I’m not the only one losing it. Bad Leo, that Christopher Walken, stalker looking, mean thug with a dead-eye stare, has been acting way crazy lately, always starting fights for no reason, just striking out. We’ll be on the riverwalk on a crowded Friday night and he’ll see some cholo he doesn’t like the look of, and he’ll reach over and pull his hair like the guy is some punk, and before you know it, the two are swinging and people are scattering, yelling, and if the dude’s got partners, they’re jumping in, which means we’re jumping in, and four minutes later it’s over and we’re running back to find the car before the cops come. “What did you do that for?”
“Man, I just felt like doing something,” he says.
I think Nacho is half in love with him, and he searches him out on the weekends. I’m not much into it. I’ve suggested that we save Leo the trouble and just kick his ass for him so we can find another way of spending Saturday night. But Nacho calls the shots, and we cruise by Leo’s house and sit outside and listen to music, drink a few beers, take a spin around the block, and then we smoke a joint and come back and hang out in front of his house some more. We do this all weekend long, waiting for something or someone to happen.
* * *
Diana wakes me up on a morning after. She was supposed to call me, spare me from going out with Leo and Nacho, but she didn’t. “How’d you get that?” she asks. I lay there, my arms crossed, body straight, making it look like I’m dead. I can’t relax even when I do sleep. Any sound wakes me up. “Where’d I get what?” I answer back.
“That.” She points at my chin. “It’s scraped up. Did you go and get in a fight last night?”
“Never mind that shit,” I say, “where were you?” I regret it right away because I’m acting a fool by letting her know I care. I cool it. “I wouldn’t’ve gotten in any scrap if you would’ve been around. Come in here with me,” I say, lifting the sheet.
“I didn’t come here for that,” she says. It’s too late to act cavalier and shit. She knows she can play with me a little bit because I gave up that I missed her last night. “Besides, your face is crusted up and you still have on your jeans.”
“Suit yourself,” I say, but I get up and start looking to grab my towel just in case I can convince her to fuck. I walk to the bathroom after checking around for Grams. She’s gone to work. I look in the mirror. My face does look bad. Aside from a long, bloody scrape across the bottom of my chin, I have a big lump on the side of my head, above my ear. My ribs hurt. That fucking Leo. I shower, rubbing myself down with Zest. I can feel each of my ribs, little mountains and valleys for my fingers to ski. Grams is always trying to feed me now, but I’m not interested in eating. I get out and wrap the towel around myself and hustle out to my room. Diana’s unpredictable and I don’t want her leaving. She’s poking through my shit. She doesn’t bother to hide it. She’s looking at my picture, the only one I have in the room. “Hey,” I say. I sit on the bed, leaning against the wall trying to look seductive. She ignores my pose.
“How come you never tell me about your mother?” she says. “You kind of look like her.” She holds up the picture to me like it’s evidence. “You look cute in this. Why are you crying?”
“Why don’t you come in here with me,” I say. I don’t want to get into my goofy-assed picture. I only keep it because it’s the only one I have. “Put that stupid thing down and get in here. C’mon.”
“Maybe,” she says, bringing the picture over, “if you tell me about this, I’ll think about it.” She’s pissing me off, so sure that I’ll tell her what she wants for the chance of getting her into bed.
“Let me see the goddamn thing,” I say, holding my hand out. She comes over and sits down next to me.
“How come you’re crying?” she asks. I take the picture and pretend to study it like I’m not too sure what she’s talking about. It’s a picture my grams took about twelve years ago. In it, my dad, skinny, with a ponytail that was in style back then, is sitting next to my moms. She’s not smiling, but she looks pretty, anyway. She’s wearing a red dress with black sleeves, very Christmassy. I’m on my pops’s knee, but I’m obviously trying to get the fuck off. I’m very pissed looking, ready to blubber. “I’m not crying,” I say. “I’m just mad. My pops wouldn’t let me open any Christmas presents on Christmas Eve.”
“That’s cute,” she says.
“That’s not cute,” I say, still studying the picture, but now looking at my moms. Her dress seems wrong for her. Too shiny, too trying-to-be-glamorous. Her face looks pinched up, kind of like she’s keeping down, out of sight, what I’m expressing right there on my pops’s lap. Just like my pops is a Christmas present that she can’t open. He’s a mystery, always under wraps.
“How come you tell people your mom is dead?” Diana asks. “She looks nice.”
“I told you what the picture is about. You don’t get to ask any more questions unless you give something to me.” I’m wanting her to at least put her hand under the towel, but instead she gets behind me and puts her arms around my chest and begins to stroke my aching ribs softly. “C’mon,” she says, “tell me why you go around telling people your pretty mom is dead.” I close my eyes because it feels good.
“She’s in California. She got sick and she couldn’t hack it around here anymore. My pops did bad shit to her and when he split, she went bonkers.”
“That’s not nice, talking about your mom that way.”
“You asked.”
“Well, but why? Did she have a nervous breakdown?”
“I guess,” I say. I try to sound bored. “I mean, she lost her hair and she didn’t do anything but cry all the time. Finally she stopped sleeping. Before I knew it, she was saying crazy things, talking about killing herself. I’d come home from school and Antony would be outside by himself. A little baby, just a couple of years old and he’d be out there in the backyard wandering around and my moms sitting in the house spaced out.”
“How did she wind up in California?”
“My Aunt Naomi came and got her. She got her to file for a divorce and to leave for California. Start over.”
“Why didn’t you go?”
“How the fuck should I know,” I say, although I do.
“Okay, relax, m’ijo. I just want to know what makes you so sad.”
“I don’t act fucking sad,” I say. She’s starting to get on my nerves.
“Okay, you don’t act sad,” she says. “Relax.” She keeps massaging me, rubbing my shoulders and back now. “Why didn’t she take you? Do you ever go visit her or your little brother?”
“Nah,” I say. I want to change the subject, only I can’t. “I did once, but it didn’t work out. She’s too goddamn nervous when I’m around and my aunt and my gramma over there, you know, her mom, they decided it’d be best for me to come back to Grams. She wanted me around, that is, my grams.”
“What about your mom?”
“I don’t know. Maybe if they’d given me a chance. A little longer. Shit was crazy then. But anyway, I came back.”
“When was that?”
“Almost two years ago now. I’m going back,” I say before I know it.
“You are?” she says and she kisses my neck with her lips round and wet. It feels good and for a second I want her to try to stop me, to make it clear she wants to come with me at least. But she doesn’t.
“Why you think I’m working at that fucking molino of yours. Not for the ojos. I’m saving up,” I say, being the tough guy. “I’m gonna get back there and show my moms that shit’s straight now.” I turn around and I kiss her and she slips her hands under my towel as I lift her blouse up. Before she can protest or act stupid, I run my tongue up toward her brown nipples and I lay her down.
* * *
Diana leaves before Grams gets home. Grams comes in tired, holding her hip like she does when it’s too cold. She walks in slow, puts her keys down. I’m eating cereal. “You didn’t go to school today?”
“No,” I say. “I felt sick from my stomach.” It’s true, but the hangover didn’t help either. “I had a friend drop off my homework, so don’t worry.”
“You going to be a burro yet, just like your old gramma,” she says, resigned to it by now.
She looks old, smaller, not as tough. She usually gives me a bigger fight when I miss school, but the way she’s doing today makes we wonder if she’s right. “Why don’t you sit down. I’ll fix you something to eat,” I tell her.
“What are you going to fix me to eat,” she says, turning on the stove. “Cocoa Puffs?”
“I’ll go buy us some hamburgers,” I say, and I can tell she doesn’t mind the idea. “I’ll go to Burger Chef,” and before she can change her mind, I grab the keys and head off. Grams and I are eating our burgers when the phone rings. It’s Nacho. “Hey, Robert, we need you tonight, man.”
“What?” I’m not in the mood to see any of those fuckers. “If you think I’m gonna fucking—”
“Leo is in trouble,” he interrupts me. “He called and said he needs backup. We need you.”
“That asshole nearly got us killed last night. I’m not going anywhere, dude. My chin’s still dragging and I got a knot on the side of my head you could hang a fucking hat on. I’m tired of that motherfucker always looking for shit.”
“Look, man, we need you. Get your ass up and meet us at the store in about fifteen minutes,” and he hangs up. There’s no arguing with that guy sometimes. It’s crazy. I know I shouldn’t go. My stomach is telling me that this is a situation I should stay out of, if only so I don’t have to tell my grams that I’m going out after I missed school because I was sick. Deep in my pit, I can feel my ulcer giving me a warning as loud and clear as any Grams might give me. I finish my burger in two bites. I give Grams a kiss and walk to my room. I put on my jeans and a black T-shirt. I don’t want to be seen in the dark. I look in the mirror. I make The Face. I’m a vampire, a child of the night. Cool, collected, invincible in the dark. I cannot be hurt.
From under my bed, I pull out a Glad bag. I take two of the Dexys we stole from Nacho’s dad. I need to be up right now. I have a knife and I’m about to take it when I decide I’d better not. Lucky for me, Grams has gone in the shower and I knock on the bathroom door and yell through it, “I’ll be back in a little while, Grams. I’m going to see Diana.”
“What?” she yells, but I’m out the back door before she can ask again. I walk down to Calderon’s store. It’s dusk already, and the dogs in the neighborhood are getting nervous. They bark at me even though they see me every day. My street looks peaceful in the half-dark, not as ratty. Old small houses, choked with weeds and old tires. Others, trying to look neat and clean in the middle of all that neglect, fence off their little yards like they can keep out other people’s tragedy like they might a neighbor’s dog. But you can’t. Sight and sound creep through the barriers. They come through the holes in your walls like some uninvited mouse stealing in. It’s gonna nibble on your food no matter what you do, and one night you find some rat sitting on your chest even though you thought you kept everything locked up tight. I get to Calderon’s. It’s closed. He’s an old guy, like my grams, and he doesn’t want trouble. He is not going to keep the store open at night. Too many goddamn thugs in the barrio now.
I’m glad Nacho and Leo aren’t there yet. It gives me a few minutes. I sit on the stoop of Calderon’s. It’s nothing like a store. It’s really an old house that he runs his tiendita out of. Outside, there’s a heavy metal soda dispenser, very old-fashioned. It still takes quarters for a ten-ounce Coke in a glass bottle. It’s been spray-painted to shit. Assholes always gotta tag what ain’t theirs. I’m studying the pair of tennies hanging on the telephone lines above my head, when the headlights hit me square in the eyes. I shrink back.
It’s Nacho. “Where’s Leo?” I say.
“He’s not here. Can’t you see? Get in.” He’s acting dramatic, like there’s a big crisis. The speed is kicking in, though, and I’m feeling better, more energetic. “So what the fuck, man? Am I supposed to guess what the pedo is?”
“There’s some real bullshit this time.”
“Man, that motherfucker walks around like he wants a lifetime supply of broken noses.”
We drive to Leo’s house. Leo is outside talking to his sister. She’s pulling the traditional Mejicana-trying-to-talk-sense-to-the-hot-headed-Latino-macho routine. The one where he shakes his head a lot and tells her no, he will not be reasoned with. He is going to kick someone’s ass and that’s all there is to that. She pleads with him while he stands there being a prick. Most of the time this is all it takes to make a macho feel better, to have a woman notice that he’s ready to get violent. Usually he winds up drinking all night and finally collapses into bed, waking up with a hangover and no memory of his bullshit the night before. But Nacho isn’t drunk and he isn’t interested in talking sense to Leo. He’s stoked for a fight. “What’s up?” he asks, playing the good buddy come to the rescue.
“Some dudes from around the other side of the block, these fuckers I had trouble with when I was going to South San. In fact, those motherfuckers were the reason I got kicked out. They came by here and tried to take my mom’s car.” No one asks for any evidence. We just accept it.
The whole time I’m standing there, I’m aware that there’s two of me. There’s the me who’s just watching, thinking the whole time, How stupid, these three morons, these little punks. What in the hell are they going to get mixed up in now? That’s the me that lives behind The Face, the guy who worries, the guy who gets scared, the guy who reads and misses his moms and doesn’t want to keep fucking up. But the me that is The Face, the Mask, doesn’t think about shit. He’s all about emotion and acting on it. He lives in my stomach, in that cauldron of acid, and he festers till he says fuck it, it’s my turn. The two are knotted up together, linked, and they live together, but they don’t like each other much. All I know is that at times like this, the ass kicker, the acid-born protector comes in on cue, right on point.
“We need to fuck them up,” Leo says.
“You know where they live? We can break up their shit,” Nacho says. Leo nods.
“Well, let’s fucking do it,” I say. Nacho smiles, grabbing me around the neck.
Leo puts his father’s pipebender and a wooden Louisville slugger into the backseat of Nacho’s mom’s car. Some avenging is going to get done. We’re armed with artificial courage, artificial energy, and an artificial cause. We creep up to where the guys live. Leo points at some nondescript house. It could be anybody’s house and I guess it is. Outside, in the driveway, is parked an old Monte Carlo. I don’t know who lives there and I don’t care. I’m flying high now, feeling wired from the energy of what I’m about to do and from the amphetamine.
I step out with Leo and grab the bat. Nacho stays in his mom’s LTD, the lights off, the engine running. We hunch over, like little kids playing hide-and-seek, only we’re not. We’re here to do damage. Leo goes over to the front of the car and I stand at the back. I watch him lift that pipebender above his head and when I see it dip, I strike at the back window with everything I’ve got, the convulsion of hitting it driving a shock wave that slams inside of my skull like a punch. The vibrations run all through my arms and back. I bash the window again and again before I hear it break. Then I flat out lose it, and in a frenzy slam the car everywhere I can, trying to cave in the roof like it’s some kind of piñata and I’m going to get some prize if I just break the fucking thing open. I want to destroy it, but seeing the dents pop and snap isn’t good enough. I want to annihilate that fucker.
Then from the corner of my eye, I see a light blink on and long shadows cutting across its path like a fan blade. They come fast. Something grabs me from behind, and I hear curses as a sharp thunk ricochets through my head. I see stars, honest-to-goodness stars, and then I’m down on the ground being kicked by a dozen-footed beast. It’s pissed, frantic, kicking my back, my face, my legs, my ears, and then I lose track. It’s just like being rolled over a hill, when you can’t tell which way is up, and the rocks and sticks poke you all over and you try to catch yourself, but nothing comes into your hand.
“Motherfuckers!” I hear Leo yelling, but it’s no use. I can’t see him, and I can’t figure out how to get up. My legs won’t work and the kicking won’t stop. I try to roll over onto my stomach, but my arms keep getting kicked out from under me and all I can hear now is my heart beating with a fear that seems to come from outside me, a jolt delivered by the blows. Then, in a muffled instant, my face is slammed into the pavement, a boot crashing into my mouth from the side at the same time, and I hear my shit crunch. I’ve got rocks in my mouth, little sharp pebbles that I want to spit out. “What the fuck,” I hear just before thunder breaks through and crashes into the car with a squeal of tires. Nacho has run his mother’s LTD through the yard right into the car we were smashing up. The kicking stops and the crowd jumps back. “Get in, get in!” Nacho yells. I crawl quick, trying to stand up, only I can’t and I keep crawling till I half-fall into the backseat. Nacho pulls out of the yard, backing over the mailbox. I hear pop! pop! pop! “They’re fucking shooting, dude!” and we haul into the street backward. Somehow Leo has run down the street and he jumps on the front of the car when Nacho slows down for him and we keep on going until we turn down another lane. I open the other back door, and he jumps in as we speed up and out. Nacho is laughing with relief, but I can’t. I’m looking at my front teeth. They’re lying in little pieces in my palm in a nauseating soup of blood and spit and I suddenly feel so sick and dizzy, but as I heave I find I can’t even breathe enough to do it. The pain’s too much and I sink into the back into something in between unconsciousness and sleep.
* * *
At the hospital, the cop wants to know who did this to me, or better yet, what the hell I did to someone else. Nacho and Leo are gone. They dropped me off at the entrance and took off. “I got jumped,” I say. “I was minding my own business, and someone tried to rob me. I didn’t see them. It was dark.”
“You’re going to need some serious stitches on that eye, and your lips are seriously fucked up. I don’t even want to tell you about your teeth, and all you can tell me is that it was too dark to see? Looks like you got a real ass-kicking. Why would somebody do that just to rob you?” The cop is smart. I’m in too much pain to give a shit. “I don’t know. Leave me alone, alright?” The doctor comes in to tell me that I’ve got two broken ribs on top of it all. “Lucky,” he says, “you could’ve punctured a lung. Very close.” My grams is there, too, but they don’t want to let her in until I’m stitched up. “How’d you get here?” the cop wants to know.
“I walked. I only live a few blocks away.” He doesn’t believe me, but the doctor asks him to go outside. “We’re going to try and put you back together now. Don’t talk. I’m going to give you some local anesthetic for your teeth and for the stitching.” My face goes numb and the pain stops, although I can feel muscles in my cheek throbbing up near my eye. My face jumps every few seconds, making my cut eye flutter. “Try and hold still now,” the doctor says. “Stay real still for me.” I can see the thread and needle tugging at my skin, lifting it up, and I’m thinking, Damn, that looks painful. They’ve got an emergency dentist who they call, and while I’m waiting, they let Grams in. “Dios mio, Dios mio, Dios mio,” is all she can say, and she puts her hands up to my face, but the doctor stops it. “Mrs. Lomos,” he says, holding up both hands, “don’t touch him. We’ve still got some work to do. He’s going to be okay, but just try and relax.”
I try to say, “I’m okay,” to her, but when I open my mouth, my broken teeth feel like they’re being broken all over again. So instead of making her feel better, I wind up moaning like someone just kicked me. “Dios mio,” she says again, and the doctor says, “Hold on, Robert,” and turns to walk her out.
After the dentist comes in and tells me what a mess I am, he whittles down the sharp, new edges of what are left of my four front teeth and he puts fillings in them. I lie there running my tongue over the crags. They’re sharp now, like filed-down shark teeth. They’ll make a convincing addition to my mask. I want to get up and take a look in the mirror, but when I try and stand up, my ribs feel like they’re being split apart. I lay back down and give up.
Grams comes in again. I think about pretending I’m passed out, but I know it’s better to get it over with for now. “Why?” she says. And I don’t move or even try to say anything. I do look her in the eyes, though. She’s been crying, but I can tell she’s mad. “Why?” she asks me again. Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t be able to answer. My face is still numb and I’ve got stitches on the inside of my lips and a couple on my tongue. “You going crazy, boy?” She doesn’t really want an answer. “You going crazy, boy.” This time it’s a statement. “Like your poor mama, going crazy, just going crazy.” She sits down on the chair next to the sink, her brown skin jumping out against the white antiseptic walls. “They gonna put you away, boy. They gonna put you away in the nuthouse before it’s over. You try too hard to kill yourself when you got the devil already doing his best.” She reaches across my body and pulls the sheet so that my right leg is exposed. “Look at that claw mark there,” she says, stroking my shin where a rattlesnake bit me when I was just seven. “You think that was done by a snake?”
It’s true. The doctors sliced me up good and the scar looks like some bear took a swipe at me. “That’s the devil’s mark, the dragon’s mark. He wanted you then and he damn near got you.” My grams never curses, but she’s shaking now. “He tried to destroy you and just when he had you, God pulled you away. Hear that? He pulled you away and all the dragon got was a chunk of your little leg. That’s there,” she says stroking my scar, “to remind you that you’ve been saved. But it’s also there to remind you that the dragon’s always gonna be right behind. And now you trying to help him?” She shakes her head, angry, not crying.
* * *
They wheel me into a room for the night. I’m in the same hospital I was born in. Grams gets them to let her sleep in the next bed. I listen to her snore and I think about going crazy, about what it means, about my moms and when things finally snapped. Did she know when she was going crazy? Does anybody know? How do you tell? Is there a voice inside your head, like when you’re drunk, and the part of you that never gets drunk is watching, and you can hear it come from inside somewhere and it’s saying, “Damn, you are smashed,” but it’s helpless to do anything because your body is out of control? Does a crazy person just keep going till he can’t hear that voice anymore, till it disappears somewhere behind him, swallowed up by the wind as he hauls ass toward the edge, the whole time thinking, I know what the fuck I’m doing, till he’s flying and he realizes that he’s jumped?
Moms took that leap after my Aunt Naomi came to town one last time to convince her that she needed to take care of business. She’d followed my old man around and she gave my moms the full details. It turned out that she’d gone and actually spoken to The Bitch, a young, stupid, mad-sprung woman, afraid that my pops would leave her soon to return to his wife and two kids. She cried for my aunt and my aunt actually felt sorry for her. I didn’t. I wanted The Bitch dead. I used to pray for it because I figured with her out of the way, my pops would come home. But when Naomi gave us the lowdown, it made me see that it wasn’t The Bitch who stole away my pops. It was my pops who had taken himself away.
A couple of days after my aunt told us where The Bitch lived, my moms got all dressed up. She put on her most businesslike suit and ordered me and Antony into the car. “Where are we going?” I asked her. She looked over at me, her eyes shining, and said, “We’re going to go see The Bitch.”
Maybe my moms just wanted to have a sitdown with her, tell her to back off because my old man had two kids. Maybe she just wanted to make her feel like a rotten slut, but by the time she got to the sleazy apartment, her face was red with fury. Her lips were working themselves up and down, and she kept mouthing words that I’d never heard her say. “Stay here,” she said, and she got out of the car. She rang the button to 1F. No one answered, but she saw a curtain move. Moms started slapping at that buzzer like it was responsible for my pops leaving, by turns keeping her finger pressed so that the bell would continue ringing, and then buzzing patterns designed to unnerve The Bitch. I sat there, freaking out but not moving. It was like watching a crazy movie about a woman who’s completely lost it, only the star was my mother and she was giving one helluva performance.
She came back and got in. She sat there crying, frustrated and ashamed. Then I think that she noticed that she was feeling ashamed and it pissed her off. She said, “It’s that bitch who should be ashamed!” That’s all she said. Then she got out and went around to the trunk. I looked back and said, “Mom?” but she didn’t say anything. I could hear her rummaging around back there, throwing shit, heavy shit, all over the place like it was nothing. She found what she was looking for, and I watched her come back around with a tire iron in her hand.
I started to open the door, to try and stop her, but she gave me a look, a crazy look, and said, “Get your little ass back in the car. I’ll be right back.” She walked around the complex straight to apartment 1F. She knocked on the door loudly, banging on it with her tire iron like the fucking place was on fire.
No one answered.
She tapped on the windowpane in the front, peering through the thin curtains. “Open this door right now,” she yelled. “I want to talk to you, you bitch!” Still, no one answered. But Moms knew she was there. She went around back, looking in the kitchen window. There was nobody inside. Then she spotted my old man’s car parked in the back.
It was just sitting there, a shiny, new pumpkin-colored Mercury with a burnt-orange Landau roof. In the driver’s seat was my pops’s trademark comfy-seat cushion that keeps your ass from getting sweaty. From the rearview mirror hung a feather hatband that The Bitch had probably put there. That car was my pops all the way. He was forever washing it, telling me whenever I got to ride in it to make sure not to put my feet or hands on anything. Godammit, I just washed this thing! It was his love-mobile, his self-image, all the power and beauty that he wanted. My moms turned toward the green, beat-up Chevy Grams had given us. It sat there, dented, barely running. A manifest “fuck you” from our shitty lives. In it she could see me and Antony, who was crying, little-kid snot running out of his nose as he watched her go apeshit banging on windows and calling out her sworn enemy. She walked to the Merc and without a second thought lifted the tire iron up and brought it down on the car’s vinyl roof. She did it again and again. I swear it looked like she was smiling and screaming at the same time. Then she smashed a window and knocked the side mirror off. Moms reached in and pulled out his comfy seat cushion. Then she came back to the green Dodge, where even Antony was quiet now. She didn’t say shit. She put the cushion on the seat, sat down on it, and turned the car toward home. When we got there, she went into her bedroom and cried for two days.
I remember all that listening to Grams snore, and even though I’m high on painkillers, the whole thing makes me so sad I can’t breathe from the fucking weight of it.