Читать книгу Throw - Rubén Degollado - Страница 7

When we drove into the La Plaza Mall parking lot in McAllen, there was this long line of cars trying to get out, and a long line of cars trying to get in. It was like cruising Tenth Street on Saturday night. Even though we were from Dennett, we knew McAllen had the most money, the nice stores, and the mall. Even if there was barrio on the South Side of McAllen where my grandma lived, this is where the rich people from Mexico came to shop. The fresas with land and titles could cross the border, then drive back with carloads of name brand clothes and perfumes they had bought at Dillard’s, crossing freely unlike the poor Mexicans who crossed the river at night, led by coyotes who took advantage of them.

Money made all the difference in the Valley. Even though all of the towns are pushed together, where you can be on one side of the street and be in one town, then cross the street and be in the other, there are differences between them, and then differences within them. Like Pharr was really hood in some parts and you couldn’t just drive into some neighborhoods with your windows open and think you were going to be safe, you could also accidentally drive into a trailer park that was full of Winter Texans with money, old gringos that lived in the Valley while their homes up north were snowed in.

Or you could go to Sharyland and see all of the nice houses and the white people from the old families and wonder if you were still in the Valley, or then see a house with all kinds of Mexican Nationals coming and going, and wonder if they made their money from the import/export business that no one asked about.

Dennett was like that too. It had its barrio and then it had places like where I lived. When you thought about it, each town was a little contradiction, a north side and a south side, rich and poor, old and new. They had this in common, but the difference between the towns is that their extremes are more extreme. Even though you could have rich and poor people in the same towns, we all knew that no one had money like McAllen or Sharyland did and no one had barrios like Dennett or Pharr did.

As we waited in line to get into the mall, Smiley, who was still sitting next to the window, pulled this trick he was always doing. He leaned forward to where someone outside of the truck couldn’t see him. Smiley had his head down low and he was laughing.

A car full of girls looked at me and Ángel, and started laughing because we were sitting so close together without a space between us. To everybody outside of the truck, because they couldn’t see Smiley, it looked like me and Ángel were sitting all lovey-dovey. I started punching Smiley in the ribs, but he wouldn’t sit up straight. He just started laughing harder. So then Ángel put his arm around me and I started punching him too. What I didn’t know in that moment was that this stupid game we were playing would later be the thing that changed our lives forever.

I had a little money to spend at the mall since I had taken some from Pop. I hardly ever bought anything besides food because Pop would start wondering where I had gotten money from if he saw new things in my room. Pop might start looking at his money clip, see all these new things, and start wondering. If he ever found out, it would definitely not be good. Even though Pop wasn’t like one of those fathers who punched their sons or burned them with cigars, he still slapped me if I messed up or didn’t show him or Mama respect.

Pop had these sandpaper hands from working on houses so much. I knew this because one time I had talked real ugly to mama, telling her Quit being a stupid hypocrite, because she wouldn’t leave me alone about skipping classes. She would sleep in until noon whenever she felt like it, and didn’t have to work so I thought, Who is she, bien mantenida, to be talking? When Pop came home that day, Mama told him what I had said, and he walked over to the kitchen table where I was eating some fideo with carne picada Mama had made for us. I thought he was going to yell at me, but no, he just walked over and slapped me in the face, which felt like being punched. All he said in this quiet voice was, You ever talk to your mother like that again it’s going to be worse.

That’s all he needed to say. I just sat there with a fideo noodle hanging out of my mouth, my face stinging, and knew I would never say anything like that to Mama again.

Ángel said, “Órale, let’s go to Rave. Brenda and Gladis were supposed to be there today, shopping.” I wondered if my ex was going to be there at Rave with them. I wasn’t in any kind of mood to see Llorona La Ex-girlfriend. I didn’t want to play the usual ghost games where we tried to pretend we didn’t exist to each other.

Karina Galán, who everyone called Llorona, the daughter of the Witch Woman Señora Galán had been out of my life for three months now and I was happy about it. La Ex was gacha, the things she had done to me. With all the things she had done, how she had almost killed herself in junior high, how she had taken the name of a ghost, some people would say she was bien psycha and should have stayed in Charter Palms where they put the addicts, nervous breakdowns, and attempted suicides. I had thrown down on so many fools for talking like that about her, but what hurt the most was when Ángel or Smiley or anyone in our circle started talking like this about her, even now that we weren’t together and despite how we had broken up.

The thing was, they didn’t know her like I used to, how we would talk, how she would show me her book of poems and get all nervous and look away while I read one, how she would ask me what I thought about her one day getting one of her poems with the art on the sides of the page published in Lowrider Arte magazine. She was the only one I ever talked to about reading and books and poems, the books I checked out at the library when Ángel and Smiley weren’t around.

All the others knew was the Llorona identity she had adopted. We had all heard the stories of La Llorona, each of our parents telling us the story to scare us into being obedient, to never sneak out of the house at night. The version of La Llorona I grew up hearing from my mother was about a woman living along the Río Grande who had fallen in love with a soldier. The soldier told her he loved her as well, but could never marry her because of her two children. Out of desperation and her desire to marry the soldier, the woman drowned her children in the river. When she told the soldier what she had done, how she was now free to marry, he was disgusted with her, called her a monster and then left the town. She went mad for what she had done. She had nothing, no children or a lover. In her madness, wearing the white wedding dress she had bought in anticipation of her marriage, she threw herself into the river, searching for her murdered children, drowning herself. Because of her sin, God didn’t let her into heaven and cursed her to forever walk along the river, weeping for what she has done, calling out, “Mis hijos, my children, where are you?” Each night she does this, never finding her own children, and satisfies her guilt by taking the children of others, making them her own. They are never seen again.

This is who Karina had become, a ghost named Llorona who dragged others down with her, the girl she had once been long forgotten. Would I see Llorona’s apparition today? I thought as I walked towards Rave. Would she drag me down with her?

Rave sold the spaghetti strap blouses, the mini skirts, the short shorts, the bright stomach shirts and the platform shoes all the bien buenas liked to wear, the ones where they could show off their pretty feet with the fancy nail polish.

The three of us walked up to Rave with its bright neon lights and clothes and some of the girls working there smiled at us as they hung up blouses and folded.

“Smiley’s here,” Brenda said as she came out of the dressing room, over the thumping techno Rave always had playing. Smiley got all red because he had been mad in love with Brenda since he was a seventh grader and she was an eighth grade woman. Smiley had always liked the bigger girls, but in Smiley’s eyes, Brenda was the queen of them.

Ángel said, “¿Qué onda, Brenda?” Like every dude we had ever seen around Brenda, none of us could take our eyes off of her. Brenda shows a lot of skin, and she had it all in the right places. Brenda’s big all over, but good big, the best kind of big.

She ran up to Smiley, wearing these green short shorts and this top without straps. Brenda went up and put her arm around him, and it always made me laugh how much bigger she was than him.

Smiley got even redder, and because he was so dark, you knew he was all embarrassed.

Brenda pulled him in closer and said, “How’s my Cositas doing?” She kissed him on the cheek, and because she was wearing these shoes with big heels, she leaned over him to do it. Her name for Smiley was Cositas, which literally meant Little Things. Whenever we wanted to mess with Smiley and how he was mad in love, we called him Cositas. We always joked about how if they ever hooked up together, he would tag on the restroom walls at school: Cositas and La Brenda, Together Forever.

Smiley looked down at his shoes and said, “Good, y tú?”

“You know me, Cositas. This girl’s always fine.”

“You got that right, girl,” Smiley said and made this face like a little kid who’s thinking about candy.

Brenda said, “Ay Cositas, you’re so cute. When we going to hook up?”

“Just say the word, Brenda, and I’m yours.”

“Ay Cositas, you’re so chulo and sweet, I wouldn’t want to ruin you for other women. You’d be with me and any woman after me would just be a cheap replacement.”

Smiley looked at her up and down, and said, “Ay ruin me, por favor, ruin me.”

Brenda touched the tip of his nose, all flirty like she always did.

All of a sudden, these two older vatos came up behind us from nowhere now that Brenda was acting all in love with Smiley. They didn’t smile or throw up their chin in greeting.

Ángel and I turned and looked at them, into their eyes. By not looking away, we gave them a challenge they had to respond to. This kind of situation, it can go two ways, and the way we wanted it to go didn’t happen as we were about to find out. I wanted them to lift their chins and keep them there, or spread out their arms, telling us Qué onda, without saying anything. Then, all of us would have gone outside to throw blows or bullets.

Brenda knew what was about to go down because she got between us and said, “Hey you all, this is my cousin Rey and his friend Eddie. They’re from Pharr. This is Ángel.” She put a hand on my arm and said, “And this is Cirilo, but we call him Güero.” Something changed in Rey’s eyes when Brenda introduced me, and he gave half a smile like he was saying, I know you. I know about you. What was up with that? The vato named Eddie gave Smiley an asco look, like he was disgusted about Smiley talking to Brenda. Smiley didn’t even notice the mad-dogging because his eyes were all over Brenda. But Smiley was that way anyway, always putting himself in places where he could get messed up and not even think about it, like crossing train tracks without looking both ways.

Rey and Eddie were both shorter than me or Ángel but were almost as big as Ángel in the shoulders. They were probably eighteen or nineteen, maybe even twenty. Now that we knew Rey was cousins with Brenda, we gave our qué ondas, the kind of looks where you just raise your chin a little, don’t smile at all, and wait for the other to look away first. If I had kept just looking down at him, it still could have started us going a couple of rounds. Brenda put her arms through mine and Ángel’s, pulled us away from Rey and asked, “So, how do you all like my new clothes?” Eddie didn’t seem to like that too much, the way she turned around in circles for us. Get over the feeling, I thought.

The question that kept going off in my head like a firecracker was this: where’s Llorona? And as if she knew what I was asking, the dressing room door opened and out she walked. Llorona wore a white shirt that showed her tight brown stomach with the HCP tattoo, her belly button ring and these white pants. She had the blue make up tears on the inner corners of her black eyes, the only tears she cried now. Llorona’s hair was pulled back, but with two dagger thin horns of hair, cuernitos pointing to her demonia smile, her small lips shaded a brown so dark it was almost black. Her naked throat was so long and pretty, her collarbone so thin and delicate like a bird’s. I remembered holding onto Llorona’s neck when I used to walk her to all her classes, which always made me tardy. At first she didn’t like me to do this because she said it looked like I owned her. What I had said was that I was proud of her, how beautiful she was, but that I could never own her. Llorona would never belong to anyone. How do you own a ghost?

But Rey was the one who was proud of her today, and with the way he was looking at me, it all started to make sense. For a second Llorona gave me this look like she was going to smile and hug and kiss me, as if these months of us being apart had never really happened. This was the way it was with us. Because we had been together since seventh grade, off and on for almost four years, whenever we saw each other now, it always took a second to remember we weren’t together anymore. We were habits to each other. As soon as we did remember we weren’t together anymore, the ghost game began, where we pretended to see right through each other. I never told Ángel or Smiley, but I always hoped one of us would stop playing the ghost game, that those seconds of forgetting our not going around would go on and on and turn into minutes and hours and longer, that our apparitions would take shape, becoming flesh and blood and bone, our hands reaching out to one another to make sure we were real.

Llorona smiled and I felt something in my chest, down the back of my neck I had not felt in a long time.

But Llorona wasn’t looking at me, and she sure wasn’t smiling for me.

She was smiling for Rey.

Qué gacha. This was what his looks were all about.

Rey was looking at her with his player smile, the one that says, I own you. Rey had no idea who Llorona was, the kinds of things she could do to people. Did he think we called her Llorona for nothing? Would she be named for the ghost-woman who drowned her babies in the Río Grande River if she was just some pichona you could control, some trained little pigeon who would always come back to you?

Llorona was no harmless little pigeon. She was the lechuza, the owl you see just before someone is about to die, the one that haunts you in your dreams and you never want to see in real life because it means you are about to lose someone you love.

“Te gusta?” He was talking about the clothes. “I like. Come on, throw those old rags away and let me pay for these new clothes.” He pulled out a thick roll, giving everybody a chance to see. I looked at his hands. Tattooed on the knuckles of his left hand was El Rey. Family or not, I wanted to take that roll and stick it in his mouth, to make him cry like a vieja. Who’d he think he was? Coming from Pharr, tattooing the King on his hand, buying clothes for a Dennett girl, and then looking to throw me a challenge? Who did this guy think he was? I mean we had hood in Dennett, but not like his neighborhood, where you heard all the rumors about the shootings, the drive-bys, the grandmas getting robbed, that security guard at El Centro Mall getting stabbed with a pencil when there was a fight outside the movies.

If he thought he was moving up in the world just because of some ink that said he was made-up royalty, and being with one of our girls, he was crazy. Here I maybe should’ve thrown it right back. I should’ve thrown up my chin and arms, told him, Qué onda, this way. But I did nothing, because if I showed any emotion, Llorona would win the game we had been playing. Llorona would get me to admit she still mattered to me. I wanted the game to end, but that didn’t mean I was going to lose to make it happen. I wasn’t playing that. And besides, he wasn’t worth my time and effort.

Llorona laughed like the sweet stupid pichona she never was. Why was she playing this game with him? Even in these months we had been apart, she had never tried to make me jealous. The only game she played was the ghost game, where she pretended not to see me, so I knew that wasn’t it. Llorona was putting on a pichona play for something else, but I didn’t know why. She walked over with Rey to the counter, tiptoeing with her bare feet on the white tiles. They were talking and laughing and Rey kept looking at me to make sure I knew what was up. His eyes said, El Rey y Llorona y qué, güey? What are you going to do?

Our other friend Gladis came from the back of Rave where she’d also been trying on clothes and gave us her saludos in Spanish, which was all she really spoke because she’d only been here a few years. Brenda and Llorona had made friends with her right away, protecting her from the other girls in PE, the ones who called her a mojada and asked her for her green card and all that. And this coming from girls just as brown as Gladis, the only difference being they were Mexicans born on this side of the border. Llorona and Brenda had jumped some girls one time for talking like that to her and that was all it took. They left Gladis alone after that, even during those days when Llorona and Brenda were suspended for fighting.

Gladis still had this straight, long pretty hair like girls from Mexico wear it, without lots of hairspray and not colored at all. Gladis was pretty the way she was and she didn’t need to change, but she was wearing Rave clothes now, a long sleeve blouse with only two buttons, opened wide at the stomach. Brenda’s dad had probably given her some money and she was buying Gladis a little something. Like me, Brenda didn’t live in the South Side of Dennett and had a father with money. Our pops even knew each other from both being in the construction business.

Brenda said, “Mira no más. Look at you, girl. Mamasota!” Gladis hid her face in her hair. “Ángel, don’t you think she looks good?”

“The young lady is beautiful, noble and true. But you Brenda, you’re going to get arrested. Just make sure the chotas don’t see you walking down 17th Street in McAllen.” Brenda just rolled her eyes. All the time Ángel had known Gladis, he had never said anything like this to her, like he said to Brenda. We never would either. She wasn’t that kind of girl.

Gladis parted her hair to find my eyes. She glanced towards Llorona and gave me her smile with no teeth, and I knew what she meant. For some reason, Gladis was always checking on me, seeing how I was when it came to Llorona. Her eyes said, Sorry, I know how you must feel right now, and I’m sorry.

Gladis was the only one who knew or cared what was happening in me, so if I kept up the show, I would lose nothing. The best thing to do was to continue to ignore it all, come back to the land of the living, adding Rey to the ghost world where Llorona roamed. But the thing about fantasmas is they don’t always stay in their world where they should, and they intrude on the land of flesh and blood. The only thing to do now was to act bored and walk away now that Llorona and Rey were on display, so I wouldn’t lose and look weak. Ángel and Brenda asked me where I was going, but I didn’t turn around. I just walked out and ignored all the voices coming from Llorona’s world. Me walking out made her win in some way, but I didn’t care. I had to go. I wasn’t going to fight for her or show her anything else. Llorona didn’t deserve one drop of my blood for what she had done to me, even though I could’ve taken that fool Rey.