by Fred Aceves
I watch her move down the hall, ponytail bouncing.
Zach asks, “You’re really into her, huh?”
A personal question. Like we tighter than tight. Not even my boys know about Amy and I’m supposed to tell Zach? For the last two Fridays we’ve walked home, just me and him, about thirty minutes of hanging out and not talking about the typical stuff that don’t matter, like I do with my boys. Zach even told me about his mom having cancer, so maybe I can tell him something personal too. Maybe he can be a different sorta friend from my boys. Maybe my secret ain’t gotta stay a secret.
“I’m really into her.”
Didn’t mean to blurt it out. Now I wait for some humiliation—a smile, a laugh, a joke. I’m also crazy curious. Gotta know how people will see me and Amy. By tomorrow night after the play, we could be boyfriend and girlfriend.
Zach’s nodding like I just told him the time. “Cool.”
And that’s all he says. Weird. Or is it? If he ain’t treating it like a big deal, maybe it ain’t.
We start for home and he changes the subject. “So, are you a visual, auditory, or tactile learner?”
12
OUTTA ALL the bedroom distractions I’ve come up with since Brian moved in, ceiling ball’s the best. How it works is you lie on the bed and toss a rolled-up sock into the air, trying to get within an inch of the ceiling for one point. Fall short or touch the ceiling and it’s minus two. That’s what I’m playing now, hitting fifty-seven points while “Search and Destroy” by the Stooges comes through my dinky speaker at a low volume.
And I’m the world’s forgotten boy
The one who’s searchin’, searchin’ to destroy
I like that the song ain’t all, “Baby, I love being with you” or “Baby, why did you leave me?” which could be the titles for most songs.
Every minute I’m home I spend here, hiding from Brian, with no technology except for my stereo. What would I do without my MP3 speaker to keep me company?
I got one car to wash this weekend, an old man who asked me to come by once a month, and I might as well try everybody else in that neighborhood again. They mighta changed their minds. The parking lot idea hasn’t worked a second time and Mr. Zeng from the Chinese restaurant also only needs me once a month.
I’ll keep searching though.
A screaming song comes on. I’m still waiting for one love song, if they make punk love songs, or at least lyrics that mean something to me.
Today, my room don’t feel as sad or lonely as usual. Here I can daydream without distractions. I’m imagining my date tonight with Amy, where we might go and what we might talk about, besides this punk music, which ain’t too bad. It’s actually pretty good.
Will tonight be me and Amy’s second date? How do I know if walking to the dugout (five minutes) and the time in the dugout (thirty minutes) adds up to a date?
No clues come to me while listening to the lyrics until I’m up to sixty-two points at ceiling ball. It’s a track that rocks softer than the others, the lyrics hard to understand except for the hook.
chunk of heart destroyed by quiet
yell it out before it kills you now
let it all out
The blue display reads Jawbreaker. Don’t know whether that’s a guy or the whole band, but those lyrics describe me. Those things I force myself to keep inside do feel like they destroying me. Is Amy telling me to let it out?
After the second hook, the lyrics go, “I want you, I want you, I—”
Brian barges in. “Turn that shit off!” His hand’s still on the doorknob. “It’s worse than the nigger noise you play.”
The volume’s low as always. I reach over and turn it off, my arm shaking.
Brian’s staring at me. If I look back, I’m also staring, and he don’t like that. If I don’t look at him, I’m a disrespectful little bean nigger. That’s why I’m sorta moving my eyes back and forth.
“Hand it over,” he says, so calm it scares me.
“I’m sorry. I’ll use it with headphones from now on.”
“Give. It. To. Me.”
Bad move. I really am a dipshit, making him say things twice. Three times and he’ll snap. I get up from the bed and unplug the speaker. Does he want me to beg? I’ll beg.
“I promise you’ll never hear a sound from my room ever again,” I tell him. “Please, pleeeease, Brian. I promise.”
Between clenched teeth he says, “Give it to me right fucking now.”
He steps closer and I hold out the speaker. “Here.”
“Disrespect me again and I’ll fuck you up. Got it?”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I swear. I won’t disrespect you again.”
And I mean it. I really do. I say the last part with all my soul so he understands.
He smiles. “Not as tough as you think, huh, dipshit?”
He takes the speaker with one hand, still breathing on me. With the other hand he makes a fist and brings it up fast. Punches me right in the nuts.
I drop to the floor. This pain’s new, a grinding that reaches my stomach. He walks out. I’m twisting and turning on the carpet. That don’t help so I lie curled up, which don’t help neither. I wait for the grinding to end.
I get up after a few minutes, still hurting. Though I’m hungry, I won’t go out to the kitchen unless my mom’s home. She lets Brian get away with everything, but he still behaves better when she’s here.
The only good thing about having Brian around is I ain’t gotta take care of my mom no more. I always know where she is—at work or at home. Without a boyfriend, she used to go out at night and come home wasted, her Kia not always fitting neatly in the parking space.
Way past midnight, when the creaking front door would wake me, I’d listen for her steps in the hall. The time it took her to head over to her bedroom told me how hard I’d gotta shake her awake the next morning for work.
This one time, a week before my eleventh birthday, the front door opened and closed, no other sound. Sometimes she passed out on the couch so I got up to check. Found her lying in the middle of the living room floor, some guy with his back to me, hands lifting up her skirt.
I’m forever dreaming up action hero moments, me stepping up to the challenge and saving the day, but when I grabbed my bat I got too scared to use it. Instead, I shouted from the hallway in the deepest voice I could fake, “Get outta here before I fucking kill you!” He bolted out and drove away.
I put my mom’s underwear back on her. Pulled down her skirt. After trying to lift her skinny body, I hated myself for being too weak. And I hated myself for being too scared to bash the guy’s head in. And I hated myself for not being enough for my mom, ’cause she always needed a guy, and that guy was never me.
After my nuts stop hurting I wait another hour in my room before my mom’s car rumbles into the parking lot. Finally! I head to the kitchen. On the top shelf of the fridge are two big pots. Rice and black beans. In an old margarine tub there’s day-old mac and cheese. Half an onion chills by its lonesome in the bottom see-through drawer.
The second shelf’s off-limits. There Brian has four cans of Natural Ice, half a tube of ground beef, his two liter of Pepsi, and the sausage he eats with generic Ritz.
Brian’s latest thing is writing down my chores for the day. Here’s the list pinned to the fridge with a magnet, the Pizza Hut hotline we never call.
Today I had to sweep and mop the kitchen, dust everywhere in the house. Yesterday I had to vacuum and clean the whole bathroom, scrub the toilet, sink, tub, and all. He shook the can of Comet before and after to make sure I didn’t use too much.
I serve the mac and cheese on a plate and add a raw plátano on the side, stabbed three times with a fork. I’m returning the onion to the bottom drawer when Brian comes in.
“You own Teco Electric now?”
“No.”
“You must have buddies at Teco that you can just call up and say, ‘Don’t send a bill this mo
nth.’”
“I was putting something back,” I tell him.
“You’re the big shot who can leave the fridge door open all day.” He puts two fingers on my forehead and pushes me aside.
I put the plate in the microwave, secure the door closed with the piece of carton, folded four times, that we use to keep it shut.
Brian stands in front of the open fridge chugging from his bottle of Pepsi. He caps it and makes a new mark with the black Sharpie, a tiny dash over the logo. If the cheap bastard finds the level of the soda lower than marked, he’ll kick my ass. I take his word for it, don’t even touch the bottle. He puts his nasty lips on it anyway.
Leaving the kitchen, Brian bumps his shoulder into my head and I catch myself on the counter. Was that a one-time thing or is this bumping here to say?
The microwave zooms as the plate turns in the light. Just before the beep, the front door opens.
My mom says hi to Brian, then to me, while heading to her bedroom.
Just like with my grandma, I used to greet my mom with the typical Bendición, and she’d hit me back with Que Dios te bendiga, a habit we ditched when Brian moved in. He said he didn’t like that Spanish bullshit. Paranoid fucker probably thought we was talking about him.
My grandma ain’t around anymore, so now I don’t say Bendición to her either. We didn’t see her much anyway, and only spent one Thanksgiving with her.
For me, Thanksgiving means eating at Obie’s or Jason’s with the sometimes lie that my mom’s at work. Except that we got a special call one day, my grandma inviting us to dinner.
Hours later my mom rolled her eyes at my nice white button-up and told me it wasn’t that sorta Thanksgiving. She was right. No red goopy sauce like at Jason’s. No sweet potato pie like at Obie’s. On the table was the same food my grandma served any time I saw her. Arroz con gandules, black beans, yucca with garlic sauce, and then came the surprise dish—thin fried steaks with sliced tomato. She let me admire everything before saying, I no cook turkeys.
As me and my mom took our plates to the couch, my grandma asked us to join her at the table. My mom said something like, So we’re a family now?
The yelling match popped off, my Spanish too weak to follow it. I wanted to feel bad for my grandma ’cause I’d gotten yelled at millions of times, knew how much it sucked, but she wasn’t my favorite person. Though my grandma never spanked me like my mom, she bossed me around and was the queen of yelling. When I didn’t close the door super quick, letting the cool air escape, she yelled so loud the neighbor’s dog barked.
Anyway, my grandma’s eyes was misting up behind her thick glasses. Watching her, the way she took small bites, the slow chewing, I wanted to cry too.
But then the weirdest thing happened. I got happy. I thought, why would she be all heartsick crying if she didn’t love my mom? And if she loved my mom then maybe she loved me.
So it was a nice Thanksgiving, just us three, no boyfriend around, until another fight got so ugly we left the table and the apartment before dessert. Before—get this—the pumpkin pie!
My grandma actually bought a pumpkin pie somewhere. My mom don’t touch desserts, and sweets at my grandma’s meant bananas or sugar for her coffee. Did she think about me and buy a pie? Sometimes small things mean big things.
Not that I believe in heaven for sure, but if one day I run into my grandma on some cloud up there, I’ll ask, Did pumpkin pie mean love?
“Mom,” I say now. “Wait up.”
I reach her in the short hallway, just before her bedroom door. I pull out the Future Success pamphlet from my back pocket and hand it to her.
She’s never gone to anything ’cause of me but I’m trying to be hopeful. Like maybe I can work on her, bit by bit, and with the baseball game six weeks away I got time. There at the stadium, other kids with their moms, she might see how families are supposed to be. All about talking and sharing and smiling. Not silence and distance.
“I got chosen for this,” I tell her. “It’s a program for kids who teachers think are smart but ain’t getting good grades.”
As she reads the cover of the pamphlet, which explains the same thing, she looks more bored than usual, ready to fall asleep standing up.
“It’s a really good class and they’re having this parent/student day in six weeks.”
I tell her about what we learning in class, sounding excited ’cause I want her to catch some excitement. I want her to be proud of me for getting in the class. I want her to ask me about it every week and about school in general. I want her to push me, the way she’s always pushed me to do the dishes, clean the bathroom, and do all my other chores.
“There will be a free bus ride, and free food at the stadium,” I say, using my happy voice. “It’s a one-time thing, the only high school event you’ll ever gotta do, forget graduation.” I’m speaking super fast, never pausing so she can’t say no. “Plus the seats are good,” I add, as if I know or it matters.
As I’m getting to the end, about how we’ll get home early, I run outta breath. She’s shaking her head. “I’m not into sports, Marcos.”
That ain’t breaking news. She never went to my basketball games at the Boys Club.
“Brian likes baseball,” she says. “Ask him.”
Shoulda known she’d go there. Brian loves baseball, and the Rays sure are his team. He watches with his cap on, screaming at the TV whenever they mess up.
If I can’t convince my mom, at least I got time to find someone else.
She glances at her watch. Her telenovela will be on soon.
“You got a few weeks to think about it,” I say, but she’s already closing the door.
13
THE TWO-floor apartment building on Ecken Street is wedged between its parking lot on one side and a loud used tire shop on the other. Somewhere in there, inside the walls of beige patches over older brown paint, is Amy. Stairs slant down from the small balconies to meet the broken sidewalk. Only a few of the towering lamps work, so as I make my way between rows of cars my eyes are working mostly in the dark.
I’d be embarrassed to invite any girl to Maesta, and here Amy’s place looks almost as bad, the cars just as old and ugly, the stucco walls tagged.
She told me I’d recognize her window but gave me no clues. I pass a brightly lit living room, two shirtless boys wrestling in there, then pass a Confederate flag in the window.
Punk music’s coming from deep in back. I follow the chaos of guitar and fast drums until I’m under a black curtain with a hand-bleached anarchy symbol.
After getting on the school computer to look for answers, I’d say this is our first date. Sometimes hanging out’s just hanging out. That’s what funchik97 wrote on one of the forums, and she had more than 700 advice points racked up.
I pinch out a few of the tiniest pebbles from between the cracks in the sidewalk. I wait for the silent pause between two songs and then chuck them all at once, hard rain against the glass. When Amy lifts a corner of the curtain, my heart does a flip. Her face in the yellow glow of the window, in the middle of this black night, is the prettiest painting ever made.
She comes out and takes the stairs down quick, which I interpret right away.
(She’s eager to hang with me!)
We walk side by side, me pushing my bike. She apologizes ’cause I couldn’t go to her door and tells me her stepdad’s sorta weird.
“Actually,” she says, “he’s not weird. He’s an asshole.”
(Damn. So was she just eager to get away from him?)
I tell Obie stories, not knowing how I got on the topic. Probably ’cause I’m forever worrying about him.
“Black kid your height?” Amy asks. “Always sitting next to you in the cafeteria?”
(She notices me!)
“That’s him,” I say.
I mention the time we got jumped in the Rent-A-Center parking lot. After the three kids eyed us, then each other, I stopped tying my sneaker to hop on my bike. I pedaled hard, hearing f
ootfalls behind me. My bike skidded and fell. As I tried to pull my pant leg outta the bike chain, the fift-fift of sneakers got louder. Obie came back and took a beating with me.
“He coulda left but didn’t,” I say.
Every time I think or talk about it I wonder, What if the situation was switched? And with that thought I miss Obie again.
That happens sometimes, even though I see him every day. Us kicking it ain’t what’s called “quality time.” Not anymore. When he do have time, at school and on the basketball court, there are always other people around.
“I wish I had a best friend,” Amy says. “But I don’t get along with girls too great.”
(She gets along with boys! She wants a boyfriend!)
We cross the grassy field of the high school, where date number zero or one took place. Tall fluorescent lights beam down on us, the grass shimmering bright green.
Up ahead! Fuck! It’s the brown mutt who’ll ruin everything! It’s lying in a triangle of shade cast by the gym. I take the biggest breath I can without making noise and wonder if Amy can hear my heart banging in my chest. Last time Obie scared the dog off, but how am I gonna act like a little bitch in front of Amy?
It notices us, gets up, and trots our way, ears pointing up. I keep pushing my bike, ready to use it as a shield.
“Don’t worry,” Amy says. “He’s cool.”
“I know.” And part of me sorta does know that.
“It’s okay to be scared of dogs, Marcos.”
(She likes me so much she ignores my wussiness!)
“I ain’t scared,” I tell her.
Hunched over, she shuffles up to the dog inch by inch, showing her palms. He does a quick turn, hurries off, then runs back. When he sorta stands still, Amy pets him on the head, which chills him out. He likes that.
She looks over her shoulder to me. “I said it’s okay to be scared of dogs, macho man.”
I think of home and big muscles and unlit neighborhoods and groups of boys I don’t know. “I ain’t scared of nothing.”
Her hand slides down the dog’s spine, ruffling the short fur when it comes back up. His eyes blink slower with every stroke.
