The Black Kids(74)
* * *
The car fund is hidden inside my mattress, which makes me feel like a gangster, or somebody during the Great Depression. It isn’t a really original place to put it, but the only person who ever looks under there is Lucia. Jose waits for us in the driveway, his car put-putting, even though Lucia told him he didn’t have to. I don’t know if he’s being macho or chivalrous, or maybe he likes her a whole lot and wants a little more time with her. So instead of leaving, he stays in his Hyundai, windows down, waiting and unabashedly humming along with “Achy Breaky Heart” on the radio.
We pull up to the detention center, which towers ten stories into the skyline like a big middle finger. The streets are a little less abandoned, though it’s a Sunday and Downtown, so they’re still abandoned enough. The riots have waxed and waned. A few loose newspaper pages blow down the street. Broken glass from blown-out windows is still underfoot. There are men in uniforms with long guns pacing, joking.
“Stay in the car, mija,” Lucia says. “I don’t want you going inside.”
“I’m a grown-up,” I say.
“No,” she says. “You’re not.”
Jose and I park the car.
“You had breakfast yet?” he asks.
“No.”
“You need breakfast.”
We walk over to a nearby stand. The vendor hunches over her cart, swaddling the hot dogs quickly but tenderly in bacon and grilling a few onions and peppers on the side.
“Buenos días,” I say.
“Buenos días.” She smiles.
“You’re out here today?” I say. Things are a little bit more under control now, but everyone is still walking around like flies that have been half-swatted: not dead, just too stunned to move. Still fearful.
“You gotta eat. I gotta eat.” She smiles and slaps a hot dog into a bun.
These could definitely make us sick, but at least for a few bites it’ll be heaven, before the bubbleguts.
“Breakfast of champions,” Jose says after taking a bite. “Does your sister get into trouble a lot?”
“Not like this. This is different, even for her,” I say.
“These are different times,” he says.
“I don’t understand what’s wrong with her sometimes. It’s like she does this stuff to herself on purpose,” I say. Jo’s own pain never seems to be enough for her. It’s like she has to take on the weight of everyone hurting everywhere.
“For some people, a little bit of trouble makes life interesting,” he says.
Jose and I stuff our faces together quietly on the sidewalk. When we’re finished, we walk around, and he tells me a little about his days playing semipro baseball in Mexico before he came here. “Are you still good at baseball?” I ask.
“Nah. I got both my arms broken once, and after that I wasn’t nearly as good as I used to be. But that’s a whole other story.”
How do you get both your arms broken? I’m afraid to ask.
Nearby, smoke rises above the city.
“How long do these things take?” I ask.
Jose shrugs.
We stand across from City Hall, which is historic and architecturally impressive, but also kinda looks like a penis made out of Lego pieces. There are a ton of police cars and police officers guarding it, watching. I feel my heart start to quicken at the sight of them, so I take a few deep breaths. There’s a slight haze, but even so, I lift my face to the muted sun, close my eyes, and let it bear down in squiggles under my eyelids.
Before we head back over to the jail, Jose gets fruit from a cart near the hot dog vendor. Jose selects the fruit—watermelon, cantaloupe, pineapple—and the vendor chops it up right in front of us before he places the slices in two plastic baggies and douses them with a healthy sprinkle of Tajín.
“Here,” Jose says, and passes me a fork.
The juice dribbles down my chin as the chili hits the roof of my mouth. Together we eat fruit out of a baggie on a dirty Downtown sidewalk while somebody’s boom box blasts “No Vaseline.” I marvel at the beauty of the city in my mouth, a little sweet, a little bitter.
* * *
Lucia and Jo emerge from the jail when the haze has burned off and our street fruit’s well into our bellies. We’ve seen a number of people enter and leave the place by now, the world a blur of human law and disorder. Jose helps me to my feet. The tips of his fingers are guitar calloused. I add this to the list of qualities I like about him for Lucia. Lucia loves music. This is perfect. Unless, of course, he’s shit at it; then she’s gonna have to pretend to like a lot of bad guitar playing. When I finally get a good look at my sister, Jo looks a little feral. Her hair is mussed in escaped curls; the front teeth that were in braces up until two years ago are chipped into opposing triangles. When she sees me, she starts to cry.
Jo wraps her arms around mine and buries her face into my shoulder. She smells so bad that I nearly gag.
“Did they hurt you?” I say.
She shakes her head no. Then yes. Then no again.
“Where does it hurt?” I say.
“Everywhere,” she whispers.
When I was little and we would join hands and sing “Ring around the rosie,” Jo changed the lyrics so I thought the song was just for me: “Ashley, Ashley, we all fall down.”