Читать книгу Throw - Rubén Degollado - Страница 8
three
ОглавлениеWhen I got out of there, it seemed like all the people in the mall, all the snotty kids and their moms were bumping into me and their voices were too loud and I wanted to get out, to go anywhere but here, like I was a hurt animal wanting to go away and die in some dark corner. I probably would’ve even gone home if I’d been the one driving.
“Oye Güero espérate, wait up, wait for me güey.”
It was Smiley’s voice. He said, “Where you going?” Who else could it have been but Smiley? Ángel would have never followed me out, unless it had been his idea to leave. This was how Smiley always had my back. His was the only voice that could be heard in both worlds, the living and the dead. When Llorona was around, I slid into her fantasma land, the place where her cold fingers could reach out and drag me down into her waters of death and desolation. Smiley’s voice could pull me back, his words like hands reaching down for me, pulling me up, overpowering Llorona’s grip, saving me from the fate she wanted for me, a fate I wanted for myself more and more with each passing moment I spent time in her world.
I didn’t say anything, but listened to every word he said, welcoming and not welcoming them, as they pulled me back to the world of light and the living.
Smiley said, “Don’t be like that. No te aguites. Do you want to go to Spencer’s? Maybe Musicland?”
I went, psh through my teeth, telling him, Forget that noise about Spencer’s.
He said, “Then, let’s go outside for a while, smoke a cigarette. ¿Está bien?”
Now we were sitting on the curb at the Dillard’s entrance, under a palm tree, trying to get shade because the sun was coming down gacho. Smiley had this camouflage Zippo lighter he always played with. He could do tricks with it, snap his fingers to turn it on, run it along his pants to open it, run it back to turn it on. He played with his lighter more than he smoked. I think he smoked just so he could play with his Zippo lighter.
“You should forget about her.” He lit two cigarettes and handed me one. I didn’t smoke, just at parties, but I really wanted one.
“I know, I know.” I said and blew smoke out of my nose.
“Yeah güey, don’t you remember all she put you through? How she wouldn’t even let you go anywhere with me or Ángel without getting all jealous. She was always jealous or pissed off at you for something. No está bien. Don’t you remember?” He was talking about how any time I wanted to spend time away from her, she always gave me the questions, the looks that could last for days, and this is what he wanted me to remember right then, but that is not what came to my mind. I thought of the moment I first met Llorona in seventh grade, back when she was still known as Karina.
I had walked into the cafeteria with Ángel and Smiley who I’d recently started hanging around with and we saw Karina, Brenda, and Gladis talking quietly to each other, looking our way. I was new to the school, not having gone to elementary in Dennett, and didn’t know them. Brenda called out across the cafeteria and said, Hey you, private school kid, you with the colored eyes, venga! Come over here, my friend wants to tell you something! Some girls from another table turned around and looked at them and Brenda said, Hey feas, why don’t you take a picture? It lasts longer. All three of them busted out laughing, and I thought it was a bad idea to go over there and maybe look stupid. I looked at Ángel and Smiley then, and they cocked their heads to the side and shrugged their shoulders, telling me it was my call to make.
I walked over to the girls and Karina was laughing, covering her mouth, while Gladis was trying to clean herself up because milk was coming out of her nose. From the flash I’d seen of Karina’s teeth, they were crooked, but not like Smiley’s. The two incisors on either side of her front teeth were pushed in toward the center, making them look sharp, almost like a vampire’s. Brenda said, My friend Karina wants to know if you’d like to sit with us. I sat down and looked into her eyes, which were darker than I had ever seen, almost black. Other times, I would have said the right thing, because I had game even in seventh grade, but in that moment, nothing came to my mind. She tilted her head, leaned in close, grabbed my chin and pulled me closer to her, examining my eyes. She then reached out her hand to shake mine, but still didn’t say a word. We didn’t let go when we were supposed to release, and everyone got quiet. If there was a beginning to our going around, this was it. There was no Will you be my girlfriend, Circle Yes or No, notes, no proclamations of my love, no flowers left in her locker. It was this moment, just our hands reaching out for each other and not letting go until it was time to end it.
“Yeah, I remember,” I said now. Whenever someone told me how messed up she was, I thought about this moment in the cafeteria, the girl I knew, who was not like Llorona at all. She was the one who wrote poems about love and hope and read them to me in this shaky, little-girl’s voice. I was the only one besides Brenda and Gladis who had read her poems.
What most people like Smiley thought of when they saw Llorona was her standing up on the stadium bleachers at Dennett Junior High. She was up there all messed up on something, crying and yelling she didn’t deserve to live. I saw her leaning out on the wrong side of the hand railing with her arms out wide behind her, her feet hanging off the ledge.
This was a couple of months after we had met, after everyone knew we were together and everyone still called her Karina. The stadium at Dennett Junior High was way up there and everybody was standing around, looking up. Brenda and some other girls cried into each other’s hair and they couldn’t answer us when we asked them what was wrong with her. They kept telling me to do something, to help her and shook their hands like they were trying to get something sticky off of them. The teachers kept saying, Go to class, go to class, and pushed me back as I tried to get to her, while no one else moved or did anything.
Some idiotas in the crowd yelled up to her, Jump! Jump-up in the air. Wave ’em like you just don’t care. They said this because if she let go, she would come down for sure. Even though she didn’t need to, Brenda asked Ángel and me to jump those mensos and you should have seen them after, all cagados whenever they saw any of us.
Coach Sánchez got closer and closer to her, but she moved away from him, like he was going to hurt her. She cried harder and screamed, I’m going to jump, I’m going to jump!
Coach Bernál came at her from the other side and Karina didn’t see him because she was trying to get away from Coach Sánchez. And then she got quiet, closed her eyes and let go.
Karina started to fall backwards, her arms out wide, but Coach Bernál reached out and caught her by the wrist. He pulled her up and threw her on the safe side like she didn’t weigh anything at all. Later as I played it over in my head, I kept remembering how far away Coach Bernál had been from her when she jumped. I kept wondering how he had gotten to her so fast, how it was impossible.
The chotas finally came and all of us, we just stood out there watching them put Karina into the police car. I remember how her head was down and she couldn’t look at any of us. I wanted her to see my eyes, to know that we were all glad she hadn’t killed herself. Karina needed to know that counted for something. They took her away to Charter Palms where they put her on suicide watch. All her girls went to go see her, taking her flowers and stuffed animals. I went with them, but had nothing to give her, only my love.
I remember walking into Charter Palms, the woman inside the window asking me to sign in, telling me I had to wait a while because there were too many visitors. I sat down and Coach Bernál was there. I wanted to ask him how it was he had reached out to her, but I didn’t say anything. I just sat there while he tried to talk to me.
Cirilo, right? But they call you Güero, right?
Yeah, that’s it.
Coach Sánchez told me about you. He says you play real good B-ball. You ever thought of going out for the team? You’re built for it.
I went pssh. Basketball didn’t mean anything. Football was the only sport anybody cared about. The basketball teams played whole seasons with only two or three people watching, and these were just girlfriends or moms.
No vale, I said.
Anyway, son. He was one of those coaches who called his players son. He was trying to treat me like I was one of his football players so I would talk to him, so he could be the important male role model in my life for fifteen minutes. I came here to visit Karina. Were you at school today? Did you see what happened?
I thought, I did and I saw how you reached out for her, how you were the big man and all of us little boys couldn’t do anything. I said, Yeah I was there.
It was a miracle, let me tell you, that girl wasn’t supposed to die today. I don’t know how I caught her, but I did. It was incredible.
I said, Ya’mbre, you did a great job, we all love you. You have made such a difference in our lives. Teacher of the Year. At least you should get a nice coffee mug out of this.
Coach Bernál interrupted me and said, No son, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that that girl, she’s special. You’re her friend and you need to take care of her. Tell her that life is good, that it’s worth living.
Brenda and Gladis came out and they were crying, holding each other all dramatic like they’d just lived through a bombing or hurricane. The door buzzed and the lady in the window said it was okay if I went in now. Coach Bernál nodded at me to walk in and I was glad I didn’t have to listen to him anymore.
He said, You can speak words of life or death to her, son, it’s up to you.
What was up with that? My words never killed or saved anyone and never would. They were just words and always would be.
I walked into the cafeteria where they let everyone visit and there were families at tables, talking all quiet. All I could hear were their voices and the juice machine humming. When she saw me, she walked up real fast and held out her hands. She was crying when she said, Take me with you. I want to go home. I want to go with you. No wonder Brenda and Gladis had been crying. My girl was messed up.
She put her arms around me and looked up. Her mascara made black lines down her face and when she asked me to get her out of there again, her breath smelled sour, like she’d just woken up. She was wearing flea market rejects, this ugly night-shirt with a teddy bear on the front and these sweatpants. Why did they have to take her clothes too?
We sat down at one of the tables and I was still holding her when she said, I want to go, I don’t want to be here, I want to go home, take me home.
I told her, Ssh ssh ssh, it’s okay.
Then like I’d told her something mean, she pulled away real quick and said, Don’t tell me that, don’t you ever tell me that. Get out of here! Get out, I don’t want you here!
I said, Karina I was just. . . . I didn’t get to finish what I was saying because she slapped me in the face and kept on slapping. These big dudes with Charter Palms badges clipped to their belts came in and told me I had to leave. They pulled Karina up and told her visiting time was over, that she had to go to her room now.
Leave me alone! Let me go, let me out! She twisted her body and tried to get free from them, but they held her arms real tight.
They were moving her through the other door when she said to me, I can’t believe you hurt me like this. I can’t believe you’re not helping me, telling me ‘ssh’ when I just needed you to be nice. I hate you Güero, I hate you.
Karina had problems none of us could help her with. Right then I was sure of this, but I also knew something else. I would try to help her anyway, and I loved her even more, in ways I could not explain.
Later when I talked to Brenda about her, she said that Karina changed after that. She didn’t need to tell me, though. She was cold to me and for a long time, would not even hold hands with me, as if she was pulling away to some place I could not follow. Everyone saw it, how the girl we knew as Karina was slowly going away. She didn’t cry for anything like she used to and she started wearing those blue makeup tears on the inside of her eyes, which made her eyes look even blacker. She started drawing ghost faces and skipping school just to smoke cigarettes at Bonham Hill Cemetery and read the tombstones and would take a long walk to go spend time at the caliche pit where the kids had drowned in the bus accident. She had known a lot of them, and had even been best friends with one of the girls.
Because of this, and because of the Llorona tag she started drawing on her binder and papers, people started calling her Llorona. The only tears were the painted ones now. Then she started to get into more fights, jumping any girl who looked at her wrong, or talked bad about her. I knew she was doing it so everyone would forget about her up there on the bleachers, crying and messed up, out of control. But none of them would forget, and they’d never stop asking why she’d wanted to kill herself. I’d asked Llorona why, and she would ignore the question, as if she couldn’t hear me. How had she been hurt enough to want to kill herself? And if she did answer, she would only say, Maybe someday I’ll tell you, Güero. Maybe when I’m stronger. Months later, she would tell me the truth of what had happened to her, but I never told anyone, because it wasn’t my story to tell, no matter what she did to me.
Now Smiley said, “Let me tell you, Llorona’s no good for you. Into that brujería of her mama’s curses, hearing all that talk from spirits and devils, messing around with that Ouija board. You really want that? She’s got you messed up with one of her mama’s curses on you. I know from experience. Let me tell you one thing about my jefe. After he’d been drinking and he’d had a few, he used to tell us stories about a bruja he went out with before he met my mom.”
“This witch he was going out with was like Llorona and her mother. Any man who left her or did her wrong she would make sick, and just like that—” He tried to snap his fingers. He tried again and said, “And just like that.”
I snapped my fingers loud and said, “You mean like that?”
“Yeah güey, you got it, así, just like that, the man would die. Now do you want that?”
He talked and his eyes were all big, like he was telling me scary stories near a fire. I laughed because I knew one of his stories was coming, because Smiley was making me forget like he always could. His whole face moved when he told stories, every muscle in his face working to make you think of the story he was telling you, and not about what you were going through at the moment.
“Let me tell you one thing: before my dad married my mom, he was all serious with this witch lady from Mexico named Esmer. Esmer de las Something. Esmer de las Pacas, las Parrancas, Esmer de las something like that. Anyway, my jefe and this lady talked about getting married. My pops soon heard from one of my tías about Esmer’s hechizos on people and let me tell you, my pops didn’t want to be with a witch woman. So what he did was, he told Esmer he didn’t want to go around anymore and you know what? Let me tell you, she put an hechizo around him, but not a curse bad enough to kill him, because she loved him so much. That was the kind of mojo my Dad had with the ladies. But in a way güey, what she did to him was worse. Much, much worse than any kind of death. Let me tell you, what happen was, my pops got this chorro that wouldn’t go away. Day and night he was in the bathroom, going and going, pooping his brains out hasta que se echó una bota. Así, like you could a hear a boot hitting the water.”
He made his face all red and strained-looking. “All he could do was say, ‘I’m going to die, I’m going to die,’ and buy all the Gatorade he could buy at the Centrál. De verás güey, it was diarrhea from Satan.”
“Whatever, Smiley.”
He grabbed my arm, “No, no, no, it was The Evil Runs, güey. For reals, true story, I’m not kidding.” I was laughing now, forgetting all about Llorona and Rey.
“I’m serious, ése. Let me tell you, my jefe, he almost died from dehydration and frustration from having to sit on the toilet so much. He even lost his job because of it. So then what he did right, was he hired a curandera to do a cleaning on him, and she rubbed the egg over his body and he was all better. The little egg sucked out all the curse from his body like some kind of spiritual vacuum cleaner. Afterward, my jefe was laying there, sweating. He was thinking how nice it would be to go to the restroom like a normal person without having to kick everybody out of the house, because when he was cursed every cagada was like an exorcism. Then the curandera said she wanted to show my jefe something. She broke the huevito and poured out the yolk, which is normally yellow, right. But let me tell you, the yolk looked all black, like tar or something, and it smelled gacho, like menudo that had been left outside for three days. The curandera poured the evil yolk into a coffee can, and said all the evil was there in the Folgers. Let me tell you my dad could never eat eggs again. He would just smell eggs cooking, right, and then get real bad asco like he needed to throw up or have the runs and have to go drop water again. Así.”
His face went all red again like he was on the toilet. “‘Ay Dios mío, I’m dying. Give me peace.’ That was my jefe. He always told us stories like that.”
I looked at him as he stared off, thinking about his jefe. What was it like to not have your father anymore, to know that he was gone forever? Mine was a drunk and I barely saw him, but at least he was still physically around. The crazy thing was, Smiley and Ángel’s dad was more present in their lives than mine was. I knew because in their apartment, their mom had a shrine set up in his memory. There were snapshots of their father when he was an old school pachuco with the black hairnet and the Stacy Adams shoes. Old school. When Ángel was born, he straightened out, quit hanging out on the streets, but it didn’t matter. The cancer from the cigarettes got him. The way Ángel and Smiley talked about him, he was a good man when he was alive, letting them smoke cigarettes and drink beer with him if their mama wasn’t around, playing cards and always talking about the old days when he was in the gangs in McAllen. My father knew who he was back in the day, and said he would fight with knives or tire irons, always fighting dirty. But like I said all his gangster ways changed when he had Ángel and then Smiley. He had taken care of them and was home a lot. It wasn’t good or fair that he was dead.
Real quick, because he could see something else starting in my eyes, he said, “Cirilo, it’s a true story, carnál, and I tell it to you so you’ll forget about her. Ella no vale.”
He was probably right. She wasn’t worth it. “You think so, huh?”
“No, I know so. If I looked like you, I’d have all kinds of girls calling me all the time. I would be the biggest player around.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah, güey.”