145th Street (4 page)

Billy followed it with a left hook, leaving his feet for a moment, seeing the force of the blow contort Vegas’s face. Vegas slumped to the floor. The referee was counting over him.

“One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . . six . . .” Vegas was on one knee at six and on his feet at eight. Billy moved in fast. Vegas moved away, slid along the ropes, picked off a wild left that Billy threw, and missed a jab himself. He tried to clinch and Billy pushed him away with one hand and swung for his head with the other. He missed and Vegas threw a right hand that caught Billy just in front of the ear.

His vision doubled. He was in trouble. From every angle there seemed to be someone throwing punches. Billy’s mouthpiece had fallen to the canvas and the referee kicked it toward his corner. He tried desperately to keep his hands up. Pride would keep him in the fight.

In the appliance store, when the clerk had asked if he was interested in the nineteen-inch screen Billy had said no, he wanted the thirty-two-inch screen.

“That’s a good choice,” the clerk had said. “It’s a good buy at seven hundred dollars.”

Later he would have to tell Johnnie Mae that he had changed his mind, that the thirty-two-inch set was too big for their small living room, but for the moment, in the store, he couldn’t back out of the game.

Billy couldn’t tell for sure where Vegas was, only that he himself was being hit. Barely conscious, he spread his hands, knowing he was going down. Still Vegas smashed his fists into his face. He heard the cheering of the crowd as he fell. Above him a brilliant confusion of lights glared down. There in the middle of the arena, in the middle of the ring, in the middle of the light, the referee standing over him, he felt like he always knew he would feel, alone.

Then, somehow, he was up, and Manny was forcing the acrid smelling salts under his nose, forcing him back to reality. He knew he must have been knocked out. Manny asked him something and he felt that he had slurred the answer, but Manny seemed satisfied.

Vegas was lifting his arm, saying that he had fought a good fight. The special policemen were coming into the ring for the next fight. They told Manny to have Billy leave from the corner without stairs and he had to jump from the ring.

Billy didn’t stop to pack his gear neatly, just crammed it into his bag. He showered slowly, surprised to find out how sore he was in the body. Later there would be blood in his urine. Later there would be the headaches that kept him up in the early mornings. He had been knocked out before. He knew what he would feel like in the morning and told himself that it didn’t matter.

He got the money from Manny.

“Billy, give me a call in a month or so.” Manny looked away from him. “When you get yourself together.”

At the gate he had to wait until a special policeman opened it so he could leave the arena. Behind him the crowd was noisy, cheering. It had started to rain. Billy decided to take the subway home. He didn’t deserve a cab. On alternate stations he tried to figure out what he had done wrong against Vegas and then what he had done wrong in life that had him in a half-empty train trying not to throw up.

He remembered his promise to pick up some ice cream for Johnnie Mae, but the grocery store on the corner was closed and he didn’t feel like walking down to 142nd Street to the one that was open.

Johnnie Mae was awake. When she saw him she knew that he’d been fighting and that he’d lost. She didn’t say anything, just helped him undress.

Outside, the rain picked up and now beat hard against the window. From down the street a tinny-sounding radio oozed out a slow blues. Johnnie Mae was crying, but she didn’t say anything. Billy took the money out of his pocket and threw it on the table. Johnnie Mae picked it up and threw it on the floor. Then, realizing that she had hurt him, picked it up and put it carefully back onto the dresser.

Johnnie Mae wiped the traces of alum from his face with a wet, cool cloth. It should have been left on, but he let her do it anyway.

“I love you, baby,” she said. “I love you so much.”

Later Billy, lying in the darkness, listened to the even sounds of his wife’s breathing. He wondered if somewhere in the city Vegas was lying in bed dreaming about fighting, about their fight. Billy checked the time; it was a little after two. He found Johnnie Mae’s hand and held it. Even in her sleep she took his hand and squeezed it gently. He needed that squeeze, that gentleness, the knowing that the gentleness would always be there, that through all the nights of pain to come, she would be there for him. He closed his eyes and hoped he wouldn’t dream.

T
he wind, whistling across the vacant lots and through the redbrick and fire escape canyons of the neighborhood, had taken another summer. Old men brought out their faded suit jackets and moved their domino games inside. Theresa, the mother of Angela Luz Colón, finally emerged from her grief and called the factory where she had worked before her husband, Fernando, had been killed. They told her she could come back to work, and she did.

That is not to say that she had stopped crying against the wall at night or stopped reaching out her hand in the darkness to where he had lain by her side for so many years. It was just that she had also begun to rise, once she had watched the gray mist of twilight give way to early sun, and leave for work.

“You should go out more, too,” she told her daughter. “Remember what the priest said about putting aside sorrow.”

She left out the part about rejoicing that another soul had found peace in the Lord.

Angela did go out more. She went to her seventh-grade classes, to the store, sometimes for walks alone in the park. These things she did when it was time for them to be done. She still spent a lot of time thinking of her father. The thoughts often came to her as she sat alone in the kitchen waiting for her mother to come home in the evenings. She would think of his laugh, the way his brown face would wrinkle around the eyes and the wide smile would fill their small kitchen. On weekends he would rise early, shower, and prepare breakfast for Angela and her mother. The comforting sounds of ham frying would announce that he was ready for them to come to the table even before he knocked on her door.

Then the dreams began.

It was Poli, the old man that worked in Mr. Rodriguez’s bodega, that Angela first dreamt about. She dreamt that she was at school when suddenly her father walked into her classroom. Then it was not her father who stood before the class, but Poli, stoop-shouldered beneath his white hair. His sad, dark eyes seeming to look into her very soul. Angela felt the same sadness for him that she had felt for her father. Later, when she went into the bodega to buy olive oil, she saw Poli sorting tomatoes in the window. She stood, not thinking, looking at him until her eyes misted with tears.

“Hey, Angela, what’s wrong?” Mr. Rodriguez came over to her. “How can such a pretty girl be sad?”

“It’s nothing,” Angela said.

“It’s got to be something,” Mr. Rodriguez said.

Angela told him of her dream. Poli and another woman came over and listened, both nodding their heads as Angela spoke. The woman said that the dream was sad, but Mr. Rodriguez and Poli looked up the dream in the Black Cat dream book to see which number to play. Dreaming about a school was 3-5-6, which was also Poli’s house number. Then they came up with 2-3-7, which was Angela’s house number, and since her father had recently died, they played 0-6-5, for death.

Poli played the numbers the next day and then forgot them. Mr. Rodriguez played them all that week. None of them came out, but Poli died.

“He called and said that he didn’t feel well,” Poli’s grandson said. “He had a pain in his shoulder. The hospital said he had a heart attack.”

The Sunday after Poli’s funeral the domino players drank rum and talked about him, about how good he was and about the old days in Mayagüez when Poli had raised pigs until his first wife left him and he had come to the United States. They talked about Angela, too. About how her dream had predicted his death. Mr. Rodriguez said that sometimes children see things. Jorge Cruz, who was older than Mr. Rodriguez and whose face was lined with his years, said that when a man dies violently he leaves his eyes to his child, and that it was her father, looking from the other side of darkness, that had seen Poli’s dying. Not much was said after that but it had been enough to dampen the thin sound of the portable radio they had been playing.

What Jorge Cruz had said spread quickly around the neighborhood and soon everyone was saying that Angela had her father’s eyes. When it came to Angela she went quickly home and looked in the bathroom mirror. She pushed her hair away from her face and looked into her own eyes. Some boys said that her eyes were pretty. To Angela they were too dark, like deep, bottomless pools.

When Mrs. Flores came into Mr. Rodriguez’s bodega she said that it was strange that Angela had predicted Poli’s death. This she said more to Maria Pincay and Titi Sanchez, who had come to buy plantains, than to Mr. Rodriguez, who she knew liked Angela very much and who looked with soft eyes on the girl’s mother as well.

“Poli was an old man,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “His time had come, that’s all. Besides, when is death a stranger in this neighborhood? You can’t pick up
El Diario
without reading that someone has died.”

“Yes, that is right,” Mrs. Flores said, crossing herself, “but how many times do you pick up a paper and see that some healthy person is going to die, eh? Tell me that.”

“I tell you that you talk foolishly, woman,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “The girl knew Poli, maybe she saw that he didn’t look so good.”

This was true, Angela had known Poli for many years. Mr. Rodriguez was pleased with the logic of his remark and noted that, although Maria Pincay did say that Angela had always been a little strange, it was a weakly offered statement.

But Angela had not known Eddie Robinson. He was the man who worked in the West Indian restaurant on 147th Street. He seemed a distant man, often lost in his own thoughts as he stood behind the counter stacking porgies in the basket for deep-frying. A dark, stocky man with sloping shoulders and large hands, he would scoop up a large portion of the breading mixture in one hand and, taking the fish in the other, would slap it from hand to hand until it was perfectly breaded on both sides. Then he would sprinkle the breaded fish with basil and stack it with the others. Angela had seen him do this but had not spoken to him about it or anything else. In truth, if it had not been for Mrs. Flores no one might even have known that Angela had ever seen Eddie Robinson.

“How are you doing?” Mrs. Flores asked when they met in the bodega. “I haven’t seen you at Mass for a while.”

“I go to early Mass with my mother now,” Angela said.

“I saw your mother the other day and she looks good.” Mrs. Flores had selected two cans of kidney beans and put them on the counter. “You must be taking good care of her.”

“I try,” Angela said, pleased with the comment.

“Have you had any more of your dreams?” Mrs. Flores asked.

Mr. Rodriguez looked up from where he was sitting with Jorge Cruz, a dark scowl crossing his face.

“Sometimes I dream,” Angela said.

There were images in her mind. An image of Poli sitting in the park watching the children play basketball. An image of the funeral cars pulling away from the church, gliding away into the gently falling snowflakes.

“Who do you dream about?” Mrs. Flores asked, pretending to examine the label on a can of soup as the dark looks of Mr. Rodriguez burned into her back.

“My father, mostly,” Angela replied.

“Angela came for eggs, not to talk about her dreams.” Mr. Rodriguez got up from the card table and put his arm around the slim girl.

“Did you dream about me?” Mrs. Flores stepped to one side so that she could see Angela’s face.

“No,” Angela said, “I dreamt about the black man who works in the restaurant near the post office. Him and my father.”

It stopped them. Mrs. Flores, Mr. Rodriguez, and Jorge Cruz. Even the moment stopped for the space of a heartbeat.

“She dreams about a place to eat,” Mr. Rodriguez said finally, and twisted his face into a silly grin. “That’s a good sign for a young girl, isn’t it?”

Angela took the eggs and a package of sausages and paid for them. Jorge Cruz played idly with the cards as Mr. Rodriguez bagged Angela’s purchases. When Angela had left, Mr. Rodriguez slapped the flat of his hand hard against the countertop.

“Why do you have to do this?” Mr. Rodriguez lifted his voice, a thing that was rare with him. “Why can’t you leave the girl alone? We have bad girls in this neighborhood and you don’t say a thing about them. This is a good girl, so why don’t you leave her alone?”

“Lips speak lies, but the face speaks the heart,” Mrs. Flores said, shaking a finger toward Mr. Rodriguez. “Jorge, did you see Mr. Rodriguez’s face when the girl said that she dreamt of Eddie?”

“Who is this Eddie?” Mr. Rodriguez asked.

“You know, the black man who works in the little diner that the Greek used to have,” Jorge Cruz asked.

“Yeah, I see him at the market.”

“You won’t be seeing him at the market much longer,” Mrs. Flores said.

“I don’t believe a word of it,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “You’re making something of nothing.”

“What do you think, Jorge?” Mrs. Flores asked. “She has her father’s eyes, no?”

“I don’t know,” Jorge Cruz said. “Maybe she has a special vision.”

“What vision?” Mr. Rodriguez threw his hands up. “This Eddie is still alive, isn’t he? If he dies it’s you who puts the mouth on him, not her.”

Eddie Robinson was born in Athens, Georgia, on the same day that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was first inaugurated. Eddie’s father would have named him Franklin if he hadn’t promised his cousin when the boy’s mother was first pregnant that he would name the child after him.

So it was Eddie, and not Franklin, Robinson who was hit by a truck on Thanksgiving morning. Someone who saw it said that he had pulled up his coat collar and was leaning into the bitterly cold wind and never saw the truck coming. Others said that it didn’t matter, that all that mattered was that Angela had dreamt of him, and that he was dead.

Surprisingly, it was Titi Sanchez and not Mrs. Flores who started the most trouble for Angela. This despite the fact that it was Mrs. Flores who spread it around the neighborhood that Angela had dreamt of Eddie Robinson. When Eddie died it was the same Mrs. Flores who went on with her did-you-hear’s and her I-told-you-so’s.

But when Mr. Rodriguez gave a party for his friends and best customers on the Wednesday before Christmas, which he had been doing for the ten years he had been in business, it was Titi Sanchez who piled the biggest burden onto Angela.

Perhaps it was the wine, or the heat from the kerosene burner used to supplement the cranky radiator, or perhaps an unlucky combination of the two. Titi was standing against the wall, beneath the plastic Malta Fresca sign, when she found herself looking into someone’s eyes. The someone, sitting at her mother’s side at the round table, was Angela Luz Colón.

“Don’t look at me!” Titi screamed at her.

Angela looked quickly away, shocked by Titi’s sudden outburst. Then, compelled to see what kind of creature would scream at her so, she looked again, searching in her eyes for reasons for this violation of her sensibilities.

“Don’t look at me!” Titi screamed again and buried her head in her hands.

All eyes turned away from Titi toward Angela, but as the girl looked back the heads turned away quickly.

“What is wrong? What is wrong?” Angela’s mother’s voice was like the screeching of a gull. Her eyes darted first to her daughter, then to those around her. “What is wrong?”

“Titi has had too much celebration.” Mr. Rodriguez separated himself from two old friends. “Here, open another bottle of wine and let’s relax and enjoy ourselves.”

The party went on, but the musical lilt of voices, the cymbal lightness of laughter, did not. Angela’s name pulsed beneath the hushed conversations like a muted drum.

When Titi was finally calmed by Sadie Jones and her cousin she apologized to Mr. Rodriguez through her tears.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just don’t want to die.”

Mr. Rodriguez didn’t answer her, just patted her lightly on the shoulder and told her, “It’s okay, Mami.”

When Titi left the others began to leave, too. Soon it was just Mr. Rodriguez, Jorge Cruz, Angela, and her mother who remained behind in the gaily decorated bodega.

“I hear what they say.” Angela’s mother had her arm around her daughter. “It’s a terrible thing to say. This is America, not some jungle. Why do they say things like that?”

“Today they talk about Angela and tomorrow they’ll be talking about me,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “Half the people in this neighborhood don’t have jobs, all they have for entertainment is what they can make up.”

But they did not stop talking about Angela. When Titi went around saying that she did not want Angela looking at her because then she might dream of her it brought a nodded agreement, if not an “amen” and a hastily made sign of the cross.

There were images in Angela’s mind. When her father died she had lived with the terror of knowing that he had been killed in his taxi, and that they had found him slumped over the wheel, just as she had feared for so many nights, ever since he had started driving. When it had come she was asleep. Her mother woke her to give her the news and then left to go to the hospital. She had lain in the darkness of her room, her mind blank, her body numb. Had she fallen asleep? She must have. When she was sure of her surroundings she recalled an image of her father. Had it been real? Or was it, perhaps, only the echo of a thousand headlines that had already screamed their violence into the deepest corners of her soul? Later, as she leaned against the cracked porcelain sink, the tea already cold in her thin hands, her mother and aunt returned from the hospital, their tear-streaked faces bringing her the news that the images had indeed been real.