Sweet Nothing (5 page)

Maple, our supervisor, is waiting when I return to the cafeteria. She's a twitchy black lady with a bad temper.

“Go home,” she says.

“I'm okay,” I reply. “I feel better.”

“You hang around, you're just going to infect everybody else. Go home.”

It's frustrating. I've only called in sick three times in my twenty-seven years here. Maple won't budge, though. I take off my gloves and apron, get my purse from my locker.

My stomach bucks again at the bus stop, and I vomit into the gutter. A bunch of kids driving by honk their horn and laugh at me. The ride home takes forever. The traffic signals are messed up for blocks, blinking red, and the buildings shimmer in the heat like I'm dreaming them.

I STOP AT
the store for bread and milk when I get off the bus. Not the Smart & Final, but the little
tienda
on the corner. The Sanchezes owned it forever, but now it's Koreans. They're okay. The old lady at the register always smiles and says
“Gracias”
when she gives me my change. Her son is out front, painting over fresh graffiti. Temple Street tags the place every night, and he cleans it up every day.

A girl carrying a baby blocks my path. She holds out her hand and asks me in Spanish for money, her voice a raspy whisper. The baby is sick, she says, needs medicine. She's not much older than Brianna and won't look me in the eye.

“Whatever you can spare,” she says. “Please.”

“Where do you live?” I ask.

She glances nervously over her shoulder. A boy a little older than her pokes his head out from behind a tree, watching us. Maria, from two blocks over, told me the other day how a girl with a baby came to her door, asking for money. The girl said she was going to faint, so Maria let her inside to rest on the couch while she went to the bathroom to get some Huggies her daughter had left behind. When she came back, the girl was gone, and so was Maria's purse.

My chest feels like a bird is loose inside it.

“I don't have anything,” I say. “I'm sorry.”

“My baby is going to die,” the girl says. “Please, a dollar. Two.”

I push past her and hurry away. When I reach the corner, I look back and see her and the boy staring at me with hard faces.

The sidewalk on my street has buckled from all the tree roots pushing up underneath it. The slabs tilt at odd angles, and I go over them faster than I should while carrying groceries. If I'm not careful, I'm going to fall and break my neck. I'm going to get exactly what I deserve.

BRIANNA'S EYES OPEN
wide when I step through the door. A boy is lying on top of her on the couch. Puppet.

“Get away from her!” I yell. I mean it to be a roar, but it comes out like an old woman's dying gasp.

He stands quickly, pulls up his pants, and grabs his shirt off the floor. Brianna yanks a blanket over her naked body. As he walks out, Puppet sneers at me. He's so close I can feel heat coming off him. I slam the door and twist the dead bolt.

IT WAS ONE
month after my fifteenth birthday, and all everybody was talking about was a party some kid was throwing at his house while his parents were in Mexico for a funeral. Carmen and Cindy said, “You've got to go. We'll sneak out together.” Stupid stuff, teenagers being teenagers. “You tell your mom you're staying at my house, and I'll tell mine I'm staying at yours.” We were actually shocked that it worked, to find ourselves out on the streets on a Saturday night.

The crowd at the party was a little older than we were, a little rougher. Lots of gangbangers and their girlfriends, kids who didn't go to our school. Carmen and Cindy were meeting boys there and soon disappeared, leaving me standing by myself in the kitchen.

One of the
vatos
came up and started talking to me. He said his name was Smiley and that he was in White Fence, the gang in that neighborhood. Boys were always claiming to be down with this clique or that, and most of them were full of it. Smiley seemed like he was full of it. He was so tiny and so cute.

Things move fast when you're that age, when you're drinking rum and you've never drunk rum before, when you're smoking weed and you've never smoked weed before. Pretty soon we were kissing right there in front of everybody, me sitting on the counter, Smiley standing between my legs. I was so high I got his tongue mixed up with mine. Someone laughed, and the sound bounced around inside my head like a rubber ball.

Following Smiley into the bedroom was my mistake. I should have said no. Lying down on the mattress, letting him peel off my T-shirt, letting him put his hand inside my pants—I take the blame for all that too. But everything else is on him and the others. Forever, like a brand. I was barely fifteen years old, for God's sake. I was drunk. I was stupid.

“Stop,” I hissed, but Smiley kept going.

I tried to sit up, and he forced me back down. He put his hand on my throat and squeezed.

“Just fucking relax,” he said.

I let myself go limp. I gave in because I thought he'd kill me if I didn't. He seemed that crazy, choking me, pulling my hair. Two of his homeys came in while he was going at it. I hoped for half a second they were there to save me. Instead, when Smiley was finished, they did their thing too, took turns grinding away on a scared little girl, murdering some part of her that she mourns to this day.

Afterward they made me wash my face and get dressed. I wasn't even crying anymore. I was numb, in shock.

“White Fence,” Smiley said right before he walked back out into the party, into the music and laughter. “Don't you forget.” A warning, pure and simple. An ugly threat.

I never told my friends what happened, never told my family, never told my husband. What could they possibly have said or done that would've helped? Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. The sooner you learn it, the better: some loads you carry on your own.

THEY MAKE A
big show of it when they come for Puppet. Must be six cop cars, a helicopter, TV cameras. That detective wasn't lying; all it took was an anonymous phone call. “I saw who killed the baby.” One minute Puppet is preening on the corner with his homeys, acting like he owns the street, the next he's facedown on the hot asphalt, hands cuffed tight behind his back.

I run outside as soon as I hear the commotion. I want to see. Lorena and Brianna come too, whispering, “Oh my God, what's happening?”

“It's the bastard who shot little Antonio,” says an old man carrying a bottle in a bag.

We stand at the fence and watch with the rest of the neighborhood as they lift Puppet off the ground and slam him against a police car. Then, suddenly, Brianna is crying. “No,” she moans and opens the gate like she's going to run to him. “No.” Lorena grabs her arm and yanks her back into the yard.

“José!” Brianna yells. His real name.

He can't hear her, not with all the shouting and sirens and the
chop chop chop
of the helicopter circling overhead. And I'm glad. He doesn't deserve her tears, her reckless love. Instead, I hope the last thing he sees before they drive him off is my satisfied smile and the hatred in my eyes, and I hope it burns him like fire, night and day, for as long as he fouls this earth.

IT'S FRIDAY EVENING,
and what a week. The freezer at work broke down, Maple changed the rules on vacation time, and one of the boys cut his finger to the bone chopping onions. There was some good news too: Looks like Puppet isn't going to be back. As soon as they picked him up, his boy Cheeks flipped on him and told the cops everything. A few punks still hang out on the corner and stare the neighborhood down, but none of them know that it's me who took out their
compadre.

I fall asleep on the couch when I get home and don't wake up until a few hours later, but that's okay, because I'm off tomorrow, so I can go to bed whenever I want tonight and sleep in. I couldn't do that when Lorena and Brianna were here. They'd be banging around in the kitchen or blasting the TV every time I tried to rest. I'd be cooking for them or doing their laundry.

I love them, but I wasn't sad to see them go when they moved out last week. They're in Alhambra now, living with a fireman Lorena met on the computer. He's really great, she says, with a big house, a swimming pool, and a boat. And so good with Brianna. I was thinking she should ask him about his ex-wife, find out why she's not around anymore, but I kept it to myself.

When I get up, I water the garden and pick a bunch of tomatoes. The sun has just set, leaving the sky a pretty blue, but it's going to be one of those nights when it doesn't cool down until past midnight. The kids used to sleep out in the yard when it was like this. Manuel would cut up a watermelon he'd kept on ice all day, and the juice would run down their faces and drip onto the grass.

I sit on the back porch and watch the stars come out. There's a little moon up there, a little silver smile in the sky. Oso barks next door, and another dog answers. Music floats over from Rudolfo's shop, old ranchero stuff, and I think,
You know, I'll never eat all those tomatoes by myself.

Rudolfo looks up from the newspaper he's reading as I come down the driveway, trailed by Oso.

“Blanca,” he says.
“Buenas noches.”

He reaches out and turns down the radio a bit. He's drinking a beer, and a cigar smolders in an ashtray on the workbench. He picks up the ashtray, moves to carry it outside.

“Go ahead and smoke,” I say.

“You're sure?”

“No problem.”

He lived next door for years before I found out he had a wife and son back in El Salvador. He got in trouble with the government there and had to leave. The plan was that he'd go to the U.S. and get settled, then his family would join him. But a few years later, when it was time, his wife decided she was happy where she was and refused to move north. I remember he told this like it had happened to another person, but I could see in his eyes how it hurt him.

“I brought you some tomatoes,” I say, setting the bag on the workbench. “I've got them coming out of my ears.”

“You want a beer?” he asks.

“Sure,” I say and lower myself onto a stool.

He reaches into a cooler and lifts out a Tecate, uses his bandanna to wipe the can dry.

“I'm sorry I don't have any lime,” he says as he passes it to me.

“It's good like this,” I reply.

He lifts his can and says,
“Salud.”

I take a sip, and, boy, does it go down easy. Oso presses his cold nose against my leg and makes me jump. I'm wearing a new skirt. A new blouse too.

“Another wild Friday night, huh?” I say.

Rudolfo laughs. He runs his fingers through his hair and shakes his head. “I might have a few more in me,” he says. “But I'm saving them up for when I really need them.”

He asks about Lorena and Brianna, how they're doing at the new place, and wonders if I'm lonely now that they're gone. I admit that I'm not.

“You get used to being by yourself,” I say.

“Yeah, but that's not the same as enjoying it,” he replies.

I like the way we talk to each other. It feels honest. Things were different with Manuel. One of us always had to win. Husbands and wives do that, worry more about being right than being truthful. What goes on between Rudolfo and me is what I always imagined flirting would be like. It's kind of a game. We hint at what's inside us, each hoping the other picks up on the clues.

I didn't learn to flirt when I was young. I didn't have time. One year after that party I was engaged to Manuel, and the last thing I wanted him to know were my secrets.

A moth flutters against the bare lightbulb suspended above us, its wings tapping urgent messages on the thin glass. Rudolfo tells me about something funny that happened to him at Home Depot, how this guy swiped his shopping cart. It's his story I'm laughing at when he finishes, but I'm also happy to be here with this handsome man, drinking this beer, listening to this music. It feels like there are bubbles in my blood.

A song my mom used to play comes on the radio.

“Hey,” I say. “Let's dance.”

“I don't know, it's been years,” Rudolfo says.

“Come on.” I stand and wiggle my hips, reach out for him.

He puts down his beer and wraps his arms around me. I pull him close and whisper the lyrics to the song in his ear as we sway so smoothly together. You forget what that feels like. It seems impossible, but you do.

“Blanca,” he says.

“Mmmmmm?” I reply.

“I'm seeing a lady in Pacoima.”

“Shhh,” I say.

“I've been seeing her for years.”

“Shhh.”

I lay my head on his chest, listen to his heart. Sawdust and smoke swirl around us.
Qué bonita amor,
goes the song,
qué bonita cielo, qué bonita luna, qué bonita sol
. God wants to see me cry. He must have His reasons. But for now, Lord, please, give me just one more minute. One more minute of this.

THE NEWSPAPERS CALLED HIM
“the Wolf,” but his real name was Armand, or perhaps Louis. He gave both when he was captured. He didn't look like a wolf; he looked like a schoolteacher or a customs agent, a clerk of some sort. His hands were soft, his pale eyes unremarkable, and he barely cast a shadow when a light was shined upon him. The authorities said he'd murdered eight children.

“Do you believe them?” he asked me once.

“If they say it's so, it must be so,” I replied.

“But of course,” he said.

“Shut your mouth,” I said.

He dwelled in darkness during his stay in Fort du Hâ, entombed deep in a section of the prison that we called the pit, locked in a dank, miserable cell far from the other inmates. How he wailed when they first brought him in, how he raved, sending up mad, desperate prayers to the saints, then working his way through various devils. He beat his fists bloody on the stones, tore out his hair, and covered himself with his filth.

“A light! A light! Mother! Father! A light!”

I couldn't bear to hear it, had nightmares even, so I offered him a deal: If he'd remain quiet while I was on duty, I'd open the feeding slot in the door of his cell and hang a lantern near it. He readily agreed, and for part of the day, at least, his blackness was broken, and he could see the hell he'd tumbled into.

HE
ANGERS
ME,
I told my commander.

Not
for
long,
my commander replied, drawing a finger across his throat.
Justice
will
be
swift.

He
scares
me,
I told my wife.

Shhh,
my wife replied.
The
children
can
hear
you.

He
knows
me,
I told my priest.

Only
God
knows
you,
my priest replied,
while
demons
seek
to
deceive.

WE WERE WARNED
not to talk to the men we guarded, especially not those facing the guillotine, “Le Rasoir National.” But when you spend hour after hour in that cold, dripping gloom so far from the sun, so far from the pulse of the earth in the grass and the trees, so far from air not freighted with dread and despair, you sometimes need to hear the sound of another voice in order to be reassured that you haven't died yourself and aren't now rotting in your grave.

“
Bonjour,
”
the prisoner would say when I opened the slot at the beginning of my watch. “Or perhaps
bonsoir
?”

One morning I finally replied.

“It's day,” I said.

“What day?”

“April twentieth.”

“Ah, spring is here. And what year?”

“You don't know the year?”

“Time has gotten away from me.”

“Still 1899. You've been down here two months.”

For the most part we spoke of simple things, he on his side of the door, I on mine. He asked if the hydrangeas had bloomed in the Jardin Public, whether peas were showing up at the market yet, and how high the river was running. This last query disturbed me, because he was said to have thrown the bodies of the children into the Garonne after strangling and mutilating them. I answered without thinking when he asked, however, brooding over the question only later.

“It's running higher than normal,” I said.

“What I wouldn't give,” he said, “for a plate of lamprey.”

AS THE TRIAL
drew near,
La
Petite
Gironde
printed a list of the victims: Charlotte Le Conte, age ten; Albert Hérisson, age eight; Laure Capdeville, age seven; and so on. Eight in all, though only five corpses had been found. The newspaper reported that the Wolf refused to confirm that the missing children had indeed met death at his hands, thereby denying the grieving parents even the cold comfort of certainty regarding the fates of their sons and daughters. In fact, the bastard hadn't uttered a single word about the crimes, not even to proclaim his innocence.

It made me sick to contemplate. I thought of my own girls, Simone and little Lolo,
mes
mignonnes,
and what a horror it would be if they were snatched away from their mother and me. I'm one of those men who are occasionally plagued by bouts of melancholy, and on my worst days back then, my daughters were the only roots I had, my only anchors against a billowing sea of despondence. I imagined the parents of the missing children suddenly lost in houses and on streets they'd known their whole lives. I saw them staring blankly at little beds and little spoons and little shoes and wondering,
How?
and
Where?
and
Why?

For a few days after the list appeared, the feeding slot in the prisoner's door remained closed. I decided that the beast who'd caused such misery deserved no kindness, no matter how small. I stopped my ears against his pleas for light and passed the long hours of my watch hunting for meaning in the flickering shadows the lanterns threw across the stone walls.

And it was there late one afternoon that I beheld the scales—justice—and a dove—God—and understood that I'd overstepped my bounds, realized that only He has the right to pass judgment. As much as it pained me, I opened the slot again, placed a lantern near it, and fetched a bucket of water so the prisoner could wash himself.

“How long has it been?” he asked.

“Three days,” I said.

“Why?”

I passed the list of dead children through the slot. The prisoner glanced at it briefly, then handed it back.

“So I've been found guilty?” he said.

“The trial hasn't started yet,” I said.

“Yes, it has,” he said.

AS I STATED
before, for the most part we spoke of the everyday, the mundane, the tiny beautiful details of the world outside, a world the prisoner knew he'd never see again. Occasionally, however, a certain humor came over him and he'd play at reminiscence.

“My father was a butcher, my mother a whore,” he told me on one such day. “I was born in the gutter, and the only reason they didn't leave me there is that they needed something to blame.

“My first memory is of my mother sucking off a customer in whatever flophouse we were living in then. My second memory is of my father skinning a rabbit alive and chasing me with its still-kicking, still-screaming carcass, laughing at my pleas that he stop. They kept me in a closet. They used me as a footstool, a garbage pail, a chamber pot. They beat me ceaselessly and with much glee.

“Did your parents beat you?” he asked me.

“Not enough to boast about,” I replied.

“I grew to enjoy the brutality,” he continued. “At least there was the relief that came afterward, when the blows stopped.”

I left the prison that evening thinking I had some insight into the stresses that twist some men's minds. Imagine my chagrin when, the very next day, the whole story was changed.

“Every Sunday the family sat down to an enormous lunch,” the prisoner said then. “Maman, Papa, my brother and sister. The cook labored all morning to prepare the meal, and the serving girl brought in dish after dish after dish. We ate until we couldn't eat anymore, leaving just a bit of room for dessert, of course.

“Then we all went out to the garden, where Papa read his newspapers and Maman dozed over her embroidery while we children played
escargot
and
b
ilboquet
. At night Maman would tuck me in with three kisses, one on each cheek and the last on my forehead, to sweeten my sleep.”

“What's your family name?” I asked, thinking that even though he was lying, he might still slip and reveal some fact that would help the authorities identify him.

“What's yours?” he replied.

“That's not important,” I said.

“Exactly,” he said.

“And what will it be tomorrow?” I said. “Descended from kings? A gypsy foundling?”

“I've lived many lives,” he said. “And I'll live many more.”

“I know what you're talking about, and it's blasphemy,” I said.

“Really?” he said. “What did you do to get sentenced here?”

“I'm under no sentence,” I said. “This is my work.”

The prisoner laughed and said, “Nobody would choose this for work. You're being punished for something.”

“Something I did in a previous life?”

“Thief,” he whispered through the slot in the door of his cell. “Adulterer. Murderer. You dream of your crimes and wake with a stiff prick.”

At times like these I had to step away, to retreat down the corridor until I could no longer hear his rants. I didn't want such depravity echoing in my head. I didn't want to take it home with me.

JEAN PISSARDY, AGE
seven; Irène Dizaute-Lacoste, age eight; Charles Vignes, age eight.

I memorized the list, and the names of the dead and missing came to my lips when they shouldn't have: When I spoke to my daughters, when I kissed my wife, during my prayers. Between that and the vile insinuations the prisoner sometimes spewed, I began to feel that perhaps I
was
being punished for something. Why else would I be more at ease locked in a dungeon with a killer than sharing the boulevards and parks with my fellow citizens?

I turned my face from policemen for fear they'd see in my eyes the disquietude in my soul. I avoided touching the children lest my hands obey some phantom command and do them harm. “Keep your distance,” I told my wife and spent my hours away from the prison confined in a cell of my own making, shutting myself up in our darkened bedchamber, where God and the devil fought over me like two dogs after the same bloody bone.

“WHY DO THEY
make you stay down here with me?” the prisoner asked. “Don't they trust their own locks?”

“I'm here to see to it that you don't hurt yourself,” I said.

“So that they can hurt me later?” he said.

“Why waste your breath on questions you already know the answers to?” I said.

The prisoner was silent for a second, then said, “Well, have no fear, they're not going to kill this sly one. Right this second Zola is writing a letter for me, just like he did for the Jew Dreyfus. I'll be free in no time.”

“No, you won't,” I said.

“Yes, I will,” he replied.

“If I were you, I'd make peace with what's coming,” I said.

When I looked in on him fifteen minutes later, I was shocked to find him hanging from a makeshift noose he'd fashioned from his tunic. He'd somehow wedged the garment into a crevice in the wall so that it would support his weight.

I unlocked the door and entered the cell. Wrapping my arms around the prisoner, I lifted his body until the tunic was no longer taut. He came to sudden kicking, punching life, and I realized he'd merely been feigning unconsciousness in order to draw me inside. I fell back as he wrenched himself free from the wall and stumbled for the door. He was not a big man, nor a strong one, so it was nothing for me to lay my arm across his throat and arrest his flight. I tightened my hold until he ceased his struggles then removed the noose and made him strip off his trousers.

He spent the rest of the day curled naked on his bunk, face to the wall. At the end of my watch I opened the cell door and stood on the threshold.

“If I tell the commander what you did, it'll be a straitjacket for you,” I said.

The prisoner didn't respond.

“I've seen men made crazy by that thing,” I continued.

Still no response.

“Can I trust you?” I said.

“Yes,” the prisoner mumbled.

“I can't hear you,” I said.

“Yes,” he pronounced clearly.

I returned his clothes to him and shut the door. He made no more attempts to escape.

A MONTH BEFORE
the trial, the prisoner's attorney, accompanied by a clerk and two soldiers, came down into the pit to take his charge's statement. A tall, thin man with a skittish air, the attorney first had me chain the prisoner, then ordered the soldiers to draw their pistols before he entered the cell with a scented handkerchief pressed to his nose. His clerk stood beside him, pad and pen at the ready.

“I am Maître Bergerot, the attorney assigned to the defense in this matter,” he said.

The prisoner slouched on his bunk and shot the man a glare that could have driven nails.

“Assigned by whom?” he asked.

“The court,” Maître Bergerot answered.

“You look more like an undertaker than an attorney,” the prisoner said.

“See here, you bastard—” Maître Bergerot began.

“I see! I see! I see!” the prisoner said, shouting the attorney down.

Maître Bergerot sputtered like flame on damp wood and looked as if he might swallow his tongue. He regained his composure after a few deep draws on his hankie.

“We'll begin again,” he said to his clerk, then asked the prisoner his name. The prisoner said he'd heard the newspapers had given him a nickname. Maître Bergerot told him yes, he was being called the Wolf.

“The Wolf will do, then,” the prisoner said. “No need to confuse things.”

“Listen closely,” Maître Bergerot said. “You've been accused of killing eight children. Do you wish to refute these charges?”

“What I'd really like is some lamprey,” the prisoner said. “Do you think you could catch one for me, stork?”

Maître Bergerot stared angrily at him, then said to his clerk, “Come. There is nothing I can do for this madman, and nothing I
want
to do but see him pay for his crimes.”