Efrain's Secret (4 page)

Before heading to my building, I stop at the bodega for a candy bar. Nestor and his crew stand in front of the icebox as usual. Nestor, Chingy, and I, the three of us, we used to be boys. But when Nes quit school and started slinging, Chingy wasn’t having it and cut him off. Me, I don’t like what Nes is doing either, but we all grew up together. I just couldn’t drop him like that.

Not that I hang with Nes. Ain’t no secret what he’s doing on that corner, so Moms would give me mad grief. Besides I don’t want to get caught out there with those cats when the po does one of their sweeps ’cause they’re not trying to hear that you were just chilling. As far as they’re concerned, if you’re hanging out with the dealers, you must be buying or selling yourself.

Nes walks up to me and holds out his hand. “What’s up, E.?” Then he squints in my face. “Girl trouble?” Man, sometimes Chingy can be oblivious to my moods, but Nes still reads me like a book.

“Ha.” I think about Candace and then get mad at myself for thinking about her. “Remember Mrs. Colfax?”

“The typing teacher?” asks Nestor. He claws the air, wiggling each finger from one pinky to the other. “A-S-D-F-J-K-L-semi-colon. To this day, I can’t break that spell, yo.”

Yeah, in addition to being the senior advisor at AC, Mrs. Colfax is assistant vice principal of the business department. That
means she not only “advises” the students who want to attend college, she also provides career counseling to those who don’t and teaches business classes. At least, that’s what she’s supposed to do.

Anyway, I tell Nes what Mrs. Colfax said to me that morning. He shakes his head and says, “That’s messed up. How she gonna say that to the smartest guy in the whole school?”

“That’s all I’m saying.”

“Man, let Colfax bogart her little fee waivers,” says Nestor. “Say the word, and I’ll hook you up with a job so you can pay them fees yourself like that, no worries.”

Ain’t that something? We found out what Nes was up to after dropping out of AC when he tried to recruit Chingy, who was insulted that Nes stepped to him. Although I never admitted it to either one of them, it bothered me that he didn’t approach me, too. I never
wanted
to sling, but did Nestor think I was soft or something?

I walk toward my building, and Nestor tags along. “Yeah, Efrain, you should definitely go to college,” he says. “Go to college, become a lawyer, and be the first Hispanic mayor of New York City, you know what I’m saying.”

“Shut up.” But I like the way it sounds.

“For real. But college ain’t cheap.”

“Who you telling?”

“Sell for me, and you’ll never come up short on tuition. Especially once you start college. Students be my best customers.”

“Get out of here, man.” I’m about to joke about how bad it would be if heads found out that the first Hispanic mayor of New York used to sling when I see Rubio come out of the hardware store across the street.

Nestor catches the look on my face and turns around. He calls out, “Rubio!” Rubio gives him a slight nod and then glares at me.
I glare right back, then turn around to go into my building. Nes points and says, “Your pop’s the man!”

I look back across the street, and there’s some girl who’s
not
Awilda talking to Rubio, looking at him all lovey-dovey. Nestor laughs and punches me in the arm. “Your father’s, like, Super Playa!” I head up the steps to my building and wish Nestor would just go back to his corner. But he follows me up the stairs even though he knows I can’t invite him in. “Yo, speaking of playas, how’s Chingy?”

“He’s a’ight.” That’s all I can say. Once I told Nes something about what was going on with Chingy—it was so trivial, I can’t even remember—and Chingy read me. He said if I wanted to stay friends with him, I’d best not tell Nestor any of his business. I thought he OD’d, and we didn’t talk for a few days. Then one day he did something funny in gym, I cracked up, and we got back to normal. We never talked about our fight over Nestor, just pretended that it never happened.

Nestor waits for me to say more. When I don’t, he says, “Tell ’im I said, ‘What’s up.’”

“Okay,” I lie. Chingy won’t be trying to hear that message, but Nestor doesn’t need to know that. “Peace, kid.”

He finally starts back down the steps. “One, bro.” I watch him until he disappears around the corner, but Rubio’s still scowling at me from across the street. Where does he come off judging me for the company I keep? He calls my name, but I give him a dirty look and let myself into the building.

Aberration
(n.)
something that differs from the norm

The second I walk into the kitchen the next morning, I know something’s up because my moms isn’t chatting up my sister, Mandy, and doesn’t tell me good morning.

Moms works at Yannis’s Discount on Third Avenue off 149th Street. Since she doesn’t have to be there until nine, and her bus ride is only twenty minutes, she’s here when Mandy and I get up for school. Usually, she talks up my sister until I walk in and then turns the interrogation on me. I shouldn’t say it like that. Moms just wants to know what’s going on in my life, seeing that she works ten-hour days, six days per week. It’s all love.

But this morning she just steals annoyed glances at me without saying anything. I say, “Hi, Mami,” and kiss her cheek. This is the first time I’m seeing her since yesterday morning. Because she gets home so late, Moms either cooks dinner in the morning so my sister and I can heat the food up later or she leaves us money for takeout, frozen dinners, or something like that. When she comes home from work, I’m usually in my room doing homework or hanging out with Chingy. Sometimes she stops by my room to ask me if I want some homemade Dominican cake baked by Yannis’s wife or if I have any dirty clothes to wash. Most times, though, my moms comes home, eats dinner, maybe watches a little TV in her bedroom, and then goes to sleep. Mandy and I usually only see her over breakfast.

I grab the box of Cap’n Crunch from the top of the refrigerator and then open the door to get the milk. My moms says, “Amanda, go finish getting ready for school.” Oh yeah, something’s definitely up if she’s calling my sister “Amanda.”

“I’m ready.”

“Did you put everything you need in your bag?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, go make your bed.”

“I made it already.” Obviously, my mother has something she wants to talk to me about alone, which is why my nosy little sister is lingering.

“Go, Beyoncé,” I say.

“Efrain, stop,” Mandy giggles. She loves Beyoncé, although every time she sees a picture of her with Jay-Z, my sister says she doesn’t like him for her. I tell her me neither.

“Then do what Mami tells you.”

“Oookaaay.” Mandy finally takes her bowl to the sink and leaves the kitchen.

My moms stands up and walks to the doorway, checking to see that Mandy’s in her room instead of eavesdropping in the hallway. “Efrain, your father called me at the store yesterday.”

In a flash, my appetite disappears. “So?”

“He told me he saw you hanging out with Nestor.”

I drop my spoon into my bowl. “Man—”

“Don’t
Man
me, Efrain. I’m not one of your friends.
Díme con quien andas y te diré quien eres.”

Tell me who you run with, and I’ll tell you who you are? I usually dig those Spanish
refranes
, but this ain’t Señorita Polanco’s class.
“Mami, yo no ’taba andando con nadie
. All I…” I really don’t believe this. Bad enough that Rubio’s got the nerve to bother my mother at work over some nonsense, but Moms is
buying it, too? Without finishing my cereal, I pick up my bowl and head to the garbage. “Forget it.”

“Don’t tell me to forget it.”

“I just bumped into Nestor at the bodega on my way home from school, and he walked me to the door. That’s it, Mami. I’m not hanging out with him.”

“Then why are you so defensive?”

Because, after all he’s done, you believe Rubio over me
. But the lump in my throat won’t let me say that, so I just dump my cereal into the garbage and toss my bowl in the sink. See why I can’t stand Rubio? First, he plays my moms dirty for the whole neighborhood to see, and now he has us fighting, which is something we almost never do. “What happened is what I said happened.”

Moms hesitates. “Well, your father was pretty sure. He told me that he called you, and you just ignored him.”

I walk past her out of the kitchen and into the hallway. “Mandy!” I pick my backpack off the chair. “Mandy, c’mon, we’re leaving.”

“Efrain …” I don’t usually disrespect my moms, but I can’t listen to this anymore. I walk to the door, refusing to answer when she calls my name. My sister runs out of her room with her backpack and jacket on. Knowing my mother’s not going to say anything else about Rubio or Nestor in front of my sister, I open the apartment door and head to the staircase.

My sister rushes to catch up to me. When we’re outside, she asks, “Efrain, why you hate Papi so much?” I don’t like to lie to my sister because I know how it felt to be her age and have older people lie to my face. Exhibit A: Rubio. But I also think it isn’t right to expose kids to more than they can handle. Again, refer to exhibit A. So I don’t say anything.

“He be asking for you all the time,” says Mandy. So now Rubio’s trying to manipulate my little sister to get to me. He can’t
step to me man-to-man, always has to run his game through the females. Whatever. After we walk a few brisk paces in silence, Mandy finally says, “He keeps asking me when you’re coming by to see Junior.”

“Junior? Who’s Junior?”

Mandy sucks her teeth at me. “The baby, dummy.”

Figures the egomaniac named the baby after himself. “How do you know all this?” I ask. “You’ve been to Awilda’s?”

Mandy doesn’t answer, but the guilt’s all over her face. She says, “The baby looks just like you, Efrain. Papi showed me your baby pictures,
y ustedes son iguales.”
She says it like it should make me feel good. “Oh my God, Efrain, when Papi holds Junior, he’s so funny, talking all that goo goo ga ga.” Says that like it should make me feel good, too. Like Rubio’s being all fatherly with his new baby who looks just like me should count for something. Mandy laughs, and it takes my all not to sneer. I ask her, “So, Awilda doesn’t have a problem with you going over there?”

Mandy just shrugs. Then she says, “Oh, Efrain, you want to hear something funny? When I left, I kissed the baby, and then I kissed Papi, and then I kissed Serenity. Awilda’s looking at me like she’s expecting me to kiss her, too, right? But, instead, I said, ‘Bye, Wildebeest!’ Get it? And she’s got, like, this stupid look on her face ’cause she’s not really sure what I said.” And Mandy laughs like she really showed Awilda a thing or two. “Wildebeest!”

“Yeah, I get it. So let me ask you something. Why you don’t like Awilda?”

“Because she’s the reason why Mami and Papi don’t get back together.”

But does Mandy know that Awilda’s the reason they split up in the first place? Not that it really matters. I mean, yeah, she’s a big ol’ smut who knew that Rubio had a wife and kids and got
with him anyway. The bottom line, though, is that, smut or not, Awilda doesn’t owe my moms anything. Rubio’s the one who stood before the priest and made the vows. He’s the one who broke his promise. Even if Awilda was throwing it at him, he had no business catching it. Word is born.

“Mandy, how can you be mad at Awilda but not be mad at him?” I ask. “If Rubio really wanted to be with Mami—if he really wanted to be with us—he would just come back, and nothing Awilda could do would stop him.”

“She went and had a baby, dummy. He can’t leave her there all alone with the baby.”

“But he could leave Mami with the two of us, right?”

At first, Mandy doesn’t answer. Then she suddenly punches me in the arm, and thanks to Chingy, who taught her how to ball her fist and swing her arm just right, my sister does not hit like a girl. “Ow!”

“Shut up, Efrain,” she yells. “Just shut up, okay!” Then Mandy flies up the block toward her school.

Rancor
(n.)
deep, bitter resentment