Chango's Fire (19 page)

“Mari, Mari.” The wrinkles on his face make perfect channels for the sweat to pour down, like water in an aqueduct.

“Papelito,
qué pasó?”

“Oh God, Mari.” Papelito can't find the words.

“Cálmate, cálmate,
what happened?” Maritza says.

“He touched her again, Mari. He did it again.”

Maritza's face turns pale. Her eyes grow wide. She grips the broom's handle tight, like she is about to twist off a chicken's neck.

“He's on the corner of 103rd,” Papelito says, and about a dozen women with brooms follow Maritza. Helen has no broom, but she is taken by the moment and follows the crowd. I trail behind. We reach 103rd, and all the women surround this man that is just standing in front of a bodega. The short, barrel-chested man looks up from his beer and stares at the women. He asks in Spanish, what do they want? They don't answer him. I think he recognizes someone in the crowd and starts to walk away from them, but the women follow. Led by Maritza and Papelito, the women begin to swat him with their brooms. Instead of fighting back, the man drops his beer and runs. The women chase him, swatting him with their brooms and mops. He stumbles down and gets back up, tries to run again, but stops and finally faces the women. He is panting and could kill the women by hate alone. His eyes are huge, and both parties stare each other down as if it is a game of chicken. Maritza starts chanting,
“Pa'que nunca ma'la toque'.”
The other women join in the chant,
“Pa'que nunca ma'la toque'.”
The man's hands are fists and his teeth are clenched, but he stays standing there, panting and hating. The reason the man does not charge at the women is not because he is outnumbered or too tired, but because several men who have witnessed this public display of humiliation have started to ridicule him as well. Other corner men keep laughing and saying
“Toma!”
and
“Pa'que aprenda!”
Making fun of the man who somehow knows that if he hits any of these women, the men would no longer ridicule him but join in the beating, and the men don't have brooms or mops but fists.

The other corner men keep laughing at the man who had been chased by women with brooms. The men say, “Hit him harder,” or
“dale un mapaso!”
The men's laughing becomes greater when the man's wife comes out from the crowd of women and starts yelling at him.”
Y nunca mas vengas a casa,
” for the man to never come home. The wife continues to yell at her husband, telling everybody about his drinking habits and transgressions, which brings more laughter to the corner men. But then the wife breaks down and falls to the ground, wailing,
“Porque?”
—Why? I spot the girl Maritza and I helped to re-virginized. She is crying again, and this time it is Papelito who holds her tightly.

”
El doctor le dijo que tiene el monstruo.
” The corner men become silent. The sick wife's words fill the street and hang in the air like hateful silent bugs swirling around. In that awful moment, everyone stands still, staring at one another in silence, not knowing what to make of anything. The wailing wife's eyes are full of questions, full of whys, and the man's are still full of hate. The street is crowded by women with brooms and men whose ridicule has been silenced by what has been revealed.

The murmuring slowly begins. Then it quickens—“SIDA”— and the men who had joined in begin to slowly walk away, whispering to each other, “That's out. Got his whole family sick.” The women with brooms help up the wife who continues to wail and crumples to the floor like dry clay.
“Después que operaron a mi hija.
” The wife cries,
“Tu tienes que tocarla otra vez.
” I know then what's happened. I understand Maritza's horrified expression of earlier. The girl that Maritza and I had taken to get her hymen restored was going to marry, but her family was afraid the husband would send her back once he found her to be spoiled goods. The operation would take care of that, except that it was her father all along who had been touching her, and worse, he was sick with the monster. The big disease with a little name.

Helen and another woman coach the wife to take deep breaths, for the wife had begun to hyperventilate. “Breathe, honey,” Helen coaches her. “Breathe,” Helen says, and the wife is swallowing her dry, sobbing hiccups.
“Respira mija,
” Maritza joins in, because the woman is in danger of silently hyperventilating and passing out. Maritza pats her back,
“Respira.
” “Get some water,” Helen says to one of the women, who runs inside a barbershop. Papelito is holding on tightly to the daughter, who has her face buried in Papelito's chest. “Breathe, honey,” Helen coos to the wife.
“Respira, Carmen, respira,
“Maritza says, and as soon as Carmen's dry sobbing takes sufficient air into her lungs, she begins wailing again, emptying her body of sound.

The husband is still standing, his hands clenched into fists. He digs his nails deep into his palms. His face is red, and he stares at his wife with an anger that dries your throat. For a second, he tries to speak but his mouth just nervously shakes.

The women with brooms shelter Carmen. The daughter leaves Papelito's comforting side and hugs her mother. The daughter is still crying; Carmen has stopped. Papelito digs into a pocket of his gown. He brings out a cigar and lights it. He expertly blows out enough smoke that it quickly surrounds us all. Papelito then begins to blow smoke and speak in a dialect none in the crowd understands. Papelito digs in his pockets again. He hurls some white powder at the husband's face. It rains down on the husband's head, sprinkling his head with a touch of white chalk. The husband doesn't move. He breathes so hard I can hear every angry breath. He is so enraged that silent, defeated tears roll down his face.

Everyone slowly begins to walk away from him. He stands still, like his soles were stuck in cement.

“Maybe you think you was made of iron, the monster would never catch you,” a woman spits at the husband's feet as she walks away.

Carmen takes her daughter's hand and follows Papelito, who leads all the women back to the church. Out of the corner of my eye I catch Antonio crossing the street. When he meets up with Maritza, he holds her like he had been with her throughout all the ordeal. Maritza holds on to him like she's been waiting for him. He brushes her hair away from her face, and they, too, walk in the direction of the church.

Helen doesn't follow the crowd. She's a bit shaken. Helen stands still, her eyes looking at nothing in particular. Her nose begins to run, and she fights back tears. I walk up behind her. She turns around and looks at me with both sadness and disbelief. For a wonderful second I'm sure Helen would fall into my arms. Sob on my shoulder. I will hold her tight, brush her hair away and kiss her. Tell her it's okay, that the other night was okay. That today is okay. Instead Helen wipes her tears with the back of her hand. I stretch my arms out to hold her, but she pushes them away, like she needs to be alone.

I leave Helen alone and she walks in the direction of her gallery.

I look back at the husband. He hasn't moved an inch. He has fallen to his knees and is praying in front of the barbershop. He holds a tiny, gold cross necklace out in front of him. He kisses the tiny figure nailed to it as he whispers little prayers.

The three barbers who run the shop have witnessed all of what's happened and come out. One of them holds a pitcher of water.

“Pa' fuera! Fuera de aqui!”
he says as he drenches the husband with the water. The husband shoots up, as if the water was scalding hot or ice cold.

“If the
santero's
evil doesn't kill you first, I'll kill you,” another barber says.

“Cabrón,
get out. You're fucked.” The third barber kicks the humiliated husband as he starts to walk away. With no complaints the husband walks as if he had been broken, as if he didn't care anymore for his life or dignity.

“Don't ever show up here again!” The one holding the pitcher throws the empty pitcher at the husband. The plastic container hits the husband on the head, bouncing off his scalp and into the sidewalk, where it lands on top of a garbage heap.

“Praying to God?” one barber sneers as all three begin to go back inside the shop. “Where was God,” the barber says, “when he was doing that to his daughter?
Pa
‘
l carajo.
You don't whip out that cross, not in front of my barbershop you don't.
Pa'l carajo, qué se cree.”

I go to
the bodega and buy five mangos, five Snickers bars, five Hostess Sunny Doodles, and five yellow candles, big ones, too. I stop by the Chinos and buy a nice, silky blue scarf and some colorful beads. I return home, go upstairs and arrange the offering. I place the scarf on the corner of my bedroom floor, like I'm about to have a picnic, and I place all the sweets neatly into bowls. I light each candle with a prayer that Papelito taught me. I get mad at myself for not getting a new peacock feather, since the old one is fading and dull. I apologize to the goddess Ochun, and hope that she helps me.

I am now ready to go downstairs and see Helen.

I climb down the stairs and knock on Helen's door.

When Helen opens her door, I don't know what to say except, “I got your letter,” I say, “it was beautiful.” I smile and say, “My father thought so too.”

“Well, I wish I hadn't sent it,” she says, unfazed, “because you're so full of it.”

“Sorry,” I say, “I'm sorry.” I only know that after that incident of the other day, I don't want to fight or argue with anyone.

“You know Julio,” she says, not inviting me in. “You made me feel so bad. So bad.”

“When?” I say, though I'm sure I must have. I do it all the time and don't even know it.

“That night you said all this stuff about this being your neighborhood.” She switches her weight, so she can hold the door with one hand and her glass in the other. “So I felt like, okay. Maybe he's right. I have to make it mine, too. I have to claim it. I wanted to talk to you about it so badly but I couldn't find you, and so I wrote you that letter—”

“It was a beautiful letter—”

“No, wait,” she interrupts me and takes a sip. “Because of what you said, I went to a community board meeting. I was thinking, okay, if this is my home now, I should be in touch with my community. I was also sure you'd be there from all that stuff that comes out of your mouth. I thought you'd be there. Well there were about twelve people there. Just twelve, Julio. I'm saying to myself, they talk all this stuff about gentrification and they don't really give a hoot. Look at these empty seats. Not only that but the board meeting wasn't about white people like me moving in, they were discussing the next block party!”

Helen opens the door wider. Her house is very neat, clean and in order. I had heard the white girls were slobs, at least that's what Mom had told me and I was stupid enough to believe it. “Come in,” she finally says.

“I'm sorry, let me tell you about those meetings,” I say, walking inside.

“No, let me tell you. I was the one that went. So, I raise my hand like a nice stupid white girl and say, What about gentrification? And a nasty woman, nasty Latina woman says, ‘That's not today's agenda.' Like I'm an idiot—you want a drink?”

“Uh? Sure,” I say as Helen gets one for me and another for herself. She's wearing a skintight, long, black skirt that reaches all the way down to her ankles, and a skintight black top. She looks like a goth Laura Ingalls. The clothes trace an outline of her curves. Her small frame looks even smaller.

“But what could be more important than that?' I say at that board meeting, and that nasty woman, she says, ‘You go get your nails done, sweetie, go get your nails done.' And everyone in that auditorium laughed at me, Julio. They all laughed—here.” She pushes a drink at me.

“I'm sorry,” I take it, “those meeting are useless—”

“Well at least they meet, you just talk,” and she makes a hand puppet, “talk, talk, talk.”

“You sound nothing like the way you write,” I say, taking a long sip.

“Who does, Julio? Who does? But I meant what I said to you in that letter. I was feeling really guilty. But after that meeting and after what I saw the other day with those women? I'm thinking this place is screwed up. This place is like an abstract, you can describe it any way you want and you can't be wrong.” Helen places a hand to her chest, “I'm not wrong. This whole place is wrong.” She sits next to me and cuddles her drink with both hands.

Helen stares at her ice.

I can hear the ice cracking in our drinks.

“You know, Julio,” she turns her face my way, lost in another thought. “I was dating this guy who took me to see
Rent.
The theater was full of all these upper-middle-class residents of Westchester or Long Island, all excited that for one night they were about to live through an urban struggle. We were going to see poor New Yorkers deal with addiction, homelessness, squatting, evictions, real estate gouging, AIDS.”

And fires, Helen. Always fires, I say to myself.

“I thought that was reality,” Helen blinks a lot. “How could I, or anyone, be that stupid? In Bloomingdale's there's a
Rent
boutique, so you can ‘look poor,'” she says, letting out a quick laugh, “like it's cool to be poor?”

“You mentioned something like that in your note,” I say. “Helen, you okay? Something else happen to you?”

“Yes,” she says, “then the other day happened to me. I just can't get the other day out of my head. If those people would have seen what happened the other day, they'd know it's not hip to be poor.”

“What people?”