Bodega Dreams (11 page)

Nene was waiting for me at the door.

“Man, you must be doing some serious work for my cus. He calls you a lot. Me, you know I’m just Nene. No one listens to me, you know, but I function anyway. And sometimes I say dumb things, you know, b’cause I’m Nene. Things that you know people don’t get, but I know you get them, right, Chino?”

“Yeah, I get them,” I said, because I didn’t want to leave him hanging.

“I know I ain’t all that bright.
I don’t know much about history, don’t
know much biology
, but Chino, I know my radio, you know. Ask me, ask me anything anythin’ ’bout my music.”

“All right,” I said as I walked to the door, “Who sang ‘Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting’?”

“Those cats were fast as lightning, huh! Here comes the big boss.”
Nene sang a line and then answered me, “Thass kids’ stuff, Chino, that guy Carl Douglas. A one-hit-wonda type of guy.” Nene put out his palm and I gave him five and walked out the door. Out in the hallway I waited for the elevator and Nene stuck his babyface and body-of-a-bear out the door. “Chino, you all right, bro,
you ain’t heavy, you’re my brother
.” I smiled back at him again and took the elevator down.

I looked for Sapo’s car that night but didn’t see it. That was okay, because it was a hot spring night and El Barrio had turned into a maraca and all the people had come out transformed as seeds. Like all ghettos, Spanish Harlem looks better in the dark when everything broken and dirty is hidden by darkness and the moonlight makes everything else glow like pearls. That night the people were jamming, shaking, moving. Hydrants were opened, women were dancing to salsa blaring from a boom box on the cement. They danced with one eye on their partner and one eye on their children playing hopscotch, scullies with bottle caps, or skipping rope. Teenage girls in tight jeans flirted with guys who showed them their jewelry and tattoos. Old men played dominoes as they drank Budweisers wrapped in brown bags. I walked home happy. I even said hello to a rat that crossed my path, running from one garbage heap to another. “Hey, dusty guy. Where you going, eh?” I said when it poked its head from a plastic bag. I was happy. I was keeping my part of the deal. At the time, I didn’t care about this Salazar. It was almost over for me. All I had to do was take Bodega to Vera and I was gone. Once I’d done that, I could continue my life with Blanca in total clarity. We’d be living in a better place, clean and newly renovated. More important, I’d be able to talk to my wife again without hiding anything between parentheses.

E
ARLY
the following Saturday morning, Sapo knocked at my door.

“Yo, Chino, bro, like Bodega wants ta meet you at El Museo del Barrio.”

“Like, now?” I asked.

“Yeah, now, bro.
Ahora.
As we exist. As the planets are circlin’ the sun.”

“But El Museo hasn’t opened its doors yet.”

“They’ll open them for Bodega, don’t worry. He like gives them crazy cash. It’s a waste of money if you ask me, kid.” Then he spat. “But as long as it’s not my money.”

“Wait, you’re sayin’ Bodega gives money to the arts?”

“Bodega does with his money what he wants. I do with mine and you do with yours,” was all Sapo told me. I invited him inside.

“Come in. Let me wash up. Blanca’s asleep.”

Sapo was bemused. He walked in and started to look around. “Like I ain’t never been all the way in here and I haven’t exactly missed much.”

“Why does Bodega want to see me anyway, I already told him when Vera is coming. Like, I’ll be there when she arrives.” I headed toward the bathroom.

“Fuck should I know. I’m like the fucken I.R.A. I just follow orders.”

“Bullshit,
pana
, you know more than you let on.” I brushed my teeth real quick.

“Withholdin’ info is an advantage.”

“Yeah? So are you goin’ to tell me how Bodega got all this power or, like, you going to have an advantage?”

“No advantage there, Chino. Thass no secret. Anyone in El Barrio from the university of the street knows that the Italians controlled the neighborhood. They ran the numbahs, they ran the drugs.” I heard Sapo sit down on the couch and turn the TV on. I wasn’t worried about Blanca waking up, because she slept like a rock. “So like there were places you could burglarize and then there were places, Italian-owned, Chino, that you didn’t fuck with.”

“Yeah, thass right. There was that restaurant, that big fucken mafia joint?”

“Mario’s,” Sapo said.

“Yeah, that was it.”

“Yo, that fucken restaurant had a three-month waitin’ list cuz it took that long to screen its guests in case they were FBI-connected, know what I’m sayin’?” I heard him opening the fridge. When I came out of the bathroom, Sapo had a bowl of Coco Puffs and was sitting in front of the TV watching cartoons.

“Like this won’t ruin your rep.”

“Nah, cartoons are dope,” he said. I went to the bedroom to find some clothes and mull over what Sapo had told me. And he was right, it was nothing new. The Italians ran the show. When I was a little kid, Spanish Harlem was different. Many Italians were still around. There were Italians-only social clubs where you’d see pink limos parked in front of pumps. There were racially segregated tenements that never rented to blacks or Latinos. The Dime Savings Bank on 105th and Third always had a special window where Italian men wouldn’t have to wait on line like everybody else.

“So what happened with the Italians, bro?” I asked Sapo when I came out, dressed.

“Fat Tony Salerno, evah heard of him?”

“Nah.”

“Nigga was this big don.”

“Yeah?”

“The nigga was indicted on charges of racketeerin’. The judge posted bail at two million and his boys ran down to court and paid it in cash. Now thass serious money.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now I remember. That was on the news. That nigga had to sell some of his tenements to pay for all his lawyers’ fees. But he still got sentenced to a hundred and seventy-five years.”

“Thass right, and after that the Italians weren’t so sacred. And with the big white shark outta da way, you had all these little guppies jockin’ for power.”

“And Bodega won?”

“With Nazario’s help. Yo, like, I took all your milk,” he said, getting up and placing the empty bowl in the sink.

“Thass wild, bro, Bodega won.”

“Yeah. Now, like, you ready? Cuz I got things to do and Bodega is waitin’ for you.”

As we walked out Sapo yelled toward the bedroom, loud enough to wake Blanca,
“Bendición!”
then he laughed.

“You crazy, bro. What the fuck, she ain’t your mother,” I said as I quickly locked the door and ran downstairs.

We got into Sapo’s car and rode down Fifth Avenue.

“Yo, Sapo, you know anyone who’s hard up to get married?”

“Girls? Plenty. Guys? None. Why you ask?”

“Blanca is trying to get some girl a green card.”

“Get the fuck.”

“Yeah, so if you know someone—”

“Well, I know this sad junkie. We can make him go cold turkey for a day or two. He’d do anythin’ for a fix.”

“No junkies, man, she’d be better off in Colombia.”

“Then what the fuck do you want? Where you think you livin’ at? You think you gonna find some gay mothafuckah who has to marry some bitch or his rich father will disown him? I don’t think so. If she wants to stay in the country, she bettah take the junkie.”

“Never mind I asked.” That was stupid. Why did I even try?

“Nazario might help, nigga knows everythin’,” Sapo advised. But I
shook it off. I was already tangled up with Bodega. I didn’t want to get mixed up with Nazario, too.

•

SAPO STOPPED
the car in front of El Museo Del Barrio and I got out.

“Yo, I’ll see you like layra, Chino.”

“See you, man.”

“One last thing,” Sapo said. “Like, I’m gonna ask you a fayvah.”

“So what else is new? I still got your shit in my house, you need that back?”

“Not yet, Chino. What I’ll need from ya is somethin’ small. Real small. Like the day you just wanted me to walk wi’choo cuz some niggas were eyein’ you bad, ’membah that?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“Well, it’ll be even smaller than that.”

And Sapo took off.

I walked to the side of the building where the entrance was that month because the front entrance was being renovated. It was locked. I pounded on the door and a guard walked over and stood by the glass doors that separated us.

“The
museo
is not open yet,” he yelled through the glass.

“Wait, I’m s’posed to meet someone here.”

“Who?”

“Willie Bodega,” I said, and he looked around. He went back inside to check on this. I looked across toward Central Park. It was a beautiful day, the blue jays were making noise, the trees were getting back their leaves. I was thinking of maybe later taking a walk in the park with Blanca, when the guard returned.

“Sorry about that.” He had a smile on his face and started to unlock the door. “You know that I shouldn’t let anyone inside yet. But since you’re a friend of Willie, I’ll let you in, okay.” He shook my hand, nearly pulling me inside. He pointed to where I could find Bodega.

I saw Bodega standing in front of a painting by Jorge Soto, a large canvas portraying a transparent Adam and Eve, with blood running through their bodies as if they were subjects in an anatomy textbook. I
stood next to Bodega. Even though he knew I was there he kept studying the painting.

He didn’t greet me, just pointed at Adam. “This man right here, he had it all. Could even talk with God. But it meant nothin’ to him without her.”

“I hear you,” I said. “So, like, Bodega, I already told you Vera is going to be here next week. I’ll be there wi’choo when she arrives. So why you wanted to meet me here today?”

“B’cause, Chino, I’m going t’ ask you for somethin’ when Vera comes and I thought you should know me. Besides, I’m gonna marry her this time, and that means we’re gonna be related. And you’re good people.”

“Wha’? You gonna wha’?”

“Marry her, of course. What’d you think I went through all this for?”

“Look, man, what you want to do with Vera is your thing, I’m just keeping my part. But, like, Vera is already married.”

“I know that,” he said, and his mood changed. He gazed at me with the confidence of someone who has marked the deck.

“That doesn’t matter to you at all?” I asked. “What if she doesn’t want to leave her husband?”

“Of course she’ll leave that
pendejo.
She never wanted to marry him in the first place. It was her fucken mother who pushed her.” He slowly walked away from me to stand in front of another painting. It was titled
Despierta Boricua
and depicted a Taino Indian tied to a New York City fire hydrant.

“So much was promised to us when we left our island,” he said softly as he looked at the painting. “They gave us citizenship and then sent us to the garment district. I’m going to make sure they make good on their promises.”

“Did you ever meet Vera’s husband, Willie?” I asked.

“Meet him, no. But I knew his family was one of the people that escaped Castro in fifty-eight. No shame in that. But his family was rich ’cause they had supported Batista with a shitload of money they had siphoned off the people of Cuba.” His eyes left the painting and looked at the floor. The tiles were beautiful, new. El Museo del Barrio had just gotten a face-lift. The floors were shining, the walls a cool, soothing
white, and the titles of the paintings were written in Spanish, with the English translation as a secondary thing. It felt good to be there. El Museo del Barrio was the only museum where I could look at the paintings without having a guard follow me from wing to wing. At the Met I got suspicious looks. First the guards checked my shoes to see if they were once alligators. When they saw my worn sneakers, they treated me like I might pull a knife from my back pocket and go slashing Goyas.

“See, Chino, back then, politics was all I knew. I tried to explain to Veronica who this guy she was gonna marry was, the reason he was rich. I was telling her he was not a friend of the people right up to the night before the wedding. Do you know what she said?”

“Wha’?”

“She said she loved me. She said that she didn’t care if I didn’t have any money. The problem was, she said, I didn’t have any vision of how to get it. She said she wouldn’t mind being poor for a few years, but since I only had a vision for political stuff, I was going to be poor for the rest of my life. And then her mother came out and yelled for her to get back inside. Her mother looked at me like I had leprosy. So I left thinking, Shit, that bitch don’t deserve me. I thought the Young Lords were gonna succeed and that she had missed her chance at history. But a couple hours later, Chino, I was in tears and not that much mattered.”

I didn’t say anything and silence overtook us. I guess if I had been old enough back then I would have felt the same way he did. Back then when Bodega was a teenager, the Young Lords were an urban guerrilla group that had its origins in Chicago, but they made all their noise in El Barrio. They wrote up a manifesto called the “Thirteen Point Program and Platform.” The first point was to free Puerto Rico from the United States. The second point was for all Latin countries to have self-determination. They wanted better neighborhood programs. They launched food drives, clothing drives, health-inspection drives, door-to-door clinics. They were many, they were young, they were educated, and they were armed. They took over a redbrick Methodist church at 111th and Lexington and made it a conference center by declaring it the People’s Church. The Young Lords party was also ahead of its time; point number five of the manifesto stated, “Down with Machismo and
Male Chauvinism!” This was due in part to the fact that half of the central committee was composed of women who, along with the men, developed strategies and carried guns.

I listened as Bodega described how he would preach these points to Vera. Telling her that Latin women were undergoing a revolution and that this would force the Latin man to change his ways and reinvent himself. Bodega wouldn’t preach these points eloquently but he would speak of them with so much passion and street intellect that Vera fell madly in love with him. She liked his ideas, his conviction, his optimism. Bodega would invite her to rallies, to the Lords’ headquarters at 202 East 117th, to Marxist education classes, to urban military tactics classes, to food drives. Veronica would attend and at times even help out with breakfast programs and clothing drives, but what Veronica really wanted was for Bodega to find a real job and marry her.