Forsaking All Others

by Jimmy Breslin

  He double-parked on the Grand Concourse at Echo Place where a Wop would be in the rear first-floor apartment with his hand out for money; in his schooling in his trade, Teenager had learned that foreign trade and foreign relations are entirely separate disciplines. The saints had spoken through the shells to Mama and told her that a man, undoubtedly Mariani, wanted to do away with him. But the saints had said nothing so far about this animosity superseding the need for Teenager and Mariani to do business together.

  “How long will you leave me sitting here?” Luisa Maria said as Teenager left the car.

  “Just a minute.”

  “A minute like last night?” Luisa Maria said.

  A black man in a raincoat and his girlfriend in a zipper jacket were passing by and they smiled as they heard the tone in Luisa Maria’s voice. Teenager closed his eyes and exhaled. I should turn around, he told himself, and go back and slap this bitch in the face to teach her not to yell at a man anytime. And to yell at a man in front of a black nigger and his girlfriend, that is the worst thing a woman can do. Instead of following his fury and going back to the car, Teenager walked around the corner, the air hissing from his mouth, and came onto Echo Place. A man in the outdoor phone booth turned his face quickly. Is he trying to hide from me, or is he just turning because he thought of something as he was talking, Teenager said to himself. His anger at Luisa Maria distracted him and he walked the few steps past the phone booth and up to the entrance of the musty six-story apartment building. The streetlight bathed the aluminum frame and the badly cracked glass of the door. As the entranceway inside was dark, the cracked glass window reflected the street behind Teenager who, as he dumbly pushed in the door with his right hand, saw for an instant in the glass the reflection of the man in the phone booth dropping to the floor. Teenager had the aluminum frame door pushed in and the darkness in front of him and he flung himself to the left as the fu-wa fu-wa fu-wa of three shotgun explosions filled the hallway. Buckshot tore apart the entranceway inside and stormed on the sidewalk and street like angry sleet. Flat on his stomach, Teenager felt the shoe missing on his right foot and the heel of the foot stinging. He pulled himself into a sitting position with his back against the wall of the building, directly alongside the entranceway. His hand went to his belt, as if reaching for a gun. Because so many police followed him, he had been moving around without a gun. He cursed the police now. A figure scrambled out of the phone booth and into the gutter and then suddenly was off and running between cars. Teenager got on his feet, flattened against the wall and waited for anything to come through the doorway. No sound was being made inside. Teenager got away from the doorway with the stocking foot paining him now.

  “What is it?” Luisa Maria said.

  “Your fault,” Teenager said. He drove hastily for several blocks up the Grand Concourse, went left, made two more lefts, then satisfied no one was trailing him, pulled the car to the curb, leaned over and brought the palm of his right hand hard against Luisa Maria’s face.

  He went home to his wife that night for the first time in several weeks. She sat on the edge of the bed and removed the buckshot from his heel with a hot knife. His five-year-old son stood in the doorway and watched. Between winces, Teenager thought about how good it would be to have a baby with Luisa Maria and to let his wife raise the child.

  When he left the house the next day, he tried to reach any of Mariani’s couriers to determine if there had been, by some odd chance, a mistake. Teenager was met with radio silence, a prime indicator that the attack had been quite real. Then early of a Saturday evening, he was confronted with Primo’s wife. Primo was one of Teenager’s runners. On the night Teenager was to deliver the cash, Primo went to the drive-in movie alongside the Bruckner Expressway for the transfer of the dope for which Teenager was paying, Primo thus far had failed to return.

  His wife, Rosie, dark-faced and with long, unruly hair, sat by the juke box, smoked cigarettes and kept shifting impatiently while complaining to Teenager about Primo’s absence.

  “Primo goes somewhere for you with a girlfriend?” she said.

  “He didn’t take his girlfriend with him,” Teenager said.

  “Primo never called you up?” she said.

  “Not once.”

  “Then where is Primo?”

  “I told you I don’t know.”

  “Somebody must,” she said.

  “Why don’t you ask the police where Primo is?” Teenager said.

  “I can’t do that. Primo told me only to talk to police to tell them the name of the man the policeman’s wife sleeps with.”

  “Then what do you want me to do?” Teenager said.

  “Pay me money if Primo does not come back.”

  Teenager paced in anger. He tried Mama three times, then drove with Benny over to her new apartment, but she was not home. Noticing that he was not being followed, Teenager then went out for a night of social clubs and bars. In the morning, he again could not find Mama, so he drove over to Maximo’s and leaned on the horn until Maximo’s head came out the window.

  “Have you spoken to Mama?” Teenager called up.

  “Not in a while. I know where she is, though.”

  “Where?”

  “The concert. Don’t you know that?”

  Teenager was angry at himself for forgetting. A weekend of big Santeria concerts was being held in honor of the saints of love, Ochun and Yemawa, at a movie house on 137th Street and Broadway.

  “I bought tickets and I forget about it,” Teenager said.

  “That’s where she is,” Maximo said.

  “Get dressed and come with me,” Teenager said.

  “I’ve got work to do.”

  “What does it matter if you come for an hour? I never see you. Why do you stay so far away from me? You have time for girls at night? Why don’t you ever see me?”

  Trapped, Maximo started to say something, knew it would have the quality of a cracked note and be received as such, and so reluctantly held up a finger that told Teenager to wait. A few minutes later, Maximo sat uncomfortably alongside Teenager as he double-parked in front of the theater on Broadway. The act of getting out of the car with Teenager on a street, and having these two in back bouncing out at the same time caused him to grimace. The thought that his presence was in disregard of Nicki’s warning produced an accompanying sense of depression. Dope peddlers shot on street.

  The concert was listed to start at two and it was now two forty-five and the crowd standing under the marquee indicated that there would be the usual lag of about an hour between advertised time and performance time. Mama appeared out of the crowd, dressed in a red pants suit and white shirt of Changó’s colors, despite the fact that the gods being honored by the concert, Ochun and Yemawa, stood for Love and Health, whose colors ran to white and yellow. Mama’s red and white, giving the illusion of a warship on an otherwise peaceful sea, took on more dramatic meaning when Teenager stepped up and embraced her. Those who knew moved away, for their belief in their religion formed a sword poised at the evil in front of them. A lanky, somber man stepped through the crowd and entered the theater, thus removing himself from the sight of Mama and Teenager. From Mama, Maximo knew the man was the Oba, a rank equivalent to cardinal or king, and thus the foremost member of the Santeria religion in New York.

  Mama, seeing Maximo, disengaged herself from Teenager’s hug, took Maximo by the arm, noticed his unease and walked him up the sidewalk away from the crowd.

  “You don’t like being here?” she said.

  “Not because of you,” Maximo said.

  “No, but I can tell. This person in the other world told you to stay away and now you are nervous that you are here.”

  “What kind of another world can it be if I just got an apartment on Pinto Avenue?”

  “I told you, being in two worlds only makes it harder for you.”

  “And I told you, I barely see the person.”

  “You will see more of her.”

  “
I don’t know that I will.”

  “Once the man touches white skin, he cannot keep his hands off it. He thinks it makes him white, too. He thinks it rubs off.”

  “I have no trouble with that,” Maximo said.

  “In the man’s head he might say, oh, I know what I am doing with this white woman. To me, she is just a gringo. I love my people. But then this man’s body says to him that there are diamonds in the hair of the white woman.”

  “I promise I won’t put a finger to anybody’s hair.”

  “This he believes over what his head says to him.”

  “Maybe somebody else. Not me.”

  “I hope so. You take a big tree in the rain forest, it is used to all this water and being where the air is warm. You take this same tree and put it in a place where there is not so much rain and the air is cold, this tree becomes a little bush. Some person comes along and steps on the bush. Poof! Now the bush is dead. You never see it again.”

  “I know who I am,” Maximo said firmly. There was a comfortable feeling to the conversation, a sense of security that always was present when he spoke to Mama, even in short bursts such as this. Her mythology was closer to what he was than all the subclauses with which he spent nearly all his time. He felt close enough to her to assume the lectern himself.

  “I hope that you know what you’re doing,” he said to Mama, indicating Teenager. The moral advantage that caused these words to be spoken evaporated in her steady gaze, one that did not permit a fleck of concern to appear in the eyes.

  “The spirits tell me what I must do. You do not want to hear them, so you must go try to live by what you think yourself. That is very hard.”

  Teenager came over to them and Maximo said he didn’t feel like going inside for the show and would leave them to talk. Teenager was too intent on speaking to Mama to mind that Maximo, whom he had practically ordered to appear, now was walking away to the subway.

  “There goes the fresh bastard,” Myles said, watching Maximo.

  “I don’t know him,” Hansen said. “Told you about the woman. She’s Teenager’s voodoo woman. Don’t know the kid at all.”

  “I got half a mind to take a ride with him and see who he is,” Myles said.

  “The main chance is here,” Hansen said, his eyes on Teenager, who stood under the movie marquee with Mama. Hansen and Myles were in the rear of a hot dog counter directly across the street. On the counter under his elbow Myles had a manila envelope filled with pictures of Chita Gonzalez; the tools of an inexperienced but willing picador.

  “Junkie woman in a religion for junkies,” Myles said. Earlier, as they had dawdled through the morning until the hour was proper for Teenager to appear on the streets, Myles had attended mass at St. Raymond’s Church in Parkchester while Hansen remained in the car with the newspapers. Sitting with a crowd filled with sad oval Irish faces, Myles felt the safety and superiority of people residing in a holy fortress; the idea of this refuse across the street at the movie house considering itself members of a religion infuriated him.

  “A real dope religion,” Myles said.

  “Don’t know about that,” Hansen said. “I don’t pass on any man’s way of praying.”

  “You’re not saying that’s a real religion?” Myles said.

  “To me, they all get kind of real,” Hansen said.

  Myles was starting to say something else when Hansen pointed to the assemblage moving into the theater across the street.

  “I’m going in there,” Myles said.

  He walked over to the theater alone, carrying the envelope of Chita Gonzalez pictures. A short man in a brown suit and yellow shirt open at the collar peered out of the doorway behind the ticket-taker and waved his hand at the woman selling tickets. “It’s a pleasure to see you, Officer,” he called out, holding the door for Myles, who stepped inside and slipped into a seat in the last row. On stage, three men in African dress walked out into soft red light and began to pound their long hands on high drums. In the darkness, Myles could see bodies in the rows about him rocking and swaying to the bare hands pounding on the drums. As Myles became used to the darkness he began to look around for Teenager and Mama, but could see neither.

  They were sitting on a couch covered with cracked brown leather that was against the stucco wall of a corridor that ran the length of the far side of the theater.

  “The saint says that Teenager should only be with Spanish people,” Mama said.

  “That is easy for the saint to say. The Guineas own everything.”

  “You must listen to the saint or he will not help you anymore,” Mama said.

  “What am I going to do if I can’t do a business with the Guineas?”

  “Where do you buy cocaine from?” Mama asked.

  “From everybody in Jackson Heights. Ramirez. This guy Dominguen.”

  “They are Spanish.”

  “All Colombians. But they have no heroin like I need.”

  “The saint says you are to get the heroin only from Spanish people,” Mama said.

  “Where do I do this? Go to San Pedro and buy from Ralphie Gomez? He gets it from the Guineas too.”

  “Spanish,” Mama said again.

  “Mexico is Spanish. All they have is brown rocks. They sell it all over in Los Angeles. It is weak dope. You step on it five or six times and it is dead.”

  “The saint will say that brown rocks that are not so strong are better than white dope from the Guinea.”

  “You know he will say this?” Teenager said.

  “He has said it many times. He spoke to me that you will make many millions by staying only with the Spanish people. The saint says only the Spanish can make you very rich. Spanish are not like the Guineas, who think you are dirt in a field.”

  For a mind geared to the formation of conspiracies to get a can of tuna fish into a prison, Teenager was uncomfortable with the simplicity of Mama’s program. Also the necessity of going to Los Angeles, going to Mexico, to Tampico, probably, where Gonzales from Ponce stayed, sold dope nice, everybody said, or to some other places in Mexico, Culiacán for sure, bothered Teenager. How could it be that he lived in the Bronx, sold dope in the Bronx, did so many favors for people in the Bronx and still he had to go away? How could this man Mariani, whose nephew he had helped so much in jail, not only try to kill him, but now make the matter serious by cutting off his dope? This was unheard of, a big shot not wanting to sell dope to someone reliable. Usually, nearly all time in the dope business was spent trying to find new customers to replace the old ones who were killed for nonpayment. Not to sell to someone because you didn’t like him? Only a crazy man would do that.

  For a moment, Teenager thought of Paulie and his new capped teeth. How could anybody get so mad about such a bad guy? As he continued brooding, he realized that he had no alternative except to listen to the saints. He could keep doing business for only a little while longer before somebody, Pedro Torres, would simply replace him on the matter of supply and demand alone. Teenager could hustle dope from Jackson Heights and some from San Pedro and rob and kill for it in other places. At the end, however, Pedro Torres and his good white would take over everything.

  Teenager then thought that while he despised the idea of having to go elsewhere, a trip to Mexico could be the path that would take him up to a high plateau where he could stroll across sloping grass and peer down at a river below and, off at one edge of the field, see another man strolling and this of course would be Rockefeller. With Mexican dope, Teenager thought, he surely could be like Rockefeller, who had the oil and the place to turn it into gasoline. He, Teenager, would have the poppy and the place to turn it into dope.

  He took Mama’s hand and told her, “I do just what the saints say.”

  As they stepped out of the corridor, the theater manager walked toward them, waving something in his hand.

  “The cop just gave it to me,” he said. He handed Teenager a picture of Chita Gonzalez.

  “Which cop?”

  “Th
e white cop sitting in the last row there.”

  “Why are you showing this picture to me?” Teenager said.

  “The cop told me to,” the manager said.

  “That’s all right,” Teenager said.

  Teenager retreated into the corridor, went out through a fire exit and asked a boy on the side street to go around to Broadway and tell the two men in the double-parked Mercedes to come and get him.

  On the stage in the theater, men bare to the waist stood in the red light, chanting in Yorubic and waving spears. As they shook their legs, small bells attached to their white pants sounded over the thumping of the drums behind them. The audience first chanted with the dancers and now writhed with them, causing the tired seats to squeak loudly, as if all in the theater were aboard an old wooden ship. Myles, sitting in the last row, was uneasy to the point of fear: all these dark bastards jumping themselves into such excitement that they might turn, maybe all of them had spears under the seats, and pounce on Myles. He was sorry that he had given the theater manager the picture of Chita Gonzalez; it could wind up as a match thrown into oil.

  He turned his head and looked into the darkness for Teenager. Suddenly, a woman with long dark hair hanging halfway down the back of a blue dress ran barefooted down the aisle and onto the stage. Eyes closed, arms out, she swayed to Yorubic chants. A hand reached out of the wings and placed a large candle, shoulder high, in a red holder, on the stage. A towering man, bare-chested, strings of red and white beads around his neck, wearing long white satin pants with red strings hanging from them, came out and stood alongside the candle and chanted to the woman, who danced furiously. The flame in the candle was steady and held Myles’ eyes for a moment. The woman in blue, hair flying, legs flashing, yelped and ripped open the top of her dress. She danced in a white bra and then pulled that off, shook the dress from her hips and soon was dancing as naked as she was ecstatic. The candle flame now came over the top of the holder. The drums quickened and the bare brown woman’s body tried to keep pace with the hands thumping on the drums. The woman convulsed and screamed. Myles saw the candle flame come high out of the holder, three feet high, he was certain, and grow fat; he was afraid it would touch the curtain and set it afire. The audience groaned and shouted. The bare woman ran off the stage and threw herself on the floor in front of the cardinal, who leaned forward in his seat and placed his hands on her head. The candle flame on the stage immediately dropped back inside the red holder.