The Glass Factory (3 page)

“Great! What’s the charge?”

“Murder One.”

“That was fast. Who’s he killed?”

“Me.”

“Fil, I’m on a short break, here—”

“I know you’ve got a stack of violations on him that are stickier than the floor of a porno theatre.”

“Oh, those. It’ll take years to bring charges.”

“I don’t
have
years.”

“Huh?”

“Well, maybe. I’m getting a second opinion.”

“Fil … What’s wrong now?”

I tell him pretty much everything. For some reason I’ve always been that way with him. I even ask him how his wife is, who hated me so much.

“Fine,” he says. Then: “Jeezus, Fil, I didn’t expect—”

“I didn’t expect either. Now will you help me?”

“Help you what? You want to go digging, go ahead. You want me to bail your ass out when you get caught, it’s not my jurisdiction.”

“Since when?”

“Didn’t I tell you Morse is on the Island? You know, that ‘hospitable economic climate’ they got out there?”

“Where?”

“He’s got two big plants out in Carthage. What are you thinking of doing?”

“Nothing. Yet.”

“I like the first part. Keep it that way, will ya?”

“Sure.”

“And Fil—Shit, I don’t know what to say to you. If there’s anything I can do …”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

I think about that bastard Morse. What he did to me and what he’s doing to others. Hundreds, probably thousands of workers dying a slow death from carcinogenic chemicals, insufficient workplace safety and his squash-anything-that-gets-in-my-way personality. It got him controlling interest in nine companies worth between $55 million and $2.3 billion
each.
But this all happened so long ago that if it weren’t for the scarred lung tissue, it would have long since faded into memory. Then last year he had the balls to threaten my kid. Sometimes, I really wish I hadn’t dropped my gun down that hole in the ice all those years ago …

Antonia wants to play but my mind’s too bent out of shape to stay at it for more than fifteen minutes. So I turn on the TV and hug her to me. I bury my nose in her hair. They’ve got a rerun of
Spartacus
on channel 9. Now
there’s
a guy with problems. And I get a kick out of seeing how he deals with them, too. No “It’ll take years to bring charges” for him. And you know, even in ghosting black and white, that scene where the trainer paints Kirk Douglas’s bare, glistening torso just makes me melt. I’m not really happy about Antonia watching this, but she won’t go to bed and I really want to see what happens. Try explaining Imperial Rome and slavery to a three-and-a-half-year-old sometime! Finally the first rebellion comes; guards get knifed, throttled—I’ll never eat tomato soup again—and when they fall into a pool, Tonia says to me, “They’re going to get wet.”

I laugh. Such innocence. I almost wish she’d never lose it. But of course she will—she must—to survive. Oh, Lord …Why?

Why?

I read her to sleep, then pick up the phone to call—who? Jen? Beto? Betty’s on vacation. I even think of calling Mr. Wang, for Christ’s sake! I’ve got to try to sort this out. This isn’t happening … Okay, Antonia’s got to come first. So I think of Rowena and George: She teaches Africana Studies at Bronx Community College, he’s a jet-black cricketeer from Trinidad who plays hardball gloveless. We’ve cared for each other’s kids through the babysitting co-op—and that’s about as close a relationship as I’ve got in the ’hood and, yes, I really do have their phone number on the inside of a matchbook.

And of course it’s too late at night to call someone with kids.

I get about as much sleep as any infantrywoman gets the night before battle, so I’m fresh as a sun-dried Dumpster daisy when I get George on the phone and arrange to meet at the playground. I try to put Antonia in a T-shirt and jeans since she always wants to design cities in the sandbox, but she insists on a dress. Where does she get this urge for femininity from? Must be TV. Not from me.

It’s one of those spring days that’s sunny enough to fool you until a cloud passes and the temperature drops twenty degrees. Antonia runs free to join the kids on the jungle gym. George is cleaning up some trash from last night’s adult playground users.

“Hey, Trini-dude-man, what’s up?”

“They say people are drinking less hard alcohol,” he says, dropping an armful of cans and bottles into the recycling pail. “Obviously not around here.”

We spend about fifteen minutes shooting the shit because neither of our cultures considers it polite to get directly to an issue. Also, how do you ask someone if he’s willing to make sure your kid gets back to your family safely just in case you happen to die in the next couple of weeks? Stumped you? Well, keep thinking. Turns out he’s got bad news of his own. The coffee plant, jewel of Hoboken and biggest employer on the Jersey-side waterfront, is closing. We agree that the local economy is becoming indistinguishable from those “Third World” economies we both fled to come here. Eventually I get around to telling him that I need a couple to act as godparents, just in case.

He says, “How ’bout Raúl?”

“No.”

“He is Toni’s father.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“You’ve gotta stop being such a lone wolf, Filomena. You can’t take on something like this alone. Think of Antonia.”

“I am: Her father sold all our stuff to pay the rent on that cocaine castle in the air he was living in and you want me to go to
him
for help?”

“That was three years ago.”

“Okay, last year he stole my tax refund check, forged my endorsement and bought himself a new car stereo with it.”

“Yeah, well this is different. He’s the girl’s father, and you need him. You might as well admit it.”

This is
not
what I wanted to hear.

I watch Antonia, swinging upside down, her dress falling down over her face, laughing.

I curse.

And agree with him.

“Yo, where’s the party at?”

“Why do you always answer the phone like that?” I thought it was cute, once.

“Filomena!
¡Mamita! ¿Cómo vás, muchachita?”

“Like shit, Raúl. I need your help.”

“¡Que milagro!
You
must
be doing like shit if you want
my
help.”

“Don’t make this any harder. Can I come over?”

“Ah, por fín te recuerdas que nadie te lo da como yo—”

“Make me heave, all right? I’ve got a problem. A
real
one.”

“Baby, if it’s your problem—”

“Raúl, never be indifferent when people need you.”

“Yes, ma’am. What’s in it for me?”

“No jail time and you can keep the car stereo, too.”

“You still pissed off about that? Because let me tell you,
chiquitína—”

“Raúl, will you shut the fuck up and listen to me?! I’m—I’m sick.”

“So take a aspirin.”

“No, I mean—Boy it all comes back so quick with you. We always had
real
communication problems.”

“Funny, you never said anything about it to me …”

“Could you turn the music down for a second? This is serious. It’s about Antonia.”
That
gets him.

“My little sugarplum? What about her?”

“I’m worried. I don’t think she should stay in the
barrio
any longer.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not healthy for her. I have to tell her
never
to touch the needles she sees in front of the building.”

“Hmm.
¿Y qué entonces?”

I realize that we have switched to Spanish without me noticing it. That’s not like me. I mean, my survival usually depends on me noticing things. “I’m thinking of maybe taking her back to Ecuador with me. But I don’t have the money. These last three months have really scraped me to the bone.”

“Back to Ecuador? With my kid? Fuck that. She can come live with me!”

“You just agreed she should move out of the city.”

“Oh, yeah. Well she can stay with my sister.”

“Oh, terrific. This is the woman who has never seen her niece? No thanks.”

“Hey: You’ve never seen her kids neither. Least they’ve got a back yard.”

“Where’s that?”

“Minoa.”

“Where’s
that?”

“Long Island.”

You can just about hear me go
ding!
“Is that anywhere near Carthage?”

“How the fuck should I know? Get a fuckin’ map! No, wait—now that you mention it, yeah—I think it’s like about five, maybe ten miles west of there. The big steel-and-glass place, right?”

“Computer casings.”

“Yeah, sure, that’s the place. Yeah, five miles, tops.”

“What’s her number?”

“You serious?”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, great! Does this mean we—?”

“Make me heave, all right?”

Raúl gives me his sister Colomba’s number and I scramble for a map of Long Island. Antonia wants to see where all her friends live, which I’m usually more than willing to show her—maps are supposed to be educational, right?—but I’m trying to dial someone who hates me, look up Minoa and Carthage on a map of Suffolk County and Antonia keeps wanting to turn back to the page with New York City on it.

“Mommy!”

“Later, Toni.”

“Mommy!”

“Not now, dear. Mommy has to kill someone.”

CHAPTER TWO

It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside … look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser.
—Sherlock Holmes, “The Copper Beeches”

I’VE BEEN TOLD
that true heroes do not set out on quests, they are forced into action by circumstances. But Heracles, Samson, and our own defiant Incan leader Atahualpa never had to ride an LIRR train that smells like last month’s sewage. The stop is called Nequonsett, and it looks close to Minoa on the map, but five miles is a long freaking way when you’re hauling a menagerie with you. I should have known better.

Aeneas-like, I enter the new world lugging my past on my back and my kid by one hand. Plus a cat carrier with our orange tabby, Puchungo. Don’t ask. Last night after cramming our lives into storage crates, mailing books off to South America, letting the landlord know he was going to have to suck someone
else’s
blood for a while and quitting my job (notice?—Ha!), the kid decided to lose contact with reality regarding our need to give the cat away and by a quarter to midnight it all came down to a choice between a major pain in the ass I hadn’t counted on or a psychotic child. I opted for the major pain in the ass.

“What’s that smell?” is the first thing Antonia says.

I can’t tell, at first. Then I place it: The sharp, fetid odor of a million freshly fertilized suburban lawns traveling heavily on the breeze. But something is rotten in paradise:
FOR
SALE
signs are toppling over with age. We take a taxi through a pretty snappy neighborhood, where every house looks the same, every street looks the same, and every street
name
is the same, for God’s sake, mile after mile of “Pyramid Place,” “Pyramid Path,” “Pyramid Parkway,” “Pyramid Passage.” Who came up with this hypnotic, nightmarish sameness? I half expect to see Franz Kafka and Rod Serling splitting a pitcher of ten-cent lemonade on the next fluorescent green lawn.