by Achy Obejas
“Jimmy Frankenstein,” Pauli whispers to me with a giggle and pulls on my sleeve to follow her into the kitchen, where she starts the process of making us a pair of cafesitos. I look back to make sure Jimmy didn’t hear—to make sure we don’t have a problem—but he’s lost in the game. The Bears punt, it’s miserable, and he groans loudly.
Pauli unscrews the cafetera, snaps her fingers against the hardened old coffee, which crumbles into the fresh new trash bag I’ve put under the sink, and washes out each individual mechanical part as she talks. “Listen, how’s your time these days?” she asks as her hands work under the faucet.
“It’s okay,” I say. “Why?”
“Well, I’ve got this huge list of things to do—everything from ‘finish portfolio’ to ‘get a haircut’—and I thought some things—like ‘buy new jeans, get a gym membership’—might befun in to do with someone else,” she says, spooning Bustelo into the now clean cafetera. “With you, actually.”
“Yeah, okay,” I say. “I’ve probably got a few things I need to do myself. I could get Jimmy’s car—”
“No, no, no,” Pauli says, resting the cafetera over a flame. “I don’t want to owe any favors. I was thinking we’d just take the train, hang out, hang loose, be pals.”
I shake my head a little and laugh. “It’s not a big deal, Pauli,” I say. “He lends me the car all the time.” Or most of the time, I think to myself.
“Yeah,” she says, not convinced, “and what do you have to do for it?”
I check out the kitchen door, making sure there’s no movement in our direction from Jimmy. I know he can’t hear us—the TV’s on loud enough and there’s plenty going on here to blur Pauli’s words, but I’m uncomfortable anyway.
“Nothing,” I finally say. But the truth is that my mind has spun back to that first time I met Jimmy, when he was sitting in the same living room he’s in now, leaning back, massaging his huge dick.
“Something,” says Pauli, dropping her voice down to a whisper now. “Jimmy Frankenstein’s not the type that does favors for free. He’ll collect at some point, mark my words.”
I don’t say anything. What can I say?
As I reach across Tía Celia’s counter and start rolling the edge of a paper towel, I realize I don’t have much to say about anything lately. I can’t talk to Nena, to my mother, to Patricia, to Cari, and now, apparently, to Pauli. Strangely enough, sometimes Jimmy’s the only person with whom I have real conversations—tense and offensive as they are.
I wish I hadn’t stayed. I wish I were on my way to my apartment, walking out in the crisp, cold air, taking long strides, feeling my body free out on the streets. My breast and arm have hardly hurt today—I’m practically back to normal. I want to go shoot hoops, dance at the Red Dog, play Lethal Enforcer, make love with a beautiful woman whose body is slick, pungent and dark.
I’m brought out of my head when Pauli pours us our cafesitos. The stuff is black, intoxicating. She’s leaning against the counter and talking about the color pink—she knows from her nightly visualization exercises that it’s the best, most calming color, and so she wants to give that serenity to Rosa by painting their room pink, but she doesn’t want to fall into the trap of gender-stereotyping.
I sip the cafesito, trying hard to pay attention. In my head, I’m singing: “Ay Mamá Iné’/ ay Mamá Iné’/ todo’ lo’ negros tomamos café.” I probably haven’t heard that song since I was a kid being rocked to sleep. I know I’m not interested in discussing the color pink, I’m not even sure how interested I am in discussing anything at all right now. I’m tired and horny.
Then we both hear a noise—although Pauli keeps talking, not missing a beat, I see her eyes jump to the back door and scan the window for shadows behind the little lace curtain Tía Celia has there. There are footsteps in the backyard. A dog barks nearby. Pauli and I both tense up but we pretend it’s not important. I look out in the direction of the living room, considering for a moment the absolute worst—that Jimmy might be stalking us, might be out there, circling the house, his body bent over, hiding something heinous in his hands, waiting for just the right moment to pounce…
“Hey!” It’s Jimmy, out of his chair, in the kitchen doorway with the remote between his fingers. I’m ashamed to admit I immediately look down at his crotch but it’s flat, calm. I don’t know if he notices because he’s clearly preoccupied with something else. “Did you hear something?” His face is strained and for a second I consider he heard us talking about him, but his attention is directed outside.
“Yeah, but it’s probably a cat,” says Pauli. “Cari left some food for them. You know her…” I chuckle.
But Jimmy’s not buying it. And I realize he’s seriously worried—the game’s not over, there’s not even a commercial break. I can hear the announcers barking out a play on the TV.
There’s a knock on the door. It’s sharp and urgent and repetitive, as though the doorbell were an inconvenience. Jimmy turns on his heels, snaps the TV off with the remote and goes to the door. “Expecting anybody?” he asks Pauli and she shakes her head. I peek at my watch: It’s almost ten-thirty. This is no casual call.
“It’s some guy,” Jimmy says, looking through the peephole. We’re right behind him, our cafesitos idling back in the kitchen. “He looks pretty impossible,” he says sarcastically, turning quickly back to Pauli.
“I’m not expecting anybody,” she says, but her voice is trembling. I reach my hand to hers, squeeze it.
The knocking continues, hard and rapid. A voice calls Pauli’s name. “I know you’re in there,” he says. He has a slight, unrecognizable accent. “Pauli, please…” The voice fades.
“Let me get rid of him,” Jimmy says, waving us away.
He takes a deep breath, puffs his chest out. His vein is quivering. We step back a bit but not much. Jimmy opens the door. The brisk air rushes in, the smell of new snow fills the room. Pauli gasps. The man at the door is dark-skinned and young. He’s shielding his eyes from the light above the door with his arm.
“Pauli…?” he pleads.
Jimmy and I glance at each other, unsure what to do. And this is what I mean: Our communication is instant, silent, totally natural.
Pauli’s arms quickly fold across her chest. The man at the door brings his own arm down slowly, revealing his beautiful face. It’s Ali Ahuja.
As if on cue, Rosa wails from the bedroom—it’s a long, yearning sound, like blood calling to blood. Pauli loses all her color.
Ali’s head snaps in Rosa’s direction, his mouth drops open. “Is that…?”
Pauli drops her arms and squeezes my hand hard. As she steps forward, blocking Ali (who has made no move to come in the house), I bolt for the bedroom, gather Rosa in my arms and rock her in hopes she’ll calm down.
Through the walls and wails, I hear Ali—he’s nervous but very controlled. I can’t make out his words but he sounds like he’s trying to explain something, to reason. Pauli responds now and again, her voice also muffled, but maintaining a cool, business-like tone.
In spite of my efforts to soothe her, Rosa continues to sob. My shoulder is soaked through from her tears and spit. I stroke her little head, her long black curls. I kiss the soft, brown skin of her face and shoulders. I whisper reassurances she can’t possibly understand, trying to sound calm and strong, hoping to scare away whatever has upset her so suddenly and dramatically. She’s warm against me, her heart like a drum.
“Mamá la negrita/ se le salen los pie’ la cunital y la negra mese/ ya no sabe que hace’,” I whisper-sing to Rosa.
Through the walls, through the constant humming in my head, I hear rusding sounds at the front door, then the door itself shutting softly. I hear footsteps down the hall—nervous, hard steps—and a towering black shadow drapes itself over the door. Instinctively, I turn my body, protecting Rosa with my shoulder. She quiets down immediately.
“Juani?” It’s Jimmy.
“Where’s Pauli?” I ask.
&nbs
p; He’s a wreck, his eyes flying all over the place—to me, to Rosa, around the dark bedroom and out the window between the drapes. “She went with that guy,” Jimmy says. “They’re outside, look.” I see the sweat shining on his upper lip.
When he pulls the drapes over a bit, I see Pauli, her arms stretched tight across her chest, leaning against Ali’s cab on the curb. She’s got my jacket thrown over her shoulders. They don’t seem to be talking, just standing there. Ali paces a little, rubs his chin.
“She wouldn’t let him in,” Jimmy says. He’s holding the drapes apart. I’m standing right under the crook of his arm with Rosa. I can smell his sweat. “I mean, I can understand that but what the fuck’s she doing out there talking to him?”
“He’s Rosa’s father,” I say. And as soon as I utter the words, I realize I’ve betrayed Pauli. Telling Nena is one thing, telling Jimmy is quite another. I bite my lips. There’s nothing I can do now to undo it. My eyes start to water and I’m secretly relieved it’s so dark in here.
Jimmy’s stunned. “You’re shitting me!” He pulls the drapes over a little more. “I thought it was somebody in Mexico.” His hand grabs at his crotch, pulls on it.
I shake my head. Rosa takes a deep breath.
“How do you know?” Jimmy asks.
“It’s a long story,” I say, rocking Rosa gently in my arms. She smells sweet, like violet water.
“You think he’s gonna cause trouble?” Jimmy asks, his forehead all crunched up. His hand is still on his cock.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I know very little about him.”
When Rosa’s body finally goes limp, I put her back down in her crib. I signal quiet to Jimmy and we tiptoe out of the room.
In the hallway, he sighs. “Man, this is weird,” he says.
I nod. In the light I can see he doesn’t have an erection, regardless of all his fidgeting in Pauli and Rosa’s room.
“So what do we do now?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’m gonna hang out, make sure somebody’s here for Rosa while Pauli’s out there. In any case, Pauli will want to talk after Ali leaves.”
Jimmy nods. “Yeah,” he says. “You know, I’m gonna call Cari, tell her to keep Celia busy. I don’t think it’d be good if she came home while Pauli’s out there talking to that guy.”
He goes off to the kitchen. I hear him dial and whisper to Caridad. I trot out to the living room where I part Tía Celia’s blinds with my fingers and check up on Pauli and Ali. Now they’re both leaning against the cab, their heads turned toward each other. Pauli’s still got her arms crossed but I can tell from the angle of her shoulders that she’s more relaxed. I’m thinking this might work out after all.
It’s snowing while Pauli and Ali negotiate. Now and then Jimmy or I peek out through the blinds and check up on them. Neither one has lost their temper, neither one seems inclined toward harsh, quick moves. Their silhouettes fall on the freshly fallen snow, sometimes creating long shadows that remind me of Bernie’s African sculptures.
I’ve emptied the cafetera but I’m so tired I can barely keep my eyes open. I keep thinking I should be worried about Pauli and Ali, hoping that kind of nervous energy will keep me alert and awake, but I’m struggling. My lids are dropping, my head’s still humming.
Jimmy, on the other hand, hasn’t needed caffeine the whole time. He’s pacing back and forth between the living room and the kitchen, scratching his head, scratching his balls, eyeballing the two of them out in the front yard.
Now and then, Rosa cries out and I get up from the couch or the chair or wherever the hell I’m sitting and go sing to her: “Tú drume negrita…/ que yo voy a comprar nueva cunital que tendrá ca’cabel…” I rock her and stroke her, kiss her and hold her. I listen to the insistence of her breathing and watch until I’m sure she’s asleep again.
It’s been about an hour now that Pauli and Ali have been out there. I’m getting worried Tía Celia’s going to be coming home any minute, no matter how Cari tries to keep her at the Wash-N-Dry or at her place. Caridad’s not that imaginative; I can’t see her being successful for very long.
Rosa starts again, a long siren-like sound that lifts me off the couch and sends me flying into her room. “…Si tú drume yo te traigo un mamey muy colora’o…’” I keep thinking I should just stretch out here, on Pauli’s bed, but I’m afraid I won’t hear Pauli—I won’t know when she comes back in, or if something happens.
After Rosa falls asleep again, I wander back out to the living room. I’m stiff and slow as I walk. Jimmy’s turned the TV on but with no sound—he’s reading the closed captions running along the bottom of the image. Both his hands are at his crotch but they’re spread out, as if he’s covering it instead of stroking it. He looks up at me and shakes his head.
“You look like hell,” he whispers.
I sit down on the couch. I decide to ignore him. “It’s so strange, it’s like Rosa knows what’s going on or something,” I say.
“At least one of us does,” he says, then he turns his attention back to the TV.
I drop my head back, stare off at the ceiling. With the overhead light turned off, Tía Celia’s flat white ceiling looks like an empty canvass. I imagine Pauli painting a mural up there—Pauli upside down like Michelangelo. She splashes pink paint, soothing and smooth, little Rosa handing her brushes like an assistant. They are joyful and beautiful, dancing about until all the white is covered over, then the pink turns to yellow, and finally to black. When I hear Rosa calling again, another voice answers—it’s deep and hoarse. It’s not mine, but that’s okay.
As I try to wake up, I realize I’ve seen that strange face on Rosa before. She’s falling through my arms. I’m struggling to open my eyes but they feel glued shut. My lids push up, but it’s as if I’ve been asleep so long that spiders have spun webs between my eyelashes. Rosa’s falling through my arms like a slippery fish. I’m standing right there the whole time, watching her descend, not moving. There’s a hideous drone, a vacuum, a fluttering and crash like a bird ramming into the grill of a high-speed automobile.
I open my eyes and the scene is clear, as clear as anything I’ve ever witnessed in my life: Jimmy’s sitting in the chair in front of the television set, its ghostly light casting shadows on his gruesome face. There are no sounds at all. His head is back, ecstatic, lips red and shiny. One hand is on the back of Rosa’s puny head, pushing her down; the other is on his cock, inflamed and purplish, its glossy tip disappearing into her tiny, tiny mouth.
I leap across the room, yank Rosa up from his lap so hard I’m afraid I’ve dislocated bones. He tumbles, his cock bopping up and down, spewing semen all over the carpet. I scream and yell, all of our limbs flailing.
CHAPTER 21
THERE IS AN EXPLOSION OF SOUND: chains rattling, wood crackling as if in a fire. Ali and Pauli burst through the door, adrenalin running like the Mississippi. Chairs topple, lamps crash to the floor, the room spins and thrashes like a runaway locomotive. Ali, his face twisted and white, pounces on Jimmy, whose cock is a flattened balloon dangling out of his zipper. Pauli stands in a corner, cringing and whimpering, holding Rosa so tightly to her that her tiny body seems to disappear like a baby kangaroo into her mother’s pouch. Rosa is dazed and droopy and I am paralyzed.
It doesn’t matter that Jimmy is thicker, more muscular, stronger in every way than Ali. It doesn’t matter that Jimmy’s arms are free and Ali’s harnessed by a long coat, his neck encircled by a scarf that could easily become a noose, that Jimmy has been in a million fights in his life and Ali so clearly in only a few. What fuels Ali makes up for everything. He’s pink-eyed, fierce, suddenly throwing Jimmy about the room as if he were nothing more than an empty, airless peanut shell.
When Ali hurls Jimmy against the wall, he seems momentarily suspended. Tía Celia’s family pictures topple in slow motion, then shatter. The glass shards are stalagmites, the photographs a gasoline rainbow running all over the floor.
Ali rampage
s; he hurls his legs against Jimmy, who’s howling and spitting, rolling around on the glass on the floor. The splinters in his skin shine like tiny icicles, then drown in blood. Ali has a shadow, an oily elephantine musth that propels him. He kicks between Jimmy’s legs, kicks again and again, and geysers of red seem to spray the room.
After the explosion, there’s a lull. In the distance, there’s a clock ticking. I don’t know how Rosa was taken from my arms. I don’t know how I wound up on the floor, my sleeve torn, my face wet from sweat. I’m trembling and weak.
Ali holds Jimmy down by the neck. He’s on all fours but barely, coughing and spitting up blood. His crotch and buttocks are magenta. His cock has vanished. Jimmy wobbles. Some of his teeth are missing and his mouth is suddenly full of bubbles and black craters. The teeth themselves look yellow and canine, scattered on the floor.
“Juani…” Jimmy pleads, his eyes practically rolling back in his head.
When Caridad and Tía Celia hurry back from the Wash-N-Dry—their eyes wide, their breaths cold clouds that cover their faces—Ali jerks Jimmy up. Caridad screams, then leaps, beating her fists on Ali’s back and shoulders, but Ali’s not letting go. Pauli, who’s been shivering in a corner, finally loses control, yelling at Caridad—who’s a fire alarm, an air-raid siren—about what Jimmy has done to Rosa. Tía Celia immediately takes Rosa from Pauli. As if knowing she’s finally safe, Rosa instantly begins to cry and wail.
Everything is happening too fast. Pauli and Caridad are all over the place, their nails like knives digging into each other’s skin. Caridad demands to know who Ali is and what’s happened to Jimmy, Pauli shrieks hysterically. Rosa screams while a stone-faced Tía Celia runs her hand all over her as if to heal her. And I’m just here, on the floor, worthless.
“Juani…” Jimmy says, his tongue thick. At first no one hears him. There’s so much noise, so many limbs are flying that we’re a blur, a giant smear. Then he swallows and says it again: “Juani…”
