The Black Kids(35)

While Lucia was on bed rest waiting to have Umberto and Roberto, the people in the Mayan village a few miles from hers just vanished one day.

“They all just disappeared, mija. And for a minute we asked ourselves if they’d even been real. Then the boys were born, and they were so beautiful and perfect, and I felt guilty for feeling so happy.”

“Who did it?”

“The military.”

“Why? How could anybody do that?”

“They hated the indios. They wanted their land. They thought the indios were more likely to be guerillas, or at least to sympathize with them. All of these reasons. None of these reasons.”

“What’d you guys do?”

“What do you mean?”

“When they disappeared, what did you guys do?”

“We didn’t do anything.…”

“But, like, what happened after that?”

Lucia shakes her head and grows quiet. I’m used to it by now, these stories she starts but never finishes, like a bunch of half-woven blankets.

A lone seagull screams across the sky.

Somehow, Lucia is always both afraid and fearless. I wonder if growing up in a war zone disarms you so you can’t even tell why your heart races, just the constant awareness that it does.

The radio station takes calls from around the city. If yesterday’s calls were full of anger, today’s are full of fear. The power is out in several areas. People are shooting guns into the air without regard for the fact that there are children around. The businesses on fire are dangerously close to family homes. There’s too much danger in this anger now, people, they say. Stop.



* * *




As Lucia and I turn into the driveway, I watch in the rearview mirror as the simple Parker paces his front yard, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. His rifle is on the ground. He’s definitely not staying vigilant. It’s weird to see a gun out in broad daylight on our sleepy street, something that could tear right through you and turn your insides out. It never occurred to me that anyone here might own one. It’s not that kind of neighborhood. But I guess now maybe it is.

“What did I tell you about smoking? Are you trying to light the whole neighborhood on fire?” his mother yells from inside the house. He extinguishes his cigarette in a nearby planter before picking up his rifle and heading back inside.

Fat squirrels chase each other in fat spirals around the trees outside. Normally, the pool guy would’ve come today; instead, the leaves float across the surface and collect in a pileup by the gutters. Inside the house, our air tastes like artificial lemons. I set my backpack down, take off my shoes, and Risky Business–slide across the newly waxed floors.

Onscreen, the looters run into and out of stores cradling televisions, their cords trailing behind them like tails.

“You’ll split your head open.” My dad peeks over from the couch. Nobody ever actually splits their head open. Jo fell off a roof and didn’t even split her head open. Grown-ups act like we’re all just walking watermelons.

Neither of my parents went to work today because the riots have everyone afraid to do everything, even make money. Even though they made me go to school. It’s weird seeing my parents so undone at this hour. My father lounges in a pair of gray sweats and a faded white V-neck. His normally slicked-down hair is curly and wild like Einstein’s. I ruffle my hands through it before plopping down on the leather next to him.

“Animals,” my father says under his breath. “How was school?”

“It was… school.” I lean over and give his belly a big slap like a drum.

My dad’s clothes are usually tailored so you don’t see the soft of his belly. That’s a newer thing, like the grays. If before he was like a board, now you can grab a handful of him and give it a good shake. My mother does this to him a lot. Each time she giggles and giggles at my father’s new pudge like it’s a three-piece corduroy suit.

“Have the Parkers been out there all day?” I ask.

“Those idiots…” My father sighs.

“My physics teacher was telling us about Watts during the riots.”

“I didn’t know you had a black teacher.”

“He’s white. Or half-white, I guess. Syrian. He said his mother made them move afterward. Do you remember the Watts riots?”

“We didn’t live in Watts,” he says distractedly, watching the screen. “But your grandma Shirley was worried about the store. There was a curfew in place in the black areas. You couldn’t go anywhere. Back then people wrote ‘Blood Brother’ on the walls to let people know that black folks owned it. Your grandma sprayed it around the building in deep red letters as a precaution. I remember that specifically, ’cause when she came home, she had red on her hands and smudges all on her face and her dress, and Ronnie and I rushed over to her hollering, thinking something awful had happened. But it was just paint.…”

On TV, a stubby black man staggers around on broken glass. He stands in front of his emptied business. BLACK-OWNED, the handwritten yellow placard says.

“I’m from here,” he yells. “I tried to make it.”

His pain is visceral as he yells at everyone around him. He is a grown man in the middle of a mob crying over his dreams. They back away slowly like he’s an injured wild animal. He could almost be Uncle Ronnie, but without the good hair.