Passersby were approaching. Like a gangster, I stuck the gun between my pants and my belly.
“See you around. I got to try to score tonight.” She started to walk away.
“Hey, listen,” I called after her, feeling that I hadn’t thanked her enough. “What’s your name?”
“Hot Sauce,” she said. “And yours?”
I told her.
“Well, San-ti-a-go, it’s been fun meeting you. Any time you want it, I’ll give you a good deal, babe,” she said, pouting and blowing me a kiss before she swaggered into the surrounding nocturnal sleaze. From behind, she looked like a child playing femme fatale.
The gun burning against my skin, I shut the door and dashed up the stairs. I locked the door and paced the length of the apartment looking for a niche to hide the gun in. Finally, I settled for the toilet water tank. Tomorrow I’ll wipe off the fingerprints before I ditch it in the Hudson, I thought. I was still shaking and feeling slightly hysterical but it was too late to call anyone, even Rebecca. I lay in bed and tried to read the Times, but my eyes wouldn’t focus. I ate an orange. Tonight, I wished I had a TV set. My mother was right—it was un-American not to own a television. Mr. O’Donnell jumped onto my bed. I set the paper aside. “You don’t know how lucky you are to be a cat,” I said. His face was on top of mine, and his breath stank, but I remained still. One half of his face was white and the other half gray, and he had the long pinkish nose of a tropical rat. I stared into his eyes. The black pupils were surrounded by a greenish circle that grew agate toward the edges. His whiskers were long and thick like plastic toothpicks stuck on his snout. I scratched him between his ears and he started to purr. “Yes, yes, I know,” I said. Burying his nose under my chin, he went to sleep lying on my chest, his enlarged heart thumping against mine.
8 Mrs. O’Donnell and Moby Dick
The alarm rang at six. I had to be at the Social Security office by eight. Consoling myself that I would be home before noon, I got up. Curled up on a corner of the bed, Mr. O’Donnell pricked up his ears.
After I showered, I put on some water for coffee and gulped my vitamins. While waiting for the coffee, I sat by the window that overlooks the alley behind my apartment building. On the far side of the alley is another building with an entrance on Forty-third Street between Eighth and Ninth avenues; the other half of the block is taken up by a parking garage several stories high. The alley is active day and night because it’s used as blow-job alley by many office workers on their way to Port Authority. But in the early morning, looking out through the screen and my gate, all I saw was a family of alley cats playing below. These cats seldom came up the fire escape, but each day Mr. O’Donnell would spend many hours by the window watching their antics.
In April, he had broken an old window screen and escaped. He was lost for eleven days. I thought he had reverted to his old alley cat life and I searched for him in vain. My friend, the painter Harry Hagin, did a drawing of him and we posted hundreds of copies around the neighborhood. Since he was a sick cat and needed his medicine to survive, the story caught the attention of a Daily News reporter, and a picture of me, displaying Harry’s drawing, appeared in the “Manhattan” section that Friday. My line was swamped by callers offering me other cats and animals; others claimed Mr. O’Donnell was their lost cat; I also received obscene letters and phone calls from heavy breathers, but no information as to the cat’s whereabouts. I had given up hope he was still alive when, one morning, with one of his ears chewed up and his muzzle so badly scratched that I hardly recognized him, he came up the fire escape, looking guilty and tired. That same week I took him to the Humane Society to have him fixed.
The coffee was ready. I poured myself a big cup and looked out the kitchen window. The handsome flasher who lived in one of the studio apartments across the alley was sitting by the window in his underwear. I had gotten used to seeing him dancing and playing with himself. Mr. O’Donnell zigzagged into the room and, eyes still half-closed, started to beg. He did not meow, but instead made a weird noise that reminded me of the cry of a toucan. I fixed his breakfast, which he ate half asleep and then went back to bed.
As I went downstairs at seven, there was already a long line of applicants at Mike’s, the employment agency on the second floor of my building. The men were Mike’s usual crop of shabbily dressed Hindu and Arabic types, chattering in exotic languages. Sometimes they came to the agency with their cardboard suitcases, as if they had just arrived from Baghdad or Sri Lanka or wherever they came from. I always wondered what kinds of jobs Mike got for them.
Outside, Eighth Avenue reeked of uncollected garbage. Masses of stone-faced commuters wearing suits and carrying briefcases poured out of the Port Authority Terminal. The humidity was thick and oppressive but the A train was prompt, although crowded. Minutes later I resurfaced at Chambers Street.
To kill time I sat on a bench outside the Federal Plaza Building, under a rachitic maple. I lit a cigarette and watched the usually frantic Wall Streeters dawdle, struggling with the prevailing mugginess. For a few years I had been working as an interpreter in different boroughs of New York City, for the Department of Social Security, a trove of stories and characters. I found it hard to believe that in New York, the Mecca of the twentieth century, there were people whose squalid lives seemed as horrifying as anything one could find in the novels of Gorky. I was uptight about having to interpret for Judge Warpick, who was the most detestable person I had ever met. I felt reassured that my hatred was shared by the other department employees as well as all the claimants who came before her. On many occasions, I had felt like leaping from my seat and twisting her neck. To ward off these thoughts, I reminded myself that I was just the interpreter, a vessel of language, the invisible man, a passive and disinterested nonparticipant.
At five to eight I took the elevator to the twenty-ninth floor.
“Hi, Jeff, how’s it going?” I greeted the security guard.
“Hey, Santiago. Good to see you, man. You up for a game?”
Jeff and I played chess while we waited between hearings. Although we had played hundreds of times, he still managed to beat me in the first dozen moves.
“I’d like to. But I have Judge Warpick, you know. And she’s always on time.”
“Good luck. She’s in a foul mood. If you ask me, what she needs is a good fuck. But I’d rather go to the electric chair,” he said smiling. “Here,” he added, handing me the claimant’s file. “She don’t have an attorney. Maybe we can play when you get out.”
“Okay.”
The room was empty but for a couple of women sitting way in the back, near a tall fan which made a lot of noise all right, but blew no air.
I approached the women. Smiling, I said to the older woman, “Good morning. I’m your Spanish interpreter.”
The women exchanged puzzled looks as if I had spoken in Chinese. The older woman said, “Thank you.”
I sat next to her. Reading her name on the file, I asked, “Are you Guadalupe Rama?”
She nodded.
“Señora, why don’t you have a lawyer?”
“Nobody told me nothing about getting a lawyer.”
“Señora Rama, the letter you received with the date of your hearing had a list of places where you can get free legal services. It’s your right under the law.”
“It would take someone with a very black soul to deny me help,” she said.
That sounded to me like the perfect description of Judge Warpick. “The judge is not here to defend you, Señora Rama, but to interpret the law,” I warned her, as I leafed through the thick file. “This folder contains all the documents that the judge is going to review to reach a decision about your case. There are twenty-eight documents here.” I pointed to the list on the first page. “They go as far back as 1978, and the most recent entry pertains to your visit to Dr. Miller on June of this year. I also see that your claim has been denied four times.”
“And if I lose this time, I will reappeal,” she
said, waving her crutches.
“If you had had an attorney, you might have succeeded the first time.”
When I had explained the file, I informed Jeff that we were ready to go before the judge. We were led to Judge Warpick’s chambers by her assistant. I indicated to the women where to sit, and sat down next to them. While the judge’s assistant fiddled with the tape recorder and the mikes, I studied Señora Rama’s daughter. A teenager of medium height, she was incredibly thin. Her complexion was caramel-colored and her hair shiny ebony. She seemed withdrawn and avoided my eyes. When our eyes finally met, I noticed that hers were dark and moist like a canna flower in the moonlight.
Judge Warpick entered the room, followed by the doctor. I rose, indicating to Señora Rama to follow me. She rose with great difficulty.
“Please be seated.” The judge motioned with her hands without looking at any of us. The doctor sat next to me.
“Mr. Interpreter, have you explained to the claimant that under the law she has the right to obtain legal counsel?”
“Yes, your honor, I have.”
“And she still wants to go on with the hearing?”
“Yes, your honor. She does.”
“Very well, Señora Rama. I advise you to go ahead with the hearing; it will be to your benefit.”
I started interpreting. Judge Warpick interrupted me, “You don’t have to translate that,” she growled. “This is not the United Nations. Please stand up, Mr. Interpreter, and raise your right hand. Do you”—she read my name on a piece of paper—“solemnly swear to interpret faithfully the questions posed from English into Spanish and Spanish into English to the best of your ability so help you God?”
I already wanted to strangle her. “I do.”
Señora Rama was sworn, we were seated, and Judge Warpick began, “Guadalupe Rama, when did you come to the mainland United States for the first time.”
“October 4th, 1964, your honor.”
This was something I had noticed about all immigrants I had ever interpreted for: they remembered the exact date when they had first arrived in the United States.
“What was the highest grade of education you completed in Puerto Rico?”
“I never went to school.”
“Never?”
“That’s right.”
“Do you speak any English?”
“I know a few words.”
“Can you read or write in Spanish?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Who do you live with?”
“My children.”
“How many children do you have?”
“Four.”
“Give their names and ages.”
“Dorcas Antioco, twenty-five; Hennil Rangel, twenty; Sonya Altagracia, eighteen and Raisa Cococielo, here present, fifteen,” she said, indicating her daughter.
The girl squirmed in her seat, and mumbled, “Sixteen.”
“How many times have you been married?”
“Twice. My first husband died; my second husband divorced me. The others, I didn’t marry. I’m a useless woman. Men don’t want me.”
“Señora, just answer my questions. I don’t want to hear long stories about your life. Is that understood?” She paused. Obviously she wasn’t getting anywhere with this claimant. “Do you still live on Avenue A and First Street?”
“In the projects.”
“On what floor?”
“Number four.”
“Do you walk up the stairs or take the elevator?”
“I take the elevator when it’s working, which is never. Otherwise, I walk the stairs one step at a time,” she said, holding her crutches. Her hands shook violently now. There was a strange expression on her face, as if she were trying to smile. I noticed it was a grimace of pain; she was about to start crying.
“Señora Rama,” the judge said, staring at her papers, “tell me about your present complaints.”
Señora Rama’s eyes were wet, but no tears came out of them. Eagerly, she extended her arms in front of her and opened her hands. It looked as if she were making an offering to the judge. “First, I had an operation on this hand,” she said, looking at her right palm. “Then (shaking her left palm), I had an operation on this one.”
I saw on each hand an S-shaped, wide, deep scar that ran from the joint of the middle finger to the wrist area. Now I noticed her gnarled fingers. “These hands are useless. I can’t do anything with them.”
“Who does the house chores?”
“Raisa,” she said, nodding in the direction of the girl, who stared at her hands in her lap and sank lower in the chair.
“Don’t you cook anything at all?”
Señora Rama shook her head; she squinted, as if trying to remember something. “I can boil two eggs and some potatoes. But I cannot peel them. That’s all.”
“Can you carry a five pound bag of potatoes?”
“I can’t do nothing.”
“Answer my question: Can you carry a five pound bag of potatoes?”
“If I hold it between my arms,” she said, crossing her arms across her breasts.
“Do you have any other complaints?”
Señora Rama rose from her chair and, on her crutches, hopped to the side of the table.
“I have trouble with my feet. See? I have pins in my ankles.” She pointed to scars the size of brown quarters on both ankles. “I had two operations,” she explained.
The doctor rose and leaned over the table and took a look at the scars.
“You can sit down,” the judge ordered her, looking very uncomfortable.
“And my knees, too,” she said, refusing to sit down.
“What’s the matter with your knees?”
“When I walk, the bones come out of joint, so I have to wear these braces all the time.” She began to pull at her pants.
“That’s enough. You can sit down.” Visibly rattled, the judge waited until the claimant sat down and then went on. “And other than your hands and your knees, do you have any other physical complaints?”
Señora Rama lifted her blouse and showed three pink, corrugated scars that looked like scaly worms stretched across the width of her stomach.
“Please, señora,” Judge Warpick screamed, hitting her desk with the palm of her hands. “You don’t have to show us your scars. Please.”
I took a good look at the judge. In her youth, she must have been a pretty woman. Now her still abundant hair was gray and cut short. Although her features were regular and firm, she was so skinny that she almost looked desiccated. But it was her expression of utter contempt and disgust—as if she hated her post, the world and its people, and maybe even herself—that I found so disturbing. Furiously, she scribbled on her pad.
Señora Rama went on. “I have to go back to the hospital for another operation.”
In a voice filled with apprehension Judge Warpick asked, “In your stomach?”
“No, here,” and she indicated behind her right ear.
“Can you bend?”
“No. I had an operation here.” She turned sideways on the chair and pointed to her lower back. “The doctor gave me a shot in my spine.”
“How many doctors do you see?”
I looked at Dr. McDowell, who all this time had been going over the woman’s medical file. His beautiful green eyes darted back and forth between the claimant and myself.
Señora Rama asked her daughter for the handbag. She took out a stack of cards and handed them to me. I removed the rubber band. “Mr. Interpreter,” the judge said, indicating that I should read the names on the cards.
“Dr. Bajit,” I read.
“He’s for my ankles,” Señora Rama explained.
I handed the card to Dr. McDowell, who examined it on both sides. “Dr. Ramin Badrinthajanmon something,” I read.
“He’s for my stomach in Brooklyn.”
“Dr. Dallon,” I read.
“He’s for my eyes.”
“Do you have problems with your eyes?”
“If I didn’t have problems with my eyes, I wouldn’t see a doctor. I have great pain inside my eyes.”
I read the names of at least twenty doctors. “Dr. Ramírez,” I read the last card.
“Is he a psychiatrist?”
“Yes.”
“And how long have you been seeing Dr. Ramírez?”
“Since 1969, when my son died.” Suddenly, Señora Rama’s eyes glistened and tears popped out.
“Do you want to take a break? Would you like to go to the ladies’ room?”
She wiped her tears with the back of her trembling hand. “No, I want to finish this thing as soon as possible. I’m in a lot of pain.”
“You can stand up if you’d like.”
“It’s worse when I stand up.”
“So, Señora Rama,” the judge said, breathing heavily. “Tell me, what do you do all day?”
“I sit by the window and look out. And I hear voices.”
“What kind of voices?”
“Horrible voices; dirty voices. They tell me to jump off.”
“And why don’t you jump?” Warpick asked. “What prevents you from jumping?”
“I prevent her,” Raisa said. “I have to watch her all the time.”
“If you want to testify in your mother’s behalf, I’ll have to swear you in.”
The claimant burst into loud sobs and stretched out her arms in her daughter’s direction. In Spanish she said, “No me dejes sola; no me dejes sola.”
“Silence,” Judge Warpick yelled. “Silence. Mr. Interpreter, what’s she saying?”
“Don’t leave me alone; don’t leave me alone.”
“Señora Rama, listen to me,” Judge Warpick said. “Forget about the voices. Nobody is going to do anything to you. We’re all here to help you.”
I noticed that my palms were sweating and my heart was pumping fast. I, too, was out of breath. I wanted to get up and run out of that room. I placed a hand on the claimant’s arm—her flesh was very cold.
“So tell me, what else do you do?” the judge asked.
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