“Ay, Juanito,” Angel said. “You know I’m a little busy over here with this food situation.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Juanito said. “I see it all, but you can always take a little break and dance with me for a hot second.” He rolled his shoulders up and down and shimmied his chest while pouting out his lips. He was trying to channel a silly energy, and it must’ve worked, because Angel laughed so quick and hard, she hiccuped.
“Yo,” Daniel shouted from the sala.
“You don’t gotta yell,” Juanito said. “We can hear you loud and clear. It’s not like we’re on Mars. We’re just in the cocina.”
“Hardy har,” Daniel said. “Yo, Angel? I don’t see no star or angel muñequita in the box. What do we put on top of this thing?”
Juanito flipped the left side of his tinsel-boa over his right shoulder just like a scarf. “Goddamn,” he said. “We are workin’ this tinsel like it’s tinsel-fuckin’-town.”
Angel smiled at him while she rolled her eyes. “Ay, Juanito, tinsel is tacky,” she said.
Juanito let out an exaggerated gasp. He pretended to whip his hair back. “How could you say that, darling,” Juanito said. “I can’t even look at you.”
“Juanito, could you please,” Daniel said. “I’m trying to finish up the tree. We need to put something on the top of it.”
“We could make a star out of construction paper,” Angel said.
“Ugh,” Juanito said. “And you said tinsel was tacky?”
Daniel laughed. Angel told Juanito to stir the soup.
“How about we put Venus’s giant dildo at the top?” Juanito said. “And then, when her wandering ass finally comes back home, she’ll have to climb the tree to get it.”
“The tree is only three feet high,” Daniel said.
“We are not putting a penis on top of our Christmas tree, Juanito,” Angel said. Her arms were crossed like she meant business.
¿Por qué tan seria? Juanito thought, wanting to push her buttons even more. “Well what about if we put it in the nativity scene then?”
“¡Ay, Dios mío!” Angel said, doing the sign of the cross. “You are being a sucia, Juanito. We can just use one of my tacones for the tree. The higher the heel the better, don’tcha think?”
Juanito stirred the soup and then tasted just a drop from the wooden spoon. It burned his tongue.
“I think I got a red one,” Angel said, “and Venus has an emerald one. Then it’d be Christmas colors so it could feel matchy-matchy.”
* * *
By the time the soup was eaten and the two tacones were placed on top of the Christmas tree, Venus still wasn’t back. Daniel was flipping through a magazine and Juanito was sitting next to him on the sofa filing his fingernails. Juanito could hear Angel in the cocina, slamming drawers and opening cabinets only to shut them right after.
“Dani,” Juanito whispered. “Could you do something? She’s about to lose her shit if Venus don’t walk through this door in a second.”
Daniel looked up from the magazine and sighed. “I know,” he said. “Pero I don’t know what to do.”
“Y yo tampoco,” Juanito said. “Pero you’re better at soothing words than I am.”
Daniel shut the magazine and called out to Angel. “’Ey, mama,” he said. “Why don’t you come settle down over here with us and we can paint your nails.”
“Good idea,” Juanito said, gently slapping him on the side of his chest. He didn’t know why he didn’t think of the idea first.
Angel said she couldn’t. She was too busy putting Venus’s leftover bowl of soup in a Tupperware. “And then, I don’t know what she’s gonna do. She’s gonna have to reheat it on the stove or something,” she said aloud.
“There’s worse things, right, mama?” Juanito said. “Por lo menos, she’ll have some soup waiting for her when she gets back.”
“That’s not all she’ll have waiting for her,” Angel said, “porque I’m gonna give her a piece of my mind and my mouth when she struts in here. Can you believe the nerve of that girl?”
“Oooh, look at you,” Daniel said. “Being all bad over there.”
“Hush,” Angel said, waving her hand like she was gonna swat a fly.
“You love her too much to give her a scolding,” Daniel said.
Juanito nudged him with his elbow, like, you better quiet down and not mess with Angel when she’s feeling like a fire-breathing dragon.
“Don’t make me give you a piece of my words too,” Angel said, popping her head out of the cocina so she could make eyes with Daniel. Daniel rolled his neck back and sighed.
Juanito walked over to where Angel was, right in front of the stove. He put his hand on her arm to get her to stop moving. “She’ll be fine,” Juanito said. “You know she’ll be fine.”
“Who says I know she’ll be fine?” Angel said. “Who says I know anything? The more I think I know, the more I learn that I’m wrong.”
“Mira, mami,” Daniel shouted from the sala. “Let’s take you to Unique Boutique tomorrow to get your mind off things. Nothing like a new pair of shoes to make a nena forget her problems, right?”
“Yeaaah,” Juanito said. “There ain’t never a bad time for a new pair of shoes. And plus, she’s gonna come in here eventually and have some good stories to tell us,” Juanito said.
“It’s been two days,” Angel said. “She’s never done this before. If she’s gone for a while, at least she calls.”
“So she’ll call,” Juanito said, but as he stared at the chunks of carrots and pollo that sunk to the bottom of the Tupperware, he started to have dudas about it too. “You should put a lid on that,” he said, pointing to the Tupperware.
“I can’t find it,” Angel said. She scanned all around the countertop and then crouched down to check the cabinet where the other Tupperwares were.
“It’s right there,” Juanito said, “behind the sugar jar.”
“Ay, Juanito,” Angel said. “What would I do without you?”
* * *
The next day, shoe shopping with Angel was like pulling teeth. Homegirl couldn’t get excited about anything—patent leather pumps, a pair of yellow kitten heels, not even the ballerina flats in bright purple. Juanito knew something was really, totally off, when he found a pair of second-hand Guccis that didn’t make Angel bat an eyelash.
“The Guccis were on markdown,” Juanito told Daniel later that night, “and she still wouldn’t crack a smile.”
“Jesus,” was all Daniel could say.
On the subway ride home, Angel kept talking about how worried she was. It was all she talked about all day. “Mother’s intuition,” she said, “mother’s intuition is always right and this feeling that I got is all kinds of wrong.”
Before they got back to the apartment, Daniel picked up three bottles of red wine. As soon as they were home, Juanito uncorked them and practically fed them to Angel like she was a baby in need of formula. “Toma,” Juanito said, “you gonna get some real good sleep tonight, okay?”
Angel nodded her head and drank.
Once Daniel carried Angel to her cama for sleep time, he and Daniel cuddled on the sofa with the TV on. The nightly news was about to finish up and the sports guy was blabbing. They kept the TV on so it could give them some background noise.
“I think she might be right,” Daniel said.
“Ay, no, not you too.”
“Pero listen, Juanito,” Daniel said. “Each and every one of us ran away from home, like why do you even think we’re here right now in this fucking apartment?”
“You think she ran away from us?”
“I’m saying,” Daniel said, “that it sure as hell is a possibility. And Angel knows that.”
“She wouldn’t leave us,” Juanito said.
“Oh, come on, you and I both know that she wanted to be in a big old fancy house,” Daniel said, “and she found that guy from Staten Island.”
Juanito sighed. Daniel was right. He had to be. Venus had always said tha
t was her dream: money and a house and a white dude who could give her things.
“But that guy was an asshole,” Juanito said. “Ese pendejo was still married. Don’t you remember?”
“¿Y qué?” Daniel said. “That don’t mean shit. You don’t think she’d go back to him? Of course she would. In a heartbeat or a second, whichever came faster.”
Juanito turned his head. He was trying to think it all over. He couldn’t believe it and he couldn’t bear to see the TV screen or the side of Daniel’s face.
“Maybe she had another man,” Daniel said softly.
“Ay, Dios mío,” Juanito said. “Pero she could have called or said something. What did she think we were going to do? Lock her in the apartment and refuse to let her out?”
It was a pointless question. He knew that Venus wouldn’t ever think they would lock her in or hold her back. Pero ahora, the answer that Juanito didn’t want to face was much harder to deal with—the thought that maybe Venus loved them so much that she couldn’t bear to say goodbye to them at all.
He rested his head on Daniel’s shoulder and, even though they had nothing more to say to each other, they stayed up for another hour, watching infomercials for the amazing Ginsu knife. The last image Juanito could remember before he passed out was of a free-floating hand slicing the shit out of a watermlon—right down the middle.
* * *
That night, his dreams haunted him. He dreamed of vagabond wigs that jumped off heads and walked away. He dreamed of wigs in heels, dancing on the tops of cars with cigarettes dangling from their lips. He saw wigs that sprouted legs and danced “Thriller” faster than Michael did. In his last dream, he saw Venus sitting on a revolving circular bed of wig hair, eating a piece of cheesecake with her hands. Nada happened except she finished the cheesecake and said, “Damn, I was really having a moment there.”
He jerked awake and he was still on the couch next to Daniel. Good Morning America was on TV and he shook Daniel awake to tell him about the dream. Daniel yawned. “What’re you talking about?” Daniel mumbled. “She hates cheesecake.”
* * *
Five days later, Angel got a call from the police department. He and Daniel didn’t know that Angel had filed a missing person’s report until the phone rang right before lunchtime. Daniel had just finished preparing some rice and beans and Juanito was putting forks on the table. They looked at each other from across the room as Angel hung up. Juanito could see the panic in Daniel’s eyes.
“Pues,” Juanito said. “What did they say?”
Angel said that she needed to go over there and they would talk about it when she came back.
Once Angel left, he was too nervioso to eat. “You should really eat something,” Daniel said.
“But my whole body is bugging out,” Juanito said.
“Por eso,” Daniel said. “Food’ll coat the lining of your stomach and help calm you down.”
Juanito looked at the steaming mounds of rice that were still too hot to touch. He really wasn’t hungry and he knew it would burn his tongue. “I can’t,” Juanito said. “I just don’t understand why she didn’t ring us.”
“There’s the leftover soup in the nevera if you want me to heat it up for you,” Daniel offered.
“No,” Juanito said. “I’m not eating Venus’s soup.”
“Pero—”
“Pero nothing,” Juanito said. “I’m not eating Venus’s soup, and that’s it.”
“You’re right,” Daniel said, pressing the mound of rice down with the back of his fork. “I don’t think I can eat neither.”
They waited for three hours like that—chain-smoking and staring at the TV as The Price Is Right, the news, and All My Children started and ended. Juanito didn’t even notice what color dress Susan Lucci was wearing that day.
When he heard the key turning in the door, he stood up and watched Angel walk in. She closed the door slowly. It wasn’t until she looked at them that she began to cry. Daniel ran over to her and helped her walk to the dining room table without falling over.
“¿Qué pasó?” Daniel said, even though Juanito didn’t want to know what happened, but rather, where she was.
Angel said that Venus was dead. Some heartless motherfucker must’ve strangled her throat. Her body was found under the bed of some Times Square motel with wounds around her neck that probably meant strangulation. Angel said that’s what the cops told her. She said she had to identify the body in the morgue. The woman cop told her that Angel was lucky to have filed a missing persons report, because the body was waiting there and they were already drawing up plans to ship her to Potter’s Field.
“And I said to her, how could you just send someone to Potter’s Field without seeing if someone comes by?” Angel said. “And she said to me, because usually nobody does come by.”
Juanito looked at Daniel. His face was whiter than a pearl earring. Juanito put his head on the table and sobbed. He could feel Daniel’s fingers running through his hair, massaging his scalp.
No one said a word, porque what could they even say? Until finally, Daniel asked the question they must’ve all been thinking, “What the fuck do we do now?”
ANGEL
When Hector died, she had to sign the papers that said City Burial. Not because she wanted to, but because she had no other choice. They didn’t have enough money to give him a private funeral, the kind with a box and flower wreaths and a priest who could come in to say some words. People kept saying that it was only the good who died young, but this pissed Angel off to no end. She didn’t care if it was the good or the evil or anything in between. She wanted to tell everyone to shut the fuck up, because unless they could raise Hector from the dead, she didn’t want to hear shit.
What a city burial meant, she didn’t know. Once the papers were signed, she spoke to several people on the phone and someone gave her the contact information for the Hart Island Project. If she wanted to visit Hector’s grave, they told her she could take a ferry from City Island’s Fordham Street pier. There was only one ferry a day, so she couldn’t miss it. She kept the phone number taped to the nevera door and she saw it every time she got up to get a glass of milk or fry an egg, but she didn’t call the number. She didn’t want to go see the site. She was fine in her mind knowing that at least the city had been nice enough to bury him on an island, and even though she knew it wasn’t going to be some kind of tropical beach island, it could always be worse.
For months she had dreams that he was still alive. These were the cruelest dreams because when she woke up, there were two or three seconds where she thought that he actually was still alive. Then the realization hit her like a brick wall—that no, he was dead, still dead, ain’t coming back to her. How many times did her waking mind have to play this trick on her? It just wasn’t fair.
One day just after lunch, she was listening to the local news on the AM stations, all static, sparkle, and hiss. The man said a crack baby was born and died in a toilet bowl somewhere off the Bowery. No mother came forward and the baby didn’t have a speck of dust for family. So the city was sending the baby to Potter’s Field on Hart Island.
Hart Island? Her ears perked up, but the man was already on to the next news cycle. That’s the shit about the news, isn’t it? she thought. They couldn’t even stop to mourn for a loss after each story. No, it was always on to the next thing, then the next.
The next day, she went on down to the New York Public Library to read about Hart Island because she was confused as to why Hector and an abandoned crack baby were sharing space.
She was dumbstruck by the first thing she learned: that it wasn’t spelled Heart. Here she had thought, all along, that Hector was buried on an island named after the heart. She had imagined it as a place of love surrounded by water. But no. She learned that it was the Rikers inmates who did all the digging: two rows of pine coffins, three high and more than twenty across. All for the pay of less than a dollar an hour. Each plot marked by a single block of concrete. Aband
oned people, the homeless, victims of murders, those too poor to pay, on and on.
Then another book said that the island was first used as a Civil War prison camp, an institution for locos, a sanatorium for TB patients so their coughing wouldn’t spread. This meant little to her, though, because she didn’t think she knew anyone on Rikers, the Civil War felt so far away that it wasn’t packing any emotional punches, and she didn’t want to know more about TB patients.
She found a microfilm of a newspaper article that was only dated from a couple months back. First baby to die of AIDS in NYC, buried in the only single grave on the island. She tried to imagine this baby’s tiny fingers, tiny toes, how many inmates it’d take to dig a hole the size of a shoe box. She wondered if those inmate dudes knew what they were digging for that day, staring at a hole so small. Concrete marker, the article read, SC B1 1985: Special Child, Baby 1, 1985.
She couldn’t read anymore. She went to the bathroom and threw up. She went home and, that night, she dreamed of a small island in the shape of a heart with a giant hole in the middle. The hole was full of amputated arms and legs, all waiting for their other matching limb. Hector was at the bottom of the pile, staring up at her, waving with both arms, and even though she saw him down there, her voice refused to work and she couldn’t get out any sound.
* * *
She’d be damned if she let the same thing happen to Venus’s body. So that morning, she spritzed her Chanel No. 5 on both wrists and got on the train en route to the funeral home in Chelsea that was—word on the street—friendly with the community. Only place, in the beginning years of the crisis, that wasn’t wrapping boys in black garbage bags and sealing their coffins.
When she arrived, she was almost kicked to her ass from the overload smell of flowers. Carnations, the ugliest of flowers, were everywhere. There were two wakes in progress and she didn’t need to pop her head in to confirm what she already knew. They were probably young, they were probably gay, and the biological families were probably absent.
The House of Impossible Beauties Page 33
