The Flowers (7 page)

“What's he do?” There was something about the look in the apartment, the smell, something.

“For work?” She smiled right at me.

“Well … yeah.”

“He sorts the packages for the brown trucks.”

“Yeah?” It seemed like memorized.

“Oh yeah, right,” she said sarcastically. She got up and got herself a soda and opened it. She plopped back down on the chair. The towel was hanging over the back and she rested against it like it wasn't there. “He started as a driver. But he said he had to run so much. Which at first he liked. But then it started making him too tired for when he got off, and then he hurt his foot. So they transferred him to the other department.” She drank. She drank a couple swallows more. “I hate him.”

That made me laugh. It just caught me that way, because she didn't mean it to be funny. She liked it that I laughed, though, you could tell.

“I do! I hate him!”

That's when I noticed she still hadn't dried herself completely under her white blouse. She was so wet in this one spot, and I could see how it curved down and up, where her nipple pushed out.

“You don't hate him,” I said.

She glared. “How old are you?”

I told her I was sixteen, even though I wasn't.

“I'm not even nineteen yet,” she said, “not for another month, and I feel like an old married lady.”

I almost said how I thought she seemed older than that. “I guess that
is
pretty young to be all married.”

“You seem older and more mature than that to me too,” she said. “Or you're just so cute.” She was smiling when she said that, flirty.

I felt good about my lie.

“I had to get married,” she went on.

I was still wondering why she was teasing me about being big and strong. Like maybe instead of meaning it, she didn't. I wondered what her husband was like.

“Aren't you going to ask what happened to the baby? Everyone else does.”

Even if I had thought of it, I couldn't because I wasn't going as fast as she was.

“I had a late miscarriage.”

“Sorry.” It's all I could say.

“He got me pregnant again eight months ago,” she said, and she paused there and sat up in the chair, “but this time I went and had an abortion.”

It seemed like she was talking to herself more than to me. I didn't know what I was supposed to say, if I needed to say anything.

“You're not against abortion, are you?”

How would I know? What did I know? I knew what it was, heard all about it, but, you know, what could I say?

“I'm glad I did it,” she went on. She put her coke down beside the chair.

I sat there, fidgety now, mostly done with the soda, nothing to say.

“Maybe,” I started, trying to think of something, “maybe your husband was glad too.” Did that even sound right? I didn't know what I was saying. I was just saying anything.

“My husband?” she said. Her eyes were seeing some wall I couldn't. “My husband.” She pronounced her words like she was practicing English.

“I thought you said you were married,” I explained. I looked away, thinking I'd go back outside to what I was supposed to.

“No, you didn't say anything wrong. Just when you say it,
you,
it sounds different to me.” She was looking at me. She looked at me like a girl would a guy. Before she wasn't really looking at me, and now she was. “His name's Tino.”

“Oh, all right. That's who I meant. That's who I was talking about.”

“He is my husband,” she said.

“Okay.”

“It sounded funny to me. Like I was listening to someone talk about my mom, not me.”

I nodded like I understood.

“My mom had a few husbands.”

“Okay, yeah,” I said. “I know what you mean, I do see how you'd think that.”

“Your mom and Mr. Longpre. …”

“Yeah,” I said. I stood up. I didn't want to be talking about that shit with her. I had the empty can in my hand. “Should I throw this away?”

“Why don't you have another one?”

“I'm full,” I said.

“What a butt you are,” she said. She stood up too. “I thought you'd like my company.” She took the empty to the kitchen and tossed it.

“I do,” I said. I was getting a little confused.

“But you don't like me.”

I was maybe gonna stay longer, but right then her telephone rang, and when she picked it up she said hi to I guessed Tino. I listened for a few until it felt fucked up to, and then I went back outside to the screen and brush. It wasn't much of a job to clean them, just a puff of brown dust jumping off. Didn't take very long to do both of hers, and when I slid them back into the brackets that held them, she was still on the phone, cuddling against it
like it was a soft kitty, her knees up, touching her toes. I liked her toes.

The television cartoons were so loud in #4 that you'd think the curtains should be flapping in the sound waves. I knew she was there, but I didn't imagine how close to me on the other side of the dirty screen she'd be until she was inches from my face.

“I'm supposed to take this off because I'm gonna clean it,” I said in English. I showed her the brush.

Her little brother, diaper and no T-shirt, wobbled over and stood behind her.

“Go watch the
teetee,
” she told him in Spanish. He didn't. “Go go, Angelito, go on!” she told him again. This time he turned back and flopped down about a foot from it, as though if he didn't get so close he wouldn't hear it, blasting loud as it was.

“So it's okay I take this screen off?” I asked her. I said
screen
in English because I didn't know what the word was in Spanish. I didn't even know if she answered because I was completely distracted. I was seeing her but I was also seeing someone somewhere else. It was like when I shut my eyes and it was that dreamlight and colors that flew off that darkness, and so this was not doing what I was doing even as I was doing it. Strands of her long hair—black as in the best night, the same best black in her eyes—stuck to the edges of those eyes that weren't only hers either.

I did take off that screen, and she went on standing on the inside, watching me brush the dirt off. I couldn't say if she said anything. She might have, and I would've wanted to answer things back. I must have because I realized we were talking.

“Nica,” she said.

That was her telling me her name, and it made me kind of remember where I was and what I was doing.

“Nica?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Nica.”

“I'm Sonny.”

“Sonny,” she said, thinking. She'd said it a little different. Like it was two names combined,
son
and
nee
. “It's a good name.”

It made me happy she thought my name was good, and I probably would've smiled right at her, but I wasn't able to look up, so I smiled at her dress. It looked soft like cotton, the color of beach shells, and it was wrinkled like the crinkly paper they draped from ceilings at a school party. It had a blue drawstring tied around her waist. Nobody wore a dress like that. It made her seem like a movie Indian.

“So what school do you go to?” I asked. I struggled with my Spanish. I was scared of how I sounded, how pocho she might know I was.

“I don't go right now,” she said.

“Not to any school?”

“No,” she said.

“I thought maybe you were going to St. Xavier.”

“No,” she told me. “Not right now.”

“Then,” I said, “you don't have to go to school.” It was supposed to be a question.

She didn't want to talk about it, you could tell.

I put that first screen back. She followed but she came out the front door. “I'm right outside here!” she told her brother. “I'm not going anywhere!” and she turned away and waved good-bye.

Both curtains and windows were closed in #5, a one-bedroom, and I slipped out the first screen. Inside an old man whose name was Josep—a strange name to me—lived with a woman whose name wasn't normal either. The first time I saw him he was on the walk in a scratched-up wooden chair, doing nothing but sitting there. Sitting, only sitting, no newspaper, no book, no radio, nothing but his hands on his lap, fingers laced, in these old-man baggy slacks and an old-man button-up sweater and slip-on shoes
that were so worn they looked like moccasins. He was looking out and away at the sky—full of telephone poles and wires and pigeons on them but like he was seeing something in or on them because he watched. He had a lot of silvery gray hair, thicker and more healthy than most viejitos, and long for an old man, and it was combed back nice, like he planned to go out soon or could if something came up. That first time I was sweeping he wouldn't even pick up his chair and move so I could sweep right there. I just went around, like I didn't even notice.

“How come you do this?” he asked. It was like he was talking more at the push broom. He had an accent from somewhere not close to where anybody I knew was from.

“The slate deck here, it gets dirty,” I told him, “and it's supposed to be swept.”

“No, no.” He shook his head and a finger like I was way stupid, like I wasn't paying attention. “How come
you
do this?”

“Cloyd Longpre. I live downstairs, in Number One. It's that he married my mom.”

He grabbed me by his eyes and squeezed. “He make you, or he pay you?”

I sort of twisted my head away to say nothing, or to make it an I'm not sure.

He shook his head slowly, backing off. When I'd finished sweeping, he went back to what he was doing before, which was sitting there, his hands back in his lap, fingers laced, gazing at the beyond in front of him.

In the bedroom that wasn't mine I listened for Nica's voice in all those voices up there—mostly her dad's came through. I was also having to hear my mom and the Cloyd arguing just a little too loud on the other side of the door. I probably was relieved that they were. It meant I could count the money I had hidden. Bueno, okay, look: The truth is that when I snuck into those
houses, sometimes I took money away. At first it was only the change, especially if I saw dimes and quarters. Then I smarted up and checked only for bills. A dollar, a five, a ten, any of them could be sitting around, folded, piled, like forgotten or nothing to them, or in a drawer or a box under the bed. The worst time was that girl's house. Yeah, I did what I said before, I did that. But in her parents' bedroom, in a small drawer, I found an envelope with twenties, coming out to $200. You know? Most of the time I thought nobody'd notice, because—I dunno, but that was so much it's what got me scared. I also started taking from my mom or my sister if I saw it around, or when I decided to look inside their purse. Only a few dollars. I stopped that too, I didn't like doing it. At first, yeah, I spent it. That's what I thought I took it for. Even then I wouldn't spend very much. I'd go out and buy like a half-gallon square of chocolate ice cream. But then I made a decision to save this money, to use it right. Also because stealing made me feel shitty, and I didn't like that part much. So it seemed better that if I wasn't wasting it, if it wasn't exactly gone, just put away for necessary things, it wasn't as bad. When I'd collected small bills, I'd go over to a store and exchange the little ones into a twenty, and then I'd put it in this envelope with the others. Anyways, once in a while I liked to see it and count it, and this seemed like a good time for that. It was, I thought, hidden in a good place—I'd pulled up the bedroom carpet in the corner, next to where the bookcase was, and put it there and it didn't bulge out. I don't know why I liked to get it out and count it sometimes, but I did. It was a thick stack, and it now was up to $249. Probably there's some explanation I couldn't think of for wanting to do the counting. Probably I looked right then because I'd just taken $6 from Cloyd, and I'd put it away fast a couple of days ago. It was sitting there in his truck, on the bench seat, almost lost in a pile of receipts and fast food trash. Like he didn't care about it. To me. That was just the other day.
I hadn't thought about it much since, but while they were being loud at each other, I guess it got me to remembering what I did.

I could tell by the tone of the footsteps outside my door that they were headed at me. I stabbed the money under the pillow fast when my mom walked in.

“I want to sit with you for a minute,” she said.

“Why?” I said.

“I just want to. Dame un minuto, one, please.”

“Why, though?”

“Because I need to.”

“Are you okay?”

“No. Yeah. No.” She laughed.

“I don't know what to do,” I said.

“Nothing you can do, nothing. Only I can.”

“What is it?”

“Do you know that he cares about toilet paper?”

“What?”

“He cares about toilet paper. How much is used.”

“You mean. … ?”

“Yes, when you make a coo-coo.”

I started to laugh really hard. She did too. “En serio, he means this. I don't think I ever knew anything like this.” I'm laughing, happy about my mom. “Like four squares. Algo así.” She was laughing really hard too. “Shh! If he hears us!”

Bud and Mary were the couple who lived in #7. He did construction. You knew because he wore a T-shirt with the name of a sheetrocking company on it. He was muscles and shoulders under that cotton shirt, his skin darkened from sun, his forearms bulging out like they were biceps, his biceps swollen like calves. Mary was a substitute teacher. I knew that because she took over one of my classes one time. She didn't recognize or remember or even know me, and she didn't ask about where or if I went to
school when I said hi then. Her face sagged as miserable as the rest of her when I saw her walking by my locker. At the table, she was eating chips from the bowl my mom put there, wearing her nice substitute teacher dress that, sitting down here, seemed like it was getting pushed at in more places about to burst. Bud made one of those glad-to-meet-mes, shaking my hand like it was a sport he always had to win and always did. My mom was cooking food. Really. She was even making something Mexican, even if she didn't know how to cook it any better than anything else. One time I heard the Cloyd on the phone. He said,
I love to eat them tacos,
and
now I even got myself married to a pretty little Mexican gal.
He said that. Really. The dude who my mom married. She had some rice on the stove, and something was going wrong there, because her face was way close to the burner, watching it boil through the glass cover. I knew something was more messed up when Cloyd complimented her on the
chili salsa.
He might as well have complimented her on the tortilla chips, because she bought them at a store too. She didn't correct him though. She had on a brand new apron. It was cute, she'd call it, probably from an expensive department store. She had a new dress on under it too, and she was fixed up like behind the stove door wasn't enchiladas but one of those too-dark restaurants she expected to be taken to before she married him.