The Black Kids(24)
Jose is not like Arturo, I say to Lucia. Jose is a good man.
“What’s a good man?” Lucia sighs. “They’re all good, until they’re not.”
But I see the way she looks at Jose, like maybe she’d like to sell cobijas and clothing and knickknacks and Coke in glass bottles with him. Like maybe she could sit up on his roof, cuddle up in a blanket, and watch the fireworks over Dodger Stadium. I can see her dreaming up their life together and deciding maybe they could be good. I wonder if she’s going to tell him today that she’s leaving soon.
Although I try not to watch, my gaze finds its way back to the television screen. The truck driver lies on the ground in a halo of his own blood and hair. Nobody goes to help him. The police are nowhere to be found. Some man walks up, takes the wallet right from the truck driver’s pocket, and runs off. Finally, the truck driver gets to his knees, and another man comes up almost out of nowhere and appears to kick him in the head. I feel myself wince.
“Go out with me?” Jose says. It’s the first time he’s said it for real and not just as a joke.
On the television, the man drags himself into his truck and tries to drive away. The people at the intersection continue to throw anger at passing cars. From up above it looks like somewhere I’ve driven through a thousand times, but also somewhere I’ve never been. I bet my dad would know where it is.
“Okay,” Lucia says softly to Jose, and I look over at her because she’s going home to Guatemala and what’s the point of even going on a date when you’re gonna leave, but maybe that bloodied truck driver made her forget, or maybe he reminded her why she left. Or maybe being around Jose makes her think she might want to stick around a little bit longer.
Jose completes the rest of the transaction in silence.
On our way home, as we cross the street, Lucia reaches for my hand like she used to when I was little, and even though I haven’t done so in a long time, I hold it.
* * *
By the time we get home, the city is burning. The buildings are stripped bare, and people yank the guts through their skeletons.
Lucia hands me a small envelope.
“The Katzes said it was accidentally delivered to them, and they kept forgetting to bring it over.”
“You open it,” I say. My heart feels like it’s going to fall right out my chest and splat right on the kitchen floor.
“It’s your future, mija.”
The envelope says my future has been wait-listed.
I want to cry. I’m in at other schools—really good schools, even—but Stanford is the school I want. Close to home, but far enough away to be some other me. Somewhere I can briefly stop being a sister and a daughter, but only an hour’s flight away in case Jo needs me. I don’t know for what, exactly; maybe in case her broken brain delivers a rough uppercut and she needs me to pull her up, squirt some water in her mouth, ice her bruises, and tell her to keep fighting. I need to be somewhere I can still feel the ocean, my ocean, in my hair and skin. I’m convinced Stanford is the only place I’ll thrive. I want to throw up. I want to disappear. I want to crawl into a hole with embarrassment. I feel all of these things and burn up in their atmosphere as I hurtle down.
Lucia pats me on the thigh. “Everything’ll work out alright.”
Instead of crying, I watch.
* * *
Up goes a shoe store.
Up goes a laundromat.
Up goes a TV repair store.
Up goes a mattress store.
Up goes a liquor store.
All of it goes up.
* * *
My mother calls me from her car phone. “It’s going to be a while. I’m going to try to take the 101 to the 405 and see if that’s better. I’m afraid to get on the 10.”
My father calls me from his car phone. “I’m okay. I’ll get there when I get there. It’s bad. Really bad. Stay home, okay? Promise you won’t try to go out with your friends. Not tonight.”
“I promise.”
I call Jo from our living room. The phone rings and rings, and I’m afraid she’s not there, but she is.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Of course I’m not. It’s so wrong. I’m so tired of this shit. They had the goddamn evidence right in front of their faces. It was right there, Ashley! I mean, they don’t fucking see us even when they’re looking right at us.” Usually when Jo goes on about one of her causes, it feels so far away—like she’s angry because she knows she should be and not because she actually feels that shit in her kidneys. But this… this feels different. Even I feel it somewhere in my innards, pulsing.
“You should come home,” I say, “until everything’s blown over.”
“I’m not leaving Harrison here alone,” she says. Stupid Harrison. Just because he maybe survived tetanus doesn’t mean he can save her from everything else.
“Just bring him here with you!”
“I’m not subjecting him to Mom again after what happened at dinner.”
“Is it him you’re really concerned about, or you?” I say.
She doesn’t respond.
“Jo… don’t do anything stupid, please?” I think of her handcuffed to her high school flagpole, fighting for brown people halfway across the world. She spent her suspension calling our local congressperson. Jo’s the kind of person who would accidentally find herself in the middle of somebody else’s riot.