Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bro (3 page)

For Lourdes, Little Star’s arrival was like new love, or the coming of spring. As far as she was concerned, that little girl was hers. “When I pulled that baby out—Jessica was there—the eyes!” Lourdes said. “The eyes speak faster than the mouth. The eyes come from the heart.” A
baby was trustworthy. Little Star would listen to Lourdes and mind her; she would learn from Lourdes’s mistakes. Little Star would love her grandmother with the unquestioning loyalty Lourdes felt she deserved but didn’t get from her ungrateful kids.

Meanwhile, Jessica made the most of her ambiguous situation. She told Victor that he was the father: she and Victor cared for one another and he had attended the delivery; he also gave Jessica money for Little Star’s first Pampers, although his other girlfriend was pregnant, too. Secretly, however, Jessica hoped that Puma was the father, and she was also telling him that the baby was his. Puma was living with a girl named Trinket, who was pregnant, and whom he referred to as his wife; he also had another baby by Victor’s girlfriend’s sister. Despite the formidable odds, Jessica hoped for a future with him.

Publicly, Puma insisted Little Star was not his. But she certainly looked like his: she had the same broad forehead, and that wide gap between her dot-brown eyes. The day Jessica came home with a videotape of the movie
Beat Street,
Lourdes had heard enough about this breakdancing Puma to go on alert. She settled on her bed with Little Star, Jessica, Elaine, and their dog, Scruffy. In one of the early scenes of the film, a boy who looked suspiciously like Little Star did a speedy break dance at a hooky house. Then he challenged a rival crew to a battle at the Roxy, a popular club.

“Hold that pause,” shouted Lourdes. “That’s Little Star’s father! I will cut my pussy off and give it to that dog if that ain’t Little Star’s father!” Jessica laughed, pleased at the recognition. Puma could say what he liked, but blood will out.

Puma’s confidante was a short, stocky tomboy named Milagros. Milagros had known Puma forever and considered him family. Puma was the first boy she’d ever kissed. Kissing boys no longer interested Milagros. Puma’s stories of Jessica’s sexual escapades, however, intrigued her; Milagros had noticed Jessica as well, when they both attended Roosevelt High School. Milagros knew that Puma still saw Jessica, but she kept it to herself. Meanwhile, Milagros and Puma’s live-in girlfriend, Trinket, were becoming friends.

Milagros and Trinket made an unlikely duo. If a river ran through the styles of poor South Bronx girlhood, these two camped on opposite banks. Milagros, who never wore makeup, tugged her dull brown hair into a pull-back and stuck to what she called “the simple look”—T-shirts,
sneakers, jeans. Trinket slathered on lipstick, painted rainbows of eye shadow on the lids of her green eyes, and teased her auburn hair into a lion’s mane. Trinket was looking forward to becoming a mother, whereas Milagros proclaimed, loudly and often, her tiny nostrils flaring, that she would never have children and end up slaving to a man.

In the fall of 1985, some of Jessica’s friends returned to school. Bored and left behind, Jessica became depressed. She would page Puma, and once in a while he would call her back. Sometimes Jessica went looking for him in Poe Park, a hangout near Kingsbridge and Fordham Road, where the Rock Steady Crew occasionally performed. Usually, though, she found Puma at work, standing on a corner not far from the hooky house. Jessica had little chance of running into Trinket at his drug spot because Puma urged his wife to stay away. Alone with Puma, Jessica broached the touchy subject of what was between them: “Give time for her features to develop and you’ll see, it’ll look like you.” She thought the space between Serena’s eyes was a giveaway. On the small span of her infant face, the gap made her look as though she’d landed from another galaxy. Jessica also thought that Little Star had Puma’s magnetism. “There’s something about her that brings her to you,” she said.

Jessica harassed Trinket with crank phone calls. The calls were Jessica’s trademark: she would whisper, “I have Puma’s kid,” and then hang up. Eight months into her pregnancy, Trinket decided to confront Jessica. Whoever was or wasn’t a baby’s father, the business of claiming love tended to be a battle between girls. The next time Jessica called, Trinket told her she wanted to see the child. Jessica gave her Lourdes’s address. Milagros went along as Trinket’s bodyguard.

“Where’s the baby?” Trinket asked. Serena hung forward in a baby swing. Her enormous head seemed too heavy for her scrawny body. Jessica propped up her baby girl to give Trinket a better look. She also produced additional evidence—“Love” and “Only you” written on photographs of Puma, in his own hand. The assessment took less than fifteen minutes. Milagros said good-bye to Jessica and hurried after Trinket, who burst into tears once they were safely back on the street.

Privately, Trinket didn’t blame Puma for fooling around with Jessica. “Jessica had this sexuality about herself and her domineering ways,” Trinket said. “I was so closed-off.” Trinket attributed her inhibitions to having been molested by one of her mother’s boyfriends. Jessica had also been sexually abused, by Cesar’s father from the age of three, but Trinket didn’t know this. Jessica seemed so comfortable in her body. She flirted
easily with girls and boys, men and women, alike. Jessica appeared to have no boundaries, as though she were the country of sex itself. Puma told Trinket that that baby could belong to anyone; he said that Jessica had been with everybody; she was no one’s girl. Trinket consoled herself with the thought that maybe Jessica’s promiscuity had resulted in a baby that had features from different boys.

A month later, in January 1986, Trinket gave Puma his first son. Her position as his wife was secure.

Jessica then began dating Puma’s brother, Willy. Willy and Puma were often together, but Jessica claimed she didn’t know they were related until Willy took Jessica to his mother’s apartment and she spotted Puma’s photograph on a wall. In fact, the brothers shared a striking physical resemblance: Willy looked like Puma with a mustache, although instead of Puma’s wiry expressiveness, Willy had a bit of a hangdog look. Both had a way with the ladies, though; Willy, who was twenty-two, had already been married, and had fathered four kids.

That winter, Cesar’s father called Lourdes—he was broke, homeless, and heroin sick—and Lourdes took him in. The family treated him “like a king,” he recalled, but he soon left, unable to resist the drugs.

Jessica’s depression grew. She started gouging small cuts on her inner thighs. Nobody wanted her—she had been neglected by her own father; then by Puma; and even by Willy, her second choice. She said, “I was never loved the way I wanted to be. Nobody in my family ever paid any attention to me.” That spring, after receiving a vicious beating from Lourdes, Jessica tried to kill herself by swallowing pills, and Big Daddy whisked her to Bronx Lebanon Hospital. The drastic action worked, but only briefly. “They paid attention to me for about two days afterwards,” Jessica said scornfully. After she had her stomach pumped, the doctor informed her she was pregnant again—with twins.

Jessica claimed that Willy was the father, but once again, there was no way to be certain. When Jessica had been carrying her first child, Lourdes had indulged her cravings, buying her the orange drink
morir soñando
—“to die in your dreams”—and preparing her oatmeal with condensed milk, vanilla, and fresh cinnamon stick. This time, however, Jessica’s pregnancy didn’t grant her special status in the household.

Jessica and Willy tried to get ready for the babies. Jessica’s older brother Robert got Willy a job at the paint store where he worked; Jessica sold clothes at a store on Fordham Road. If a man came in looking for an outfit for his girlfriend, it was Jessica’s job to model it. Jessica generated
so much business that her boss let her keep some of the clothes. Her bestselling item was called The Tube. “You could roll it down and wear it as a miniskirt, and if you roll it up and hook a belt, it could be a dress,” Jessica explained. “Or a tube top if you fold it, or if you twist it, you could make a headband.” Day after day, men came in for an outfit for their women and departed with three or four, fully accessorized. Many of the men asked Jessica out. Her boss started bringing her into the back and asking her to model the new lingerie; he rewarded her with a gold-nugget necklace and matching earrings, and took her out to eat. Before long, Jessica had to quit.

Willy had left his job as well, and soon they were both back to their old ways. Willy’s girlfriends included one of Trinket’s cousins, a schoolgirl named Princess. It was Princess’s turn to receive Jessica’s calls.

“I’m pregnant from Willy,” Jessica said.

“You’re a ho,” said Princess. Next call, Princess snapped, “You’re pregnant from that bum in Poe Park,” which was worse than saying the baby’s father was an immigrant.

Willy may have lacked Puma’s lightning energy, but that September he quickly agreed to put his last name on the birth certificates: Brittany arrived at 5:01
P.M.,
several weeks early and two minutes ahead of her twin sister, Stephanie. They were scrawny, with that prominent forehead, a tuft of thin, black hair, and a sweeter trace of Willy’s hangdog look. Jessica had a C-section scar; Puma was an uncle; Willy was a father; Serena had two baby sisters; and Lourdes was a grandmother again.