Teen Angel (18 page)

“They’re the ones that have those black jackets with red eyes on the dice?”

“That’s them.”

“Jeez. They look like killers.”

“So I was coming home one night and a whole bunch of them were waiting for me. I was alone, but, at least, I had a chain with me. Well, I just started swinging it blindly. I heard one of those bastards lost an eye. They all ganged up on me and broke my nose. That’s when I lost the tooth too. I had to get seventeen stitches.”

“Wow,” Sonny said. “I thought those kinds of things only happened in
West Side Story
and
Dragnet
. But you don’t seem that tough. I mean, you seem tough and all. But not like that.”

“Well, I don’t hang with those guys anymore. They got in a lot of trouble with the cops. I don’t need that kind of aggravation. You know what I mean?”

“Wow,” Sonny repeated, thinking of the Jets and the Sharks, gorgeous Richard Beymer, and how George Chakiris got killed. She moved closer to Ruben. “I can’t believe it.”

“Yup,” Ruben said, smiling proudly. But his smile veered clearly toward the left side of his face.

This time when he put his arm around her, Sonny moved still
closer to him. “Can I see your tooth again?” she asked.

“Come on,” Ruben said. “You’re embarrassing me.” He clamped his mouth shut.

“Please,” she asked, imitating her mother’s expression when she wanted some money from her father. “Pretty please …”

“Okay, but don’t laugh.” He smiled and in a split second closed his mouth again.

“One more time,” Sonny begged.

He brought her close to him and kissed her on the mouth. After a five-second lag, Sonny kissed him back. As soon as their lips parted long enough for each of them to hurriedly inhale a toke of air, they returned to each other’s mouths. Their lips got softer and softer until they seemed to just melt into each other. Sonny stuck her tongue into the toothless space in his mouth and tickled him. Mouth to mouth, tongue to tongue. Then D.B.’s voice interrupted.

“So that’s what you guys have been up to,” she said as she approached with Miguel. “You left your bag, Sonny, so I figured you’d come back.”

Sonny broke loose from Ruben’s hold. She was breathless like she’d just come up from swimming underwater. “Hi, uh, thanks a lot,” she said, taking the bag from D.B.’s hand.

Miguel gave Ruben a look that said, “This wasn’t my idea, I swear.” D.B. sat down next to Sonny and patted the ground next to her, indicating that Miguel should join her. He did.

“We were just talking,” Sonny said self-consciously.

“I saw you making out,” D.B. said.

“Yeah, we were, sort of … So what’s up?”

“Miguel and I finished playing Do You Trust Me? He did it to me.”

Ruben looked at Miguel. “Yeah, I did it,” he said. “What’s the verdict?” Sonny asked. “Do you trust him?” D.B. smiled. “Sort of.”

“That’s good. Hey, does anyone know the time, by the way,” Sonny said. No one did. It was beginning to get dark. “I better be getting back.”

“Where do you live?” Ruben asked, standing up. Sonny gave him her hand, and he helped her stand up.

“Up on 161st Street,” she said coolly.
Would he walk her back?

“I can go back that way,” Ruben said casually.

“You don’t have to,” Sonny said, taking a comb out of her bag.

“It’s not out of my way,” he said, even more casually.

“Where is my lipstick?” Sonny said, ransacking her bag. She took out a white lipstick and applied it to her lips. Then she licked her lips with her tongue. “You can, if you want to.”

“Well, if you’re going to act like you’re doing me a favor,” Ruben said. “Forget it.”

“Okay, if that’s the way you feel.” Sonny turned away from him.

“You two are something else!” D.B. exclaimed. “You know you want him to walk you home.”

Sonny’s face burned with embarrassment. “Why don’t you mind your own business?” she said to D.B.

“All right, never mind. It’s just that you were acting so
immature
,” she said like she was
mature
. “Anyway, I had an idea. They’re playing
The Virgin’s Spring
with Ingrid Bergman at the Heights. It’s supposed to be real sexy.” She rolled her eyes. “There’s this virgin in it who gets raped by three guys.”

“Yeah?” Miguel said.

“And she gets killed. Anyway, it’s one of those
foreign
movies so there’s supposed to be some real sexy scenes in it where they show
everything
.”

“You mean,
everything?
” Sonny said.

“Uh huh,” D.B. said, nodding her head. “The works.”

“Who’s gonna go?” Sonny asked shyly, looking at D.B. and then casually glancing over at Ruben and Miguel.

“We could double,” D.B. said.

“Sounds good to me,” Miguel said.

“How about Saturday night?” D.B. asked, looking at all of them.

“Terrific!” Sonny blurted out excitedly. Then she remembered that it was sort of a date and Ruben hadn’t said anything. In fact, it would be their first date. And he didn’t say if he wanted to go. She began to pull out. “I don’t really know if I can make it.”

“Come on,” Ruben said, smiling crookedly. “Let’s do it.”

She paused for thirty seconds and when she could no longer contain her excitement, Sonny jumped up and clapped her hands. “TERRIFIC!”

“Yeah,” D.B. said. “And wait until you see
The Virgin’s Spring
. It’s supposed to be a pisser!”

“I’ve gotta go home,” Sonny said. “What time should we meet at the Heights?”

“How about seven,” D.B. suggested.

“Good,” Ruben said.

“Is that the theater near 181st Street where they have all those pictures with Brigitte Bardot?” Miguel asked.

D.B. nodded. “It’s on the corner of Amsterdam near the projects.”

“Oh yeah,” Miguel said. “Sure.”

“Ditto,” D.B. said, wrinkling her nose cutely, “for me.”

Ruben just nodded his head. God, he was sexy. Sonny loved the strong, silent type. He took her hand, and they began to walk.

“See ya around!” Sonny called out.

D.B. and Miguel remained sitting on the ground so as to give Sonny and Ruben a lead. “They want to be alone,” D.B. whispered, nibbling on Miguel’s ear as she spoke. Miguel dove for D.B.’s warm body.

They climbed up the steps holding hands. Sonny felt safer with Ruben than she ever did, except when she was a little kid. No
jerkoff artist was going to stick a tail out of his pants and swing it around his head like a lasso. No one would whisper in a scary way, “I’m gonna fuck you, I’m gonna do it to you …” They wouldn’t dare. Ruben would kill them. She could walk without her heart pounding in her chest every time she heard a noise. And she didn’t have to keep looking around.

When they got to Riverside Drive and 161st Street, Sonny said, “I better go back from here by myself.” She hated to let go of his hand but she had to. She dropped it like something in a store that you really wanted but your family couldn’t afford.

He nodded and gave her one final kiss. She returned it. “I guess I’ll see you around,” she said hesitantly.

“Sure. We’ll see each other at school and then we’ll go out on Saturday.”

Sonny nodded.

“And I’ll pay for you,” Ruben said.

That was the closest anyone ever came to saying, “I love you.” Sonny ran up her block. She had to go to the bathroom so badly she was afraid she was going to burst a pipe.

Sonny waited. Through boring days of school when Ruben played handball and acted like she wasn’t even
born
. But D.B. said that’s the way guys were. Four more hours, 240 minutes. She had washed her hair the night before and set it on pink sponge rollers. Now she stood on a chair so her mother could pin the hem of her dress.

“Does that look even to you?” she asked.

Sonny jumped off the chair and stared at the dress her mother had sewn in the mirror. “I guess so,” she said, slowly turning. “God, my legs are so thin and I have nothing on top. And look, my face would have to be all broken out. What am I going to do?” She popped a pimple on her forehead. “And I still have a mark on my chin.”

“Come on,” her mother said. “It looks lovely on you. I chose that blue because it brings out the color of your eyes. Now take off the dress so I can finish it for tonight.”

“Do you really think it looks nice on me?” Sonny asked, continuing to stare unhappily in the mirror. “I look so ugly.”

“You’re going to be the prettiest girl tonight. And I’m sure lots of nice boys are going to ask you to dance.”

“Sure,” Sonny said. She had told her mother she was going to a dance at the Inwood Jewish Center. Naturally, her mother was overjoyed. She took this occasion to give her some tips on the opposite sex.

“The most important thing is that you’re clean. Make sure that your ears and neck are clean. No boy likes a girl who is a
shlump
and they can tell when they dance with you. If you have dirty ears, they can see.” She sat down on Sonny’s bed with the dress draped over her lap and a needle and thread in hand.

“Yeah, yeah,” Sonny said, popping another pimple on her forehead.

“Don’t do that! You’re going to have marks on your face tonight.”

“Leave me alone,” Sonny said moodily. “I don’t know why my skin has to break out today.”

“When I tell you that you shouldn’t eat out of the house, you, with your pizzas and grilled-cheese sandwiches-do you listen to me? So that’s the price you have to pay.” Her needle darted in and out of the blue fabric like some silver insect.

Sonny said nothing. She had to sit there until her mother finished the hem. And they were supposed to talk.
Ruben. Ruben Ortega. He had said, “And I’ll pay for you …” Sonny Ortega
.

“Are any of the boys from your class going to be at this dance?” she asked Sonny, looking up from the dress.

“I hope not. They’re all jerks.”

“Well, I hope you can find
nice
boys,” she said, emphasizing the word “nice,” which definitely meant
Jewish
“You know I met your father at a dance.”

Here it comes again. Her mother’s version of
Splendor in the Grass
. Sonny could recite it word for word.

“It was after the war,” she began. “I was living with my uncle, the doctor, in Germany. I had two girlfriends and we were very close. They used to call us Masha, Dasha, and Natasha. You know, it was a little joke.”

Yawn. Wake me when it’s over
. Sonny raised her nose with her finger, trying to imagine how she would look with an upturned nose, like Gidget’s. Then she licked her lips and pinched her cheeks. Would she ever be beautiful?

“So the three of us went to this dance. I danced almost every dance but I wasn’t very interested in any of the boys. They were nice, but somehow they all seemed so young. I don’t know. But then your father walked in. Every girl at the dance turned to look at him and began to whisper. ‘That’s Heniek. Isn’t he handsome?’ Oh, and he was,” she said, putting the needle down and dreamily looking up at Sonny.

“You should have seen him. His hair was so thick and dark with a thousand curls. And he had the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen. Kind of greenish-blue, like yours, Sonny. And he was very skinny. You know, it was after the war. His clothes looked like they might fall off him. But I just continued dancing. I didn’t even let on that I noticed him. But I knew he was the man for me.”

“How did you get him to notice you?” Sonny asked. “What did you do?”
Damn
. Her mother had gotten her caught up in the story again. She had only heard it about a thousand times. Maybe it was the way she told it, her eyes so alive and excited.

“I don’t really know. But I could feel his eyes on me. Later, he told me that he came to the dance to meet me. He had seen me around and asked about me. So he invited me to dance. As we waltzed, I had a different feeling about him than I had ever had
with other boys. Somehow I knew he was strong and a good, responsible man. And Sonny, after almost twenty years, I still think I made the right choice.”

“But I hear you two scream at each other and fight,” Sonny said.

“All people fight sometimes when they live together. But your father and I love each other very much.”

Sonny turned away from her. They picked at each other all the time. He hated her cooking. She nagged him about working so late. Sonny sneered at her reflection in the mirror. Her mother looked at her funny-like.

“There’s something I want to tell you. You’re a big girl.” She smiled happily. “We’re going to have another baby in the family.”

“What! I don’t believe you.”

“Yes. I’ve been wanting to tell you so much.”

“No, that can’t be. Another baby? How?”

“Yes, Sonny. You’re going to have another baby brother or sister. Which would you prefer?”

“Neither,” Sonny said, gritting her teeth. She saw them holding hands in the living room on Sunday afternoons when they watched television.
But they still fucked
. Sonny had not been prepared for this at all. Maybe they were adopting.

“Are you happy?” her mother said, putting the dress down. “There’ll be another baby around the house. Remember how much you used to like playing with Mike when he was a baby?”

“No,” she said. “I’ve got to go to the bathroom.” Sonny marched out of the room, betrayed.
They still fuck. And kiss. Her parents who were so old
. And all the time when she heard them talk in the bedroom, she thought they were talking about her and Mike.
A baby. How could they?

Sonny ran a bath for herself. As she soaked in the tub, making sure to wash behind her ears and neck, she thought the idea that her mother and father still fucked was the dirtiest thing that she
had heard in a long time. It was even dirtier than the things the guys on the street said about how she should touch it and all. Her mother was full of it, acting so pure. Her and her dumb stories. Her father wasn’t even half as handsome as Ruben. A baby-now everyone would know. Couldn’t they be
careful?
Sonny recalled the single Trojan in her
mother’s
drawer which she had taken that day to become a Teen Angel. It wasn’t her fault. They didn’t
have
to fuck.