by Jaquira Díaz
You consider throwing it away, but they are brand new. You refuse to think of them as a single thing. They are a pair.
You go into your bathroom, open the hamper, stuff it inside, under all the clothes. At the very bottom. Later, when you are sorting clothes, you will find it and think of how useless the one sandal is. Brand new, but useless.
There’s a knock on your door. You think people wouldn’t knock if they knew what their knocking did to you. Your sister opens. Come in, she says.
There’s a cop in your apartment. She wants to know what happened.
I didn’t call you here, you say.
I called her, your sister says.
Beba and I sat together in art class while Ms. McKinney explained our assignment. She had placed pictures of Ocean Drive all around the room, several of them at our table. We were supposed to create imitations of one of the Art Deco hotels, first using pencils on poster board, then using colored pencils, pastels, crayons, or water colors to fill them in. I sat with a blue pencil in my hand, watched Beba as she drew an exact replica of the picture Ms. McKinney had set at our table. It took her all of ten minutes to sketch and paint the picture, write her name on it and walk it over to Ms. McKinney.
When she returned to our table, Beba noticed my poster board was blank. I was sitting there awkwardly, everyone ignoring me, the new girl.
Beba smiled. “Just draw it!” she said.
But I couldn’t just draw anything.
“Draw a big square,” she said.
I hesitated, but I drew a square.
“Now draw small squares for windows,” she said, pointing to where windows should go, “here, here, here, and here.”
I drew small squares.
We continued this way, Beba guiding me through the entire picture until I had an actual building with windows and doors, with palm trees on the side, with a sidewalk, and cars parked out front. It looked like something someone else had drawn. Afterward, she showed me how to draw horses.
They want you to go with them. It’s not like Mount Sinai, they say. You won’t have to wait. I will be with you the entire time, someone says, but you don’t know if it’s your sister, or the cop. Either way, it doesn’t matter. You’re not looking at them. You’re not paying attention. You are looking at yourself now. You are bloody. No, you are bleeding. There is blood running down between your legs. You want to wipe it, wash it off, but you’re afraid to learn where the blood is coming from. You know, but you don’t. You think of that first time, with all its violence, all that blood, and how you never told a single person. You agree to go with them, only because you don’t want to see it. You want them to do it. You want them to be the ones to wash it off.
When we were both ten, Beba and I were shooting hoops in Flamingo Park with Frank and Jorge, some kids from the neighborhood. After Beba and I fought over the ball and pushed each other around, I walked off the court and headed toward the girls’ bathroom. I was bending over the water fountain when I felt someone grab me from behind. What the hell? I thought. I turned around, thinking it was Beba, and I swung my arm at her. We were always fighting and making up, so I didn’t swing too hard, since I was just annoyed. But when I turned around, it wasn’t Beba.
It was a man. He was pulling me toward the boys’ bathroom. I was almost inside when I realized what was happening. He was attacking me, trying to take me away, and I didn’t understand why. I pushed him as hard as I could, trying to fight him off. I put one hand out in front of me, pushed against his face, and I felt his mouth against the palm of my hand, his lips, his teeth.
I pulled my hand back when I felt those teeth, that sticky mouth, the wetness there, pushed against his chest. And then, I could smell him. He smelled like garbage. But it wasn’t just him—the smell was all over me. He was all over me. He was trying to pull me into the boys’ bathroom again, and for a while time seemed to slow down and I kept thinking, Not the boys’ bathroom, again and again, Not the boys’ bathroom, until I thought to scream, until I had no air left in my lungs and I didn’t know if anyone could hear me. I tried to run, but he had me. I didn’t know where he was holding me, my arms or my torso, only that I couldn’t pull away. I kicked, and kicked, and kicked, but I didn’t hit anything, and then I started swinging my arms, trying to hit him in the face, the shoulders, anywhere, and when he finally let me go, I realized that Beba was hitting him, too, and Frank and Jorge, the four of us, as I tried to catch my breath, the four of us punching and kicking and slapping, and I flung my whole body at him, hands, feet, knees, until I was almost flying, and then he was running running running, and we ran, too, picking up rocks in our path, until I pegged him square in the back, and he raised his shoulders in pain but kept running, and we chased him, throwing our rocks, out for revenge, out for blood, but lost track of him in the small residential blocks between Flamingo Park and Alton Road.
Beba wanted to tell.
She thought we should go to the cops, her mother, her aunts. But I was afraid Papi and Abuela wouldn’t let me go out by myself anymore if they found out. I preferred the secret. Besides, I told Beba, nothing happened.
The next day at school, Beba passed me a sheet of paper with some of her drawings on it. A comic strip. The four of us playing basketball. Me, with springy curls and a thought bubble over my head that said, “Peace, love, and hair grease,” walking away from the courts. The man grabbing me. Beba, Frank, and Jorge running toward us. Then all of us stomping him, a dust cloud rising between us. And after all the pictures, she wrote, “We kicked his ass!”
Today, I remember how hard I fought to stay out of the boys’ bathroom, how maybe it was that part, how forbidden the place had seemed, that scared me the most, and I wondered if I would’ve fought as hard if it had been the girls’ bathroom.
Your memories of the clinic aren’t complete. You remember a crime scene technician rubbing cotton swabs along the inside of your fingernails, wiping off the blood along the three nails you broke off, taking pictures of your hand. Sometime during all this, your dress and your bra are stuffed in a paper bag, labeled, taken away. Your sister helps you into a sweatshirt, which you put over the hospital gown. You still can’t take a shower.
They keep asking about your panties. Somewhere in that alley, that’s all you can say. You remember to memorize this phrase, Somewhere in that alley, because every question is asked three, four, ten times. When they keep asking, you stop talking. You decide to look straight at the wall. Maybe if they think you’re crazy, they’ll stop asking questions.
Your sister gets upset. She already told you that. Didn’t you hear?
You lift up the back of your sweatshirt so the woman with the camera can take pictures of the bruises and cuts on your back. You don’t remember her asking you to do that. She asks to take pictures of your face. You refuse. She tries to explain. If they catch the guy, they need to have pictures of the bruises and cuts to show the extent of the damage. But you don’t want any evidence, no pictures to prove that you are damaged. That’s not what she meant, she reassures you. She’s so, so sorry.
After you are showered, dressed, when you think the looks and the questions are over, they sit you at a table. You’re going to speak to a detective.
When the detective arrives, she sits across from you. Tell me what happened, she says.
I already told the other police officer, you say.
I know, but I need you to tell it to me. She doesn’t ask what you want. Doesn’t ask what you need. You refuse to tell the story one more time.
She needs to know the truth, she says, she needs the whole story. Were you drinking? Were you using drugs? She begins to explain how your words could put an innocent person behind bars, how you could ruin someone’s life. This is not a game, she says. This is serious. And then, finally, you understand.
You hide your face in your hands. You just want to go home, you tell her, but she keeps talking, which makes you think maybe you didn’t really say it.
You get up, lea
ve her sitting there. You have nothing else to say.
The summer before I started middle school, Alaina and I stayed with Mami for a few weeks. I kept bouncing between Mami’s and Papi’s apartments, running from one place to the other, or just plain running away. On July 4, Alaina and I sat outside watching fireworks after a long afternoon of running around the neighborhood with the other kids. We were sitting on the curb drinking Capri Suns. I was trying to make mine last—we usually couldn’t afford to spring for luxuries like Capri Sun or Coca-Cola, and we had to settle for the generic orange drink or grape drink you could buy at the corner bodega for a dollar a gallon.
When one of Alaina’s second-grade classmates, who lived in our neighborhood, walked over, she introduced us. “Hi, Barbarito! This is my big sister,” she said, smiling. He probably already knew who I was, since Alaina was a miniature me.
“Hey,” he said, and sat with us on the curb.
We watched the fireworks for a while, and when it got darker, after we’d flung our juice pouches into the street and most of the neighborhood kids had been called home by their parents, Alaina went inside. I stayed behind a few more minutes, until Barbarito said he had to go. We both got up, and I headed toward our building, and he started walking up the block toward his. Suddenly, he turned around and ran to me and grabbed both of my breasts as if it was a normal thing. I’d just turned twelve, but I was already wearing a B-cup. I pushed him away, but he came back at me, wrapped his arms around me from behind, and stuck his hand down my shorts. I tried to elbow him, tried to peel him off me, but he was behind me, and was much shorter and faster. I realized that for a moment this little kid, who was probably only eight or nine years old, was in complete control. I couldn’t get him off of me. It was only when he decided that it would be over. Then, suddenly, he just let me go.
I stood there in shock, watched him walk away, asking myself, What just happened?
Then, as if to show me that he was still in control, he stopped, smiled at me. “Byyyye!” he said.
I crossed my arms, hugging myself, feeling like my body had betrayed me, my breasts inviting violence. Even though I’d been attacked by the homeless man in the park nearly two years before, when I was younger, smaller, it was this little kid, one of my little sister’s classmates, someone I could probably beat within a minute of his life, who’d made me feel powerless.
I never told Alaina. I never told anybody. But the next day, Alaina and I went back to Papi’s place.
You make your sister drive you back to your apartment. She tries to convince you to go forward with it. She tries, in her best tone, to explain that if you don’t, you will regret it for the rest of your life. In front of your door, she asks if you want company. She can sleep over. You tell her you want to be alone.
She stays anyway, sits in bed with you while you pretend to sleep. You get up at three in the morning, pick up the phone, dial your ex-husband in Jacksonville, North Carolina. By this time next week, your apartment will be packed up, stored, and you will be in another state.
The year I’m in boot camp, lying awake in my rack night after night, writing letters home, standing at the top of the tower looking at the water below, Beba is fighting with her boyfriend. I haven’t spoken to her in about four years, and as I’m marching next to G-mo and practicing flag drills and spit-shining my boondockers, I don’t think of Beba once. And she probably doesn’t think of me.
That year, as I’m passing Battle Stations, Beba is breaking up with her boyfriend. After that last argument, in the middle of the night, she leaves her boyfriend’s house, headed to a friend’s place. As she’s walking down Biscayne Boulevard, a cab driver is getting robbed, knife at his throat. He can’t move, watches the ceiling while the guy in the back takes his wallet, his watch. The attacker cuts him, and the cab driver clutches his chest, his arm, his eyes shut tight, his whole body rigid, and steps on the gas pedal.
As Beba crosses the street, she is struck, the taxi dragging her three, four, five blocks.
The taxi crashes into a house on a side street, comes to a stop. The police are called, the taxi driver rushed to the hospital, the car taken away. The attacker is long gone. The scene is cleared.
At the hospital, the cab driver tells them the story. He was robbed, thinks he hit someone, but isn’t sure.
There was no victim at the scene, the officer tells him. No one. You got lucky.
Thank you, the cab driver says, nodding, relieved. Thank you.
A few blocks from the accident, in a small house in the neighborhood, Marcus Jess can’t sleep. His dog won’t stop barking. He steps out on the front porch, but the night is dark. He can’t see anything. He gets back inside, shuts the door behind him. Dog still won’t stop barking.
A few hours later, when the dog finally stops barking, Marcus Jess has to get up for work. He takes the dog for a walk. As they cross, they reach the fence where the dog usually does his business, Marcus Jess sees a body. A teenage girl. Again, the cops are called. The scene is cleared.
Marcus Jess doesn’t make it to work that day. His dog was barking all night, he tells the cops. All night.
There’s nothing you could’ve done, one police officer says.
Thank you, Marcus Jess says. Thank you.
That year, as a drug war is sweeping the city of Miami, the worst South Florida has seen in decades, with multiple drive-by shootings, as police raid homes and confiscate pistols, knives, two hand grenades, as the Miami Herald is reporting armed robberies and three different deadly gang-related shootings on the same day, as a fifteen-year-old boy is shot down in front of his house, Miami Police Lieutenant Bill Schwartz is quoted in several South Florida newspapers: “Our homicide rate is down.”
You will come back to Miami eventually, after six months in North Carolina.
You will know that moving to Jacksonville was a mistake.
It will not be the only thing you’ll regret.
It will be a long time before you buy another pair of strappy sandals.
But you will.
Mother, Mercy
The summer of the Casey Anthony trial, seven years after I’ve left Miami for college, while news stations across the country are reporting on the Florida woman accused of murdering her two-year-old daughter, my grandma Mercy dies. I’m living in central Florida and haven’t seen Mercy or my mother in the seven years since I left. Only once in all that time has Mercy called to see how I was doing. That was three weeks ago. She was sixty-nine years old.
They find five empty bottles of sleeping pills on the floor next to Mercy’s bed. They find a gift she left for my little cousin Lia: a necklace with an angel pendant. They find a note.
It’s my cousin Junito who calls with the news.
I ask if my mother knows yet.
“No one’s heard from her all day,” Junito says.
My mother hardly ever has a working phone. She still lives in a tiny efficiency in Miami Beach—a city she hasn’t left since we moved from Puerto Rico in 1987—a few blocks from Mercy. Anthony is still a waiter in the same tourist trap restaurant he started working in when he was eighteen, so he’s in Miami Beach every day, and sometimes takes care of her, as much as you can take care of someone like my mother.
For many years, Mami and Mercy, both addicts, kept each other company. Mercy took pills mostly: Xanax, Ativan, Oxy. My mother prefers crack, cocaine, meth. Both have been prescribed powerful antipsychotic medications for schizophrenia. Before Mercy died, they saw each other every day. They were each other’s refuge, enabling each other, bailing each other out, sometimes living on the streets together. Loving and hating each other the way addicts do.
I ask Junito what the suicide note says, not sure if I’m ready to hear the answer.
He exhales loudly. “You don’t want to know.”
I ask about our aunts in Virginia and Puerto Rico—do they know?
“You’re the first person I called,” he says, and then he starts sobbing. He says he always imagi
ned that when Mercy died he wouldn’t care, wouldn’t cry, wouldn’t feel a thing.
“I’m sorry,” I say, as if she weren’t my grandmother, too. As if this were something that happened to him, not us, not me. Later, I will call my aunts in Virginia, and they will wail. I will listen to their ragged breathing and imagine what the news will do to my mother. “I’m sorry,” I will say. “I’m so, so sorry.”
I ran away from Miami seven years before Mercy’s death. Cheito and I had gotten back together and bought a townhouse after I left the military. I’d taken night classes at Miami Dade Community College, and then applied for a transfer to the University of Central Florida. I wanted to get out of Miami, wanted to get away from my mother, from Mercy.
When I got the acceptance, I decided to go. I didn’t have a conversation with Cheito about it—we weren’t happy, and I’d decided months before that I would leave him. It seemed easier to just go, so I packed whatever clothes and shoes I could fit into my car and drove north, left him with the mortgage, the car payments, the dogs. I stayed with family for a couple of weeks until I found a job and an apartment.
On the day of my college orientation at UCF, after declaring English as my major, I was given an appointment to meet with the English department for an advising session with a group of about eight other transfer students. We were handed forms to fill out, a list of courses and their prerequisites, requirements, electives.
We all sat at a small table with our paperwork. While all the other students filled out their forms, I looked at the concentrations: Literature, Technical Communication, Creative Writing. I looked over at the guy sitting next to me. He’d checked Literature. The woman next to him. Literature. The woman to my right. Literature. A guy across from me. Technical Communication. Not one person had checked Creative Writing. Maybe they knew something I didn’t, I thought. Did writers even make money?
