities. This city had a green rectangular park running down its middle, dividing its west from its east. It had a hole in the ground where everyday people of all colors, income brackets, genders, and sexual preferences traveled. It had four satellites that circled it or completed it into a city of one of five. And then I saw us, all three of us. Usmaíl was no longer inside Taína’s body. Taína was stretched out, sleeping on a blanket in a green field in that park. Her hair spilled all around me, her figure inviting, her arms and legs exposed, thin and lovely as if she were nobody’s mother. Across from us, a teenage Usmaíl was ice-skating, though it was summer, and no one skates on the Harlem Meer even when it freezes in the winter. Taína continued sleeping. I got up. I saw how gracefully and elegantly Usmaíl skated. Then Usmaíl glided over to me. “The important thing,” Usmaíl said, “is not how I got here. The important thing is that I’m here now. You gonna take care of me or what?”

  * * *

  —

  BECAUSE I HAD grown tired of being bullied by Mario and because there was no way I was going to pay him every month, no way, I had done something I was not proud of. There was no going back. Like Sal, all I could do was try to rewrite something good from what I could not change. To get back at Mario, I had signed up using his name and address for a year’s subscription to a gay porn magazine called Blue Boy. I had added to the cart two vibrators, a whip, and a leather mask. I knew that when Mario’s father got those things in the mail, he was going to throw a fit. I wanted Mario to feel that humiliation. I wanted him to feel that fear and discomfort. I wanted his father to beat him up like Mario had beaten me up. I didn’t expect, though, that his father was going to send him to the hospital.

  BD and I were outside Metropolitan Hospital.

  “I ain’t going in,” BD said.

  “We should.”

  “Why? This is what we wanted. Think about him picking on us at lunchtime, calling us wetbacks.”

  “We have to say something to him.”

  “He took my arm.”

  “You got it back.”

  “He wanted a cut from our work.”

  “So? We were as much hustlers as he was trying to hustle us.”

  “So what nothing.”

  “Come on, BD. We owe Mario at least to say sorry.” Mario was turning twenty-one, and the system was either going to pass him so he could graduate with a high school diploma or drop him altogether because he was a super-duper super-senior. Either way, we would not have to deal with him at school anymore, and yet I felt bad.

  “This was your idea. Not mine. You’re the one with bright ideas. I’m staying right here.” He crossed his arms, sat on a bench, and was not going to be moved. “Staying right here.” He dug out his Jolly Ranchers.

  I opened Metropolitan Hospital’s door. The air conditioner on full blast told me that the school year was almost over. Taína’s due date was ahead.

  “Are you family? In order to visit, you must be family,” the woman at the visiting hours desk said.

  “Yes. I’m family,” I said.

  “You don’t look Italian.”

  “He’s my half cousin.” Here I was going to see the neighborhood racist bully and saying he had my blood.

  She scoped me for only a second, then shrugged like it was not her problem.

  “The room number is written right here.” The receptionist pointed. I took the big blue plastic card with the word VISITOR in big, black, bold letters and rode up the elevator. I took out the comic books I had hidden inside my pants because I was embarrassed to tell BD that I had bought Mario comics. I had bought the ones he was always reading, Sandman series, Dark Knight, and X-Men. When I stepped off the elevator, I didn’t go in Mario’s room. I stayed outside and peered through the slightly opened door. Mario looked like a guy who just wanted to be left alone. I think he knew what they were saying about him back in school. About a rumor that I had started. That big, bad Mario De Puma was gay, and when his father found out, he sent him to the hospital. All the kids were laughing behind his back.

  Mario was propped up with pillows behind his back. His jaw was wired up. His arm was in a cast, though both his legs were fine. I slowly walked in, and in discomfort and pain Mario turned his head.

  “Fuck…you…want?” Clenched jaw sounding like Clint Eastwood.

  “Nothing.” I forced a smile.

  “Cops…got…you?”

  “Almost but not yet.”

  “Your…scam…about?”

  “Doesn’t matter. It’s over.”

  “Too…bad,” he said, and hurt something because he took a quick breath and then he said to me, “Sorry.” I saw steel wires in his mouth, rubber bands, too.

  “For what, man?”

  “Ruining…your…thing.”

  “It’s cool,” I said, and he looked at me, wanting to know why I was there. But I wasn’t going to tell him, no way. I was there because it was my personal way of apologizing. I was no different from him. I had exploited a fear of something that is really natural. Something that shouldn’t matter. But in Spanish Harlem it did, and I knew it sure as hell mattered to Mario’s father. I knew that boys could be brutal, and this brutality wasn’t always displayed by physical violence. I had hurt Mario, and it was just as brutal as if I had stabbed him.

  “School…what are…they…saying…about me? In…?” Through gritted teeth, he got all that out.

  “That you’re a jerk.”

  “That’s…it?”

  “Yes,” I lied.

  “Sure?”

  “Yes, and that you deserved it for being a jerk.”

  And I think he was happy with this.

  “Okay…good.”

  “You know, Mario,” I said, “we are just two kids stuck in this place with no money. We don’t know any better. You know, we are just trying.”

  I left him the comics by his bed. With more discomfort and pain, he twisted his head.

  “Old issues…read already.” Th
ough I knew he had not read those because the man at the comic store told me they had just come out that day. Still, I didn’t say anything.

  “See you in school,” I said, and he barely nodded back. And just as I was about to turn toward the door, he grunted.

  “Wait…Taína…” He took a deep breath because whatever he was going to say was a lot and it was going to hurt him. “If you see…her…say…I…want…to…talk to her.”

  No way was I going to say this to Taína.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Okay.” He was spent. The painkillers were bombarding his body with sleep. I took one last look at the guy and realized that Mario had all the tools and makings of a stand-up guy, if he could only learn how to make those tools work and pull himself together.

  Verse 3

  I SHOULD HAVE known something was wrong when I entered and there was no music in our house. My mother was waiting, arms crossed like Mussolini. “All those books on pregnancy…” Mom shook her head. “You think I’m stupid. A woman knows.” She had gone into my room and searched my stuff. “Una mujer sabe.” She lifted her hand as if to strike me but didn’t. “Why would you have books on pregnancy?” She huffed and puffed. “I know you are still going down there.” Her lips were tight, like a child who doesn’t want to open them for the dentist. “Those women who live on the second floor”—she was doing her best to keep her anger in check—“any criminal could have come through that window. I’m losing a day’s work. Pero esto se acaba hoy, señorito.” Not seeing my father get up from all this shouting told me he had agreed to this.

  On the Metro-North up to Ossining, Mom repeated, “I’m doing this for you. Que el Señor me ayude. I’m doing this for you.” I didn’t need to see that man. I had my truth on how Taína had gotten pregnant. Peta Ponce had another meaning, another definition. Taína had chosen to believe that. But none of this mattered anymore. Once, I had gone to see this man myself to look for answers and come away empty-handed, but now there were no more questions to be answered. But Mom wouldn’t understand. Mom had planned this because that man’s mother was waiting for us by the shuttle that would take us to the prison’s compound.

  After the ride, we entered the prison’s visiting hall, and I was hit by all this white noise. Inmates and their families murmuring, coughing, laughing, yelling, kissing, babies crying. Soon, an unshackled and uncuffed Orlando Castillo walked into the hall, led by a guard. He could have easily passed for a white man. He had blond hair and seagull-pale blue eyes. He was the whitest of Puerto Ricans I had ever seen. We were seated next to his mother and he glanced at Mom and me for only a second before slowly sitting down in front of us. With only a table and glass in the middle separating us. There was no need for phones; the glass was not that high and it had holes in it. The man smiled at his mother and she smiled back at him. He placed his hand on the glass and she did, too. I did not see any violence in his face, only happiness that his mother had come to visit him. I looked at Mom at my side to maybe tell her that we should leave them alone, we could question him a little later. But my mother’s eyes were lost on another prisoner sitting about two families away from us. As if I did not exist, as if she had forgotten why she had dragged me all the way here, she got up and slowly walked the few steps, where sat an irritated white woman visiting her jailed husband across the table.

  “Bobby?” Mom whispered to herself. “¿Ese eres tú?” she said louder. The guy took his gaze off his wife and looked up at Mom, squinting as if the sun were in his face.

  “Oh, shit. Mami,” he said out loud among all that white noise. My mother forced an embarrassed short smile. “Mami, shit, wha’ you doing here?” he said, even more embarrassed than my mother. Still sitting, his wife scoped my mother, nodded angrily, and sucked in some teeth. They had never met before but had always known about each other. “This is my wife, Angel.” From across the glass he pointed at a pretty, short, white woman sitting in front of him. She was dressed in jeans and a coffee-stained blouse. Her hair was in a bun held by like a hundred bobby pins. She was wearing these flat-topped platform shoes to make her look taller. My mother guiltily held out her hand.

  “Why don’t you”—the wife ignored my mother’s hand—“get him his chicken-shit sandwich and Coke?” And not taking her eyes off him, she gave the guard a half-full paper bag for inspection. The guard looked in it and then placed it next to her husband, who sat across the table.

  “Yeah, yeah, you just tell Junito to come see me,” he yelled as his wife began walking away. “This is bullshit. I’m still his father, coño, no matter how old he is now.” His wife gave him the finger and then continued to walk away. He then smiled at my mother as if none of this had happened. My mother politely and full of embarrassment smiled back, but she did not take the now empty seat in front him. She stayed standing, and when he stood up so as to be eye to eye with my mother, a guard yelled, “Sit the fuck down.” He sat down, and my mother’s nose started to run.

  “Do you want a chicken sandwich and Coke, Bobby? I’ll get it,” Mom said nicely, still standing.

  “De verdad?” he said. “That would be great, you know the food in here is for pericos. You, Mami, you don’t look anything like I thought you would by now.”

  “De verdad?” Mom said. “I think you look good, still looking good.” But I knew she didn’t mean it. His face was a pothole of craters, and whatever it was that he had done to finally land him in prison was written in his features.

  “Yeah, you know I’m still a pollo. But I thought you’d be better-looking after all these years.” And from Mom’s expression, I think she was holding on to some hope that a tiny bit of what she had once fallen for was still there. “That’s your son?” he said, and Mom just nodded. I nodded back at him. “Wha’s your name?”

  “I’ll get you a sandwich,” I said, not telling him.

  “Chevere,” he said happily. “And a Coke. Diet, okay? And could you get me coffee, put lots of sugar in it, okay, and get me some cookies, chips, pretzels, and a Snickers.” He quickly licked his lips. “Oh, and an egg-salad sandwich for later, pretzels, two bags, can you do that?”

  I did as Mom did by only nodding. I walked to the back of the visiting hall. There were six vending machines lined up side by side like six extra guards. One sold cookies, one sold coffee, one sold sandwiches, one sodas, the others chips and chocolate bars. I took out some bills I had, and as I slid the dollars in each machine, on the vending glass I caught glimpses of what was happening behind me. My mother was still standing, and Bobby “el Pollo con la Voz” Arroyo was sitting and talking really fast, his hands moving rapidly as if he were afraid my mother would walk away before he was done. Once in a while my mom would switch her weight, but she did not say much, I’m sure. I could tell she was only listening, even among all that noise, I knew that she was not the one talking. There were plastic bags from a dispenser, and I placed all the stuff he had asked for. I then rejoined him and Mom, and he kept laughing and smiling and saying, “Believe me, mami, mamita, la salsera, my love. You have to believe me. Lo juro. On the life of my children, lo juro.”

  On her face I didn’t see any love for him, only politeness and maybe some terrible memories that were rolling past Mom. She hadn’t said a word and had stayed standing, continually staring at her past. When I motioned to the guard to come take the items from me for inspection, my mother said, “Let’s go.”

  “But what about…?” I said, pointing two seats down to where that man was lovingly talking to his mother. “ ’Tá bien. ’Tá todo bien,” she said, and then looked at Bobby, who was happy when the guard brought him over more stuff. “You know, Bobby, I forgive you,” Mom said, getting ready to leave.

  “You forgive me?” he said, laughing. “Coño, shit. You forgive me? I brought excitement to your boring fucking life and you forgive me? Pa’ carajo.”

  “You mistreated me. Things I won’t repeat, bu
t I forgive you, Bobby,” she said.

  “Mierda, I made your life special and you say you forgive me, shit. That’s fucked up, you know. I should be the one forgiving you! You were so boring before you met me, and you say you want to forgive me?”

  Mom then really looked into his eyes, held them for a long time, before saying, “Que Dios te cuide.”

  “No, ’pera, mami, wait, nena, ’pera,” he said desperately when Mom cleared her runny nose and turned her back on him. “Wait, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. You know everyone was crazy back then. Crazy. Todo el mundo. You know, mami?”

  Mom continued walking and I followed her. His desperation grew. “Listen, can you visit again?” we both heard him say loudly. “Just bring me stuff. Toothpaste, some clothes? Okay? ¿Mami?…¿Mami?” he yelled. “Just some stuff, okay?…Okay?” When he knew she was not coming back, his voice sailed. “See how you treat me? See how you treat me? Fuck you.”

  * * *

  —

  ON THE WAY back my mother said nothing. She stared ahead and once in a while would look my way but never say anything. I left her alone and rode the long ride back to the Metro-North Spanish Harlem stop on 125th Street and Park.

  When we arrived home my father was cooking. In Spanish he asked, “How did it go?” But my mother didn’t answer and went straight to the bedroom and closed the door. My father followed her and knocked. Was everything all right? he asked. I thought she was going to yell to leave her alone.