José paled.
“Yeah, it’s real,” Jay told him, “and yeah, I’m serious. Do we understand each other now?”
José gave a quick nod. “No gangs southside. Got it.”
Jay crossed the distance between them, and José cringed.
“Relax,” Jay said. “I’m just taking you home.”
He returned the boy to the school yard. When he came back to el entre, Lupita was still waiting for him.
“Ay-yi-yi,” she said. “Aren’t you the tough guy.”
“I feel like an idiot saying stuff like that.”
“But if it works . . .”
“I suppose. Are you coming to the street party?”
“I think all the cousins are coming. I just hope they don’t get too rowdy, because then you’ll have to go all tough guy on them.”
She danced around, shadow-boxing with a fierce look on her face.
All Jay could do was laugh.
JAY
The night before the big fiesta street concert we’re all out putting up decorations, setting up the stage and food tents, and getting the other last-minute preparations done. We don’t get back to Tío’s until past midnight and we’re all tired so no one stays up long. Ramon and Rosalie go to her trailer, Anna crashes on the couch, and Tío and I go to our own rooms. Everybody else heads for home.
I lie down on my bed but I can’t sleep. It’s not only because I know Anna’s on the couch, though that’s part of it. Things are good between us. Not exactly where I’d like them to be—she’s not my girlfriend yet or anything; I haven’t even kissed her—but we’re spending a lot of time together, getting to know each other better, and I have the feeling that if no new disaster comes along, it’ll only be a matter of time.
Just lying here waiting to fall asleep makes me feel even more restless. Finally, I get up and step over into el entre. I figure I’ll pay my respects to Maria—I haven’t been out there for a couple of days. While I’m doing that I’ll grab the chance to soak in some of the peace I always feel when I’m there. It makes me feel so grounded when I get back.
I shouldn’t have thought of disasters—Rosalie’s always telling me not to put negative thoughts out into the world because that just gives them substance. But I did, and wouldn’t you know it, when I arrive on the plateau, someone else is there. I get that ping in my head that tells me it’s a cousin. A powerful cousin, and nobody that I know.
She doesn’t look like much from first glance. She’s sitting cross-legged in front of Maria’s cairn, a small woman with brown hair falling over her face as she plays a loose blues progression on an old beat-up small-bodied guitar. When she looks up, I see her violet eyes first, and then a moment later I see the spirit shape rising big into the sky behind her and I realize what she is.
“You’re a dragon,” I say. “Of the Yellow Dragon Clan.”
The woman mutes the strings of her guitar.
“Yeah,” she says. “Your grandma’s really disappointed by that, too. White girl stealing away some Chinese kid’s heritage and all.”
“No, it’s not that. I just didn’t know it was possible.”
“Yellow dragons come in all shapes and sizes and colors now. I know it wasn’t always like that—used to be there was one emperor, one dragon protector. But the emperor’s long gone and there are lots of us now. These days our protection is centered on a place, or it covers less conventional subjects.”
“Say what?”
She shrugs. “You watch over the land on the other side of these borderlands. I protect the homeless.”
“But . . . they’re everywhere.”
“Yeah, I know. It keeps me busy. It’s like trying to carry water in a sieve, but I do the best I can. Mostly I travel around and set up operations that can help them help themselves.”
Her fingers have gone back to the guitar again, noodling the way Anna does when she’s talking, except the woman’s playing a soft blues riff.
“What’s your name?” I find myself asking.
“People call me Berlin.”
What kind of a name is that? I want to ask and I guess she sees something in my face.
“It’s not that complicated,” Berlin says. “I used to walk around with this great big wall inside me, keeping the world out. I managed to take it down after a while, but the name stuck.”
“So why are you here?” I ask.
I can guess. I don’t know what they think I’ve done, but the clan must have decided that I’ve become too dangerous so they’ve sent her to deal with me. Why else would a yellow dragon be here?
At least they didn’t send Paupau.
I use the medicine wheel to check out the plateau, but the threads don’t connect to anyone else—dragons, cousins, or even Abuelo. I suppose they don’t think I’m much of a threat, because they only sent one of the clan to deal with me. But I won’t go without a fight. I start to talk to the winds, to the stone under our feet, getting myself ready for her attack.
But she doesn’t seem to be in any kind of hurry.
“It’s about your grandma,” Berlin says.
I sigh. So all of this is because I didn’t give her the respect she expects from me. But the next thing Berlin says turns everything upside down.
“We’re worried about her,” she goes on.
“You’re worried about Paupau? You’re not here to . . .”
My voice trails off. Berlin’s violet eyes study me for a moment, then she smiles and shakes her head.
“No, no,” she says. “Everybody thinks you’re doing a terrific job. They think you’re already got the maturity of a dragon well into his second century. And I agree.”
“Then what . . . ?”
“You know about dragons going rogue?” she asks.
I nod.
“It usually happens all at once,” she says. “Something sets them off and they just snap.”
Like I did when Margarita was killed.
I don’t know if she can read my mind, or if it’s showing on my face again.
“No, not like you when your friend was killed,” she says. “You shut the rage down and got everybody out before the building collapsed.”
“How do you know that?”
“I was here,” she says. “I was with the others when we came to see what had happened.”
“So it was like a cop has to go up in front of the police board if he discharges his weapon. You guys are the dragon equivalent of the police board.”
She nods. “Kind of.”
“Or like the feathered serpents down south.”
“Yeah, more like that.”
She has the decency to look a little embarrassed. She stops playing for a moment, then starts again in a different key.
“So what’s this got to do with my grandmother?” I ask.
She mutes her strings and leans on the small body of her guitar.
“It’s a little more rare,” she says, “but sometimes a dragon starts to go off. It’s a little something here, a little something else there, and the next thing you know you’ve got a rogue on the loose, tearing apart all the things she’s supposed to be protecting.”
“You think Paupau’s going rogue?”
We might have had our differences, but the one thing that defines my grandmother is her control. I can’t imagine her without it. For six years, I was witness to it every single day.
“We don’t think it’s gotten that far,” Berlin says. “But the signs . . .”
“What signs?” I ask when she doesn’t go on.
“Your grandma is the last of the Chinese yellow dragons,” she says, then she pauses. “Well, technically, you are. But you know what I mean. Paupau is the last of the old-school ones. She’s big on tradition.”
“Tell me about it.”
“But not so much anymore. She’s made herself completely unavailable to those requesting her help. She spends her days sequestered in her apartment. At night, she wanders the streets waiting for someone to try to t
ake advantage of the little old Chinese lady. And when they do, she . . . deals with them.”
“Oh, crap. She hasn’t killed anybody, has she?”
“Not yet. Until last night, she’d just been roughing them up—laying down the law, dragon style.”
“What happened last night?”
“She put a man in a coma. She’s so angry, but she won’t say why.”
But I know why.
“I think it’s my fault,” I tell Berlin. “I called home yesterday.”
Both Rosalie and Anna had been after me for days, trying to convince me to call my parents.
“You’re mad at your grandmother,” Rosalie said. “I get it. Don’t forget, I met her and she’s a real piece of work. But your mother and father—”
“How can you not have called them since what happened at the dance hall?” Anna said. “They must be worried sick.”
“I know. I’m just afraid that Paupau will pick up. I’m not ready to talk to her yet.”
Anna shook her head. “Superhero,” she said. “You’ve got to bite the bullet on this one and just do it. Take the chance.”
Rosalie nodded in agreement. “You really do, Jay.”
So that night I took my cell to the trailhead and punched the speed dial for my parents’ restaurant. With the time difference, they should have just been closing up.
I was so nervous I actually had to sit down on the bench there. Some big, scary dragon I was. I found myself hoping that no one would pick up. I could tell the girls, hey, I tried but—
“Hello. You’ve reached the Dragon Garden.”
All my nervousness drained away. Just hearing her voice made me feel happy and safe.
“Mom?”
“Jay! We’ve been so worried.” I heard her call to my dad. “Jimmy, pick up the extension. It’s Jay on the phone.”
That’s why my James became Jay. We already had a Jimmy in the family.
I had a good conversation with my parents. Scratch that. I had a great conversation with them. At least I did, until my mom said she’d go get Paupau so I could talk to her.
“Don’t, Mom.”
It was so quiet for a moment that I thought I’d lost the connection.
“Hello,” I said.
“We’re still here,” Dad said.
I could hear the thoughtful frown in Mom’s voice.
“Why don’t you want to talk to her?” she asked.
I put it as diplomatically as possible.
“We’re . . . we’re having a difference of opinion. She doesn’t think I should be allowed any free will, and I disagree.”
“Is this dragon business?” Mom asked.
“Um, yeah.”
Mom sighed. “Well, you won’t get any argument from me on that. I never agreed all that ridiculous training.”
When she said that, it made me wonder how much she actually knew about what had been happening between Paupau and me.
“Why didn’t you stop her?” I asked.
“It’s like trying to move a mountain,” Dad said. “Believe me, we tried. But this dragon business . . . it goes back forever—for generations in the Xú family. Your mother and Paupau have been arguing about it for years.”
Mom added, “The only reason I agreed to your moving away without even finishing high school is that at least it would get you away from her for a while. Everything is always so serious with Paupau. I thought you should have a chance to be a seventeen-year-old, to find your own way, even if it meant my baby boy was moving so far away.”
Even over the phone I felt embarrassed.
“I’m not a baby anymore, Mom.”
She laughed. “You’re my youngest. You’ll always be my baby.”
“I’m going to school here,” I said to change the subject. “It’s tough catching up this late in the year but I’ve got friends helping me.”
“Good for you, son,” Dad said.
We talked some more and it was all good until Mom finished with, “You know I’ll have to tell Paupau you called.”
Which meant I was giving her even more disrespect by not speaking to her.
“Yeah, I know,” I said.
“I talked to my parents,” I tell Berlin, “but I refused to talk to Paupau. We already had an argument the last time I saw her, so this was just going to make it worse. But I thought she’d only be mad at me. I never thought it would affect anybody else.”
“So what is going on with the two of you?” Berlin asked.
“You have to ask? For six years she puts me through this insane exercise and meditation program, but she won’t tell me why. At least not in any way that makes sense. She gives me riddles, not explanations. Then she just sends me out into the world where I’m supposed to find my destiny, but if I screw it up—and how do I not screw it up when I don’t have a clue what’s really what?—she and a bunch of her friends are going to come and kill me.”
Berlin’s quiet for a long moment.
“Yeah,” she finally says. “That’s been a source of disagreement for a lot of people in the clan. But you have to remember that she went through the same process herself. It’s how the Chinese dragons have always done it.”
“Tradition.”
She gives me a humorless smile. “Pretty much.”
“So did you have to go through that?”
She shakes her head. “But I wasn’t any happier with the seven years I studied with a sensei in Japan learning meditation techniques, martial arts, kendo, and that kind of thing.”
“Kendo?”
“Kind of the Japanese version of fencing.”
“You don’t look Japanese.”
She shrugs. “I’m not. That’s just the branch of the clan I hooked up with. They pulled me out of an orphanage—my parents were both dead. Dad was a junked-out musician, Mom a hooker. Not much life expectancy in either profession.”
She says it like it’s no big deal, but now I know why she chose the “emperor” she did.
“Anyway,” she goes on, “life was tough in the dojo, but we always knew what we were doing and why, and we sure as hell didn’t get sent out solo to wake up our dragons.”
“So you see why I’ve got issues,” I say.
She nods. “But I’m going to have to ask you to man up and try to make things right with her. Show her a little respect.”
“Why should I?”
“Because you’re a good kid and she needs it. Look, you don’t have to kowtow to her like everything’s okay and you don’t have your issues, but surely you’ve got some good memories of her? Was it six years of hell, or just a tough boot camp that went on for way too long?”
“No, there were good times.”
“Try to focus on them and not the crap that winds you up.”
“But she was going to kill me.”
Berlin shakes her head. “We’d have had to do something if you gone completely rogue, but killing you wasn’t nearly the first option.”
“I don’t know. . . .”
“You don’t have to go live with her or anything. You couldn’t, anyway. You’ve got your own responsibilities now. But go talk to her.”
“Or you guys are going to come down on her.”
“We’re just trying to stop this before it gets worse.”
“The guy in the coma—what happens if he dies?”
She shrugs. “Then he dies. Look, these guys she’s taking out, they’re not exactly the cream of society, but she’s hitting them way too harsh. She shouldn’t even be dealing with that kind of thing. Our job is focusing on the big picture. We only deal with the little stuff if somebody specifically asks us to get involved, and even then it’s our call.”
For days now, I’ve been wrestling with questions about where I’m supposed to draw the line in terms of my responsibilities. I guess I couldn’t get a clearer answer than that.
“So I talk to her and then I can go?” I say.
“That’ll be up to you.”
“But if I’m done wi
th her, won’t she just keep doing what she’s doing?”
“I don’t know,” Berlin says. “Maybe it’ll give her closure. At some point the sensei always has to let the student go.”
“I guess.”
“You won’t know until you talk to her.”
So I let her take me to Chicago. The cool thing is that she shows me how el entre can be used to bridge great distances. Like we only walked for an hour or so through an ever-changing landscape, but after that hour we were already on the outskirts of Chicago. The only bad moment was when we got a certain distance from the barrio and I felt the medicine wheel fade away.
I would have fallen if Berlin hadn’t caught my arm.
“It’s okay,” she says. “It’ll still be there waiting for you when you get back. It’s always tough the first time.”
I nodded, but as the emptiness filled me I finally really understood how Señora Elena must have felt.
“Can Paupau travel like this?” I ask now. “Because the last time she came to see me, she came by plane.”
“She was showing you respect,” Berlin says.
“I don’t understand.”
“Instead of just taking a walk through the otherworld and reaching you in an hour or so, she took the time to take the long way to see you. The way everybody else has to travel.”
Great. Now I’ve got that to feel guilty about, too.
“Can you find your own way back later?” Berlin asks.
We’re still in el entre but it’s different here. All deep woods and granite-backed hills. But I remember the way we came.
“Sure,” I say. “You’re not going to audit my meeting or anything?”
She laughs. “I can see how it might seem like it, but we’re not Big Brother always watching over each other. It’s only when circumstances don’t give us any other choice. We’ve all got our own lives.”
“Will I see you again?”
“I don’t have a phone or anything, but if you want to see me, just ask a homeless person where I am. They won’t have a clue what you’re talking about, but I’ll know you’re trying to contact me.”
She puts a hand on my shoulder.
The Painted Boy Page 31
