“Man, let Colfax bogart her little fee waivers,” says Nestor. “Say the word, and I’ll hook you up with a job so you can pay them fees yourself like that, no worries.”
Ain’t that something? We found out what Nes was up to after dropping out of AC when he tried to recruit Chingy, who was insulted that Nes stepped to him. Although I never admitted it to either one of them, it bothered me that he didn’t approach me, too. I never wanted to sling, but did Nestor think I was soft or something?
I walk toward my building, and Nestor tags along. “Yeah, Efrain, you should definitely go to college,” he says. “Go to college, become a lawyer, and be the first Hispanic mayor of New York City, you know what I’m saying.”
“Shut up.” But I like the way it sounds.
“For real. But college ain’t cheap.”
“Who you telling?”
“Sell for me, and you’ll never come up short on tuition. Especially once you start college. Students be my best customers.”
“Get out of here, man.” I’m about to joke about how bad it would be if heads found out that the first Hispanic mayor of New York used to sling when I see Rubio come out of the hardware store across the street.
Nestor catches the look on my face and turns around. He calls out, “Rubio!” Rubio gives him a slight nod and then glares at me. I glare right back, then turn around to go into my building. Nes points and says, “Your pop’s the man!”
I look back across the street, and there’s some girl who’s not Awilda talking to Rubio, looking at him all lovey-dovey. Nestor laughs and punches me in the arm. “Your father’s, like, Super Playa!” I head up the steps to my building and wish Nestor would just go back to his corner. But he follows me up the stairs even though he knows I can’t invite him in. “Yo, speaking of playas, how’s Chingy?”
“He’s a’ight.” That’s all I can say. Once I told Nes something about what was going on with Chingy—it was so trivial, I can’t even remember—and Chingy read me. He said if I wanted to stay friends with him, I’d best not tell Nestor any of his business. I thought he OD’d, and we didn’t talk for a few days. Then one day he did something funny in gym, I cracked up, and we got back to normal. We never talked about our fight over Nestor, just pretended that it never happened.
Nestor waits for me to say more. When I don’t, he says, “Tell ’im I said, ‘What’s up.’”
“Okay,” I lie. Chingy won’t be trying to hear that message, but Nestor doesn’t need to know that. “Peace, kid.”
He finally starts back down the steps. “One, bro.” I watch him until he disappears around the corner, but Rubio’s still scowling at me from across the street. Where does he come off judging me for the company I keep? He calls my name, but I give him a dirty look and let myself into the building.
Aberration (n.) something that differs from the norm
The second I walk into the kitchen the next morning, I know something’s up because my moms isn’t chatting up my sister, Mandy, and doesn’t tell me good morning.
Moms works at Yannis’s Discount on Third Avenue off 149th Street. Since she doesn’t have to be there until nine, and her bus ride is only twenty minutes, she’s here when Mandy and I get up for school. Usually, she talks up my sister until I walk in and then turns the interrogation on me. I shouldn’t say it like that. Moms just wants to know what’s going on in my life, seeing that she works ten-hour days, six days per week. It’s all love.
But this morning she just steals annoyed glances at me without saying anything. I say, “Hi, Mami,” and kiss her cheek. This is the first time I’m seeing her since yesterday morning. Because she gets home so late, Moms either cooks dinner in the morning so my sister and I can heat the food up later or she leaves us money for takeout, frozen dinners, or something like that. When she comes home from work, I’m usually in my room doing homework or hanging out with Chingy. Sometimes she stops by my room to ask me if I want some homemade Dominican cake baked by Yannis’s wife or if I have any dirty clothes to wash. Most times, though, my moms comes home, eats dinner, maybe watches a little TV in her bedroom, and then goes to sleep. Mandy and I usually only see her over breakfast.
I grab the box of Cap’n Crunch from the top of the refrigerator and then open the door to get the milk. My moms says, “Amanda, go finish getting ready for school.” Oh yeah, something’s definitely up if she’s calling my sister “Amanda.”
“I’m ready.”
“Did you put everything you need in your bag?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, go make your bed.”
“I made it already.” Obviously, my mother has something she wants to talk to me about alone, which is why my nosy little sister is lingering.
“Go, Beyoncé,” I say.
“Efrain, stop,” Mandy giggles. She loves Beyoncé, although every time she sees a picture of her with Jay-Z, my sister says she doesn’t like him for her. I tell her me neither.
“Then do what Mami tells you.”
“Oookaaay.” Mandy finally takes her bowl to the sink and leaves the kitchen.
My moms stands up and walks to the doorway, checking to see that Mandy’s in her room instead of eavesdropping in the hallway. “Efrain, your father called me at the store yesterday.”
In a flash, my appetite disappears. “So?”
“He told me he saw you hanging out with Nestor.”
I drop my spoon into my bowl. “Man—”
“Don’t Man me, Efrain. I’m not one of your friends. Díme con quien andas y te diré quien eres.”
Tell me who you run with, and I’ll tell you who you are? I usually dig those Spanish refranes, but this ain’t Señorita Polanco’s class. “Mami, yo no ’taba andando con nadie. All I…” I really don’t believe this. Bad enough that Rubio’s got the nerve to bother my mother at work over some nonsense, but Moms is buying it, too? Without finishing my cereal, I pick up my bowl and head to the garbage. “Forget it.”
“Don’t tell me to forget it.”
“I just bumped into Nestor at the bodega on my way home from school, and he walked me to the door. That’s it, Mami. I’m not hanging out with him.”
“Then why are you so defensive?”
Because, after all he’s done, you believe Rubio over me. But the lump in my throat won’t let me say that, so I just dump my cereal into the garbage and toss my bowl in the sink. See why I can’t stand Rubio? First, he plays my moms dirty for the whole neighborhood to see, and now he has us fighting, which is something we almost never do. “What happened is what I said happened.”
Moms hesitates. “Well, your father was pretty sure. He told me that he called you, and you just ignored him.”
I walk past her out of the kitchen and into the hallway. “Mandy!” I pick my backpack off the chair. “Mandy, c’mon, we’re leaving.”
“Efrain …” I don’t usually disrespect my moms, but I can’t listen to this anymore. I walk to the door, refusing to answer when she calls my name. My sister runs out of her room with her backpack and jacket on. Knowing my mother’s not going to say anything else about Rubio or Nestor in front of my sister, I open the apartment door and head to the staircase.
My sister rushes to catch up to me. When we’re outside, she asks, “Efrain, why you hate Papi so much?” I don’t like to lie to my sister because I know how it felt to be her age and have older people lie to my face. Exhibit A: Rubio. But I also think it isn’t right to expose kids to more than they can handle. Again, refer to exhibit A. So I don’t say anything.
“He be asking for you all the time,” says Mandy. So now Rubio’s trying to manipulate my little sister to get to me. He can’t step to me man-to-man, always has to run his game through the females. Whatever. After we walk a few brisk paces in silence, Mandy finally says, “He keeps asking me when you’re coming by to see Junior.”
“Junior? Who’s Junior?”
Mandy sucks her teeth at me. “The baby, dummy.”
Figures the egomaniac named the
baby after himself. “How do you know all this?” I ask. “You’ve been to Awilda’s?”
Mandy doesn’t answer, but the guilt’s all over her face. She says, “The baby looks just like you, Efrain. Papi showed me your baby pictures, y ustedes son iguales.” She says it like it should make me feel good. “Oh my God, Efrain, when Papi holds Junior, he’s so funny, talking all that goo goo ga ga.” Says that like it should make me feel good, too. Like Rubio’s being all fatherly with his new baby who looks just like me should count for something. Mandy laughs, and it takes my all not to sneer. I ask her, “So, Awilda doesn’t have a problem with you going over there?”
Mandy just shrugs. Then she says, “Oh, Efrain, you want to hear something funny? When I left, I kissed the baby, and then I kissed Papi, and then I kissed Serenity. Awilda’s looking at me like she’s expecting me to kiss her, too, right? But, instead, I said, ‘Bye, Wildebeest!’ Get it? And she’s got, like, this stupid look on her face ’cause she’s not really sure what I said.” And Mandy laughs like she really showed Awilda a thing or two. “Wildebeest!”
“Yeah, I get it. So let me ask you something. Why you don’t like Awilda?”
“Because she’s the reason why Mami and Papi don’t get back together.”
But does Mandy know that Awilda’s the reason they split up in the first place? Not that it really matters. I mean, yeah, she’s a big ol’ smut who knew that Rubio had a wife and kids and got with him anyway. The bottom line, though, is that, smut or not, Awilda doesn’t owe my moms anything. Rubio’s the one who stood before the priest and made the vows. He’s the one who broke his promise. Even if Awilda was throwing it at him, he had no business catching it. Word is born.
“Mandy, how can you be mad at Awilda but not be mad at him?” I ask. “If Rubio really wanted to be with Mami—if he really wanted to be with us—he would just come back, and nothing Awilda could do would stop him.”
“She went and had a baby, dummy. He can’t leave her there all alone with the baby.”
“But he could leave Mami with the two of us, right?”
At first, Mandy doesn’t answer. Then she suddenly punches me in the arm, and thanks to Chingy, who taught her how to ball her fist and swing her arm just right, my sister does not hit like a girl. “Ow!”
“Shut up, Efrain,” she yells. “Just shut up, okay!” Then Mandy flies up the block toward her school.
Rancor (n.) deep, bitter resentment
Chingy and I always meet on the corner of St. Ann’s Avenue and 141st Street after I drop off my sister and walk together to school. But when I arrive, he’s nowhere to be found. I check my watch, and I’m right on time. Always am. Chingy, too. The first time Nestor made us late for first period was the last. I insisted that we give him a few minutes, and the next thing we knew, Chingy and I were running to beat the bell. After that, Chingy would bop through the intersection at exactly eight o’clock without breaking his stride. Whoever showed up just jumped in alongside him, and usually it was just me. Sometimes when we were halfway to AC, Nestor would come huffing and puffing behind us, yelling “Y’all niggas left me.” Eventually, he stopped appearing altogether, but it took Chingy and me a few weeks to realize that he had dropped out of high school.
Suddenly a man calls my name. It’s none other than Rubio sidling up to me in his Civic, and it’s too late to pretend that I don’t see or hear him. “You need ride to school?” he asks. I barely shake my head. Damn, Chingy, where you at? “Come on. I take you.”
“I’m waiting for somebody.”
“¿A quién? ¿A Nestor?” I just suck my teeth and give him my back. “I have question about the paper you mother give me.”
Chingy finally races around the corner. “Thanks for waiting, cuz. If you had bounced, I wouldn’t’ve been mad at you.” Without noticing Rubio, he steps and rambles.
I fall in beside him as if nothing is unusual. “What happened, kid?”
“Man, I overslept. The Giants-Cowboys game went into overtime, yo. You know a brother had to stay up and watch it.”
Rubio creeps the Civic alongside us like a stalker. When we reach the corner, he turns right and blocks our path. A woman with a shopping cart curses at him in patois for blocking the curb cut. He ignores her and unlocks the car doors.
Chingy peers through the passenger window. “Yo, E., it’s your pops.” He throws open the back door and jumps inside. “¿Cómo está, Señor Rodriguez?”
But Rubio’s eyes are only on me as I slide into the front passenger seat and slam the door behind me. “Estoy bien. ¿Y tú …?”
This is mad embarrassing. “His name is Rashaan,” I bark. The guy has only been my best friend for twelve years. “Get it right already.”
“Chill, E. It’s cool. Estoy muy chévere, señor. Gracias por preguntar.”
Rubio isn’t here to help Chingy practice his Spanish, so I finally turn to ask him what he wants with me. “¿Y qué quiere conmigo?”
“¿Qué quiero yo contigo?” he repeats sarcastically. “Eres tú que m’está buscando sin venir a verme, mandando a tu mai.” Me looking for him? Yeah, right. If I wanted to see him, I know where Awilda lives. I know where all his jump-offs live. And this is why I didn’t want my mother to call Rubio about the financial aid form in the first place.
“Don’t you know it’s rude to speak Spanish in front of people who don’t know it?” Of course, that’s Rubio’s point. He doesn’t want Chingy to understand what we’re talking about. On the real? Neither do I. I’d rather not have this conversation at all.
“Speak for yourself, son,” says Chingy. “I’m fluent.”
We arrive at AC, and I fly out of the Civic. “You come by my work,” says Rubio. “We talk about you papers for school.”
As Chingy thanks Rubio for the ride, I bound toward the school building. He double-times to catch up with me. “What’s up with you, man?”
“I told my moms to leave that alone.” As Chingy walks me to Spanish class, I explain how Rubio created static between my mother and me by blowing my chat with Nestor out of proportion. I can tell that Chingy doesn’t like the fact that I was parlaying with Nes, but he bites his tongue. “Then she calls him about some forms he needs to fill out so I can apply for financial aid, and he got it in his head that she used that as an excuse to talk to him, freakin’ narcissist. And now he’s trying to bypass her and come to me, fronting like he doesn’t understand the paperwork.”
“So?”
“So?”
“Even if he thinks that about your moms, what difference does it make?” says Chingy. “You know the truth; your moms knows the truth. Besides, your pops probably really doesn’t understand the forms. It’s not like English is his first language.”
“Don’t defend him.”
“I’m not trying to defend him. I’m trying to look out for you.” We reach my classroom. “Look, E., I know your pops did some foul stuff, and I understand how you feel about him, you know, using you to hide his dirt. But if the guy wants to step up and help you with your grind, let him. Maybe that’s his way of making it up to you. Don’t get in your own way just to spite him, cuz. That’s mad stupid.”
That’s what I mean about Chingy being oblivious. I don’t question that he’s trying to look out for me, but, obviously, he doesn’t understand at all to say something like that. The bell rings, and I tell Chingy to peace out and go into my classroom.
Giving in to Stevie’s incessant reminders that she hasn’t shown us a movie all month, Señorita Polanco plays a documentary about the Young Lords called ¡Palante, Siempre Palante! As she dims the lights and the credits roll, my mind is still on Chingy’s advice. If I were anything like Rubio, I’d do exactly what Chingy says. I’d use him to get what I needed regardless of how it might make anyone feel. But just because Rubio’s my father doesn’t make me his son. I’m my own man. A man unlike him.
Brazen (adj.) excessively bold, brash
Ten minutes into physics class, Chingy throws a folded piece o
f pink paper on my desk. I look at him like he’s crazy, and he tilts his head toward the front of the room. GiGi González waves to me from where she sits in the first seat in the same row as Chingy. Her French manicure is hot. Way better than all the colors and hardware Leti likes to pile on her nails. I unfold her note.
Hi, Efrain!
Why you didn’t come with us to the movies yesterday?
Love,
GG
I look up and mouth Work. She mouths back Oh. Then she pouts and rubs a fist over her eye like she’s crying. I drop my head behind my notebook before she can catch me smiling. But Chingy throws a peanut or raisin or whatever they gave out at lunch at me, so I flip him the bird.
A few minutes later he throws another piece of whatever at me. When Mr. Harris turns his back to write the work-energy theorem on the board, I jump up from my desk, chop Chingy in the neck, and rush to sit back down. The other kids in the class snicker at us, and Mr. Harris whirls around. “What the heck’s going on here?”
“Nothing,” a few people mumble.
“I guarantee you this will be on the Regents, so I’d stop messing around and pay attention if I were you.”
When I look down to copy the notes from the board, I find another folded pink note on my desk. I hesitate to open it. GiGi’s the business, but I have to bust my ass for my measly seventy-two average in physics. Leti is the current salutatorian and is only five points behind me. I know homegirl’s gunning for me, and I’m not mad at her for that, but I have to be valedictorian if I want to go to any Ivy League school, especially if I don’t score a 2100 or more when I retake the SAT in January. No either/or, man. I have to do both, which means finding a way to take that prep class at Fordham that starts in a few weeks.
Chingy lets out a big ahem to remind me that GiGi awaits. I can’t resist anymore and open her note. Under what she had already written in blue, she wrote in red:
You don’t have to lie, Efrain! If you had to go meet your girlfriend, just say so. Lying just makes me even more jealous.
Efrain's Secret Page 3
