His father stood in the kitchen with one hand keeping the refrigerator door open, and the other holding a brown bottle of cervéza. Papá was a mountain, even more so in his wife-beater undershirt and boxers because his muscles, tattoos, and body hair seemed to burst from the seams. Jesse watched him stare into the open fridge and Jesse said hello, but Papá kept staring like he didn’t hear him.
He ran to him, getting between his papá and the fridge, just wanting to be in his arms. The fridge was a building now, dark and gray with covered slits for windows. The clank of empty glass bottles on concrete echoed off invisible walls, and angry yelling followed it. Jesse just wanted to see his father’s face at least, but he never got to; Papá was gone and Jesse was surrounded by darkness and strange voices.
The giant concrete building loomed behind him and he turned to face it. His lungs felt solid and his chest felt like exploding. He needed to get away from the gray and windowless edifice. Other voices called out to him as he attempted to run. They seemed familiar, but none stood out distinctly.
“You can’t run.”
“You need to be the man now, Jesse.”
“Puta.”
“You’re fucked.”
“...Got my back, hermano?”
“It’s just business…”
“Mamá!”
“... day. And a new future!”
A gunshot rang out in the distance and echoed. As the shot reverberated off distant and unseen walls, it turned into a siren from afar. It wailed and became faster and closer. Metal doors opened and clanged shut behind Jesse.
He turned around and saw masked police in riot gear rushing out of trucks and vans. They charged past Jesse as if he weren’t there. His eyes followed them and crowds of loud and anxious people cheered them on down a large street as they watched from the sidewalks. Jesse’s view was blocked by the brigade of police, charging shoulder-to-shoulder in a straight line. All he could make out in the distance above people’s heads were handmade signs and banners of various colors and designs, wavering umbrellas, and clouds of smoke.
The ongoing march of heavy boots on pavement seemed to skip a previously undetectable beat and a subtle rumble could be felt, like one of Jesse’s cousins’ had rolled up and was bumping music. But with this sensation, there was no particular tempo. Jesse thought it was thunder but it seemed so close. The tide of black uniforms began to vibrate with the rumbling.
Then they all blurred together. The excited and angry faces of the nearby crowds abruptly changed to wide-eyed surprise and fear as they all looked at Jesse. They vanished into dark mist that was a dense black.
This shadow grew like a stretched silhouette, shifting shapes of branches, tentacles, and wisps of cloth. Jesse could see other shadows reach out in the shapes of rifles, reaching arms, blades, ropes, and other things he couldn’t completely recognize.
He began to hear faint but deep yells and screams float in and out of hearing, loosely strung together by whispered warnings and sharp words, all of which were in languages and dialects both familiar and foreign to Jesse. The shadow slowly cast itself upward, as if a prismed hologram that sucked in light instead of reflecting it. He saw faces, clothes, limbs, claws, eyes, hair, fur, weapons, scales, and more reflected in the shifting prisms of shadow as it swirled, recoiled, clouded, shaped, seeped, and crept closer to Jesse. He was frozen in place but was able to see that more shadows were forming behind this horror. They began to move toward Jesse, then past him. They went on farther than he could see.
As the first one passed through, Jesse felt all of the fear, pain, anger, confusion, and despair of his worst nightmare, the same one he would have as a young boy every time he was sick with fever and he’d have to cry out to Mamá, too scared to go back to sleep. Then in the same instant, he felt and saw the same kinds of nightmares completely unfamiliar to him.
Jesse was still pissing himself when he woke up screaming at the top of his lungs. Sure enough, his abuelita rushed up and he heard his little sister crying.
“¡Ay, dios mío! ¿Mijo, what happened? Are you sick?” She came to the side of his mattress and wiped the sweat from his forehead and checked his temperature.
Marcy, Jesse’s youngest sibling, scrambled across their bedroom, opened the bedroom door, and stood at the doorway. “Lita? What should I do?”
“What… what are you doing?” Jesse yelled out with anger, balled around a bit of relief.
“Jesús, mi nieto. Me llamaste. In your sleep, you called to me.”
“I did?” Jesse asked, half-asleep still. He looked behind him on the bed and saw his younger brother Alfredo on the far side of the mattress, turned to the wall with his one pillow smashed over his head and ears. “I didn’t even know I said anything.”
Jesse didn’t really sleep the rest of the morning. He tossed and turned on his bare and moist mattress, trying to fall back asleep. He got drowsy enough when his phone alarm went off, and he heavily fumbled to hit the snooze button. Finally, Lita came into the room, rapidly nagging at Jesse in Spanish as if she didn’t need to breathe. She yanked his pillow out from under his head and threw it on the floor. She placed her phone on the dresser across the room and tapped a button. Ranchero music blared from her phone: accordions, horns, and all.
“Cuanto tiempo busque tu cariño,” blared out of the phone. Then she walked out and left the door open, still mumbling and lecturing all the way into the kitchen. “Y anduve borracho, borracho perdido,” cried an incredibly sad man. Jesse sat up and rubbed his eyes. “De tanto quererte, Yo me acuerdo que estaba chiquillo y no,” the song trudged on. Today was his first day at his new school. He’d missed the first week because he was in Mexico with Lita, Marcy, and Alfredo. It had been his last chance for a long time to see Papá. “Iba a escuela porque ni aguantaba seis horas,” the man bellowed from the phone.
“Shut up, Vicente. I fucking get it,” Jesse mumbled toward the phone. About fifteen minutes later, Jesse sat down at the kitchen table with a plate of fried juevos topped with salsa, accompanied with refried beans, and a slice of Bimbo.
“Jesús, por qué -- why do you have nightmares?” Mrs. Ramirez commented to Jesse, shaking her head, and placed a glass of Tropico next to his plate.
“I don’t,” Jesse griped.
“Adios!” Dominique yelled out as she ushered Alfredo and Marcy out the front door as quickly as she could. Her own kids, Alexia and Antonio, would continue sleeping in their room until one of them woke up, and Lita would make them breakfast. Jesse wondered how much they had heard last night from sleeping next door to him. The front door closed shut, followed by the metal screen door outside a few seconds after.
“They’re just dreams. You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jesse replied back coldly.
“¿Qué quieres decir? You think I don’t know you’re not sleeping? Todo esto con los gritos y el pipi en la cama. What is happening to you, Jesús?”
Jesse’s face turned flush. “It was a fucking accident! Don’t tell anyone I-- about the bed. And I sleep fine. You don’t know anything.”
“Jesús Ignacio Ramirez de Castillo, your brothers paid the price for you to be here. Hugo -- God watch over him -- is in jail, and Erik -- God rest his soul -- is…” her voice quivered before she regained herself again. “Enough, Jesús. Life is no party. You destroyed this family. Mi familia.”
Now Jesse got really quiet. He had been waiting for this, actually. Lita finally said it out loud: he was to blame for his oldest brother being in jail. And his other brother, Erik, was dead because of his stupid actions. Now starting at a new school, she was right: this was it, his last chance. He’d messed up big time. He couldn’t mess up again.
Mrs. Ramirez continued, “There is no one left to make tus problemas go away. You have to hold on and face what comes to you. Ponte los pantalones, por Dios.”
“Put my own pants on? I fucking know these are my problems. I remember every day because you never let me forget with your goddamn prayers for Erik and Hugo and Papá. But none for me!” Jesse stood up from his chair and flipped his breakfast across the table. “Fuck this. I didn’t tell Papá or Junior to stand up for me. They should have just left me alone for the cops. I probably would have been out of juvie by now, anyway.”
Mrs. Ramirez stood leaning against the counter and didn’t flinch when egg yolk oozed off the table’s edge to the kitchen floor in front of her. She stood there calmly, looking past Jesse as he stormed out of the kitchen and slammed the front door on his way out of the apartment.