Marie is my favorite waitress, hands down. Not just because she has a beautiful face and a slamming body, but because she doesn’t kiss gut-ass like the others do, then come back to the kitchen and bitch and complain about them. Out of respect, I don’t rip off her tips. Those others, that’s a different proposition. Every time Flora brings her fat Filipino ass back to the kitchen and starts screaming that she needs help “right away” loud so that Ayala or Ponce can hear, I smile because I know I’m taking her shit to the cleaners whenever I get the chance. Delores, too, although she’s not as obnoxious as Flora. But she’s malevolent in her own way, always talking down to us when some fucking gut complains about no salt or that there’s a grease streak on the table. “You gotta keep things clean,” she’ll say, shaking her droopy little face so that her chin waggles like a chicken’s. She’s skinny and smells sour. I take her shit, too. Fuck ’em both. But Marie. She’s different. She gives me something to look forward to, something besides the home situation to think about.
One night I’m standing at the edge of the kitchen door during a momentary lull, waiting for some table to free up so that I can clean it. I’m the only busboy working because Tuesdays are dead-dog slow. Marie comes up and stands next to me, just taking a breather like. She leans up against the wall. I can smell her hair because she’s standing close. It smells like coconut. It’s straight, thick, reddish brown. It looks soft, like if you ran your hand through it, it’d make you feel like keeping it in there all night. “What are you thinking about?” she asks, a big sexy smile playing across her face. I can’t tell her that I’m thinking about running my fingers through her pretty hair so I say the first stupid thing that runs through my mind.
“I was wondering how high the center beam of the roof is.” I gesture up at the ceiling. Stupid, I know.
“Why are you wondering that?” she says, looking up at where I pointed.
“Oh, I play basketball and it just came into my head what an incredible leap it would be to be able to take a running start and just jump so high that I could touch it, maybe jump out of this whole building.”
She gives me a mercy laugh and bumps her hip against me. “I bet your legs are strong, aren’t they?” She gives me another smile and goes back to work. I look at her walk away. Even through that clunky uniform, I can see that she’s got the full package, and I’m thinking that there’s some chemistry thing going on between the two of us.
That night Marie trades with Flora so that she can close with me. I’m back there cleaning up, and Marie comes in and stands against the wall.
“You need any help?”
“I can handle it,” I say, sweating my ass off.
“Mind if I wait back here with you?” She’s just watching me.
“Nope.”
“Robert,” she calls out to me after a couple of minutes. “Do you have any dreams?”
“What do you mean?” I ask. “Dreams as in I want to be a lawyer or the first chuco president, or do you mean dreams like I’m naked, flying through the air on a big fudge Popsicle?”
“Well, neither exactly.” She laughs a little. “I mean things that you wish would happen. Things you want to happen.” She’s acting kind of shy now, very coy, a little-girl-like smile, her eyes looking at me and once they catch my sight, turning downward. “You know what I mean, a fantasy; do you ever have fantasies?”
“Sure.”
“Can I tell you mine?”
“Sure.”
“I’m kind of embarrassed; lean over and I’ll tell you.” I lean close to her and she brings her lips to my ear. “I want to make love to someone who’s never made love before. You’re a virgin, aren’t you?” She leans over a little closer and kisses me below my ear. “You’re salty,” she says, licking her lips slightly. “I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you let me help you finish cleaning up, and then I’ll give you a ride home and I can tell you more about it.” I work faster than I’ve ever worked before, putting the dishes away, using all the shortcuts I’ve learned over the last couple of weeks. When we finish, we go out to her car.
We’re in the Escort. There’s a doll in the backseat, a Barbie whose hair has been cut off. It reminds me of her kid, the little girl who was in the car before.
“Hey,” I ask, turning back around, “you want to smoke a j?”
“Sure,” she says.
The whole time I’m rolling it, though, I keep thinking about that little girl and how Marie is a mother and what the little girl would think of me if she knew what I was about to do to her mommy.
I light up and pass it to her. “You’re not worried about being seen?” I ask her. She hits it quick and passes the joint back, but doesn’t say anything. She’s holding her breath. She exhales.
“Seen by who? God? I know you don’t mean my husband. He’s banging somebody in a hotel somewhere.” I wonder about the kid, but I don’t ask.
Instead of a motel, this crazy woman drives up on a house. “Where are we?” I ask her. She puts her hand behind my head, and pulls me toward her. She kisses me, not very long, but soft, like she means it. Her lips are warm and full. She leaves her bottom lip tucked between mine and I open my mouth and softly suck on it for just a second before it slides out.
“My house,” she says.
“What?”
“My house. I want to do it in my bed.” She’s kissing my neck, but I’m pretty fucking freaked out now. “That’s the other part of my fantasy.” She kisses me again. “You’ve really never had sex?” she asks like it’s no big deal that she wants to screw in her husband’s bed.
“What about your kid? What if your husband comes home? I’m not trying to get shot.”
“My kid’s with my mom, and he never comes home anymore. He’s got himself a bitch in the Valley.” As soon as she says it, I get this horrible picture that I’m kissing my moms. That I’m about to jump in the sack with my moms.
I shake my head. “I’m not down with this.”
“C’mon, let’s do it. I can show you.” She seems more desperate than sexy, like she has to do this or something bad is going to happen to her. “I’ll turn on the shower for us and I’ll show you how to do everything,” she says. She unbuttons her dress and opens it clear down. Underneath she’s wearing white panties and a bra. Her shoes are off, too. She’s not wearing stockings. Her skin is white and her stomach is just slightly round. I reach out for it and she lets me put my hand there. It’s warm and I can feel it pulse with a heartbeat that’s getting quicker. “You look excited,” she says. “Like you really want to touch me. Do you?”
“Yeah,” I say, but I can’t move.
“Put your hand down my panties,” she says in the same whispery voice, moving my hand down from her stomach. “Do you feel how wet I am?” I nod. “Are you going to fuck me like I tell you?” I nod again. Before I know it, she’s sitting on top of me. She keeps on saying “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” and the more she says it, the less I feel like I can keep it up. As much as I try to concentrate on her face as she grinds and slides up and down, I can’t get it out of my head about the kid and her being a mom. And underneath it all is this fucking picture of my moms alone all those nights at home not being able to do anything about anything. It’s all I can do to keep from losing my woodrow.
After about four minutes, Marie moves over to the driver’s seat and puts herself back together. She doesn’t say anything and the car is filled with this thick, musky silence. I button up and keep my mouth shut, but the whole time I’m trying to think of something to say. Maybe she’s trying to find something to say, too, but finally settles for starting the car.
We’re both quiet on the way to my moms’s house. I’m thinking how in a way I’m almost lucky that my moms got sick, that she broke down and was depressed, because at least that way, I didn’t have to deal with her doing shit like this. At least I always knew where she was.
Marie drops me off a couple of blocks away. I give her a half-assed kiss and slip out without saying anything. The first thing I want to do is take a hot shower like maybe I can wash my thoughts away.
As I creep toward the stairs, I pass my moms’s room. I hear her say, “Robert, is that you?” I poke my head through her door. She’s lying in bed, a dim nightlight casting a small, sad yellow glow on her face. I get this weird, stoner déjà vu thing, only it’s like I’m in my pops’s head, feeling like he must’ve when he crept in late after fucking in a car or motel and having to face Moms with the smell of another bitch on him.
“M’ijo, come in here.” I walk into her room. It’s pretty empty, just a bed, a small sitting chair, and a bureau that I remember from our old house. She’s got a few pictures on it, mostly of Antony, but I notice she’s got one of me there, too. It’s this dorky school picture taken when I was in fifth grade. I’m wearing a goddamn safety-patrol belt and this stupid grin that says I don’t know shit and never will. It’s the picture of a kid in need of a good beating. “Sit down for a few minutes,” she says. I sit on the chair.
“I smell bad. I should go take a shower,” I say.
“No matter. Let’s talk a little.”
“Okay.”
“Do you like your job?”
“It’s okay.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Not really.”
“No?” she smiles.
“Don’t you ever get lonely, Mom?” I say suddenly, maybe too suddenly, but I keep going now that I’ve opened that door. “I mean, I’m glad you’ve rested up, but don’t you, you know, want to leave sometimes?”
“Where would I go?” she asks like maybe we’re going to finally talk.
“Anywhere,” I say sharp and hard, like maybe I can pull her through. But she shuts me down, turning her face toward the little nightlight.
“I’m already here, mijo,” she says, kind of sad but also sort of determined. “I’m okay and your aunt takes good care of me. I know you don’t like her, but nothing that’s happened is her fault. She’s done the best she can for me. I’m grateful.”
“I don’t see it. She runs your life, that’s all it is. It’s like you’re hibernating. Why should you be grateful for that?”
“Does it seem that way to you?” she asks. She seems hurt by what I’ve said but I want to be real with her while I have the chance.
I nod my head. “Yeah, it does.”
“Don’t you remember how bad things had gotten?” she asks.
“You’re asking me that,” I say. “Me? I was there every minute, every night. Do you remember?”
My moms sits up looking at the wall just on the other side of my left shoulder. “I was sitting at the house, our house in San Antonio just after your father had left for the third or fourth time,” she says, “and I was praying, but I had gotten so tired of everything that I didn’t even know what I was praying for or to, and I remember I started to cry and I looked up at that dresser mirror behind you,” she says, looking at the bureau against the wall, “and I saw myself, what I’d become, my hair falling out in patches, my eye twitching, my face so old and drawn that I looked like I was fifty and not thirty-three. I felt like I didn’t have the strength to get out of bed or even the first idea of where I’d go if I did get out of bed. That’s when your Aunt Naomi came, and she helped me to do the things I needed to do to keep from giving up. From dying.”
“But why did that have to mean getting rid of me?” I ask her.
But she doesn’t have an answer. We sit there for a while longer not saying anything really. Moms settles back down into bed and she gestures for me to give her my hand. She takes it and says, “I think about you all the time.” That’s something I guess, but only if I don’t think about it too long.
* * *
I pick up Antony from school on Friday like I promised him. He’s held up his end of the deal. For two weeks he’s taken care of business: no notes, no F’s on homework assignments, no phone calls. He’s taken to bringing his schoolwork to me. A couple of days ago, he came in excited because he’d gotten a couple of check-pluses on his addition worksheets. The kid’s turning into a little egghead.
I go into the school office and tell them that I’m there to pick up Antony Lomos. I forged a note this morning saying that he could get out of school early. It’s about lunchtime and I figure we’ll go to Pizza Hut, then a kid’s movie. The lady at the attendance desk calls for him on the intercom. I imagine Antony getting up from his desk kind of proud, like he’s just been chosen for something special. I remember how it used to be in elementary school when you had to leave early and they called your name out. You’d get your stuff ready to go and all your classmates would be looking at you with envy pointed like a shiv because you were going somewhere and they had to stay in purgatory for a few more hours.
Antony comes into the office with his backpack and I sign out for him. I can’t believe it’s so easy. Outside, Antony is all smiles. We hang out at the theater arcade before the flick. I was thinking I’d show him a thing or two but he’s better than me at video games. He’s really digging it, though, beating his big brother, and it seems like we haven’t been apart at all. These last couple of years haven’t happened. He’s making fun of me when I blow it, and then giving me advice about how to play this kickboxing thing. “Hit the A button twice before you move the joystick up and then hit the B button three times really fast.” I catch the hang of it and Antony seems happy that he’s taught me something. Goddamn, it makes me feel good to know I can pull this big-brother stuff off, that I’m showing my little bro a good time.
The trouble is, kids don’t keep secrets, especially when it’s a secret about them and it’s something they’re dying to tell other kids about. I hadn’t taken Antony out of school but three times before his teacher, who I guess was already getting suspicious—they hate for kids to get out of school early—overheard him rubbing it in to his buddies at recess that his big brother, Robert, was taking him to a movie every Friday. All hell broke loose then because the teacher couldn’t wait to tell the principal what she’d heard. They went over the sign-out book and the notes and it didn’t take long for them to see that Antony was being “kidnapped” by me on Fridays. They called my moms while I was at work and by the time I got home, Naomi was in the picture.
“Do you know that you could be arrested for pulling this little stunt?” she asks me like I’ve taken Antony to a titty bar. “Do you?” She wants an answer. Meanwhile my moms isn’t even in the room. “I’m trying to save your mother more pain, and I’m certainly trying to keep you from influencing that poor baby in the wrong way. God knows that we have enough trouble without him turning out like—” and she stops because she’s just about to say “you.”
I figure I have to defend myself because, like most adults, Naomi has completely missed the point. She doesn’t understand shit. “I’m trying to help,” I say, but before I can go on, she’s all over that.
“Help? How? By turning your five-year-old brother into a truant? By forging your mother’s name? By teaching that baby that deception is the way to get what you want? Your father—” and she stops again because she’s just about to say that my pops has already fucked me up by teaching me how to lie and that she doesn’t want it to seep into Antony. I’m just like my pops, she wants to say. I stifle what I want to say—fuck you—and instead stick to doing what I can to help Antony. “I knew that if I gave T something he wanted, something he could look forward to, he’d do better in school. He’s been doing better, too. Just look at his work.”
“Who is ‘T’? Is that some sort of gangster name you’re giving him?”
“Just a nickname,” I say knowing I’ve lost.
“Well, don’t think for a minute that this short-term bribery is a good solution. It’s not. What’s he going to do when you’re not around anymore?” She keeps going but I stop listening because she’s said it. Not around anymore. I know it now, that she isn’t going to let me stay. She’s been looking for a way to make me go back since I knocked on the door, and here is a way for her to kick me out.
She calls in my moms, who acts all mousy and just nods her head when Naomi looks at her for approval of what she’s saying. Then they bring in Antony and tell him that what I’ve done is wrong and that he needs to understand what a lie is and why it is bad, and how I am a liar. Naomi pulls him on her lap and speaks to him like he’s an idiot, using a fakey soothing voice. I feel bad for him because he can’t really understand what’s going on. I don’t want him to think it’s his fault. But the kid’s scared. He can barely look at me and when he does, I can’t tell if he’s buying all of Naomi’s shit. I should do something but I don’t know what.
After a while it’s over and everyone rolls out of the room and I sit there alone for a while not saying anything. I do my best not to think about it, but what else is there to think about? After a while, I get up, take a shower, and head for the Sizzler.
* * *
I’m blowing smoke with Maurice during a break and I wind up telling him most of the story, I guess because he seems interested and because he’s older, almost as old as my pops.
“I was just trying to get Antony to read, keep him from being ‘anomic.’”
“What’s that? Weak blood?”
“No. My Aunt Naomi says it means he’s ‘consciously and purposefully maladjusted.’”
“Shit,” Maurice says, “she ought to know better than that. It’s life that makes you be anomic to survive.”
“Yeah, but I wanted to help him. Show my moms I got it together. That I’m useful. Not a fuck-up.”
“I don’t know,” Maurice says, “sounds like you think maybe you can control shit, like maybe life’s a story, like you writing a script. You too young still. Take it from me, best you can do is put a spin on shit. It only took me till I turned forty to learn that.”
“What do you mean ‘spin’?”
“Spin, motherfucker, spin. You know, like those goddamn politicians do to everything.”
“Like lie to yourself or act a part?”
“No,” he says, getting frustrated. “It’s not lying or acting. It’s framing the shit right, that is, to your benefit, to where you can live with yourself and with your circumstances. You gotta believe it, get it?”
“What, like a comedy or tragedy?”
“Just like a motherfucking comedy or tragedy. Or romance, if you like that shit. But whichever way you frame it, you get some choice, and that’s better than no choice.”
“What about other people,” I say after a minute. “What if they’re set on framing their lives like a tragedy and you know that it won’t work out with your story? What do you do then?”
“Shit, that’s why I can’t stay with a bitch. You gotta cut some people loose if they won’t let you frame your story or if their story don’t flow with yours. Sooner or later, one of you will wake the other one up, make them hip to the fact that what they’re seeing as their lives ain’t nothing but a mirage. That ain’t cool, man. Above all, you gotta sell yourself on your own story. You gotta believe it so that it will be true. I don’t need anyone trying to change my perspective. I believe in the old saying, ‘Don’t truth me and I won’t truth you.’ I’m trying to spin my shit like Shangri-la and people keep trying to wake me up in Compton. I’ll kick a bitch to the curb for that.”
* * *
I’m working in the back, elbow deep in muck, ankle high in grease water because the drain in the kitchen is clogged like an all-you-can-eater’s heart, when Ayala pokes in his head and tells me my old man is in the restaurant and wants to talk to me. “Make it snappy,” he says, “and clear out that fucking clog before you come out.” I prefer sticking my hand into the slimy drain to having to go talk to my pops, but after I clear out the gunk, I walk out into the dining room. He’s sitting in the farthest booth drinking a big glass of iced tea. He’s wearing a black T-shirt, his shades and keys sitting in front of him like he’s a busy movie star, the king of the joint daring someone to come up and talk to him. When he sees me, he gives me a fucked-up little smile while he shakes his head.
“How’d you know I was here?” I say, beating him to the punch.
“Your grandmother phoned me after your aunt phoned her. Naomi’s got her worried. Something about you getting yourself and your little brother into trouble already.”
I stand there trying to make a hard face, but I can’t find it right now and instead I probably come off like a fucking kid. It’s been a hard day.
“Sit down,” he says.
“I can’t. Boss won’t like it.”
“Yeah,” my pops says, “he seems like a real asshole. I was getting ready to fill him in on what’s what. No one tells me when and where I can talk to my son.”
Toe to toe, my pops wins the heavyweight asshole division by unanimous decision. Ayala’s only shot would be a lucky knockout blow. I almost smile.
“I’m here to tell you you’ve got to go home, Robert,” he says like it’s a closed case.
“What?”
“I know you heard me. You’ve got a lot of people worried. Your grandmother, your mother, me. It’s been decided.”
“By who?”
“By me, Robert.”
“That’s not enough,” I say.
“Yes it is. I’m your father.”
“Look, Pops, you’ve gotta give me a chance here,” I say, my fucking voice starting to shake. “I’m here to make things right, to make amends. Like a man.”
“Make what right? You can’t make things right. You’re a kid.”
“I don’t want Naomi to win,” I say. Mentioning my aunt has the effect I want on my pops. He keeps his mouth shut now, waiting for more. “I can’t go out this way. I can’t let Naomi win, because if she does, then I lose everything that I want. Antony loses me and Moms loses herself. Naomi is as bad for Moms as her other problems. Moms was never this weak. Never. Even when shit got at its worst. She used to cry and she’d get depressed, but when she needed to, she found the energy, the strength to go to work and make decisions. Now she’s lost that. She doesn’t seem depressed, but she doesn’t seem happy, either.” I sit down. “She just seems lost in some deafening buzz where nothing seems to reach her. Everyone likes that buzz for a while, but who wants to live there? I need to reach her and bring her back, her and Antony. I’m not going to let Naomi stop me.”
My pops seems surprised, like he’s seeing something he’s never seen before. My adrenaline jumps because I’ve reached him. Fuck it if he’s the reason my moms is so messed up, if he’s the worst thing that ever happened to her. I’ve got him buying my spin and that’s what’s important.
“I don’t know, Robert. I’ll think about things and let you know what I decide.” With that, he picks up and gets ready to leave, but before he does, he tosses a twenty on the table. My tip, I guess.
* * *
Shit has changed. It’s been subtle and silent, but I’ve felt it just like you feel roaches lurking in a dark kitchen before you hit the lights. All week, no one’s talked to me except Antony, who likes to come into my room when I’m home and ask me to listen to him read. He’s getting good. I shoot him a buck every time he finishes a book. He’s got a little stash going good now.
A few days after my pops blindsides me at Sizzler, I come home with my latest pay in my pocket. I walk into my bedroom and count out my dough. I’ve been adding to it since I got here. I’ve got close to two thousand bucks. I decide I’ve got to talk to my moms now. I have to make a move. Let her know about my plans once and for all. I need to draw out the scenario, give it my best shot. Give her what she hasn’t had in a long time, a real choice. I tell Moms that I just got paid and that I’m going to get us some dinner. Some pizza. She’s all smiles and I ask Antony if he wants to come. He does. The two of us jam into the car and head off to California Pizza Kitchen because I don’t want greasy pizza. I want to make like it’s a celebration.
We get home with the pizza, but my moms is catatonic. She’s so quiet, it’s spooky. Antony can sense it; he walks over to her and she sits there holding him. “What’s wrong?” I ask her and then I look across the room to see my father sitting in a chair. The backstabbing motherfucker is wearing a beige cotton jacket and jeans and a pair of California-asshole sunglasses. He’s been here only a couple of months and he’s already looking West Coast. He’s sitting next to Naomi frostylike, the way you might with somebody you hate at a party—with a half-smile while your eyes say fuck you till you die.
I stand there watching them for a second feeling more and more like a punk. I haven’t changed from work and I’m still wearing my goddamn Sizzler shirt. They don’t seem to know how to start but before anyone can open their mouth, I turn around and head up the stairs fast as shit.
I hear my pops call my name, but I keep going. I close the bedroom door and lock it. No one follows me up, but I can hear Naomi talking all sorts of shit, sounding like a goddamn shrink, like she’s trying to be protective and patient. Oh-so-fucking rational. I grab my money from underneath my mattress. I almost pull the gun out by mistake. Both are wrapped up in old T-shirts. I walk back down and stand in front of my moms. I know I have to say everything now, in front of them all. It’s my last chance and so I do my best to block everyone else out.
“Mom,” I say and she looks up. She seems to not recognize me. I keep going, “I know that this looks bad, but I want to show you something.” I hold out the stash. My hands are shaking like crazy and I can barely contain myself. I hold out the money, trying to play it cool. It’s mostly twenties and it looks impressive. “I can get us out now. We can leave. We can fix all this shit.” She looks at it without expression. “I’ve been saving up,” I say. “I’m thinking that we can use this money to get our own apartment, you, me, and Antony. It’d be better that way.” She smiles at me sweet, like I remember her doing when I was just a kid.
“Don’t worry, m’ijo,” she says. “Don’t worry.” And she makes a motion with her hand for me to sit next to her on the couch. I sit down, still holding the dough. She puts her arm around me, keeping the other one around Antony. She strokes my head like she used to when she was trying to help me go to sleep.
“You worry so much, m’ijo,” she says. But she sounds dreamy. “You’ve always worried so much. That’s what used to hurt me so much about you. You were always trying to be so grown up, always with your brow wrinkled, being a big boy even when you were a little one. I’ve been bad for you,” she says more to herself than to me. “I’ve been so, so bad for you. Not strong, not strong at all. That’s why I had to leave you.”
“Mom, you didn’t leave me. You just needed to get away. I understand, but now I’m here and we can make it. You’re stronger than you think.”
She traces the scars around my eye with her finger. “You always wore your pain on your body, all the pain that was in your soul, your spirit,” she says. “You used to worry me so much when you were a baby. Always falling and cutting yourself. And now with your poor stomach. Always your body telling me what you couldn’t. Every time your skin got covered with that rash, I knew what you weren’t telling me. I thought it was better to leave you with your grandma than to have you keep trying to tell me how bad I was for you.”
“Mom,” I say, trying to snap her out of it, “We don’t have to stay here. We can leave. We can be together. It’s all coming together.” But even as I say it, I know it isn’t true.
“I can’t go anywhere,” she says, “I’m no good even to little Antony. Anywhere I go, it would be the same, so I should stay here. Don’t you see?”
She hasn’t said “we” once. “What about me?” I ask knowing the answer.
Naomi opens her big mouth. “I know how hard this is for you to understand, Robert. But we’ve come to a decision. It’s not easy. Maybe later, when you’ve had some time to grow up a bit more.”
I don’t even look Naomi’s way. I have to get through to my moms fast, or it’s over. “We can leave. Look,” and I fan about five hundred bucks on the coffee table.
“Where did you get that money, Roberto?” Naomi doesn’t bother to think that I’ve saved it from my checks. “Drugs?” she says. “Drugs? Is that where? I had a look in your room. I know what you’re doing. I know about the pills, about the marijuana. Do you think I’m blind, that I can’t smell, that I would tolerate that sort of thing in my house? You are corrupting your little brother and hurting everyone around you.”
“Shut up, bitch,” I say and she jumps off the couch like she’s thinking about getting in my face.
“Stop it,” my moms yells out, “you stop it. All of you.” And then she gets up and practically runs to her room. Naomi follows after her shooting me an I’m-not-through look.
I look at my pops. He looks almost embarrassed. He’s trying to distract Antony with some electric piece of shit he brought him.
“Why’d you come here?” I tell him, picking up the cash from the coffee table. “I thought you were going to give me a chance.”
“I never said anything like that. And now Naomi tells me about drugs.” I just sit there looking at him because even with all I know, I can’t believe what a rat he is.
My moms is a mess. She doesn’t want to come out of her room. I can hear Naomi knocking on the door saying, “Teresa, come out. Big Robert came here to talk to you. It’s important that we resolve this thing right now. Come on out.” Moms doesn’t make a peep.
“She won’t come out,” Naomi says, stalking in. “She’s very weak and this whole thing has been unsettling for her.” She looks at me when she says “this whole thing.”
“Well, I hope I’m not making things worse,” Pops says, looking up from Antony. “I just want to help. Also, I’ve missed my Antony. I want to be a part of his life if Teresa would only let me.” The two of them are talking there like conquering generals. “You’ve got your grandmother very worried, son,” he says at me, trying to look like a fucking TV dad. “You know that?” He wants me to answer him. He doesn’t want to be shown up in front of Naomi. I nod because I don’t know what else to do. I’m in a kind of shock.
“Can I talk to her?” he says to Naomi. “It’s important that she be in on this conversation. I don’t want to come in here like some jerk. I’m here to help her out, really.” My pops is trying to sound sincere now. Naomi buys it, but she doesn’t want to give up control in her own house. “No, Robert. Let me try again. I know how she gets. She’s not likely to come out if she feels threatened. This whole thing has just been too much.” The bitch looks at me again when she says “whole thing.”
She walks to my moms’s bedroom door like a zookeeper at the cage of a stubborn animal. “Teresa, come out. We need to talk about some important things.” She waits outside the door for a few seconds without saying anything. Finally, Moms says something, but it’s mumbled. “What?” Naomi yells out. She’s steaming. “What was that, Teresa? You have to speak up!” There’s nothing for a few more seconds. Then I hear my moms say more loudly. “Please leave me alone. Please. Do what you want, but just leave me alone.”
“That’s not going to be good enough, Teresa. You’re going to have to come out here sooner or later.”
I don’t like sitting here watching them fuck with my moms like this. “Just leave her alone,” I say finally. My pops turns toward me and shakes his head, but I keep on. “Naomi,” I say loudly, “just step away from the goddamned door already. Leave her alone. If she doesn’t want to come out, she doesn’t have to!” My pops is pissed not because I’m being too loud or rude, but because I’m throwing him crazy in front of Naomi. He tries to reach for me, but I move off the couch quick and stand up, walking toward Naomi. “Why don’t you just back the fuck off my mom!” Naomi steps back.
“You get back to the living room. I know what your mom needs better than you, I think.” She’s trying to front like she’s in control, but I can tell that she’s pissed and even a little scared. I’ve managed to surprise her. My pops comes into the hallway.
“Robert, go sit down now. Leave this to us.”
“So what? So you can finish the job on her?” He gets this look in his eye that for a second reveals what’s really there, like his skin can’t contain it and from out of his sockets comes something you don’t want to know.
“Shut up now,” he says. “The trouble with you is you don’t know when you’re beat. Look around. It’s over, Roberto. You’re not wanted here. It’s time. Go get your things.” Naomi is turned toward me now, the two of them standing side by side, a living wall of don’t-give-a-shit.
I know they won’t ever let me in, won’t ever let us be. “I’m not going anywhere,” I say. “If you fucks would let us, we could make it.” My pops reaches out quick and slaps me hard. “You watch your mouth, malcriado.” I can hear my moms crying and Antony is crying now, too. He hangs back in the living room poking his small head through the doorway. I smile, my vampire teeth in full view. “You better back the fuck off me.” My pops makes a grab for me, but I slip it and jump up a couple of stairs so that I’m standing above them. “You can’t do shit to me, motherfuckers. Neither of you.” I hit the rest of the stairs but just before I reach the top, he grabs my foot and trips me up. I fall hard on my knees, and he’s holding tight onto my left foot like he wants to drag me down to where he is. I’m trying to kick loose and I catch him on the side of his face. “Cabrón,” he yells, but the shock makes him let go and I get to my room. He’s there a second later and starts working the knob.
“You’re going home!”
“Fuck you,” I yell back, and I grab my duffel bag and go to throw my clothes in when I hear him start kicking at the door. “You’re nobody to tell me where home is,” I say. “You wait,” he yells while Naomi gets there. I can hear one of them fucking with the lock. Before I can finish grabbing my shit, they’re in and my pops comes up fast taking a wild swing that catches me on the back of my head because I’ve turned toward the open window to crawl out on the roof. I spin around on him, dropping my bag, but he’s quick for an old man and he catches me across the eye with the back of his hand, almost like a karate chop that sends heavy thunder rolling through my head. But he doesn’t knock me down. “You can’t hurt me,” I say and I mean it for the first time. “Stop it!” Naomi yells, scared now because it’s gone further than even she wants, but my old man is on a tear and he slaps me again, hard, and goddammit, I know I’m about to cry. But I swallow hard and smile, fucked up like, and I say, “You can’t hurt me.” There’s blood running down my eye. I feel it trickling, mixing with the blood in my mouth. “Can’t hurt me,” I say again, and this time I am crying. And then crazy shit, like I’m watching it. And I lick my bloody lip, the weird iron taste making it like the words are liquid pain, like the blood’s been squeezed out from my insides and I want them to see some more of it right there on the fucking walls, on the goddamn shag carpet. I move backward toward my bed. I put my hand under the mattress and pull out the gun. “I could blow my fucking brains out right here for you,” and I point the motherfucker at my head. “Would you like that, bitch?” Both of them stand there looking like they’ve forgotten how to breathe. “Hate you motherfuckers,” I say and I spit a bloody mess right on the floor. “Hate you goddamned motherfuckers!” And for a second I feel like I’m gonna squeeze it off, just end the shit.
“Robert.” It’s Antony, looking in the room, crying same as me. “Robert,” he says one more time before Naomi grabs him quick and disappears out into the hall.
My father still hasn’t moved, hasn’t said shit, and I think, Fuck him, and I move back quick finding the window with my ass. I climb out keeping my eye on him, his face as scared as I’ve ever seen it. Outside, I try to keep my balance on the mad-sloped roof made all the worse because I’m dizzy. I have to jump or I’ll fall. I drop the gun and then take a quick look down to make sure I’m not going to land on a rake or some other crazy shit and I leap, landing on my feet for just a second, before I roll onto my back. I get up fast and grab the gun, but the TV cop effect’s ruined when I nearly split my head kicking a full bottle of beer some scumbag left in the middle of the street.
I get running and from behind me I can hear my pops finally yelling my name. A stranger’s voice that doesn’t mean shit.