Chango's Fire (10 page)

That's why I believe in Papelito. To him all religions are streams, rivers, bodies of water that lead to the same ocean. It matters little to Papelito if his religion is considered a great lake, a pond, or a puddle; as long as he keeps his water clean, he believes his life is enriched by his faith. No matter how foreign that faith might sound to others. So, maybe I should take Papelito's advice to heart. Maybe I should trade in my Christian Jesus for another culture's Christ.

The
last thing I expect to see when I get home is Helen sitting so close to my mother on the couch it looks as if she's perched on Mom's lap. The two are looking at family albums. My father is sitting across the room in his favorite chair. Piled on his lap are his old salsa albums. No doubt he was showing them off.

“Julio loved school,” Mom says, which isn't true. I hated school.

“And this,” Helen points at a picture I know too well.

“That was his clubhouse, he loved it,” Mom says. Helen shoots me a sly smile, like one does when something is cheesy.

“Julio loved church,” Mom says, pointing at another picture, and that, too, is untrue. I liked church, but it was far from love.

“Julio loved cats,” Mom says. “Brought me a cat once.”

“Julio loves a lot of things, Mrs. Santana,” Helen says, laughing.

“Oh, yeah, and he's so smart.” My mother wants to sell me, like she needs to let Helen know I'm good. “This is Julio graduating.”

Because Helen is white, my mother assumes she has to speak clear, good English, like it will indicate that she is civilized. Though Mom has a slight accent, there's no trace of Spanglish in her speech.

“Show a picture of when I had a salsa band,” my father says, but Mom ignores him.

“He loved to play, Julio was always playing,” she says, and Helen is enjoying this. But I really don't want her to see those pictures. I know those pictures well. I see them in my mind's eye all the time. It isn't my childhood that makes them so memorable, it is the time they represent. The burned buildings, the vacant lots, the graffitied trains, the broken elevators, the heaps of garbage, the many buildings and places that no longer exist in a fading neighborhood. And I know Helen will only see me laughing or playing and ignore what's behind me. She'd ignore the glares of truths in those backgrounds. It was my neighborhood, with all its wrinkles and warts, before the surgery.

“There's a picture of me with Hector Lavoe,” Pop says, and Mom knows that if you leave Pops alone, he'll dream off on his own. Which is what she wants.

“Who are those two, Mrs. Santana?”

“That's Julio's friends, they grew up together. Eduardo and Maritza.” Of course Mom doesn't mention that Trompo Loco is slow and that Maritza runs a commie church.

“She's beautiful. Short hair doesn't go well with her though.”

Mom had gone too far. I am about to take the album. I reach for it, and when Mom shifts her weight the album falls on the floor. Many of the pictures spill on the rug. Helen excuses herself as if it was her fault. They begin to pick the pictures up. Helen looks at me.

“I just dropped by to apologize for the other night.”

“It's okay,” I say.

“Julio, Helen is having dinner with us,” Mom says proudly.

“Only if it's no trouble, Mrs. Santana. I mean I'll invite you over and reciprocate as soon as I can fix my kitchen. It's such a mess. But the gallery opens in two weeks.”

“It's too bad I can't stay,” I say.

“Re … ci… pro … cate?” Mom whispers slowly to herself, because she doesn't know the word.

“Mira,
that's wrong,” Pops says. “We have a guest and you have to go.
Que modales son esos?”

All of a sudden my father cares about manners, like we are at church or somewhere public.

Helen and Mom are through picking up the pictures and are back on their feet.

“I know it's wrong but I'm sorry. I just came to change and pick up a book for class,” I say. Truth is, anything would be better than where I'm going. And I want to talk to her, at least apologize for that night. I don't want her to think that I'm jumping the gun in thinking that just because she wrote this nice letter she's crazy about me.

Mom cuts me her evilest look.

“He is embarrassed of us,” she whispers to Helen, “because we are not as American as he is.”

“I don't think so, Mrs. Santana. That's not true,” Helen says. I, on the other hand, let Mom say whatever she wants. I do my best not to fight with her.

“I have to go. Sorry I can't stay, Helen.” I go to my room and change. I open the book where Helen's letter is and reread it quickly. I tell myself there is nothing in there that should make you think anything. She is only stating her side, and she does it beautifully and nicely, and you should be just as gracious. I place the letter back inside the book and close it.

When I come out of my room, all three are in the dining room. I make believe I'm getting things ready, but I look at them and see that Helen seems comfortable. She smiles when my mother serves her some food.

I do want to stay. I do. But I have to go.

“Julio, wait,” she calls out and gets up from the dining table and runs over, before I step out, “I apologize for the other night.”

“Oh, that, don't worry about it,” I say, not looking at her.

“Was Julio rude to you?” Mom joins us by the door.

“No, not at all,” Helen says to her.

“I have to go,” I say, about to turn around.

“Did you get my letter?” she calls out.

“Oh, that, yes,” I say and I notice that my father smiles the shiest of smiles. That man has read it. Jesus! I'm wondering if Mom has, too? That's what you get for living with your parents this long. You idiot. “Yes, I should apologize as well,” I say.

“No, no,” Helen's small mouth stays open for a second, like she's heard a rude remark, “no, no. No need to. I'm just trying to make friends here, okay? That's all. I didn't come to fight. I just want peace,” Helen says. “Thanks for reading it.”

“What letter?” Mom says.

“Nothing, Ma',” I say, to calm her suspicions down. “Nothing.”

Miraculously, Mom lets it drop. But Pops still has that sly look on his face.

“Poor thing,” Mom says, petting Helen's hair, “getting called
la rubia
all the time in the street.” But I know Mom would kill for that title.

“I just need peace,” Helen repeats, “what you told me about claiming my presence here is just so brutal. Like pioneers, this isn't the Wild West.” She smiles, and I notice how pretty her nose is. How she has tiny freckles that join together when she smiles. “Allies and all that stuff, I just want peace. Okay?” she says again as if that word had power. Maybe it does; I like the word as well. I sometimes believe it can save us all. I want to talk to Helen about this, but I can't right now.

I
park my car outside the coffee shop on 118th and First. I enter to collect for my very last job. Eddie is sitting at his favorite table. He's on his cell phone and glancing through a limp
New York Post.
With only a third-grade education, he's a wizard at numbers and trivia. Eddie has a calculator in his head, and every morning he reads all four city papers, the
Times,
the
Daily News,
the
Post,
and
Newsday.
If he knew Spanish, I bet he'd read
El Diario.
His Sundays are practically devoted to reading his papers. But I know he isn't making bets.

Still on the phone, he motions for me to come in and sit.

“Why not take my car, honey,” he doesn't lower his voice or anything. “No, I'll be here awhile.” He pauses and then looks at a picture on a wall. “I don't know when I'll be back, all right? But when I do get back, I'll fix the car,” he says and I pretend not to be listening. His coffee shop's walls are bare, except for the wall behind the cash register where it's crowded with dusty bowling trophies and pictures of his wife and children. The entire history of his family, from when they were kids to adults. There's no picture of Trompo Loco on that wall. “Yeah, yeah, I love you too,” he says and I cringe, because Eddie has no problem with those three words. At least not to his wife. Eddie can be the coldest of people, yet he can say those words and say them while someone else is in the room.

“Bye, I love you too,” he repeats, hangs up, and then looks my way as if he has said nothing embarrassing, which I guess he hasn't.

“Hey, it's good to see you,” he says in the nicest of tones as he folds up the
Post.
The other three city papers are neatly piled on the floor, waiting their turn. He then gets up, gets me a cup of coffee and hands me an envelope with my pay. I take it; no need to count it.

I tell him that was my last job.

“Are you sure? It was just yesterday that you started, time flies.” He stands up, steps on his papers and hugs me.

“So why you quitting?” he says like I haven't told him already.

I tell him I can't do jobs for him anymore. I need a lot of time. I tell him I'm going to go to school full-time. But I'd still like to keep the demolition job he got me at the construction site. I never heard any names, I don't know anything about the insurance, never saw any faces, I always worked alone, and now I want out.

“Out? Out where? What you mean out?” Eddie is getting old, but he still has the same young voice he had when, as a kid playing stickball, he yelled, “Safe!”

“But Julio, what I'm ‘spose to do, call the union? ‘Hey, send me another arsonist, the last one quit to go to school?' “

He smiles at me, and I smile back and think how beautiful this old man could be. How he still loves his wife, believes in God, and how his clothes smell of newspapers and sweet coffee. He would make a great old man if he only knew how to be one.

“You can't just quit, Julio. You're the best. What I'm ‘spose to do?”

I plead with him. Because I also know he is fair.

“How you going to keep that mortgage, Julio? No way, you gonna give away money to the banks.”

I tell Eddie that's my business. I look into the old man's eyes for no reason other than so he can see I'm not hiding anything. The mortgage is my thing, he has nothing riding on it, it's mine and mine alone to lose.

“Come here, come here, give me a hug. Give me a hug.”

I hug him again. Still, as good as he's been to me, we're in business and business is the hardest thing, harder than diamonds and harder than raising babies.

“Listen, I always liked you.”

I know the reason this old man likes me is because I look after his son. It's Eddie's way of justifying his guilt trips, a chain he has created with my help. He takes care of me, I take care of his son. In his own way Eddie believes he is performing his fatherly duties. Not only that, but he can take communion and be at peace with his God.

Eddie learned the fear of Jesus when he was a kid, baptized at Our Lady of Carmel on 112th and Lexington. He loves that church. Later his mother groomed him to be the priest in the family, but he lost his way or found it, I'm not sure. He likes to tell the story of when Spanish Harlem was called Little Italy, how on every Friday, when it was fish and no meat or you'll go to hell, his mother would give him a quarter to get fresh fish at the market. It was also the place where men played craps and took bets. He'd watch those games but, more important, the faces of the players. He soon recognized who was working with who and would place his bet only after the dealer's accomplice had placed his. Soon Fridays were more than fish, Fridays were young Eddie's days to make money. That was until those craps players caught on to him, and then it was on to something else.

That something else turned out to be an old gun Eddie won playing poker. His mother hated the gun, and the story goes that Eddie himself didn't know what to do with it. Then came the knock at the door.

A woman wanted to know if Eddie would put her dog out of its misery. It was cheaper if Eddie shot the dog than if she took the dog to an animal hospital, to ask for a humane injection. She was pooped. The dog was suffering. Eddie agreed and soon the neighborhood knew him as the man who will shoot dogs. Soon, many knocked on his door asking for his services. Eddie obliged for a price. He saw it as a good business. A single bullet costs three cents, and Eddie would do the job for five dollars. Bury your dog in Central Park for an extra ten. His only condition being, the dog had to be old and suffering. They say that Eddie hated the job. He confessed to his priest that he hated the job because the owners would knock at his door in tears, telling Eddie stories about their dogs when they were puppies. The shoes they mangled. The way they used to run and stumble. But Eddie needed the money, so he did what he had to. He went to church every Sunday to wash his sins clean. Eddie did so many jobs that word spread fast among all the Italian neighborhoods in New York City. By then Eddie was nineteen and was putting down three dogs a month.

Until he broke the gun. One day the old gun fell on the floor and broke to pieces. The handle, trigger and barrel lay sprawled out on the floor.

Then it was on to something else.

For a few years Eddie worked in a supermarket as East Harlem continued to change in color. People like my parents arrived by the load. East Harlem became known as El Barrio or Spanish Harlem. Then, during the late sixties the property value of the neighborhood fell. And that something else that Eddie had been waiting for arrived in name of Slum Clearance. This was no longer small-time hustling, there was a fortune to be made. And he set out to make it.

“You Porto Ricans, I never lost money on any of you. I once bet five Gs on the Benitez-Sugar Ray fight.” Eddie does have a weakness, he loves to gamble. If Eddie sees two roaches side by side he'd freeze, to bet you on which roach will get to the wall first.