The Flowers

by Dagoberto Gilb

  He jumped in on the passenger’s side, his white teeth even whiter than his skin. “Oh, yeah, it is a beautiful night, little brother. A beautiful, beautiful night.”

  I was sure he was right.

  “Ain’t it so, ain’t it?”

  It was hard not to feel better because of him. I nodded.

  “And what’re you doing out here, my little brother?”

  “Sitting.” I smiled. Made myself smile.

  “You are sitting, aren’t you?”

  I nodded again.

  “So you like your car here, don’t you? I knew you would. You been driving it?”

  “I can’t drive it. Like I said before, I don’t even got a license.”

  “Oh come on! You been driving it, ain’t you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “All right then,” he said. “All right, that’s all right.”

  “They’d both pop if I did,” I said. “My mom and Cloyd.”

  “All right, yeah, I understand.” He sounded calmer, made a shift with what seemed like his body. “We all partnered up still, you know, about your stepdaddy.”

  “To be honest,” I said, “I’m still not really sure. It’s that I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

  “Ain’t no nothing, no big nothing. Like I told you. You just keep me up on things, keep your eyes and your ears open. You keep me up on your stepdaddy.”

  “What, though? I mean, keep you up on what?”

  “Nothing, nothing. You know. If you hear something, if you see something.”

  “Did he say anything?” she asked me. She stank of cigarettes and cocktails.

  “About what?”

  “He’s still gone,” she said, talking as her eyes roamed. “He didn’t come back. I don’t know what I’m thinking.” Her body sighed all over. She plopped down onto that special favorite leather chair of his and she was taking off her high heels. They were bright blue, color coordinated with the baby-blue dress she wore. “I am so happy I got here first.”

  I sat on the sofa, not sure what next. “You like that owl?”

  She looked at it. “No,” she said. She looked at it longer, then she laughed. I listened to her laughter. “I guess I never thought about the owl. No, I don’t like it, no. Tú no te gusta tampoco, you don’t either, do you?”

  I shook my head no, but not hard. I meant my question.

  She was laughing. She laughed too much because she was drunk. She took off her earrings sloppy and tossed them on the coffee table in front of me. She rubbed her feet. “Why are you asking me that?”

  “It’s that it’s kind of cool and I never seen an owl before this one, so I don’t hate it. I hate the fish up there, and I don’t like these duck lamps for real, even if what I think is how lots of people maybe would like it all. But that owl—well, I think I don’t hate it but not how the Cloyd loves it, you know?”

  “Ay, m’ijo!”

  I shrugged. “I always call him that.”

  She laughed. “Ay, m’ijo, we moved away, didn’t we?”

  She wasn’t wanting me to answer.

  “He stares,” she said. “He’s like knowing what we do, isn’t he?”

  “Or she.”

  “What?” she said.

  “It could be a she. Neither of us knows what’s a male or female owl.”

  She laughed, too drunk again, and rubbed her feet. “Like an abuela! But abuelita no puede decir o hacer nada, can she?”

  “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  “Of course, yes. Are you, m’ijito?”

  “I miss Goofy.”

  She put a finger to her lips.

  I nodded. “Bon soir.”

  “Angelito’s asleep,” she whispered, shaking her head in a good way, smiling, “but if we’re calm, we can talk.”

  “Toujours,” I said. “I’m always calm, n’est-ce pas?”

  She looked at me like I was making it up.

  “I said, ‘I’m always calm, right?’” I said right too loud.

  She shushed me again, but she was still smiling. Talk French, make a smile. She was happy to see me. And then she took my hand, and she sat us on the couch. Some really dumb Mexican variety show was on TV. A woman in a nurse uniform swatted at the bedridden old man’s hand grabbing at her butt when his ugly red-haired wife wasn’t looking, the laugh track volume up high.

  “You’re not watching this, are you?” I asked.

  She didn’t care what I said. “I have a job to babysit,” she whispered.

  “You already do that.”

  “No, you clown. Over there.”

  “Yeah? That’s real cool. You’re going to be rich.”

  “You can come over. With me.” She was smiling like she was talking French.

  “Of course. With pizza!”

  She was a little girl in a white chiffon dress and black shoes and a pink ribbon. “But you do not tell!” She was a little girl.

  “No, not possible.”

  “They can’t know.”

  I wasn’t sure which they she was talking about. I was feeling confused. I don’t think I could get anything straight. Maybe something was wrong with me. Because I didn’t understand. For example, why would I get to be there, in #7, just down the walkway, but not here, in #4, where I was anyways? And who would be watching Angel if nobody else could? I didn’t ask questions, I couldn’t. “But I don’t think,” I decided to say, “those people, Bud and Mary, have a child.”

  Really, I was sure they didn’t. I was kind of sure she didn’t know, but then it didn’t matter if she didn’t or her father didn’t. She was always in this apartment. Even if she only got five minutes over there, it was better.

  We were still sitting in front of the TV light and the noise, and it’s what I wished for every day. Another program: a man holding a weeping woman. She was wailing so hard her hair shook. Nica shook her head and turned it down.

  Instead, she talked, happy. Nica told me that in her pueblo above Xalapa, that big city below, their home was painted blue and yellow, and she loved the red flowers that grew against the walls. The fog rolled up to her and, since she lived on a mountain, sometimes she would stand in a cloud that lowered from the sky. She stayed with her cousins there. She missed going out and playing.

  “Playing?” I asked.

  Her eyes would never see into mine. As though to look straight at me was wrong. As her lips moved, I didn’t see curve in them, only sharp-cut lines. Her nose too, they weren’t for breathing, they were for someone to draw. She wasn’t real. She couldn’t be real.

  Nica’s mother was from Veracruz, from a big family. Her mother was the first girl in her family. She loved her mom. She still loved her mom. Her father? Her father she didn’t know. This man, the man here, Margarito, he was not her natural father. He married her mother. He said he was from Mexico, the capital. Angel Fidencio was their child. She loved her baby brother Angel, she really did. She loved taking care of Angel. She said everything was fine. She said she liked living here in the apartment. Her mom had work, her stepdad Margarito worked, and it was good for everyone that she was here to watch Angel while they did. She hoped they didn’t have another baby. She hoped that things would change eventually. It was not the first place she lived with them. It was different when they were alone, her mom and her, when they came across. Yes, she loved to listen to her radio. When Angel was asleep and he was next to her, she could listen to it. He liked it too when she was next to him and he was awake or asleep.

  The commercials were full of action and she was watching the TV, but it seemed like she was more near me, she was moving closer. Her hands could almost touch me again. The TV had a broken purple color in it, and her hands weren’t real in the strange light. I wanted to kiss the not-real hands. I wanted to go to the not-real place with colors I didn’t know. Like the world away from this city, if there was no smog, like where she grew up. Or if we were kissing and we were there, that black-and-white I knew. I was shaky, and I was happy. I was so happ
y I was next to her but I was also afraid to stay and didn’t know where to go. Where was I going to hide that money? I was sad. I was fear and sadness except where I saw a glow on her, like in a saint’s painting. The glow didn’t come out of her but gathered around her, collected around her, came off her—or it was a light behind her that she was blocking, and its too-bright light was on the other side of her face, and so the fuzz was a circle around her.

  She was happy that I was sitting with her too. She liked it that I was there! Still, I jumped up. “I better go,” I said suddenly. I needed to go. “It’s pretty late.” She sagged, her body deep into the couch. I couldn’t see what it was in her eyes, not directly anyway, because they didn’t look into mine. “I don’t want you to get in trouble with your family.”

  She didn’t move.

  “I’m bringing the pizza, and we’ll have it over there.”

  “I want you to be there when I am,” she said softly.

  “I do too. I don’t want to go now either, not really. I don’t. I just better.”

  “I wouldn’t say nothing,” said Joe. “So what if the baby’s a kitty-cat.”

  “A él, le gusta más la otra kitty-kitty,” said Mike.

  “Shut up,” I said. “Don’t say it, don’t say shit or anything like it.”

  “Her dad probably didn’t know she was talking about a cat,” said Joe.

  They kept a distance as we walked.

  “I think you’re in a bad mood,” said Mike.

  The pervert cruised past us slowly. It was like he never washed his car or changed his shirt. Both were kind of red but with so much dirt they could be called as brown as his stiff bristly hair.

  Joe said, “It can’t be the same dude, it can’t.”

  Mike said, “It’s the same dude.”

  We saw him turn around way up there.

  I’d picked up a rock. It was a big one, baseball size and heavier. It was a good rock.

  Joe said, “We should do something to him.”

  Mike said, “We should fuck him up.”

  “You could anyway,” Joe said to me, “but we’d help you out.”

  “We couldn’t help him out,” said Mike. “We wouldn’t know how.”

  “Yeah,” said Joe, “we’re fucking pussies.” As he said this, he about tripped over his brother.

  “That’s not the same,” Mike told him in a whisper. “He’s not gonna get mad about that.”

  I smiled. I wasn’t smiling because I wanted to laugh, just everything they did made me want to smile like a French word. And I wanted to smile. When the sickie came toward us, now from the other direction, I could see his insect eyes behind his glasses. I think he thought one or all of us was in the game. I got a little closer to the curb and he steered his four-door closer. When he got near enough, I stepped out on the street and threw the rock as hard as I could at his face. It cracked against the windshield—a break but not the explosion I was wanting—and the rock ricocheted off. He hit his brakes, and when he did the twins stopped walking and ran. The twins didn’t see I had the rock until I threw it. I was in the street, looking for another rock, and when the sickie realized, he pounced on the gas—not to hit me—and made a big curve around me. The twins were running over the railroad tracks and were across the other street, holding their books like girls squeezing their arms against a tight sweater. They were not good runners either, and they didn’t look too good running. They did not hear me yelling at them. The twins always made me smile, no matter what, like French. It made me smile to see that sickie dude driving away hard.

  After school, I’d rolled a 229, the score I wanted against that windshield. It was my highest score for a while, and I was walking strong. I was feeling lots better about myself. I was proud of my power inside and my aim, my roll. My shot. I wished I didn’t take that money. In another way I was like, well, not sorry. Then again, I couldn’t be. Then again, it didn’t matter, it was done.

  On our way back, avoiding the hijo de su madre puddles and globs of slime or maybe grease or none-of-us-wanna-know, while it seemed to me our shoes were only digging into an island of ugly gravel rocks on either side of the railroad tracks that made the crunchy noises at our feet, the twins kept going how we weren’t just walking in what was once upon a time the ocean, we were cracking the crust of ancient earth, crushing shells of cellular lobsters. Our feet were like maracas, a stepping jungle music, and we were doing a cumbia that had to be heard with a brain. That’s what these guys told me, and they got straight As, so I couldn’t say nothing much. My own theory was that maybe they were smoking the mota.

  “Hey, so, what is it like?” Mike asked, almost shy. His brother got closer too.

  “Like getting high, fucker. Whadaya think?”

  “Ay, vato,” said Mike. “Honest, come on. I mean, is it like beer, or whiskey, or es como tequila?”

  “Those are nothing,” said Joe.

  “Cálmate,” said Mike, shaking his head. “You always exaggerate, cabrón.”

  “No siempre,” said Joe, soft. “A little, nada más sometimes.”

  “I guess it’s like being inside her,” I said after a few seconds, trying to be serious, “except all the time.” It’s what I could think of.

  Both of them made groaning noises.

  “It’s that it’s the only time I smoke is when I’m with her.”

  They both made more noises and stuck their tongues out like they were having a spaz attack.

  “He’s no Catholic,” Joe told Mike finally.

  “Not gonna be a priest anyway,” said Mike.

  “Dude, you’re our pre-Conquest warrior hero,” Joe said.

  “Un indio que toma el polvo de las uñas de águila, and the heavenly white moon is shining down on your beautiful maiden’s bigass chichis y nalgas.”

  “La blondie Azteca!” said Mike.

  “When I’m on the bed at night,” I said, “I do hear shit.”

  “Stop snorting eagle nail powder, dude,” said Joe.

  Mike started making sounds like we were in outer space.

  “That’s not the music, vato,” Joe told him.

  “I’m Catholic. What the fuck do I know about my pre-Spanish, pre-Columbian musical heritage?” said Mike.

  “It’s there, hermanito, in your cells,” said Joe.

  “It’s in your skin color and on the bones of your nose,” said Mike.

  “Your nostrils don’t look exactly Swedish,” said Joe.

  The route was our regular now because of me, and the twins were cool with that because they were into busting malt liquor bottles and pickle and peanut butter jars—this one of mole sauce didn’t bust, and we cracked up about how tough Mexicans were—against the iron rails. We hadn’t seen the sickie since that last time. He was there though, lurking. I was definitely planning to bomb the fucker with fat rocas, dent the shit out of his stink ride. I juggled my favorite monster rock between my hands, back and forth, ready: big as a softball, hard as a shotput. Every day I expected it to be his day to get to know the real deeper me better. I left this one rock where I could carry it in the morning, then I’d leave it at the other end to pick up on the way home. I wanted muscles flexing with each hand-to-hand toss, my blood to run so quick inside me it’d come squealing into my ears, the rushing wind in a conch shell. It made me feel like I was gliding and getting lighter, floating, a bubble coming up fast from below.

  I skipped Alley Cats to get to The Flowers early because, the night before, Cindy looked her dirty way at me and was going how she was really lonely, so I was all Oh yeah, I’ll come up, why not? I was getting in an y qué? and also an y por qué no? mood lately a lot, seemed like. I was going like, yeah, that’s right, yeah, I don’ care you like it or you don’. Fuck her candy-sales husband. Nobody was around in the afternoons, so it wasn’t like I had to watch how I said what.

  An ambulance was way up in the driveway already, the back loaded with Mr. Josep’s wife, and there were even neighborhood strangers around, setting
up sodas and chips, like it was a TV set. My mom was near—glossed and sparkling, ready to be gone, going wherever she’d go to—and Cindy was at the top of the stairs, and Mr. Josep was coming out of his apartment door. Bud, a construction site stuck all over his workboots and jeans and T-shirt and face and arms and hair, was below too, eating a white-bread sandwich that sometimes would hang on his lips, which made it seem like he was distracted about something else. Maybe he really was only around for his lunch break, late. My mom hustled up the stairs to steady Mr. Josep down, and he accepted her arm. They were talking in Spanish, and I swear that made Bud growl out loud. He held his position like he had a memorized speech ready. Mr. Josep was dressed as neatly as every day, slacks ironed, shoes polished, a vest buttoned, his silver hair combed like an old important politician. He bent down to get in the back with one of the emergency workers, but like he was weak and sick, and then the ambulance whined in reverse and turned onto the street, rushing forward with a siren running.

  “How bad is Mrs. Josep?” I asked.

  “Her last name’s not Josep,” my mom said, ticked I was so dumb. “They told me she didn’t look good. They weren’t hopeful.”

  “They weren’t married?” I asked her.

  “Sonny, Josep is not a last name. It’s his first.”

  “Really?”

  “Poor man, este pobre viejito. He is upset.”

  Cindy turned back into her apartment. It was as though I was the only one who ever saw her standing there, because nobody else looked at her, and she didn’t look at or say anything to anybody either.

  Bud stepped up into my mom’s face, though more like he was holding out on what he really had to say. “So, you’re saying you didn’t see him?” It might have been the subject he wanted, but it wasn’t what he wanted to talk about.

  “No, Bud, please,” my mom said. “Please don’t raise your voice.”

  “I swear to God I saw him.”

  “I just don’t know, Bud.”

  “He don’t answer the door, even though I know he’s in there.”