“WHERE’S RICKY?” Manny sat on the storage chest. I wondered if the tiny blankets and pillow were still inside.
“Why are we meeting here?” I said. Manny whittled a carpenter pencil with his jackknife. “Why couldn’t we meet somewhere else?” I hadn’t seen James since Ricky had been hurt. He had come to our door on New Year’s Eve, asking my father to let him keep his job. My father spoke to him through the screen door, told him he needed someone he could count on. James pleaded, “I need this, man. Give me another chance!” Looking out my bedroom window, I heard my father slam the door. “You owe me!” James shouted, coming into view as he walked backwards to stand on our front lawn. James leaned against the bathtub with Jesus in it, smoking a cigarette. He wouldn’t leave. I turned away from the window.
When we woke up New Year’s morning, we saw someone had kicked in the Plexiglas that trapped the statue of Jesus in the tub. My father found the statue on the neighbour’s lawn, broken in three pieces. He spent New Year’s Day gluing it back together, painting over the chips and cracks.
Manny didn’t say anything. He sat with a cigarette securely wedged in the corner of his mouth.
“I know what you did,” I said.
Manny stopped whittling and began to dredge out the dirt from underneath his nails with the blade. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“I know you wrote in for the baby. I saw the package on the porch just before Christmas.”
“What about it?”
“I just wanted you to know that it came. It was a nice thing to do. I was going to give it to you, but then I just thought it would be best to get rid of it. Agnes might have been freaked out if she’d seen it.”
Ricky came into the garage with his puppy tucked inside the front of his coat. “Just needed to take him out for a pee.” He walked over to the cardboard box padded with rags and slipped the pup inside. He sat down on the floor next to it. The puppy whined and Ricky dropped his arm into the box so the pup could nibble on his fingers and lick his hand. Ricky was so out of it when I found him that day that I wondered if he even remembered anything.
“What did you do with it?” Manny mumbled.
I shrugged and attempted to open my mouth a couple of times, hoping that would trigger a memory of what I had done with the package. “I picked it up off the porch and then—”
“The baby, moron!” Manny blew the cigarette smoke through his nostrils and rolled his eyeballs. “I don’t care about the fuckin’ present.”
Ricky went stiff. The pup yelped.
“You were stoned. You took off.” He should have been there too. “We buried it.”
“Where?”
“What difference does it make?”
“I baptized her Mary,” Ricky said softly.
“What?” I said.
“How?” Manny said.
“With spit,” Ricky said. “I licked my thumb and made the cross on her head. Then I prayed really hard.” He reached into the box and lifted the pup right under his chin. “God’s taking care of her. She’s in heaven.” He scooped the dog into his arms, kissed its head, then slowly got to his feet.
“Okay then, Padre Hoot, what did you baptize the dog?”
Ricky lifted the garage door, ducked underneath, and was gone.
“What did I do now?” Manny flicked the cigarette across the floor. It landed dangerously close to the turpentine bottle and rags James kept in the corner. “Can’t say anything right with that one.”
I got up and stomped on the butt. He reached into his back pocket and flicked open his hair pick. I thought of the presents I had bought for my friends, how I had dropped them when I found Ricky in the snow. I went back a day later but they were gone. Manny plumped up his Afro. “It wouldn’t have been a good idea anyway,” he said.
“What?”
“The baby. Have you ever thought what it would be like if you were never born? Baby Mary was lucky, is the way I see it.”
I had never seen Manny so sad.
“They’re getting the hell away from here,” he said.
“Who?”
“Amilcar and his whole family. My brother’s not good enough for their daughter. They think moving to Portugal is going to keep Eugene away. Idiots.”
“My brother told me.”
“Well, who needs them? My mother says they’re snobs anyways and—”
“It won’t stop Eugene. No way. He’s going to make sure they’re together.” Manny buried his head in the crook of his arm.
I knew he would hate it if I went up to him or said something to console him. So I just sat there and waited it out.
Manny lifted his head. “What happened to Ricky, anyway?”
“What do you mean?” I said, uncertain how much he knew.
“He was laid up here for two days. Could hardly walk. Had a fever. James kicked me out every time I came near. Like I was going to hurt him or something. Asshole.” Manny waited. I said nothing. “You see him with that mutt? Walks around this place with that rope tied around his neck. He’s in his own little world.”
“Forget it,” I said. “You know the trial’s going to begin soon. I’m going to go.”
“How?” Manny said. “They’re not going to let you in the courtroom.” He stood up and raised both arms in the air, stretched himself out and yawned.
I had been thinking about, dreaming about Emanuel’s killers for almost five months and I wanted to see them, in person. “You wanna come?” I let the invitation just hang there in the air. He’d bite if he wanted to. I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to do it—pretend I was sick, I thought—and then when my parents went to work and my sister went to school, I’d make my way downtown.
“I’ll think about it,” Manny said.
I was worried about Agnes. I hadn’t seen her since Baby Mary was born. I knew Ricky dropped by and spent time with her, but that’s all he’d tell me. After school, I walked up the laneway and found myself in her parents’ basement. We used the laneway entrance and entered through the backyard. The door was unlocked. The only light in the whole house came from the TV. Agnes’s parents were in Portugal and as far as the neighbours were concerned, the house remained empty.
“I thought you might want something to eat.”
She stared blankly at the TV and rocked in her chair over the ceramic-tiled floor. She didn’t look at me. In the basement kitchen, I opened the jar my sister had filled with sopa de estrelinha, a chicken broth with tiny pasta shaped like stars. Terri continued to keep Agnes’s hiding place a secret. Edite hadn’t told her about the dead baby, or Terri would have said something. As I stirred the soup over the gas flame, I thought this was all James’s fault. He’d told Ricky he’d take care of him, make sure he was safe, made him feel like no one could ever hurt him. And he promised Manny he could be a player—“The world’s gonna fuck with you so you better learn to fuck it back.” Before he hooked up with Lygia, Eugene used to say stuff like that to Manny all the time. And Agnes thought she had no one until James came along and saved her. Agnes told me she never felt better than when he touched her. Fuck him. I didn’t even recognize her now: her skin draped over someone else’s body.
I left the soup on the end table to cool off. “What are you watching?” She rocked in her chair. “Padre Costa told us the story of St. Agnes on Sunday.” She kept her eyes locked on the television. “She’s the patron saint of young girls. They pray to her and do certain things—rituals—so that their future husbands will come to them.”
I didn’t tell Agnes all the gory details about how her namesake saint suffered martyrdom at the age of twelve or thirteen, or how they dragged her through the streets to a brothel before they killed her.
“St. Agnes prayed, her hair grew and covered her body to protect her. They tied her to a stake, but the bundle of wood would not burn.”
It was stupid of me to think that the magic of the story would snap her mind back to reality. We were all doing it, though; trying not to talk, because that made things easier. There was no way that Ricky had told Agnes anything about the baby or what we did to it. He knew she couldn’t handle it.
“I still pray, you know. It helps. And you don’t have to pray out loud. You can do it in your head.” I squatted in front of her and placed my hands on her lap. “Like this.” I closed my eyes and said a quick Hail Mary. I opened my eyes. I wanted to see her smile, but everything was coming out wrong.
“I pray for my friends,” I continued, “even for James. Adam too. And every day I pray for Baby Mary.” Agnes blinked. It gave me the courage to go further. “We took good care of her. We made sure she was warm, and you need to know Ricky baptized her before—” Agnes leaned in and looked at me as if for the first time. Her lip quivered. I felt her finger hooking mine. “Your baby went to heaven.”
After dinner, Manny and I were going skating at Alexandra Park on Bathurst Street. Our parents only let us go in groups, and they knew there was a rink guard there keeping an eye on us. With our skates knotted together and slung over our shoulders, we had just turned the corner when we heard the faint sound of a siren whirring in the distance. The sirens grew louder: the sound was coming in our direction. We slowed down to watch. Police cars, fire trucks, and an ambulance, the three melted into one, and grew louder until they stopped in unison.
We ran through the laneway and out onto Markham Street. I flung my skates into Mr. Serjeant’s front yard so I could run faster. The light on top of the ambulance spun against the brick houses. The police cars and fire engines had gathered halfway up Markham Street, blocking traffic close to where Edite and Ricky lived.
Edite stood inside her front-yard fence. She’d pulled a leather maxi-coat over her silk robe. Her slippers sank into the snow. She held a coffee mug, her shoulders scrunched up as she bounced a bit in the cold. Her eyes were dark, and makeup ran down her cheeks. She looked toward Ricky’s veranda and didn’t even notice me coming. Ricky’s front door was open and boot tracks had made their way up his walkway and into his house. My stomach ached as if my insides would spill out onto the snow.
Manny tapped my shoulder. I felt relieved he had followed. I looked back and saw Ricky come outside onto his veranda. He raised his arm to shield his face from the glare of the flashing lights. He was wrapped in a thick blanket and his pup was cradled in his arms. A police officer directed him to the old sofa that was on the porch. Manny scissor-kicked over the fence and ran up the steps, with me close behind. The policeman put out his hands to stop us, but then must have realized we were friends there to comfort Ricky.
We sat down on the couch with a crunch. Ricky shivered. He looked out across the road, his eyes fixed above the roofline. His teeth chattered and his lips had gone blue. With his limp wrist he slowly stroked his puppy, from the base of its ear to the tip of its tail.
“He found out,” Ricky said, looking straight ahead above the crowd that had gathered. His words paralyzed me. They had found the dead baby in the lake and were here to arrest Ricky and then me. How could I save myself? What would happen to Agnes? Would they torture me to name names? They wouldn’t have to. A bit of pee already warmed the inside of my leg. I’d be more than happy to blame James.
A gurney was pushed out the front doorway and rattled over the porch floor. Ricky didn’t look at the figure draped in a white sheet and blanket and cinched down with belts.
“He was so drunk. And angry.”
I kept thinking, you never say anything until there’s a lawyer.
“He told me he got into a fight. Some man owed him money and wouldn’t pay up. Told him he kinda helped him out by throwing his son a few dollars every so often.” Clear snot dripped from Ricky’s nose.
And then with a swell of relief it all clicked: it wasn’t the baby. I sometimes wondered if the men at the billiards hall talked about who was on the other side of the fence. Did they even care? Did my father have any clue?
I stared at the gurney rolling down the walkway. A crowd had gathered, shoulder-to-shoulder to keep warm. Their breath steamed out of their noses and mouths.
“When he got home, I was at the top of the stairs. He began crawling up on his hands and knees. When he got to the top, he fell against the banister and started yelling. He couldn’t stand.” Ricky looked straight ahead the whole time. “He was soaked. I tried to help him out of his coat and then he swung his arm and pinned me to the wall by the neck. I couldn’t breathe. ‘You’re a little faggot,’ he said. ‘A good-for-nothing little faggot. They’re all laughing at me because you’re a good-for-nothing little—’ ” Ricky licked the snot above his lip. “I thought I had closed my bedroom door, but Snoopy came out of my room and—” He looked at me for the first time.
“It’s okay, Ricky. He can’t hurt you anymore.” Manny rubbed Ricky’s back.
“I just wanted to put him to bed so he could sleep it off, but he wouldn’t let me. He picked up Snoopy by the neck and held him over the banister.”
“I’m sorry, Ricky,” I said. Ricky stroked his pup, jiggled his knees every so often to rouse it from sleep.
“Smashed him down onto the ground floor.”
“It was an accident,” I said. “He was drunk.”
“He didn’t care. He never cared.” Ricky’s big eyes looked straight at me as he leaned in. “I pushed him,” he whispered. “I pushed him down.”
I looked to Manny.
“He fell all the way down … down … down.”
“Son, you’re coming with us.” A Chinese policeman placed his hand on Ricky’s shoulder.
Manny sprang up, pushed himself between the officer and Ricky. “You can’t take him. He didn’t do anything.”
“Relax, son. We’re just going to get him cleaned up. We’re going to try to get ahold of his mom. We understand she’s in Portugal.”
“He doesn’t have anyone but us,” I said.
The police officer lifted Ricky to his feet. “You can’t bring the dog with you, son. He’s dead.”
Ricky began to cry.
“Look, Officer,” Manny said, “what if I wrapped his dog …” Manny took off his coat, pulled his sweatshirt over his head, static snapping through his hair, draped the sweatshirt over the pup, and tucked the sleeves and sides underneath its limp body. The officer nodded.
They helped Ricky to the cruiser. Before he got in, he looked up at his house, dropped his eyes to meet mine and Manny’s, and then he was gone.