This Side of Providence

by Rachel M. Harper

  “It’s like a virus. It came back.”

  “Why didn’t you fight harder?”

  She opens her mouth but nothing comes out. She shakes her head. “I did,” she finally says. “I thought I did.”

  We’re eye level now, and we stare at each other for a long time. It’s hard to look at her this close up, but harder to look away.

  “Do you have to start all over again now, with those twelve steps?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “I’m back at one.”

  Her eyes are all puffy and red, and her face looks baggy, like when all the air leaks out of a balloon. She looks like she needs to sleep for a very long time.

  “You know what they never tell us at school, when they say all that stuff about not doing drugs? They never say why anyone does it in the first place. If it’s so bad for you, why did you ever start?”

  She takes a step back, sitting down on the edge of the couch. “I hope you never know the answer to that question.” She re-ties her hair in a ponytail, stalling for time. “I guess the truth is that sometimes bad things feel good. Like having sex without a rubber. But if you never do it, you won’t know what you’re missing.” When I look away she says, “I’m serious. Maybe you’re too young to hear that, but I’m not gonna lie to you about something this important.” She leans closer to me and locks her eyes with mine. “Most kids whose parents tell them not to do drugs, they’re talking out their ass ’cause they’ve never done anything stronger than Tylenol. But I’m telling you now: don’t do it. It’s out there and it’s going to tempt you, but if you don’t mess with it, you’ll never know what you’re missing.”

  Fifteen minutes later my backpack is filled with clothes and I’m ready to go. I tell her I’ll be back later for the rest of my things. She’s still on the couch, lying down now, and still in her pajama bottoms. My hand is on the doorknob, smooth and cold as ice.

  “You can come back anytime,” she says, her voice low and sleepy. “It’s your home, too. You know that. You’re always welcome here.”

  I nod, trying not to think or feel too hard, just knowing I need to go. I’m about to leave without giving her a kiss or a hug but something makes me walk over and kiss her good-bye. She sits up and leans into the kiss, pushing her hollow cheek into my lips. Then she grabs my free arm and pulls herself up. Next thing I know she’s hugging me, both arms crossed behind my back. She’s holding me as tight as she can, but it still feels like I could slip from her grasp.

  When she finally lets go she holds my face in both of her hands. She plants a hard kiss on my forehead. When I look up, she’s smiling at me.

  “My handsome boy,” she says. “You’re going to break a lot of hearts, kid. I know that as well as I know my name.”

  I pull away from her, feeling hot now, needing fresh air. “I’ll see you later, Mami.”

  “Wait.” She licks her thumb and rubs it across my forehead. “Lipstick,” she says.

  “Thanks.”

  She nods, tears streaming down her face. She brushes them aside, but new ones keep falling. When I close the door she’s waving at me, her hand as pale and thin as a tortilla. I look back into the apartment from the porch, watching her through the window. You wouldn’t know to look at her, or this house, that anything bad has ever happened inside. She stands in the middle of the room, both arms wrapped around her thin shoulders, hugging herself.

  I reach for the door, suddenly wanting to go back in, to touch her one more time, but it locks behind me. When I look back through the window, she’s gone.

  It takes ten minutes of steady knocking to get Snowman to open the door. Lines of shaving cream streak his face like war paint and a towel hangs around his neck. He’s holding a razor in his hand, not the cheap disposable ones Scottie used to use, but a long shiny one that looks like a switchblade.

  “Yell next time,” he says, slapping the huge metal door. “There’s no peephole.”

  I nod, hoping that means there’s gonna be a next time.

  “You coming in?” He slides the door open and I can see the flicker of candlelight behind him. It smells like one of those stores at the mall, where Teacher took us last year to get school clothes, and for a second I wonder if he’s got a lady here.

  “Sure. If it’s okay.”

  There must be fifty candles spread throughout the living room. Most are in tin cups, sitting on the floor like lights lining the aisle of a movie theater. It looks like church during Christmas Mass, not that I’ve been since Abuela took me back in Puerto Rico. But I’m pretty sure this is how it looked.

  “You got company?”

  “Just my own.” He wipes his face with the towel, then uses it to clean the blade before tucking the razor into his pocket. “I don’t like artificial lights,” he says, like he’s apologizing. He stares at me for a few seconds before asking me what’s wrong.

  “How do you know something’s wrong?”

  “Come on, kid. We don’t have time for this.” He crosses his arms. “Spill it.”

  “Lucho’s back, with Mami. I found them together at home.”

  His lips tighten. “Is she all right, your mom?”

  I shake my head. “They were both messed up.”

  He pulls out a chair for me, so I sit down without taking off my backpack. I put my hands on the table, then remember it’s rude and put them in my lap. He sits across from me, a huge candle between us. It’s got three wicks, all of them lit, but it barely seems to give off any light.

  “She said it was a slip.”

  “So she’s using again?” He pinches the top of his nose, between his eyes, like he suddenly has a headache.

  “She promised to stop.”

  “How long’s it been?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He scratches his goatee, which seems to glow in the candlelight. “That’s a shame. I’m sorry you had to see that.” He rubs his hand over his chin, smoothing the hair down, over and over again. All I do is sit there, staring at all those candles. “You hungry?” he asks, his eyes so small they look closed.

  I shrug. “A little,” I say, when really I’m starving and can’t remember the last thing I swallowed except my own spit.

  Snowman disappears into the kitchen, which is really just a sink and a line of cupboards along the wall. A few seconds later he comes back with his arms full of Chinese take-out boxes, which he lays on the table in front of me like presents. He tells me there’s beef with broccoli, pork egg foo yung, Hunan shrimp, steamed dumplings, and chicken with snow peas. I don’t recognize most of it, but it’s salty and warm and I don’t really care.

  “Fork or chopsticks?”

  “Chopsticks.” I’m no good with them, but I know he thinks it’s the right thing to do. I hold them like he shows me, but it feels weird, like writing with my left hand, and I can’t even get one dumpling out of the box. I finally stab into it with the end of the chopstick, but it slips off before I get it to my mouth and falls onto the floor. After that he brings me a cloth napkin and lays it over my lap like rich people do on TV.

  “Shit, my baby brother could work those better than you.” He’s laughing as he says it, his eyes looking straight into mine. Then the kettle whistles and he walks away, asking if I want green tea or jasmine. I lean over and pick up the dumpling with my hand, slipping it into my mouth in one bite, not even bothering to wipe it off. It burns my tongue but it’s worth it. When he comes back he’s carrying a pot of tea to the table, pouring a cup for each of us.

  “You got a brother?”

  He sits on the edge of the table. “Used to.”

  I can tell by the look on his face that it’s another secret he’s gonna keep, so I don’t ask him anymore about it.

  “Anything else wrong?” He keeps picking up the boxes and putting more food onto my plate, filling it up every time I finish something.

  “I need a place to stay.”

  “You walked out?”

  I nod. My heart starts beating faster and I think may
be I shouldn’t say anymore. Maybe I should just finish eating and leave. But then I hear myself say, “I want to stay with you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Here.” I swallow and clear my throat, drink some of the tea he poured me. It’s bitter and tastes like old flowers, but at least it’s hot. “I want to stay here with you.”

  Snowman stands up, dropping the empty cartons on the table. “That’s a bad idea, Cristo.”

  “I’d stay out of your way. And I wouldn’t ask any questions. I promise.”

  He walks into the kitchen and turns on the sink. I can see him bent over, splashing water onto his face. “This world is no good for you. My world. I’m sorry.”

  “But I’ve been in your world for months.”

  “As a visitor maybe, but you didn’t live here.” He comes back with water running down his face like sweat. “You shouldn’t live here.”

  “I can handle it.”

  “No, you can’t. And you better never be able to. I was wrong to get you involved.” He dries his face with the towel. “This isn’t your home.”

  I’m full now, but I keep on eating. Who knows when I’ll eat like this again.

  “Listen. I’m sorry.” He puts his hand on my shoulder. “When you’re older you’ll understand.”

  I finally put down the chopsticks, laying them across the plate like I’ve seen him do a bunch of times. I wipe my hands with the napkin and then my mouth. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

  “Come on now, what about your teacher? You know she’d take you in.”

  I shake my head, blinking quickly to keep tears that I didn’t know I had from falling. “I told her I didn’t need her. I said that Mami and I were gonna get a nice apartment and then bring Luz and Trini back home. I can’t go to her like this.”

  “Yes, you can. You have to.” He rubs his chin again. “You belong there, with your sister.”

  “I want to be with you.”

  He grabs the back of a chair, slamming it into the table.

  “Don’t you get it? This isn’t about what you want. It’s about what you need. You need to be with family. You need to be protected.” He stares down at the floor, like he’s talking to all those candles.

  “You can protect me.”

  “Damn it, Cristo—you need to be protected from people like me.”

  “That’s not true. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

  “You don’t know the first thing about me,” he says, his face still looking down. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”

  “I know you’ve helped people. In the neighborhood, like that park you rebuilt—”

  “And what about your mother?” he shouts, cutting me off. “What about you?”

  Snowman looks up at me now and I stare back at him, not sure what to do. Without saying anything else he walks into the dark kitchen and stands with his back to me. He covers his face with the towel and mumbles something under his breath. Then he tucks the towel into his back pocket and comes back into the room, sitting down across from me.

  “I need to tell you something. And you better pay attention ’cause I’m only going to say this once. I don’t like confessions.” He rests one hand on the table, flat and white like a napkin, while the other is jammed into his front pocket. “I used to fill orders for your mother, before she got locked up. Whatever she and Lucho wanted, if they could pay, I got it for them. That was one of my jobs.” He clears his throat. “Your mother, she was one of my customers.”

  I can see his lips moving, and I can still hear the words, but they sound far away, like I’m underwater.

  “You see now?” Snowman says. “You get that I’m not what you need?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “And you don’t have to. You’re a kid. You’re not supposed to understand why people do the things they do.”

  “I thought you were my friend.”

  He closes his eyes. “You were wrong,” he says. “Friends don’t pass money between them. It was a job, you got paid. It was never more than that.”

  I try to swallow but my throat won’t let me. “I don’t believe you.”

  He stares at me for a long time. “Believe what you want.”

  I push my plate away, knocking over empty food boxes and spilling the now cold tea from our cups. “You’re a liar,” I tell him.

  He’s looking at the floor, watching the chopsticks roll under the table. He opens his mouth to say something, but then closes it, standing up to clear the table in silence. He looks like a waiter, piling dishes in one hand and using the towel from his back pocket to wipe up the mess.

  “I know you’re angry. You should be. You love your mother and you want to protect her. Your loyalty is in the right place.”

  “I don’t want to be loyal to her,” I say, feeling far away and not quite like myself. “She lied to me, too.”

  “Everybody lies,” Snowman says from the sink, his voice rising over the sound of running water. “She just tried to protect you. From who she was and is. But that’s not your job to worry about. She’s your mother, that’s all you need to know.”

  I stand up, feeling the weight of my backpack trying to drag me under. I lean against the table for balance. “A mother is supposed to take care of her children.”

  “You’re right,” he says, his voice coming again from the dark. “But they’re human, too. They’re weak, they make mistakes, they die.” He walks toward me, a ghost appearing from the night. “But a son can never abandon his mother, no matter what she does. Don’t waste your time questioning your loyalty, okay? Don’t ever let a friendship or girlfriends or work or any other bullshit separate you from your family. Do you understand me?” He bends down to make sure I’m looking at him. “Family is the only thing that connects you to the world. Without that, you’d be flying around like a balloon some kid forgot to hold onto. Then you’d be no better off than me.”

  Tears fall onto the table and I wipe them up with my sleeve. I don’t even know why I’m crying. Snowman uses the corner of the towel to wipe the tears off my face.

  “Don’t worry,” he says. “It’s clean.”

  “Nada es limpio,” I say. “Not anymore.”

  He looks at me as he holds the towel, wrapping it around his arm like a bandage. It’s dark brown, probably the color he wishes he was.

  “You’re allowed to love someone who disappoints you,” he says. “That’s the nature of real love. To allow someone to devastate you, and to keep loving them. Then you know it’s real.”

  I feel like I don’t know anything right now. None of this seems real.

  “Go to your teacher’s house. Go be with your sister. The two of you need each other.” He walks me to the door. “Trust me, you’re going to be fine.”

  I reach into my pocket to get the pager. It seems like I’ve had it for years, even though he just gave it to me last summer. He looks surprised when I hand it to him.

  “You quitting now?”

  “I thought maybe you fired me.”

  He tucks it back into my pocket. “Keep it. That way I’ll always be able to find you.”

  When I turn to leave he puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes it once. Then he lets go.

  Teacher’s wearing her bathrobe when she answers the door. Her mouth falls open but she doesn’t say anything. I guess the look on my face tells her everything she needs to know. She takes my bag and follows me up the stairs. We stand together in the darkness of the kitchen, waiting. The clock on the oven says 10:45 p.m. She waits for me to speak. I wait for the words to come.

  I sit at the table while she heats up a plate of chicken and rice. She never even asked if I was hungry. I’m not, but I figure it’s smart to eat every time I have the chance. She doesn’t turn on the light until after she serves me. I eat with my eyes half closed. When I finish it she serves me another plate.

  “At home we never have leftovers,” I say, just to break the silence.

  She sets down the pot, wh
ich makes the table shake. “Well, that’s because you come from a big family,” she says. “It’s hard to make enough for all those kids.”

  I stare at my reflection in the pot’s rounded lid.

  “Is Luz asleep?”

  She nods. “You should probably wake her up when you go in there, just so you don’t give her a heart attack.”

  “Luz sleeps like she’s already dead.”

  She eats rice straight out of the pot. “Still, you should try.”

  “Okay, Teacher.”

  After two pieces of banana bread and a glass of milk, she tells me it’s bedtime. She brings me into the bathroom and hands me a stack of clean towels and the toothbrush she bought me back in September. I grab her hand before she leaves.

  “I’m sorry, Teacher. I was wrong when I said I didn’t need you anymore.”

  She squeezes my hand. “It’s okay. I understand.” She kisses the top of my head. When she walks out she reminds me to put the toilet seat down after I’m done.

  “Don’t worry. I’ve lived with girls my whole life, Teacher.”

  When I walk into Luz’s bedroom I don’t bother to turn on the light. I can picture the room perfectly. Luz is so neat that I know everything is put away, tucked neatly into its proper place. The window is cracked, and the breeze blows the curtains against the windowsill. The room is cold like a porch and it smells like fresh laundry.

  “Luz,” I whisper. “Luz, wake up.” She doesn’t respond so I shake her. “Come on, Luz, don’t make me sit on you.”

  “Cristo?” Her voice is scratchy.

  “Yeah.”

  Her head pops off the pillow. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. We’ll talk in the morning.” I push her shoulder lightly. “Just make some room, okay?”

  She slides into the corner. “Here, take the outside. I know you don’t like the window.”

  By the time I get into bed she’s asleep. She curls into me like a baby, pushing against my side. I don’t realize I’m cold until I feel her warm body against me. I wrap my arm around her and put my face in her hair, something I would never do when she was awake. The smell of her head is the only familiar thing in the bed. I hope it’s enough to put me to sleep.