Chango's Fire (5 page)

Inside Trompo Loco's dark apartment there is a mattress on the floor, losing lotto tickets, medicine bottles, and unpaid bills lying on the side. An old table stands in the corner, its third leg held up by stacks of phone books. There are chicken bones, buried halfway, lost inside coffee grounds that somehow got spilled on top of a plate. Coming in through the window is a long electric wire, jerry-rigged to the lamppost outside so as to run electricity to his apartment. Trompo Loco's apartment is really a plea, a cry, an appeal for the survival of a soon-to-be-extinct urban homesteader.

Trompo Loco flicks on the lights. I sit on the mattress.

“Listen man,” Trompo Loco says, “you know I'm like a little brother to you, right?”

“Okay, Trompo, yeah, get to the point.” Trompo Loco hates it when anyone calls him by his complete nickname. To his face I only call him Trompo. If I'd called him by his complete nickname, he'd get so angry that he'd start spinning. But what would get him even angrier, so he'd spin until he passed out, is being called by his real name, Eduardo.

“Well, Julio. I mean, I wanna work where you work.”

“Why would you wanna work when you got disability? I worked hard to get you that. Took you to see doctors, and then all that paperwork. When your mom was sent away, I got that for you, right?”

Trompo Loco's mother was manic-depressive. She was a beautiful woman no one ever guessed needed help. Because of her striking appearance, the neighborhood took her depression as a form of conceitedness or eccentricity, until it worsened and then everyone just called her crazy. In El Barrio few can afford shrinks and fewer designer drugs. Go back three decades to the seventies and you have a
loca
who can't be helped or understood at all.

“I just want a job. Like you have a job. Ask my father, okay? Just ask ‘im. He talks to you.”

“First of all, okay, Eddie is not your father, and second he won't hire you.”

I hate lying to Trompo Loco, especially when he knows the truth. But Eddie wants it that way. Not only did Eddie have an affair with a Puerto Rican woman at a time in America when Puerto Ricans weren't cool, but she happened to have a history of mental illness. It was too much for Eddie, wife or no wife. Eddie would have been the butt of jokes for years to come. His friends would have had an inexhaustible well of fun at his expense. Eddie's mistake would have made its rounds in every bar, coffee shop, and social club in the five boroughs. So Trompo Loco became a nuisance from Eddie's past that he has tried to bury under tons of cement.

“Listen man,” I say, “I'm your friend?”

He nods his head.

“So look, I got a big place now. Move in with me and my folks. They know you, helped raise you, bro'. Just come with us.”

“Nah, nah, see, Julio. That's what I'm talking about. I want to be help-less.”

“Okay, talk to me.” I've known Trompo Loco all my life so I know how he talks.

“See, Julio I was on the bus and this guy way older than me, walks in carrying a little Toys R Us bag. And he sits on the bus smiling. And I notice how he carries that bag, like it was his pride you know. And every time the bus made a stop he would bring out a finger. I do that sometimes, so I know he was counting. But see, he was all by himself, no one was helping him and he was proud to be help-less. So, I thought, I'm smarter than him because to me, riding the bus is easy.”

“I got a class at eight so I got to go, but I know what you mean. What you want is independence.”

“Yeah, yeah, that's it. See this place, I got this place all on my own. I live here all on my own. It's a nice place too, right Julio?”

I sigh, because I have been trying to make Trompo Loco understand that the other squatters in this building are real activists. They don't want Trompo Loco around. Sooner or later, they will turn on him. These activists are intelligent people who need all the help they can get and Trompo Loco is a setback to them. He doesn't understand the work that's involved in legitimizing a squat. The paperwork, the city hall meetings, the protests, and, in time, someone will bleed real blood. Trompo Loco thinks that just because he is here that makes it his. The activist squatters can get nasty, they can be as self-righteous as religious fanatics. I should know, Maritza is like that.

“Yeah, I think it's a good place, you know,” he says, looking around his squat.

“Mira
Trompo, this setup is no good. You're going to have trouble with these people.”

“I don't want no trouble, Julio. I always smile at them.”

“Yeah, but they're going to throw you out—”

“Don't let them throw me out, Julio—”

“What do you want me to do? Trompo, all I can tell you is if one of these people hit you, you hit them back.”

“I hate hitting people, Julio.”

“I know you do—”

“I've never hit anyone in my life, Julio—”

“I know that—”

“I've never done anything to them, right Julio?”

“Well, in a way they think you are holding them back. Everyone in this squat has to be on the same page.” I sense Trompo Loco doesn't understand the term “same page,” he thinks it's a book or something. I shut up.

“All I want is work, Julio. What I need now, I now need to wake up and go to work, like you do. Check this out.” Trompo Loco gets up and goes to another room. He keeps talking as he looks for whatever it is he's going to show me. I stay where I am, I don't want to see how the rest of the house looks. All I know is I have to get Trompo Loco out of here.

“I found this on the street and thought that I can work. Where you work, Julio.” He reemerges with a hard hat. It's got a huge dent on the side. Whoever it belonged to must have had some serious accident.

“Mira,
Trompo you can't work where I work.”

“Why not? I got a hat now.”

“Because you can't, okay?”

“But why not? I can fix the hat and it'll be like new, and then I'll work.”

“You can't work where I work, okay?” I notice he's getting mad. “Don't fucking start spinning now. I'm serious.” I look in his eyes. His hands are fists and he's doing his best not to spin. “Okay I'll tell you what I can do, I'll try to get you a job on the condition you move in with me and my folks.” Trompo's eyes light up.

“You serious, Julio?”

“Yeah, now I got to go.” I get up from the floor.

“So you gonna talk to my father, then.”

“No! I didn't say that, right?” I say, a bit upset, “and I told you, he ain't your father. But I'll try and find you a job.”

“All right, all right, all right,” Trompo Loco backs away, he doesn't want to upset me. “Hey Julio, thanks man. I really will make it up to you.”

“Like the last time?”

“No I mean it this time, I will make it up to you.”

“You can start by not going around that coffee shop.” Trompo gets nervous and clears his nose. “You know what I mean? Right? I heard you've been going around that coffee shop. Now, that guy is not your father. If he was he'd be here, right?”

Trompo just clears his nose again.

“Good, now are you reading your Bible?”

“Yeah, and Maritza is taking me to her church.”

I am glad for Trompo Loco, because Maritza is the pastor of this really wacky church. Maritza gave Trompo Loco this illustrated Bible with big letters. Trompo Loco still has problems reading it, but the pictures help. Maritza's church is one of the few churches where Trompo Loco would be welcomed without being looked at as a freak. Maritza's church is really a socialist racket. She doesn't even believe in God, but she wanted to mobilize the poor in Spanish Harlem and so she brought God into the mix. It worked, and her church is so progressive that other churches shun her. I was never surprised at people's acceptance and sweet trust they had for Maritza. Nothing is too doubtful or unimaginable if God is deftly placed into it. I also wasn't surprised at other churches for shunning her. Church buildings are never built out of glass, that way they can throw stones at will.

“Good Trompo, go to church and read your Bible.” I hug him and get ready to leave.

“Julio, why did God send a bear to kill those kids, just for making fun of that prophet's bald spot?”

“Wha'?”

“Yeah, God killed these kids who made fun of his prophet. I wouldn't have sent a bear to kill the kids. I would have sent them home with no play.”

“You serious? God did that?” I had forgotten that story but I now do remember reading it in the Old Testament, where God is a warlike, jealous God, right before He does a turnaround and becomes love personified in the New Testament.

“Well I don't know, Trompo. Ask Maritza, okay? I got to go to school,” I say and hug him again on my way out the door.

M
any times people from the neighborhood have asked me why I take so much interest in Trompo Loco. They tell me, if he wasn't around, the time and energy I'd save, maybe even find myself a woman. But I can only think that he reminds me of this terrible feeling I had when I was a kid. A feeling that I can't stomach. It began when I was ten, and my mother, after I had been kicking and screaming, finally let me try out for the Little League team from Yorkville that met in Central Park's baseball fields. We had missed the deadline to sign up to play with the league that was from Spanish Harlem, and it cost fifty dollars to join that other league from Yorkville.

But I won and my mother went with me.

When I approached the coach, a white man with a beer belly and hair on the sides, he only let me try out because my mother was there, plus I had the fifty bucks.

“You'll still need to pay for your uniform,” he said to me, and I didn't say anything, because I knew I could cry and kick some more so my mother would somehow come up with the money.

“Take right field, you're batting ninth.” I was happy, because I was playing. But I knew right field was for scrubs who the coach didn't trust. No one hits it to right field. And batting ninth was an insult. But I took it, because I wanted to play. I wanted to play baseball, I wanted to play that great American game that I loved.

That day I went three for four. I hit a single and two doubles, plus when the only kid from the other team hit the ball to right, I caught it. During innings, I'd take a sneak peek at my mother, who was reading her religious books, bored out of her mind, sitting among other bored mothers. But she loved me, so she sat there through seven innings.

We won that game and I knocked in four runs.

“Here's your money back,” the coach said. “I don't have a place for you.”

“But I went three for four?” I said, and the coach shook his head and started putting away the bats and gloves. The kids and their parents were all getting ready to go out for pizza or Burger King.

“Aren't there any Puerto Rican Little Leagues?”

“Yeah, but they're full,” I said, and I knew these white kids could use me.

“See, you should have joined sooner, that right there tells me you have no discipline.” And he walked away.

When I went over to my mother, I knew she would not understand. So I just handed her the money. She was kind of happy she had her money again. She told me, next year, I would make it on time to play with the Spanish kids. I knew that, I knew there was always a next year. But I had been cut. And that my mother would never understand. She'd never understand that no matter how much you try, how much effort you put in, and even if you do good, you are still considered not good enough. She wouldn't understand that I also wanted that wonderful feeling of acceptance, the sweetness of being part of something. Even if I had to pay for it.

Instead I had been cut.

That's why I loved Trompo Loco, because all he wanted was to join the team, to be everyday people. Trompo Loco was always trying. He was giving his best, as little as it may be to some people. He gave it all, but it was never good enough. Yet he was out there, swinging, like when we were kids and he was downstairs watching us play, absorbing all those insults so that maybe one day he could be like us. Instead Trompo Loco had been cut, he always got waived.

After
night school I enter my building, walk up one flight and find Helen sitting alone on the steps. Helen is wearing a black skirt, black top, black stockings, and her shoes are these ugly, black earth shoes that look like clunky boxes. Her hands are hiding her face, and her shoulders jerk up and down as she wails and whispers little things to herself. I notice a half-empty bottle of vodka standing upright and proud near her shoes.

“You all right?” I ask her, placing my hand lightly on her shoulder.

She shakes her head and her blond hair falls over her hands, which cover her face.

“Something happened to you?” She stays quiet, doesn't even look up.

“You can just knock if you need anything,” I say, stepping over her, and walk up the stairs. I turn around to make sure she's still there, watching her shoulders resume their motion, rise and fall, rise and fall.

M
ira, Julio, se fue Kaiser
,” my mother tells me when I enter.

“Wha'?” I get upset, the image of Helen on the steps still clear in my mind. “Ma', how could the cat escape?”

“Your stupid father left the window to the fire escape open.”

“How could that happen, ma'? That was a nice cat.”

“I know, I loved him,
‘tava mas lindo.”
Mom is a little sad. “I looked all over for him,
en el rufo, la escalera,
by the hallway, in the bodegas, I even went inside Papelito's botanica next door, and you know I hate going in there.” She whispers,
“Si entras allí, se te puede pegar algo.
” Meaning something dark would cling to you. This dark thing was bound to come into your house, curl up in a corner and wait until you were sleeping, then uncoil itself and roam—maybe open the refrigerator, take the phone off the hook, leave the faucet dripping. This evil thing that all Pentecostals were warned about would hover over your dreaming body, hissing and murmuring unintelligible sounds. It'd lurk in your tiny apartment, and you'd feel its cold presence increase each day, until it became part of your dark family.