by Jaquira Díaz
I tried not to look surprised. “For real?”
She smiled at me a long time, looking me over, studying me. Then, finally, she said, “I know all about you.”
I doubted that she knew all about me, but at the same time, I was afraid of what she did know, and how. “Like what?”
She opened the file and put on her reading glasses, flipped through the pages quickly. “Well,” she said, “I know you’ve been suspended quite a few times.” She observed me from behind her reading glasses.
“Okay,” I said, not surprised to find that everything she thought she knew she’d read from my school records.
She kept going, not taking her eyes off me. “I know you’ve been in a number of fights, in and out of school, that you ran away from home a year ago and the police picked you up two weeks later, that you were arrested last month for aggravated battery, and you have a hearing coming up.” She took her glasses off and waited.
I took a deep breath but said nothing.
“I know you’re angry,” she said, really emphasizing the word angry, “but what I don’t know is why.”
I shrugged and looked down at my sneakers, suddenly feeling like I’d made a mistake, like I’d rather be faking my way through Ms. Jones’ math test than sitting there being questioned.
“So why don’t you tell me,” she said, closing the file without even looking at it.
“I don’t know,” I said.
She nodded. “Why don’t you tell me about your situation at home?”
I had no idea what she meant by “situation,” but I just shrugged again, rolled my eyes like I’d done so many times with Ms. Jones. “What do you wanna know?”
“Let’s start with what brought you here.”
I considered telling her that I’d just wanted to get out of class, but somehow I didn’t think she’d like that. I crossed my legs, uncrossed them. “Sometimes I live with my father,” I said, “and sometimes I live with my mother.”
“So they share custody.”
I shook my head no. “I just go whenever I want.”
“Where are you living now?”
“Mostly with my mother. But sometimes I don’t sleep there.”
“So where do you sleep?”
“Friends’ houses, boyfriend’s house, the beach.”
“The beach?!” she said, raising her eyebrows.
It could’ve been her expression, the way her face contorted into something I read as disbelief, then anger, then pity, even though she was supposed to be the counselor for all the school’s fuckups, so she was supposed to be the woman who’d heard it all seen it all. Or it could’ve been something else—that I’d admitted this for the first time, confessed it to someone other than my delinquent friends, even though it wasn’t really anything, nothing compared to what still needed confessing. That once, last year, I stood in front of the mirror in my father’s bathroom with a box cutter, determined to slit my wrists, but then couldn’t do it, and instead I carved up my upper arm so deep it left a scar. That sometimes I saw myself climbing up on the concrete balcony in my father’s high rise building, saw myself sitting on the edge, leaning forward, letting the pull of gravity take me. That even though I didn’t like to think about it, I found myself catching feelings for girls, that sometimes when I was around Boogie the swelling in my chest and throat was like a bomb that was ready to explode.
But I couldn’t say any of this. I didn’t know why. And right then, sitting in Ms. Gold’s office, the last place I’d expected to be even an hour before, I started to cry.
The second time was that winter. Holiday break. My mother was off her meds, and we’d been fighting for three days straight. We screamed at each other because there was no food in the house. Because my music was too loud. Because, my mother claimed, there had been a woman in the apartment going through her things and I’d been the one to let her in. Mami always had these stories—a woman who came into our living room and moved all the furniture while we slept, a man who kept looking in our windows at 2 a.m., people sending her messages through the television or the radio, a guy who came in and ate all our food while my mother stood in the kitchen, paralyzed with fear.
That morning my mother woke me before sunrise as she paced around the apartment talking to herself, refusing to take her pills or let me sleep. I covered my head with my pillow, and she pulled it off, started shaking me. I needed to get up, she said, help her check all the windows so nobody could get in the house. I turned over, my back to her.
She shook me again, yelled, “I said get up!”
“Fine!” I said. “I’m up.” I’d already learned that when my mother was like this, I had no choice but to do what she ordered. So I ran around the apartment checking all the windows—the living room, her bedroom, my bedroom. I made sure the deadbolt on the front door was locked, then got back in bed.
Ten minutes later, my mother burst in, again, insisting that I’d left the windows open, again. But this time I didn’t get up. I was awake, but refused. She yelled. I yelled back. She threatened. I threatened back. Then she left.
She came back with a steak knife, pointed it at me like a sword.
“Who are you?” she asked.
I jerked up and hit my head on the wooden beam of the top bunk. “What the fuck are you doing?” I jumped out of bed, grabbed my pillow, the closest thing I could use as a shield.
“Tell me who you are,” she said, “because you are not my daughter.”
I should’ve cried, begged her to stop, put the knife down. I should’ve apologized and told her I loved her. But instead, before I could stop myself, I started screaming. “Are you serious?! I never wanted to be your daughter! You’re not my mother! You’re a crazy fucking crackhead!”
She stood there for a while without saying a word.
I kept my eye on the knife, gripping the pillow with both hands.
“You are small,” she said finally, “like a fly. You are so small I could squash you. You are nobody. You are nothing.”
I didn’t believe what my mother said—not at first. I took it the same way I always took her rambling—everything she said was nonsense. But after she turned back for her room, left me standing there with the pillow in my hands, everything quiet except for the sound of my own breathing, something changed. It was like a switch that got flipped, and everything that happened after was mechanical.
Dropping the pillow on the bed, the beeline for the kitchen for a glass of water from the tap, a car horn blaring across the street somewhere.
My mother rushing to the living room window, peeking through the blinds.
The bottles of my mother’s prescriptions on the counter, untouched for weeks.
My mother running back into her bedroom, slamming the door shut.
The first pill, a drink of water. The second pill, another drink. The third, fourth, fifth, another drink.
My mother coming back out of her bedroom, pacing back and forth. Bedroom, living room, bedroom.
Another pill, another drink. Bedroom, living room. Another pill and another and another.
The car horn again.
The way my mother walked past me so many times but never once turned to look at me, to see me killing myself again and again.
The wanting, more than anything else, to sleep.
My mother saying, “You are small.”
My mother saying, “You are nobody.”
My mother saying, “You are nothing.”
The French woman. She was there before I swallowed the first pill. And she would be there always. But all I really knew about her was that she jumped.
Later, it would hit me: I’d been thinking of her as a myth, a legend, a story. But she was not any of those things.
The second time, I swallowed all my mother’s pills, locked myself in my room, didn’t sit to wait until she found me. The second time, I slid a dresser in front of the bedroom door to keep my mother out. The second time, I woke sick to my stomach, stumbled out of bed, but c
ouldn’t get the dresser out of the way in time to make it to the bathroom, so I threw up all over the carpet in my bedroom. The second time, I woke to find that, again, I had not died.
In my bedroom, spewing a foul white foam which I assumed was my mother’s pills, and then the Kentucky Fried Chicken that Kilo had brought over late last night, blowing chunks of chicken and mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese, I was sure that if I didn’t die of a prescription drug overdose, then the retching would kill me. Bent over the mess on the carpet, the vomiting turned to dry heaving. It took me a few minutes to straighten up, to push the dresser out of the way, to wash my face and brush my teeth, to get my sneakers on and my hair in a ponytail, to stuff some of my things in my backpack and go.
I walked past Normandy Park, feeling jittery and weak, headed toward the Circle K, where I bought a small bottle of Gatorade and got some change for the payphone. Outside, I sipped some of the Gatorade, then picked up the phone, my hands shaking. And then I threw up again, just liquid this time, left the receiver dangling and bent over right there on the spot.
Again, it took me a minute to get myself together. Then I finally made the call. I put two quarters in the phone and dialed my father. The line rang four or five times before Papi picked up.
“Hello,” he said, but not like a question, more like he was annoyed at whoever was calling. I was surprised by the sound of his voice, which I hadn’t heard in months—not since I ran away to my mother’s house. His voice stirred something inside me, and I couldn’t believe how much I missed him, how much I needed him. I wanted to ask him for help. I wanted to tell him everything that happened since I left, ask him to come and get me, take me home. But he’d let me down so many times, and I’d let him down so many times, I was sure it was the only thing we would ever do—let each other down.
“Hello?” he said again.
But I couldn’t do it. So I hung up.
I stood there for a long time, feeling tired and weak and so sick. I considered just going back to my mother’s, getting back in bed, letting myself drift off. But I wasn’t sure if the pills could still work, if my body had absorbed some of them before I threw up, if there was still a chance I could die.
I picked up the receiver again, but this time I called Kilo.
Twenty minutes later, Kilo’s dad picked me up in front of my mom’s building. He was driving his station wagon, Papo riding shotgun, and Kilo in the back. I got in, dropped my backpack on the floor, and thanked them for picking me up.
“Where to?” Kilo’s dad asked.
I gave him my father’s address in South Beach, and he made a right out of my mom’s complex.
In the backseat, Kilo held my hand. I hadn’t told him that my mother had pulled a knife on me, or that just hours before, I’d swallowed her pills and went to bed, that I woke up vomiting, surprised to still be alive. All I’d said on the phone was that I was sick and needed a ride to my father’s.
I leaned my head on his shoulder, and he put his arm around me. In the front, Papo and Kilo’s dad were talking about the Miami Dolphins, Joe Robbie Stadium, what they planned to do this winter. When I called Kilo for a ride, I knew that I’d be leaving Normandy Isle for good, that there was no way in hell I’d ever go back with my mother, not if I could help it. I knew that my leaving would mean I wouldn’t see Kilo, Boogie, and Papo every day, and maybe I wouldn’t be able to stay out all night or hang in the streets whenever I wanted, that we could easily drift apart. But I was so tired.
Kilo leaned over, kissed me on the cheek, then whispered something in my ear that I couldn’t make out. I told myself that he said, “I love you,” even though I knew it wasn’t true, but at that moment I needed it to be.
I spent most of the ride to South Beach thinking of our time as if it were already in the past. How Kilo and I had danced at the Nautilus Middle School Halloween dance, all sweaty and breathless and crazy. How once, Papo had introduced me to his neighbor as his sister-in-law, and afterward he always called me sis. How we had walked all over the place—the four of us shooting the shit from Seventy-First and Collins to Normandy Isle to Bay Harbor, even at three, four in the morning. How Boogie and I sat on a bench by the courts in Normandy Park, knocking back a quart, pretending we were grown, and watching the pickup game. How Kilo and Papo acted like they were super-fly street-ballers when really they were just okay. How in Kilo’s room, the walls were all tagged up with spray paint and Sharpie, covered in bad graffiti, his homeboys’ names, their neighborhoods, and on the bedroom door, the largest piece: R.I.P. Mikey. How once, I got so pissed that my name wasn’t written anywhere, I took his Sharpie and wrote Jaqui n Boogie on the wall next to his bed, then drew a heart around it. How he came when I called. How maybe he saved my life and didn’t even know it.
By January, we would barely see each other. By Valentine’s Day, Kilo would already be with the girl who’d become the mother of his baby.
When I got out of the car in front of Southgate Towers, the air was too warm for winter. Even for December in Miami Beach. I strapped on my backpack, watched the station wagon as it drove off, headed north. They would drive past North Beach, past Seventy-First and Collins, then make a left toward Crespi Park. I would go into the lobby of the south tower, take the elevator up to my father’s apartment on the eighth floor, where my abuela would greet me with a hot meal and café con leche, always ready to forgive me for stealing her cigarettes, for running away, for getting arrested so many times.
A few days after going back home, I would have a dream. I’d be on the roof of the north tower, standing close to the edge, my arms extended like wings. I would be looking down at Biscayne Bay, and across at the Venetian Islands, and then I would jump, and before I hit the ground, I would be flying, flying. The dream came back every couple of months, and, always, I would fly before hitting concrete.
A couple of years after the French woman jumped, another woman—Papi’s friend—would fling herself off one of the balconies. The south tower this time. She would hit the side of the building, then the roof of the pool maintenance storage shed, then the ground. She would fall fifteen stories. And she would live.
Fourteen, or How to Be a Juvenile Delinquent
You remember that first game of chess you played with your father: You, sitting across from him at the table, thinking, Who does this old man think he’s playing with? He enjoys that stunned look on your face as he captures your last knight and lectures you on who knows what, trying to make life lessons out of stories.
You think you’re playing. He thinks he’s teaching.
You’re determined to do the opposite of everything your father says. He’s determined to stop you in your tracks. This is what passes for I love you these days.
You learn that day that you will always remember your one bad move, that moment when you could’ve made one choice but made another, and what follows is your whole game falling apart, piece by piece, check, cross-check, and suddenly, when you’re fourteen, checkmate.
At fourteen, I walked into the Miami Dade County Children’s Courthouse alone, not my first time in there by myself. Papi had stopped coming after my fourth or fifth time in front of the judge. Tanisha had given me a ride in her boyfriend’s car, but dropped me off out front while she found a parking spot.
On the second floor, on the bulletin board where all the cases were listed, I found my name next to courtroom number 2-1. They always sent my cases to the same judge. At fourteen, I didn’t think much about this, but looking back now, I’m sure that the prosecutor was sick of seeing my face, of reading my name and my multiple case numbers, all my charges, hoping the judge would finally come to his senses and lock me up for good.
As I approached the benches outside of 2-1, Tanisha walked up, found a spot and took a seat. Tanisha was eighteen, but looked around thirty-four. She’d gotten skinny and pale over the years, but her hair was the same, dark and thick, down to her waist. Looking older was a quality my mom and most of her sisters shared, but Ta
nisha was the most like my mother—smoking weed, mixing methamphetamines and prescription drugs, running over a boyfriend with another boyfriend’s car, never backing down from a fight. Like my mother, Tanisha took no shit. When I turned eighteen—if I made it to eighteen—
Tanisha was exactly who I wanted to be.
I didn’t tell her why Papi didn’t come to court with me, how when I’d tried to wake him up that morning, he opened his eyes, took one look at me, and went right back to sleep.
“But they’ll lock me up if you’re not there,” I’d said, even though I was secretly hoping the judge would give me a few months. Every single time I’d been sentenced to house arrest or probation or some at-risk youth intervention program with court-mandated counseling, I’d been furious. I wanted to prove myself to all the other delinquents in my father’s South Beach neighborhood, to be able to say I’d done some serious time and come out of juvie with stories. But most of all, I think I wanted my father to pay attention.
We would joke about this years later, when I was a senior in college and my father had remarried, when we’d both moved past the point when thinking about my teenage years brought tears to our eyes. Papi and I would play chess, sitting at the dining room table drinking Presidentes, me, taking way too long to make a move, and Papi waiting on me, like he’d been doing for years, sitting across the table telling stories. The time the school principal beat him with a yardstick so hard it broke, and he ran all the way home to tell Abuela. How in his early twenties, he’d had to take off one night, out of the blue, when one of the tiradores in El Caserío caught beef, how he fled Puerto Rico for New York and came back after a couple of years. How he enlisted in the army when I was a baby, but got a medical discharge after a few months. And how we were so much alike, me and my father: that time I jumped in Biscayne Bay after getting drunk and two men in a fishing boat had to pull me out. The day I got arrested for assaulting a police officer, knocking the glasses off his face. How I was always getting arrested, always running, and every time someone came knocking, every time the phone rang, he braced himself for bad news, Abuela always asking, “What did she do now?”
