Chango's Fire (7 page)

“I know you understand me,” he says to Antonio. “And I understand you. So don't think I didn't get your joke. I don't have to understand Spanish to know what it's about.”

A half-smirk rises from the corner of his mouth.

“You have a beat-up pickup,” the boss accuses Antonio. “I've seen it, you must have come here during the night and loaded that pickup. Is that right?”

“No boss,” Antonio says in a heavily accented English, “at night, I am a drunk Mexican. I can not steal nothing.”

I laugh.

Boss doesn't.

Antonio stands there, defiant.

“Is that so,” the boss says, “maybe I should report your drinking problem to the INS. How about that?”

Antonio's eyes finally fall to the ground.

“I want those pipes by the end of the week. Otherwise, there's plenty of other Mexicans who'd kill for your jobs.” He walks away as all of us go back to work.

I tap Antonio on the back.

“Good job,” I tell him in Spanish, “don't worry, he's a son of a bitch but he knows if INS raids this place, it's his ass too. There are rules about hiring undocumented workers.”

“I know that, Julio,” he says, “but I know who stole those pipes.” Antonio gets back to work without telling me more. I leave it alone. I don't ask.

Just then I look ahead and see Trompo Loco come into focus. He sees me and smiles as he points at his hard hat. I get angry at him. I don't want to be embarrassed, which is exactly what Trompo Loco is going to do. I hope that the boss doesn't see me talking to Trompo and tell Eddie that Trompo Loco was around.

“Hey Julio, you know, I got this great idea that I can just help you. I can just work next to you,” he says with the sunniest of smiles.

“Trompo,” I sigh, “you got to go home, come on.”

“But I can help you, look,” he takes a wrapped sandwich out of his overalls, “I even brought us lunch, see. Half of this is yours, but I want the bigger half.”

“Trompo go home,” I raise my voice and he closes his lips real tight. I look behind me to see if the boss has noticed me not working. I see Antonio making fun of Trompo. I look back at Trompo Loco and can't tell if he is about to cry or spin.

“You can't work here, because I already got you a job,” I lie, because I know he is about to spin. If he does, there's no stopping him, at least not without knocking him down to the ground and maybe hurting him.

“Really,” he gets closer to me, “a real job?”

“Yes, I'll tell you later.”

“What do I do?”

“You go home.”

“That's not a job, Julio.”

“I mean you go home now, I'll tell you later. And then you have to move in with my family, right? Right?”

Trompo Loco is beaming. He licks his lips, like he's been starving and a plate of food has just been placed in front of him.

“Okay, okay, you can have all of it,” he hands me the sandwich. “I'll go home and make a new one. I have some Wonder Bread left over, the jelly and all.” Trompo Loco turns and walks away. I'm glad he is leaving, but then he turns around. “Hey Julio why do fat chance and slim chance mean the same thing? I heard a guy say it. Then another guy, and it means the same—”

“Go home!” I yell at him, and he covers his mouth real fast, like he had said something wrong. He turns around and begins to walk away whistling, happy he is going to have a job soon. And I go back to work.

The boss taps my shoulder.

“Hey, wasn't that kid Eddie's retard?” He winks at me, and I ignore him and get to work. Boss trails me, grabs my shoulder, because he feels he can command any of his workers' attention at any moment. “Let me tell you something Julio, being that we are both friends of Eddie's.” I stop to listen, maybe it'll be short and then he'll leave me in peace.

“I knew that retard's mother. We all did. Know what I mean?” He gives me a wink.

L
ike I don't have enough problems.

Waiting for me downstairs at home is Maritza. I haven't seen her in a while. I only hear echoes of her voice at night, when the services in her church would start. Bits and pieces of her sermons enter through my window and sometimes, when her church is really high on the Lord, my entire floor shakes.

Maritza is holding on tightly to this very scared girl. She clings to Maritza, like she has cat claws. The girl's eyes never leave the ground, and she's silently crying. Her heavy tears roll off her cheeks and splatter on her blouse. The girl is short, and I can tell by her beautiful, long, black hair and her silence that she is a new immigrant from Maritza's church.

“You have to drive us, Julio.” Just like that, no please or thank-you.

“Wait, aren't you supposed to be at church right about now?”

“We snuck out. We have little time, Julio. You have to drive us—”

“Where?” I say.

“To Queens. And I don't drive, let's go,” she says. “This is important, Julio. And we only have two hours.” I stare at her for a second, because Maritza is like that sonic boom that you hear seconds after the electric storm hits the city and all the car alarms go crazy. That's what she does to me when I see her, and it takes me a while to shut them off. I used to be in love with her for so long, but later it wore off. Like that number that you keep playing that never comes up, yet you still play it, but now it's more out of habit than love or want or need. Basically, I've known her all my life.

“Look Mari, I'm not in the God business, that's you. I got my own things to worry about.”

Maritza sighs heavily. She has taken off her usual pastor gown and put on a dress that outlines the shape of her breasts. As she impatiently sighs, her breasts slowly rise and fall in unison.

Maritza's attention shifts to the scared girl. She whispers something quick and loving, with something about God at the end, and then pulls me aside.

“Where you going that's so important?” I ask Maritza, whose hair is always kept short and kinda of moppish and raggedy. If she were a petite girl, she'd be considered perky and cute. But because she's tall, taller than me at five-eleven, what her hair tells you is that Maritza is too preoccupied with matters she deems more urgent to care what her hair looks like. So she just keeps it short and out of the way.

“Just drop us off at the clinic, just drop us off. We got two hours before the service is over, come on.”

I think I know what's happened.

“Is that all, cuz you always have something else in mind.”

“That's all, let's go. Come on, this poor girl is getting married next week.”

She gives me a desperate look. Maritza knows that I can never refuse her anything; though I've tried, I could never do it. For years I've tried to shake her loose, and like a pit bull's jaw I can't let go. She commands me to do this or that, and I always complain, but in the end I always give in and do what she's asked of me.

Like now.

I drive her and this scared girl to a clinic in Queens, where during the entire trip no one says anything. Complete silence, except for the girl's sobs and sniffles. I take the FDR Drive along the Upper East Side.

In the silent car, I think about how the Upper East Side always reminds me of when I was a teenager and I started to realize I was being lied to. I believed in “The Truth” back then, and these people walking around the Upper East Side were people who were destined to be destroyed by God. These rich people were sinners and didn't love their children, because they were not walking in the ways of Jehovah God and their thoughts were not His thoughts. They didn't know the Bible and they didn't read it to their children every day and they didn't preach the good news of the Kingdom. They were part of the physical world. The governor of their world was Satan, and all those shop windows with Rolex watches and silk dresses, and all those penthouses, and all those cars and good furniture were material things that were there to entice us into the world. Our reward was Heaven.

Yet I walked around the Upper East Side and saw how these people, too, had churches and they, too, believed in God, and they, too, took their children to church. They called their God the same name as we called ours, and He, too, had a son, his name was Jesus, and he, too, died for all sinners. The churches and synagogues on the Upper East Side were big and wealthy. They had real wooden pews, not folding chairs, like ours, and their rugs were clean, not gum-stained. Their worshipers didn't wear the same two or three good dresses they rotated every other Sunday. They bought their children presents, real expensive ones, like trains and cars that ran on batteries. These people were Christians like me, believed in the same Christian God as I did. The Upper East Side and Spanish Harlem were two neighborhoods that existed back to back and were like the prince and the pauper. But our Christian God was the same. And our God was supposed to love us the same. Our God was supposed to bless us the same. We were supposed to live by His word and take part in the same blessings. But that's not what I saw. I remember how, when we were teens, Maritza made fun of me one day by saying, “The Upper East Side God can beat up the Spanish Harlem God.”

My mother kept saying that it's only a matter of time, and that the more years go by the closer to “The End” we get. Mom would hear in the news about some earthquake in India or some mud flood in Colombia and she'd see them as signs of “The End.” That still hasn't changed. But not me, I got fed up. I wanted to do something with my life other than just wait for the world to end. Maritza went to school and graduated college. She studied civil rights, and when no one in Spanish Harlem was buying her socialist agenda, she began to save the world using the very God she had made fun of me for once believing in.

“Here's the address, Julio. Hurry.”

“All right, all right, God.” I say and take the piece of paper she's handed me. I cross the 59th Street bridge, not feeling groovy at all. So I'm thinking that this is a Planned Parenthood branch or some back-alley shanty Maritza knows about. Instead this clinic is located on Northern Boulevard, the aorta of Queens. The clinic is right smack in the center, where all types of businesses hit you at once—dentist offices, real estate brokers, jewelry stores, restaurants, banks—they waren't hiding anything.

“You have to come inside with us,” Maritza demands. The girl is still shaking.

El Centro de Cirugía Plástica
is not a name used in disguises, it's not called that to divert attention, it's called that because that's what it is. Surgery. The plastic kind.

I park the car.

I walk in and, except for Maritza and the frightened girl, the waiting area is empty. The room is a soft pink and there are tastefully framed posters of beautiful women on the walls. A television is playing MTV
en Español,
with the volume down. Shakira is shaking her Arab roots like she has been thrown in a body of water right in the dead of winter.

The door swings and a woman walks in. Her hair is beautiful, her legs long and slender, her breasts the size of baseballs, with a perfect rise you only get from implants.

“So,” the woman says coldly, writing on her clipboard, “she needs to be a
señorita
again?”

“Yes,” Maritza answers for the girl, who all of a sudden starts crying like her mother had died in her arms.

“It's all right sweetie,” the woman says, laying her hand on the girl's knee,
“es muy simple, no tengas miedo.
We'll sew it back up like it was before, like nothing has happened.”

“Will she need anesthesia?” Maritza strokes the girl's hair as the girl cries on her shoulder.

“Not much, just local.
Mira
sweetie,” the woman tells the girl whose head is buried in Maritza arms,
“no te apures, todo se cose. Serás virgen de nuevo.
“

“No sé lo que me hará,
” the frightened girl sobs,
“él cree que soy virgin
…”

The girl can't finish her words before breaking down. I think she can't say that her father might kill her if her husband brought her back as damaged goods.

The woman with the clipboard isn't moved, like she's heard all this before. She even whispers a little curse when she writes something down incorrectly. She begins to erase it, candidly speaking to Maritza.

“Don't worry, the doctor is licensed and knows what he's doing,” she tells Maritza. “Your cousin will be fine. We do this all the time. We leave a small opening unsewn for the, you know, her period. But everything else is put right. Her hymen will be intact like before. He won't know a thing. On her wedding night, the walls will be tight and there will be blood on the sheets. Sign here.” Maritza signs. “I need the credit card,” and that's when Maritza points at me.

I back away slowly, like a gun has been pointed at me. I see Maritza telling the woman to take “her cousin” inside for the doctor to start the operation.

I exit the clinic and walk to my car. Maritza catches up with me.

“Wait Julio, wait,” she pleads. Of course I stop.

“I knew it, I knew it,” I say, “you needed something else, I knew it. I'm not going to pay to have that girl's thing done.”

“So you'd rather have her beaten up by her husband or killed by her father? Look, this girl came to me for help. I'm trying to help her.”

“Did you ever think Maritza that you can't always help people? That sometimes it's better to just let things happen.”

“No it's not.”

“I can't believe you, I've known you all my life, and you still surprise me. I can't believe you.”

“I have a scared girl in there who made a mistake! I need your credit card!” She is already losing her patience with me, as if I am the one who is responsible for all of this.

“Maritza, I'm not the guy who did this to her, and I'm sure that the guy she is marrying is also a new immigrant, cuz Nuyoricans aren't into this virgin bullshit. We like our women whether they are pushing strollers or not. Look at Zulma, she has like four kids, but she still looks good and all these men want to marry her. So it's not only my problem it's not even my people's problem.”