Efrain's Secret (18 page)

I imagine how I might feel if Rubio was dying. My mother breaking the news to Mandy and me. Awilda trying to upstage my mother during his final days at Lincoln Hospital. Another woman and her child turning the funeral into a
telenovela
. The reading of the will and Rubio leaving my mother nothing but the six-figure hospital bill since they’re still legally married. Yeah, anger is mad easy.

“My mother snapped me out of it, though,” Candace laughs. “As hard as I tried to hide it, she sensed what was going on with me.”

“Moms just be like that.”

“I remember once yelling at her
I don’t know that man
. And my mother yelled back
You don’t know ‘that man’ because he worked himself to death to buy this roof over your head and those
clothes on your back. You don’t know ‘that man’ because he loves you. That’s all you need to know about ‘that man.’”
Candace pretends to scout the playground for Nia, but I know that now she feels as raw as I did a few minutes ago. “That’s when I started bargaining with God for miracles, but he wasn’t interested in any of my offers. Still, he gave me one small consolation.”

“What was that?”

“Before he died, I got to tell my dad that I loved him, thank him for all he’d done for us, and say goodbye. I think he could’ve lived a hundred years, and I still never would’ve known him all that well. But we told each other all we needed to know.”

“Come here,” I say. Candace and I wrap ourselves around each other. We still feel raw, but at least we are raw together.

Veneer
(n.)
a superficial or deceptively attractive appearance, facade

There is so much business tonight, Nestor and I race back and forth between the building and the curb as if in an endless relay. In between sprints, he chats up nonsense. Nestor insists that all the scuttle about gang initiation rites—you know, flashing headlights and slashing ankles—is just propaganda to make people think that gang members prey on random White suburbanites, but to this day he still believes Tommy Hilfiger dissed minorities who wear his clothes on
Oprah
. I humor him, though, because stacking paper builds a man’s patience.

“Yo, Nes, don’t you think if that were true, it’d be all over YouTube?” I ask as I pocket the cash handed to me by my latest customer and then whistle for LeRon. “Yo, RonRon, introduce my man there to Judas.”

LeRon nods. “Done.”

“Claudia says she saw that episode herself,” says Nestor. “You know she be into all those talk shows. Says Oprah owned him, too, bro. Kicked his racist ass off her set and told everyone to boycott his brand. That’s why you’ll never catch me wearing that nigga’s shit. Never, son!”

Claudia’s a liar, but what do I care? “Yeah, okay.” I check my watch. “I’ma bounce.”

Nestor peeks at his cell phone. “You kidding me? The set is jumping, and it ain’t even ten yet!”

“More money for you, then,” I say. I made more tonight in three hours than I have made all week, and I’m ready to go. “I’ve got homework to finish and a test first thing in the morning, so I’m not trying to be up all night.” Plus, I want to get home so I can call Candace at a decent hour.

Nestor says, “Yo, E., when you go to college, you think you might join one of them fraternities?”

“I don’t know.” It crosses my mind sometimes. Apparently, the real benefits of joining a fraternity kick in once you graduate. For example, a fraternity brother might get me into a choice law school or give me a dope job. But then I remind myself that I’m not headed to a Morehouse or Howard. “I’m going to a college where I’ma be a minority, and to be real with you, kid, I don’t think I can let some rich White boy haze me, ordering me around and smacking me up and all that.” I had enough of that mess at IS 162 before Nestor told the bullies to fall back. I’m not the one anymore.

“Yeah, that couldn’t be me either, bro,” says Nestor. “But if you go to the Library of Congress down there in D.C., they got a whole file on that stuff.” I suck my teeth at him. “For real, E.! Back in the fifties when that cat McCafferty was running around accusing everybody of being a communist—”

“McCarthy, kid, McCarthy.”

“Whatever, yo, listen to me! Back then the government made all the frats and sororities give up their secrets to prove that they weren’t commies, and it’s all documented in the Library of Congress. But check it… there’s still mad info missing.”

I sneer and say, “I bet.”

“You think somebody like J. Edgar Hoover or the head of the CIA or even the president himself is gonna expose their boys? No way, man! You know they’re gonna use their influence to keep their most secret rituals out of that file.”

I start to ask with all those exceptions, how Nestor can be so sure that such a catalog even exists when I see Lefty Saldaña across the street. I pull my hood over my head and inch closer to Nestor, letting him ramble on to the next topic on his list of favorite urban legends while stealing glances across Hunts Point Avenue. Is Lefty looking for me? No, can’t be. Least of all around these parts. Chingy may know I’m slinging now, he may be angry with me about it, and he may like to parlay with Leti and the other
chismosas
, but no way would he put my secret out on front street.

Still, I keep my eye on Lefty while pretending to listen to Nestor yammer about some talk show psychic who predicted one of the campus massacres. With a huge grin on his face, Lefty approaches that Latino guy in Hinckley’s crew who convinced Julian to accept Nestor’s money and back off me. They hug like long-lost relatives and kick it for a minute in front of La Floridita. A few minutes later, Julian turns the corner, and his boy calls him over. The way Julian and Lefty nod as he speaks, and then exchange pounds, I gather that he just introduced them. But then they burst out laughing and slapping five as if they’ve known each other forever.

“Damn, I hate when you do that, E.!” yells Nestor. “I be talking to you, and you be zoning me out. What you staring at, man?” He rides my gaze across the street and cackles at the sight of Lefty. “Oh, that’s the AC Super Senior!” Then Nestor spits on the ground. “He used to be down with us, but then he got too hungry, so Snipes told him to kick rocks.”

I don’t confirm or deny out of fear of drawing attention to ourselves. It makes no difference because suddenly Julian looks across the street and busts Nestor and me eyeballing him. I quickly look away, and Nestor put his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t do that, bro. Don’t look away.” And yet Nestor sidesteps in
front of me, blocking Julian and me from one another’s sight. He whispers, “It’s okay to get shook out here sometimes, but you can never show it, you feel me?”

I shrug his hand off my shoulder. “I’m not shook.” And to prove it, I jam my quivering hands into my pockets, bop over to a parked car, and lean against it with my back to Julian. Hopefully, this move lets me have my cake and it eat it, too. It avoids the staring contest I can’t win and yet signals to Julian
I’m not afraid to turn my back on you
.

Nestor doesn’t buy it, though. Still, he perks up and asks, “Yo, but did you hear about the time Method Man scared this White lady in a hotel elevator?” See how he lets me be? That’s why we’re boys.

But when I first heard that urban legend a few years back, it was Kobe Bryant. And then it was Reggie Bush. The last time I heard it—from Nestor himself, in fact, only a year ago—it was Jay-Z. But I leap off the car and say, “Yeah, dude steps on with his boys, and she starts clutching her purse and whatnot because she doesn’t realize he’s rich and famous. Then later he picks up her dinner tab at the hotel restaurant, and the woman’s, like,
Duh.”
I feel my back burn, and I take a glance over my shoulder. Now Julian and Lefty are alone, both eyeing me from across the street and talking out of the sides of their mouths. I turn back to Nestor and say, “’Cept when I heard the story, the Black dude was 50 Cent.”

“No! Whoever told you that done lied, bro. How is that story going to work with a cat like 50 Cent?” Nestor laughs. “If Fiddy stepped on my elevator, I’d grab my shit, too.”

“What about Fiddy?” LeRon yells from his post. “You want to talk sideways about my boy, you need to kick rocks ’cause I love that nigga. No homo, though.”

Nestor says, “You see, this White woman is staying at this
fancy five-star hotel and gets on the elevator to go to the restaurant for dinner, right? …” As he recounts the legend, he walks toward LeRon, and I follow. The other guys in our posse crowd around Nestor, reacting enthusiastically to his story. As much as I want to go home and crawl into my warm bed with Candace’s voice in my ear, now is the time to close ranks. When Nestor gets to the part where the woman realizes that the Black “thug” she encountered on the elevator is a celebrity who just paid for her dinner, I laugh louder than anyone else. That’s the best way to show ’em you’re not shook.

Sanguine
1.
(adj.)
consisting of or relating to blood 2.
(adj
.) optimistic

Candace has family visiting New York City during the holiday, so we decide to exchange gifts on Christmas Eve Day. We sit on the floor in the living room by her tree while her sister Nia watches television a few feet away. Meanwhile, Candace’s mother, aunt, and grandmother throw down in the kitchen for all the guests they expect tomorrow. I hand Candace a large gift bag and say, “Ladies first.”

She kisses me on the cheek. “Thank you, E.” Then Candace tries to tuck it under the Christmas tree.

I reach out and clamp on to her wrist. “C’mon, open it now!”

“No,” she says while making no effort to pull away from me. “We have to wait until midnight at least.”

“But I won’t be here then to see the expression on your face.” This girl can be so stubborn! Katrina never stood a chance against her. I lower my voice and say, “Unless at midnight you’re planning, you know, to climb down a brother’s chimney….”

Candace gently socks me in the knee. “Shhh!” She jerks her head toward Nia.

“She can’t hear me.”

“Yes, I can!”

“Nia, stop being so nosy!”

“You and Efrain stop being nasty!”

Now I’m the one who tells Nia to hush. Then I say to Candace, “That’s your fault. You should’ve just done what I asked you.”

Candace reaches inside the gift bag. She pulls out the large but thin gift box. When she opens it, peels away the tissue, and finds another wrapped box, I pretend to cough to cover up my laugh. Candace smirks playfully at me as she tears away the wrapping paper and opens the box. In the box is another gift bag. “Efrain!”

“Blame my sister,” I say laughing. “It was her idea.”

Candace opens the gift bag and pulls out yet another box. After unwrapping the gift box, pulling back the lid, and peeling away the tissue paper, she finally finds the envelope. “Oh, a gift card!” she says. “For where?”

“Someplace you really love,” I say.

She runs her finger under the triangular flap, tearing it away from the envelope. Then she pulls out the ticket. It takes Candace a second to read it and understand. “You bought me an airplane ticket to New Orleans?”

“Round-trip. And it’s an open ticket, too, so you can leave and return whenever you want so long as it’s before then,” I say, pointing to the expiration date. “You still have to make a reservation in advance, but, you know …”

“Oh, E….” Candace’s eyes fill with tears. Good tears. She leans forward and kisses me in a way she shouldn’t with a little sister and all those matriarchs only feet away.

When we finally part, I say, “I have something else for you, but you have to wait until
los Tres Reyes
. I mean, Three Kings’ Day.” I know I should save every cent, but I can’t resist the desire to spoil her a little.

“We celebrate the Epiphany in New Orleans, too,” says Candace. “My grandmother makes the best king cakes. She’ll be
baking and mailing them from now till Mardi Gras, but I’ll save you a piece.”

A dirty thought pops into my mind, but at least I know better than to
say
it with Nia in earshot. Instead, I say, “Thank you.”

“No, Efrain, thank
you.”