Tuff (10 page)

Despite the Bonilla boys having enrolled in every karate and boxing school in Manhattan, Winston beat the brothers viciously and regularly, pulverizing every zygotic permutation: individually, Bendito and Enrique, Bendito and Miguelito, Enrique and Miguelito, all three at once. Like many bullied city kids, the Bonilla brothers had become auxiliary police officers right after finishing high school. Their civil servitude stemmed not from any sense of social justice; rather, it was a state-sanctioned training course for a job that would serve as an outlet for their vengeance and pent-up rage. Armed only with handcuffs, a flashlight, and a ticket book, the Bonilla brothers had a well-deserved neighborhood reputation for being the last ones on a crime scene, sucker-punching the suspect in a chintzy display of cop solidarity.

The Bonillas and their dog stopped in front of the stoop. The two factions, police and policed, looked at each other in silence for a few moments. Bendito, the oldest brother by three minutes, placed one shiny patent-leather shoe on the bottom stair. The hellhound, Der Kommissar, followed with a stumpy paw. Winston spat, the globule landing inches away from the tip of Bendito’s shoe, and the dog’s paw snapped back to the sidewalk.

“Afternoon,
morenos
,” came the greeting from Enrique.

“Buenas tardes a los tres pendejos. Ahora, vete por carajo,”
answered Winston. Der Kommissar, whose Spanish was better than the Bonillas’, growled.

“Yo, Tuffy, you better be glad this dog is on a leash, else you’d be in trouble, bro,” cautioned Bendito.

“That dog is leashed for its own protection, because I’m a dangerous nigger. He comes near me, it’s over for him.”

“Don’t you people see the No Loitering sign?” asked Enrique, using his flashlight to point out a rusty metal placard that since the turn of the century had been ignored by the poor and used by the police as an excuse for harassment. Both parties overlooked the broadsides sloppily wallpapered beneath the No Loitering sign. Still wavy and wet with paste, the block of posters read:
ON ELECTION DAY EMPOWER YOURSELF AND YOUR COMMUNITY—VOTE FOR MARGO TELLOS DEMOCRAT COUNCIL-WOMAN DISTRICT 8—LIMPIANDO NUESTRAS CALLES
.

Fariq made a halfhearted peace offering to the officers. “We’re not loitering. We’re having a board meeting. Planning how to make money this summer.”

“That wouldn’t include drug dealing, would it?” asked Miguelito, both hands tugging at Der Kommissar’s leash.

“I doubt it. We thinkin’ ’bout going legit this summer. Actually, Tuffy was just about to share with us his brainstorms.”

Winston lifted his leg and pulled out the handgun. The Bonillas hurriedly stepped back, falling over each other in a dither. As the triplets disentangled themselves from the dog’s leash, Winston pressed his advantage. He held the small pistol in the flat of his hand, showing it off like a downtown gunsmith. “Way I figure it is, we buy a shitload of guns, paint the noses and barrels that street-cone orange so they look like toy guns. That way when kids about to spark up an officer of the law, such as you all, the cop will freeze for that crucial second, thinking his assailant is holding a plastic toy. Surprise!” Winston stuffed the gun into his pants pocket.

“That’s not a bad idea,” commented Yolanda, throwing a “so there” glance in Nadine’s direction. The testy young gun molls cinched in closer to their respective men.

The Bonilla brothers straightened their ties and badges. Miguelito strummed his flashlight across the wrought-iron balusters, turning the railing into a cacophonous harp. “Any more bright ideas, fat boy?”

“
Sí, claro, mamao. I
was thinking we could pool our resources and make a movie,” Winston said, slipping the gun into his front pocket.

“Here we go.” Fariq perked up, temporarily suspending the discord with the Bonilla triplets. “Ever go to the movies with this motherfucker? My man be at the movies in places you didn’t even know had a theater. I went one time with this weirdo to see some Japanese flick at the YWCA, no less.”

“Stray Dogs,”
added Winston fondly.

“They showing the film on a wall. I’m not excited about having to spend the afternoon reading in the dark, but to make matters worse you couldn’t even read the subtitles.”

“Too fast?”

“Naw, in a movie where everybody is pale as Swiss cheese, sittin’ in a white room, wearin’ a white linen suit, they got the subtitles written in white letters. I was lost from the giddy-up—trying to read that shit was like trying to find Whitey at a hockey game. The nigger with the big lips could act, though.”

“Takashi Shimura.”

“That was the last time I went to the movies with Tuffy. I don’t feel comfortable. Don’t be nobody in the audience but retired old white people. Not a nigger in the entire place. Maybe one or two toothy motherfuckers flossing some white bitch. ‘Oh yes, Cannes this year was
incroyable.’
Faggots. No black couples in there, that’s for sure. How in the fuck you get interested in them foreign shits anyway, Tuff?”

“Playing hooky in the Village one day. Walked past a marquee on this little place that said
400 Blows
. My ignorant ass thought
400 Blows
was one of them kung fu joints, so I was like ‘One adult. Where the popcorn and soda at?’ Ready for some drunken-monkey style, know what I’m saying? Turns out the film—”

“Hear this nigger? ‘The film.’ ”

“Whatever. As I was saying, this French nigger and his crimey are …” Winston mumbled something under his breath.

Fariq cupped his ear. “What, son? I can’t hear you.”

Charles, who was sitting closer to Winston than Fariq, gladly explained, “I think Winston said, ‘looking for a poetry to explain their misunderstood lives.’ Then something that sounded like ‘Balzac.’ ”

Winston knew better than to give a heartfelt synopsis of a grainy black-and-white film that had inadvertently touched his heart and caused him to empathize with a loafer-shod French boy, Doinel, the young, unloved Parisian, running toward the sea in the last reel. Winston had wanted to chase behind him, clasp him on the shoulder.
Wait up. Where you going? Can I come with you? What’s the story with this fat motherfucker Balzac?

Winston vibrated his lips in disgust. “I didn’t say nothing about no Balzac, I said, ‘Him and his boy be like balls out.’ ”

“But you did say something about poetry, though.”

Ready to resume his tête-à-tête with Bendito, Winston walked toward the cop. “Anyway, I got two ideas for movies, one underground, one commercial.” Bendito, growing testy but feeling the security of his badge and a partisan court system, held his ground. Winston and Bendito stood forehead to forehead, nose tips touching like Eskimo lovers. Tuffy spoke, his voice cold and steady. “My underground joint is going to be straight-up guerrilla filmmaking. A snuff film where masked niggers go round ambushing police officers, field-testing those bulletproof vests. The boys come out the
Chino’s
wiping they chins—
kack! kack!
Shit going to
be called
Officer Down
. Sell them on the corner next to the bootleg Disney cartoons. All profits go to the families of those killed in police custody.” Winston took a deep breath and began reciting names drummed into his head by his father during the “police brutality” lectures he delivered during his infrequent custody weekends. “Ernest Sayon, Jason Nichols, Yong Xin Huang.” Droplets of Winston’s hot spit landed softly on Bendito Bonilla’s face and cooled in the light crosstown breeze. “Leonard Lawton, Frankie Arzuaga, Annette Perez.”

Bendito and his brothers slowly drew their flashlights from their holders. Winston backed up two steps, planted a loud kiss on each fist, and eyed the bludgeons dancing in front of his nose. Bendito lunged forward, eyes closed, hacking wildly at the space where Winston had stood a split second earlier. “I’m going add your name to that list.”

Fist cocked near his ear, Winston was poised to unload a punch when two thin arms grabbed him from behind and wheeled him back toward the stoop. Inez Nomura’s touch was as familiar to Winston as Yolanda’s. Emboldened by the sight of a small woman walking Winston away, the triplets raged on: “Let him go, you slant-eyed bitch!”

At one time Inez had admired the Bonillas’ spunk; at least the boys tried to stand up to Winston’s bullying. But the brothers had committed the unpardonable sin of joining the police force, becoming conspirators with the capitalist oppressors. Enrique stepped to Inez, his badge sparkling in the afternoon sun. “You goddamn zipperhead, don’t you watch the news? Communism is dead. The cold war is over. Cuba’s going to be the fifty-first state.”

“Fifty-second, man,
después
Puerto Rico!” corrected Miguelito.

“Fuck you—and shut up that dog!” snapped Winston. Inez and Yolanda calmed him with soothing words the Bonillas couldn’t hear.

“What y’all sayin’ to him?”

Yolanda turned and flipped a lavender acrylic talon at the trio. Inez raised a V for Victory into the air and teasingly shouted, “Workers of the world, unite!”

Bendito Bonilla replied, “None of these motherfuckers have jobs, so what you talking about, ‘workers’?”

The brothers turned to leave, scattering the crowd with shoves, snarls, and threats.
“Maricón,”
hissed Armello to Enrique, who, tugging Der Kommissar’s leash, turned and replied, “That’s
Mister
Maricón to you.”

When the triplets resumed patrol duty against a nearby brownstone wall, Inez asked Fariq what had happened. “It wasn’t nothing, Ms. Nomura. We was discussing moneymaking.”

“Why are you guys so preoccupied with money?”

“Because we don’t have none.”

“I don’t have any money either, Winston, but you don’t hear me complaining about it.”

“That’s because you too busy complaining about the system. And what you mean you don’t have
no
money?”

“You know how much I make running the school? Thirty thousand dollars a year. Not a whole lot of money.”

“Yeah, but you got a framed uncashed check for twenty thousand dollars on your bedroom wall next to the picture of you and your kids.”

“Doesn’t count. That’s blood money—a bribe from the United States government to be quiet, forget about the camps, and fall in line like a good American. A bribe that I never accepted. That restitution check is not my money, it’s a memento.”

Fariq shook his head. “You Chinese. If it was me I’d cash that check and put it right into the Hang Seng.”

“I’m Japanese.”

“The Nikkei then.”

“I get a restitution check too,” Nadine said meekly.

Fariq squinted at his girlfriend. “Fuck you talking about, Nadine? Niggers ain’t never got, ain’t never going to get, any restitution money.”

“My welfare sounds like the same thing Ms. Nomura talking about. And it’s more money in the long run.”

“Funny.”

Nadine, pleased with her joke, worked Jordy’s arms up and down like water pumps, producing a foamy saliva that bubbled from the baby’s mouth. “Tuffy, you sure this kid ain’t got rabies?”

The afternoon wore on, the shadows lengthened, and the tension died down. The neighborhood kids resumed playing stickball. The adults chattered like patrons in a theater lobby waiting for the bell to signal the next act. As veterans, they knew the edges on a rough East Harlem weekend were never smooth. “Tuff, what your commercial idea for a movie?”

“That’s right, Boo, you never said.”

A smile lit up Winston’s face like a camera flash. He pretended to
close one eye around an Otto Preminger monocle. “Okay, picture this:
Cap’n Crunch—the Movie
.”

“What? The cereal, yo? You buggin’,” Nadine said, tapping her index finger on her temple.

“Hollywood’s remade all the cartoons—
The Flintstones, Popeye, Batman
—but nobody has done a cereal. The commercials are just as popular as the cartoons. Captain Crunch sailing on an ocean of milk, having adventures and shit. Shit would be slamming.”

The gang started to giggle, seeing the appeal of the idea and unable to fight off Winston’s infectious enthusiasm. “You got the Carlisle and the little white kid sailor motherfuckers for that matinee PG feel.” The group closed in around Tuffy, peppering him with questions. “Who gonna play Cap’n Crunch?”

“Danny DeVito.”

“What was the thing that steered the boat?”

“Sea Dog, fool. And I’m going to have Smedley the stupid elephant rampaging to get to the Peanut Butter Crunch. The fucking Crunchberry Beast, all yellow with strawberry polka dots and shit. You know who going to be the costar?”

“Who?”

“The invisible motherfucking Goo-Goo!”

The group convulsed with laughter, giddy with the reminiscence of how important breakfast cereal was to a kid’s sanity.

Inez folded her arms and looked at Winston and his friends high-stepping around her. Their glee was contagious, and she wanted to join them, but age and psychological distance immobilized her. She felt as if she were tied to the stake while the natives whooped and pranced. Tuffy wiped the tears from his eyes with his wrist. “Don’t give me that look out of the corner of your eye, Ms. Nomura. You about to start that ‘If you’d only channel your energy, harness your intelligence, you could be the next Malcolm X’ bullshit. Remember how you sent me the Koran when I was in jail? Well, I never told you this, but I traded it for some astronomy magazines stolen from the library. So you can forget about that by-any-means-necessary bullshit.”

A
lmost four decades ago Inez was in her early twenties, a University of Washington dropout, and procrastinating in New York
before returning to the drudgery of her parents’ chicken farm just outside of Olympia. There was no better place to put off poultry raising than Manhattan in the early sixties.

Every morning she would go to the observation deck of the Empire State Building and place pennies into the power telescopes, bringing into focus the beatnik far-out, bebop outta-sight—and New Jersey. A week before the spring molt, she received a letter from her mother. It was in English—the language her mother often bragged was taught to her by her personal tutor, Lionel Barrymore, who held class in Seattle’s Rialto Theater. The letter’s curt B-movie telegram prose was all too clear. There was no salutation.