After the Hurricane(92)
Santiago’s uncle Samuel, who everyone called Rowdy, was just two years older than him, and had been caught trying to burgle a warehouse in Williamsburg that summer. Given the choice between prison and the army, he had chosen active duty, and in October he had been shipped off to Vietnam. They got letters from him every other month, and an occasional crackled phone call. Teofila was quite proud of him. He’d become a sniper, and already had three kills to his name.
Why is it, Santiago wondered as he walked to Teofila’s house one Sunday night, the first winter after his mother had been institutionalized, his breath white clouds in the heartaching cold, that one of my uncles is in jail for his excellent aim with a gun, while the other is rising through the ranks? But then, Santiago himself was no stranger to the curving line of moral relativism.
“You’re late,” Teofila said, opening the door and looking him up and down with, as always, clear disappointment at his existence, before turning back and walking toward the kitchen, leaving him in the doorway, her duty to greet him done. She spoke in Spanish, as always, for she spoke almost no English.
“I was doing homework,” he called out, closing the door behind him. A lie; he had simply not wanted to come, he had been reading something his English teacher recommended, The Count of Monte Cristo. He loved the way that the Count remade himself from the ground up. It confirmed what Santiago already knew, that reinvention was a matter of will, and strategy.
“Always your nose in a book. Useless waste of time,” Teofila called from the kitchen, her derision clear. How would you know? Santiago wanted to ask. His grandmother could not read. Instead, he hung up his coat, neatly tucking his scarf into the sleeve of his jacket so that it wouldn’t fall or get lost. He had very few possessions, and had learned how to take care of them. As he turned, a punch to his stomach knocked the breath out of his body, his hands flying to his nose to protect his glasses. His body healed for free, but glasses cost money.
“Maricón! How are ya, Junior?” His uncle Roberto, who was six years older than him, asked, his mouth curved in an evil smirk. Of all his uncles, Junior couldn’t understand how kind Rodrigo and cheerful Rowdy had ended up, respectively, imprisoned and in the army, while Roberto, who was a sick, smug bastard, roamed free. But he was smart, his uncle, not as smart as Santiago, but smarter than many, and Teofila’s pride and joy. He worked by day as an elevator repairman, taken on by a friend of Isadoro, his father.
Santiago straightened his glasses, got his breath back, and sighed.
“I’m fine, Tío.” Santiago called all his aunts and uncles by their familial title, no matter their age. Roberto hit his arm, hard, laughing again.
“I bet you are, pansy.”
Santiago sighed again. Hitting him back, which was what he wanted, what Roberto would have respected, would only end in more pain. His only real option was to remain a punching bag for his uncle until he got bored and gave up. He had a cat’s attention span, so it shouldn’t be too long, Santiago hoped.
Small hands crept around his waist, squeezing at his bruised stomach, but he closed his eyes against the pain, not wanting to yell at the hugger, Irena, his eleven-year-old aunt. He liked her well enough, and Roberto wouldn’t hit his sister, she could be a shield.
“Sobrino Junior!” She cackled, amused as ever that her nephew doubled as her babysitter. She called him Junior, like they all did, even though Teofila loathed his father, his namesake. “I have something to show you.” She took him by the hand, past Roberto, who had slumped down in the living room, his eyes glued to the television, a beer in his hand, and down the hallway of the three-bedroom apartment.
Isadoro, who worked every day but Sundays, usually spent the day napping, so Santiago would greet him at dinnertime when he emerged from the room he shared with Teofila, a sleepy bear of a man as gentle as a butterfly. Irena shared a room with her half sister, Carmen, who was nineteen and wild, out with every bad character in the building, and the larger neighborhood, any chance she got. Recently she had been seeing a member of the Ghetto Brothers, a South Bronx gang that also played music. Teofila was sure she was going to come home pregnant, but Santiago privately thought one day she just wouldn’t come home at all. Little Hermando now had a room all to himself. Roberto had his own place in the same building, something Teofila had been able to finagle through sheer intimidation, but he came over most days for meals, an act of madness, according to Santiago. Anyone who could avoid Teofila’s food should do so, no matter how hungry they were.
“Come on,” Irena said, leading Santiago to the dining table. Dinner that evening was a mofongo, dry as chalk and twice as tasteless, filled with stewed chicken, which was both tasteless and oversalted. Roberto, the madman, had three helpings, while Junior, hungry despite it all, cleaned his plate and asked for another chicken leg, earning him a glare from Teofila, and a smile from Isadoro, a man who loved to feed people. Their pairing was so strange that Junior wondered if Teofila had herself resorted to magic years ago, hanging love charms around her bed to render her gorgon-self a beautiful princess instead. Carmen had come home halfway through the meal, and sat, scowling at everyone, the hickeys on her neck standing out like neon signs. She and Teofila were locked in a battle of wills, silent but deadly, with each one refusing to acknowledge the other’s existence.
“I think it’s going to help a lot,” Irena said, out of nowhere, over watery flan soaked in syrup that had burned, and was now bitter.