Chango's Fire (6 page)

“Allí no vive Dios.
But I went inside that botanica only to look for my cat, so
que el Señor me perdone.”

I shake my head, not just because the cat is gone, but because my mother believes botanicas are houses of fallen angels. The angels Genesis speaks about, the ones that had left God's heaven and materialized their bodies to have sex with the daughters of man. We were taught that, during the great flood, these angels left behind their bodies of flesh and returned to their celestial forms. But they were not let back inside the fraternity of God. Instead they were cast down to Earth where they played havoc on mankind. To Pentecostals like my mother, these demons are as real as invisible companions that lonely children play with in their made-up worlds. It was this fear, the fear of wicked angels, that prevented anyone from our Pentecostal church from visiting botanicas. These beliefs are so nailed into my mother's head that the older she grows the deeper those nails are driven; by now, it's hard to find their points.

“I even asked that horrible man if he'd seen a cat, and no one has seen him.”

“Well, maybe he'll turn up,” I say, looking around as if the cat is going to walk from under the couch any minute. I liked having that cat around. I especially liked it when he would run around all over the apartment. My apartment has a huge hallway, and having Kaiser run around reminded me how big this place is. Made me love my house even more.

“Is Pops up?”

“No, sleeping. That's all that man does.”

“Is there food?” I ask her. I just want a quick bite.

“Only
pegao
left,” Mom says.

“Pegao?”
I say, “why not?”

I get a good, strong spoon and start scraping the burned rice left over at the bottom of the pot. The doorbell rings and Mom goes to answer it.

“Hi, I know it's late—”

“No, it's not that late,” Mom says to Helen. “Come in. Want some food?” Mom offers, though I wonder if Helen would
like pegao.

“No, I'll …” she hesitates for a moment, “have coffee. If you have any?” I think she really didn't want coffee, but judging from the expression on her face, something made her knock. Helen shyly walks in. When she walks inside, her shoes clank on the new wooden floor we placed in the living room. It was an expensive renovation, and I'm wondering, as her shoes sound like two-by-fours hit against each other, if she'll ruin the floor. Because of Helen's presence, my mother's face becomes a lamp. She could care less about the floors. My mother pulls me back inside the kitchen and I let her.

“Mira,
” she whispers to me,
“quiero nietos con pelo bello.
“

I introduce my mother to Helen, but they had seen each other before. Mom smiles like a ditz, because she is happy we have a white person in the house. So Mom leaves us alone in the kitchen right after she has set the coffee pot on the stove. She repeats her whispers to me that she wants grandkids with blond hair, as she leaves us alone.

“I'm sorry about the stairs.” Helen's blinking a lot. There's a rim of smudged mascara under each eye.

“It's cool,” I say.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Yeah.” I start eating as we sit at the table.

“Why are some people in this neighborhood so mean?”

“Like what, you got robbed, is that it? Hey, I'm sorry.” I shrug. “It happens.”

“No,” she says, “I was at the fruit stand and this woman looks up and down at me, and when I smile and ask politely, ‘Yes?' she says to me for no reason, ‘White bitch get out of Spanish Harlem.'” Helen hides her face in her hands, and her blond hair falls over them.

“Hey, it's all right. Don't cry, it's all right.” I touch her hair to comfort her.

When she uncovers her face, she isn't crying. Not at all. I get a peek at her bra when I look down her blouse.

“I'm angry,” she says. “I'm angry at myself, at that woman. At what I'm doing here.” She clears her dry throat. “Angry at what I'm doing to this place. What is it with me?”

“Where you from originally, Helen?” I ask her, just to talk about something else, because I understand what that woman meant. I know the origin of her distrust. It's been hard for us in Spanish Harlem to negotiate a whole new series of relationships across lines of race and class even. We had lived among ourselves for decades, here in El Barrio, and not too many of us had to live with white people next door to us. And now, in the new millennium, the melting pot did melt, and it wasn't just us who were clueless, Helen and her people were in the same boat.

“I was born in Howard City, Wsconsin,” she says, “it boasts the world's largest ball of twine.”

The pot whispers, and I go to pour us some coffee.

“Where I'm from,” Helen says, “they don't burn crosses, but if you're not from around those parts, they don't look at you with the same eyes. You can be as white as the Grand Dragon, mister, it doesn't matter, a stranger in my town is a stranger. So yes, I understand but—”

“So if you understand that woman,” I cut her off, “why are you angry?”

“Because,” she nods repeatedly, “still, does it make it right Julio, does it?”

“I'm not saying it's right,” I backpedal a bit, “Helen, all I'm saying is you got to understand.”

“Yes, I understand. I'm not that stupid. My business partner bought a brownstone in Harlem and he got death threats in his mailbox. Is that terrible or what?” She looks around, I think she wants a drink.

“Yeah but,” I say, “it's still better than what would happen to a black man buying a building in a white neighborhood.”

She blinks rapidly again.

“I didn't mean to bother you Julio,” she says to me.

“It's all right.” I know she wants to talk, so I let her. And truth is, I want to hear what she has to say.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” I stare at a roach on the wall. It's the first one I've seen since I bought this place. The building was in need of work but it was clean.

“I'm opening up an art gallery on 118th and Second Avenue. What do you think about that?”

“I think it's good. I hope you sell a lot of paintings.” I look at the roach again. Should I go kill it? Then it might not get a chance to multiply.

Helen lifts her hands up and shakes her head.

“No it's not. It's not that good of a thing.”

“It's an art gallery,” I say, “not another Starbucks.”

“Yes, but don't you see, Julio, I'm bringing art to a neighborhood that has art. Its own art. My business partner says, ‘White people don't need a gallery, they have SoHo. This neighborhood, on the other hand, needs galleries. The exposure itself is priceless.' But I know that's bullshit and I still go along with it. Did my business partner ever think that,” she says, as if she was talking to her business partner, “that this neighborhood has art. Tons of art. De la Vega's gallery, the Mixta Gallery, Taller Boricua, el Museo del Barrio. That's a lot of art. Now if you ask me, the real reason we are opening a gallery here is because it's a hell of a lot cheaper than opening one in SoHo.”

“Wow.” I am surprised. “You know those places? Taller Boricua, Mixta. Some people have lived their entire lives in this neighborhood and don't know about those places, wow.”

“Well I did my research on this neighborhood before I put up some money. Didn't you?”

“No. I always lived here.”

“Oh my,” she says.

“Listen, Helen all I can tell you is that you are here, and there are these unspoken rules, a way of life here. You have to claim your territory. If you are going to make this neighborhood your home, you claim it. You don't just pay your rent or put money in, the people in this neighborhood could care less, they will bug you until they see some guts in you—”

“But what about the Dalai Lama and compassion?”

Where did that come from?

“What?” I say, totally caught off-guard. “What does he have to do with this?”

“What about understanding?” she says.

“Look, when we arrived in Spanish Harlem the Italians beat the shit out of us. But we hit back, we claimed it. If you are going to now live here you will have to bleed sometimes. I mean not bleed but be hurt, just like today, don't let those women fuck with you is what I'm saying. You make allies and you hit back. That's what you have to learn. You learn when to hit verbally; humor is good. Making someone feel stupid. But you make friends as well. You also claim it by not going to Starbucks or Old Navy but the Latino stores too—” I stop, because she stares at me like I had said things that shouldn't be said. Like I have just shot her dog. Right then I realize I have too much going on in my life to evaluate who is right or wrong. I have labored hard and even took shortcuts to get what I have. I feel that Helen hasn't yet put her time in Spanish Harlem to talk to me about right or wrong. She didn't have to sell a piece of her soul to buy anything, then again, I don't know her. I didn't want to talk about what white people bring to us or what we bring to them. Maybe in class, not here. Not now.

“You are so small,” she says in almost a faint whisper. The corners of her eyes shudder, as if her worst suspicions had been confirmed. “You believe two wrongs make a right.”

I have some idea why she gets defensive, but what does she want me to say?

She puts her cup down. She waits a second for me to escort her out of the apartment. I stay sitting, and so she leaves.

I finish eating and then put my books away.

I fix a window that needs adjusting. Just some screws that were always loosening. I'm done in a few minutes, and afterwards, I open and close it to test the window, then I step outside onto the fire escape.

I gaze up at the empty, blue-black sky. It looks like an ocean with clouds. The moon is full, and the glittering outline of an airplane collides with its round whiteness.

Looking downward, I make cat sounds, hoping Kaiser will answer me. I look around in the darkness but never see him.

Nothing.

I stare across the street and see no one sitting in front of the buildings. It wasn't always like that. Before people like Helen arrived, those buildings didn't have spikes on the side of the stoops. People would sit on the stoops and talk all night as they watched their children play. The spikes are offensive; it's saying “We don't want you sitting here. We don't care that you sat here for decades, bringing those tropical customs from your old countries, this is a new neighborhood now.”

I know, all neighborhoods must change, but if you are Puerto Rican and need to learn where you came from and who you are, you need to start in Spanish Harlem. The spiritual landmarks are still here, in El Barrio. Helen's people don't seem to have mystical places like ours. They don't have a sacred Harlem, an East L.A., a South Central. They don't have poor, holy places that speak to your soul, vibrant streets that tell you about those who came before you. All they have are small towns that either die or stay the same. Small towns they don't care to romanticize. Small towns they try to kill inside themselves when they leave for New York City or wherever and not look back. There's no place like home, Dorothy had said about Wisconsin, or was it Kansas? I never cared for the movie or the book. All I know is many want out. What Dorothy really wants is to come to Oz. And Oz is running out of room.

At
work the boss is complaining about thieves coming at night and stealing all the expensive pipes from the buildings we are stripping. He lines us up like we're in the fourth grade.

“It's got to be one of yous,” he says with no apology. “You people have a bone in your bodies that makes you take things.”

For years the windows and entrances to these buildings were cinder-blocked. Not so much so junkies wouldn't use these hollow walls for shooting galleries, more so that thieves wouldn't steal the brass pipes and expensive wires that lay hidden behind the walls. The landlords knew that in time the neighborhood would bounce back and they would someday rebuild. But if the pipes are stolen it makes the renovation more expensive.

As the boss rattles his accusations, I have this idea.

I will ask Maritza to get Trompo Loco a job at her church, collecting coats for the homeless or something. I'll pay her, and she will pay Trompo Loco as if it was a real job. Trompo Loco will never know. If Maritza can't do it, maybe Papelito will do it, but I don't want to ask him, because he is already helping me so much by fronting my mortgage for me.

“Which of you came in during the night and stole some brass pipes?”

The workers are all quiet, looking at the ground. Mario is smirking, nodding like he knows who did it. But no one pays him any mind.

The boss paces.

“All right, I just want those brass pipes back. I don't care who took ‘em.”

“I'll give them back,” Antonio says in Spanish. “I'll give them back when you give us Texas back.” All the workers except Mario laugh.

The boss is furious. He looks at me.

“What he say, Julio? What he say?” the boss asks me, and I realize that all this time he never bothered to learn any of his workers' real names, except for mine and Mario's.

“The truth, maybe?” I say.

“You too, Julio?” he's surprised at my answer, as if he and I had been friends.

“Look, I think we all just want to go back to work,” I say.

The boss spits on the floor.

“I know who did it,” Mario says.

“Yeah, who?” the boss walks over to Mario, “tell me.”

“Just pick any one of them,” Mario says, “you can't be wrong.”

Mario laughs like an idiot. The boss doesn't bother to answer him. Instead his eyes stare at Antonio. Antonio stares right back at him, like he is daring the boss to either fire or fight him.