How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water (28)

Not so different from Yadiresela. It happened only eight blocks away from where we live.

And guess what? The reporter warned parents not to share photos of their children on the computer. Especially photos where you can see the school in the background. You see? They said strange men take photos and put them on the computer. They sell the girls. They only need to identify the school. They watch and they grab and take them to another state. They change their names so they disappear forever.

I don’t care that ángela calls me paranoica. She doesn’t understand that we live in a dangerous world with very sick people. Somebody has to watch for the children.

Do you know the story about the monkeys paranoico? No? I will tell you. My vecina Mariposa told me that the scientists see the monkeys from the jungle creating a big revolú for the others. So they took them away temporarily, to study them so that they could eventually help the paranoid people. They gave them drugs so they were more calm. But you know what happened? When they came back to the community with the monkeys, everybody was dead or disappeared. And you know why? Because the community needs somebody like me to pay attention for the danger. Everybody cannot be calm. To be calm is a luxury!

So yes, if I take a job doing security in the school, I can sit and watch the cameras, and make sure the strange men never enter.



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Ay, you’re right! It’s like when I watch Channel 15.

Recently I saw something on Channel 15 that can show you how much I care about the children and their safety.

Sabrina, the daughter of my neighbor, was in the lobby, around eleven in the night, wearing pajamas and shoes with pom-poms. In this cold weather! She was opening the door for one of her friends, who was wearing a Catholic school uniform. Then they disappeared off the camera. Maybe to smoke? Before, it was the boys we had to worry about. But the girls now are smoking like the boys. The next morning, I found loose tabaco all over the stairs.

Nothing happens in this building that I don’t know. Sabrina’s mother works two jobs so her daughter, dique intelligent, can go to Mother Cabrini. It’s one of the good Catholic schools in the area. When she works in the night, she leaves her two daughters with the grandmother, who is forgetting things. If someone needs extra eyes and ears, it’s Sabrina.

Why was the other girl still in the uniform, like she didn’t have a house to go to?

When Fernando left I didn’t sleep for many nights, thinking Fernando also stayed in lobbies like this one. Before I met Alexis, I worried. What if Fernando sleeps on stairs and benches in the park like people without family? These children with the entire life in front of them, what if somebody makes them do disgusting things for a hamburger? That friend of Sabrina wasn’t even carrying a backpack!

So when I saw Sabrina appear in the lobby another night, and she disappeared from the camera with her friend again, I thought maybe I should talk to her. Sabrina needed to know that her activity was in the TV. I hadn’t seen her in the camera letting in boys, just her little friend—but in a building where the bochinche travels she will get caught.

So I put on my coat, went down the stairs. I heard them laughing one floor down. Their voices louder and then suddenly everything got silent. Then that smell. Dios mío, that smell. They had been smoking la marijuana, like they didn’t know that it made them not grow. The trap door to la heroína. It makes my heart break.

She’s only una ni?ita and has to concentrate on school so she can get a good job with health insurance. Stay away from the drugs and drinking. That’s all any mother wants. And Sabrina is pretty too. So pretty.

I walked down, close enough to see the girls holding hands. Then Sabrina got closer to the girl with the uniform. What are you doing? I wanted to say, but I couldn’t talk. They kissed. On the mouth. And kissed again. Stop! I said, but maybe only inside my mind. Because they kissed more. I wanted to save Sabrina. What does she know about the world? She is ruining her life. Pero me tranqué. I told you, when I get nervous I lose the voice. They kissed like they were invisible to the world. And I remembered that feeling, to kiss before knowing any bad, any evil. When I kissed with curiosity.

The girl with the uniform had her back against the wall, and when she opened the eyes, she saw me. She pushed Sabrina. They looked so scared of me. Of me!

I’m sorry, I said.

I dropped my keys, picked them up, and went back up the stairs. Maybe if I act like nothing happened, she can remain innocent. No, I don’t plan to tell the mother what I saw. But Sabrina doesn’t know this.

Why not? Ay. Maybe she will give Sabrina tremenda pela. Maybe with the baseball bat that she keeps by the door. I don’t know. I think about Fernando. Now I see I could have been more gentle with him. I didn’t understand this before he left. I learned the difficult way that you have to be gentle with your children, or you can lose them forever.



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Ay, yes, I would like a Kleenex. Look what you do to me.



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I don’t know. I don’t know what Fernando thinks of me. Still, every day I hope he will return to sit in my kitchen and eat my food. When he left, I asked the policía to help me find him. But they didn’t help. Every time a person told me they saw him, I went looking for him como una loca. Not like my mother, that never looked for me.

I told you about the time where I went to the Bronx? Yes, when I met Alexis. I will confess to you. There was another time, before that. I don’t like to think about it. Some things are too difficult to tell. But yes, a year after Fernando left, my neighbor Tita told me she saw him in the building on 180th and Pinehurst dique helping the super. Here I was, looking for him everywhere and then Tita tells me this. That he was only a few blocks away!