The Flowers (25 page)

“You better just go to your room,” my mom said. She was dressed in something new.

I was relieved to do that. Well, only to not stand there and wait for what was going to happen. Mostly to go see if they knew about the money I stole. All of it was still there like I left it, even the money I kept stashed at the corner. After a couple of seconds, I knew if that'd been found—well, I wouldn't have gotten to go to this room. Still, I was scared and I was embarrassed. I was really embarrassed. Nica's radio was on upstairs but I couldn't concentrate on it or her. I didn't hear nothing in the walls or outside, no spiders, no cats, not even dogs, only the nervous chatter in my own head, its sparklers making crazy like I was driving wild with even faster cars going the other direction on either side of me. My real eyes were shut, but I was seeing too much light, so much I could see only white.

“It wouldn't have been as much if he weren't drunk,” my mom said when she woke me.

I was blinking. She didn't even seem to notice that I was asleep when she sat on the bed.

“It's not good that you did that. I told you before.”

I couldn't look at her, and not only because I wasn't focused yet.

“You were stealing, m'ijo.”

I nodded. “I'm sorry.” She smelled of perfume I liked.

“You have to stop it.”

“Yeah.”

“Yes?”

I nodded.

“Es que, I don't want you to get into trouble. I have confidence in you. I want you to be a man. I want you to learn how to be a man.”

She was playing with her hair, pulling it behind her left ear over and again. She still had on her jeweled earrings. “He laughed, you know. He thought it was what any boy would do if he wasn't afraid to. But he didn't want you to think it wasn't serious. He said he thought he should punish you. I wouldn't let him and we argued. I don't trust him, but then it didn't matter after a few of his drinks.”

“You guys got in a fight about it?”

“It's nothing new. Don't worry too much.”

Joe said, “Hijole, man.”

Mike said, “Ay, dude, I'd hate if
our
mom found that shit.”

“Don't even talk like that,” Joe said.

“It's what I'm saying!” said Mike.

“Pero, what your mom said, that is toda madre, güey,” said Joe. “She was all right, eh?”

Mike was nodding in agreement.

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess.” I was ready to think more about it, but then some dudes, a couple with rags tied around their foreheads, bounced by slowly, screaming
PUTOS!
laughing like they were bad to come up with that word and chingones to shout it out too. They drove a four-door wannabe lowrider—all they
had was suspension and shocks so fucked up that the ride sagged. The wheels were dirty hubcaps on baldies. They did have tinted windows, and the word
relámpago
was painted in glittered silver in all-electricized letters on the back side panel.

“I don't know why mamones like that gotta be like that,” said Mike. “They're really embarrassing, really punkass payasos.”

“And they're too afraid to stop, to say it to us,” Joe said.

Mike shook his head at Joe like he'd lost his mind.

“They had guns, anyways,” I started. “Shit, I don't even have my rock!”

“I didn't see a gun,” said Joe. “You saw a gun?”

“I saw one for sure,” I said, “and another probably.”

“Hijole, man,” said Joe.

Mike didn't want to talk facts. “I'm sick of having to hear them or hear about those pendejos y sus pendejadas.”

After we walked some, Joe said, “Yeah, like because we're Mexicans we have to apologize for being as stupid as they are.”

“I can't wait to go to college,” said Mike.

Joe nodded. We walked quiet for a while.

“So did your mom throw that magazine out?” Mike asked.

“Look at how my brother is!” Joe said. “He's still angling to get it from you!”

We laughed.

“Your mom,” Mike said. “I think she is all right.”

“Simón, tu mamá es muy padre,” said Joe, smiling. “We'd be in the shithouse.”

“Worse!” said Mike. “We'd be outside the dog shithouse, sleeping next to piles and piles of poops.”

“I'd die,” said Joe. “If we got caught, I'd die.”

“N'hombre! We'd get spit-roasted and chopped up como cabrito, dude!” said Mike. “I wouldn't wanna imagine how Dad would cook us.”

* * *

“He wanted me to make a Mexican dinner,” she told me. I think the apron she had on was new. It was a red-and-white checkerboard. I think it would be called cute. She wore a white dress under it, sandals, her hair—well,
muy
nice. “Can you believe that? He thought I should cook, and not only cook but cook
Mexican
food.” She definitely wasn't doing that. She was making spaghetti, and she dropped a couple of jalapeños into the sauce. “There. Now it's Mexican.”

“You're cooking, that counts for something.”

“Things are kind of upset around here,” she said. “I want to warn you.”

“What?”

“You haven't seen someone going in or out of Mr. Pinkston's, have you?” she said.

“I haven't, like I said before.”

“Bud keeps on saying that some man who is black is living there. He says that's how they're doing it now, by getting someone else to rent an apartment with a roommate nobody sees until later. He thinks that's what's going on.”

“Can I tell you something? What I heard?” I wanted to tell her about me sitting with Mary, how Bud talked about her. I would tell her without telling her.

“Is he bothering you?” she asked. She heard me asking something else. “You're not going to tell me he's bothering you too, are you?”

“No,” I said.

“Because Bud used to be a cop,” she said. “I don't know if he quit or they got rid of him. Can you imagine him a cop?”

Maybe me telling her anything else about Bud talking about her wasn't necessary.

“Have you seen anyone else in that apartment? A white person?”

“Not me. I never even seen Pink in that apartment.”

“They're talking about him too.”

“Pink's okay. I like him. I think he's cool.”

“He's an albino,” she said. “I don't think Cloyd knew it before.”

“Albino?” I didn't know it either.

“It's an idea I heard. Nely told me. It's right too, explains why he's like he is. He's not as obvious as most albinos. Nely says some don't look like albinos exactly.”

“Nely?”

“Yeah,” she said, not really wanting to get into that with me. “He's white but he's really black. It makes sense, it explains it. Cuando le dije a Cloyd, ay, he died de un infarto! I thought his heart would attack him out of his mouth, he was yelling so much.”

We both liked so much the idea of Pink messing with Cloyd and Bud, him maybe having a black roommate, there was no room to say anything about Nely or not Nely. I was almost finished eating.

“M'ijo,” she said. She sat down next to me, but she didn't look at me. “It's not so bad here for you.…” She stopped there too long. “I have to think,” she said. “Did you get enough to eat?”

“Oh yeah,” I said.

I was sweeping the lower walkways and Cindy had to lean hard over the upstairs railing. “Hey,” she said. As always, she was practically naked, at least it seemed like you could see everything even if it was covered.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” she said again, stretching the sound out, playful.

“Did I see you the other night?”

“What're you talking about?”

This time I didn't say nothing.

“Sonny,” she said, all sweet, my name yellow and warm.

“No,” I said. I didn't see what she did or where or how because I kept my head down and swept. I wanted to be good. I swept everything. Then I cleaned the laundry room. I'd dragged over a trash can from the back and while I was thinking of it, I went over to the mailboxes to grab the flyers that had to be thrown away too. That's when Bud's pickup wide-loaded the driveway, almost pinning me against the building.

“Looking for the titty magazines again, Sonny boy?”

I almost said I didn't do that shit, out of habit.

He'd rolled down the passenger's side window from a switch on the driver's side.

“Your age, it's the only action you get!”

I still didn't say nothing. Made me mad that Cloyd told him.

“Your mom getting things ready in there?”

I didn't say nothing to him still. I swore to myself I was gonna start pumping iron.

“You gone deaf? They say that's what happens after you keep whacking it so much! You keep at it, hear say you go blind too!” He was laughing and laughing like he was watching himself on TV.

I wanted to steal something from him. Put nails under his tires.

“You better watch yourself, kid,” he said. “I'm telling you.” He drove in.

Maybe it was the word
kid
that did it.

Nica came out of her apartment with Angel in her arms, rocking him fidgety and moving her feet—like being out of the apartment was dangerous. “Tonight,” she said. She pointed to #7, Bud and Mary's apartment. She was grinning fifty smiles but showing it to me and me only. She made it seem like she was only talking to the baby, and then she turned back around. She had to answer her dad inside the apartment.

I wanted to run laps around The Flowers instead of spin in
the tight circles my brain took. I rushed over to the Bel Air and went in. I sat and waited. I saw anybody, I ducked and hid. Cloyd's butt-heavy truck, those huge toolboxes hanging on either side, squawked and squealed onto the driveway. Neighborhood people were walking from parking their cars way down the street. It was the time of night when some headlights were on, some still off. Waiting waiting. Gina's car, her perfect husband Ben's sporty car, Mary's plain car. People from the whole neighborhood coming home. I sat and sat and sat, waiting. I was happy! I dreamed in my Bel Air. I dreamed of what it would be with Nica and me cruising the boulevards, pulling in this place, parking there—a desert, the cactus and sand, or mountains, or a river, a lake, and there'd be a real sky, a real moon, stars falling all over us, and trees, and dew. The windows down would let in air, or be up to keep warmer—all about not being here, all about being with Nica, Nica being with me, everything I ever wanted to see all around us. Stopping. Sitting someplace pretty. Kissing. I only wanted to kiss her, I swear it's all I really imagined. No, I wanted her to kiss me. We could go to movies. I'd never been to those Spanish ones. She wouldn't want to either. She liked the same radio music I did. We could drive down to the beach. Probably she'd never seen the beach. She could watch and listen to the waves. I would kiss her lips! My fingers would touch her cheek, hold her chin. I'd kiss her on her neck, under her ear, and feel her goose bumps rise. She would be against me, warm. Her body. I imagined it, sure. I knew I would love her body, but I only saw her lips while I was holding her.

“Young blood,” Pink said. His face was at the passenger's window this time.

“You did that again,” I told him, shaking my head.

“What I do again?”

“Surprised me when you came up. I didn't see you.”

“You better be watching yourself better then,” he laughed. “You better always know what coming up behind you. At all
times you better be knowing what coming up on you, my little brother.” He got in and sat with me. “So everything cool?” His eyes were watching the front door and windows of Cloyd's apartment too. “Like they having a party. Good. That is nice, that is good. Good for them.”

I looked at him.

“Give me some time,” he said.

“Time?”

“Gotta be leaving here,” he said. “I am gone.”

“Really?”

“You don't say to nobody, you didn't hear that.”

“Okay, sure.”

“Don't want Longpre knowing till he knows.”

“So, the car?” He knew what I meant.

“Little brother, I told you. I told you, this is your ride.”

It didn't make any sense, I really didn't understand, but I didn't want to say no. If he really was out of here, if he was really leaving it to me, I'd even go ahead and learn to drive it. Not play in it like I did now, not pretend. “I guess you haven't had a lot of cars around lately, now that I think of it.”

“There you are, you
have
been paying attention. This here is the last and only. But little brother, I am around. I come around time to time. You gonna see. I come around. You gonna be seeing me again, and we got a deal.”

“Hard not to see you,” I joked.

“You only just said you missed seeing me, didn't you say that?”

I laughed.

“So it ain't that easy unless you be watching careful. You don't be watching careful, you do not see.”

I shook my head.

“Buncha shit I'm talking, ain't it? Ha! Buncha bull and shit, ain't it?” He laughed and laughed. “I better get on up. Hey-uh, they still talking?”

“About a black man living in your apartment?”

“That, yeah.”

“No more than I said.”

“Well then little brother man, I better get up on it.”

The door of #7 opened fast. Nica had a finger over her lips. “He just went to sleep.” Her eyes would barely to look at mine, but she was smiling. “He'd never seen a cat.”

“You mean the baby,” I said.

“A cat!” She said that loud for her. “The cat is the baby! Can you believe? The lady wanted me to take care of her little cat!”

“I told you already they didn't have a baby.”

“No, you didn't tell me.”