The Last Cinnamon Sunday

So, I've started a piece for Tales of Blood & Roses. It's an idea I had a while ago, but finally got around to... executing. Sure, the beginning seems very nice and wholesome, but with the title, you can imagine it won't be long before all hell breaks loose. You can catch the rest at the ToB&R reading on July 14, 6:30PM. Enjoy this taste, for now.

I wake to cold dampness darting around my face and the sounds of tinny explosions and music. I slowly spread my eyes open. Princess Leia is staring at me, longingly. She loves me. I gently shove her off me, slip into my robe and head downstairs, Leia at my heels.

I say good morning to Donovan as I pass his room. He blurts out a quick Hi! without looking away from his game. Donny is too busy killing things. He loves killing things. Thankfully, everything he kills is digital—binary villains, a threat to none but his own ego. I descend.

Once in the kitchen, I reach out to turn on the oven on my way to the sink. I don’t even look. I don’t have to. I’ve done this for so often that I know how far to twist the dial to get the oven to 400. I fill the kettle, set it on the stove and turn on the burner. When I get to the back door, Leia is already there. She pops a paw at the knob, as if I needed a reminder. I open it, and she darts out.

I’m  greeted by a chorus of mewing near the back door. I step over to Lola and Mouser, give them each a rub, open their food tin and fill their bowls. I make my way over to the fridge, pull out the bacon and a tube of cinnamon rolls, set them on the counter. I grab the bag of Sumatran and grind  enough beans for a pot. That wonderful aroma—a perfect blend of earth, moss, nut & spice—fills the air. The kettle whistles just as I pour the this perfection into the press.

I turn off the burner and pour the water over the freshly ground beans. The aroma explodes throughout the kitchen, spreads through the house. I layer the bacon on a cookie sheet. I prefer to bake the bacon to keep it long and flat. I arrange the rolls into a round cake pan, set them on the counter while the bacon begins to slowly sizzle.

The smell of brewing coffee has awakened the Goddess. This, too, is as expected. I turn in time to find her lips, exactly where they are supposed to be. I kiss them. “Good morning,” she says. Cinnamon Sunday has begun.

Paradise Regained: How I Killed Bin Laden

It's just a feeling, a sense that something isn't... right. I'm strolling through El Yunque, the rainforest high in the mountains of northeastern Puerto Rico when it registers—an imbalance. Maybe eddies in the time space continuum. It's hard to explain. I'll try.

I come here to see the sky being born, to watch the clouds peel off the mountaintops and drift towards the sea. I come to listen to the higuaca birds croak and the coqui frogs chirp. In short, I come to be with God. It's not hard to feel a flaw on God's throne.

I'll admit that my first instinct's to avoid it. After all, I'm here to be cleansed, not to detail God's chair. But it's like ignoring trash because someone else left it behind—it's bad form. So I'm compelled to follow the disturbance to it's source.

The source is just some old jibaro, the Puerto Rican hillbillies who roam the mountains living off the land. I greet him graciously, and he offers me a cordial welcome and a box of mangoes, for five dollars. He's a dirty, old man, tall & gangly, wearing burlap clothes as tattered as his long beard and his wide sombrero. He's carrying a lot of weight, not the mangoes, but the gravity of thousands of dead souls.

"Viejo, you seem tired," I say, "¿Have you been to the fountain?" He bows his head a bit, shakes it slowly. "¡Bueno! Vamonos."

I lead him to the top of Las Minas, the waterfall the locals hike miles to for its waters' curative properties. We wade in. He's more cautious than I am, taking long but hesitant strides. "¿Lo sientes?" I ask, "You can feel it, can't you?"

I turn back to see his eyes widening wildly. "Si, but the current, la curriente—" His English is bad, his Spanish is worse, but he's right. I stop in the middle of the river and watch as he drifts closer to the edge.

"¿Ques pasa, viejo?" I shout at him, "¿Too much power?"

He's coming at me now, or at least he's trying to. He leaps out of the water towards me, but only ends up closer to Las Minas. "¡Help me!" He cries, finally, "I'm very rich. ¡I'll make you rich!"

"Look around you, viejo. I'm as rich as they come."

"¡Poder! ¡I can make you very powerful!" He has to shout now in order to be heard.

"And yet you're the one being pulled towards the fall." I laugh. He drifts.

"¡¿Do you know who I am?!" He's shouting at the top of his lungs, but it sounds like a whisper. I can't quite make out the rest, muffled as it is by the fury of the water as it cascades off the cliff. It doesn't matter.

All that matters is that he didn't belong in paradise, especially not selling mangoes. All that matters is that the energy of El Yunque is slowly being restored as the dark, old man anchored by the weight of thousands of murdered souls is being washed out to the sea. I can now continue on my pilgrimage comfortably. I can now go watch clouds being born, in peace.

☠

Olive Juice

“Love you—”

My ear catches it flitting through the air like a miniscule moth, almost imperceptible, but undeniable just as I’m about to hang up the phone. Curious, I quickly put the phone back to my ear. “Excuse me?”

Silence, but I can tell she’s still there. “What?” Nicole finally asks, hesitantly, probably curious as to what I heard.

“I thought I heard you say something as I was hanging up.” I know it was a mistake, she probably had just gotten off the phone with a lover or family member, and it slipped out, but I want to play this out. I like to play. That’s just the way I am.

“Oh… nothing… it was nothing.”

But it wasn’t nothing; it was much more than nothing. The way I see it, the phrase I love you, in all its eternal possibilities lives somewhere where nothing is not allowed. I love you precludes the possibility of nothing.

When I was in junior high the prettiest girl in the eighth grade sat on the opposite end of the room from me during Algebra, the last class of the day. I sat in the front with the rest of the geeks who always wanted to impress the teacher. She sat in the back near a window. I could always catch her staring out, as if she expected one of the passing cars to pull over and take her away.

I was nothing—as always, the smallest kid in my grade, insignificant to everyone unless I was being used as entertainment, whether that meant being jammed into a locker or being dangled from a basketball hoop inside a gym bag. She, Audra, aside from being the prettiest girl in the school, was everything to everyone—friendly and open, popular amongst every clique, but belonging to none.

Sometimes she would catch me watching her vigil. For those moments, her eyes would be mine, trapped by my eyes—at least that’s what I like to imagine for the brief amount of time before she finally looked away nervously. But sometimes she would offer just the slightest bit of a smile before drifting back to her vigil. Just that would be enough to thrill me and carry me through to dismissal.

Once, as a dare or a joke, I don’t remember which, when she caught my eyes I mouthed the words olive juice. Her face instantly twisted, and her shoulders hunched subtly. I knew she was irritated. When the bell rang she stormed out quickly. Audra was waiting for me as I came out of the school. She grabbed hold of the hood of my sweatshirt and yanked me back near the door.

“What the hell did you say to me?” she asked in an angry whisper.

I was suddenly scared. I could feel the blood pulsing in my scalp and the sweat trickling from my underarms down the sides of my chest. I had never intended to piss her off, and if she beat my ass in front of everybody in school I would be less than nothing. I was perfectly happy with my nothing status, thank you very much.

But what really scared me was being this close to her for the first time. From here I could see that her eyes weren’t blue, they was pure crystal—reflecting the color of the sky. I could even smell her hair, strawberries and cream with just a hint of cigarette smoke. I could hear the full tone of her voice, not just the meekness she offered in class. I realized than that olive juice was no joke.

“Ol—olive juice,” I stammered, “ All I said was olive juice. It was just a joke.”

“Olive Juice?” she asked, and her face softened. “Olive juice… that’s pretty funny.”

My heart softened.

We ended up walking home together, laughing children oblivious to the world around us. When she laughed it made me giddy. So I did everything I could think of to make her laugh, and she laughed at everything I did. Halfway through Patterson Park we were holding hands.

At the west edge of the park towers a Chinese pagoda. It was donated to the city, as legend goes, to honor Canton, the Baltimore neighborhood that shared its name (albeit different pronunciation) with the Chinese province. We called it the Kissing Castle because young couples would stop to make out under its shadow or in the topiaries around it on their way home from school. When we got there no one was around, almost as if the world understood the significance of what was happening.

Kissing her, I was reminded of the taste and consistency of olive juice—vinegary, yet fruity. Thick.

The next day carried with it the electric anticipation of a lightning storm. Every hour was an hour less that I had to wait to see Audra. Every corner I turned in the halls and stairwells was an opportunity to bump into her. By the time I finally did see her, in Algebra last period, I felt like one of those plasma lamps ready to shoot my charge right through the glass. After ten minutes I was grounded, my charge dissipated.

During the fifty minutes of class she looked at me exactly once and looked away quickly. That day I could not capture her eyes. She avoided me and rushed out quickly when the bell rang. After school I was the one snatching her up looking for answers. She didn’t want to talk near school, but reluctantly agreed to walk through the park with me. She didn’t say much and refused to hold my hand. I knew what was coming. I’d been through it enough by then.

Audra finally admits what’s bothering her about halfway through the park. “Look, I like you. You’re cute and so fucking funny, but I don’t think I could get used to dating someone shorter than me. I’m sorry.”

She wasn’t even that much taller, maybe three or four inches. But that was the story of my youth: cute, short, sorry. Most of the time it wasn’t so much that they thought it, but that their friends thought it. Either that, or they were afraid to be mocked. Like the previous day, we walked to the Pagoda together, this time in silence, before going our separate ways.

Occasionally, in class, when I would catch her eyes I would mouth the words, and we would share a momentary smile. The joke now was that I was actually mouthing I love you.

So I have this girl on the phone, and she knows I heard her say something, but she’s not sure what. But she’s curious because she has yet to hang up, and we just met. We’ve known each other for all of five minutes, if you can count taking someone’s order over the phone as knowing someone. Nicole orders books for a small chain of bookstores, and I take orders for a publishing company. I was taking her order, and although there was a bit of banter, I don’t recognize her voice from the hundreds of voices I hear over the phone every week. All I said at the end of our conversation was, “Thank you. Have a nice day.”

I anted, she raised, but I know she’s bluffing. I finesse my hand to the table. “Oh… I thought I heard you say, ‘Love you.’”

At this point, she could have folded. She could have said, No, you heard wrong, and hung up. She doesn’t. She says, “Yeah, well I just got off the phone with my boyfriend, and I’m used to saying that before hanging up with him. I probably just got confused. It doesn’t mean anything.”

She’s all-in, but it’s time to let her off the hook, at least for the time being. “Well, don’t you think your boyfriend should know how you feel about me?” I can’t let her off too easy. We both laugh away the awkwardness of the situation and say goodbye—a second time.

A few weeks pass before we talk again, but it doesn’t take any time for us to recognize each other. “Excuse me a moment,” I chide, “but isn’t this the love of my life?” We giggle our way through the whole book order. After a while, if she doesn’t get me when she calls, she asks to be transferred to my desk. We gradually develop a rapport that builds into a sort of sight unseen friendship.

Every phone call with Nicole ends up lasting an extra five to ten minutes because we always end up chatting. We talk bout the movie that just came out. We talk about the difference between Baltimore’s weather compared to Cleveland, where she lives, even though they’re so close. Sometimes I listen to her talk about how much she hates how mundane her job is.

After a while, my supervisor points out that I’m taking too much time with certain calls, and tells me to be aware of how much time I needlessly spend with customers. Nicole and I decide to keep our calls strictly business, but agree to call each other during lunch breaks.

We discuss our quirky families. I compare my reclusive uncle Marco, who does nothing except play chess by himself in his bedroom until my grandmother forces him to come out for meals, to her loopy aunt Gloria who has a house full of never-read books, and a never-off television. I was there to console her when her boyfriend broke up with her, and she encouraged me when I told her I had decided to go back to school.

It’s December 9^th, memorable because it’s unusually warm, and I decide to wear a light jacket to work. At this point, I’ve known Nicole for a little over a year. Besides our twice a week lunch conversations we email each other daily, and on occasion, chat on Facebook. There’s an email waiting for me as soon as I turn my computer on. There’s a number for me to call. She says it’s urgent. The brevity of the message makes me think she’s frantic. I leave for lunch five minutes early and immediately dial the number she gave me.

Nicole answers in tears. She’s a mix of anger, frustration and bruised ego. The number is her mother’s phone. She’s upset because she’s been fired. Her job had recorded a personal call to me using a company phone and found out that it wasn’t the first time she’d done it. She only used their phones when she had forgotten her cell phone or when she was close to her minute limit. “I didn’t think they’d notice.” she sobs, “I’m so damned stupid.”

“No you’re not,” I shouted at her, “don’t stay that! I know you well enough to know you’re nowhere near stupid. A little careless at times, but that’s at least three degrees away from straight out stupid.”

Silence.

Laughter.

I assure her that everything will be alright, that she’ll find a new job in no time, and that until then, all calls can be on my dime. Eventually, the conversation drifts to more normal topics. Once I feel she’s calm enough, an hour and a half later, I let her know that I should get back to my desk.

“Jeez!” she says, realizing the time, “I’m going to end up getting you fired, too.”

“Nah!” I tell her, “Didn’t I ever tell you? My godfather owns this company. Not that it matters—I would have done it anyway. I lo—”

“What?” she asks.

I wait a moment, thinking.

“Nothing,” I say, finally.

“Right, nothing,” she agrees.

Nothing has never been so full of possibility.

The Handsome Man

Here's another one from my archives, originally written during my second semester at the University of Baltimore. Again, I've edited it to better reflect my current writing style.


I’m used to dealing with weirdos. The Pennington Hotel down in the deep south of Baltimore is full of ‘em. I call it a three-quarters house cuz although we don’t get no state funding most of the residents are stuck here on their trip from whatever halfway house they come from and the real thing. I doubt any of ‘em will ever be ready for the real thing, being able to keep a full apartment, much less a house. No, most of these weirdos will always be teetering between here and back in the same jail or crazy house they came from, except for Andy. Nothing weird about Andy, at all.

His name is actually Andres, some Porta Reekin version of Andrew, but he likes Andy just fine. He’s tall and thin—some might say lanky—with a face that looks like it’s carved from rock, like those big old heads from Easter Island. A handsome man. Not that I’m gay or nothing. He’s just so different from the freaks that usually live here that he really stands out.

The lady comes first. I worry when I see her. She’s very attractive, something you don’t see here. The few ladies that have stayed here were all kinds of butch and burly and could handle themselves with all these men. This lady looks like she had class and maybe money, so I figure she’s a whore at first. We get them too, but I can’t have no pretty, classy whores here. That would attract attention, and people living here don’t usually want attention. I’m about to suggest a different rooming house when she explains that she wants to rent a room for a friend that was coming out of prison in a few days. She gives me a few weeks rent and a security deposit. She warns me that he’s a might sickly, asks me to keep an eye out for him.

I’ve got no problem with that being as I try to keep an eye on all these fools living at The Penn. One more won’t hurt, right? With that, she leaves me her name, Maria—a pretty Spanish name for a pretty Spanish lady—and a number to call if there’s an emergency, and she’s gone as quick as she came.

Andy doesn’t show up for a few days. I’m standing outside, under the awning, watching the rain come down hard on Pennington Avenue—nothing like watching Baltimore getting drenched on a hot August day. I see a car drive up. Pennington dead-ends here at The Penn, so most folks driving all the way up are headed here. That lady, Maria, might be driving, but I can’t really tell with the rain and all. Anyway, she doesn’t get out. But I see this handsome man hop out, reach in the back seat for a couple duffels, and walk towards me as the car speeds off.

I’m taken aback as he gets closer. He’s taller than me—maybe five-ten—and dark like he’s American Indian or maybe Creole. He’s got the neatest beard I’ve ever seen, trimmed in perfect strips down along his face, across his chin and up to meet his neat little mustache—nothing like the shaggy biker beards you normally see here. “Can you take me to the manager?” he asks, snapping me out of the kinda trance I was in.

I introduce myself, and he tells me who he is, tells me there should be a room here for him. I’d prepared a room for him cuz I figured he’d show up any day, and I wanted to make sure he got one of the rooms fitted for handicapped or older folks being as he’s supposed to be sick and all. Granted, he doesn’t seem sick by the looks of him. I tell him to follow me. Inside, everybody notices him. He’s pretty cool about it, too, giving everyone there a nod.

Upstairs, I show him around. Not much to show, really—just the bed with a nightstand and the bathroom. I tell him that most of the others eat elsewhere, but that if he wants he can get a hotplate. He thanks me all cordial-like offering his hand to shake before I walk off.

He doesn’t spend much time in the rec room watching t.v. or playing on the pool table, except when Soul Train comes on. So he spends a lot of time telling stories. Like how he grew up in New York. Bragging really. Like how it takes balls to rob a bank in New York like he did. How he shot a man in the head for a few thousand dollars in broad daylight in Manhattan, and nobody noticed it was him cuz he ran off with the crowd that started panicking. He tells us how he got high with Mick Jagger and David Bowie in Studio54 in the 70s, and how he spent a lot of time in jail in Bordentown in New Jersey on account that he would always get caught in Jersey.

He got caught one time lifting a couple of cases of Yoo-hoo right off the truck while the driver was making a delivery. He got away with that scam all the time in New York, but in Jersey it was like the cops had radar for him or something.

I tell him a couple of my tales, although I don’t have many to tell. I only did one stint behind bars. Some buddies convinced me to drive the car for a liquor store robbery, one of them that cashes checks so they keep lots of cash around. Got caught. That was enough for me. I knew I wasn’t smart enough to be no career criminal. I did my six years, and went as straight as I could when I came out. Worked as a longshoreman at Dundalk Marine Terminal for years until I ruined my back. Now I collect disability and manage The Penn under the table.

It’s nice having somebody that’s sorta normal living here, somebody that I can talk to that don’t come across as half-baked, or all-baked. He treats me like I’m his friend, even though I know it’s just cuz I’m one of the only ones here for him to talk to. He don’t go out much cuz he wants to stay out of trouble, and there ain’t shit to do here if you don’t watch t.v. or play pool.

He likes cards though. He shows us how to run Three Card Monte, and one time Maria brings him some dominoes, and he shows some of us how to play. Andy may not think so, but I consider him my friend. Ten years I’ve been working here, and I never made no good friends.

Yeah, we talk a lot, but I don’t ever take Andy for being sickly. I mean, he’s real thin, gaunt even, and he has a bit of a cough, and he has those scabs on his cheeks he’s always scratching at, but he’s only forty-something and don’t hardly seem that old even. Things change fast in a year.

It’s August again when Harvey, this drunk that stays here so he can afford to spend most of his social security on liquor, comes down and tells me he smells something burning in 3C. That’s Andy’s room, and I haven’t seen him all day.

I hurry on up there and knock on the door. No answer. I can smell the burning, so I use my master key to get in the apartment. I figure he left real early for one of his walks to the harbor and forgot to unplug his hotplate. Sure enough, when I get in the hotplate is on, and Andy was nowhere around. There was a bit of something black and bubbling on the burner that was smoking bad and stinking up the place. I yank the plug and get ready to walk out when I hear some water running and some kind of scraping noise coming from the bathroom.

It gets me curious, so I open the door and peep in. There’s Andy, on his knees, in boxers and a wifebeater, bent over the edge of the tub. I’m thinking, maybe he’s puking or something. I bend over to look, and he’s cooking. I mean he’s trying to cook something. He’s got this small can sitting on the bottom of the tub, and he’s stirring it up with a spoon. He notices me there next to him. He looks up at me, and he says, “What’s up Mac? I’m heating up some SpaghettiOs. You want some.”

The water’s running, but not hard, and definitely not hot enough to heat up no SpaghettiOs. I tell him no, thank you, and reach over to turn the water off. “I think you need some rest, man,” I say, and carefully picked him up off his knees and lead him back to bed.
“I’m hungry, Mac,” he says, in this sad voice.

I don’t know what to say. “Don’t worry, Andy. I’ll go down and get you something to eat,” is what finally comes out as I close his apartment door behind me and lock it. I hurry downstairs and call 911. They send cops and an ambulance. They must think they got a real crazy on their hands, but I can’t blame them. This is The Penn after all. But still, it makes everybody here nervous.

I take the paramedics to the room and let them in. They ask him questions, but it’s all such a ruckus now, I can’t follow what’s going on. Pretty soon though, they got Andy on a stretcher, and I was following them back downstairs.

A couple of days go by, and I don’t hear nothing about Andy. I remember about that number the lady, Maria, gave me, so I call her. She’s really upset with me at first being as I waited two days to call, but I remember the name of the hospital they were taking him to.

I feel pretty bad about forgetting like that, so I decide to go check on Andy myself. I lock up and jump on the 64 to Harbor Hospital. I figure, it’s been a couple days, they probably figured out what was wrong with him. I mean, we ain’t got no air conditioning, except in the lobby and my office, so maybe it was just like a heat stroke or something like that. He should be right as rain by now.

He’s not. As a matter of fact, I have to talk my way in to see him because Andy’s in ICU and he can’t get no visitors unless they’re family. I tell them that I’m his landlord, and that I need to get word to his family about how he is because they can’t get here right away. They still don’t want to let me see him, but they don’t have no next of kin information for him. I give them Maria’s number, and they tell me that they’ll give me fifteen minutes with him, but then I gotta go.

They take me to a room with glass walls on three sides. “Mr. Candelario is right in there.” The curtains around his bed are closed, so I walk in and around the curtains, and I’m taken aback, again. Andy’s hooked up to all these machines, and he’s under one of them clear plastic tents from the chest up. He’s just really a skeleton now. All those parts that made him so sharp and handsome just look hard now, like they’re gonna bust through his skin. I just stand there in shock, looking at him. I can’t say nothing.

I don’t even realize I’m there so long when a nurse comes to tell me I have to go. I nod. Lord knows I don’t like seeing him like this. “Excuse me ma’am, but what’s wrong with him?” I ask the nurse ask she walks me out of the ICU. She explains that he has AIDS, and that he’s suffering from some complications, including pneumonia. I know it’s sad to say, but the first thing that comes to my mind is that I hope I didn’t get it, wonder if he’s ever been bleeding around me or something.

I tell her how I found him, acting all crazy and stuff. She says something about some toxic stuff, germs that was attacking his brain. She says something about how people with AIDS can’t even have cats around cuz the litter can make them really sick and start acting crazy. I tell her we don’t allow no pets at the Pennington. “Is he gonna come out of it?” I ask her before I leave.
She says, “Not likely.”

I get back to The Penn, and I go to his room and start stuffing his things in big black contractor bags. I want to make sure that if he does get better, his stuff is safe. If I leave it in the room, I know somebody will eventually break in and steal it. I’m careful with his clothes cuz I don’t know how he got the AIDS, but I don’t want to get pricked with no needle. I done had that happen, and waiting for those test results is downright stressful. I drag all his property up to the attic, which has a big padlock that even these folks won’t try to break.

All his property, except the trimmer. I’m going through the stuff in the bathroom, you know, soap, deodorant, cologne and stuff, and I find the trimmer in the cabinet under the sink. It’s a tiny thing, run by batteries, but it’s sharp, sharp enough to shave a spot on my cheek clean when I try it out. I decide to hang on to the trimmer for a bit. I’ll give it back when he gets out.

Andy doesn’t get out though. Maria hears that I visited, so she puts me on the list to see him. She says he don’t get any visitors but her and his mother who comes up from Puerto Rico when she hears he real sick. I guess she ain’t too mad at me. So I try to stop by everyday, but he just lays there. He’s awake sometimes, but he still just lays there, staring at the ceiling, not saying nothing, or worse, mumbling. I just sit there telling him stories about my boring life. After a while, I can’t bring myself to go anymore.

It’s September, but it’s still hot when Maria comes to ask for his things. She don’t say it, but I can tell because she’s just got these puddles on her eyes that she’s trying hard to hold in, so I don’t say it either. I have her follow me upstairs, and I tell her how I packed up his things, not because I didn’t think he wasn’t coming back, but because I didn’t want anybody breaking into his room and taking his things. You can’t trust these guys living here.

I tell her as I help her carry the last couple of bags to her car how sorry I am. I tell her how Andy and I had become good friends. How he was the only tenant I could really talk to. She just kind of nods as she puts the last bag onto her back seat. I stand there as she pulls off, stand there until her car disappears up Pennington Avenue. It’s raining. It’s been raining, but I just notice.

I don’t really talk much to the renters here anymore. Everything is just business: collecting the rent, giving them change for the pool table, fixing their heaters. But every once in a while, I’ll pull out Andy’s trimmers, and I’ll get in front of the mirror and trim myself up real nice. I’ll even splash on some of that aftershave even though the guys’ll tease me about it, calling me a fag and all that. But that’s just fine because you can’t expect them to know how much work it takes to stay a handsome man.

A Tree Grows Nowhere

It’s the first weekend of the month, a cause for celebration. Mom gets her welfare check the first of every month and throws a sort of party come the weekend. I’m not invited. The only people allowed to celebrate are her and whatever Flavor of the Month 
motherfucker whose arm she’s hanging on to. This one’s on his fifth month, a bit of a record. Of course, the fact that he just moved us out of New York and into Nowhere, Baltimore County, Maryland improves his chances. It means Mom won’t be meeting any new Flavors any time soon. Anyway, it doesn’t bother me not to be invited—her little parties have a way of getting out of hand.

   I haven’t had a chance to make any new friends, yet. I don’t go to school my first week here. Besides helping unpack and settle the only pair of my shoes that made the trip are some snow boots. The weather here in Nowhere is spring-like compared to the frigid city, and I’m too embarrassed to wear them. Thankfully Mom springs for a pair of Sikes, kind of like Nikes but with the swoop going the wrong way.

The next two weeks are awkward—teaching people how to pronounce my name, clarifying my race. Nobody in Nowhere has ever met a Porto Reekin before, or anything remotely close to one. They’re curious to hear me speak some Porto Reekin until I tell them it’s no different from the Spanish class we all take every day during fifth period, except for the teacher’s grammatical mistakes. I’m seen as a true oddity.

I’m used to moving—lucky to complete an entire year at one school—but never to a place where I’m watched curiously, like some ape in a cage expected to start throwing its shit at any moment. I’m not sure whether to resent these kids or be flattered by the attention. I am, however, one very pissed of Porto Reekin. We left New York on a spur of the moment, practically on impulse—no chance to say goodbye to my friends, never to learn the results of my audition to the School for Performing Arts—the so-called Fame school. I spent the first few nights in Nowhere crying myself to sleep. I felt stranded.

Tonight, I’m still stranded. I watch The Flavor carry in a case of Red White & Blue, and I shake my head. Mom comes in behind him carrying a brown bag, Bacardi—Ron Rico if she’s pinching her pennies. The winter sun’s going down already, my cue to retreat to my room. As they begin playing cards, or dominoes, I start reading Thomas Covenant, a novel about a modern day leper who gets transported to a dying land where he is the only one who can restore its magic. I envy him, leprosy and all.

I don’t know how longs it’s been, but I hear shouting from the other side of my door. I stop being Thomas Covenant and listen. Mom and The Flavor have started to argue, if you can call it that. The neighbors would call it screaming, and the police would call it disturbing the peace. I’m used to it. As a matter of fact I won’t even leave my room unless—¡¡¡FUCK!!!

   He starts hitting her. ¡Motherfucker! I storm out of my room and try to come between them. “¡Please, stop! Don’t hit my mother,” a line I’ve been practicing since I was five. There are cards all over the floor. One of the beer cans is spilled over leaving some of the cards in a bubbly, pale yellow puddle. He has the collar of her blouse in one fist, smacks hers in the face with his free hand. He stops for a moment to shove me away.

My mother stops wailing enough to yell at him in Spanish. “¡Don’t touch my son you sonofabitch! ¡¡I’ll kill you!! She swipes at his head, catches his face with her long scarlet nails. He winces, puts his free hand to his face, feels the blood starting to trickle.

“You fucking whore,” he shouts as he throws her to the floor, redoubles his efforts to beat the shit out her. I jump on his shoulders, try to yank him off her. He shakes me off, whips around and cracks me in the head. Had I not tried to duck the blow, if he were any less drunk, he would have caught my ear.

My head’s reeling. I’m in shock. Not one of my mother’s flavors had ever tried to hit me for protecting her. There have been some who, in their effort to play Daddy, have swung a belt at me. This—this is unheard of. He’s stops hitting her, starts to drag her into their bedroom by her hair. Mom’s hanging onto his fists, kicking as she slides across the floor. I go out the front door.

One big difference between Nowhere, Maryland and New York is trees. While New York is not known for its fauna, at least not in the neighborhoods I came up in, I’m able to step out the door and in little time I have a branch I can barely lift. I storm back in, straight into their bedroom. He has her pinned against the bed. His back is to me. He’s wielding a pair of utility scissors, the ones with the big orange handles, and he’s trying to cut her nails off. “You want to scratch me?” he shouts, “I’ll teach you not to scratch!” My mother, like many Puerto Rican women of her generation, takes great pride in her nails, always keeping them long and painted—complains for hours if she breaks one. He’s managed to cut off three of them.

With tears in my eyes, I raise the branch as high over my head as I can get it and swing it down across his back. I’m about to strike him again when he turns to look at me. He has this look of pure hatred on his face, enough to fill me with fear. I drop the branch. He rises, I turn around and start running. He’s too drunk to catch me, but I can’t run forever. He’s also too drunk to know when to stop chasing. Trees. Again they come to good use as I choose a particularly tall one and climb.

He makes a few attempts to climb up after me, but I don’t think he would have been able to even if he were sober. On his last attempt he makes it about three feet up and falls onto his back. Mom’s outside by now. She runs to him. “¡Oh my God! ¿Papi, are you okay? ¿Can you get up?” She helps him to his feet, walks him back to the apartment.

I stay in my tree for another ten minutes or so when mom comes back out. “¡Ricardo, get back in the fucking house!” she orders. I follow her in. I can hear The Flavor snoring from their bedroom. Mom locks the door behind us, stands in front of me, and smacks me. “Don’t you ever do that shit again,” she tells me, “¡What me and him do is none of your fucking business! ¡Stay out of it!” With that said, she strolls into her bedroom and slams the door closed behind her.

   Stunned, I go into my own room and get undressed. The irony of it all makes me dizzy as what just happened swims about in my head. I flop face down onto the bed. I can’t hold back the tears anymore. It means something that, until recently, I didn’t even wait to get hit before I started crying. Then again, everything that happened tonight probably means something. I’m too tired to figure it out, too tired to even dig Thomas Covenant out of my ribs. I spend another night in Nowhere, Maryland crying myself to sleep.

***

A month later, I still haven’t made any friends. I have, however, made a contact that can get me some pot. This month, I have my own private party. I lift ten bucks from Mom’s pocketbook, and I’m able to get a nickel bag of some decent weed, a pint of Jack Daniels, and a pack of rolling papers. I don’t have enough for a Coke, so I learn to drink it straight.

When Mom and The Flavor start their little party, I sit in my windowsill and enjoy mine. When it gets out of hand, I barely notice—I don’t care. I’m deep in the middle of somewhere not even Thomas Covenant can guide me through. No matter what tears are shed tonight none of them would be mine.