“No worse than last year,” César says as he shows me his report card, a line of Ds marching straight down the page. He laughs as he puts the paper away, but it’s a quick laugh, not like the one he gave last year when he asked Teacher if her typewriter key had gotten jammed. He tries to act the same as before the accident, but it never works. It’s like he’s trying too hard to be himself. He wears his helmet tilted back on his head like a baseball cap, and all I can see is the bullet still inside his skull, messing up the insides and covering up the part of his brain that made him who he was. He’s having another operation to remove the bullet next week and I keep hoping that when it’s gone, my friend will finally come back.
There’s a new girl in our class named Graciela and on her first day she smiled through every lesson and never said a word. She’s got a pretty smile. She just moved here from Colombia and she’s the darkest girl in our class. And just like Luz, she’s always reading. Even in the middle of class she has a book open on her lap. And she always has that smile on her face, even when she’s not looking at anyone. Last year I woulda probably asked her out, or at least sat next to her at lunch or on the bus, but now I don’t have time for that type of kid stuff.
Besides, I usually try to save a seat for Marco during lunch, even though he has new friends from Regular Ed and he usually eats with them. Sometimes he asks me to sit with them, but none of those kids speak Spanish and they all bring their lunch from home and make fun of anyone who eats the cafeteria food. Like we have a choice. I try not to blame Marco ’cause I know it’s not his fault he’s smart and had to move into Regular Ed, but lately I feel like everybody else is moving forward and I’m the only one standing still.
After she gives us our report cards Mrs. Reed tells us about a new assignment we’re spending the rest of the year working on. She tells us we’re each gonna make a book of our favorite poems, with a cover and page numbers so they look like real books. Then she says we’re gonna have to work on it outside of school, too, at the public library or whatever, since our school library is only open a few times a week and doesn’t let us check out any books. When the bell goes off I try to sneak out of the classroom, but she calls me over to her desk. She stares at me over her glasses like I got something she wants.
“So?” Mrs. Reed leans forward.
“So what?”
“What do you think about the assignment? The poetry book?”
I shrug.
“I was hoping for more enthusiasm than that. If you do well on this it can really turn your grades around.”
“Okay.”
She takes off her glasses. “You do want to pass the fifth grade, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you should be thanking me. I came up with this assignment for you, Cristo. I thought it would be something you could work on in your own time.”
Fuck if I know what she means by that. I don’t really own anything.
“I expect a lot from you with this project. I hope you don’t let me down.”
Thanks. No pressure.
After class I see Graciela in front of her locker and when I say hi I guess I startle her because she drops all her books onto the ground. I kneel down to help her pick them up and when I hand them to her she pushes one at me. “You should keep that one, I already read it like ten times.”
“No, thanks. I’m good.”
“But you haven’t even looked at the title.”
I look down and pretend I’m reading the title. “No, I’ve read this already.”
“Really? I didn’t think any boy would read it.”
“I don’t want your damn book.” I shove it into her arms.
“Fine, you don’t have to yell.” She walks away from me, holding her books with both arms like how Trini holds her teddy bear.
I run to catch up to her. “Look, I’m sorry. I just don’t like reading books. In Spanish I’m okay, but in English…I’m not that good.”
My heart is pounding like I just ran five blocks.
“I could help you, if you wanted. I taught my brother how to read and he’s only five.”
“I know how to read. I just don’t have time…to practice or whatever. To read a whole book, you know?”
Her eyes are wide when she looks at me.
“How do you expect to get better if you don’t practice?”
I jam my hands into my pockets. “I read other things.”
“Like what?”
“Signs, movie posters, ads on the sides of buses. Candy wrappers.” I look at my feet, realizing how crazy this must sound.
“How about menus?” she asks.
I look up to see if she’s just messing with me. Nope, she’s serious.
“Sure,” I say. “But not at Chinese restaurants.”
She laughs and I can feel my face get hot.
“I can see why you drive the teacher crazy.”
“Yeah, well…it’s a tough job, but somebody’s gotta do it.”
“I think the teacher’s got the toughest job,” Graciela says. “She has to stand alone in front of a room full of kids every day and try to sound smart. And stay calm. I could never do that.”
I never thought of it that way before, that teachers have to try to do something. I just thought it was something they are.
“Don’t you think it’s easy for some of them? Like getting up to dance.”
“Even dancing is work,” she says. “It takes time to learn all those steps. And practice.”
“Okay, okay, I get it.” I can’t stop myself from smiling. “It’s all about practice.”
She hides her smile in the top of her books. “If you say so,” she says, finally turning to leave.
The stairwell is empty by now and I watch her climb the steps two at a time. When a book drops from the stack in her arms, she doesn’t stop or bend down to pick it up. She looks at me near the top of the staircase, making sure I saw it, and then disappears around the bend.
I walk over and pick up the book. The House on Mango Street. I tuck it under my arm, like I dropped it myself, and head back to my locker. It’s the first book I ever wanted to bring home.
César calls me at Kim’s house the night before he’s scheduled to go into the hospital for surgery. His voice is so low I can hardly hear him.
“You busy?” he whispers into the phone.
I put down the book from Graciela I was trying to read. “Just watching TV.” No point having him laugh at me too.
“Can you come out?”
“Now? It’s ten o’clock.”
Luz lifts her eyes from her book to look at me.
“I thought you don’t have a curfew,” César says.
“I don’t.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Nothing. I’ll meet you at Anthony’s in five.”
I hang up the phone and grab my sweatshirt off the floor. Luz doesn’t say anything. Then she picks up the remote and turns up the volume on the TV, covering up the sound of the door closing as I sneak out the front. It’s cold for the end of October and there’s already a bunch of leaves on the ground. I zip up my sweatshirt and tuck my hands into the sleeves, wishing I had a winter coat.
When I get to Anthony’s, César is waiting for me in the parking lot, sucking on a lollipop. He’s wearing a fleece pullover and a blue ski hat with the New England Patriots logo on it, but he still looks cold. He pulls another lollipop out of his pocket and hands it to me.
“Here. They only had grape.”
“Grape’s good.” I tear off the wrapper and shove the lollipop in my mouth. It takes me a while to taste the flavor, my mouth warming up slow like tap water.
“So what’s up?”
He shrugs. “Nothing.” He pulls at his hat, stretching the folded rim to cover the awkward shape of his helmet. I’m actually surprised to see him wearing it.
“You wanna walk around the block?”
I figure maybe I’ll warm up if we keep moving. César shrugs, then follow
s me down Manton. Sections of the sidewalk are torn up so we walk down the middle of the street like we’re part of the traffic. Like we can stand up against a two-ton car.
“You worried about tomorrow?”
“Nah. I’ll sleep through most of the bad parts.”
“Plus you get to miss school. That alone should make it worth it.”
“Yeah.” César tries to smile.
A car speeding up the hill has to slam on the brakes when it finally sees us. We step to the side slowly, as the driver blasts the horn and waves her arms from behind the wheel. I drop my head and give her the finger as she drives away.
Once we’re walking again César says, “They said I could lose the eye, though. Or I could keep the eye but lose my eyesight completely. I could be blind.”
“Or you could get it all back. Get rid of those damn headaches and stupid seizures and stop having to take all them pills. You gotta look on the bright side, kid.”
After pissing off another car, we end up cutting down a side street, one of the few that has working streetlights. The bulbs are almost burned out and they cast a spooky glow over the empty street.
In the half-dark I hear him say, “I don’t want to die, Cristo.”
I knock him in the arm. “What the fuck are you talking about? You’re not gonna die.”
“But I could. The doctors said there’s like a twenty-percent chance. I heard them tell my grandmother last week.” He stops walking and turns to me.
“Fuck twenty percent. It’s not gonna happen.”
“But it could.” He sounds like he’s about to cry. “Last time it almost did.”
I grab him by the shoulders. “Listen. You’re not going to die. You’re a little kid, you got your whole life ahead of you.” I loosen my grip but keep my hands on him, holding him up. “If that bullet wanted your life it would have taken it back in June. You beat it then and you’re going to beat it now, okay? You gotta believe that.”
He looks at me for a long time.
“Promise me,” he says.
I drop my head. “Come on, César.”
“Promise me.”
“I’m not God.” I look him in the good eye. “I’m not even your doctor.”
He looks at me, both eyes steady and unblinking, and doesn’t say a word.
“I promise,” I finally say.
He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. I let go of him, and he falls back into the telephone pole, letting it catch him. Tears fall down his cheeks and he wipes them away without opening his eyes.
Neither one of us talks during the walk back to Anthony’s. I tell César to wait outside while I run into the store for a minute, wishing I had time to go to a real store in the mall instead of this broke-down drugstore in Olneyville. I find the sunglasses rack near the checkout counter and try a bunch on, looking at myself in the plastic mirror that’s no bigger than a deck of cards. I see the pair I want out of the corner of my eye, gold rims with big, round lenses dark enough to cover a flashlight, but I don’t try them on. Instead, I look at the cheap plastic ones, pretending that I’m deciding on the color. I slip the gold pair into the sleeve of my sweatshirt with my left hand, and pick up a bright pink pair with my right and put them on.
“Hey, what do you think?” I ask the lady at the counter.
“I don’t think that’s your color,” she says. “Kinda girlie.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I guess you don’t have what I’m looking for.” And then I take the pink ones off in front of her and put them neatly back on the rack. I say good night and walk out of the store.
Once I’m on the sidewalk, I reach into my sleeve and pull out the gold sunglasses. I rip off the tag and hand the glasses to César. “Here, a good luck present. Either way you’re going to have a big old bandage and one hell of a black eye.”
“Gracias,” he says, slipping the glasses onto his small face. They cover his eyes completely, from his eyebrows to the tops of his cheeks, and make him look even younger than he is. He takes them off and puts them in his pocket. “Thanks,” he says again, punching me softly in the shoulder.
“De nada.”
“Hey kid, come here a minute.”
A loud, rough voice calls out from the street. A white guy with a scruffy beard and a long, blond ponytail waves me over from the passenger side of a parked car. I look around, but the only other person on the street is an old lady folding newspaper from a broken recycling bin.
“What, you don’t remember me?” He drops his sunglasses so I can see him better. “You brought me a package last week, on Atwells. You were right on time, too, as reliable as the fucking post office.”
“Sure, I remember now.” A late-night delivery for Snowman. I walk a few steps toward the car, a two-door Pontiac that looks older than I am. The color is a faded black, like it was spray-painted on. “How’s it going?”
“Well that depends on you, and on your answer to my next question. You working tonight?”
“No.” I nod toward César. “I’m with a friend.”
“I’d make it worth your while.” He rubs his fingertips together, yellow from smoke.
I step up to the window. “What you need?”
He lifts a pizza box from his lap. “Take this to the address on this card.” He hands me a business card. “Memorize the address and then burn the card. When you go inside, ask for a guy named Pincher. You think you can do that?”
“You want me to deliver a pizza?”
He laughs. “The pizza’s gone. But you can buy another one with the twenty bucks I’ll give you.”
“Twenty bucks to deliver an empty pizza box?”
He winks. “I never said it was empty.”
“Oh.” I look back at César, who’s still messing with his hat. “Well…”
“You interested or not?” the guy says, pulling a crumpled twenty out of his front pocket. “We don’t have time to wait around.”
“Forget about it,” the driver says, starting the car. “We shouldn’t give this shit to a kid, Charley.”
“What are you talking about, that’s the beauty of it,” Charley says, like I’m not even standing there. “They don’t mess with kids.”
A passing bus lights up the inside of the car. The driver squints. “So why should we?” He bites his fingernails, spitting them onto the floor of the car. Something about him looks familiar.
“Come on, Jimmy,” Charley shrugs. “Snowman trusts him.”
“Oh, Christ.” Jimmy slaps the steering wheel. “You treat that guy like he’s the fucking Dalai Lama.”
“Okay, I’ll do it,” I say quickly, hoping to stop their argument before it becomes a fight.
Charley smiles, first at me, and then at Jimmy. He’s missing one of his front teeth, and the rest look like they could fall out if he sneezed too hard. Jimmy pulls the hood of his sweatshirt over his buzzed head and goes back to biting his nails. Charley turns back to me, his smile fading. He tucks the twenty into the front pocket of my jeans and pulls me against the car in one motion.
“I’m calling over there in forty-five minutes, and if they don’t have it by then I’m coming back here to find you. It shouldn’t be too hard to find a green-eyed Spanish kid with an Afro, now should it. But I hope it doesn’t come to that.”
He pulls me closer for a quick second, and then pushes me away from the car. I stumble, but I don’t let myself fall. My heart is beating so fast I can hear it in my ears, but I try to stay calm. He hands me the pizza box, which is so heavy on one side I almost drop it.
“Use two hands,” he says. “And don’t open it. I’ll know if you do.” Charley drops low in his seat to light a cigarette. “One more thing: don’t say anything to Snowman about this, okay? No point making him jealous.” He laughs hard, the cigarette hanging out of his mouth like a walrus tooth.
They drive away, leaving me standing there like I just had a pizza delivered to the sidewalk. I hold the box still, trying not to tempt myself by shaking it. I’m kinda
curious, but then I remember rule #1: Don’t ask questions. That way you won’t have to lie if you ever get busted. One of the first things Snowman ever taught me.
César walks up to me, shaking his helmeted head. “Man, I don’t know how you do it. You’re always in the right place at the right time.”
“It’s not what you think,” I say. “I’ve got to bring this home.”
“Come on, just give me one slice.” César reaches for the box.
“No, I’m serious. I gotta go.” I back away from him. “I’ll see you later, okay?”
César zips up his fleece, covering his freckled face. “You’re coming, right?” he calls after me. “To the hospital?”
“Of course,” I say. “I’ll be the first face you see.”
“You better.” César pulls down his hat to cover the helmet. Then he takes off in the other direction. He runs quickly down the street, like he’s memorized every bump and curve on Manton Avenue, every pothole, every piece of garbage, and has no fear of taking the wrong step, no fear of falling.
He runs like a boy who can see in the dark.
Miss Valentín
If every woman who wanted to get pregnant had to go through foster care classes first, the human race would come to an end. Not because the classes are hard, or boring, or even especially time-consuming—the problem is that they are thorough: incredibly, horrifyingly, overwhelmingly thorough. When I realize what it means to really parent someone, how all encompassing it will be, how much kids need (and how many things can go wrong), it’s enough to make me want to give up right there. And maybe that’s their plan. Like law schools, they’re actually trying to get a third of us to quit in the first semester.
This Side of Providence Page 16
