This Side of Providence (5 page)

I been clean for two weeks but I still feel like shit. That's the problem with being clean—you feel everything. Fuck detox. I'm still looking to score every chance I get. Mostly 'cause it gives me something to do every day. Word is the men still shoot up in here, with needles stolen from the infirmary and a hollowed-out ballpoint pen. But not the women. All we can get is cheap liquor and the occasional joint, in exchange for making friends with the guards. But I realize right away that ain't for me. I had enough sex on the outside, I don't need to be fucking no uniforms. I keep to myself, smile at the right time, and get all the cigarettes I could ever smoke from the butches who say I look like their daughters. Then I trade the extras for candy bars, gum, and lollipops. In here sugar's the real drug, as valuable as dope, and just as easy to get hooked on.

It's all a waste anyway. Who wants to have things that feel or taste good? All it does is make you want more, and there's no point wanting something you can't have. So most days I don't bother wanting anything—not my freedom, my children, or my girlfriend. Not my home. Instead, I think about what I can get. Time. Peace. Silence. But it's all a lie anyway. I don't want any of that. What's a junkie need peace for? Or time. We want time
to stop.

But time don't stop in here. It goes on and on forever, like when you're a little kid and every day is the same. Three weeks in and I'm done counting time. Done being inside my own head. Done being in prison. Some of the ladies knit or do crossword puzzles, but not me. I don't have hobbies. I've never really done anything in my life other than being a kid and a mother and now that I'm neither, I don't know what to do with myself. How to be myself.

Most of the books in the common room are from the men's prison, with far-out stories and all those crazy sci-fi names. There's one romance novel that everybody fights over, but when it's finally my turn I see there aren't any pictures so I give it to the next girl without reading it. One of my bunkmates—an older white lady who was here for five years 'cause she killed someone drunk driving—spends her whole day reading magazines. When they finally let her out she leaves behind a stack that's taller than I am. Most of them are about decorating your home and firming up your thighs, but there's a few about food and cooking I like to look at over and over again.

When I first got married I used to cook with my husband's mother, simple things like arroz con pollo and
pasteles
. Seeing pictures of all that fancy food—all those perfect fruits and vegetables—makes me miss those days. We never cooked anything that looked like it should be in a magazine, but it was still nice to take the time to make something pretty. Sometimes I cook for the holidays—with free turkeys from the needle exchange—but I stopped cooking for real when I left Puerto Rico. The food don't taste as good here. Nothing in America tastes like home.

After that old white lady leaves I move all her magazines to the common room, except for one—the holiday issue of
Gourmet
from a few years back. I hide it under my bed like a dirty magazine. I want something to be just mine. At night I tuck it inside a book so nobody can see the cover and I look at all the pictures, fantasizing about the food like it's sex. One night I tear out a few of my favorites and glue them to the wall with chewing gum. The other ladies put up pictures of their kids, but I can't.
I don't want to look at them yet. Not from in here. I don't want my kids to touch these walls, not even in a photograph.

The first letter I get is from Cristo's teacher. Why the hell is she writing to me? We ain't friends. She don't even know me. She knows my children, but she ain't no friend of mine. I want to throw it away, but she sent pictures of the kids and a copy of Cristo's report card. I hide the pictures under my pillow without even looking at them, but the report card goes on the wall for everybody to see. She says he's smart, my sweet boy, one of the smartest kids in her class, and he could be on the regular track if he did all his homework and showed up on time. She wants to know if I encourage him. If I ask to see his school projects. If I sit and read stories with him.

Who encouraged
me
, lady? Who read
me
stories? She thinks she gets me 'cause we're both Puerto Rican, but she don't get anything about me. She don't know how much I think of him. How I wake up at night with his name in my mouth. See his goofy grin in the mirror, his bright eyes looking just like mine. Every day I pray he finds what I hid for him. I want to ask him about it on the phone, but I can't risk getting caught. Cristo is a smart boy. He listens to me. He'll know where to find what I left for him. He knows me better than anyone.

When I first started using I was living in the Bronx with my cousin Chino and one day he caught me shooting up in the bathroom. He was pissed and he yelled at me for a while but at the end of the fight he just sat on the toilet and cried. He wouldn't look at me, but he kept saying, “Why you wanna die?” over and over again. I didn't say anything but I remember thinking, what's he talking about? I don't want to die. I want to live. I want to live the most, the highest, the hardest.

Don't nobody want to die.

 

       
S
HE SEES
a girl holding a broken lantern. The girl is alone. She stands in front of a house with no doors. A small house, filled with people she loves. A wind chime blows in the warm breeze. The sound like coins dropped in an empty glass. There is a porch swing, slowly rocking in the heat. Her father comes out of the house. The girl cannot see him, but she smells his cigar. She feels the heat of it near her arm, as if it was burning her skin. He touches her shoulder. “
Hija,
” he says softly. She holds her breath. He has been crying. She doesn't turn around. She refuses to move. Her mother is dead. She no longer wants to be alive.

Miss Valentín

T
he first time I saw Cristo's mother she was getting out of a pickup truck, tucking a twenty-dollar bill into her bra. It was March and she was wearing shorts and a tank top. I was picking Cristo up to take him to the park. She walked up to my car slowly, reeking of liquor and some sour smell I didn't recognize. She looked at me like she knew who I was, not because I was her son's teacher, but because she could tell things about a person by looking at them in the right light. As I rolled down the window she leaned into it, pushing against the glass like she wanted to test its strength, or her own. Then she asked me to take her for a ride.

I didn't take her up on the offer, then or any other time. Cristo is the only person I ever pick up from that house. I've asked him to invite his sister Luz to join us on some of our outings, but he always tells me she's busy. I can't imagine that a nine-year-old has that much to do. She reminds me of myself at that age, except her head is in a book while mine was always in a box of cookies.

When Cristo comes back to school after his mother gets arrested he acts like nothing happened. When I ask him in the morning how he's doing he says, “Fine,” and when I ask him after lunch he says, “Seriously, I'm fine,” and when I keep him after school to ask him again he says, “I'm not the one they locked up.” He tells me they're going to stay in the same apartment and that his mother's friend Lucho is going to take care of them, be their official guardian. I've never met Lucho, but I
saw her once, standing on the corner with a pack of men twice her size, and she was the one who looked scary.

“Are you okay with that?” I sit down at my desk. My knees often hurt after standing all day, something my mother tells me will change if I lose a little weight.

Cristo shrugs. I ask him if he wants to sit down but he keeps standing. He's short for his age, so we're about eye-level. He has the prettiest eyes, bright green like a gecko. I always thought my own son would have eyes like that, since half the men in my family have light skin and green eyes, a combination that gets them the best jobs and the richest women in New York and Puerto Rico.

“How well do you know her?”

“She sleeps over sometimes. Mami says having her there makes her feel better. Or safer.” He shrugs again, which makes his backpack slip off his shoulder. “Or something like that.”

I stop myself from fixing his backpack and remind myself that I am only his teacher, not his mother. “Do you like her?”

“Yeah, she's all right.” He rocks back and forth on his feet. His sneakers are too big, which causes half his foot to slip out. He slides it right back in and keeps rocking.

“How long have they been friends, she and your mom?”

“Don't know. A couple of months maybe. Since she got out of prison.”

“Lucho was in prison?” I try to keep my voice from rising. After four years at this school, the word prison should no longer shock me.

“She stabbed a guy who was trying to steal her pit bull.”

I nod and try to stay calm. Sometimes I think I should have trained as a social worker to do this job. “Does she get mad a lot?”

He shakes his head. “I think she stopped fighting after that. She's real quiet now. I usually forget she's in the house.” He finally fixes his backpack. “She's different from the rest 'cause I could never forget they were there, even when I tried.”

A car horn honks and I glance outside. The tops of the trees are just visible through my windows, their bright green leaves adding a splash of color to my normally dreary view.
I stand and walk toward the windows. In the distance, I see smokestacks from the power plant and the pitched rooftops of hundred-year-old houses that should have fallen years ago. I see the old water tower, which hasn't worked in decades but is too expensive to tear down, so the city just ignores it. And I see the twin striped towers of Atlantic Mills, an old warehouse filled with God knows what. When I first moved to Providence almost ten years ago, to go to a college that cost more each year than my parents made at both their jobs, I never saw this view. I lived on the east side, in ivy-clad brick dorms and restored Victorians that had views from every window, but never showed me this side of Providence.

“Can I go now, Teacher?”

When I turn around he is standing in the door to my classroom. I release the blinds slowly, blocking out the afternoon sun. In the darkness, his features blur and he could now be one of a dozen boys in my class: buzzed head; baggy clothes; empty backpack; and last but not least, a look of desperate indifference that somehow manages to border on contempt. “Sure. But promise to walk home safely.”

He smiles. “Only if you promise to drive like a lunatic.”

I laugh. “I'm a New Yorker, I always drive like I'm crazy.”

“Nah, Teacher. You're Puerto Rican, that's what makes you crazy.”

He points at me and winks like an old man making a bad joke. We laugh together, standing on opposite ends of the dimly lit room. He's still laughing as he walks down the hallway. I stand completely still, just listening to the sound of his joy.

I drop it after that and he seems to be okay during the last two weeks of school. He does all his work and shows up on time and everything seems fine on the outside. The only real difference is how he is with the other kids. I'm used to him being in the middle of a big group, the one laughing or yelling or singing the loudest, but every day he seems to withdraw a little more. His body shows up, but his spirit seems to be missing.

On the last day of school we have a class party to celebrate the end of the school year. While the other kids eat rice and beans their mothers cooked in huge tinfoil platters, Cristo sits at his desk shuffling cards. Even César, his best friend since the first grade, can't get him to eat a bite of food or play card games with anyone but himself. When their favorite song comes on, César dances alone on the improvised dance floor, his fiery red hair like the flames on a torch, while Cristo deals himself another hand of solitaire. Finally, five minutes before the final bell rings, I announce the last song. Krystal, Cristo's girlfriend for the last three months, walks across the room in front of everyone and asks him to dance. Cristo looks up at her and smiles. Then he tells her no.

Krystal, who is petite and pretty like a porcelain doll, is so new to rejection she doesn't recognize it. She stands next to his desk for the entire three minutes of the song, appearing to wait for him to change his mind. I feel sorry for her, so I turn off the music early. I have a lot of experience with rejection. I put all the desks back into rows and when the bell rings at 2:45 the school year is over.

“Don't forget to take everything out of your desks when you leave,” I remind my students, “and check your lockers on the way out. Next time you're back here you'll be in the fifth grade and this won't be your classroom anymore.”

I stand by the door and hug every student as they pass me by. “And don't forget to practice your English over the summer. Read every word you see. Go to the library and check out as many books as you can carry. And
speak
to each other. Practice makes perfect.”

“Does watching TV count?” César calls out from the back of the line.

“Only if it's educational.”

He turns to Marco, the only student in my class who tested out of Bilingual and will start on the regular track in the fall.

“Is Jerry Springer educational?” César asks.

“No,” Marco says. “She means like
Sesame Street
.”

“Oh.” César looks disappointed. “But I learn a lot from talk shows.”

“You
are
a talk show,” Marco says.

César laughs, hanging on Marco to keep himself up.

“Talk shows are entertainment.” I speak loud enough for everyone to hear. “They aren't about real life.”

He smiles a toothless smile. “Why not, Teacher? I want my life to be entertainment.”

This is the same kid who told me he didn't want a job when he grew up, he just wanted to cash his WIC checks and watch talk shows like his grandmother. I shake my head and pull him into a hug.

“
Ay, Dios mio
,” I say, pinching his cheeks as he pulls away from me. “What am I going to do with you, Señor Martinez?”

“When my grandmother gets mad she says she's gonna put me back in the system. Maybe you should do that, Miss Valentín?”

He's still smiling, oblivious to the implication. I force myself to match his smile.

“No, César. I will never want to do that.”

Before I can finish my sentence he's out the door and halfway down the hall, singing “La Cucaracha” to a group of sixth-grade girls at the water fountain. When friends ask me if I'm making a difference I think of moments like these and wonder if I can ever truly help anybody.

It takes several minutes for the room to finally empty, and only then do I notice Cristo sitting in my chair, his feet propped on the desk like he's been waiting all day for me to come find him. The soles of his sneakers are worn through and they look large enough to fit a man.

“You need help cleaning out this desk, Teacher?”

“Maybe. You need help figuring out where your feet belong?”

He drops his feet to the floor. The laces are tied as tight as possible, but the sneakers are still loose. His bare ankles float like buoys in the oversized shoes.

“You got a box?” he says.

I grab a cardboard box from the bookshelf and hand it to him. He begins to take the items off my desk, filling the box.

“You okay?” I ask him.

“Sure. Why not?” He packs my books in gently, as if every one were made of glass.

“Well, you didn't eat during the party.”

He shrugs. “Wasn't hungry.”

“And you didn't dance with Krystal.”

He keeps filling the box.

“Any reason?”

He shrugs again. “Nope. I just didn't feel like it.”

“Did something happen between you two?”

He doesn't answer.

“You still like her, don't you?”

“She's all right.”

“All right? Last month you passed her notes in every class.”

He picks up a snow globe and examines the miniature world inside. He shakes it before placing it into the box. “I just don't have the time anymore.”

“For what?” I ask him. “To pass notes? To dance?”

He smiles. “You know what I mean, Teacher. To have a girlfriend or whatever.”

“Cristo, come here for a minute.”

He walks over and stands next to me, leaning against the desk. “You're eleven,” I say, squeezing his shoulder. “You have plenty of time for a girlfriend. What you don't have time for is to carry the weight of the world on your back. Lighten up. Don't be in such a hurry to grow up.”

He cocks his head, as if he's trying to hear me better. I know he's listening, that he wants to understand, but I also know I should be talking to someone else. To Lucho or his mother, or God, if that would help—but to someone who could actually do something. Not to a child.

“I'm okay, Teacher. You don't have to worry about me, all right?”

“No, it's not all right. I'm a teacher. I was born to worry, just like a mother.”

He touches the leaves on a ficus plant almost his height, pulling a few of the dead ones off. “My mother don't worry.”

“
Doesn't
worry,” I say, stressing the correct grammar.

He makes a face. “You know what I mean.”

I make the face back, mocking him. He laughs, crumbling the dead leaves in his hand.

“How do you know she doesn't worry?” It's an obvious question to ask, yet suddenly I'm not sure I want to know the answer.

He shrugs, and I can see his eyes deciding to move on, to let this, and so many other things, go. “Anyway, school's over now. You're not even my teacher anymore.” He smiles as he pulls away from my hand, backing up in those big shoes.

“Wrong. I'm always going to be your teacher. And your friend. I don't care what the calendar says.”

“I know, I know. That's why I love you.” He looks surprised as the words come out, almost apologetic, and quickly averts his eyes.

I feel my own eyes welling up so I force myself to look away too. I can't let myself cry in front of a student, even if he is the only person aside from my parents to ever say those words to me. He stops to sprinkle the crumbled leaves into the garbage, watching the pieces fall like snow into the bottom of the can.

“See you next year, Teacher.” And then he walks out of the room without looking back.

“Don't even think about it, Señor. You're not going the whole summer without seeing me.” I follow him to the door, calling after him as he walks away. “I'll take you to the beach one day. Or to a movie, okay?”

“Okay, Teacher. You know where I live.” He throws up a hand to wave good-bye, but doesn't turn back around. Seconds later I watch him disappear down the stairwell.