Chango's Fire (12 page)

“But I like to work—”

“Has Maritza paid you, Trompo?”

“What?”

“Money!”

“I don't want money,” he says, “I want work.”

“Never mind,” I say, ‘Til talk to Maritza.” A van honks at us.

“Julio, I got to go to work,” he says, all excited, adjusting his hard hat.

“Who's that?” I look at the driver, a middle-aged woman with rollers on her head, peeking out from under a bandanna.

“That's Sister Centeno. Maritza wants us to collect can food and coats.” He says proudly, tapping his hard hat, “Can't stay and talk to you. I got to go to work.”

Walking by the new Starbucks that just opened, I look to see if Helen is inside. I look and see all these white people that have moved into the neighborhood. A few Latinos are there, feeling hip and looking stupid. The old residents of Spanish Harlem still prefer the coffee brewed in bakeries. I don't see Helen, and start heading for the East River.

On my way I see a huge tour bus full of white people stop in front of the Salsa Museum on 116th and Lexington. The tour guide, a white guy, erroneously says, “There are many salsa museums all over Spanish Harlem.” I want to ask him, where? Because there's only one. And I watch how these white people enter the museum, as if they are entering a pyramid in Egypt. Full of wonder and discovery. I continue to walk, asking myself who in their right mind would visit Spanish Harlem in the 70s, when it was burning? When did it become cool to visit this neighborhood? Is it cool? Then I think of Helen.

Helen, Helen, why am I looking for Helen? Get that broad out of your head, I tell myself as I turn east, toward the river. As luck would have it, I see Helen walking about half a block in front of me. I notice, when she walks she moves like she's dancing in her room, thinking she's all by herself. Her feet and shoulders bounce and her head moves slightly. If she saw herself walking she'd probably feel embarrassed, like when someone is caught dancing alone and they quickly stop and shut the door.

When Helen stops for a red light, I catch up with her.

“Hey, what's up?” she says, smiling.

“Hi,” I say, looking across the street where two old men are playing chess.

“I'm sorry about the other night.”

“Hey, it's all right,” I say, continuing to look at the old chess players. I've always wanted to go over and introduce myself and play. But I never have.

“Where you headed?”

“By the East River,” I say, but I don't tell her I'm going there to throw sweet cakes in the river.

“No way, my gallery is by there, on 116th and First. I just bought all this booze for the opening night. Come, check out my art gallery. Check it out,” she says, lightly slapping me on the arm.

I should just go take care of my things, but a good drink always sounds better when you don't want to go to school. Especially night school.

“Okay, yeah.”

“Great,” she says, “let's have a drink?” We walk past men playing dice. When they see Helen, they pick their dice up. As she passes by them, they hiss and catcall her.

She smirks and shakes her head as if to say, how childish.

“You're not going to fight for my honor?” she says, half joking, knowing it's not worth it.

“As long as they don't touch you,” I say, “hey whatever.”

“Guess not,” she says, visibly uncomfortable. “What's with the
mami
shit. Yeah, I can't stand that. Guys blow kisses going,
mami, mami.
Do you guys see your mother in my ass?”

I got to give her that.

“I'm sorry Julio, am I being offensive?”

“No,” I say, “I think that's stupid. Besides, I've never seen one guy ever pick up a girl by doing that. If it really worked I'd be the first one on the corner.”

“Latino men are so Oedipal. Calling girls
mami,
like do you guys want to fuck your mothers? Do you?”

“Hey my Mom was hot,” I say, trying to inject some humor here, “okay? See, that's what I meant when I told you to claim your place here. Making someone look stupid is big here.”

“Why?”

“I don't know, it was once called snapping, or dissing. It gets you respect. Claim your space.” From the look in her face, she doesn't buy it.

I had seen Helen's gallery space, it's a block away from Eddie's coffee shop. I have never entered, because there was always a sign saying
OPENING SOON.
The sign had been up for months. Until Helen must have taken it down when she moved into the neighborhood. But the space was still closed, and I would see Helen and some people always trying to get it in shape. I had no time to stop by, because the only reason I was around that part of El Barrio, the old Little Italy, was to see Eddie.

“The stairs in our building,” Helen says, “are so old they creak, but the floors in this gallery space creak so loud they make everyone sound like Hamlet's father.”

“I read that last semester,” I say.

“Oh? What are you studying?”

“Management, but I had to take a lit course. Which I like.”

The gallery is small but neat. It's very well lit, with a large window facing a lamppost. The paintings are leaning against the walls, ready to be hung. Objects from other parts of the world, masks, rugs, jugs, small statues, are on the floor, waiting to be placed in their proper spots.

“So, what's up?” she says, like we haven't been talking.

She leads me into her office. A tiny window faces 116th and Lexington, the aorta of Spanish Harlem. We sit down, both of us barely fitting in a small but neat room filled with office supplies.

I point to a picture of a man standing on a wheat field. “Who's that?”

“Oh, that's my dad,” she pours us a vodka and adds some tonic water, “yeah, corporate farmer, you know, thousands of acres. Other people's farms. I hate the place. No imagination. At fourteen I couldn't wait to drive so I could escape everyday to Concourse, the nearest big town to where I was. A post office, a book store, a restaurant-slash-Laundrymat, whoopie. When Concourse got old—real quick it got old—I couldn't wait to go away to college. Cheers.”

“Thanks. Where did you finally escape to?” I ask.

“Cornell, that's where my parents are really from. Where they met,” she tilts her head, “didn't I tell you this before?”

“Yes,” I say, “in a letter.”

Helen snaps her fingers. “That's right.”

“It was a beautiful letter,” I say, “I still have it.” I stop when I see her blush.

“Anyway, my dad got this big job for a bank.” She returns to the same corner, so I let her. “Not the nicest of jobs. People hated him.”

“Why?”

“The bank sent him to take care of farms that people had lost to the bank by defaulting. My dad made sure all was working well.”

“I see. So, why you choose to come to New York?”

“You're kidding me, right? Capital of the art world, Julio. Besides, when your town tells you all your life never to be with a certain kind of people, when you leave that town, naturally that's the first thing you do.” She stops her glass right before she takes a drink, “I'm sorry, am I being offensive?”

“No. And screw that, just talk.”

“Good. So after grad school—”

“You got your master's?”

“Is there something wrong?”

“No,” I say, wondering if I'd ever reach that far in my goal toward higher education.

“You okay? What's wrong?”

“Nothing, keep going.”

“All right, so I meet this gorgeous guy, Russell Running Water Means. Little by little he gives me bits and pieces of his life. He had told me he was Native American, turns out he was Mexican American, real name Julio. Like yours. Actually you two kinda look alike. I'm sorry, am I being offensive again?”

“Are you going to keep this up? Just talk.” I down my drink and think that I'm supposed to be offering my sweet cakes to Ochun at the East River at this very moment. I don't want the Orisha angry at me.

“Okay I'll stop. You want another one?”

“Sure.” I hand her my glass.

“So Russell Running Water Means, or Julio Silver, born Julio Plata from California, shares the same passion for art that I do, and then—poof! He's not from California but Utah, and three wives later, I find out, the Mormon Chicano boy—” and when she walks over to hand me my drink she catches me not listening to her, so she cuts her story short. “But at least we got to open this gallery. Are you all right, wanna tell me what's wrong?”

“Okay,” I say, taking my drink and downing half of it. “Promise you won't laugh.”

“Maybe a little.”

“Okay, I have these sweet cakes in my bag that I'm supposed to offer to a goddess, Ochun—”

“Wait, that nice old man next door to us put you up to this, right? The botanicah,” she pronounces the last word like she was from Boston. “He's really nice.”

“Yeah, it's about stories. Powerful sto—”

“Hey,” she doesn't let me finish what I was going to tell her and gets up from her chair and goes over to a desk. “Come to our opening next week. De la Vega said he's coming, others too.”

She hands me an invite postcard,
SPA HA GALLERY.

“There will be lots of free drinks.”

“I'll try to make it. I got to go.”

“You gonna let me drink alone?” Her eyes drop, like a child left at the doorstep of a church.

“I'm sorry, I have to go,” I say but don't go anywhere.

She drinks up.

“Try to make the opening, okay?” she says as her shoulders slump.

I've heard the strangest things happen to you when you're drunk. I never believed it. I never get drunk, just tipsy. I think weird things happen because we let them. They don't always happen at unfortunate moments, only that it is at these times when we will purposely forget about what we're really supposed to be doing.

I walk toward her.

Helen stands up and faces me. I wait for her to touch me, and when she does, I kiss her. Helen pulls her sweater off above her shoulders. She pauses and then, with her hands behind her back, reaches for the clasp of her bra, like she was going to surprise me with flowers or bring out a gift. When Helen's breasts spring loose, she looks down at them. And after she takes off the rest of her clothes, I think she apologizes for her body.

“This is it,” she whispers with a small shrug, “this is all I have.”

Then there are all these silences around us. No one is doing anything but just standing here. We just hover, loitering like muggers, until the silence becomes too cold, so chilly it seems not even blankets could warm us up. And it is only when Helen realizes how silly all this is, how absurd, that she begins to giggle. And only then do we decide to inject some sense into this odd situation by kissing each other's body.

The few times in my life I'd had sex, it had always been on the run. During improvised events, with girls I barely knew, or girls I knew too well from the neighborhood but didn't care for. I've had sex in borrowed, inconvenient places, sandwiched between a new building I had to burn and a mortgage check I had to hand over to Papelito. This time, it was different. Sex with Helen was like a process of continual adjustments. Like living in a foreign country. You learn the language, the currency, the method of transportation, the good stores and restaurants. You try to feel like a native, like you belong, careful not to embarrass yourself. Still you never succeed in feeling at home. You remain a tourist in her body.

T
he gallery phone has been ringing nonstop throughout. And as soon as we have stopped and it is over, Helen goes to answer it. She talks naked, and I stare at her white legs and thin waist. How her pallor offsets the dark wooden floors. She is tiny and her hair is not as short as I thought it was. It reaches all the way past her shoulders, and her back is covered with freckles.

I get up to dress and sense that something has changed in the room. There is this uneasy thinness in the air, enhanced by the medical smell of used condoms on the floor. As I get dressed, the feeling only intensifies. I feel like I just took part in some large event, and a tiny residue of shame hovers above me. Now that it's time to go home I just hope that I said and did the right things. That I didn't fail anyone.

I say I have to go, and grab my bag. Helen nods, covering the phone's mouthpiece and says something to me, but I don't catch it. I'll soon have to confront that half smile, that shy embarrassment that always arises when you've slept with someone for the first time. But not now, not yet.

Outside.

The walk toward the river does me good. I arrive to find the moonlight has cooled the river, turning it a heavy, clear gray. Above, it's all white clouds and blue-black sky. I sit on a red bench, facing the traffic of tugs and freighters that float by the river's breeze. I sit there and watch the currents go by as seagulls bite the water. At my feet, there's scales of dead fish, blood, and used condoms. Someone loved badly but loved here, by this pier.

I get up, unwrap my offering to Ochun. The East River sizzles like seltzer when I drop the sweet cakes in its waters. I see fish underneath come up for a taste of Ochun's offering as the wind plays with my hair, my clothes, my face, like telling me change is inevitable. I beg the goddess to make me better. To help me find out things about myself, because some change has occurred in me. Papelito said so, and he is an expert in these things.

So, before I head off for school, I ask the goddess, what should I do? As I drop my last sweet cake in the river, I ask her. Helen is supposed to be a spy in my country. What should I do? Because it's not only Spanish Harlem that's being gentrified.

Passing
by Modesto Gardens, on 104th Street and Lexington, I see Papelito inside. He is beside a rose bush, looking down at the ground like he lost a contact lens. I'm hoping he doesn't see me, because I don't want to be late for work.