Malentendido (Misunderstood)

by Mara White

  The dial on the lamp by my bed keeps twisting in my fingers and not turning the light on. The thread must be entirely spent, worn down to smooth metal. And now the lamp won’t light so I stare into the darkness. Luke snores peacefully beside me in my childhood bed. We’re at my mom’s place because I’m still too afraid to sleep in my apartment.

  “B, are you still there?”

  Adam’s voice is quiet like the darkness. How do I answer a question like this? How do I agree to him giving up on us?

  “I hope you can find love, and heal when you do. I hope you’ll still be a father to Luke because he needs a dad just as much as he needs a mom. You are his father and this will tear him apart. Don’t forget about your son’s heart while you try to heal yours. I’d add, what about us, but I think you’ve already decided it’s a forgone conclusion.”

  “Don’t hate me, B.”

  “I could never hate you. I probably wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t rescued me when you did. I mean that, Adam. I’m here for you if you need me. Good luck with your journey.” He saved my life and I’ll be the first to admit it.

  When I hang up the phone, I sit perfectly still in the dark. Should a wife lose her husband and feel only numbness? I could have seen this coming if I’d only squinted hard enough.

  I’m unlucky in love. I’m so lost without him.

  Antes

  “Girl, you look so sexy in that skirt,” I whisper into her ear. Her blonde hair falls over her shoulder and she giggles like a kid. I stare down at her cleavage and just the round curve of her tits has me adjusting my pants. This girl smells like apples, looks like she just stepped out of a magazine about summertime in the Hamptons. Blue eyes, white-blonde hair, tall, slim and dressed like her uniform came in the mail yesterday.

  When I look up, I’m eye to eye with a flustered Belén. She’s got her school skirt on too, but it’s a good three inches longer. Bey wears her school sweater over her white button-up shirt. She stands with her shoulders squared, holding onto her books.

  “Luciano, I lost my keys and Mami’s not home until tomorrow morning.”

  “Is that your little sister?” the blonde asks.

  “Cousin!” Belén and I bark in unison.

  “Can I have your set and then I’ll bring them back to you tomorrow?”

  “Thing is, I took yours off and they’re on the dresser at home.” What I don’t tell her is that I got in a fight with my ma. She told me if I keep sneaking into Tía Betty’s she gonna call the cops and have them press charges against me. I know she’s full of shit, that’s for sure. My ma would take a bullet for me before she’d hand me over to law enforcement. She yelled at me about stealing food and money and smoking in their place. But my ma ain’t stupid; what she was really worried about was me hooking up with my cousin and getting her pregnant. Sometimes, I let myself into their place just to smell Belén’s sheets like some kind of freak.

  Ma and Tía Betty are like vigilantes when it comes to Len. They protect her body like it’s a bank vault and they practically never let her be around men. But what they don’t see is that I feel that way too. If I was this attracted to any other girl I’d have her under my finger; popped her cherry months if not years ago. With Len I hold back and it’s all uphill and against gravity. It stresses me out so much that sometimes I lose my shit. Sometimes I gotta get high just to take the edge off of the craziness.

  “Take me to the dance on Friday, Luciano?” the blonde girl says.

  “I can’t.”

  “There’s a dance?” Len’s face lights up like it does when she shows me and my ma her test scores.

  “You ain’t going. Dead serious. They won’t let you,” I tell her. The pout that follows is adorable.

  “Can we go get them now?” she asks. Hands on hips, tapping foot, annoyance at everything I say.

  “If they say you can go, I’ll take you,” I tell her. She smiles, makes bright eye contact; my heart blooms wide open when she looks at me like that. “Let’s get out of here,” I say. Give the blonde a quick kiss on her high cheekbones.

  “You are pathetic. Why you picking up gringas?”

  “Says the girlfriend of Jungle Fever Jeremy.”

  She smiles because it’s funny, but she’s too stubborn to admit it. I grab the back of her neck and squeeze hard. She squeals and leans back into my hand and suddenly she’s pressed up against me. We both stop laughing and Bey steps away. Our eyes catch. I want to tell her that if I could have her I wouldn’t give a damn about the others. And I want her to say the same back to me—that Jeremy means squat to her, that he’s a cover, a device to try and stay away from me. That if it were up to us we’d be together, just like it’s always been, Lucky and Bey. Her and me and the fireworks show that lights up between us.

  “I’m not joking, I will take you to that dance if Tía lets me. I’ll even wear a tie and shit so that you can be proud of me.”

  “¡Dímelo, papá!” we hear. I got friends on every corner.

  “¿En qué tu ‘ta?” I shake hands with all three of them.

  We stop and bullshit with some of my boys who long ago gave up on school and are trying to make it in the game instead.

  I’d be like them too if I didn’t have such strong women in my family. Ma would drag me away by the ears if she knew I was dealing. But the thing about this life is, you can’t be a connoisseur without at least one foot in the business. You’ve got to get in the chain if you want to use without paying. How’s I’m supposed to feed the need if I ain’t got a hand in the game?

  Bey scrutinizes our handshakes as we exchange drugs and cash. Her brow furrows like she’s thinking hard and she physically distances herself from my body. She doesn’t talk to these guys and none of them talk to her, but I notice their stares and how they size her up. She picks up some pathetic flowers out of an overgrown patch of dirt. Playing outside in the Heights means throwing a fucking ball down the sidewalk right next to honking traffic. Kiddie pool on the sidewalk filled by the super’s hose. Running around on tar roofs and jumping building to building under the faded city stars. That’s how we grew up—straight-up playing in the street. Bey would look good in a field filled with flowers and grass. Real blue sky, no smog, no snakes hiding what they packin’ every time a cop rolls by.

  “Would you take me to the dance sober?” she asks as soon as we’re out of earshot of the guys. Bey’s up to something, ’bout to reprimand me for getting high. Thing is, if I took her sober, no way I’d be able to live through the torture. I’d go crazy with all the ideas that pass through my head about us; at least if I’m high I can think about something else—like getting higher and finding more drugs, or other chicks, Yari, anybody. Fucking anything not to cave to this overwhelming lust.

  “I ain’t gonna front, B. You’d have to ask Jeremy if that what’s you want. Though Jeremy gets a little powder on his nose usually right after his allowance rolls in.”

  She follows me up the stairs, dragging her Mary Janes, and plunks down on the sofa while I go into Ma’s room and snatch the keys off the dresser. She’s splayed out across the whole couch, her eyes closed, her arms crossed, knee socks scrunched down around her ankles.

  “Len, wake up. I’ll walk you up,” I say.

  She smiles with her eyes still closed.

  “Faker,” I say. She sits up quick and throws a couch pillow at me.

  “I can walk up two flights of stairs by myself, thanks.” She stands and adjusts her skirt. Pulls it down and then looks at me.

  “I’m going up anyway to have a smoke,” I say.

  Her face falls; she knows I’m not talking about cigarettes. “Come up there and sit with. It’s not so bad. Just helps me to chill out.”

  She doesn’t look so sure.

  “It ain’t addictive at least anyway.” I shrug.

  I’m desperate to pull her back into her smile, to the playful way she felt when we were leaving the schoolyard. Her forearm in my hand feels like salvation as I pull her through the hat
ch.

  Bey sits next to me while I light up a joint. The sun is going down; sharp orange and purple tint the sky over the Hudson.

  “Want some?” I ask her, offering the spliff. I know she won’t take it, I don’t even want her to, but it feels rude not to ask her. I don’t want Belén to do drugs, I just want her to understand me.

  I exhale and cough when I can’t hold it in anymore. Len’s face is down, her chin almost touching her chest. When she looks back up at me she’s got tears in her eyes.

  “What’s wrong, what’d I do?” I ask her. I’m alarmed. I’m paranoid. Don’t like not knowing what she’s thinking.

  “What if you died?”

  “I ain’t dying. I’m trying to relax!”

  “But you could!”

  “No I won’t!”

  “But you hang out with those guys, what if you got shot or arrested and sent to Riker’s Island?”

  “I’m careful,” I say, taking another hit but looking away from her. I don’t want to exhale in her face.

  “But bad things happen and drugs eventually get you into trouble. Addiction, overdose, so many different things could happen. All of them bad.”

  “Bey, quit it. I’m just smoking a fucking joint.” Her eyes have gone amber in the glow of the golden light. She rests her weight on her hands and stares past me down to the river, which looks almost beautiful at sunset.

  “Two guys just got shot on the corner of 139th last Saturday.”

  “Think I don’t know that? Bey, can you shut your mouth and let me smoke a joint?”

  “You’re all I got, Luciano, whether you like it or not. I don’t have a dad and I don’t have any brothers. Mami works all the time and Yari doesn’t even like me that much.”

  “Come on, don’t exaggerate,” I say, knocking my cousin in the shoulder.

  “Without you I’ve got no one. I wouldn’t even want to live.” Before I can respond she lays one hand on my cheek. Her lips are on mine in the lightest, sweetest kiss. I close my eyes and let her lips stay there without making a move. Her soft exhale tickles across my upper lip. When she pulls back I feel warmth spread through my system, like the levee just broke and all the warm water comes rushing in. She opens her eyes slowly and her pupils are dilated; the reflection of the sun shines in them and I feel intoxicated. I flick the joint high up into the sky and it falls over the edge of the roof. There’s no guardrail up here, nothing to keep us from stepping over the edge and falling seven stories to the sidewalk.

  “There. Happy?”

  “All of it,” she says and puts her hand up in front of me. I reach in my pockets and pull the bag of weed out. Bey blinks at me seriously and I dig a little deeper, fetch a stamp-sized baggy filled with a good amount of dope. Bey closes her fist around them, pushes up to her feet and tosses them off the closest side of the building. I come up behind her and wrap my arms around her waist. We stare at the sunset, neither one of us wanting to talk or even move an inch.

  My desire to become something, to be a better man, all comes from wanting to please this girl in my arms. I’d give or do anything to get that look she just gave me when I handed over the drugs. The highest high I get is knowing Bey trusts me.

  Después

  In my dream, we’re back on the playground. Yari is with Lucky and I’m playing by myself. The colors are all off and I feel a little nauseated. The sprinklers leak rust-stained water instead of spraying ice-cold fans that make rainbows when they line up with the sun. The seconds are moving backwards, unwinding in stretchy taffy. I watch Yari’s mouth move in slow motion but I still can’t tell what she’s yelling. Lucky is in his uniform of low-slung jeans and a wife-beater; he wears his dog tags and the gold bracelet he’s had ever since he was a baby. The sky, overrun with helicopters that look like dragonflies, is slowly closing in on me. I want to scream, I want to run, but the only thing I can do is squat down and catch frogs. The same frogs I studied in the biology lab at college. All of the chimeras are loose out of their aquariums and hopping through the rusted water. Every time I catch one they slip right out of my hands. I start crying rusted tears that look startlingly like fresh blood. I shove the chimeras in my pockets and into the t-shirt I’m wearing. Everyone is laughing and pointing, all of the kids on the playground minus Lucky and Yari. Those two are kissing, necking. Shoving their tongues down each other’s throats while I cry pink tears and grab hopelessly at the mutant frogs hopping out of my pockets. My heart is frozen stone cold. Ice aches deep in my chest as it spreads out through the branches of my blood veins like frost creeping along windowpanes.

  A glass-shattering scream rips me from my dream; my own, I deduce after searching my son’s body for any signs of trauma.

  I set Luciano free, told him he could leave. But I’m sending mixed messages—while my head says one thing, my heart refuses to move on. And how can I escape him when he lives in my dreams?

  Luke has one leg slung over me while he sleeps, an unconscious new development ever since his dad left. He’s afraid I’ll leave too; I can see the stress on his face while he sleeps. I don’t want my son to go through life without a father.

  Antes

  It wasn’t until after Lucky died that I confronted Mami about my father. It was hard for me to predict that she’d be so affected more than twenty years later.

  “I thought when I came here, I would marry an American. That I’d get a little house with a fence and maybe a dog instead of a yard full of chickens. Growing up in DR I fantasized about it, until it became an obsession—coming here, living the life that I’d dreamed of. But what I didn’t expect was that it would be as hard as it was. That a million other people, from all over the world, would have the same dream that I did. I thought we could be self-sufficient and provide for ourselves, but without papers or a diploma, that silly dream was turning into a nightmare—less prospects here for us than there were at home.”

  She pulls out a giant photo book, the cover white and peeling. It’s the only one she has and contains both of our baby albums, our school pictures, hers in black and white, fading to sepia, and mine in full color with fake screens of fall in the background. Mami’s hands shake as she opens the book.

  “We relied on him for everything. He was a good man, never did anyone harm.”

  Luis looks much older than Mami, even older than she looks now. He wears a driver’s cap and V-necked sweaters in the winter that cover a rounded beer belly. His smile is huge. The way he looks at Mami in some of the images sends shivers to my toes. He looks at her like he loves her and Mami looks so young. But optimism is on her face in every photo. I never got to see her like that, looking forward to the future with gusto. In one, they stand in front of a Cadillac; Mami wears a dress and silver heels and has her hair in big hot dog curls.

  “He lost his lease on the car when he started drinking,” Mami says as she runs a fingertip around the rim of the front wheel in the picture. “Then the medallion. But he was a good man, mi hija, despite what they said about him.”

  “Is he still alive?” I ask. I think I already know the answer.

  “No,” she says. Her big tears drip onto the clear covering. I throw my arms around her neck and give her a squeeze.

  “Do you still wish for the American dream?”

  “Oh, I have it, Belén, in spades. My professional daughter, my beautiful grandson, enough savings to eventually retire. I got what I dreamed about. Luis was the biggest surprise. He didn’t fit into my original plan, but he was a good addition, love. Without Luis I wouldn’t be blessed with such a perfect daughter.”

  “When Lucky first told me, I thought there was something wrong with us, me and you. I thought we were cursed, or maybe diseased—that we shared the same affliction.”

  “To love a man who is good down to the bone? To want to be with someone who makes your heart soar? That’s no curse, Belén, that’s a gift from God. Not everyone is blessed to feel a love so strong. It’s loves like yours and mine that break down boundaries, make p
eople question what’s right and wrong, make them look a little deeper into their own beliefs and prejudices.”

  I flip the page and look at images of her and Awilda with Luciano and me in diapers. Their smiles are wide and proud.

  “Groundbreaking love?” I ask her. I can’t help but smile.

  “Love that stands true to God.”

  “Sometimes I feel bad, Mami, because I think Yaritza might have loved Lucky too. I always thought our relationship was so special that it overruled hers. But looking back, I’m not so sure of it. Maybe their love was important too.”

  Mami drops a sugar cube into her coffee. She stirs it softly and peers at the froth.

  “We’re speaking again. I saw her the other day. She still hurts like I do.”

  Mami lifts one eyebrow at me.

  “There is a difference between drama and passion. Drama feeds the ego, Belén, while passion feeds the soul. Yari and Lucky shared chemistry, you and Lucky were in love.”

  “Or we shared biology.” Mami doesn’t crack a smile at my little joke.

  There’s a picture of Luciano and me, all dressed up to go to church. He’s wearing a little tie and suspenders, pulling me along by the hand. I look up at him with fascination, admiration written all over my little six-year-old face.

  “Loving him would have been a difficult choice.”

  “No, Mami,” I say. A shadow of regret passes over her gaze. She thinks I’ll tell her that it wouldn’t have been a struggle—that Lucky and I could have overcome the obstacles, the drugs, the adversaries, the people who said and thought our love was unnatural. I grab her hand which is now tight with arthritis. Hands that worked hard their whole life to put her only daughter through college.

  “No, Mami,” I say again. I think it’s important that she knows. “It was never a choice.”

  Después

  So I’m supposed to start fresh, get a job and a place. Sometimes it’s surreal to be back and I have to hold onto things tightly—like the bannister going up the stairs or the handlebars on my bike. Sometimes I repeat simple directions in my head; saying it over and over helps to keep me from losing track. I signed up with a security firm and I have to do a thirty-six-hour seminar. Easy stuff really, but I’d like to get it right and not fuck up my life anymore. So I go religiously and I find a place to go to meetings. I never went overseas because it wasn’t an option. Only thing that sucks is that the scumbag Ponzo is in there too. I manage to avoid him the first day, but the next meeting, sure enough, he’s slithering over to me. I got my Dixie cup of hot coffee and some arepa dominicana, a corn cake kinda like the Colombian one, but sweeter and denser.