Sweet Nothing Read online

  Manuel was five years older than me. I met him at a party at my cousin’s when I was fifteen. He’d only been in the U.S. for a few years, and his idea of dressing up was still boots and a cowboy hat. Not my type at all. I was into lowriders, pendejos with hot cars. But Manuel was so sweet to me, and polite in a way the East L.A. boys weren’t. He bought me flowers, called twice a day. And after my parents met him, forget it. He went to Mass, he could rebuild the engine in any car, and he was already working at the brewery, making real money: they practically handed me over to him right there.

  Our plan was that we’d marry when I graduated, but I ended up pregnant at the end of my junior year. Everything got moved up then, and I never went back to school. My parents were upset, but they couldn’t say much because the same thing had happened to them. It all worked out fine, though. Manuel was a good husband, our kids were healthy, and we had a nice life together. Sometimes you get lucky.

  I DO THE dishes after dinner, then join the girls in the living room. The TV is going, but nobody’s paying attention. Lorena is on her laptop, and Brianna is texting on her phone. They don’t look up from punching buttons when I sit in my recliner. I watch a woman try to win a million dollars. The audience groans when she gives the wrong answer.

  I can’t sit still. My brain won’t slow down, thinking about Antonio and Puppet, thinking about Lorena and Brianna, so I decide to make my rounds a little early. I can’t get to sleep if I haven’t rattled the lock on the garage door, latched the gate, and watered my flowers. Manuel called it “walking the perimeter.”

  “Sarge is walking the perimeter,” he’d say.

  The heat has broken when I step out into the front yard. The sun is low in the sky, and little birds chase one another from palm tree to palm tree, twittering excitedly. Usually, you can’t hear them over the kids playing, but since the shooting, everybody is keeping their children inside.

  I drag the hose over to the roses growing next to the chain-link fence that separates the yard from the sidewalk. They’re blooming like mad in this heat. The white ones, the yellow, the red. I lay the hose at the base of the bushes and turn the water on low, so the roots get a good soaking.

  Rudolfo is still at work in his shop. His saw whines, and then comes the bang bang bang of a hammer. I haven’t been over to see him in a while. Maybe I’ll take him some spaghetti.

  I wash my face and put on a little makeup. Lipstick, eyeliner; nothing fancy. Perfume. I change out of my housedress into jeans and a nice top. My stomach does a flip as I’m dressing. I guess you could say I’ve got a thing for Rudolfo, but I think he likes me too, the way he smiles. And for my birthday last year he gave me a jewelry box that he made. Back in the kitchen, I dig out some good Tupperware to carry the spaghetti in.

  Rudolfo’s dog, Oso, a big shaggy mutt, barks as I come down the driveway.

  “Cállate, hombre,” Rudolfo says.

  I walk to the door of the shop and stand there silently, watching Rudolfo sand a rough board smooth. He makes furniture—simple, sturdy tables, chairs, and wardrobes—and sells it to rich people from Pasadena and Beverly Hills. The furniture is nice, but awfully plain. I’d think a rich woman would want something fancier than a table that looks like it belongs in a farmhouse.

  “Knock-knock,” I finally say.

  Rudolfo grins when he looks up and sees me standing there.

  “Hola, Blanca.”

  I move into the doorway but still don’t step through. Some men are funny. You’re intruding if you’re not invited.

  “Come in, come in,” Rudolfo says. He takes off his glasses and cleans them with a red bandanna. He’s from El Salvador, and so handsome with that Indian nose and his silver hair combed straight back. “Sorry for sawing so late, but I’m finishing an order. That was the last little piece.”

  “I just came by to bring you some spaghetti,” I say. “I made too much again.”

  “Oh, hey, gracias. Pásale.”

  He motions for me to enter and wipes the sawdust off a stool with his bandanna. I sit and look around the shop. It’s so organized, the lumber stacked neatly by size, the tools in their special places. This used to crack Manuel up. He called Rudolfo the Librarian. The two of them got along fine but were never really friends. Too busy, I guess, both working all the time.

  Rudolfo takes the spaghetti from me and says, “Did that cop stop by your house today?”

  “The bald one?” I say.

  “He told me he’s sure someone saw who killed that baby.”

  Someone who’s just as bad as the killer. I know. I run my finger over a hammer sitting on the workbench. If this is what he wants to talk about, I’m going to leave.

  “Are things getting crazier,” Rudolfo continues, “or does it just seem that way?”

  “I ask myself that all the time,” I reply.

  “I’m starting to think more like mi abuelo every day,” he says. “You know what he’d say about what happened to that baby? ‘Bring me the rope, and I’ll hang the bastard who did it myself.’”

  I stand and brush off my pants.

  “Enjoy the spaghetti,” I say. “I’ve got to get back.”

  “So soon?”

  “I wake up at two thirty to be at the hospital by four.”

  “Let me walk you out.”

  “No, no, finish what you were doing.”

  Puppet and his homeys are hanging on the corner when I get out to the street. Puppet is leaning on a car that’s blasting music, that boom boom fuck fuck crap. He’s wearing a white T-shirt, baggy black shorts that hang past his knees, white socks pulled all the way up, and a pair of corduroy house shoes. The same stuff cholos have been wearing since I was a kid. His head is shaved, and there’s a tattoo on the side of it: Temple Street.

  I knew his mom before she went to prison; I even babysat him a couple times when he was young. He went bad at ten or eleven, stopped listening to the grandma who was raising him and started running with thugs. The boys around here slip away like that again and again. He stares at me now like, What do you have to say? Like he’s reminding me to be scared of him.

  Baby killer, I should shout back. You ain’t shit. I should have shut the door in that detective’s face too. I’ve got to be smarter from now on.

  I HAVEN’T BEEN sleeping well. It’s the heat, sure, but I’ve also been dreaming of little Antonio. He comes tonight as an angel, floating above my bed, up near the ceiling. He makes his own light, a golden glow that shows everything for what it is. But I don’t want to see. I swat at him once, twice, knock him to the floor. His light flickers, and the darkness comes rushing back.

  My pillow is soaked with sweat when I wake up. It’s guilt that gives you dreams like that. Prisoners go crazy from it, rattle the doors of their cells and scream out confessions. Anything, anything to get some peace. I look at the clock, and it’s past midnight. The sound of a train whistle drifts over from the tracks downtown. I have to be up in two hours.

  I pull on my robe to go into the kitchen for a glass of milk. Lorena is snoring quietly, and I close her door as I pass by. Then there’s another sound. Whispers. Coming from the living room. The girls left something unlocked, and now we’re being robbed. That’s my first thought, and it stops the blood in my veins. But then there’s a familiar giggle, and I peek around the corner to see Brianna standing in front of a window, her arms reaching through the bars to touch someone—it’s too dark to say who—out in the yard.

  I step into the room and snap on the light. Brianna turns, startled, and the shadow outside disappears. I hurry to the front door, open it, but there’s no one out there now except a bum pushing a grocery cart filled with cans and newspapers down the middle of the street. Brianna is in tears when I go back inside, and I’m shaking all over, I’m so angry.

  “So that talk today was for nothing?” I say.

  My yelling wakes Lorena, and she finds me standing over Brianna, who is cowering on the couch.

  “Let her up,” Lorena says. />
  She won’t listen as I try to explain what happened, how frightened I was when I heard voices in the dark. She just grabs Brianna and drags her back to their room.

  I wind up drinking coffee at the kitchen table until it’s time to get ready for work. Lorena comes out as I’m about to leave for the bus. She says that the boy from Brianna’s school came to see her again, and she was right in the middle of telling him to go away when I came in. She says we’re going to forget the whole thing, let it lie.

  “I want to show that I trust her,” she says.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “Just treat her like normal.”

  “I will.”

  “She’s a good girl, Mom.”

  “I know.”

  They’ve beaten the fire out of me. If all they want is a cook and a cleaning lady, fine.

  MY STOMACH HURTS during the ride to work, and I feel feverish. Resting my forehead against the cool glass of the window, I take deep breaths and tell myself it’s nothing, just too much coffee. It’s still dark outside, the streets empty, the stores locked tight. Like everyone gave up and ran away and I’m the last to know. I smell smoke when I get off at the hospital. Sirens shriek in the distance.

  Irma is fixing her hair in the locker room.

  “You don’t look so good,” she says.

  “Maybe it’s something I ate,” I reply.

  She gives me a Pepto-Bismol tablet from her purse, and we tie our aprons and walk to the kitchen. One of the boys has cornered a mouse in there, back by the pantry, and pinned it to the floor with a broom. Everybody moves in close, chattering excitedly.

  “Step on it,” somebody says.

  “Drown it,” someone else suggests.

  “No! ¡No mate el pobrecito!” Josefina wails, trembling fingers raised to her lips. Don’t kill the poor little thing. She’s about to burst into tears.

  The boy with the broom glances at her, then tells one of the dishwashers to bring a bucket. He and the dishwasher turn the bucket upside down and manage to trap the mouse beneath it. They slide a scrap of cardboard across the opening and flip the bucket. The mouse cowers in the bottom, shitting all over itself. The boys free it on the construction site next door, and we get to work.

  I do okay until about eight, until the room starts spinning and I almost pass out in the middle of serving Dr. Alvarez his oatmeal. My stomach cramps, my mouth fills with spit, and I whisper to Irma to take my place on the line before I run to the bathroom and throw up.

  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 yo
u 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.