The Knife and the Butterfly

by Ashley Hope Pérez

  Until I met Becca. Becca’s strong. She’s got this way about her that pulls you in like a magnet and this goodness inside her that holds you there. But that doesn’t mean she’s some innocent schoolgirl. Sex with my Becca is the closest a sinner like me can get to heaven.

  Now I close my eyes and imagine her body like a prayer that can get me out of here.

  I’m lying on the cot with my eyes still closed when I hear someone slide open the little metal door they use to pass meals into the cell.

  I count to three, then I jump up, thinking I’m going to scare the guard. But this weird old cracker in a white uniform just stands there with a meal cart watching me through the bars like he’s not surprised at all. He’s got these crazy blue eyes in a pasty face crisscrossed with about a million lines. His hands shake a little, but his eyes stay on me. You don’t see that many old white guys working in the tank. This guy looks like he belongs in the pity post at the front of Walmart, greeting the grannies and handing out stickers to kids.

  I read the plastic name strip pinned to his uniform. Gabe, it says.

  “Hey, Gabe, what’s the story? Why am I in here?”

  He ignores me and pulls a meal tray out of his cart. His hands tremble so much getting my juice out that I figure I won’t even need to shake it.

  I try again. “Listen, you got my brother in here, too? Name’s Eddie. Eduardo Arevalo.”

  His expression goes kind of funny, and he shakes his head.

  “They gotta charge me with something to keep me here, right? And where’s the court-appointed fool they got to give me?”

  Gabe points to the empty plastic tray on the floor and motions for me to pass it to him. He slides me the new one with a gray burger, a pile of something orange, some green Jell-O, and the juice carton. For a second, I almost get distracted by the food, but then I lock eyes with him.

  “Is there something you want to discuss, son?” he says finally. His voice is pretty smooth for an old guy. Especially a guard. All the ones I ran up against in juvie sounded like they’d been smoking three packs a day since the day their mamas squeezed them out.

  “Hell, yeah. I wanna talk about what day of the week it is and when I got here and what the hell happened and where my brother’s at. And don’t I get a phone call?”

  He nods, then shakes his head.

  “So what’s the deal?” I ask.

  “I can send for your case worker. If you want to talk.”

  “Case worker? Like a lawyer?”

  Gabe shrugs.

  “Okay, what the hell. Sign me up. How long I been in here?”

  He ignores my question. “You need another blanket?”

  “Screw that. What about my phone call?”

  “That’s enough, son,” he says.

  I holler after him, but he just pushes his cart on to the next cell. I look up and see Baby Tigs is laughing a little and shaking his head.

  “Got a fuckin’ staring problem?” I say, but really, I don’t mind. He looks like he’s all right.

  CHAPTER 5: NOW

  I know it’s another day because Gabe brought breakfast a while ago. Now I’m drawing a picture in my mind, a big black truck with Becca sitting on the hood all sexy in a tiny blue bikini with rhinestones that I make sparkle. The clouds in the background spell out MS-13, but real subtle. It’s force of habit, I guess, to represent even though I’m trying to go straight. La Mara has been good to me in a lot of ways. The truth is that my boys are my family. Becca hates it when I say that. “It’s no good if it puts you in front of bullets or behind bars,” she says. “Let me be your familia, Azz.”

  Maybe she’s right, but it’s hard to break away. I mean, I got gang tattoos. MS on my right shoulder, 13 on the left. Plus my whole back is covered with our sign, pointer and pinky fingers up and out, middle and ring fingers folded under the thumb. At the pool once somebody told me that it’s almost the same as for the UT Longhorns, and I thought, shit, even colleges got signs! But I was kind of embarrassed, too, that I didn’t know that. Anyway, even going clean, I don’t ever want to get my tattoos took off. They’re part of me, always will be.

  I’m thinking all this when I hear footsteps in the hall, and I know they’re not Gabe’s because they’re heavier and the shoes are different. I get up and make my bed real fast like Pelón’s mom is going to come in and chew me out or something.

  I’m guessing the man who stops in front of my cell is the case worker. I size him up and decide that he could beat my ass if we fought right now, but if he had to run a block or two first, I could pound his. Not that I’m going to try anything; that’s just what I think when I first see anybody under 50.

  He looks sort of Hispanic, and he kind of reminds me of a younger version of my Tío Beto, which is no compliment because Beto is a real cerote. This guy has a white uniform like Gabe’s, but his belly goes way out. His bottom shirt buttons look ready to pop.

  His eyebrows are thick and meet in the middle like maybe they’ve got some evil plan. He’s also got a big mariachi-style mustache, the kind you see in the lame paintings in Mexican restaurants. His name badge says Pakmin. Maybe he’s Indian. Like from India Indian.

  “Martín Arevalo?”

  “I go by Azael.” I don’t know why, but I feel like I shouldn’t mess with this guy. If his name really is what it says, he’s probably got a chip on his shoulder the size of Texas from being teased with Pac-Man jokes his whole life.

  “Fine,” he says. He nods to somebody down the hall, and then after a buzz and a loud click, he rolls the cell door open. “This way.”

  Pakmin doesn’t cuff me; he just has me walk two steps in front of him. While we move down the center hall, I try to take in the other cells without staring. Lots of fools are sleeping on cots just like mine. A few are sitting or standing, and they look my way, sizing me up. I stick out my chin. It’s a greeting or a challenge, depending on how you see things.

  Just like at the Youth Village, here we’re mostly shades of black, brown, and yellow. I catch sight of one pink-skinned kid just before we turn a corner out of the cell block. Cracker must get his ass beat every time they uncage all these other cabrones.

  Next we go down a narrower hall with lots of doors. Pakmin opens one, and we go into a little room like the one at Youth Village for talking to your lawyer. We sit down across from each other at the table.

  “I’m gonna be getting out of this joint soon, right?” I say.

  Pakmin looks up. “You think you’re ready, my friend?” I can tell that this is just something he says, his way of talking. Nobody’s friends in here.

  “Hell, yeah,” I say. “This place ain’t no pleasure palace.”

  He frowns, and his forehead wrinkles up.

  “No offense,” I say real fast. “It’s just, I don’t rem—” But I think better of telling him about the big-ass hole in my memory. “My brother Eddie, did he get picked up?”

  “It’s just you,” Pakmin says.

  That’s good news, at least. Eddie wouldn’t make it three days in the can.

  I watch Pakmin, but his face doesn’t give any clues. “So what am I being charged with?”

  “You can review your file. There are reasons for your detainment.”

  “What kind of file?”

  He nods and motions me to follow him. Everybody here acts like they’re going to have to pay a hundred bucks for every word, that’s how hard it is to get anything out of them.

  I follow him out another door, and then we’re in this big-ass room, something like a gym crossed with a library crossed with a grocery store with nothing but aisles of filing cabinets. No windows, just fluorescent lights.

  He points to a round table, and I sit down in one of the plastic chairs. He walks down an aisle. He comes back a couple of minutes later carrying a folder that has my name typed up on the tab. It’s pretty thick, and that gives me a little kick of pride.

  Pakmin slides the file over to me. “I’ll come back for you.”

 
; That takes me by surprise, but he’s already gone out the door before I can say anything. There must be some top-line surveillance in here or else he’d never leave me alone.

  I open the file. The first sheet says “HOUSE ADMITTANCE FORM Q-51.” It’s got my basic stats. My birthdate, the hospital where I was born, stuff about my parents, plus a physical description. 5'7", 135 pounds, brown eyes, brown hair. Two birthmarks on left cheek.

  There’s also a date and time. June 11, 2011, 3:08 p.m. That’s the day I went rolling with Javi and the boys. Probably it’s the time that I got picked up.

  The next sheet lists everything from my backpack. I know I left it in Javi’s van, so does that mean that Javi and Eddie and them got taken in? Maybe Pakmin is lying about Eddie not being in custody. That crazy mustache makes him look like a TV bad guy. It’s always the Middle Eastern dude with the funny mustache you got to keep an eye on. But for now I decide that Eddie and my homies got away on foot, and I go back to reading.

  Items Recovered:

  - One gray Adidas backpack, marked on the front and back with tags linked to MS-13.

  - Three photographs:

  - one of a young girl, approximately age 8;

  - one of a long-haired Hispanic teen female (“YR Becca Hottie” written on back);

  - one of a group of eight boys, aged approximately 13–21, labeled “MIS VATOS” (see enclosure for photocopies).

  - One sheet torn from National Geographic with the caption “sunset in the Sierra Madre of El Salvador.”

  - One pair of socks.

  - One can of Red Devil Delta Blue spray paint, half empty.

  - Two small aerosol spray caps.

  - One large aerosol spray cap.

  - White toothbrush.

  - Small Colgate toothpaste.

  - Earphones and a hand-held music player marked in black, “AZZ’S SHYT.”

  - Three unlabeled CDs.

  - A hardbound black sketchbook with stylized letters that spell out “AZZ’S PIECES.”

  - A stick of Degree deodorant.

  - Traces of marijuana found in bag.

  It seems kind of sad all written out, like all you got to do is throw away my backpack and nobody’d know I was ever even around. That’s why I like to can. I tag and work up pieces to represent, but I also do it so that there’s part of me out there for everybody to see. Getting smoked out with my homies and then hitting the street until my cans run out, that’s what I call a day.

  The downer is that some fool comes along and messes with your work, covering it up with their shit. Or punks from the city buff it. A couple of times they had a whole little army of volunteers out in the hood painting over and scrubbing out our writing like that’s some good deed. When they could be doing something real, like building a park or something.

  Sometimes I work out a really fine piece on a wall somewhere, but when I come back a few days later it’s like I was never there. The fact is that you got to re-can the whole hood practically every week to keep your presence strong. Now that I’m not out there to tag up whatever I can reach, to turn trains into traveling masterpieces, how long before my name disappears?

  This is how it goes when I try to read. My mind just kicks off to other places. I drag it back and start looking the sheet over for something about why they picked me up or if they got anybody else, but the rest of it is in some weird, official writing. Like “reason for admittance: F111Rs2.” I know my police codes pretty good, and these are something else.

  The next thing in the folder is a statement from my P.O., recommending me for early release from juvie. My parole came with three strings attached: living with my Tío Beto and my Tía Roxann, going to school regular, and staying out of trouble with the police. I feel my face get hot because even with all my “going straight” talk, I didn’t keep a single part of the deal.

  On the street, you got to live by the law of the streets. Becca’s always telling me that that’s stupid, because where has it ever gotten me? Where was my street law when the judge handed down my time? Yeah, I want to go clean for her, but she doesn’t get how hard it is. Only a homeboy can understand. All of us have suffered bad; that’s why we’re so united.

  I keep going through the file pretty much in order. They’ve even got some school records from Tinsley Elementary with my fifth grade teacher’s writing. She called me “smart but unfocused.” She also wrote about a time I ate all the snacks we were supposed to have for a party. Guess I was hungry even then.

  I’m still reading along when I feel something thick toward the back of the file. I pull it out. It’s my black book. I try to save it for my best work, but it’s almost full, just one page left. I was planning to get me a new one as soon as I filled up that last page.

  Just then Pakmin comes back through the door.

  “Ain’t nothing in here about new charges against me,” I tell him when he gets to the table. I don’t want to mention the parole stuff because maybe I’d incriminate myself. Maybe that’s what they’re hoping I’ll do. I don’t know whose side this guy is on, mine or the county’s, but I’d put my money on the county.

  “Is that so?” he says. I can tell he wants me to give him the file.

  “I just barely got started here, man. I dropped out in seventh grade. I ain’t a fast reader.”

  “Five minutes, my friend,” he says and then disappears back into the rows of filing cabinets.

  While he’s gone, I take the sketchbook from my lap and slide it partway into my pants. Earlier Gabe made me change from my street clothes into county issues, the same kind I seen all the other fools in the cells wearing. At least they’re blue, the only color I’d want to wear. And baggy as hell, practically made for racking shit.

  I sit on the floor by my cot and stare at my black book for a long time before I open it. I can just hear Becca saying, “Damn, Azz, already doing wrong the minute he ain’t looking.” So I imagine saying right back, “I’ma make a real pretty picture for you, baby, that’s why I need it.”

  Then I realize what a dumbass I am because I haven’t got a marker or pen or nothing. So I just look at my old work. Mostly it’s designs to can, drawings of us protecting our turf, shiny pieces tucked into waistbands. There’s one that I did after my homeboy Doble passed. It’s got a coffin with these two angels lifting him out of it like they’re going to take him to heaven. If you look closer, though, you see he’s giving the whole world the finger as he goes up. Doble was tight, but he was also a mean motherfucker, and it’s only right to remember him how he really was.

  Maybe half an hour later, a buzzer goes off, the cells open, and we line up in the long hall. Baby Tigs gives me a look and lifts his hand like he’s shooting a basketball, so I guess we must finally be going outside for rec. We file out into a concrete courtyard with a couple of busted hoops. There’s a chain link fence separating our courtyard from another one just like it. I catch sight of a few females in darker blue county issues going back into their side of the building through a double door.

  “Fools never let us out here at the same time as the chicks,” someone behind me says.

  I tense up and turn toward the voice, but then I see it’s Baby Tiger. “What the hell’s up, man?” I ask him. He’s smaller than I guessed, probably twelve or thirteen. He’s got a gold tooth in front and his nose is broke in the same spot as Eddie’s.

  “Jason,” he says.

  “Azael.”

  “So how’d it go with your case worker?” he asks.

  “Don’t know. Dude barely said a word.”

  He nods. “They’re like that.”

  “What you in here for?”

  “My guess is they got something on my cousin, but not enough to put him away. Keep having me watch him being questioned and shit.”

  “For real?” I ask.

  “Through a window, not in person. They don’t let us see each other. Don’t let us see nobody, really.”

  “Shit, I don’t even know what they got on me. Couldn’t r
ead very far in my file before they kicked me out.” I bang the chain-link fence with the toe of my busted-up Nikes.

  “Gabe’s pretty cool. Maybe you could hit him up for another look. I heard he helps people out before they go.”

  “Go where?”

  Baby Tigs shrugs. “Wherever they get sent. From what I can tell, nobody stays here too long.”

  “How long you been in here?”

  “A week, I think. But it feels like a lifetime, sabes?”

  “Are you part Mexican or what?” I ask.

  He laughs at that. “Dude, I’m the whole world rolled up into one.” And he walks off toward the basketball court.

  I try out Tiger’s advice when Gabe comes to my cell with dinner.

  “Hey, Gabe. Thing is, I barely even got started looking at my file. Takes me time to puzzle out the writing. When do I go back to the big room?”

  “I’ll look into it. Don’t hold your breath, now,” Gabe says.

  “And when I go back, can I have some paper and something to write with? I wanna take some notes on my case, you know?” This is a load because I don’t even know what my case is. Really I just want to get something I can use to draw. But Gabe seems to think this makes sense, as far as I can tell by how his wrinkles move a little on his face. He’s done talking for today, and he walks away whistling and pushing the meal cart.

  CHAPTER 6: THEN

  After Pops got picked up, me and Eddie laid low for a week. When we heard that the CPS people weren’t coming by to look for us anymore, we headed back to the Bel-Lindo.

  The Bel-Lindo was bad parents and crackheads, dog shit and dirt for lawns, and pissed-off fools everywhere, but it was still home. There were things I liked, too. Like Jorge Ledesma’s grandma praying the rosary out on the balcony to beat the heat in summer. Or the soccer games with the little guys on the dirt courtyards between buildings. And nowhere else in Houston could you find Mrs. Guzman selling calling cards and Coronas and spicy-as-fuck Cheetos right out of her living room window.