The Flowers (30 page)

“Like having to play football,” said Joe. “He was like, are my sons male? If they don't want to go do any street violence, shouldn't they want to
see
it?”

“He thinks it's because of the glasses we wear, because of books and reading.”

“I wanted to do what Mom wanted, myself.”

“So we had to come,” said Mike.

“Had to witness history,” said Joe. “And now, que bueno que we can talk about getting our glasses all dirty.”

“Yeah, reading can get you into tough, dangerous shit too, you know?”

“Viva la revolución!” Joe said.

“I dunno,” Mike said. “So far only a few locos cussed out police cars.”

“Revolt,” Joe said to the two of us. “Fuck Whitey.”

Mike shushed Joe and that started making a laugh.

“Mostly it's the black dudes we saw throwing bricks and bottles down the road, but we saw la chota chasing some brown vatos,” said Mike. That made them both look at me for approval, wait a few seconds.

“Es buena onda, like a party, dude.”

“You throwing any?” I asked.

“Cómo que no?” Mike said.

“Cómo que sí,” Joe said. “We're too scared to throw a fart.

I'm figuring we only gotta be here ten or fifteen minutes more so we can go back home and not get our butts kicked by our pops.”

“Then we finally get to watch some TV.”

“Watch this better on TV, verdad?”

“O mejor watch a sit-com.”

“Revolt!”

“Yeah, tonight let's not even study, 'cause there's not gonna be any school tomorrow, right?”

They both cracked up over this.

* * *

I didn't see Pink hanging there across the street from Los Flores until I almost crashed into him. I was going over to what was the only car of his around, the Bel Air which he said was mine, so he couldn't have been there for it unless he changed his mind.

“My little brother. You doing any good?”

“I thought you moved out and … left your roommate in the suit to live there.”

“Gotta be here, gotta wait.” He rolled his head, frustrated.

“Gotta goddamn wait.”

We were both away from any streetlamps, close to the Bel Air. I was there to look into the picture window of #1 and Pink was too. The street was bigger than before, the building was smaller than before, so it was harder. We could see the TV set flicking on inside over at the right, and a stick of light, back there on the left, which was Cloyd's office, the door mostly closed, but we couldn't make out bodies inside.

“I don't want nobody to see me,” I told him.

“They in there,” he said. “They in there, little brother.”

“Who?”

“They are. Your stepdaddy, he in there, don't you think?”

“Probably. You don't know?” I wanted him to tell me this so much I forgot I wondered what he was doing. “My mom? Did you see her?”

But he'd gone off into grumbling sounds, like he was fucked up. Not drunk messed up. High fucked up. And not mota either. And not only pissed-off messed up.

“You didn't see my mom in there?” I was seeing him but I don't think he was seeing me. He was saying something to himself. “You been here for a while, Pink?” I asked.

Like he'd been listening all along. “I been here, little brother.
I good goddamn been here and wanting not to. Motherfucker got me here waiting.” He caught up with what he was saying and grabbed my shoulder, his big hand sweaty hot, making the blood rush up to it. “But it all be good, it's all good, we don't got nothing to worry, you know what I mean? It be all good, all of it gonna go good eventually.”

I thought I saw someone in #1 at the window.

“You think they can see us? I don't want Cloyd to see me.”

“They can't see us here,” he said.

I backed up deeper anyways, toward a big tree with lots of leaves, and he did too.

“You see my mom in there?” I asked again.

“Can't see us,” he said following me. “They don't see us.”

When a light burst out from behind us and then against the glass across the street, we both dropped flat—it was flames jumping into the sky, maybe blocks away but so tall they hit up into the night above them and even reflected bright against the panes of #1. Voices went louder on the boulevard.

“Ain't this something? This is some fucking shit going on.”

The door opened from #1 and we crouched more, stayed lower than the Bel Air's windows. By the time I let myself up to peek, the door was closed.

“Who was it?” I asked. “You see?”

Pink was talking to himself but not out loud.

“Cloyd's got shotguns in there next to the doors,” I told him. “Took down his hunting rifles.”

“That's just right,” he whispered, shaking his head. “'Cause they just might wanna shoot at some black meat, like that.”

I wanted to take off. Noisy as the street over there was, we seemed to be in a safe and quiet unseen darkness.

“Blue-eyed devil wanna kill him some niggerboys. Now you listen to me, you listen. He gonna use them guns. You
understand? Might not be today or even next week. But he gonna. Now you listen to me. You be careful. You understand?”

Sirens were curling around from several directions, voices seemed to be dropping down onto us from the tree.

“I gotta get in there another way,” I told him.

“You go on now. If I'm still here … well, goddamn, I better not still be here.”

I probably wasn't making much sense either, so there was that. “Probably see you then.”

“You keep them ears listening for me,” he said. “You do that for me. Ears, brother, and you tell what they hear. We doing right, me and you. Ain't that right, little brother?”

When I saw I had the rock in my hand and that I'd been holding onto it like it was my doll, the words
ma chère
popped out of my head and, well, I started to smile and I wanted to laugh. And because of that, was that why I wanted to feel like it would all be good, like Pink was saying? That maybe he was right, whatever it was?
Peut-être. Peut-être
I understood what he said,
peut-être non
.
Vive la différence.
I was smiling so loud I should have been laughing with the twins.

The boulevard was working the air so fierce that landing screwy on the trash cans from the back fence didn't even make a dog bark, or I wasn't listening for one anyways. And it stunk like burning rubber everywhere, so that made it hard to hear too. Once I got my balance back, I kept sneaking in from the back of The Flowers, past Bud's truck. Even Tino's was there tonight, though not my mom's. I did not want to run into Cloyd, I did not want to. I tiptoed up the apartment stairs like I was in socks and for some reason fell over Josep's chair and it broke, I broke it, crumpled it like a toy. I stopped for only a second and felt sorry, but what could I do right then? It didn't seem to make no noise either, so then I went over and put my ear to Nica's window,
lights on inside but no way with all the outside crazy could I even hear TV, so I just went on and knocked on it until I knocked on it harder and she bent the curtain and saw me and opened the door, already crying like she couldn't wait to see me or somebody.

“That I stole money,” she said again.

I couldn't get it until she said it a couple more times.

“I didn't do that,” she said. “I didn't do that.”

I kept up asking because I couldn't believe it. I felt so bad. I never felt so bad.

“Sonny, I'm scared,” she said, crying. “I didn't do that.”

“You didn't do that,” I said. “I know you didn't.”

“But Margarito is very mad. He says that this man is going to make trouble for him and my mom. He doesn't have papers. My mom, she doesn't have the documents either.”

“You gotta explain to me better what happened.”

“Well he came over and told Margarito. He told him I stole money.”

“From Number seven, that man?”

“The big man who is the husband of the woman with the cat. That one.”

“That's not right,” I told her. “You didn't do that.”

“I don't know what I'm going to do. What can I do, Sonny?”

“It's that—well, I have to think of something,” I told her.

“I want to leave here,” she said, sobbing. “I want to go home, I want to go home. I am afraid of Margarito. That he is so mad at me and he will not stop. I am afraid. I am afraid of what he will do. Do you understand? I am afraid to stay here.”

She was crying so fierce I was afraid she would wake up Angel.

“He's asleep.” She didn't stop crying but she got up with me when I went to look in the bedroom. He was on the single
bed he shared with her, naked except for a diaper. “I love him, it's not because of him, but I want to go home. I only want to go home now, Sonny.”

We were back on the gold couch like I dreamed all the time, her body up against me, and I could see us in the mirror like I would always want to see us. I looked at us and I looked at us. Was the mirror real? Her tears wet me blue like a clean sky that never touched me before.

“Where could you go?” I asked her.

“Mexico,” she said.

“But where? Do you have someplace to go there?”

“Xalapa,” she said. “I can go there. It's Veracruz.”

“Really?” I asked. “You have someone there? Family?”

She still sobbed, but without tears, nodding. She even looked at me straight into my guilty eyes, which she never ever did before. I flinched. I had to not look at her back, because that way maybe she would never know what she saw there. I wanted it to be as unclear to her as, like, English.

“But Angel,” she said.

“He's not your baby,” I said. “He has a mom, and it's not you.”

She started crying and put her arms around me and she was crying even harder and I wasn't sure what else to do.

“Are you sure you want to go?”

She was nodding her head. “I don't like it here,” she said.

“I don't want to stay now.”

I kissed her. She kissed me. We kissed. We kissed and kissed and there was almost nothing but me kissing her and her kissing me and kissing.

“I'll take you,” I said.

She had no voice. Her breathing was more gasps, breaking in between sobs.

“If you want to go.”

Her breathing was becoming air. She sat up. She breathed with her chest, sobs were fading.

“I have to come back. I have to take off. I'll be back though.”

“Sonny?”

“You have to get ready. You have to bring everything you want.”

I forgot about sirens and the streets and smoke too that made a taste in the mouth. Then there were shouts on the boulevard, so close they seemed close to the steps of The Flowers, though only silent ashes floated as much up as down, not even moths slapping any light on either side of Nica's, not Cindy's, not a creak from Mr. Josep's. No light on over in #7 or in #6 either, meaning, maybe, did Pink's roommate leave and did Pink leave too? If that was what he'd been waiting for. I went down wanting not to touch the steps—I probably could've stomped and nobody'd hear nothing. Dead lightbulbs kept it black inside Gina and Ben's so I pushed against the wall to the back door of #1 until I decided not to go in that way once I was at the edge of Cloyd's office—those lights were made of daylight. I turned back. I wanted to run but I only walked fast and I got to the other side of the building where the weeds were still jungle and itchy through my clothes and I made it over to the window where the bedroom I slept in was. Being expert with screens, I took this one off and started to climb in the open window when a lightbulb from the old people across clicked on and I heard their window opening, which scared the piss out of me so I pressed down onto the bedroom floor. I held still and grabbed the rock I'd thrown onto the bed. I kept myself there and I heard them talking from their window but there were sirens and other voices out there and now I could also hear voices in the living room of #1 too. I think they heard the noise I made but the TV volume
was high. It was Bud getting closer, saying I don't know what, and Mary wasn't talking so I could hear. It was so much TV riot news. Under me from the floor I felt steps getting closer and then I could even sense his ugly eyes check out this bedroom, but since he wasn't looking for me he didn't see me clutching the rock. I had it ready. I peeked, and he was carrying a shotgun to the bathroom. He left the bathroom door open while he filled the bowl. I did not move except a little backward, more behind the bed in case he came in again. After he flushed, just like I guessed, he opened the bedroom door again, but he didn't see the window open or the screen off, maybe since the neighbor across already turned off the light. He left the door like it was and in the kitchen said
You're outta beers, Cloyd.
I stayed still I don't know how long until his voice went a couple times in the living room and then I took all the hundreds I'd put back in the boyscout book and folded them and put them in my front pocket and I lifted the carpet because I decided to get the other money too and I rolled that up for the other pocket and I went back to the window. I tossed the rock a little to the side, where it thudded into the grass. I hopped up and swung myself over and down until I had to drop. I didn't land perfectly. I had to catch myself with my hands and I hit sideways and on my shoulder and the rest of my body came behind that, and the tall grass made like bamboo crackled, not like some cat passing through but more some dude like me breaking in. As I fished around for my rock, that neighbor's light came on again and I heard the woman making those words of hers I didn't understand, but once I finally found my rock I just took off out of there because, though I didn't see her, I think she saw me or someone, because she was shouting out the window. I ran through the grass straight to the back of the complex, and when I got to that cinder-block fence I somehow climbed it and got over with that pinche rock in my hand! I ran through another apartment complex out that street and I kept running. At
first I thought I would head away from the boulevard, but no, I turned that way instead.