Chango's Fire (2 page)

“Each fire, Julio, has its own life, its own personality,” he said to me that first time, as we watched the house burning at a distance, us safely inside his parked car. “Depending on building design, material and how clean your kerosene is, the fire will burn at its own pace, the smoke will take its own color and smell.” I noticed that night that Eddie was not obsessed by fire. He saw no beauty in the flames. “Most fires are nasty, Julio. As soon as they reach a certain growth, they are like children that you can't control, or never wanted. They pretty much become an avalanche of flames and you can't take them back or stop them, Julio. So, know what you are doing before it's too late.”

Like Eddie, I'm not obsessed by fire. But I have no problems with what I do.

My conscience is clean with God and men. I burn buildings, just like Eddie, and I burn them for the same reason, the money. But the person whose house I'm burning knows I'm coming. He even gave Eddie the keys and alarm code. And I don't know how Eddie does it, how he fixes it with the insurance company, all I know is everyone gets paid and my job is to light that house up.

T
onight, right before I set this house in Westchester ablaze, I call Eddie. I want to make sure this is the right address; even though I'm already inside, I check to make sure. I don't want to burn the wrong place.

“All right,” Eddie says over the phone, “read me the address back.”

I read it back to him.

“Yeah, that's the one. Read me the alarm code.”

I read that back, too.

“You're set. Go wet the bed.”

I tell Eddie this is my last job, that I'm quitting after this one. That I'll work at the demolition site but that's it. I don't hear anything, so I repeat that this is my last job.

“How's your friend?” Eddie always refers to his son as my friend.

I tell Eddie, Trompo Loco is fine.

“Good, good. Keep an eye out for him, okay? But keep him away from my coffee shop.”

I always do, right? Then I say it again, that this is my last job.

“Are you taking him to church?”

I remind Eddie that I don't go to church anymore.

“Is he at least reading his Bible?”

“Yes,” I say, and “did you hear me, Eddie, this is my last job.”

“Are you getting married or something?”

“No,” I say, “what's that got to do with it?”

Eddie hangs up.

I sigh and get to work.

I walk up the stairs and drench a bedroom, splashing some kerosene on the curtains. I do the other bedroom, where I hear a strange noise. Like someone or something crying. I get nervous. This house is supposed to be empty. I look for the source. I calm down some when I find under one bed a scared cat. He's afraid and wailing. I stomp my feet on the floor and, like a frightened mouse, the cat runs to the other side of the room. I chase after him and he runs down the stairs. I get a good glimpse and I see it's a beautiful Russian blue, I think it's a boy. His eyes are gray and he is too thin. The poor cat must not have eaten for days, living on mice, roaches, or whatever he could find in this house, and drinking water from the toilet bowl.

Not my problem.

It's just a cat.

I walk back down the stairs, pouring kerosene on the carpet. I take out my lighter. As soon as the lighter flame kisses the wet steps, the sound is one of thunder, and the fire quickly shoots up, running up the steps like a man possessed. The same possessed man who in the gospels asked Christ, It is not yet time to take us Son of Man? Because every time I start a fire, I think of my religious upbringing. I remember all the yelling, healing and anointing, and those sermons where the word of God was never “love” or “light” but “fire.” Tongues of fire. And His angry presence was evident around a neighborhood that kept burning night after night. So often that the fires were disregarded and the people branded as sinners. In the news, we were being punished for being junkies, thieves, whores and murderers. The evidence of God's wrath was the blocks upon blocks of burned buildings we supposedly brought on ourselves. In my church it was a sign, these fires that consumed Spanish Harlem, the South Bronx, Harlem, Bed-Sty, you name the ghetto, it was being lit up. It was a sign, a pox on our houses, these fires were evidence of prophecy, of fulfillment, of… “The Truth.”

But the truth was, it was just a guy like me, who had set those fires. A schmuck like me who had been paid by a local city politician or a slumlord. Each and every one of them a poverty czar.

Outside.

I see the house is wet in flames, not an inch of it is dry from fire. I start my car and I drive out, toward the highway. I hear that wailing sound again, the same one I heard in the bedroom. I look back and see the crying cat curled up in a ball in the back seat. I had left one car window open, and when the cat ran out of the house, he must have hopped in my car. At first I brake, and I'm ready to open the back door and shoo it away, but I'm too tired to pull over. I have to be at the site in the morning, then school, and I'm sure Mami would love it if I brought home a crying cat.

So I drive away.

When I reach the highway, the New York City skyline parades all its beauty across the Hudson River. The cat jumps to the front seat like he wants to take in those glorious lights. He sits there staring, and I wonder how the city looks to a cat. Because New York City does different things to different people, even creatures. I started building my own private New York the second I came of age. When New York City was filthy and broken and, in my mind, holy. The city left its mark on me, like a fish hook that caught me, was yanked and scarred my flesh. That first image of a dirty, broken city burned in my nine-year-old eyes and memory. And no matter how much the skyline changed over the years, what towers fell, what new buildings rose, the changes have never supplanted the vision of when I first climbed up on that Spanish Harlem roof and gazed upon its bright lights. How up above on that roof, Spanish Harlem sang to a nine-year-old kid like our church choir, and the skyline shone so saintly there was no doubt I was, at that very moment, closer to God.

Now, years later, somewhere in that glorious mess of a city, I own an apartment. A real space, with walls, doors and locks. It is mine. I will not die paying rent.

And that's how it's going to stay.

“Right, cat?”

I park
the car and pick the cat up slowly and hesitantly, dunking he's going to scratch me. I start to like him, because he doesn't. The cat lets me pick him up as if he knew this was now going to be his home.

It's late, I'm tired, and I begin to walk toward my building. I spot the white girl who just moved in. She's ahead of me, dressed in black, and her waist is small and thin, like she could be snapped in half. She looks back and sees me carrying a cat. I know I must smell of plaster from work and of kerosene and smoke from the fire. She reaches the door before me and takes her keys out and opens it. I am about to thank her and go inside, when she turns around to face me. She has a polite expression laced with a bit of suspicion. The kind of look I've seen white people give to office janitors and delivery boys.

“Excuse me,” she says, blocking the door. “Do you live here?”

“Yeah, I'm on the third floor,” I say courteously. She becomes even more hesitant to move away.

“Really?” she smiles nervously. “Then you wouldn't mind ringing? I just need to be sure.” She looks at the cat, thinking I'm homeless or something. “I don't want to let anyone I don't know in the building.”

I want to turn street on her and just rip her to pieces. Listen white bitch, I don't have to prove I live here. I lived in this neighborhood years back, when this very block was burned and broken. So move out of the way and go back to that town in Middle America where you came from.

I would love to say that.

Instead I take a deep breath.

“It's past midnight,” I sigh. “I don't want to wake my parents up.”

Why am I being polite when, unlike her, I have history here?

“I've just never seen you before. These aren't rentals,” she says, as if I don't know this. Then she starts digging her hand into her purse and keeps it there. Mace, I'm thinking, cell phone or something?

Truth is, I want to push her aside and walk inside my property. But I just stand there. I see how vulnerable and small her body is. How her blue-green eyes highlight the splash of freckles around her nose, mirrored by a bigger splash just above the V-neck of her shirt and around her breasts. I stare at her. I think about when I was growing up, when there were not too many white people in Spanish Harlem. You only saw white people when you went to work and clocked in, and usually they were your bosses. At school they were your teachers. On TV these white people were always doctors, lawyers and detectives. They lived in another part of the city, or were wealthy and lived in Dallas or ran a dynasty, and you knew you were not wanted there. You'd be arrested on the very spot where you had set foot on their lawns. Now that I dealt with white people on a regular basis, and I never let them push me around, I stood my ground, but somehow, in Spanish Harlem, I felt they were in my backyard. On my lawn. I should be the one asking questions. But the other voice tells me that if I show them politeness and education, it throws them off. They expect the rude Latino from the street, and the truth is that I am that, too. And, at times, I have a problem deciding which face to put on.

“Please, can you ring?” she says again as a smile trails her last word.

El Barrio was no longer my barrio, and the past seemed irretrievable. White people living on many blocks. Some had money, some didn't, but we were supposed to leave them all alone. We were supposed to accept them moving into our neighborhoods, as opposed to when blacks and Latinos started entering their suburbs. How they'd stare at us with evil eyes. Tell their kids to stay away from our kids. Made sure their daughters stayed away from our sons. They never warmly welcomed us into the great American Dream.

“Could you please just ring?”

Give us your tired.

Your poor.

But not on my block.

Not in my suburb.

Not in my building.

“If you don't ring, I can't let you up.”

And here, in Spanish Harlem, we were supposed to take the high road. Like Christ, turn the other cheek. Welcome white people and smile as greedy real estate brokers changed the name from Spanish Harlem to Spa Ha, because El Barrio was not a cool, catchy name. They needed a new name, something that would attract yuppies and make them feel hip while they wear all that black.

All that black, just like the girl blocking me from home is wearing.

“Sure,” I say to her, “I don't mind ringing,” which I do, because I have to ring a lot and wake up my family.

“Quien?”

“Pa', soy yo.”

“Coño,
don't you have keys?” my father grumbles over the intercom and she giggles with reassurance, now that she is sure I live there.

“Nice cat,” she takes her hand out of her bag and holds the door for me to walk inside.

“Thanks,” I say. I can smell the booze on her breath, and her cheeks are bubble-gum pink. She must have been out drinking late with her friends. Because with the influx of yuppies, bars are springing all over the neighborhood. It's actually brave of her to confront me. I wonder if she would have done it if she wasn't tipsy.

We walk inside the lobby, and I hear my father ring me up.

“You live with your parents?” We start walking up the creaky stairs.

I mutter, “Yeah well, even if I had the money, I'm never putting them in a home.”

“Excuse me?” she says.

“Nothing,” I say, wondering if I said that too loud. “Yeah, we help each other out.”

She becomes really friendly and tells me that her name is Helen and that Manhattan is so expensive and how she always wanted to buy an apartment.

“My god, I don't know how much you paid, but even in
this
neighborhood, it's so goddamned expensive.”

This
neighborhood? This has been my home for three decades.

“Yeah, it's not a good neighborhood,” I say.

“Do you know where there's a good, cheap place to eat around here?”

“La Fonda, it's good food and cheap. It's on 105th between Lexington and Third.”

I say this nicely, but I know that if it was the other way around, if I moved into an all-white neighborhood, my neighbors wouldn't want me around. Even if I hit the lotto jackpot of a hundred million dollars, I'd still not be in their class. The board members of the luxurious Dakota building on 72nd and Central Park West wouldn't let me buy even if I could. I'd be rejected on the spot. It's not all about money. And I really wanted to do the same to Helen. Let this white girl know how it feels to be invisible and hated. Even feared.

“Go check it out, great Puerto Rican dishes,” I say.

“Great,” she says, smiling again, “want to get coffee at Starbucks sometime?”

“Sure,” I say, thinking that I wouldn't be caught dead in that place.

“Bye.” She then strokes the cat, “Bye cat,” and opens the door to her floor. “I'm Helen, by the way,” she says again.

“Julio,” I say.

“Great,” she says, closing the door.

I'm happy she's gone.

I walk upstairs and hold the cat with one hand while I fumble for the door key with the other. When I finally find it, my father opens the door.

“Mira un gato?”
my father says, half asleep, “wha' you doing with a cat?”

“Sorry Pa',” I say as I kiss him hello. My father, who is getting old before his time because of all that work and fast living in his youth, groans at the cat.

“Not a mean cat,” he says and takes the cat from my arms.