Chango's Fire (25 page)

At
work I expect nothing. I get there, hopeless, angry. If I didn't have to I wouldn't have come at all. To go to that construction site is to be reminded of all that's wrong. A little overseas America at work in a bottle, right here in my neighborhood. These undocumented workers who supply everything and demand nothing. They just work and keep their mouths shut. They have no rights, they can't speak.

“Julio, how does he do it? How does the boss get away with it?” Antonio asks me in Spanish. I look at Mario, who is working more out of mechanical impulse than anything. Mario is smoking and getting ready to sledgehammer a wall down.

“The boss is a nobody,” I tell him, knowing Mario is too far away to hear me.

“I knew it,” Antonio takes a sip of his coffee, “I knew it, because the people who are really in charge never need to act like it.”

“Mira,”
I say and he laughs at my Spanish. “I have to talk to you about Maritza.”

“My woman?” he says, and I cringe at that, because if I or anybody else said that about her, she'd kill them.

Before I get a chance to say anything, Mario comes over. He smokes his cigarette, and Antonio notices my meekness. He looks at me like I'm another person, like I'm a child who has to shut up because his parents have entered the room. Mario asks me if I have any cigarettes for him. I know what he means. I say I don't. He answers that's too bad. Mario stares down at Antonio before he walks away. I ask Antonio if I can drop by tonight. It's important.

Mario calls me over.

I go.

“What did he tell you?”

“I was trying to get him to invite me over to his house.”

“Did you go to that church?”

“Yeah, the other day. I saw nothing.”

“Okay,” he says, then points at Antonio. “After you see him, call me,” he says and then hands me a cigarette. I take it and, when he walks away, it hits me. Mario isn't worried about the undocumented workers knowing who he is, he's worried about the boss and the owners of the names finding out. What if one of those people, someone like Eddie, knew about these blank forms? Then he'd have a real mess on his hands. It'd be a race, for sure, and I, for one, would put my money on guys like Eddie.

T
here are nine men in this apartment, counting Antonio, two know me from work. There is a sign by the door that states in Spanish that only three minutes is allowed in the bathroom.

“Hey Antonio,” I say as I watch one man get skipped, another man just cut in front of him as if he was in the school lunch line. “Let's go out and get a beer somewhere else.”

“Nah, nah, nah,” he says, almost like a baby. “No I do not want to be caught by a policeman drunk. Too dangerous.”

There is a television on top of the refrigerator. Pots and pans in a sink, unwashed dishes, and a plastic garbage can that needs to be emptied.

“Where do you sleep?” I ask him.

“Over there,” Antonio points, “you just pick your spot and drop your mattress and that spot becomes yours. I do not like living with eight men. Nasty and the smell of sweat can kill you,” he says, laughing.

Antonio lives in a commune of lonely men. A locker room of wifeless husbands who work all week and come home to eat, sleep and then go back to work the next day. Except tonight. Tonight is Friday night, and because they have this job, where we don't work on Saturday, they want to get drunk. I have come not really wanting to, because I told Helen I would meet her later tonight, but I need to ask Antonio about Maritza. If she has those certificates, why is Antonio still undocumented? Why hasn't he given the workers those papers like he promised them? Maybe Maritza doesn't have those forms after all. Maybe Mario is wrong. For a brief second I feel relieved, like my problems have been cut in half. If that's the case, then it's only me that's in a bind, and I don't have to snitch on anybody. But the mere fact that I'd rather face Antonio than Maritza pretty much indicates I know I'm lying to myself. I don't face Maritza because I fear the truth is real. That after she fights and argues with me, she'll tell me that yes, and what of it?

“So the boss is a nobody, Julio?” Antonio asks me, and soon I get used to the sound of men tapping on the bathroom door because someone is taking too long and with all this beer they need to pee.

“All those men that come to get that check that you worked for, they are nobodies too. They are the small favors being given to them by the most powerful people in this city, the builders. The builders raise large funds to elect an official, and then, when that official is elected, they can do as they please.”

From Antonio's look, he doesn't think it's so bad. In Mexico it's probably ten times as corrupt. But we are the self-proclaimed land of the free, God's chosen country, the conscience of the world, what's our excuse? I don't try to explain it to him. He has a job and he'll call me spoiled.

“I have something to tell you, Julio.” A man walks in the kitchen. There have been men walking in and out of the kitchen, opening the refrigerator and grabbing beers, all throughout our conversation. This one doesn't ignore us but places his index finger on his lips, telling us to shush. He then goes to where the plastic garbage can is and pulls out a bottle of tequila.

“To my wife,” he says in Spanish, taking a swallow, “to the delicate flower that she is.” And he hands Antonio the bottle, and I follow.

“I'm a poet,” the man says to me.

“I see that,” I say to the man who's probably, I'd say, twenty-five?

“My wife was the most beautiful woman in San Matias—”

“You are from San Matias,” Antonio cuts him off, “you are more poor than me.”

“Nothing there but farmers,” the man strikes the pose of an intellectual, “so though I was not the most handsome or strongest, she loved me because I was a poet.”

Another man walks in the kitchen and grabs a beer. He smiles at us behind the poet's back as he circles a finger next to his ear, telling us the poet is crazy.

“And did you feed your wife poems?” the man who just grabbed a beer asks in Spanish.

“No, I farmed but I was a farmer who wrote poems,” he says, and the man with the beer, Antonio, and me laugh.

“Want me to recite a poem?”

“No,” Antonio shouts. But I want to hear it.

The poet takes his bottle and leaves us alone in the kitchen.

“I wanted to tell you something,” Antonio says, “it is about Maritza.”

“Good,” I say, “I wanted to talk to you about her too.”

“You know I am married.”

“I know.”

Antonio pauses and weighs in his head what he is about to tell me. I can just see it in his eyes. He wonders if he should trust me.

“Maritza knows I am married too,” he says, “if that is what you came to talk to me about.”

“No, Antonio, I came to talk to you about something else—”

“Well it does not matter. Because I am leaving. I cannot stand it here. I am going back.”

“Back to Mexico?” Nothing made sense here.

“I sometimes feel like she treats me like a project—”

A knock on the door interrupts us.

I hear the noise level drop like a car alarm just went off. All the men who were scattered around the apartment come out to see who it is. The men's eyes shift from side to side, fearing the worst. Finally Antonio leaves the eating table where we are sitting and goes over to the door and looks through the peephole.

“What you want?” he asks in Spanish.

“I have a woman,” a male voice answers in Spanish.

The men calm down. Antonio looks back at the men.

“Well?” he asks them.

“Ask how much,” one of them says.

Without opening the door, Antonio asks how much.

“Fifty dollars a man,” the voice answers in Spanish and the men begin complaining. They ask Antonio what she looks like? Antonio makes it clear that she looks bad. They tell Antonio to say twenty-five. He does.

“Forty-five a man,” the voice shouts back.

The men grumble that they don't have that kind of money. They tell Antonio thirty-five.

“For how many men?” the voice at the other side of the door asks.

“Eight,” Antonio says, not counting himself.

I can hear the woman complaining in English. It's not enough for her, not for eight men. She wants at least forty. For that many she wants at least forty, she says.

The men want the woman. They discuss the situation and size it. They ask Antonio if she is really that used up. Antonio is fed up. He moves away from the door and tells them they can see for themselves. One by one they go look through the peephole.

Only the poet is excited by her appearance.

“A man needs holes,” the poet says in Spanish to the men, “and any woman can provide them.”

Both sides then agree on forty and the poet opens the door. A Latino man with an old, haggard, bleached-blond, white woman walk inside. The man is polite and greets the men like he has done business with them before. The woman though lays down the law. She tells her companion to make sure he translates to the men that she is not their wife. There are things, she says, that they can't do to her, and they all better have their own rubbers. She then asks for a drink of water.

“Come on Antonio,” I say, “let's go drink at my house. No policeman will find you there.”

Antonio thinks it over for a second.

“It's early,” I say.

“Yeah, but it is dark already. I am going to sleep.”

“With all that racket,” I say, “with all that's happening around you? How can you sleep?”

“You get used to it, Julio,” he shrugs, bringing out his mattress.

I'm getting tired of all this. I crouch down toward Antonio who is about to lie down and go to sleep.

“Why hasn't Maritza,” I whisper in Spanish, “given you a blank citizenship certificate?” I expect him to jump up. To deny their existence left and right. To tell me he knows nothing and that Maritza is just crazy. Instead he yawns like he's tired.

“I did not come here to be an American. I came to work,” he says.

“Yeah, but with one of those you can travel back and forth to your country with no problems.”

Antonio turns his body away from me. Like he could care less.

“I never asked her for one,” he says. “I do not want it. I am Mexican.”

I can't argue with that. I admire his pride.

“What about the guys at the site? They want to be Americans. Why haven't they received a certificate?”

“Because,” he says, turning farther away to the edge of his mattress, “they don't have AIDS. Maritza is crazy. She will only give that document to sick immigrants.”

Antonio wants to get some sleep.

I walk out and call Mario. I tell him that Antonio just wanted to booze it up. That nothing is happening. Nothing? he sounds surprised. I respectfully tell him he just recruited me the other day. Did he expect me to just add water and everything will fix itself? I need time. He reminds me that if my friend knows where those documents are and keeps quiet, it's a federal offense. Meaning serious time, and that I could be held accountable if I hold anything back. Then he hangs up.

I go meet up with Helen. It's a Friday night and the Met is open late. In Helen's last letter she said that the paintings there dream in color. I asked what she meant by that, and she said she had to show me. I want to see whatever it is she meant. Especially since my life as I know it seems about over. I am looking forward to seeing those paintings. Maybe, just maybe, they do dream, and, if so, would their dreams be in color? I can't remember if mine are in color or not.

I have
never had any difficulty falling asleep. No matter what problems I have. However terrible things are, I can sleep. It's like killing yourself and taking the easy way out.

It's waking up that I dread. Every morning, I go through the five stages of death. I wake up in denial that I have to go to work. Then I get angry. Then I bargain with God, or myself, and try to call in sick. Then I feel guilty and go into remission, until finally I accept that the day will suck and I get up.

From Helen's window, I look out at the projects and see it is raining in sheets. Though the projects look even more gloomy and doomy all wet, I feel happy. I can now postpone the inevitable some more. Mario is still there, hovering over me, but what does he really have on me? Unless he goes after Eddie, he can't prove that Papelito is a front for me. All we have to say is I'm his tenant and Papelito is my landlord. That we had an agreement for me to pay him in cash, and so, no trail. Then a shot of fear strikes my chest. Because the more I think about ways of getting myself out of this mess, the more lies I have to tell. It isn't stopping. In order for me to hear the song of the Orishas, I have to live in truth. I am so far from that truth that I feel taking baby steps won't get me anywhere.

I felt Helen get up before I did. I had stayed covered up, wallowing in my misery. If I had looked out the window, I would have known earlier I have at least one more day, one more excuse for happiness.

I get dressed. Helen has taken her little boom box back to the kitchen. I hear the lyrics of Silvio Rodriguez,
“Es una historia enterada, es sobre un ser de la nada,”
enter her bedroom.

Helen rushes in.

“I'm sorry,” she picks up some makeup from her dresser, “I didn't make anything.”

“It's all right.”

“Aren't you
late?” she says.

“Yeah,” I lie, “I'm late, too.”

She applies lipstick and, halfway through, stops and looks at me.

“You'll be at the opening? Right?”

“You know where I live. If I don't make it, write me a letter.”