by Meg Medina
I turn the page, only to find Son of Sam’s face staring at me. Beneath it is the hotline number, which gives me pause. Someone in this city may have information, the police say. Citizens should help find the murderer. Surely someone knows something. It’s our civic duty to help fight crime before someone else is hurt.
What should I do?
What hotline is there for someone like me? How do I turn in my own flesh and blood when it means that everything will be blown apart and I’ll lose whatever little family I have left?
I’ve thought about this from every angle. I know that telling what Hector did won’t make him better. He’ll come home, maybe beat the shit out of Mima and me. Even if they do arrest him and lock him up at Spofford with all the other juvies, he’ll sneak out, or else harden into something even worse.
Hector has left his shirt on the chair. I creep over to it. Holding my breath, I tap down the pockets, almost dizzy with fear. Son of Sam is creeping around the city, but I have my own secret monster right here, don’t I?
My fingers close around something metal in the breast pocket. Just a lighter, but I know that in Hector’s hands it’s as deadly as a Bulldog revolver.
I slip inside our closet next and run my hands along all of his pants, his shirts. I dig with my hands inside his stolen shoes.
I find the radio again, another lighter, a crushed pack of cigarettes, and a wad of rolled bills — his own clever stash! But finally I find a bag with a loose joint and Lemmons.
I take it all to the bathroom and sit on the tiles, where it’s cool, to study my finds.
Maybe I will flush these things away, try again to vanish the ugliness.
Maybe I’ll light up the joint myself and try to calm the hell down.
Or maybe I should just bury them back inside the dark closet where we all can pretend we don’t know.
But what erases the shell of Mr. Farina’s store, or that terrible look in his eyes when he fell?
“¿Qué haces?”
Mima has come barefoot to the bathroom door. She pushes it open with her toe and gives me a worried look. She can’t sleep, she says, with a killer on the prowl.
I don’t answer.
“You’re having nightmares,” she says. “Come back to bed. It’s this heat.”
Finally she glances at the collection of things all around me. Mima’s eyes slide cautiously to where my brother still sleeps.
“Niña, go to bed,” she whispers.
I get up and edge past her. She follows me to the living room, watching as I dig through the stolen albums.
“Don’t look for trouble. Leave his things.”
“His? None of this is his. He stole it all.”
Mima steps closer. “What’s done is done,” she says. “And he’s not the only one. Everyone went crazy in this heat. Lots of people took things.”
“It’s not about things, Mima. It’s about how he’s sick and killing all of us around him.”
I snap each LP in two, a wishbone breaking.
“Por Dios y Maria, Nora,” Mima begs in a whisper. “Can’t you see you’ll make things even worse?”
“Worse than waiting for him to hit us or burn something else down? Worse than waiting for him to OD?”
“Shhhhhh.” She grips my hand, but I pull away.
The floorboards creak behind us. “What the fuck are you doing?” Hector is standing at the bedroom door.
We need to get out of here. “Come with me, Mima,” I say.
But she doesn’t move.
Hector crosses the living room to his stack of albums. He’s still groggy as his lizard eyes move slowly over my handiwork. Even from here I can feel the pressure in the room changing.
I grab Mima’s sweaty hand and pull her toward the door, but she’s rooted to the spot. “Please,” I tell her.
Suddenly Hector turns to me. I can read his face, burning with rage. With one sweeping motion, he topples the stereo and all our music. He kicks a chair that goes spinning across the room at Mima. Then he starts in my direction.
I don’t wait.
I fly down the stairs as Mima tries to block the door.
“¡Niño!” she cries out.
But in no time, he’s close behind. I’m taking the steps three at a time, but Hector’s legs are longer. He’s close enough for me to hear his labored breath at my back. He grabs at my hair at last and drags me back painfully. I’m lifted off the step, and then, with a sudden shove forward, I go sailing through the air. The floors in this building are old marble, cold and hard. I grab frantically for the rail to save myself. My cheek bounces hard against the wood, but I manage to hang on and avoid smashing onto the floor below. I race as hard as I ever have from one landing to the next.
“Stiller!” I shout. My voice echoes in the hallway as I pound on her door. “Help!”
Hector isn’t behind me anymore, but I can hear more furniture overturning upstairs and Mima’s voice rising.
Stiller throws open the door.
“Call the cops!” I shout.
And then I race out into the darkness for help.
Is he hurting her? I wonder.
The side of my head pounds as I imagine Mima facing Hector’s fists.
The MacInerneys’ kitchen is quiet except for the scanner. The dispatcher’s flat voice directs car 50 to my address. Kathleen sits across from me at the kitchen table, quiet, her face unreadable. Her mom has propped open the side door to let in the cooler night air, but the air around us still feels thick and hard to breathe.
Mr. Mac hangs up the phone and turns to me. His hair is damp and all points, but his voice is calm.
“There’s a car on the way now for the family disturbance. And I’ve left word for James at the fire marshal’s office to come by as soon as he can for the rest.”
“Will they take him away tonight?” I ask.
Mr. Mac sighs. “They’ll have a crisis team to calm the situation.”
My hands tremble despite the thick heat. “There’s no calming this.”
“It’s going to depend on what has gone on — and on what your mother says, Nora,” Mr. Mac explains. “We deal with the immediate emergency first. Tomorrow, we’ll see what the marshal can do about the rest.”
Mrs. MacInerney shakes her head as she fills an ice bag for my face. “This is exactly why we need better laws,” she mutters. “Thank God Stiller is over there.”
I put my head on the table.
Mima will help Hector lie. I know it. And more, she’ll never forgive me. Even if Mima isn’t hurt, she’ll be humiliated by having all our neighbors gawk at her. With everyone panicked about Son of Sam, the police car will draw a crowd. Our business will be the talk of the neighborhood.
“Hold this to your face,” Mrs. MacInerney says.
I close my eyes against the cold.
A few minutes later, I hear a chair scrape back. Kathleen gets up. “I’ll get her bed ready,” she announces.
A distance in Kathleen’s voice makes me open my eyes. I’ve come to their door like a lunatic and dumped the ugly details of my life in their laps. Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut, handled it quietly after all.
“I’m sorry to get you involved in this, Kathleen. I didn’t know where to go.”
She looks back at me from the door. There’s a hurt expression in her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me before?” she asks. “All this time, you never said anything about what was happening.”
“You couldn’t have done anything.” But even as I say it, I know I’ve left her out, hidden things.
She shakes her head. “I could have been your friend, Nora,” she says.
Then she slips upstairs.
Fire Marshal Costa takes notes as he sweats through his uniform.
I try to see what he’s writing, but he keeps his page close.
He wipes his face with a handkerchief. “Wait here a moment, please.” Then he walks to the parlor, where he and the MacInerneys talk in low voices.
Pablo
and I exchange looks, wondering if what we’ve said will be enough.
“I’m telling you right now, if they don’t pick your brother up, I’m taking him out myself,” Pablo whispers to me, his eyes glued to the bruise on my face.
“It hardly hurts.”
“Stop protecting him,” he says. “It’s time. Stop.”
Costa comes back with the MacInerneys in tow. For my own safety, I am to stay here. Hector will get picked up sometime before tonight, he says. They’ll search for Sergio at the Satin Lady, too.
“We’ll call you when the arrests have been made. For now, please don’t call anyone,” he says. “We don’t want to encourage anyone to run.”
All day, I sit in Kathleen’s room, feeding pellets to Gloria and worrying about Mima. Kathleen stays scarce the whole time, as if being around me makes her mad.
So, when no one is looking, I use her phone to call Mima. I know I’m not supposed to, but I have to make sure she’s okay.
The phone rings and rings, but there’s no answer.
At dinnertime, Fire Marshal Costa calls. Hector, he says, went calmly. Sergio was all mouth until they searched his car.
The tension is killing me. Kathleen and I have almost never fought in all the years we’ve been friends. Wandering around their house in borrowed clothes for two days, I feel like an intruder. She’s been keeping to herself, packing for college and talking to me only when I ask her a question.
I keep busy with the only thing that really calms me. I spackle the broken soap dish in the bathroom for Mr. Mac and hammer down the loose planks on the stairs. I even help Mrs. MacInerney stuff envelopes for the women’s conference.
“You girls all right?” Mrs. MacInerney looks cautiously from one face to another. Kathleen hasn’t said a word as we worked.
“Fine,” Kathleen says, sealing another envelope. Then she gets up and goes upstairs.
I can’t take it another minute.
I march up after her.
“You’re really going to add on to what I’m going through now?” I demand from the doorway. “I needed privacy, Kathleen!”
“Privacy has never been part of our arrangement, Nora, and you know it. We’ve told each other everything since kindergarten. We’ve been there for each other. Or at least I thought we had been.” She crosses to the doorway. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to take a little privacy break myself right now.”
Then she shuts the door in my face.
It has taken five days for Mima to finally answer the phone, but it’s a disaster. The judge detained Hector instead of letting him come home to wait for his court date. Wisely, he didn’t think Mima could keep the community safe from Hector based on the evidence the fire marshal presented. Mima says that’s my fault.
“Are you happy now?” she shouted into the phone today. “Are you proud that you’ve ruined our family?” Then she slammed down the receiver.
I tried to go over to talk sense into her, but it was no use. Stiller buzzed me into the lobby, but that’s as far as I got. Mima wouldn’t even open the door when I rang.
So, here I am, on the way to the only other person who might help.
It’s been so long since I’ve been here that I almost don’t recognize Papi’s building. But then I remember the navy-blue awning and the scrolled numbers for the address. The doorman is standing just inside the air-conditioned lobby. He’s in a crisp white shirt and bow tie, watching the cabs zoom by on Lexington Avenue.
He holds open the door for me before I even reach for the handle. I haven’t seen Gabriel since I was fourteen, but to me, he looks the same.
“Good afternoon, miss. Can I help you?”
My eyes flit to the art-deco mailboxes. I see my last name on the one for apartment 14C.
“I’m Nora, Gabriel,” I say, but he only smiles blankly. “Mr. López’s daughter.”
His eyebrows shoot up, and he blushes.
“Miss! I didn’t recognize you!”
We stand there awkwardly for a second. If I were Papi’s daughter and I lived here, I might have a key. I might sail past Gabriel with nothing more than a wave on my way to the elevators behind him.
But I’m basically a stranger, and we both know it. I’m to be managed like any other delivery.
“Can you ring my father’s apartment, please?” I say.
He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, miss. Did he know you were coming? Mr. López isn’t home right now. He’s still at work, and Mrs. López is downtown for the day.”
My throat feels a little tight, but I swallow it down.
He looks at me thoughtfully for a second, then glances at a tiny picture of two toddlers tucked near the visitor log at his podium. He motions to the velour sofas in the lobby. “Why don’t you wait here for your papi?” he says. “He might not be too long.”
It actually takes two hours. The whole time, I steal glances at Gabriel. What does he think about? Does he go home and tell his wife about the pathetic lives of the tenants he serves?
Anyway, it’s almost five thirty when he finally looks out the lobby windows and smiles. “Here they are!”
He holds open the door, and a little boy in a bowl haircut races in. He gives Gabriel a high five but comes to a screeching halt when he sees me.
I suck in my breath, unprepared for how much Pierre looks like Hector did at that age. The sight makes me so sad that it’s hard to stand up.
“Hi, Pierre,” I say.
He scoots behind Papi, not an ounce of recognition on his face.
“Nora?” Papi says, coming closer. He puts down his briefcase. “What are you doing here?”
“Hi, Papi.”
He flashes a smile and tries to draw Pierre out from behind him. “Look who it is! Your sister! She’s come to visit!”
It sounds so pleasant. I’m visiting. But Pierre won’t budge. Maybe he’s as smart as Papi always says. I suspect he’s got a little radar of his own. He stares at me in accusation the whole ride up on the elevator.
I wait in the living room while Papi gets Pierre’s snack from the kitchen.
It’s so quiet up here, except for the air-conditioning. The thick carpet swallows all the sound, so that even Pierre’s cartoons and Matchbox cars don’t make a racket over the hum. The furniture matches, and there are pictures of Linda and Papi, and school shots of Pierre everywhere. There’s not a single image of Hector or me.
“Are you thirsty or hungry?” Papi calls to me. “You want me to make you something?”
“No, thanks.”
Finally Papi, changed out of his suit, comes to the living room. He sits on the edge of the sofa across from me. He’s wearing a Lacoste alligator shirt, a nice watch. He’s even tan.
“Well, this is a big surprise,” he says. “What’s the occasion?”
The question gives me pause. We only talk on holidays, so I can see why my visit would surprise him.
“Has Mima called you?” I ask. There is so much to say that I hardly know where to begin.
“Your mother? No.” His happy expression starts to dim.
I put the fire marshal’s business card on the glass coffee table and wait for him to pick it up. “Then that’s who you’ll want to talk to,” I say.
He reads the card and frowns. “What’s this about?”
“They’ve arrested Hector,” I say.
I tell what I can about where my brother is detained right now. My lips are moving; I can hear my voice in the quiet apartment, cartoon sound effects in the background, but somehow I’m numb. It feels as though I’m looking down at myself as I list the charges that Fire Marshal Costa explained. I use his words: arson, larceny, and drug possession. Hector is sixteen, I tell him, and no judge in New York is going easy on people who looted in the blackout. Even if he’s sentenced as a youthful offender, Hector will get at least five years.
He sits back on the sofa, folding and unfolding his neatly manicured hands. “I don’t know what to say, Nora,” he tells me. “This is coming out of th
e blue. I didn’t know.”
I give him a long look. It occurs to me that I’ve watched Mima make excuses for Hector my whole life. I suddenly realize that I’ve made excuses for Papi, too. Or at least I’ve let him try to make excuses for himself.
“Maybe you didn’t know because you didn’t want to know.”
Papi looks like I’ve slapped him. “That’s not true. I tried, Nora. I send money. I call you regularly.”
“Calling on holidays isn’t really trying, Papi. And keeping a roof over your kids’ heads is just a basic requirement. Besides, you know as well as I do that you don’t even do that so well. How many times have I had to call you about money?”
“I can’t control the mail!”
I glare at him until he looks shamefaced.
“I’ll admit that sometimes I’m late, but I always come through.”
I lean forward, thinking of all the ways he’s been missing. “What’s my favorite color, Papi?”
He stares at me blankly.
“How is Hector doing in school? Where do I work? What college did I get into?”
Silence.
“You don’t know those things because you never bothered to find out.”
Papi is quiet for a while. “I don’t know what to say,” he says. “I’ve done what I could. I’m sorry if that hasn’t been enough, Nora.”
Something inside of me closes tight. “It doesn’t matter if you’re sorry or if you aren’t,” I say. “You left us behind and let Mima do it all. That sucks, if you want to know the truth.”
“Hey,” he says angrily.
“Hey, what?” My own temper starts to boil. “You can’t run from the fact that you have three kids, Papi, not just one, the way you pretend.”
Papi’s cheeks get blotchy. “You don’t understand all the pressures, Nora,” he begins. “You’re too young to understand them. Life’s not a straight line, the way you think. I’m spread thin; I have responsibilities that you don’t know about.”
I look around his well-appointed apartment and sigh.
