This is for you. We won’t tell Homero, will we? It will be our secret, eh?” He placed the twenty-dollar bill on the table. He turned around and stared at Andrés, who was sitting on the couch with his head bowed.
“Now don’t be sad.” He walked over to Andrés and kissed him on the forehead. “You’re a good boy. You’re a very good boy. Now, look at me.”
Andrés made himself look at the man. Maybe then he would leave.
The man kissed him again on the forehead. He walked over to the table and kissed the twenty-dollar bill the same way he’d kissed him.
“I think I could fall in love with you.”
I won’t ever fall in love—not with you, not with anything. Not ever. Not ever again.
Andrés stared at the money on the table. He wanted to burn it like he’d burned all the letters he’d written to Mrs. Fernandez. He felt dizzy. He got into a fight once, when he was eight. A boy had hit him in the side of his head and he’d felt numb and dizzy and he’d had to sit down on the ground, and the whole world was spinning—and he’d felt ashamed that everyone had seen that he hadn’t been able to hit the other boy back. Because he hadn’t known how to fight. He felt that way now, like the world was spinning, like he didn’t know how to fight. And somehow, he felt like the whole world knew what he had done. For twenty dollars.
He stumbled toward the bathroom and vomited. He lay there on the floor for a while. Finally, he took a shower. He couldn’t keep himself from shaking, could barely dry himself, he was shaking so much. Maybe a cigarette would help. He knew where Yolie kept them. He walked to the drawer and opened it, then found a pack. “They’re mine,” he said. “They’re mine now.” He took the pack to the courtyard and lit a cigarette. He inhaled, held the smoke in his lungs, then slowly let it out. He was dizzy again, but he didn’t care. He smoked the whole cigarette. He felt sick. He stumbled to the bathroom again and vomited. He vomited and vomited until there was nothing left, but his stomach was still trying to turn itself inside out.
He was cold. He put on a coat. It was too small for him now, his coat, but it was okay, he was warmer. He felt the hot tears on his cheeks, and he wondered why he was crying. Why was he crying? That wouldn’t help. Crying never helped. When his mother and father had died, what good were his tears? When Mando died, what good had it done him or Yolie, that they’d cried? He wouldn’t cry anymore after this, that’s what he told himself.
But he couldn’t stop himself. So he cried.
And then he stopped. He smoked another cigarette. He didn’t get so dizzy this time. He fell asleep in the courtyard and dreamed his mother was hovering over him. And then his mother became Mrs. Fernandez. And then Mrs. Fernandez became Silvia. And they were all angels.
Andrés woke in the middle of the night. He was cold. All the hovering angels were gone. He thought maybe there had been a funeral. Someone had died. Everything was black—the sky, the clothes he was wearing, his heart. He made himself get up. He smoked another cigarette. He didn’t want to look up at the stars. He didn’t want to. He finished his cigarette and went to bed.
Ileana was asleep. She was home. She was safe. He kissed her, then fell into his own bed. Maybe, when he woke, he would discover that it was all a bad dream. But in the morning, he understood that it had all been real. He felt sick and ashamed and he didn’t want to get up, so he didn’t. He fell back asleep. The next time he woke, Yolie was sitting at the foot of his bed. She was just sitting there, watching him. He wanted to tell her he hated her. For everything that had happened—he hated her and Mando, even though Mando was dead, because all of this was his fault, too. But hating them didn’t change anything.
He turned toward the wall, and stared at it.
“If we don’t do what he says, he’ll hurt Ileana.”
Andrés said nothing.
“Do you understand?”
The man hurt me. Does it matter? Do you care? “I understand,” he whispered.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not. If you were sorry, you’d get us out of here.”
“If you leave, he’ll hurt Ileana. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t hate me.”
“I told her I’d hate her till I died.”
“Why shouldn’t you have hated her?”
“She was caught.”
“It’s not your job to defend what she did, Andrés.”
“What is my job?”
“Your job is to live.”
“They didn’t get to live. Why should I?”
“That’s not your fault.”
“What’s it like to wake up in the morning and be glad?”
She thought of Sam, how she’d wake next to him, or if he had already risen, how she’d find him in the garden.
“Do you know what gardenias smell like?”
“Yes.”
“That’s what it’s like to be glad. You wake searching for the smell of gardenias. Or the smell of oranges. Or the smell of agaves. Or the smell of rosemary. And you think, God, I can smell. And you walk out and you see the light falling on everything—on the delicate leaves of a mesquite or the brilliant white of an oleander in bloom that almost blinds you or the bougainvillea that explodes pink like a firecracker. And you think, God, I can see.”
“You sound like a poet.”
“I was married to one. He died.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He taught me how to look at things. How to smell things. How to understand the miracle of having a body.”
“I don’t think having a body is such a miracle.”
“That’s all you’ll ever have in this world, Andrés.”
“Maybe that’s why I hate everything.”
“Andrés, what your sister and brother did. We both know they didn’t mean for you and Ileana to get hurt. But they were wrong. And that man, that bastard, Homero, who used you to make money—”
“He turned me into a prostitute. You can say it.”
“Twelve-year-olds aren’t prostitutes.”
“What was I, then?”
“A boy. A boy who was sexually abused.”
“And got paid for it. For three years. I worked for three years. I think that qualifies as prostitution.”
“I think that qualifies as sexual abuse in the extreme. In the fucking extreme—if you don’t mind my language.”
“No, I don’t mind.” He smiled. Just the same, it was a sad smile. He lit a cigarette.
“It makes me angry that you hate yourself for something that somebody else made you do. Don’t let them take any more. Don’t you do that, Andrés.”
“None of this does any good, Grace. All these visits, all this talking, all this strolling down fucking memory lane. It doesn’t help. And you know why it doesn’t help? Because everything that’s happened—it lives so deep inside me that the only way I can ever get rid of it is to die.”
“That’s not true, Andrés.”
“It is true. Happiness isn’t in the cards for everyone, Grace.”
“You know what I’d do? I’d reshuffle the deck. I’d redeal the cards.”
“You can’t win every hand.”
“You can’t lose every hand, either, Andrés.”
“I have, Grace. I fucking have.”
His sadness was unbearable to watch. Far worse than his rage. He looked so defeated in that sorrow—like he was surrendering, like the battle was too much. But when he was angry, he was at least alive and fighting—even if he wasn’t clear who the hell he was fighting. Or why. His rage was at least a kind of understanding that if he didn’t keep fighting, he just might perish. His life had taught him at least that one lesson.
God, she wanted him to be angry again. His rage had helped him to survive—and it was possible that his rage was the only intelligent response to what had happened to him. The emotions the body conjured had their own logic. Perhaps the body was vaster, larger, much more complex and mysterious, than psychologists or physicians ever dreamed. Who knew? Who really knew the secrets of the human body? Maybe that was the only reason she had clung to her Catholic God all these years—because a God-made man was the most beautiful thing imaginable. It was the most beautiful thing in the world.
Be angry, Andrés. Who are we to rob you of your rage?