Drowning Tucson (3 page)

Señora Nuñez sat in her rocking chair thinking of her son. Ever since she had whispered I love you in his ear when he hugged her goodbye,
she had been praying the rosary on his behalf. Why are men so foolish? Why do they hurt themselves and each other when there are people at home who love them? For years she had been asking herself these questions, and she had never received an answer. So she succumbed to her belief that men are only capable of loving behind closed doors, and she petitioned the Blessed Virgin to pray for her sons.

She was glad this was the last time she would have to worry over a child. Her heart was tired and could take no more sorrow. Many years before, when her oldest son was still a boy, she had realized the trials of motherhood. Sure, there was great joy in creating children and raising them. There was the pride of first footsteps, first words, and the first day of school. But she never anticipated the sadness of watching her boys grow into men.

Even before her sons were old enough to make foolish decisions, she had learned to hide her pain and make her boys tough. Like the time Chuy had gotten his first paper route. He had been so excited when he finished wrapping the newspapers and stuffing them into the bags tied to his bike handlebars for the first time. She’d waved from the door and smiled as her son wobbled down the driveway, weaving back and forth before he finally straightened his bike and pedaled into the darkness. She was still beaming and holding her bathrobe closed when she heard the sound of Chuy’s bike crashing and the horrible shrieks that pierced her heart and sent her running across the street, her robe blowing open as she ran, ignoring the fact that her naked body had grown cold, exposed to the morning air, not caring that anyone looking out his window could see her breasts bouncing under the streetlamps as she dashed frantically to her son’s side and pulled him from the row of cactus where he had landed.

She carried Chuy back home and laid him on the couch, holding back tears so her other sons, who stood in the living room, awakened by the noise and rubbing their eyes, wouldn’t have to see their mother’s sadness. Chuy lay there, trickling blood from hundreds of punctures. She ordered her sons to help her tear the needles from his flesh, and for the rest of the morning, Señora Nuñez and her boys worked in silence, removing every spine from Chuy’s arms and scalp and stomach. Had she known motherhood could be so painful, she might not have had four sons.

They were so sweet when they were young. Back when they needed her. She missed the way her sons used to come to her when something was wrong, as if she were the only person in the world who could fix their problems. But the older they grew, the colder they became. They cut themselves off from her. And now she had no idea whether or not they were sad or happy. Their faces were simply hard masks.

She didn’t understand how babies could grow to be such hate-filled creatures. One by one, as her three eldest sons turned into men, she watched them come into the house covered in cuts and bruises, mumbling curses. She knew they had joined that stupid gang, the one her husband used to be in. He had warned them about joining the Kings, had told them time and again how he would beat them senseless if he ever got word of them running around with those thugs, but he worked such long hours there was no way he could enforce the rules. She tried to do it for him, but she could never bring herself to punish her sons when they came home late, smelling like marijuana and alcohol. Instead, she nursed their wounds and helped them get cleaned up and into bed before their father came home.

For years she took solace in her youngest boy. She longed for him to become a respectable man, the kind of man she had wanted her other sons to become. At night, while her husband and sons slept, she snuck into the boys’ room and lifted Felipe out of his crib and carried him into the living room to rock him. She sang him songs and told him stories. She loved that he smelled like a man. Even when he was young enough to breastfeed, his body had the scent of a hard day’s work. She took it as a sign—he was the one who was going to go to college and meet a nice girl and get married and make her lots of grandbabies. So, when her husband came home angry and beat the boys because they had probably done something bad while he was away, she grabbed Felipe and carried him into her bedroom, snuggling with him on the bed until his father’s rage had passed. More than once, when he actually chased after Felipe with a belt, she had stepped between them and told her husband he would have to beat her to get to her baby. Eventually he forgot about Felipe and focused all of his attention on his other sons.

More than anything, she hoped Felipe would come home today the same as when he left. She wasn’t sure if she could handle seeing another one of her sons come home with the look in his eyes that said I’m a man now and I understand my burden is to become hard so I can handle the pain of living among other men. But she understood Felipe needed to make this decision on his own.

While she sat worrying about losing her last son, Chuy and Rogelio and Davíd walked past and told her bye. Got to get to work, Mom. Got to help Peanut with his car. They always had something to do. Anything but stay home and keep their mother company. But that’s okay. I’ll just sit here and wait on Felipe. The house is clean and in a couple hours I’ll put his cake in the oven so it will be ready by the time he comes home. I hope he likes it. It’s his favorite. The yellow cake with chocolate icing. She was proud of her son. She rocked in her chair and waited.

In the lunchroom at Mansfield Junior High the students were unusually calm. They talked quietly and looked around nervously. Once in a while Felipe heard his name whispered, but he ignored it. He sat next to Ricardo and picked the meat from his sloppy joe. It was stringy and stained his fingers a rusty color. His appetite was gone.

They went outside to walk around for the rest of the lunch period. Some black guys were playing ball in front of a group of white girls, and one of Felipe’s friends commented on how the niggers get all the good pussy these days. Between them and the Kings, we only get scraps. What’s wrong with those bitches anyway? Felipe rolled his eyes. He wasn’t in the mood. All morning he had been going over his options.

He could run. That would solve one problem. But earlier in the day another problem arose when Lavinía slipped him a note telling him how proud she was of him for becoming a King. How she had been eying him ever since she moved to 25th Street seven years earlier. She and her friends, Helena and the two Rosas, had talked about him many times and decided she and Felipe were a perfect match. He had everything she was looking for. He was handsome. He was intelligent. People looked up to him. If the note was supposed to help, it didn’t. Now he wasn’t sure what to do. Lavinía had told him outright that she wanted him, and that
was hard to turn down. She was fine. Beautiful brown hair. Nice rack. The works. Now here she was telling him that after he became a King she would be proud to be his girlfriend. He ignored his friends rambling about all the different bitches at Mansfield they wanted to screw and thought about Lavinía and how much he’d like to give her a book he’d stolen from the school library. The librarian let him steal books because he took good ones. Not the usual horror or romance novels the other kids tried to lift. If he gave her
Wuthering Heights,
maybe she’d invite him over one day after school and they could talk about it on the couch while he rubbed her arm or her hair and leaned forward as she was in the middle of a sentence to surprise her with a kiss. After that she would give herself to him and they would make love and snuggle until it was time for him to go home for dinner.

He stopped walking when he reached the fence at the far end of the schoolyard and told his friends to go on without him. You sure, Felipe? Yeah. You too, Ricardo. I need to be alone. They left and he stood looking at the brush on the other side of the fence, thinking of Lavinía and his mother and his brothers and all the things everyone expected of him, growing angry, frustrated. He jumped over the fence and ran, ignoring his friends, who yelled after him. If he had turned around he might have seen Ricardo smiling and nodding his head. But he didn’t.

He ran as fast as he could, leaping over cactus and weaving around other, spidery plants until he made it to the nearest alley, where he turned and ran more, ignoring the pain in his chest and shins and the pounding in his temples, trying desperately to think of a place to go and scared that if he stopped he would break into tears over his foolishness and feel like a helpless little boy, so he kept going, running until he found himself exhausted and standing in an unfamiliar part of the city.

Stone Avenue was dotted with empty buildings. Hotels with their signs bashed or burned out, a few strip joints, stores that reminded him of Old West watering holes. Felipe wandered around trying to catch his breath, looking in windows and checking doors to see if any were unlocked. None were. He stopped at a pastel blue building with a sign that said The S ank Club. There was a bright outline of paint where the W had fallen off. Looking for a place to rest, he walked behind the
building and found a cove where deliveries were only accepted between the hours of 2 and 4 p.m. It was shady and cool. He found some old cardboard boxes and spread them out, then he lay down on them and slept for the rest of the afternoon.

When Felipe woke hours later, the sun had already gone down. He lay still with his eyes open, trying to remember the route he had taken to end up in this deserted part of the city.

When he finally rose and walked to the front of the building, he was startled to find the street alive with activity. Cars cruised by playing music loudly, their drivers sunk down in their seats with only their foreheads visible above their opened windows. The hotels, which had looked abandoned earlier, were lit up against the desert sky.

The walls of the Swank Club shook with the deep bass of dance music. Felipe tried to see inside, but the windows were blacked out. He didn’t understand why a bar wouldn’t want anyone to see in, so he walked to the front door and pulled it open. When his eyes adjusted to the smoke and lights, he saw a woman lying on her back in the middle of the bar, twirling her bra above her head. She got to her knees and began pulling at her panties, revealing a little patch of hair, and Felipe couldn’t believe his luck. A naked woman, with great tits, right there in front of him. Close enough that he only had to take a few steps and he could reach out and feel her soft skin.

Is this some kind of joke? Felipe looked to his left, directly at the chest of a huge man looming over him. A joke? What do you mean? The bouncer’s arms were so thick he couldn’t cross them over his chest. He just rested them on top of his gut and stared down at Felipe. You got ID? You know you have to be an adult to come in here, and I’m guessing, little man, that you aren’t exactly full-grown yet. Felipe shook his head. He was mortified. Everyone in the place is probably looking right at me thinking look at this dumbass kid trying to sneak in here. He turned to leave, and the bouncer stopped him. Hey, little man. Consider that a free-bie. Now you know what you have to look forward to. He smiled, see you in a few years, then he pushed the door open for Felipe to leave.

If that’s what I have to look forward to, I can wait. He wasn’t thinking about the naked woman. He was thinking about the lonely-looking
man he’d seen just as the bouncer kicked him out. The old man was crouched in his chair at the foot of a stage, where another dancer was shedding her clothes. His back was an exhausted curve, his hair badly brushed over his balding scalp. The man’s arm was extended toward her, a dollar bill folded between his fingers for her to grab whenever she became desperate enough to approach him. They seemed to both be there because of an obligation and not because they had chosen to show up. Felipe always figured if you went to a tittie bar, you would be excited. Maybe there was a small chance you could even score with a stripper. But this guy was sitting there like he was being forced to sit through a midnight mass. Damn, the stripper’s tits were real nice, though. They looked real firm, and he wished he could’ve touched them just once. Still, it hadn’t been a total loss.

He walked to the street and sat down on the curb to smoke a cigarette and watch traffic. If Ricardo knew he’d been in a strip joint, even if it had only been for a moment, he’d be so jealous.

He hadn’t noticed it before, but there were women everywhere. They were walking down the street in pairs, laughing and flicking cigarettes onto the pavement. A few leaned against lampposts or lounged in the doorways of bars or under the awnings of hotel lobbies, playing with their hair or checking their makeup in compact mirrors. Felipe couldn’t believe the way the women in this part of town dressed. Miniskirts. Go-go boots with tall, see-through heels. They barely had anything on, and there were so many of them.

A woman sat down beside him and introduced herself. I’m Rainbow. Her lips puckered with the words, mesmerizing him. He liked the way her toes poked out of her shoes. They were tiny, and the nails were painted metallic blue to match her top. She put her hand on his knee, and he hoped the fuzz on his lip was dark enough that she’d mistake it for a mustache. I’m Felipe. She said his name back to him slowly, puckering her lips again. You got a cigarette? He had one out before she had finished asking the question. They smoked a while in silence, and he looked at her long legs sticking out into the road. Rainbow finally broke the pause by asking if he was lonely tonight. Yeah. I’m lonely. Don’t really know anyone here, and I have nowhere to go. Her thin hand crept
higher up his leg. Do you want a girlfriend tonight? You know, some company? He nodded his head and swallowed, and Rainbow flipped her cigarette out into the street. She stood up and pulled Felipe to his feet. Follow me. I have somewhere we can go.