The Flowers

by Dagoberto Gilb

  “We do have to be quiet,” she said, “but he’s asleep for the night.”

  The TV was on. It was another one of those really dumb novelas in Spanish, but I didn’t say nothing. She’d gotten us plates—all scratched-up plastic—and made lemonade. It was real lemonade too, from lemons and sugar. A lot of sugar. It was sweet, too sweet for me. She’d made us each a glass while I was gone. I kind of wondered if she’d ever eaten a pizza before because she sort of seemed like she hadn’t. She was cutting it with a knife and fork at first. I told her how that took too long and I think she got embarrassed but since I didn’t make a big do out of it, pretended I was watching the show on TV, she picked her next slice up from the box with her hand like I did. She ate it like it was burning hot, like the littlest bites were how it had to be eaten, and she held the slice with both hands. Me, I was too hungry, but I controlled myself. I wanted to seem, you know, like, polite. I didn’t eat as fast as I wanted to. I even pretended I didn’t want to eat the last three pieces. I kept telling her to have them, they were hers, but she wouldn’t, so I went ahead and overate one more bite out of one and dropped it in the box.

  She picked up the plates and glasses. She washed our dishes and I dried them and she put them away. I told her it was fun to be doing this. She laughed. She laughed really good. She didn’t say and I didn’t have to ask that she didn’t want her parents to know I visited, let alone that we ate pizza in the apartment. When I walked the box to the trash cans in the back, I admit it, I ate one more slice before I threw it in.

  The TV was off when I got back. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to leave.

  “No, you can stay a little more,” she told me.

  She was so pretty, she was so fucking chula!

  “Can I tell you something?” she said.

  “Sure.” We were sitting on either end of their gold-colored couch, facing the dead green screen of the TV set. If you stared into it deep enough, you could see each of us sitting there on the curved couch, way away from each other. It made me think of how I could get closer to her.

  “You know what I wish?” She had a faraway face. “I wish my name were Cathy.”

  “Cathy?”

  “I hate my name,” she said.

  “I like Nica better,” I said.

  “I hate my name.”

  “Well, okay, so then I guess what you gotta do is dye your hair blond.”

  It wasn’t that she didn’t think I was joking. More that she didn’t seem to get it.

  “I don’t like my mom’s or dad’s or my brother’s names, not any of them.”

  “What’s wrong with theirs?”

  “You know, everybody who is Mexican is named María, like my mom.”

  I didn’t think that was exactly true but I didn’t think I could say anything. I know I hadn’t thought about this as much as she seemed to have.

  “I hate being Mexican sometimes,” she said.

  “Not much you can do about it now,” I said. Yeah, it surprised me what she was saying, made me laugh, though she was so serious. “You know, if you think about it, I don’t know. Who else can make tacos? Who else you gonna get nachos from? Nobody else loves jalapeños or green chile like we do.”

  “What’s green chile?” she asked.

  “You see what I mean? You’re not even that Mexican.” I guess I thought everybody ate green chile.

  She still didn’t seem to be getting me. “So what’s your dad’s name?” I asked.

  “Margarito,” she said, after a few seconds. She was watching the television like it was on, answering somebody on the screen, until she looked over at me. “Do you understand what I say? His is such a Mexican Mexican name.”

  “Uh, a little. But the thing is, he is Mexican, so there’s a good reason for it. You know, my mom tells about how gringos name their dogs, like Concha or Paco or Chuy. We had a neighbor whose shepherd was named Pedro. Understand what I’m saying? My dog was named Goofy. What if I named her Judy?” I was smiling right at her, hoping to make her laugh some, hoping my Spanish was good enough that it wasn’t too confusing. I might’ve laughed alone and to myself, but I cut myself off. “It’s probably your dad’s parents were Mexican, if you think about it, and they didn’t think about it. Didn’t maybe have many names to pick from that weren’t.” You could tell she didn’t seem to get any of my joking around too well.

  “Where’s your dog?” she asked. “You said you have a dog, but I never see him.”

  I wanted to ask her how she could if she never went out of her apartment but I thought I better not bring that subject up right then. “Yeah, I don’t know. They said that she’s. … nothing. They didn’t bring her to the apartment when we moved here.”

  “What’s your name?” she asked. There wasn’t that long a time between that last question and when she asked this.

  “My dog’s name?”

  “Yours.”

  “Ay, you don’t even know? And here I bought pizza.”

  “Of course I know … .”

  “You eat pizza with me but you don’t know my name? I didn’t think you were that kind of girl.”

  “Already you know what I mean. Your real name, your real first name in English.”

  “Sonny? That’s Spanish?”

  “Already you know what I am saying.”

  “Hey, you ever seen that movie where this actor Marlon Brando was Emiliano Zapata.”

  “Marlon Brando?” She got the syllables kind of right, but if she moved one or two this way or that, it wouldn’t have made any difference. Probably it was that her English wasn’t that good and she had to consider what I said. She was probably laughing but didn’t show it or something. “Your real name,” she repeated. “I wonder what your whole name is.”

  “So you never seen that movie?”

  “What movie?”

  “Viva Zapata!”

  She looked at me like I was still teasing.

  “Marlon Brando is American. I used to think it was crazy that Marlon Brando played Zapata.”

  She looked at me like she didn’t understand anything I was saying.

  “It’s a movie, he’s a man.”

  “Your name, tonto.”

  I started laughing. “You saying I’m an indio?” I said that in English.

  I think she thought I wasn’t talking in any language.

  “Everybody’s named after somebody,” I said in English.

  She was staring at me, not sure.

  “You still want to know my name,” I said in Spanish.

  She didn’t have to say yes.

  “My name Sonny.” I said the words like I just learned to say them in English. “You say Sonny, I’m here. Except you call me other names, I promise to come too, especially on babysitting night, and I carry pizza.”

  “I like American names a lot,” she finally said, giving up on trying to follow me.

  “I like yours. Nica’s a cool name.”

  “It’s from Veronica,” she said.

  “I like that too. That’s a cool name. But I don’t see how you can pull a Cathy out of it.”

  “I like American names, and Cathy is so American. It’s happy. You see? Like your name too. It’s a good, happy, American name.”

  “So should I call you Cathy from now on?”

  “I like the name Veronica,” she said. “It’s good too, don’t you think? And I like when you call me Nica.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I think it’s very cool. I’ve never known a Nica before you.”

  We heard noises which I thought were outside the front door, but she went to the bedroom to see how her brother was sleeping. When she got back, she kept looking around, being distracted. “They shouldn’t come home for hours yet,” she said.

  “But you’re worried about it. That’s okay. I’ll leave right now if you want.”

  She nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “I don’t want you to get into trouble.”

  “I never have any company. I like it.�
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  “Yeah,” I said. “Me too.” She was always here alone—with her parents and brother. I really didn’t think she went out of the apartment ever. “They’d be mad if they found out I was here?”

  “Probably my father.”

  She was so chula. Her eyes, the white of them, the black of them. Her eyelashes. Her eyebrows. Her nose. Her cheeks. Her lips. Her chin. Her neck. Each strand of her hair in place as alive as the ones that floated in the breeze while I stood at the open door, wishing I knew how to make her kiss.

  “Can we get pizza when we babysit?” she asked. “I don’t get to have pizza, and it was fun. Thank you.”

  “If you remember my name.”

  “Stop.”

  “You could call me Marlon Brando, because it’s more American. Or Pancho Villa, who you have to like, right? That’d be an all-right Mexican name, right?”

  She wasn’t listening to my words again.

  “They might not like it if they found out. And my father for sure wouldn’t let me go there if he knew.”

  “Your mom and dad will be at work then, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Then nobody’ll ever know except us.”

  There was no moon outside so I didn’t think anybody’d see me, all quiet except for the car fizz behind and in front and the electric buzz of a power box on the telephone pole above, and the TV over there, and even over there too, and in the building next door, and I could even hear a throbbing bass line not so far off, not the pumped-up car that passed by, its windows letting in and putting out, speakers aching. Up the stairs I wanted to listen in Cindy’s window for, like, a few seconds, but I was afraid Mr. Josep might come out and see me. Cindy’s husband was in there, that Tino, talking fast, and it could’ve been mad talk. I only wanted to hear a few sentences of his voice and maybe I could have stood there, but I went back down the stairs. Yeah, I got myself scared of the dude, scared of what would happen to me if he found out. I wished I could see what he looked like exactly because I was already inventing him. I combed his black hair back, with Tres Flores brilliantine. First I put a scar on his face, but that was Pink’s, I realized, so I took that away and saw acne digging up his cheeks. I had him wearing hard black shoes, too sharp at the toes, too polished. I had him in cheap shiny nightclub shirts with collars too floppy, the cuffs unbuttoned, the long sleeves sometimes rolled up. I tattooed him because he probably was in the navy. I didn’t like the way he looked or dressed and I didn’t like the fucker. I’d say it wasn’t possible for anyone to like him. I started seeing how I’d fight him if he came at me. I didn’t make him out to be much bigger than me if he was—he had to be small—but he was more experienced, because he was older and tough, mean, unafraid, especially of a kid like me. I’d just hit him anywhere I had to, cut loose, go crazy, hurt him! I’d bust the dude’s fucking nose and crack his ugly yellow teeth. He was a culo and I wasn’t going to back down. He was only a cheap drug dealer.

  It took me a few to slow myself back off. My eyes closed, my mind was swarmed by white gnats of light that kept me from sleeping. I was counting ten bright-green hundreds. I was feeling Cindy’s chichis. I was kissing Nica’s lips at her front door, and I was in love. I was defending myself from Tino, popping his face, busting him up, a knee in his mouth, kicking his jaw, uppercuts, loaded rights to his nose. I must not have heard Cloyd come in. He might have already been home and I didn’t know it. It was when my mom walked in that I heard the mutter of conversation and the speech getting faster. I didn’t want to know, didn’t want to hear it. On my back in the bed, I started to listen to Nica’s radio, on above me. I imagined her balled up asleep, a small American-made transistor radio near her pretty face. I was hearing my mom and him out there for too long. They were arguing, and I could make out words if I let myself, but I didn’t want to. I shut my eyes and went. Sound went into color and shape and I traveled up or down or wherever it was and I listened with other ears and saw with other eyes and the bright lights didn’t make me turn away but stare. I was traveling toward it and I felt good, like black air was water above me and around.

  “I don’t know,” Joe said. “If I were black, I wouldn’t want to be called a nigger. I’d jump all over anybody who’d call me that.”

  “But if they act mayate,” said Mike, “they’re gonna be treated like mayates.”

  This was because of these black dudes who were parked when we passed by them, waiting for someone. Their lowrider Impala was painted a purply blue, with silver glitter in it, a bright white interior, oversized dice dangling from the rearview, mohair around the steering wheel, chrome rims that hadn’t been washed in so long they looked like tin hubcaps. They were laughing and carrying on, giving us some shit about being Mexicans—about hair grease and farting beans. Two of them had rags on their head, like they themselves weren’t the cartoon characters.

  “Still, probably people shouldn’t be calling them niggers,” said Joe.

  “They’re acting like it,” Mike said, “and they were calling us names first. Like it’s us.”

  “Maybe it’s just us, me and you,” said Joe, “because we’re twins.”

  Because the black dudes started it by laughing about the way they dressed.

  “No,” said Mike.

  “We get teased all the time,” Joe told me.

  “They were calling us Mexicans, dude!” said Mike.

  Joe smiled at his brother. “We are Mexicans.”

  “Yeah, but we aren’t Mexicans. I hate it when they’re throwing it like it’s a bad word, like it’s a pendejada.”

  “He’s right about that,” said Joe.

  “Our grandparents were born here too,” said Mike. “We’re living in their house still.”

  “That’s true,” said Joe. “We should tell them to go back to Mississippi and get off our land and leave us alone.”

  “The gringos too,” said Mike, pissed off now about everything. “They’re the ones who are the inmigrantes, not us. They crossed our northern border. We were here already, just not picking cotton.”

  “Sometimes our old man talks like that,” Joe explained. “That they couldn’t be happy enough with all they get—we give them a chair at our table, offer some tacos, but they start shooting too much tequila and want the whole house.”

  “He’s right too,” said Mike. “It’s true. Isn’t it true? Our family has been living here before people heard of the English language.”

  “Our grandfather was a carpenter,” said Joe. “He built a lot of our house.”

  “But he had to work as a laborer,” Mike said.

  “He worked for the union,” Joe said, “and he always had a job, and he was always working.”

  “Yeah dude!” said Mike. “He built all the freeways.”

  “We got brothers who do construction too,” said Joe. “We’re going to be the first ones to go to college.”

  “That’s what our family says,” said Mike.

  “They’ve been telling us that forever,” Joe explained to me. “Our family thinks we’re smarties—”

  “Smart-asses,” Mike interrupted.

  “—just ’cause we get good grades.”

  I checked out the Los Flores sign in the light of the day. I’d splattered a little in like two places, but it was no big deal, couldn’t be. My mom was standing in the living room with a couple of department store bags, on the phone. But she was weird too. It was in the air. Sometimes I’d be able to pick up on it, and I could tell something was up. That Bud from #7 was standing at the Cloyd’s office door, facing forward, but he turned when he saw it was me.

  “I didn’t know they had a baby,” I said to my mom, once I was past them. She looked at me like I was nuts but didn’t explain.

  She went into their bedroom. I wasn’t going to follow her at first.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Entonces?” She acted like it was me. Maybe that I was at the door of their bedroom. She
’d bought clothes. She’d bought a blouse and a skirt and she was trying each one against different others in the closet.

  “So did he like that I finished the painting?”

  She didn’t act like she knew what I was talking about.

  “The flowers sign outside, remember? I painted it.”

  “You did?”

  “Remember? You said he thought I wouldn’t. We were just talking about it, remember?”

  “Good,” she said, distracted. “Good.”

  “I guess he must not have said anything to you then.”

  “Must not have,” she said. She was studying a particular combination in a long mirror, holding them against her.

  “I was wondering if he said anything. Wondering if he was gonna pay me.”

  “Don’t bring it up with him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m asking you not to.”

  “But why?”

  “Because I’m asking, okay, m’ijo?”

  I didn’t want to talk about food money to her—she’d stopped giving it to me. I never ate with them, so what’d she think? But I’d never talked to her about money before. I felt like taking some from her right then, though. That’s how I could get it. And now I knew where that envelope of hundreds was.

  I turned around and headed toward that bedroom I slept in. Bud was by the refrigerator getting out a beer as I passed. “Wanna a cold one?” he asked.

  Cloyd heard him from his office. “Yeah, get him a beer too!”

  “Nah, it’s all right,” I told Bud. Bud was even bigger than you’d think at first. Solid, as wide as a wall, muscles squeezing out in it and all over his arms. He was wearing a T-shirt, and he’d been sweating in it.

  “Hey, come in here for a second,” Cloyd yelled.

  I didn’t want to. He was drunk. You could see liquor squirting around in the veins of his eyes.

  “Did Pink sell a car to those colored yesterday?”

  What’d he say, colored? Qué cabrón, como anda. “I dunno what you’re talking,” I said. Bud came from behind me and handed him a bottle of beer.

  “You could have one, you know,” Cloyd told me.