Painted Cities (18 page)

There was definitely something confusing about Mexicana. Every few minutes the attendant behind the counter made an announcement and each time some of the crowd moved to the left, and a new group filled in the open spaces. Along a glass wall people were standing, duffel bags hanging from their shoulders. Suitcases lay on their sides on the floor, and on some of these children sat.

Another announcement and Daniel’s mother reached out her hand. Daniel got to his feet. The man stepped aside and watched them leave. They walked down a long corridor. Before turning into a separate room, Daniel took one last look behind him. The man was still staring. Daniel almost raised a hand to say goodbye.

The room was already packed. Daniel’s mother got up on her toes and looked around. “There she is,” his mother said. She led
him though another maze of people. Daniel had never seen his grandmother in person. In her pictures she had looked nice enough, normal. Still, after all he’d heard, he’d expected to see an ugly, gnarled brute of woman. He was surprised when he finally saw her.

More than anything, she was short. She had her head away from him but Daniel recognized her, her glasses, how the stems connected high up on her frames then dipped to become the earpieces. Of all the things Daniel had heard, nothing really prepared him for how tiny she was. She was barely taller than him, like it could’ve been her shoes giving her a boost. His mother said fifteen children had come from this woman. Daniel wondered how that was possible.

Her arms were long. She looked strong, compact, wide. The closer Daniel got, the more he figured she could knock down a tree if she wanted. She looked nothing like his mother. His mother had soft features—her eyebrows, her nose all seemed to mold into each other, but his grandmother was chiseled, sharp and defined. The lines in her face were deep and more like scars than wrinkles.

“
Hola, mamá
,” his mother said. “
Comó estas?
”

His grandmother jumped. “
Ay, mija, me asustastes. Comó estas mi vida?
”

His mother leaned in and gave his grandmother a kiss. His grandmother returned the kiss, then said something Daniel couldn’t understand. He saw an angry look on his mother’s face.

“
Y tú?
” his grandmother said to him. “
Éres Daniel, verdad?
”

“
Sí
,” Daniel said. And she gave him a kiss and hugged him. He still couldn’t believe how short she was. Daniel tried to hug her back but he felt like he couldn’t get a grip. He felt like he was hugging a building. When his grandmother backed away, he wasn’t satisfied.

She rubbed the back of his head. “
Tan flaquillo, te pareces a tú abuelito
.”

“
Mípapá no era flaco, mamá
,” his mother said.

“
Enflacó antes de morir. Pero tú ya no estavas
.”

Daniel had no idea what his mother and grandmother were saying to each other, but he could tell there was an edge to it. His mother shook her head and without a word picked up his grandmother’s suitcase and began walking away. His grandmother looked to Daniel as if she had something to say, but all she did was pull him close. Together they walked in his mother’s wake.

This had all happened one week ago. Since that time they had visited his great-uncle exactly once. There had been more tension in the air than ever before. Hardly anything had been said during the visit. Voices were hushed. Daniel was the main topic of conversation. “Is he doing good in school?” “Summer break, huh?” “Make sure he drinks a lot, dehydration, you know?”

During the visit his great-uncle said a total of two words to his sister, Daniel’s grandmother: “Hi” and “Bye.”

Daniel, his grandmother, and his mother left after only an hour. When they got back to the car his grandmother and mother went back and forth like schoolgirls. Daniel couldn’t understand everything they were saying, but he knew they were talking about his great-uncle and cousins, and not in a positive way. His grandmother and mother laughed and waved their hands. Then they said things and laughed and waved their hands again. It was the only time all week that they seemed at all alike. It was the only time all week that
they seemed the least bit happy with each other.

Between Daniel and his grandmother, though, things were different. There had been cold nights, damp nights, like the night of his grandmother’s arrival. Daniel had experienced his
rumas
often, and while his mother had taken to leaving him to his own remedies, his grandmother went out of her way to make him more comfortable. She drew baths for him, something his mother hadn’t done for him in years. His grandmother had also cut tube socks for him, taking the toes off of an old pair so that he could use them as warmers once he put his Ben-gay on. When he went to bed now, with his
rumas
, tube socks around his elbows and knees, he was in a world of warmth, heaven.

Daniel had also improved his Spanish. In the last week he had learned the right way to roll his
r
’s. His grandmother spoke to him in Spanish, so he had to understand, and more than that, he had to respond. If he was unsure of a word, he used those he knew and got as close as possible. Then his grandmother would say, “Ahh,
caca-huete
,” or whatever she guessed the word was. Somehow, Daniel knew instantly if the word his grandmother quoted was the word he meant. If it was, Daniel would nod, say it over to himself, and commit it to memory.

Between his mother and grandmother, things were more tense. Aside from that brief moment after visiting his great-uncle, the two of them argued constantly. Sometimes his grandmother tired of arguing and dealt quietly with whatever his mother said. Sometimes it was the other way around, and his mother put up with whatever his grandmother said. But most often neither could stand the other, and they would walk around the kitchen cooking or cleaning and at the
same time arguing, his grandmother’s voice screeching, his mother’s voice sounding amazingly similar. When they got to fighting like that, even sitting in his room with the door closed didn’t help, and Daniel would leave the apartment to walk the neighborhood, where it was quieter, where at least he was able to think.

Daniel wondered if he’d eventually get to be the same way. If he’d get to the point where being in the same room with his mother was almost physically painful. Already he felt himself wanting to say things—“Mom, can’t you just shut up for a minute? What the hell is your problem?” It wasn’t so much that he suddenly loved his grandmother and would take her side over anyone else’s, it was just that he wanted things to go more smoothly, more smoothly than it seemed they ever could.

At the sprinkler pool Daniel could’ve made things easier by wearing clean socks. His mother would’ve said something if she’d seen the ones Daniel had on. Especially considering that there were probably clean ones in his dresser drawer. As it was, he knew that as soon as he and his grandmother returned home from the park, she would take the socks she had pulled off his feet and scrub them the way she did all the white clothes, in the kitchen sink, on the washboard she’d insisted on buying the first day she was in Chicago. She would use gallons of bleach, Daniel knew. She had used so much already that the apartment had begun to smell sour. A smell Daniel was convinced had fumigated all the cockroaches in their apartment building.

As he got up and walked through the wading pool to the sprinkler, Daniel thought about what it must be like in Mexico: if his grandmother had separated herself from her whole family the way
his mother had separated herself from everyone here. He wondered about his uncles, his aunts. Fourteen of them. He wondered at the cousins he had running around. He wanted to meet them, visit them, stay with them. He wondered if his grandmother even talked to them, or if all her children, like his mother, had cut her off.

He soaked himself in the cool shower of water. He felt a cold tingle between his legs as the water flooded his jean shorts. He ran his fingers through his hair. He saw the kids around him, some older, dancing and running, some babies, wading near his grandmother. Through the rain of the sprinkler he looked to his grandmother. She had rolled up her long flannel sleeves, and for the first time Daniel saw her forearms. She had tattoos, two or three of them on each arm. They were dull green, the same color as the rusting chain-link fence that surrounded the wading pool. Even from this distance he could see how the ink had bled into her dark skin, how time had created large splotches on her arms rather than anything even or clear. His grandmother was looking off to the left. He knew she would roll down her sleeves as soon as he returned. He wondered how much else he didn’t know about his family, how at ten years old he was completely unsure of who he was.

SACRIFICE

O
ur oldest just turned five. I’ve always been honest with him. And now I wonder if I should tell him I killed his father.

He is her child; I adopted him. I told Blanca I wanted to. I am not so sure she cared. My wife is a pretty woman, striking even. But she is also desperate. Desperate in the sense that she knows to take what she can get. Desperate in the sense that she knows not to ask for more. I’ve always given her the most I could. For this reason we don’t argue much.

I love her. Don’t get me wrong. Although after all these years, after two children, I am not entirely convinced she loves me. But this is not important. Because, you see, I am a desperate man, and my only wish is to come home to a family. Children who call me Daddy and a wife who will never cheat. In many ways our marriage seems born of convenience. Such is the case with desperate people.

Her boy, our boy, turned five in December. His name is Prince
Marcus; I don’t like the name. He was named after his father, and so the boy is cursed. Each time I speak or hear our son’s name, I am reminded of the man I killed four months ago in the alley three blocks down from where we live. I walk by there often. I need to in order to get to the supermarket. And I look down the alley and expect to see his body there, slumped over, perfectly camouflaged like a bag of trash next to an overflowing garbage can.

I didn’t know him personally, not before I married Blanca. He was from Eighteenth Street, and in this neighborhood Eighteenth Street and Twenty-Second Street are night and day, two opposite sides of the universe. He really should’ve known better than to come around. I suppose the fact that he didn’t respect the obvious made me dislike him even more.

Marcus was the leader of the Laflin Lovers. His name on the street was
Prince
Marcus. The Laflin Lovers were not a big gang. They were one of hundreds in our neighborhood, thirty or so members, two or three street corners’ worth of turf. But the Laflin Lovers had a reputation. They were crazy. They jumped rivals in front of families. They pulled drive-bys in front of schools, churches. I’d heard of Prince Marcus long before I ever met Blanca. And then there was Orejas, Pac-Man, Lepke—all Laflin Lovers, all with ugly reputations, all under the leadership of Prince Marcus. Maybe this is what attracted my wife.

My wife and Prince Marcus had the fortune of ending up at the exact same school at the exact same time, and when I think about it, timing seems to be the culprit for everything. Benito Juarez High School was built on Blue Island Avenue and Twenty-Second Street, strategically placed to take in kids from both sides of the
neighborhood, Twenty-Second
and
Eighteenth. While this was probably the brainstorm of a lifetime for some city planner, it was an unfortunate reality for any kid who couldn’t afford an alternative. For the first five years Benito Juarez was up and running, the school had the distinct honor of being the only high school in Chicago with a double-digit murder rate: Cullerton Boys, Two-Ones, Satan Disciples, Latin Brothers, Laflin Lovers, Latin Counts, Latin Bishops, Racine-Boys, Almighty Ambrose all claimed victims. Even in the envelope of my all-boys Catholic high school, I could see that Benito Juarez was the pits. And living in the community that Juarez served, I heard the stories. How Beany from the Two-Ones had stabbed Lil’ Cano, from the Party People, in the cafeteria. How Sleepy, who was just a junior Latin Count, was found shot in a stall in the men’s room. How Ms. Welzien, one of the PE teachers, had had her nose broken by an Ambrose named Juice. The gangs had taken over. They divided themselves into two categories: Folks and People. Drive-bys began with riders screaming their affiliations—“People!” or “What up, Folks!” Then the shooting started.

There were Chicago police units assigned to Juarez. Their primary job was to pick up the pieces. The wars went on.

It still offends me somewhat that my wife has a history with another man. I know this is petty. Plenty of marriages are actually second and third marriages. But I think my attitude would be different if my wife had been in a relationship with a different kind of guy. The first two years I was with her, I actually got to know Marcus quite well: there was the time he kicked down our front door, the time he threw a brick through the front window of my car while I was driving, the time he nearly OD’d in front of our apartment,
puke streaming down his chin onto his black T-shirt. That morning my wife took him in and put him under a cold shower. She knew exactly what to do. She massaged his chest. She gave him blankets, our blankets, and made him chicken noodle soup. He ate breakfast with us, and lunch and dinner, and then the next morning ate another breakfast. At one point he apologized for all he’d ever done. “I’m sorry, Jesse,” he told me over scrambled eggs. “I respect you, bro. You know how to keep a woman. You know how to have a family.” He cried. My wife put her arm around him. She told him everything was okay. “People in this house love you,” she said. I looked at little Prince Marcus, who was too young to love anything at that point, and I wondered who she meant. That afternoon Marcus left. Within a week he had broken into our apartment, through the back door while we were away at work. He didn’t take anything. It didn’t even appear that he’d gone through any drawers. But he left a note on the kitchen table.
I still luv you, Blanca
, the note said.
I can’t help it
. And while it wasn’t signed, it was obvious who it was from. My wife cried.