Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bro (60 page)

In the spring of 1998, Cesar asked Giselle to make arrangements to bring Mercedes and Nautica along on the next trailer, and Giselle agreed. She knew that Mercedes had been writing Cesar about her unhappiness at home, and that he was worried about her. When he got out, he wrote Mercedes, she could live with him and his wife.

The trailer visit would coincide with Mercedes’s eighth birthday. For weeks, it was all Mercedes spoke about. Some of the staff at her school pitched in for the bus fare. Coco had bought the girls new outfits, sneakers, toothbrushes, socks, and underwear. No one would have any reason to discount her daughters, and she instructed them to speak up if anything made them uncomfortable, or if they wanted to sleep with their father or
sit on his lap. Mercedes and Nautica were packed to go days before they were due to leave.

Then, the night before the girls were going to meet Giselle in the city, Giselle called Coco: the trailer visit had been canceled—there had been a fight at the prison and Cesar had been slashed. He’d been thrown into protective custody, with thirty-two stitches across his back.

Weeks earlier, Cesar’s friend had been attacked. According to Cesar, the men involved decided to jump Cesar rather than wait, because they feared Cesar would retaliate. Cesar had been standing in the chow line when they assaulted him.

Cesar didn’t want the children to visit until the beef was resolved. The visiting room on a weekend would provide a prime opportunity for a revenge attack on his family. He didn’t want to put the children at risk, or put himself in a position where he would have to defend them, thereby further compromising his already shaky status with the authorities.

When Giselle arrived that Thursday, Cesar nervously scanned the room before he would let her hug him. He hadn’t shaved, and he had dark circles beneath his bloodshot eyes. Ordinarily, he ate three packages of barbecue chicken wings and three packages of microwave french fries, but Giselle had to get after him to finish even one. He told her he could finish his own sentence because it was punishment for killing Mighty, and for all the bad things he’d done for which he hadn’t been caught. But he couldn’t live with being the cause of harm done to his family. Giselle found that she was unable to comfort Cesar this time: “All the serenity he had was gone.”

Before Giselle could make it back to see Cesar, he got shipped to Southport again.

When Lourdes and the girls visited Jessica, that same spring, they found her in a reflective mood. In therapy, she had been analyzing her relationship with her family and reconsidering her relationships with men. After greeting her with hugs, the three girls headed into the prison’s playroom, a glassed-in space with bright decorations and comfortable furniture and toys. Jessica eyed Lourdes narrowly. “I had to write a family history and I put that you was codependent on men.” Lourdes fidgeted in her seat. “I don’t even know the reason my father died.”

“I told you, Mami,” Lourdes said.

“Why he died, then?” Jessica asked accusingly.

“Mami! I
told
you.”

“Did you love him?”

“I loved him, but he hurt me a lot,” Lourdes said as though her throat were bruised.

The children drifted back. Jessica started her usual primping and grooming. She styled the twins’ hair, using her fingers as a comb. She picked lint from their clothes. She noticed a plastic price-tag thread on Serena’s shoe and bit it off. She braided Serena’s hair. She described the kind of nightlife they would share when she got out. If she continued to do well in DAP, she would be home by Christmas. “They gonna think we sisters. We gonna dye our hair blond. We don’t have to ask anybody. I be like, ‘C’mon, Serena, get dressed! We going to a club!’ ”

“Ai,” Lourdes cautioned.

“You just jealous,” Jessica said. When Jessica had been a teenager and taken her mother dancing, she’d made Lourdes pretend they were sisters. Now, though, the ruse could never work. Lourdes had aged. She lumbered instead of scurried. She looked matronly. The anger that had animated her eyes had been replaced by resignation. She wore smocks and turtlenecks instead of tank tops and leggings; Hush Puppies instead of strappy sandals with heels.

Serena flapped her knees distractedly.

“Mami, your legs! Keep your legs closed!” Lourdes said sharply. Serena rolled her eyes. “He beat me up,” Lourdes murmured.

“Why you stay with him then?” Jessica asked, her tone wet with disgust.

Lourdes’s indignation barely stirred. She mumbled, “You have to be sure you want to leave when you leave. You can’t come back. You be towed around like a dog.”

Jessica then came at her mother again: “I want to get a job, any job. I will do anything. I want to support myself.” Lourdes didn’t retaliate, and Jessica backed down, adding, “Mommy, I gave your address to the parole. They’ll be calling you. They need to come to the apartment to look to make sure everything’s okay.” The Troy Housing Authority had already rejected Jessica’s application to live with Milagros; they did not accept felons. Jessica hadn’t heard back from Elaine, and she’d never taken Coco’s offer seriously. Lourdes’s cramped one-bedroom was her only choice.

“You going to live with me? My baby’s coming home!” Lourdes exclaimed. She sidled onto Jessica’s lap. “I am so happy, Mami! I knew you were coming to me!” She kicked her feet a little, but the enthusiasm felt fraudulent.

“Your man,” Jessica said gravely. Lourdes slipped back into her seat
and cast her eyes down. Jessica bent forward and placed her elbows on her knees. “Your boyfriend,” she repeated, staring up at her mother, making sure Lourdes heard all that could not be said. The silence lasted only seconds, but it contained decades of their history. Jessica then relieved her: “If you start messing up, I’m gonna be behind you on that.” The threat hung between them hollowly, before it gave way to levity.

Jessica leaned back. She breathed in the uplifting sight of a young boy, who stood beside another boy peering at the selection in the vending machines. They were visiting their mothers. One was the son of one of Jessica’s friends. “Serena, come on, look how cute that boy is!” she said.

“You so bad,” Serena said.

“Come on! Come on, Mami! You so pretty! Look how cute he is!” She pulled Serena’s hand and clasped her shoulders and positioned her in line. Serena waited and bought candy like a soldier, all the while with her eyes down. When she was through, she pressed into Jessica’s belly, happy and relieved.

“You so bad, you so bad,” Serena repeated.

Jessica smiled.

C
oco survived another winter, but she was run down by the demands of school and the days and nights of Baby Motrin, steaming showers for Pearl’s asthma, and the endless sippy cups of apple juice. She struggled to finish her schoolwork, but during class she found it nearly impossible to concentrate: she would start wondering if the girls had made it home safely from school, if Frankie’s friends were in the apartment, and if they’d devoured her daughters’ snacks. One morning, she snuck back to check up on Frankie and caught him bagging crack in the kitchen. She dropped out of school to keep watch over him. He balked at her policing, and one fight got physical. Mercedes ran to a nearby hospital, where there was a telephone. She called her uncle Hector and begged him to hurry over and help.

Coco’s affection for Nikki’s father, Kodak, had ended that day he hit her years before. Cesar had never laid a violent hand on her. Coco threw Frankie out. To make ends meet without his assistance, she took in baby-sitting, adding three children to her bedraggled four. At the end of the week, for five days of child care from 6
A.M
. until 3:40
P.M
., she was paid a total of $40. Added runs to the church pantries didn’t make the food last. By the weekend, Coco felt as though she was going crazy. It was spring, and the girls needed air, but the backyard was a slide of mud.

Coco sometimes walked down the hill to Fallon, the garden apartments where Iris lived. Iris was making progress toward the realization of a lifelong dream—she wanted to own a funeral home. “At least dead people are quiet,” she said. The local community college had a mortuary-science program Iris hoped to take; she had nearly completed her GED. Her husband, Armando, toiled at Garden Way, a nearby factory. Iris worked part-time at a hobby shop; she got discounts on the supplies for ceramic lamps and statues, which she liked to sand down and paint in her spare time. She also taught ceramics at the community center at Fallon, where she’d received an award from the tenants’ association for her good works. Mercedes had enjoyed attending her classes for a while.

Hector and his wife and son also visited Iris’s. One afternoon, Hector got into a shouting match with the drug dealer who lived next door; the
drug dealer made an allusion to Coco’s affair with Wishman, Hector told him to shut up, and things deteriorated from there. Next thing you know, the dealer’s brother pulled a gun. In the past, Iris had asked this neighbor to lower the loud music, but she was careful to control her temper; Hector didn’t know how. Later Iris’s husband, Armando, said, “We been here three years without trouble, and look, here it is, when your family comes.”

Without Frankie to baby-sit, Coco’s situation stagnated. “I’m dying,” she said. “I can’t go nowhere. I can’t go shopping. I’m just pinned.” Summer provided some relief, although, unfortunately, the sloping backyard that the girls had longed to play in for months was spiked with dangerous junk and infested with fleas. But Coco adamantly stuck to the positive things. She might have had to drop out of school, but Iris had graduated and made a beautiful speech. She had spoken from her heart in front of everyone: she had told the audience how she was nervous, and that she’d moved to Troy to get a better life; that she’d left school at fifteen because she was pregnant, and that the years had passed, and she didn’t feel like going back. But when her kids asked what she was going to be when she grew up, and she didn’t know what to tell them, she realized it was time.

Foxy had traveled up for the graduation; it always pleased Coco when her children got to spend time with their grandmother, and she was also relieved to see that Foxy didn’t seem to be partying so much—she was fat. The public swimming pool that was within walking distance of the apartment buoyed Coco’s girls through the dog days of summer heat. Pearl loved the water; Nikki loved her shimmery bikini; Nautica mastered the cannonball.

But Mercedes tested her mother’s patience with comments like “I’m gonna get a tattoo and get me a man” and “I want a boyfriend.”

“Wait till you father hears you want a boyfriend, Mercy,” Coco warned.

“How old do I have to be to have a boyfriend?” Mercedes persisted.

Coco shouted,
“You don’t even know what a boyfriend is!”

To Coco’s relief, Mercedes spent two blessed weeks with her grandmother when Foxy went back down to the Bronx.

Since Coco had kicked him out of the apartment, Frankie had been living with one of Coco’s cousins, Leo, who’d moved to Troy from the Bronx. One August afternoon, Frankie rode his bicycle down River Street, past mangy dogs and pit bulls trotting along the busted sidewalks, half-breeds and rottweilers and skulking mutts. He was headed to
a block party at Fallon sponsored by the tenants’ association, in which Iris was involved.

Frankie dodged potholes. His tires crunched the shattered forties glass. His tank top billowed in the breeze. He emerged from the shade of the overpass and cycled onto the sidewalk that trailed the Hudson. He coasted off the sidewalk back onto the street. He passed the furniture warehouse that was too expensive and did not deliver, the Napoli bakery, where the lady behind the counter still snubbed you, no matter how many loaves of Italian bread you bought. By the dreary Happy Lunch luncheonette, the old tavern, the rows of empty tenements. A thin white guy with long, feathered hair kicked a box toward a U-Haul. Moving vans were a familiar sight along River Street. The bored women watched Frankie pass.

Fat women, scrawny women, women on broken steps drinking diet no-name soda out of promotional cups from Burger King. Two middle-aged ladies sat on the sidewalk in bucket seats salvaged from a car. Frankie turned left at the intersection of River and 101st. He looped around the back road that led to Fallon and glided to a stop.