To the Last Man I Slept with and All the Jerks Just Like Him

by Gwendolyn Zepeda

  She looks down at her feet.

  “Hey, man, are you messing with her?”

  “Nobody’s messing with anyone. This young lady just asked me for a ride.”

  Tony stares at the man for about five seconds.

  “Get out of here. She don’t play that shit, man. I don’t play that shit either. Get out of here.”

  The guy opens his mouth as if to say something, but then instead moves back to the driver’s seat, puts the car in gear, and takes off, yelling “You’re crazy!”

  Tina is left alone with Crazy Tony.

  There’s a long silence. She doesn’t look to see if he’s still looking at her. Eventually, she remembers the manners her grandmother taught her.

  “Thanks.”

  “Tina, you need to be careful. There’s some messed-up guys around here.”

  “Yeah, well . . . thanks.”

  The bus pulls up with a loud squeal and a release of air. Tina hurries into it.

  Tony remembers Tina’s face when that pervert was messing with her. Not just like she didn’t want to be there, but like she wasn’t there. Like she just spaced out and went somewhere else in her mind. Good thing that guy was just a punk who wouldn’t really do anything. Tony’s seen him before, trying to pick up girls at all the bus stops from here to 20th.

  It’s the afternoon of that same day. He’s sitting at the drugstore counter, drinking a cherry Coke that he won’t have to pay for because Neno, the old guy who runs the counter, wants to suck up to Tony’s brother. Tony ignores the way Neno smiles at him every time he comes by with his dirty rag.

  He thinks about Tina standing there trying to pet that stupid cat through the gate, and he has to laugh. She’s just like Danny was—always trying to pet some damned animal. Always noticing some squirrel, bird, lizard. . . . She’d probably want to pet a baby alligator, if you let her.

  And her face got like Danny’s, too, when people told her shit. Scared and then blanked out—not there.

  His dad picked on Danny most because he was the easiest. He’d call him a little faggot, and Danny wouldn’t say anything, wouldn’t even look mad. Then he’d hit Danny across the head and laugh when Danny still didn’t do anything. Only a tear would leak down from his eye.

  It’s a good thing their father’s gone. Everything’s as good as it can be for them now. Manuel’s doing good, making money. Louis is in the Army and he’s probably going to stay past the four years. Too bad Georgie’s dead and Danny’s where he is. But still, they’re doing good. Tony used to wonder if he should leave, try to join the army, too. But instead, he keeps on staying with his mom. He doesn’t want her to be alone and afraid.

  Tony holds out a dollar to pay for his Coke. Neno waves it away, tries to put his hand on Tony’s, but Tony pulls his back, first. He gets up to go, not having any plan as to where he’ll actually be.

  He used to wonder why his mom married an asshole like their father. Then he figured out that there probably just wasn’t anybody else.

  He thinks of all the guys who live in the neighborhood now. He hopes Tina moves away before it’s too late.

  Two nights after the bus stop incident, Tina’s in the kitchen with her grandmother.

  “Grandma, do you know that guy Crazy Tony?”

  “You mean Mrs. Hernández’s boy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t call him Crazy like that. It’s ugly.”

  “So, he’s not crazy?” Tina wipes a bit of potato from the big spoon and licks her finger.

  “Well . . . .” Her grandmother frowns, a small change from her normal expression. “Not crazy like your mother, no.”

  “So what happened to him?”

  “I don’t know for sure. You remember all that stuff that happened with his daddy? Well, they said it scrambled his brains.”

  “What stuff that happened with his dad?” Tina asks.

  “Put some more mayonnaise. Not that much. That’s good. Well . . . I guess you were too young to remember. His father used to come home drunk and hit him and his brothers and Mrs. Hernández. I heard he did other stuff, too, to the youngest boy. Nasty stuff.”

  “Like what?” Tina says, letting go of the spoon.

  “You know . . . molested him. Or that’s what they said. Who knows? You know how people are.”

  “So then what happened? Where’s the dad now?”

  “Smash up those eggs better,” says her grandmother. “I don’t like thick eggs in my potato salad. Nobody knows where he is. The oldest brother, Manuel, beat the heck out of him one night. Sometimes they say he killed him, but we would have heard the ambulance. Or the police. I think he just went off to live with some woman.”

  Tina stirred pickles, salt and pepper into the bowl, then covered it with plastic wrap.

  “Grandma, do you think the dad molested Tony, too, and that’s why they call him Crazy?”

  “I don’t know, m’ija. I couldn’t tell you.”

  “Why do you think their dad was like that?” Tina says.

  “I don’t know m’ija. Well, probably because his father did it to him. The other day on Donahue they had women who had been sexually abused, and the doctor was saying that sometimes it happens like that—like a cycle. And that it happens all the time.”

  “Really?” Tina says. “Did it ever happen to you?”

  “Of course,” says her grandmother. “I had big boobs and big nalgas, like you. Men always wanted to touch them.”

  “But did it ever happen with somebody in your family?”

  “Yes . . . with one of my uncles. When we were staying at his ranch in the summer, to pick blackberries.” Her grandmother wrinkles her nose, waves her hand as if at a fly. “He was always sweaty . . . breathing on my neck. I hated the way he smelled.”

  Tina waits, but that’s all she gets.

  “So what happened? How did it end?”

  “Well, I told him to quit it, of course. And then we moved back with my mother when the summer was over.”

  Tina frowns and picks at her thumbnail.

  “M’ija. . . .”

  “Yeah, Grandma?”

  “M’ija, if any of the boys around here ever messes with you—or if the men do—tell me, okay? I’ll put a stop to it.”

  Tina lets out the breath that she’s been holding. She takes a bigger breath and opens her mouth to speak, but her grandmother beats her to it.

  “Or, if you don’t want to tell me, tell Rudy, and he’ll put a stop to it.”

  Tina closes her mouth again.

  “Rudy will beat the heck out of anybody who messes with you. He knows how to respect women. I raised that boy right.”

  Tina doesn’t feel like going home. It’s humid outside, but at least there’s a breeze, unlike in her house. She’s walking around the streets. Melissa went to a church youth group meeting, so there’s no use trying to hang out with her. Tina looks at all the trees that have bloomed in the last couple of weeks and the flowers and Virgin Mary’s in Mrs. López’s yard, and the bugs, the lizards, the earthworms . . .

  There’s a cat under a car. Tina calls to it. It meows and rubs its face against the tire. Tina reaches. It saunters out, but then quickly walks away.

  “Aw, come on,” she tells it.

  It makes a quick figure 8 under her touch, then walks out of reach again. Tina tries to scratch its chin, but it just meows in a slightly alarmed way and pretends to try to bite her.

  “You have to pet the body.”

  She looks up and sees Tony there.

  “Huh?”

  “They like it when you pet the body first, then the head.”

  Tina stands with her legs and arms crossed, looking down at the cat. She almost wants to try Crazy Tony’s advice, but she wishes he wasn’t there to see.

  The cat walks towards him and crashes into his leg. He strokes it along the back. It arches its back against his hand, circles his legs. A boy hoots as he rides by on his bike and the cat bolts under the car again.

  “
I guess it didn’t want you to pet the body, either,” Tina says.

  “Sometimes they don’t,” says Tony. He laughs a little.

  “What am I gonna do, make it stand there and let me touch it? C’mere, kitty . . . . Nah. I don’t want to piss it off. Those things can scratch the crap out of you.”

  Tina laughs. She looks at Tony, imagining him trying to stroke and kiss a cat that’s scratching the crap out of him. She doesn’t notice when the cat slinks away into Mrs. López’s yard.

  Tony sees her looking at him, smiling like that. He looks to see where the cat has gone, wiping his hand over his forehead. When he pulls his hand back down, she’s still smiling. He tries to look her in the eyes, but doesn’t know if he’s smiling back at her or just twitching. He runs his hand through his hair.

  “Uh . . . I . . . I gotta go. My mom . . . she . . .”

  Goddamned stuttering. He quits before he embarrasses himself any more.

  Tina watches him stumble over a stick as he walks away. She has to laugh again. He’s not crazy. He’s cute.

  It’s Sunday morning. Tina and her friend Melissa are walking to the house to get some clothes and records for that night. They discuss the upcoming school dance and the lies Melissa will have to tell her parents in order to go. Tina still hasn’t decided whether she’ll go or not. She’ll have to ask her grandmother, who will have to ask her dad, if he’s at home and awake. Her dad will probably say no.

  They turn the corner next to Tina’s house and see Manuel and Rudy yelling at each other in the middle of the street.

  “I told you, Rudy . . .”

  “Say that again, man! Say it to my face!”

  Rudy, obviously high, shoves Manuel as hard as he can. Manuel doesn’t fall back, just punches Rudy in the face, knocking him to the ground. Tina and Melissa stop at the edge of the yard, as enthralled as everyone watching from the windows up and down the street.

  “Quit it! Quit it!” Tina’s grandmother yells, running out the front door with a broom held business-side-up above her head.

  Manuel turns to face her.

  “You get out of here! Nobody messes with my grandson!” she yells at him, swinging her weapon as if to swat him like a roach.

  Manuel pulls back under it, but doesn’t turn away. She half-swats again, then holds the broom over her shoulder like a baseball bat, glaring at him.

  “Mrs. Chávez, I’m sorry to do this in front of your house. I don’t mean you any disrespect. But you have to understand . . . I gave Rudy a job and then he stole from me.”

  She stares at him, words rushing to her lips and then dying away.

  “I don’t play that, Mrs. Chávez. I don’t take that from anybody.”

  Tina’s grandmother sighs and puts the broom down at her side. Manuel looks down at the street respectfully.

  Rudy struggles up from the cement.

  “Fuck you, man! I’ll kick your fucking ass, you asshole!”

  “Rudy, go inside,” says his grandmother.

  “Nah, man . . . I’m gonna kill this motherfucker!”

  “Rudy. Go inside,” says his grandmother, taking the broom in both hands again.

  Rudy goes inside, muttering. Everyone else is silent until the door closes behind him. Then Manuel gets into his Camaro and drives away.

  Tina’s grandmother waddles to the porch, and sets the broom next to her on the steps. She takes her cigarettes and lighter from the pocket of her housedress.

  Tina bites her lip, not sure what to do or what to say to her friend. This is almost as bad as finding her mother here.

  Not to Melissa, though.

  “Oh, my God . . .” she whispers. “I am totally in love.”

  Once again, Tina has managed to avoid her own home for most of the weekend. But now it’s Monday night and she’s back in the kitchen, washing the dishes made dirty by all the men in the house.

  Rudy pops out of his room like a stoned jack-in-the box, as if he’s been waiting for her to show up the whole time.

  “Leave me alone,” she says before he can say anything. But he doesn’t hear. The words he was planning are already coming out of his mouth.

  “I bet you though that was funny, huh, having your faggot boyfriend’s brother start shit with me right there in front of Grandma, where I couldn’t do nothing. I bet you and your little friend liked that shit, huh?”

  Tina is standing at the cutting board. She feels heat run from the space behind her eyes all the way down her arm to her fingers, which twitch. There’s a big fork somewhere under them in the water. Also, a big knife.

  “I told you, leave me alone.”

  “I told him you were like that, you were just a little slut . . .”

  “Shut the hell up, Rudy.”

  “. . . Always trying to get the guys to whistle at you on the street. . . .”

  That is it. Tina is pissed off now.

  Why is she always a slut? The girls at school, the men on the street, the old ladies in front of the church—all whispering or even just yelling slut, tramp, bitch. Her own father getting drunk and crying that she’s a whore.

  There’s Crazy Tina. She was a slut and it scrambled her brains.

  Tina laughs.

  She turns around, looks Rudy right in the face. “That’s right, man. Now you better take off before I tell him to come kick your ass again.”

  “Yeah, I bet you would, you little bitch . . . Hey, man . . . What the . . . ?”

  She pulls a little fork out of the water and holds it up like a dagger, with water dripping from her fist.

  “Get out of here, Rudy, before I kill your ugly ass. I don’t play that shit anymore. I’ll stab you with this fork.”

  “What the hell? What are you, crazy?”

  Their grandmother comes through the sheet, just waking up.

  “What’s going on here?”

  “Nothing, Grandma. Rudy’s trying to mess with me, but I told him to let me do my work.”

  “Leave her alone, Rudy. Go take out the trash.” “Aw, man. . . .” He’s gone.

  Tina sighs. “He’s always messing with me. I’m tired of it.”

  “Well . . .Well, don’t let him, m’ija. Tell him to quit.”

  Her grandmother searches her pocket for her cigarettes. Tina takes the pack off the butcher block and hands it to her.

  “Grandma, can I go to a dance next weekend? At the school, with Melissa and Adriana?”

  “A dance? With boys?”

  “Yes.”

  Her grandmother studies her critically.

  Tina waits, fork hidden in her hands, eyes on her grandmother’s slippers.

  The old woman lights her cigarette with a deep drag.

  “Well . . . okay.” She blows smoke into the air, fakes a casual cough. “Okay . . . I guess it’s about time you got yourself a boyfriend.”

  Tony’s on his way down Washington Avenue. He’s heading to Happy Land to have a beer with the guys. Now that Rudy’s gone back to jail—breaking and entering—it’s a mellow place to hang out again.

  The Number 50 bus pulls up alongside him. The doors open and out comes Tina, pushing her hair back with a hand as she steps down onto the curb. She looks up and sees him there.

  “Tony! Hi.”

  “Hey,” he tells her. “How’s it going.”

  The bus pulls away. She looks at him and laughs. “It’s going good.”

  Tony looks at the cars and billboards around them, but can’t think of anything else to say. She’s still smiling. And staring at him.

  Then she laughs again. What the hell’s so funny?

  She smiles at him harder and stares into his face with a weird look in her eyes and one of her eyebrows kind of sticking up. Tony doesn’t want to stare back. Maybe she has a tic. Then . . .

  “Bye,” she says in a weird kind of high-pitched voice. “I’ll see you around, okay?”

  She waves at him over her shoulder as she walks out into the avenue, cutting around the cars. He watches her make her way into
the neighborhood, smiling, singing to herself, tossing her head.

  Crazy.

  He puts his hands in his pockets and goes on following the street.

  Reina Cucaracha

  Rosa Villarosa dances through the kitchen with her broom. The dishes, floors, stove, counters, walls, sink, table, chairs are all clean. Before moving on to the floors, tables, couches, curtains, windows, shelves, knick-knacks, and mirrors in the other rooms, there’s a little time to dance.

  The broom is a dashing salsadero, a pretty merengue man. He twirls Rosa around the floor. Her housedress swirls against her knees like silk, and the balls of her feet click-click in chanclas that, for all their light adeptness, might be the finest Italian leather.

  Then—ay—another one runs across the counter. Up comes the broom. Down goes the broom.

  Chihuahua, another on the floor. Down, hard down goes the broom.

  Chinelas, these roaches! Whack, whack! goes the broom.

  “Why must they bother me?” sighs Señora Villarosa. Didn’t she just clean this kitchen? What will Jaime say, if he ever comes home tonight? How clean can a kitchen possibly be and still have roaches running and flying around?

  With a spanking white dishtowel to her temple, Rosa Villarosa turns around and— ¡Dios mío!—sees the hugest roach of all. The hugest roach she’s ever seen in her whole entire life, standing right there in her kitchen, looking her right in the face.

  “Ay” she says. Her eyes roll up to the Virgin, and she hopes her broom will catch her when she faints.

  “No, Señora. Don’t go away from me,” says his voice. It’s big and deep, mellifluous like Ricardo Montalbán yet shining like a chainsaw, this big, big cockroach’s voice. “Señora Villarosa, don’t go away so soon. I have come a long way to see you.”

  “Ah,” she suddenly knows, “he is the King of the Roaches.”

  Looking again, she sees the extreme brilliance of his wing cloak, the bronze strength in his many appendages, and the royal, authoritative carriage of his—his head, that must be. Are those his eyes? Yes, that part there is moving with the voice—must be his face.

  “Señora, put down your weapon. My minions have withdrawn and will bother you no more. Please, Doña Rosa, I ask that you tolerate my unworthy presence and grant me the gift of a few moments of your time.”