Someone I Wanted to Be (21 page)

The light glittered as if it were shining through crystals. A jet whined miles overhead. A kitten staggered through the grass in front of a little house with a sagging porch. Anita dropped to her knees and pulled off her messenger bag. She lay in the grass and rubbed the kitten’s tiny throat with her thumb.

She got to her feet and tossed the kitten toward the porch. “Go home, dummy.”

Anita lived ten blocks from me in a five-story building made of rose-colored bricks. There was a playground next to the building. Chains without seats dangled from the swing set.

Anita waved her arm toward the swings. “The most disgusting playground in the city,” she said. “Used condoms, broken glass, human feces, and needles.”

Her building was called the Briarwood. In the entry was a wall of locked metal mailboxes. She had a key to get in and a key to use on the elevator, which was tagged with graffiti inside and out. We rode up in silence, facing the scratched silver doors.

The fourth floor had a narrow dim hallway with a shiny green floor and door after door after door. One of the doors creaked open, and someone peeked out from a dark apartment. Except for some hip-hop thumping in one apartment and TVs blaring from a couple more, it was quiet. Cooking smells oozed out from beneath doors.

Anita commented on each door in her hallway. “Nice family . . . Real quiet guy . . . Old lady . . . Sweet kids . . . Drug dealer . . . Old lady . . . Old lady . . . Mentally ill guy who goes through everyone’s garbage . . . Really sweet old lady, super-duper tiny . . . The mom here weighs six hundred pounds, but super-cute kids . . .” She tapped on #417. “I like to bug him. Hoarder, big-time, you wouldn’t believe.”

We walked farther down the hall, and Anita unlocked her door, #428. As she pushed it open, she said, “Home, sweet home.”

It was completely dark in the apartment except for the TV and a light over the stove. A man sat on the couch in the glow from the TV. He was watching
Jeopardy!
A contestant gave the correct answer, and the people in the audience applauded.

Anita threw her keys on the counter, walked over, and leaned over the back of the couch. She combed her fingers through the man’s hair. “Hey, Dad,” she said. “How was your day?”

He whispered to her in Spanish. She nodded and continued to pet his head. TV light flickered across his face. In the kitchenette, a black frying pan coated with white grease and a little sink stuffed with crusty plates and a haystack of forks and knives waited for Anita. The refrigerator was duct-taped shut.

Anita took my wrist and pulled me down the hall. “You stay in my room while I go get Evelyn. I’ll be right back.”

I grabbed her sleeve. “Let me come. Who’s Evelyn?”

“My little sister. Her bus is coming in two minutes. It’ll be faster if I go alone. Wait in my room.” She opened a door. “I’ll be back in four and a half minutes.”

There was a white pencil of daylight beneath the shade. I felt around for the switch and the room exploded with color.

The walls and the ceiling and even the floor were covered with art. Van Gogh’s
The
Starry Night,
kid artwork, manga drawings on every size of paper, concert posters, a bookstore poster for
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya,
pictures torn from magazines, a huge blue print of an old man curled up and playing guitar, paintings in unpainted wood frames. A heart-shaped frame decorated with sequins and paper flowers hung over the bed. The frame held a photograph of a dark-haired woman hugging a tiny girl.

Pierce the Veil and Escape the Fate posters were taped up sideways. Her bedspread was bright blue and woven through with little metallic threads. She had
TEST TUBES, NOT BUNNIES
and
FUR IS DEAD
bumper stickers stuck to her headboard. Orange and purple spirals of construction paper hung from the ceiling. Postcards were taped in a crazy mosaic over the whole floor.

Charcoal, pencils, and pens were lined up on the top of an old-fashioned yellow wooden school desk. A sketchbook waited in the center of the desktop.

I heard a cough from the couch and stepped back into the hallway. Anita’s dad’s eyes were black and shiny. He had long fluffy bangs over a skinny, wrinkled face. He stared and said nothing.

“Hi, Mr. Sotelo.” I waved, stepped into Anita’s room, and shut the door.

One thought pounded my brain:
If I could just have one cigarette, every problem in my life would be solved.

Five minutes later, the door opened and Anita came in holding a large child. She set the child on the bed. The little girl was about seven years old, with long stringy brown hair, huge teeth, and glasses with brown frames propped crookedly on her nose. She had little blue studs in her pierced ears. She squinted up at me.

Anita sat down next to the kid, put her arm around her, and pulled her so close they looked like a two-headed person. “This is Evelyn.”

“Hey, Evelyn.”

The little girl snorted and looked away as if I were the most boring person she’d ever seen. She was wearing lavender stretch pants and had a round stomach. She swung her little leg.

“Let’s get that patch off,” said Anita. She pulled down the waist of Evelyn’s stretch pants and the top of her polka-dot underwear, and peeled a white patch off Evelyn’s hip.

Anita dropped the patch into the black-and-white garbage can. “I hate this stuff. It makes her dopey, but her social worker says she has to wear it to school and the nurse checks. I’ll go get us a snack.” Before I could say anything, she left me alone with Evelyn.

Evelyn put her hands between her knees and stared at me with her mouth open in what appeared to be disgust. There was nowhere to sit but at the desk or on the bed next to Evelyn. I felt like a giant in the tiny room. I sat on the postcard-carpeted floor. The tape was yellowing and crackly and had dust and little hairs caught on the sticky part.

“Evelyn, where do you go to school?”

She stared at me like I was a beast at the zoo and put her fingers in her mouth.

“OK,” I said, “we’ll just wait for your sister.” I dropped my head between my knees and listened to Evelyn breathing through her stuffed-up nose.

Anita pushed the door open with her hip. “I made some popcorn,” she said. “Sorry it took so long. I had to wash the bowl.” She set the bowl of popcorn on the floor and sat cross-legged across from me. Evelyn scooted off the bed and rooted through the popcorn with her spitty fingers.

“Go ahead,” said Anita, holding out the bowl. She looked anxious, so I took some.

Anita looked at her little sister and slowly brushed the hair off her forehead. “How was your day, Evie?”

“Stupid.” Evelyn crouched like a monkey. She lifted out handfuls of popcorn, then dribbled them back into the bowl.

We watched Evelyn play with the popcorn. Anita said, “Welcome to the family.”

I ran my finger over the postcards underneath me:
Buenos Días from Cancun, Aloha from Maui,
palm trees, the Eiffel Tower, an obese cat, and mountains topped with white ice and snow. “Where’d you get the postcards?”

“Evie and I hit a lot of garage sales. An old lady sold me a shoe box full of them for twenty-five cents. Then a tenant left a gigantic roll of packing tape when he moved out. I was up late one night, feeling kind of manic.” Anita combed Evelyn’s hair with her fingers. Evelyn got bored with the popcorn. She tipped over backward. She lay on her back and puffed out her stomach.

“What’s up with your dad?” I ran my finger around and around the wheel of a bicycle on a postcard.

“Clinically depressed and alcoholic,” Anita said in a blasé voice as if she were saying,
My dad is the manager at RadioShack and plays golf.
She looked down at Evelyn’s sweaty spaced-out little face. “He’s got bad liver problems. He’s a mechanic and used to run a garage, but he’s on disability now. He’s had a really rough time since my mom died.”

“Sorry.”

“Yeah, it sucks.” She shrugged and started braiding Evelyn’s hair. The room’s colors exploded around her.

“I like your room,” I said. “It’s incredible.”

Her face broke into a huge grin. “Really?” She looked down at Evelyn and tried to stop smiling, but she couldn’t. “I think of it as my first art installation.”

I stood up to look at the picture over her bed. “This is your mom? She’s so pretty.”

“Yep,” said Anita.

Tacked next to the picture of Anita’s mom was a photo of a band playing in a garage. A girl with dark hair like Anita’s hunched behind the drum kit. “Is that you? You play drums?”

“Just a little. Me and Evelyn stayed with my aunt for two weeks. My uncle has a set. So we were playing one Saturday morning.”

In another picture, a skinny redheaded boy was bent over a microphone. “Is that Carl Lancaster? You play in a band with Carl Lancaster?” Carl Lancaster appeared to be gyrating his skinny body.

“Nah, we just messed around a couple times. Have you ever heard him sing? My God. He’s fabulous. He’s moving to Austin as soon as he graduates.” She scooted back against the wall, crossed her legs, and twirled a piece of hair between her fingers. “You guys going out?”

“What? No.” I sat back down and pressed my fingers against my temples. Evelyn lay across Anita’s legs and looked at me sideways. She drooled on Anita’s jeans.

“I like Carl,” Evelyn said. She stuck her index finger into her nostril and dug.

“OK, we are here for money.” Anita lifted Evelyn’s head off her knee. She stood up and stepped over me to get to the dresser. “Evelyn, close your eyes. Close your eyes. Now!” Evelyn scrunched her eyes shut, then covered her glasses with her sticky hands.

Anita lifted up the dresser scarf and ran her hand underneath it. She moved her hand around and knocked over bottles of nail polish. She gathered the ends of the scarf and picked up all the jewelry and makeup in a clinking bundle and looked underneath. She set the bundle back down. She stood motionless with her back to us for a minute. Evelyn opened her eyes, and we stared at each other.

Anita turned around. Her face was stiff. “Let’s go,” she said. “Let’s get the hell out of here. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”

Evelyn rolled onto her back. “I don’t want to go.”

Anita hauled her up by her arm. “Get your butt up. I’ve got to get out of here, or I am going to have a panic attack.” Anita threw her messenger bag over her shoulder, grabbed Evelyn’s hand, turned off the lights, and charged out of the room.

“Shut my door,” she said over her shoulder. She ripped Evelyn’s jacket off the kitchen table as we walked through.

Anita’s father had scooted to the edge of the couch and was yawning in the TV light. “Anita,” he said. “Anita . . .”

“Bye, Dad. Be back soon,” she sang through the door as she locked it.

She jogged down the hallway, dragging Evelyn behind her. “If I don’t get out of here, I’m going to explode.” She rode down the elevator with her eyes closed.

Once we were out in the parking lot, she screamed,
“Aaaaaaaaaack!”
She covered Evelyn’s ears with her hands. “I love him but I hate him so much! He took my money! Thirty bucks. That’s two days in the Johnsons’ apartment at five in the morning, and it reeks like cat pee. I was saving up for another piercing. I already gave him twenty. He’ll say he had to get groceries. . . . I know he needs to buy stuff, but it’s not fair. God, it’s not fair! I hate my life! I got to run. . . .” She ran down the street, pulling Evelyn along.

I jogged after them. I managed to run for two blocks, then had to stop and put my hands on my knees. Anita circled back and waited, shifting from foot to foot.

“Where are we going?” I was wheezing and coughing up gunk that tasted like old cigarettes.

“Carl’s. Carl is loaded.”

“Carl’s her boyfriend,” said Evelyn. Her little baseball jacket was open over her chubby stomach. She was panting.

“He’s not my boyfriend, Evelyn.”

“We’re going to Carl’s?” The ground was littered with crushed cigarette butts. My nose was running and my head felt hollow, and it was all because I didn’t have a cigarette.

“Carl plays at weddings and funerals a couple times a month. He’s rich. He’s saving up so he can move to Austin, but he’ll help us.” Anita turned, ready to take off again.

I grabbed her arm. “Anita, stop. Why are we doing this? You hate Kristy.”

Anita ran her fingers through her hair. She closed her eyes, took a breath, and opened them. “We have to save Yertle.”

The expression on my face must have made her feel like she had to explain.

“It’s excellent karma to help someone you hate. It’s a law of the universe.”

Evelyn squinted up at Anita; her tiny nostrils were almost completely plugged with yellow crusts. Anita kissed Evelyn’s forehead. She pulled Evelyn against her stomach and cradled her until Evelyn wiggled away.

“OK, I feel a little calmer. We can walk now,” said Anita. She straightened her messenger bag, snapped her jacket up, and took Evelyn’s hand. She took a few steps, stopped, reached back, and pulled me after her with her other hand. “Come on, come on, come on. . . .” The afternoon sun soaked the trees and rocky cliffs on the mountain in orange light.