by Mia Hopkins
“This didn’t go as planned,” he said, “but Ruben and me, we’re glad you’re back, Trouble.”
I nodded and swallowed down the words I wanted to say.
When I was younger, the gang was my purpose. Lots of people think gangs are a new thing, a simple problem that needs to be solved. They have no idea how deep the roots of many LA gangs are. My grandfather was ESHB, way back in the sixties. My dad followed in his footsteps. For a while, my dad left the gang and went straight. Then bad luck hit us hard. Dreamer Rosas lost his job. My mother and sister died in a car accident. Looking for refuge, Dreamer went back to the gang. He brought his sons with him.
School bored me. The teachers who weren’t burnt-out wrecks tried to push me in the right direction, but they had no idea what my life was like or how to connect with me. I mouthed off. I got Fs. I got into fights. I was a pain in everyone’s ass.
In those days, the only place I felt at home was with my homeboys. I got everything from them. How to talk. How to walk. How to dress. How to behave. How to get girls. How to make money. How to survive.
Along with that, I got other things, things I wasn’t completely aware of. How to accept Trouble as your name. How to alienate yourself from others. How to make stupid decisions.
How to be the kind of person who laughs out loud when the judge gives you your sentence.
I turn off the shower and get dressed again. In one of Rafa’s feng shui mirrors, I examine my face and see it—the ugly purple shadow of a black eye.
“Fuck,” I whisper.
I pull my backpack out from under the sofa. I take my keys and phone out of the hole in the avocado tree and replace them with the knife Spider gave me. The hole is hidden in the trunk behind a thick branch of leaves. No one would find the knife here unless they knew where to look.
Before Rafa comes home, I put on my backpack and leave the garden again.
The sun is setting when my bus arrives at the stop. It’s full of commuters either getting off work or heading out into the night to start their shifts. There are a couple of students in hoodies and backpacks, scrolling through their phones. There’s a homeless person or two, keeping to themselves, quiet and waiting for a stop that never comes. People give me the side eye as I walk down the aisle. I pull up my hoodie.
I find an empty seat and stare out at the traffic and sidewalks of Whittier Boulevard. This is East LA’s most famous street, a main drag where car clubs show off their restored vintage cars on weekends. On weekdays, it’s a regular street. Local businesses cater to working-class people and recent immigrants. Check-cashing offices. Pawn shops. Meat markets. Discount stores that sell school supplies, party supplies, cleaning supplies, international phone cards, and the occasional luxury. Leather cowboy boots. Cheap perfume. CDs of music from home.
But I see some changes mixed in. New strip malls. New bank branches. At the stop where I get off, there’s a brand-new Starbucks with a drive-thru. It looks like it used to be a Burger King.
Across the street is a big stucco building with glass windows. Medical offices—they look new. I check the address again. It’s correct. I walk through the glass doors and follow the signs marked with arrows and the word Recovery.
When I arrive at the conference room, the meeting has already started. As quietly as I can, I slip in through the double doors and take a seat on a folding chair. There are about fifteen people in the room, all different races and different ages, seated in a circle.
The facilitator of the meeting is a big homegirl in a flowered T-shirt and red ball cap. She addresses a woman sitting near me. “How about you?” she asks. “Would you like to say something today?”
The light-skinned African-American woman is wearing a black dress with white polka dots. Her hair is in a neat bun on the top of her head. I notice she’s curvaceous, with a small waist—the kind of hourglass body my mother and all my dad’s girlfriends had.
I remember Miguel the church groundskeeper’s description.
“Yes, a woman,” he had said. “Era bonita. She had a name like a flower. Rose or Lily. Something like that. Your dad liked her a lot.”
“Hello,” she says in a clear voice. “My name is Daisy.”
Thirteen
After the meeting, everyone mingles by a table set near the door. On the table, there’s a box of donuts, some cups, and an ancient coffeepot.
Some people introduce themselves to me. I shake their hands and tell them my name, but I don’t share more.
I attended these meetings in prison, twelve-step programs for criminals and gang members that were run exactly the same way. I know the drill.
Without being too obvious, I make my way through the group until I’m standing close to the woman named Daisy.
Her story was short, but good. I can tell she’s had lots of practice telling it. She moved here from a small town. She was lonely and lost until she met a man who introduced her to drugs. For six years, addiction stripped away her sense of self to the extent that she didn’t know how to leave her abusive relationship. Each rock bottom gave way to a new rock bottom until a judge sentenced her to drug court, which eventually led her to these support meetings.
Ten years later, she has a job as a receptionist. She has a small apartment and a cat named Pringles.
For her, and no doubt for other people who are working toward recovery, this meeting room is a safe place. I don’t insult her by trying to pretend I’m not the person I am.
“Daisy,” I say. “My name is Eddie.”
She shakes my hand and examines my face. She takes in the black eye, the tattoos, my height. Something flickers in her eyes and I know she knows who I am before I explain.
“Nice to meet you, Eddie,” she says.
“Can we talk?”
She’s still for a moment, considering her answer.
“Okay,” she says.
We walk across the street to Starbucks and I buy her a cup of hot chocolate. We sit in a quiet corner away from the groups of teenagers sucking on their Frappuccinos.
“I’m guessing you know why I’m here,” I say. “You knew my father. Dreamer Rosas.”
She nods. “Who told you where to find me?”
“Miguel.”
“Of course.” She sighs in the graceful way a long-suffering woman sighs when nothing really surprises her anymore. She’s younger than my dad, for sure—maybe in her mid-thirties. I know twelve-step programs like this discourage romantic relationships and flirting. But things happen. With my dad, things happened all the time.
Daisy takes her time but during our talk, she opens up to me. She tells me Dreamer sometimes talked about me and my brothers—his two older boys locked up in prison, and his youngest boy, stolen from him by his in-laws.
“He was ashamed,” she says. “He felt he hadn’t done enough for you and Sal. He regretted he had messed up his chance to raise Angel.”
Hearing her say my brothers’ names out loud makes this experience feel more real. I wonder how much more truth Dreamer shared with her woven in with the inevitable lies.
“Were you my dad’s girlfriend?” I ask.
Daisy takes a sip of hot chocolate and stares across the room at nothing in particular. “I don’t know. It was complicated with Dreamer. At first I was supposed to be his sponsor.” She gets a dreamy, sad look in her eyes. “In the end, we both disrespected each other’s boundaries.” She looks back at me and says slowly, “I was sorry to hear what happened to him.”
I nod.
Here’s where things get tricky.
Daisy is intelligent—one minute with her and anyone would be able to tell that. But how good is she at lying? Does she know the truth about my dad being alive? Does she know where he is?
I decide not to give her the chance to lie to me.
For this to work, all I know is everything I say to her right now has to be true, or she will see right through it and never trust me again.
“I was his favorite,” I say quietly. “Middle kid. T
roublemaker. My teachers hated me. My mother—she didn’t know how to deal with me. My older brother was always bossing me around, telling me all the things I was doing wrong. But my dad—my dad was my buddy. He said I reminded him of himself when he was little.”
Deep inside me, I feel a small, hidden spot in my heart warm up.
“When I was six or seven, my mom and dad had a big argument. Over what, I had no idea. The next day, my dad took me to the flower district downtown. Five o’clock in the morning, we drove over the bridge. It was still dark, but the wholesalers were all open. The sidewalks were wet. Buyers and florists walked around the warehouses, making their deals. And here I was, this dumb kid, following my dad like a puppy.”
Daisy watches me. I can’t read the expression on her face.
I continue. “I remember the smell of roses surrounding me. In my mind, the only flowers in that market are roses, because that’s what my father bought for my mother—two dozen long-stem red roses, her favorite. He knew one of the wholesalers who cut him a deal in exchange for some meat that ‘fell off the truck’ at the slaughterhouse where he worked. He paid half price for the flowers. When we walked back to the car, he let me carry the bouquet.”
I haven’t told this story to anyone. Suddenly I’m that little kid again, standing proudly at my dad’s side.
“I remember my arms filled with red roses. The thorns poked me through the clear plastic, but I never complained, never said one bad thing about the experience because I wanted him to bring me with him wherever he went. I wanted to be a part of his adult world more than anything. I never stopped thinking—Sal isn’t here. Angel isn’t here. He’s bringing me. His favorite.”
My empty hands are folded on the table. I look down at them. I only had enough money for Daisy’s drink, not one for me. “When I look back, he was teaching me how to say sorry.” Something occurs to me after all these years. “That’s what I was holding. A big bouquet of his sorries, all tied up in a bow. In his world, as long as you knew how to say sorry, you never had to take responsibility for yourself. You never had to change.” I look up at Daisy. “Do you have a pen?”
She takes one out of her purse and hands it to me. I write my phone number on a napkin and slide the pen and napkin over the table.
I look her in the eye. “I want to hear my dad’s voice again,” I say slowly. “To tell him I tried, and to tell him, ‘Dad, I’m sorry. For everything.’”
The words hang in the air between me and this stranger. I push my chair back from the table. The story has made me more emotional than I had expected. All I want to do is leave this place, get away, hide.
“Eddie,” Daisy says.
I look up.
“Sometimes,” she says, “what we want and what we get are two very different things. Sometimes it’s not up to us.”
I nod. I know—fuck, I know.
“Thank you for talking to me,” I manage to say. “I have to go.”
My bus home is almost empty. I sit in the back seat with my hoodie up. When the stupid tears finally stop, I wipe my face with my sleeve and take out my phone. I stare at it for a minute. Then I dial Carmen’s number.
She picks up. “Eddie? It’s late.”
“I want to see you,” I say quietly.
I hear a TV in the background. I hear her walking down a hall and closing a door. “What? I can’t. We’re all settled in for the night. I’m in my PJs.” When I don’t say anything she adds, “What’s wrong?”
What can I tell her? What can I say? My chest aches. I’m raw with feelings I usually keep on lockdown. I wipe my face again.
“Wait. Are you drunk?” she asks.
“What? No, I’m not drunk.”
“Are you in trouble?”
“No. I just…I want to see you.”
She hesitates. The bus stops at a red light. That’s when it dawns on me. Why am I dragging her into this mess? She deserves better than this—better than me.
“You know what?” I try to make my voice lighter. Less weak. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how late it was.”
“Where are you?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”
“But—”
“Good night, Carmen.”
I hang up, turn off the phone, and put it back in my pocket.
I stare out the window. The bus passes closed storefronts behind security cages and all-night taco joints.
My chest aches. I hate how I feel.
I want to get a buzz on. To be honest, I want to get trashed. Rafa’s out of beer, but he might have something good lying around for me to light up.
Anything to get me out of my head tonight—I’ll take it.
At the bus stop by the hospital, I get off and walk down the dark street to the gates of the community garden. I fish my keys out of my backpack. I’m turning the corner when I see it—Carmen’s car, parked at the curb in front of the garden gates.
Her parking lights are on. In the darkness of the car, I spot the flare of her phone screen as she scrolls through it.
I walk up to the driver’s-side window. She’s wearing a ball cap, a hoodie, and pajama pants. She rolls down the window and turns on the dome light.
“Jesus, what happened to you?”
I forgot about my black eye. “Nothing,” I say casually. “Just a little tune-up.” I try to pretend that my heart isn’t beating faster at the sight of her. “What are you doing here?”
She looks skeptical. “I was worried,” she says. “You didn’t sound so good. I tried calling you back but it went straight to voicemail. I took a chance that you might be here, but the gate was locked.”
“So you were just going to wait out here all night?”
She shrugs. “Like I said. I was worried.”
“What about your parents?”
“They think I’m in bed.”
I crack a smile. “Oh, yeah? With who?”
She rolls her eyes and unlocks the doors. “Just get in.”
Carmen drives up Soto Street. She turns the radio down low and switches from the news to an old-school station. “Whittier Boulevard” by Thee Midniters comes up from the speakers. Cruising in a beat-up Toyota, with Carmen by my side, I suddenly feel like the king of the boulevard.
“Where are we going?” I feel lighter than I have all day.
“Have you eaten?” she asks.
“No.”
“Okay. Let’s get food.”
We cross the LA River. On the radio, Thee Midniters leads to Mary Wells, the Temptations, and Ralfi Pagan. Old ghosts ride in on the songs and swirl around me. My dad and his old homeboys, smoking and joking on the sidewalks. My granddad and his original gangsters, holding their corners in zoot suits with razor-sharp creases.
I look out the window and see Twin Towers. The county jail. How many homies do I know in there at this very moment? Probably a lot.
“Where are we going, anyway?” I ask.
“Be patient. You’ll see.”
We reach Union Station. When we turn onto Alameda I see where she’s taking me.
“Oh my God. You serious?” I want to kiss her. I mean, even more than I usually want to.
“You said you missed it.” With a little smile on her face, Carmen pulls into the half-empty parking lot of Philippe’s.
While Carmen maneuvers the car into place, I take out my wallet on the sly and try to count my remaining money out without her seeing me. There’s a ten, a five, and three ones. I jingle my pocket. Two dimes and a quarter. I push the thought away that this is the last money I’ve got until I find another job.
After Carmen parks, we enter the restaurant and shuffle over the sawdust-covered floor. My stomach growls louder—it’s been years since I’ve had one of these sandwiches, and I can’t wait. It’s fifteen minutes until closing time. We get in line to order.
“So?” Carmen says as we wait.
“What?”
“What was it that you wanted to talk about? When you
called me?”
Seeing Carmen, taking a drive, listening to music, and now smelling the scent of my favorite sandwich in all of Los Angeles have worked together to take me away from the anxiety I got after my meeting with Daisy. Carmen has driven away the dark shadow that’s followed me all day. I don’t want to call it back.
“Well?”
“To be honest, I wasn’t planning on talking.” I lift an eyebrow at her.
Fourteen
Carmen nods slowly. “So it’s like that?”
“Like what?”
“You’re going to make a joke to keep from being real with me?”
“What do you mean?”
Her voice gets edgier. The words come faster. She’s annoyed. “You call me with your voice shaking. You hang up on me. I come see you and you’ve got a fucking black eye.”
A couple customers turn to look at us. Carmen doesn’t care. “Your face is all puffy,” she continues. “Something is wrong, but you don’t want to tell me what it is. Why not?”
I’ll do anything to keep from answering these questions. I look down. Her pajama pants are pink with little pink flamingoes on them. “Did you really climb out of your bedroom window?” I ask quietly.
Her voice is pure acid. “No. I snuck out the back door.”
I have to keep her talking to keep her from asking me more questions. I can’t tell her about what happened in El Sereno. I can’t tell her about my dad. “Let’s save my drama for later. Right now I want to talk about you. What did you do today?” I put my arm around her shoulders and pull her in.
She sighs but leans against me.
“Tell me,” I say.
“I called some friends,” she says. “Asked around to see if there were any new restaurant openings in the area. I helped my mom clean the house. Then I went to the drugstore to pick up my dad’s prescription. After that, Sal and Vanessa called me. They said they’d completed their business plan and wanted to set up a date to meet with my parents about leasing the bakery.”
