literature assignments

My mother teI1s me Beto's home, waits for me to say something, but I keep watching the TV. Only when she's in bed do I put on my jacket and swing through the neighborhood to see. He's apatonow but two years ago we were friends and he would walk into the apart- ment without knocking, his heavy voice rousing my mother from the Spanish of her room and drawing me up from the basement, a voice that crackled and made you think of uncles or grandfathers.

'We were raging then, crazy the way we stole, broke

windows, the way we pissed on people's steps and then

challenged them to come out and stop us. Beto was leaving for college at the end of the summer and was delirious from the thought of it-he hated everything about the neighborhood, the break-apart buildings, the

little strips of grass, the piles of garbage around the cans, and the dump, especially the dump.

I don't know how you can do it, he said to me. I would just find me a job anywhere and go.

Drown 91

I

92 DNOWN

Yc:rh, I said. I wasn't like him. I had another year to go irr high school, no promises elsewhere.

Days we spent in the mall or out in the parking lot playing stickball, but nights were what we waited for. 'fhe heat in the apartments was like something heavy that had come inside to die. Families arranged on their porches, the glow from their TVs washing blue against the brick. From my family apartment you could smell the pear trees that had been planted years ago, four to a court, probably to save us all from asphyxiation. Nothing moved fast, even the daylight was slow to fade, but as soon as night seffled Beto and I headed down to the community center and sprang the fence into the pool. \(/e were never alone, every kid with legs was there. We lunged from the boards and swam out of the deep end, wrestling and farting around. At around midnight abuelas, with their night hair swirled around spiky rollers, shouted at us from their apart- ment windows. lSinvergiienzas! Go home!

I pass his apartment but the windows are dark; I put my ear to the busted-up door and hear only the famil- iar hum of the air conditioner. I haven't decided yet if I'll talk to him. I can go back to my dinner and two years will become three.

Even from four blocks off I can hear the racket from the pool-radios too-and wonder if we were ever that loud. Little has changed, not the stink of chlorine, not the bottles exploding against the lifeguard station. I hook my fingers through the plastic-coated hurricane

fence.Somethingtellsmethathewillbehere;Ihopthe fence, feeling stupid when I sprawl on the

dandelions

and the grass.

Nice one, somebodY calls out'

Fuck me, I say' I'm not the oldest motherfucker in

the place, brt it', .lose' I take off my shirt and my shoes

,.rith., knife in' Many of the kids here are younger

brothers of the people I used to go to school with' Two

of them swim nrti black and Latino, and they pause

when they see me, recogntzing the guy who sells them

their shitty dope' The crackheads have their own man'

Lucero, and some other guy who drives in from Pater-

son, the only full-time commuter in the atea'

The water feels good' Starting at the deep end I glide

over the slick-tiled bottom without kicking up a sPume

or making a splash' Sometimes another svrimmer

churns past me, more a disturbance of water than a

"it' body. I can still go far without coming

uP' Vhile every- $t a'

thing above i, io'd and bright' everything below is

whispers. And always the risk of coming up to find the

cops stabbing their searchlights out across the water'

And then everyone running' wet feet slapping against

the concrete, yelling, Fuck You' officers' you Puto su-

cios, fuck You' \[hen I'm tired I wade through to the

shallow end'

past some kid who's kissing his girlfriend' watching

me as though I'm going to try to cut in' and I sit near

the sign that runs the pool during the day' No Horse-

Ploy, No Running, No Defecating' No [Jrinating' No

Erorvn 91

I

94

I twN

DROi/N

Expectorating. Atthe bottom someone has scrawled in No Whites, l/o Fat Cbiks and someone else has pro- vided the missing c. I laugh. Beto hadn't known what expectorating meant though he was the one leaving for college. I told him, spitting a greener by the side of the pool.

Shit, he said. Vhere did you learn that? I shrugged. Tell me. He hated when I knew something he didn't.

He put his hands on my shoulders and pushed me under. He was wearing a cross and cutoff jeans. He was

stronger than me and held me down until water flooded my nose and throat. Even then I didn't tell him; he thought I didn't read, not even dictionaries.

IVe live alone. My mother has enough for the rent and groceries and I cover the phone bill, sometimes the cable. She's so quiet that most of the time I'm startled co find her in the apartment. I'll enter a room and she'll ;tir, detaching herself from the cracking plaster walls, from the stained cabinets, and fright will pass through me like a wire. She has discovered the secret to silence:

pouring caf6 without a splash, walking between rooms as if gliding on a cushion of felt, crying without a sound. You have traveled to the East and learned many secret things, I've told her. You're like a shadow warrior.

And you're like a crazy,she says. Like a big crazy. \flhen I come in she's still awake, her hands picking

clots of lint from her skirt. I put a towel down on the

sofa and we watch television together. \(e settle on the

Spanish-language news: drama for her, violence for me'

Today a child has survived a seven-stoty fall, busting

nothing but his diaper. The hysterical baby-sitter,

about three hundred pounds of her, is head-butting the

microphone.

It's a goddamn miraclevilla, she cries'

My mother asks me if I found Beto. I tell her that I

didn't look. That's too bad. He was telling me that he might be

starting at a school for business'

So what?

She's never understood why we don't speak any- i

more. I've tried to explain, all wise-like, that every-

thing changes, but she thinks that sort of saying is only

around so you can Prove it wrong'

He asked me what You were doing'

\7hat did you saY?

I told him you were fine'

You should have told him I moved'

And what if he ran into You ?

I'm not allowed to visit mY mother?

She notices the tightening of my arms' You should

be more like me and Your father'

Can't you see I'm watching television?

I was angry at him, wasn't I? But now we can talk

to each other.

Am I watching television here or what?

Drown 95

96 EROWN

Saturdays she asks me to take her to the mall. As a son I fccl I owe her that much, even though neither of us has a car and we have to walk two miles through red- ncck territory to catch the M15.

Before we head out she drags us through the apart- ment to make sure the windows are locked. She can't reach the latches so she has me test them. With the air conditioner on we never open windows but I go through the routine anyway. Putting my hand on the latch is not enough-she wants to hear it rattle. This place just isn't safe, she tells me. Lorena got lazy and look what they did to her. They punched her and kept her locked ,p in her place. Those morenos ate all her food and even made phone calls. Phone calls!

That's *hy we don't have long-distance, I tell her but she shakes her head. That's not funnI, she says.

She doesn't go out much, so when she does it's a big deal. She dresses up, even puts on makeup. Vhich is why I don't give hen lip about taking her to the mall even though I usually make a fortune on Saturdays, selling to those kids going down to Belmar or out to Spruce Run.

I recognizelike half the kids on the bus. I keep my head buried in my cap, praying that nobody tries to score. She watches the traffic, her hands somewhere inside her purse, doesn't say a word.

\[hen we arrive at the mall I give her fifty dollars. Buy something, I say, hating the image I have of her, picking through the sale bins, wrinkling everything. Back in the day, my father would give her a hundred

dollars at the end of each spmmer for my new clothes

and she would take nearly a week to spend it, even

though it never amounted to more than a couple of t-

shirts and two pairs of ieans' She folds the bills into a

square. I'11 see you at three' she says'

I wander through the stores' staying in sight of the

cashiers so they won't have reason to follow me' The

circuit I make has not changed since my looting days.

Bookstore, record store, comic-book shop' Macy's' Me

and Beto used to steal like mad from these places' two'

three hundred dollars of shit in an outing' Our system

wassimple-wewalkedintoaStorewithashopping bag and came out loaded' Back then

security wasn't '

tight. The only trick was in the exit' \fle stopped right

at the entrance of the store and checked out some

worthless piece of junk to stoP people from. getting

)

suspicious. \flhat do you think? we asked each other'

\Wouldshelikeit?Bothofushadseenbadshoplifters

atwork. All grab and run' nothing smooth about them'

Not us. \fle idled out of the stores slow' like a fat sev-

enties car. At this, Beto was the best' He even talked to

mallsecurity,askedthemfordirections'hisbagall loadedup,andme,standingtenfeetaway'shittingmy pants. \flhen he finished he smiled' swinging

his shop-

ping bag uP to hit me'

You got to stoP that messing around' I told him' I'm

not going to iail for bullshit like that'

You don', go to lail for shoplifting' They iust turn

you over to Your old man'

Erorvn 97

11 I DROWN

I don't know about Iou, but my pops hits like a motherfucker.

He laughed. You know my dad. He flexed his hands.

The nigger's got arthritis. My mother never suspected, even when my clothes

couldn't all fit in my closet, but my father wasn't that easy. He knew what things cost and knew that I didn't have a regular job.

You're going to get caught, he told me one day. Just you wait. 'When you do I'll show them everything you've taken and then they'll throw your stupid ass away like a bad piece of meat.

He was a charmer, ffiy pop, arealasshole, but he was

right. Nobody can stay smooth forever, especially kids

like us. One day at the bookstore, we didn't even hide the drops. Four issues of the same Playboy for kicks, enough audio books to start our own library. No last minute juke either. The lady who stepped in front of us didn't look old, even with her white hair. Her silk shirt was half unbuttoned and a silver horn necklace sat

on the freckled top of her chest. I'm sorry fellows, but I have to check your bag, she said. I kept moving, and looked back all annoyed, like she was asking us for a quarter or something. Beto got polite and stopped. No problem, he said, slamming the heavy bag into her face.

She hit the cold tile with a squawk, her palms slapping the ground. There you go, Beto said.

Security found us across from the bus stop, under a

J..p Cherokee. A bus had come and gone, both of us

roo scared to take it, imagining a plainclothes warttng

,o .frn the cuffs on' I remember that when the rent-a-

cop taPPed his nightstick against the fender and said'

You little shits b;;t' come ot't ht" real slow' I started

to cry. Beto did";;;y aword' his face stretched out and

gra!this hand squeezing mine' the bones in our fingers

pressing together'

Nights I drink with Alex and Danny' The Malibou Bar

is no good, iust washouts and the sucias we can con into

joining us. 'We drink too much ) roar at each other and

make the skinny bartender move closer to the phone'

On the *rff f""gs a cork dartboard and a Brunswick

Gold Crown b"locks the bathroom' its bumpers

squashed, the felt pulled like old skin'

When tht b" btgi" to shake back and forth like a

rumba, I call i" "igi' and go home' through the fields

that surround the apartments' In the distance you can

see the Raritan, as shiny as an earthworm' the same

river my homeboy goes to school on' The dump has

long since shut dow"' "'d grass has spread over it like

a sickly f',tzz',and from where I stand' my right hand

directing a colorless stream of piss downward' the

landfill might be the top of a blond head' square and

old. In the mornings I run' My mother is already

up'

dressing for her hl''"ttl"aning iob' She says nothing to

me, would rather point to the mangri she has prepared

than sPeak.

Dron'n 99

I

100 DROWI{

I run three miles eas,y, courd have pushed a fourthif I were in the mood. I keep an eyeout for the recruiter who prowls around our rr.ighborhood in his dark K_car' s/e've spoken before. He was out of uniform andcalled me over, jovial, and I thought I was helping somewhite dude with directions. \[ourd you mind if I askedyou a question?

No. Do you have a job? Not righr now. Vould you like one? A real career, more than you,ll

get around here? I remember srepping back. Depends on whar it is, Isaid. Son, I know somebody who,s hiring. ft,s the United

States government.

Well. Sorry, but I ain,tArmy material. That's exactly what I used to think, he said, his tenpiggy fingers buried in his carpeted steering wheer. Butnowlhaveal

L oy atty .c r, ;::,','; ;:tr ;ffi"j,ilffi ilr#:one? Ffe's a southerner, red_haired, his drawl so out ofplace that the people around here laugh just h.rrirrghim' I take to the b.rrh., when I see his car on the road.

These days my gurs feel loose and cord and I wanr robe away from here. He won,t have to show me hisDesert Eagle or flash the photos of the skinny F,ipino

girls sucking dick. He'll only have to smile and name the places and I'll listen.

When I reach the apartment, I lean against my door, waiting for my heart to slow, for the pain to lose its edge. I hear my mother's voice, a whisper from the kitchen. She sounds hurt or nervous, maybe both. At first I'm terrified that Beto's inside with her but then I look and see the phone cord, swinging lazily. She's talking to my father, something she knows I disap- prove of. He's in Florida now, a sad guy who calls her

and begs for money. He swears that if she moves down

there he'll leave the woman he's living with. These are lies, I've told her, but she still calls him. His words coil inside of her, wrecking her sleep for days. She opens the

refrigerator door slightly so that the whir of the com- pressor masks their conversation. I walk in on her and hang up the phone. That's enough, I say.

She's startled, her hand squeezing the loose folds of her neck. That was him, she says quietly.

On school days Beto and I chilled at the stop together but as soon as that bus came over the Parkwood hill I got to thinking about how I was failing gym and screw- ing up math and how I hated every single living teacher on the planet.

I'll see you in the p.m., I said. He was already standing on line. I just stood back

and grinned, my hands in my pockets. With our bus

Drown 101

I

I

IO2 DROWN

drivers you didn't have to hide. Two of them didn't give arat.fuckand the third one, the Brazllianpreacher, was too busy talking Bible to norice anyrhing but the traf- fic in front of him.

Being truant without a car was no easy job but I managed. I watched a lot of TV and when it got bor- ing I trooped down to the mall or the Sayreville library, where you could watch old documentaries for free. I always came back to the neighborhood lare, so the bus wouldn't pass me on Ernston and nobody could yell Asshole! out the windows. Bero would usually be home or down by the swings, but other times he wouldn't be around at all. Out visiting other neigh- borhoods. He knew a lot of folks I didn't-a messed- up black kid from Madison Park, two brothers who were into that N.Y. club scene, who spent money on platform shoes and leather backpacks. I'd leave a mes- sage with his parents and then watch some more TV. The next day he'd be out at the bus stop, roo busy smoking a cigarette to say much about the day before.

You need to learn how to walk the world, he told me. There's a lot out there.

Some nights me and the boys drive to New Brunswick. A nice city, the Raritan so low and silty that you don'r have to beJesus to walk over it. We hit the Melody and the Roxy, stare at the college girls. \We drink a lot and then spin out onto the dance floor. None of the chicas

ever dance with us, but a glance or a touch can keep us

talking shit for hours'

Once the clubs close we go to the Franklin Diner'

gorge ourselves on Pancakes' and then' aft'er we've

smoked our pack, ht'd home' Danny passes out in the

back seat and Alex cranks the window down to keep

the wind in his eyes' He's fallen asleep in the past'

wrecked two cars before this one' The streets have been

picked clean of students and townies and we blow

through every light, red or green' At the OId Bridge

Turnpike we pass the fag bar' which never seems to

c10se. patos are all .ver the parking lot, drinking and

talking. Sometimes Alex will stop by the side of

the road

and say, Excuse me' \flhen somebody comes over from

thebarhe'llpointhisplasticpistolatthem'justtosee if they'll run or shit their Pants' Tonight

he just puts his

head out the window' Fuck you! he shouts and then

settles back in his seat' laughing'

That's original, I saY'

He puts his head out the window agarn' Eat me'

then! Yeah, Danny mumbles from the back'

Eat me'

Twice. That's it'

The first time was at the end of that summer' We had

iust come back from the pool and were watching a Porn

video at his parents' aPartment' His father was a nut for

Erolln LOl

IO4 DROWIq

these tapes, ordering them from wholesalers in Cali- fornia and Grand Rapids. Beto used to tell me how his pop would watch them in the middle of the day, not caring a lick about his moms, who spent the time in the kitchen, taking hours to cook a pot of rice and gan- dules. Beto would sit down with his pop and neither of them would say a word, except to laugh when some- body caught it in the eye or the face.

\7e were an hour into the new movie, some vaina that looked like it had been filmed in the apartment next

door, when he reached into my shorts. Vhat the fuck are you doing? I asked, but he didn't stop. His hand was dry. I kept my eyes on the television) too scared to watch. I came right away,smearing the plastic sofa cov- ers. My legs started shaking and suddenly I wanted out. He didn't say anything to me as I left, just sat there watching the screen.

The next day he called and when I heard his voice I was cool but I wouldn't go to the mall or anywhere else. My mother sensed that something was wrong and pestered me about it, but I told her to leave me the fuck alone, and my pops, who was home on a visit, stirred himself from the couch to slap me down. Mostly I stayed in the basement, terrified that I would end up abnormal, a fucking pato, but he was my best friend and

back then that mattered to me more than anything. This alone got me out of the apartment and over to the

pool that night. He was already there, his body pale and

flabby under the water' Hey' he said' I was beginning

to worry about You' Nothing to worrY about' I said'

we swam rt'alia"'t talk much and later we watched \

a Skytop crew pull a bikini tof f'o"t a girl stupid I

enough ,o h"'g out alone' "i"t it' she said' covering

herself, b.rt tht" kids howled' holding it "n

o":j',ntt I

head, the shiny laces flopping just out of reach' When \

they began to pluck at her arms' she walked away' leav-

ing them to try the top on over their flat pecs'

He put his hand o" *y shoulder' ffiY pulse a code

under his palm' Let's go' he said' Unless of course

you're not feeling good'

I'm feeling fine' I said'

Since his parents worked nights we Pretry much

owned the place until six the next morning' \[e sat in

front of his television' in our towels' his hands bracing

,grirrr, my abdomen and thighs' I'11 stop if you want'

he said and I didn't respond' After I was done' he laid i

his head i" *;1;' I *""'' asleep or awake' but:':glt

i

somewhere in bt'""t"' rocked 'lo*ly back and forth l

the way surf holds iunk against the shore' rolling 'it i

over and over' In three weeks he was leaving' Nobody

can touch me, he kept saying' We'd visited the school

and I'd r"tt' ho"' beautiful the campus was' with all the

students dri{ting from dorm to class' I thought of how

in high r.f'ool ol" ""hers loved to crowd us into their

Iounge ."', time a sPace shuttle took off from Florida'

Drou'n 105

I

I

106 DROWr

one teacher, whose family had two grammar schoors named afrcr it, compared us to the shuttres. A few of you are going to make it. Those are the orbiters. But the majority of you are just going to burn our. Going nowhere. He dropped his hand onro his desk. I courd already see myself losing altitude, fading, the earth spread out benearh me, hard and bright.

I had my eyes closed and the television was on and when the hallway door crashed open, he jumped up and I nearly cur my dick off struggling with my shorts. It's just the neighbor, he said,laughing. He was laughing, but I was saying, Fuck this, ard getting my clothes on.

I believe I see him in his father's borromed-out cadil- lac, heading towards the turnpike, but I can'tbe sure. He's probably back in schoor arready. I deal crose to home, trooping up and down the same dead-end street where the kids drink and smoke. These punks joke with me, pat me down for taps, sometimes too hard. Now that srip malls line Rou te 9, a rot of forks have part-time jobs; the kids stand around smoking in their aprons, name tags dangling heavily from pockets.

\flhen I get hom€, ffiI sneakers are filthy so I take an old toothbrush to their soles, scraping the crap into the tub. My mother has thrown open the wirrJows and propped open rhe door. It,s cool enough, she explains. She has prepared dinner-rice and beans, fried cheese, tosrones. Look whar I bought, she says, showing me

two blue t-shirts. They were two for one so I bought

you one. Try it on. It fits tight but I don't mind' She cranks up the tele-

vision. A movie dubbed into Spanish, a classic, one that ,

everyone knows. The actors throw themselves around,

prrriorrte, but their words are plain and delib:til: Y It's hard to imagine anybody going through lil

way. I pull out the plug of bills from my pockets' She i

takes it from me, her fingers soothing the creases' A

manwhotreatshisplatalikethisdoesn,tdeserveto spend it, she saYS.

\7e watch the movie and the two hours together l

makes us friendty. She puts her hand on mine' Near the ' (4'; '' end of the film, just as o"' httots are about to fall aPart,

\' '')

under a hail of bullets, she takes off her glasses and

kneads her temples, the light of the television flicker- i i i

ing across her i^"r. She watches another minute and

th., her chin lists to her chest. Almost immediately her

eyelashes begin to tremble, a quiet semaphore' She is

dreaming, dreaming of Boca Raton, of strolling under

theiacarandas with my father' You can't be anywhere

forever, was what Beto used to say, what he said to me

the day I went to see him off' He handed me a gt{t'' a

book, and after he was gone I threw itaway'didn't even

bother to oPen it and read what he'd written'

I let her sleep until the end of the movie and when I

wake her she shakes her head, grimacing' You better

check those windows, she says' I promise her I will'

/ I

Drorvn I07