Burn Baby Burn

by Meg Medina

  “Finally warming up out there?” He’s at the slicer, a Mets sweatshirt under his bloodstained apron.

  “Thinner, please.” A lady at the counter frowns at the turkey slice Sal holds up for inspection.

  He purses his lips. “Any thinner and it’s gonna break apart, lady, but if you wanna be stingy, what can I say? I’m glad it’s not my sandwich.” He hands the fat slice across the counter to me and readjusts the blade. “Mangia.”

  Hector settles himself on the edge of the produce bins to watch the delivery guys. They’re wheeling hand trucks loaded with merchandise to the sidewalk vault below. When he was little, Hector used to say that dragons lived down there and they were going to burn all of Queens with their fiery breath. Ever the sweet growing boy, he just got darker with his fascination. He read all he could about sidewalk vaults and told me about a 1902 murder. Cops investigating a terrible smell had crawled into the sidewalk vault at the Empire Garden Cafe on 29th Street and found what? A human head roasting in the furnace.

  Obviously I don’t go down there if I can help it.

  I walk to the back of the store to get my work apron off the old meat hooks Sal recycled into a coatrack. On my way back, I pull a half gallon of milk from the refrigerated case and a box of strawberry Pop-Tarts. There are lots of other things I’d like to grab, but I’m out of hands — and money. Twinkies would be nice, some Oreos maybe. All the stuff Mima almost never splurges for. It’s not that she’s on a high horse about junk food or sugar. She’s from Cuba, after all, so sugar is practically its own essential food group. It’s more that she just can’t seem to get the hang of American food in general. We eat strange approximations of everything. Our hamburgers have olives in the patties. Instead of pancakes and syrup, she makes us cornmeal buñuelitos with honey. Even if we could convince her to make a cake from a Betty Crocker mix like Mrs. MacInerney, she’d probably frost it with that egg-white merengue that hardens to plaster. Jeez. You could chip a tooth. Is it too much to dream of a bologna sandwich on Wonder bread?

  When I get to the register, I find Hector reaching into the pickle jar that Sal keeps on the counter.

  “Use the tongs,” I tell him.

  The register is still locked and unmanned, so I dump my stuff and lift the hinged door in the counter to step behind it. “Where’s Annemarie?” That’s Sal’s wife. She works the register when I’m not around.

  “Working the dungeon,” he says. That’s what they call the sidewalk vault. He holds up sliced Muenster for the customer’s review. “The new guy started today.”

  “Not a moment too soon,” I say. The only other employee they have is a part-time stock guy, but the last one recently quit for a job pumping gas. The floor has gotten filthy with sawdust and mud. Unpacked fruit crates crowd aisle one, and the cans on the shelves are looking furry with dust. I don’t mind standing for hours at the register, but I hate cleaning. Absolutely none of Mima’s need for scrubbing has rubbed off on me. I don’t see the point, really. This is an old brick building, like all the others on the block. No matter how much we scrub, the deli always looks dingy. Sal agrees, but he insists that a little dirt gives the place charm.

  I total my bill. When the cash door springs open, Hector wiggles his eyebrows at the sight of the money inside. He also opens his jacket quickly to show me two apples he just swiped. I put in the money I owe — plus another buck for the fruit — and slam the drawer shut.

  “Go home,” I whisper, and then signal to the lady behind him. “You’re next?”

  Hector starts to light a cigarette on his way out.

  “No smoking, pal,” Sal says. “But hold on a minute.” He wraps the end of the cheese in white paper and ties it with string. “It’s too skinny to push through the blade with my big mitts,” he says without looking up. “Stupid to waste food.”

  Or so he says.

  “You staying outta trouble?” he asks.

  My brother shrugs and grins. “Define ‘trouble.’”

  Sal leans across the top of the meat case and hands over the cheese. “Oh, a fannullone. What you need is a job, Mr. Wonderful. Work makes the man. Remember that.”

  I finish ringing up my customer. Hector? A job? Ha! He’d have to follow directions, do what he’s told.

  “Look at me,” Sal continues. “I’ve been working since I was ten. Delivered papers all over the place. Now look at me!” He rubs his fingers together to mean money. “Il dinaro. A good honest living will make you irresistible to the ladies.”

  Hector snorts and tucks the cheese under his arm like a football. He blows out without so much as a thank-you.

  “Who’s irresistible to the ladies?” Annemarie comes through the door out of breath. She’s a round lady with a head of red hair and two gold teeth. The new stock guy trails her with two soggy cartons of produce stacked in his arms. Only the top of his head shows over the load he’s carrying.

  “The lettuce bins are on the left,” Annemarie tells him. “Cut off any brown leaves first. Rot spreads fast. Wait: You’ll need the knife.” She pats my cheeks and points at the bucket of tools we keep under the register. “How are you, Nora, sweetie? Hand us that blade, would you?”

  I don’t have a chance. All at once, the bottom of one of the cartons breaks open, and a dozen heads of iceberg lettuce go rolling across the floor in every direction. Just as the stock boy tries to catch them, the second carton spills from his arms, too.

  “Oh, man,” he says, scrambling to pick them up. “Sorry!”

  I stare stupidly — and not just at the mess.

  Is this a mirage? Our old stock guy, Norman, had warts. This guy is about my age, a little older. Olive skin, a perfect DA haircut.

  “Fuori di testa!” Sal thunders. “Anybody around here ever hear of a hand truck?”

  “Well, if we could find one in that mess down there, we would have used it! When are you going to throw out all that scrap wood?” Annemarie quips.

  “Yeah, in all my spare time!”

  I step from behind the counter and start gathering lettuces while Sal and Annemarie argue.

  “Thanks,” the new guy says. “I don’t know how I did that.”

  “Those boxes are pretty flimsy when they’re wet.” I try not to gawk at him, but my heart is already thumping.

  “I’m Paulie,” he says.

  “Nora.” I hand over a muddy lettuce. “Leonora, actually, but Nora is fine. It’s like the last part of my name and not so ugly. It’s Spanish.” My God, why is my mouth firing off on its own?

  He grins. “That’s funny.”

  My cheeks feel hot; my tongue is suddenly thick in my mouth. “Leonora. I know. I hate it. Ha. What a name.” Stop talking!

  “No, no. I mean, I’m not really Paulie,” he says. “It’s actually Pablo.”

  I stop and look at him. The same way Papi went from Fico to Rick?

  “Where are you from?” I ask.

  “I live over in Hollis, but we’re from Colombia, if that’s what you mean.” He says Colombia in knee-buckling, perfect español. Right there, I know I’ll never call him Paulie.

  My mind races. What do I know about Colombia? Nothing, except that it’s at the top of South America. Oh, Cyclo-Teacher, where are you?

  “How about you?” he asks.

  “Soy cubana,” I finally say. And then because we both stand there with nothing else to say, I point to the ground. “There’s more under there.”

  We stoop under the counter to reach for the last of the spill. It’s close quarters in here, which is kind of awkward, but holy God, I can feel the electricity. He smells so nice, like Irish Spring, I think. And when he reaches for an escaped lettuce, I stare at his biceps, too. They’re on full display inside a green T-shirt that reads ELéPHAS across the chest.

  “You dance there?” I manage to ask. Eléphas is a new disco in Bayside. Everybody talks about it, but I haven’t gone. It gets crowded, so they’re picky some nights and check IDs.

  He looks down and shrugs. “Someti
mes. My buddy Ralph picks up hours as one of the bouncers. Thursday is free T-shirt night, so I have one of these in every color. It’s a cheap way to get a wardrobe, I guess.”

  My head is a spinning disco ball. He’s a dancer.

  “I haven’t seen you there,” he says.

  My stomach plunges. “Oh, it’s been on my list,” I say, trying not to sound like the pathetic high-school kid that I am.

  “Come when Jimmy Yu is deejaying,” he says. “He mixes Latin in. I’ll find out when he’s coming next if you want.” He smiles and stares right at me.

  Oh. Oh. Oh.

  Suddenly Sal peers under the counter. He looks from Pablo to me with that knowing look of his.

  “You’re not going make me regret hiring you, are you, Paulie?”

  “Absolutely not, sir.” Pablo climbs out in a hurry and brushes the sawdust from his pants. The counter is crowded with the lettuces we rescued.

  “Go rinse those in the back sink and tear off the dirty leaves,” Sal says. “Dry them good when you’re done.”

  Pablo turns to me before he goes. “Um, do you mind, Nora?” he says.

  That’s when I realize that I’m clutching two heads of lettuce to my chest like veggie boobs. I hand them over and hold my breath as he makes his way down the aisle. Thelma Houston is singing “Don’t Leave Me This Way” in my head again. I see Pablo and me spinning in a hustle.

  Sal clears his throat and crosses his arms.

  “What?” I step behind the register, trying not to look at him. “I was just helping.”

  As much as I’d like to go out with Pablo, I might have to give it a second thought.

  The ballistics tests for the Forest Hills shooting are finally back, and our fine friends at the NYPD have no choice but to publicly admit the worst.

  The same gun killed both girls in Forest Hills, but it’s also the same one that paralyzed the girl in Bellerose, too. They’ve linked it to the bullets sprayed into the car with the detective’s daughter and even to a girl who got shot through the neck and killed in the Bronx last summer.

  I can’t stop reading the gory articles in the paper, my stomach squeezing nervously. Murders are nothing new in New York, but a serial killer is scary, even by our standards. The cops are asking for witnesses. Teary neighbors remember the girls, and even psychics are giving theories. Worse, there’s a psychiatrist who pointed out that the victims are “romantically active girls with long dark hair,” as though something about brunettes in love draws murder.

  I stare at the picture of a Bulldog .44 revolver in the paper for a long time. It has muzzle flash, they say, and huge recoil. Only someone who has been trained to shoot can really handle it well.

  I put down the paper, wondering. The shooter could be a veteran, or even a cop, somebody you’d never suspect. He could just wander up my street, looking ordinary.

  “Scared?”

  I jump at Hector’s voice. He leans over the newspaper I’m reading.

  “No.”

  “Liar,” he says slyly. “You could be next, you know. All that silky hair.” He rakes his fingers through my hair, snagging on a tangle.

  “Ow!” I shoot him an ugly look. “Stop.”

  He laughs and goes off to rifle through the refrigerator for breakfast.

  “There’s no fucking food,” he says.

  I put my dishes in the sink and run the water. I have to be at Kathleen’s in five minutes. “It’s your own fault for eating all the Pop-Tarts in one sitting,” I say. “Guess you’re out of luck.”

  I’m soaping the sponge when something whizzes right by my head. There’s a loud smack against the wall to my left, and I feel something wet on the back of my shirt. I turn to see an egg dripping down the wall. Bits of yolk and shell have splashed all over me.

  “What the hell, Hector!” I hiss, trying not to wake Mima. “What was that for?”

  He grins at me. “Better pay attention, Nora,” he says. “You never know when someone might be taking aim at you.”

  Kathleen, her mom, and Stiller are already waiting for me when I come jogging up to their stoop. Boxes, rolled banners, and clipboards are piled around them.

  Kathleen takes one look at me. “I see you read the paper this morning, too.” She gives me a knowing glance. “Not a bad idea to cover up your dark hair.”

  I adjust my bandanna, but I don’t tell her I’m mostly just covering the egg splash.

  “No gruesome talk today,” Mrs. MacInerney tells her. “Today isn’t about murderers. It’s about empowerment.”

  We’re heading to the Women’s Day march in the city. Mrs. MacInerney is on the planning committee, so naturally we got roped in. It’s a nice day, so I don’t mind the idea of trekking from Herald Square to Union Square. Besides, it’s much better than our last volunteer assignment: a phone-a-thon in support of the Equal Rights Amendment. God. I’m all for liberation, but it sucks to spend four hours having people hang up on you.

  Stiller stands up and leans the banner over her shoulder like a bayonet. She’s got blue glitter in her hair, and her entire shirt is covered in slogan buttons. LIBERTY, EQUALITY, SISTERHOOD. THERE CAN BE NO FREE MEN UNTIL THERE ARE FREE WOMEN. BLACK POWER. ERA WON’T GO AWAY. REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS!

  She and Mrs. MacInerney have been pals since they met at Hunter College when Mrs. MacInerney was working as a secretary. Stiller helped organize a sit-in to demand a Black and Puerto Rican Studies department. “I would have liked to hate her,” Stiller always says. “But Mary kept bringing us coffee and doughnuts to keep up our spirits.”

  Mrs. MacInerney hands me a box of flyers. “Let’s get moving, or we’ll be late.”

  I wonder what Mima would say if she could see me here with all these “agitators.” She thinks I’m working on an English paper with Kathleen all day, but here I am about to be part of one of those demonstrations she hates. Mima doesn’t get feminists at all. In fact, she says they’re lunatics. Who wouldn’t want a good man to take care of them, she wants to know.

  Interestingly, none of the volunteers that are already gathered look particularly insane to me — except maybe the weird kid who is actually wearing a costume for the occasion. Her hair is pinned up, and she’s wearing a high-collared blouse and a long skirt with a bustle made out of crumpled newspaper. She’s trying to look like one of the girls who burned to death at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in 1911. It’s a little over-the-top, if you ask me, but I’ll give her points for morbid creativity. We’re marching to the spot where 146 women and girls died in a fire thanks to crappy work conditions, after all.

  I’m not the only one who notices her, of course. A reporter wanders among the crowd and zeroes in on her right away.

  “Why did you come today?” the reporter asks her.

  Kathleen and I are standing close enough to eavesdrop on their conversation.

  “The girls at my school are only interested in boys and makeup,” the kid says. “They’ll be women one day, and then they’ll understand why they should have been here.”

  Kathleen rolls her eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “She looks like she’s twelve. You think she really knows what she’s doing here? Can she really know what reproductive rights are?”

  I glance over at the girl. “Well, do we know much more?”

  Kathleen loses steam and gives me a guilty look. “You think we suck as feminists?” she whispers to me. “We do argue about Wella Balsam versus Prell.”

  “That doesn’t make us Mrs. Shoo-Flies,” I point out. Phyllis Schlafly is public enemy number one at Kathleen’s house. She’s always on TV making speeches about God’s true plan for women as homemakers.

  “True,” Kathleen says.

  We wander to the display tables, where they’re taking sign-ups for the first national women’s conference being planned in Houston this summer. All the former first ladies will be there, and Battling Bella Abzug is going to preside. I’ve already heard Stiller and Mrs. MacInerney arguing abo
ut it. Kathleen’s mom is sure it will be the Big Feminist Kahuna to end oppression. Stiller says she wants to see the needs of black women included or she won’t go. “Being oppressed as a woman is just one way of being held down, Mary,” she said.

  I jot down my name on the sign-up sheet and then thumb through a women’s “herstory” calendar while I wait for Kathleen to sign up, too. I check tomorrow’s celebration. March 13 is the day Susan B. Anthony died. Sixty years of fighting for it, and she never saw women get the right to vote. I’ll be thinking of you when I pull the voting lever in November, Sue.

  “All right, girls. Time to get busy.” Mrs. MacInerney appears with our volunteer badges and the agendas. She points across the street. “I need you to give these out at the entrance to the subway and point people in this direction,” she says.

  I glance at the flyer to see what’s in store. The president of the National Organization for Women. Someone named Carmen Vivian Rivera talking about forced sterilizations of women. Somebody else on women’s literacy in the Third World.

  My brain hurts, and no one has even said a word yet. Not that I can say so. Kathleen is smart, but Mrs. MacInerney reads the New York Times from the first page to the last and finds it relaxing to pick apart stuff like President Carter’s crappy gas policy and whether it’s the labor unions or the banks that are killing New York City. Kathleen sometimes resorts to a silent recitation of the names of her nail-polish colors to counterbalance the heft. Optimistic, BoingBoing, FlowerPower . . .

  “No window shopping,” Mrs. MacInerney warns Kathleen. She knows we’ll be standing dangerously close to Macy’s front-window display. “This is more important, you hear me?”

  “Roger, captain.” Kathleen salutes and turns on her heel.

  At first, we have only a few stragglers, so Kathleen and I have a chance to talk about less pressing matters than the state of the world for women.

  “There’s a new guy at work,” I tell her.