The Afterlife

by Gary Soto

  On the court, my homie friends were fair, at best, and none of them was a starter. We were supposed to be good this year, or at least look suave because we had new uniforms. Maybe new jockstraps, too!

  It was Saturday evening, and I knew that we would be playing an exhibition game against Sanger High. From my parents' home I strode, bounced, and flowed toward the high school. This took some effort because the wind worked against me. I almost gave up when I noticed my hands were gone, and one of my ankles, too. I was being erased right before my eyes!

  "No," I murmured.

  Unable to continue, I had to sit on a curb and bury my face in my arms. I tried not to picture my mom and dad, who in my mind were staring into their cups of coffee for an answer to my death. I was so mad at Yellow Shoes. I possessed the sudden urge to hurt him.

  "How come me?" I cried. I knew some crackheads who needed to go. But why me? What trouble did I cause people? After a few minutes, I pulled myself together and continued toward school. I would see what I would miss—the start of basketball season.

  Since it was an exhibition game, there weren't many spectators in the bleachers. There were cheerleaders and the band, and Coach Silva dressed in a black suit. He wasn't a bad guy, really, except I held it against him when he cut me off the squad. I wasn't tall enough. I couldn't make a layup, even with no pressure. So? I wanted badly to be with my friends, the four Js. I recalled how Coach pulled me aside and said, "Hey, track season's in two months, no?"

  I scanned the bleachers. I recognized some of my classmates. I saw Jamal, Jaime, Jonathan, and Jared huddled around Coach. What would these dudes do except sit and chew their fingernails when the game began? I liked them a lot and was beginning to think of using the word love. Yeah, I loved my friends, whose eyes, I noticed, were red from crying. The skin under their eyes was dark. No doubt they had been up all night talking about me as they drove around Fresno, killing time.

  Then I spotted a banner with my name on it. There were flowers pinned to the banner, and a lot of signatures and drawn hearts. Did people really like me? I wasn't exactly popular; then again, I wasn't exactly one of those nerdy souls that hug the hallways, looking down at their shoes as they shuffle from class to class. But flowers and hearts?

  The clock read ten minutes before game time. Time was running out and, with it, my time on this planet, in this gym that was bright as a carnival.

  I searched the meager crowd for Rachel, my would-be novia. But she wasn't the kind of person who went to football or basketball games. I looked for another girl that I liked, but she wasn't there, either. But there was my history teacher, Miss Escobedo, whom I'd had a crush on since I first saw her get out of her car in a short dress. Hers was the only class I really liked; that one and maybe English and lunch. Miss Escobedo was only twenty-five or so, and sweet.

  "Dawg," I whined.

  Miss Escobedo had her arm hooked in some guy's arm.

  I sat in the bleachers next to Sara, a girl who had tried out for cheerleading. Like me with basketball, she didn't make it. But she was nice and had a nice smile, and used the word nice a lot when she talked. I got up when a friend of hers returned with a bag of popcorn.

  "That's nice of you," Sara said, her face lit with happiness over the prospect of eating popcorn through the first half.

  Her friend, too, had gone out for cheerleading. But she hadn't made it either.

  "It's nice to see you," I breathed in Sara's ear.

  Sara touched her ear.

  "You can't do everything," I said, and left her side. I approached the vice principal, Mr. Laird. He was holding a clipboard and clicking his pen nervously. I would have reached over and touched the pen to make him stop, but my hands were long gone.

  Coach Silva turned to Mr. Laird. He nodded his head.

  Mr. Laird stood up, breathed in, and clicked the on-and-off switch of a handheld microphone.

  "School," he began.

  That single word echoed off the walls. Everyone grew quiet, even the visiting team. The mood became dark, as they were aware of what was going to be announced.

  "School," he repeated. "Yesterday we lost one of our students in an unfortunate incident. It troubles me."

  Mr. Laird did look troubled, looked like someone who had swallowed a dark cloud. I had always thought he was mean, but I could see that I had been wrong. His lower lip quivered as he held back from actually crying. I would have hated to have his job right then. A grown man crying in front of his school.

  "May we have a minute of silence?" he asked. He scanned the gymnasium until everyone's head was bowed.

  A kid I'd known since elementary school stood up, raising a trumpet to his mouth. I couldn't remember his name, but couldn't forget how a bully used to jack him up for his lunch money. And every day this kid—this trumpet player with thick glasses and more than his share of pimples—would bring out his money before the bully even asked. Now, years later, he was playing taps for me.

  "Ah, man," I sobbed. When was the crying going to stop?

  The kid from my childhood played beautifully. I felt terrible that I couldn't go back in time and try to beat up the bully for him. We could have done it together.

  After the trumpet player lowered his trumpet, a last note hung in the air. Mr. Laird asked for silence and a moment of prayer. But I already knew silence. It occurred earlier when I stood before an open grave looking up at the October sky in midday.

  Then the game started with an easy bucket for Sanger. That basket was followed by two more. With less than three minutes gone, Sanger was up 6–0.

  Sapo luck, I complained silently as I remained an invisible spectator in the bleachers. I screamed: "Come on, dawgs—score!"

  Chapter Five

  YELLOW SHOES. After I left the basketball game, I found another dude in a set of yellow shoes hanging in front of a 7-Eleven. He was sucking the last of a cherry-flavored slush. His cheeks collapsed as he inhaled that sweet, meaningless drink. His eyes were roving in their sockets as he scrutinized the oil-stained parking lot. Let him blame society, school, and his deadbeat father. He could care less. He was trouble. His face was half-light, half-dark, under the glare of a sputtering neon sign. It was the dark side of his face that attracted me.

  "Who are you?" I asked, face-to-face, as if we were two boxers right before the start of a fight. "How come you got the same stupid shoes on?"

  It was trippy encountering another vato in yellow shoes. I wondered if that was the new style for gang bangers. But unlike the skinny guy who did me, this dude in front of the store was heavy as a sack of onions, fat and out of breath just sucking in his drink. He tossed his cup, looked left and right, and hiked up his loose and huango Dickies cut off at the knees. He approached a Honda with different-colored fenders and a spiderweb of a cracked windshield. The fat dude disappeared into the shadows and his hand wiggled the passenger's window, which was open an inch. The inch was enough for him to work his wormy fingers inside. He wiggled the window back and forth until it, too, cracked and cobwebbed. With both hands, he bent the window and unlatched the door.

  "Ay," he yapped. A finger, nipped by a sliver of glass, went into his mouth like a candy cane. He shook his finger and muttered, "Stupid glass."

  This ride didn't have an alarm and barely any tread on the tires—they were shiny as a bald man's head. The fenders could fall off hitting a pothole. This was the kind of car that got you from one place to another in truly ugly style. It was a car even Hmong and Mexican gangs wouldn't consider stealing. Nasty junior high kids wouldn't bother to bend the antenna. The junk man would laugh, run a handkerchief under his nose, and laugh some more. As for organizations that search for donated cars? One look and they would drive away. The Honda was on its way to becoming scrap metal.

  Maybe this dude was practicing the art of thievery Maybe he couldn't help himself. He opened the door, and jumped in quickly, the springs squeaking under his weight. He rifled through the glove compartment and found a can of hairspray and two
Bibles, nada mas. He growled and fanned the pages of a Bible as if he were trying to cool himself. When he tossed it over his shoulder, he heard a whimper that startled him. He turned around and discovered a poodle.

  "Stupid dog," he snarled. "You scared me, stupid."

  Stupid, it seemed, was the main word in this vato's vocabulary.

  The poodle whimpered. The little furry dude, all old with black muck running from its eyes, was the one who was scared.

  When the dude reached to grab the dog around the throat, I shoved the stumps of my ghostly arms into his eyes. He backed off, rubbing his peepholes, and farted the winds of fear. He farted a second time, and I laughed, "Fuchi!" His hand reached for the door handle.

  My power is the coldness of death. I'm invisible, yet present, and this bully was comprehending my power. I had no hands, and my feet were gone. But I could make people feel my presence. This is what I was learning about myself.

  The guy scrambled out of the car and hurried away, one hand pulling up his pants as he let out another fart. I would have followed him for the fun of it, but I had had enough of his ugly face. Plus, I couldn't hold my place. The wind had picked up, and I was sent rolling like a tumbleweed. Luckily for me, it was in direction of prime- Eddie's duplex apartment, a mile or so away, in the part of town where Fausto, the bike thief, held court in his half-painted house. I rolled past the high school, where one of the teams was making a basket. Let it be us, I prayed. Just this night, let us be winners.

  The wind's push eased and I was able to stand upright on a dark street—kids had busted out the streetlights for the fun and the danger of it.

  I got my bearings, and ignored a car alarm that was screaming. But no one stepped out of their houses to see. What was a car alarm when better action was taking place on TV?

  I recognized my primo's apartment and prayed that he had left my parents' place and was home by now—what had he and my mom been talking about, anyhow? Lights were on. A radio was singing to itself, because when I went through the wall there was no one home.

  Still, I called out, "Primo? Eddie?"

  A moth banged against the bulb of the goose-necked lamp. The refrigerator kicked on, chilling the cold water even colder. I stood in the living room and was not in the least scared when a tree in the yard whistled its haunting tune.

  I got comfy on the couch, my weight not even denting the cushion an inch. I noticed that both my ankles were gone, and some of my wrists. I felt a shiver blossom in my shoulders and wanted to cry. Instead, I lay on the couch and assembled in my mind something to smile about, something to remember from my crazy life. I giggled. I pictured Eddie and me crouching like frogs and playing with matches. Bad boys for a day, we were in an old lady's junky backyard, and Eddie, the brave one because he was seven and I was six, struck a couple of wooden matches at once. He cried, "Ay!" and tossed them over his head when the flame licked his fingertips. One match flared and caught the dry grass that was not lawn but something yellow as hay. We jumped up like frogs. I remember asking him, "Are we going to burn?" When Eddie bugged out his eyes, I knew we were in trouble. He was scared as me. We jumped and danced on the flames, but they spurted out under our little tennis shoes. The fire's great hunger began to feast on the quickly blackening grass.

  I had to smile to myself as I remembered the two of us trying to climb the chain-link fence. Trying is the word. I got my pants cuffs caught on the top of the fence and flipped back to hang upside down, mouth open. It was weird. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the flames grazing on the grass and the smoke begin to rise in puffs that signaled trouble. But I didn't become scared until I heard the distant wail of fire engines. I pictured the firemen with hoses and ladders. I pictured smoke curling around my body on the fence, like a chicken on a barbecue grill.

  Eddie tried to unhook me, but he wasn't strong enough to lift me up and free my pants cuffs. He said that I was going to be okay, and gently let me fall back and rest against the chain-link. He ran away promising to get help. I was really scared then. I envisioned my mom burning my legs with a good belt-whipping. Now there was fire!

  "Eddie, you funny dude," I said, then laughed. We were troublemaking mocosos that day!

  It took a fireman to unhook me from the fence. I couldn't tell if he was smiling, or frowning—I was hanging upside down and couldn't tell up from down, but was smart enough to hurry away once my dizziness disappeared.

  What was that—twelve years ago? Eddie was now studying air-conditioning at City College, and I was dead and losing myself to the eventual dark hallway of a wet grave.

  I was looking at the wall where a slightly curled Raiders calendar was nailed when a key rattled in the door. The doorknob turned, and Eddie entered cautiously as he scanned the living room—in this part of town, there was every chance of encountering a thug waiting in the shadows. His eyes were red, his face as gray as ash. It took him a lot of effort to get the key out of the door.

  He checked out the kitchen before hurrying to the bathroom to take a leak that lasted longer than I could hold my breath—if I had had breath. He didn't flush but came out zipping up. He was starting again for the kitchen when he heard a tap on the front door. Eddie froze. His eyes spun crazily in their sockets, and I sensed he was thinking about what to pick up—the coat hanger on the kitchen table, the hammer on the chair? He was searching for a weapon to use to defend himself. Who was knocking on his door at that late hour? Not some religious group asking if he wanted to be saved.

  The tap came again, this time softer.

  Eddie stepped toward the door and hesitated, his breathing shallow. He took a step backward and picked the hammer up off the chair. What was he going to do? Nail the intruder to the wall?

  I floated over to Eddie and stood so close I could see the pulse in his throat. He swallowed his fear and reached for the doorknob. He pulled the door open slowly. No one was there.

  Light footsteps—a woman in pumps?—clicked down the driveway of the duplex. When they faded, Eddie, hammer raised, stepped outside and discovered on the mat a folded dish towel that I recognized from home—what was it doing there? When he picked it up and opened it, he found a gun, heavy as the hammer in his hand.

  "Jesus," he muttered. He walked down the porch and hurried out into the driveway. "Tía, I can't do it."

  Tía? My mother? Had Mom delivered a handgun in a towel to her nephew? It was so clear, just like the moon tangled in the nearly leafless sycamore trees. My mom expected revenge, and she chose Eddie to see to this revenge. I thought she would have known better. After all, she was a grown-up. After all, she went to church every Sunday, and didn't the Bible say something about not taking another person's life?

  "Mom," I said, "you can't do this." I flapped my arms at my side, as if I, the fallen angel, could take off and leave this place. So that's what they were talking about in the kitchen.

  Her old Buick's headlights lit up the black asphalt lining the street. She pulled away from the curb, and I tried to run after her with my long strides. I might have kept up with her car—she was a slow driver who went by the rules and used both hands on the steering wheel—except the wind pushed me in the other direction.

  "No!" I screamed at Mom. "You can't ask him to do this!"

  I slowed to a walk and turned around, head down. I loved my cousin, who many years ago tried to unhook me when I was hanging upside down. I would crave his friendship until my body disappeared altogether. Friendship is what I longed for, but nature was telling me to move on. When I looked up, my cousin was setting the hammer on top of the handgun, the tools of a terrible trade.

  THE WIND that whips through the valley in fall sent me rushing toward Blackstone Avenue then shifted so that I once again ended up on Fausto's street. Radios were crying out Mexican songs, and over that I heard the frying of something delicious—chicken tacos? Came asada? Chicharrones? I was aware that I couldn't eat, but the aroma...

  I stood in the middle of the street—and jumped out of the str
eet and nearly out of my mind when I saw a ghostly outline of a girl roll past. I guessed it right away: She was dead, like me, and recently dead because she couldn't control her body. She was tumbling, and her long brownish hair was waving like seaweed. Her mouth was shaped into a sorrowful O.

  "Dawg," I crowed to myself.

  I wasn't the only one departing life in Fresno; others were shutting their eyes as the pulse in their wrists slowed to a stop, though their watches continued to bang out the time. I felt self-centered, me thinking all along that I was the only person to have lost his life. I asked myself: Where are the others, the old and sick who gave up their ghosts daily, or those who died in accidents? Where were those who died from cancer, heart attacks brought on by heartbreak, or diseases I couldn't even pronounce?

  This girl, I asked myself. Who is she?

  I put my long-distance runner years to use and caught up to her just as she righted herself and wobbled dizzily. I was familiar with that sensation of dizziness, that and a lot more. Immediately, she began to style her hair back into place. Funny how she was primping even when she was a ghost. Who was there to see her but me? The sorrowful O of her mouth completely disappeared and was replaced by the sleepy look of someone shaken awake.

  "You got to tighten your stomach muscles," I tried to explain.

  She jumped backward, shocked by my presence. Her arms were raised in self-defense.

  "Don't be scared," I said in a slow, deliberate manner. I wanted to be understood, trusted.

  A curious look sprang up on her face. A line cut across her brow, and I could see by that single little line what she would look like when she got older. Then I realized that she would never get older.