This Side of Providence (13 page)

Trini runs by in a T-shirt with no underwear, laughing uncontrollably.

“Hey, you think that's funny? Running around like a tramp with no underpants on?” Scottie points toward the bedroom. “Go get dressed. Now.”

She listens to him, but walks away with a smile on her face. I nod for Luz to follow her to the room, hoping she can find something decent to put on her.

Scottie sniffs an empty carton of milk that's been sitting out for a few days. His face curls in disgust. He walks into the kitchen and opens the fridge. After a second he shakes his head. “Looks like she's cooking some real gourmet food, huh? I bet you're missing your mom right about now.”

“It's not that bad,” I tell him, collecting a bunch of the garbage in my arms. I go to throw it out but the trash can is already full. It should have gone out weeks ago, but the can is so big I can't drag it to the curb by myself. I put the garbage on the floor, starting another pile.

“I hope not, kid. 'Cause it looks really bad.”

He walks around the apartment, peeking his head into every corner. He goes to Mami's bedroom last. The room is spotless, probably cleaner than when she left it. The bed looks like it never gets slept in.

“You know what I think?” He sits down on the bed. “I think you've been lying to me. I think Lucho never lived here, and that you kids have been living here by yourselves all along.”

“No way, Lucho was here. She slept right there.” I point to the other side of the bed. The side that used to be his.

“Sure, when your mother was here. I bet she slept here all the time. And it pisses me off, too, don't think it doesn't.” He stands up, turning around to fix the blanket where he was sitting. “But when Arcelia left, she left. There was nothing else to keep her here.”

“That's not how it happened, Scottie.”

“But it happened didn't it? She left you guys alone.”

I don't say anymore. We stand there in silence, staring at each other. After a while Luz walks into the room holding
Trini's hand.

“Okay, she's all set.” She hands Scottie a pink bag with a picture of Barbie painted on the outside. “I put in some dolls and books and an extra change of clothes, just in case.”

“You know what,” Scottie says, “we're gonna need a lot more than that.”

He picks Trini up and carries her back into our bedroom, asking her to point to her favorite things. Trini says the window is her favorite thing. He stuffs the bag with as many clothes as he can and tucks a few stuffed animals in his armpit. He grabs her blanket from the crib but Luz tears it away from him.

“What are you doing?” Luz asks. “Cristo, what's he doing?”

I look at her but don't say anything.

“Well, do something, don't just stand there. Stop him.” Luz throws herself at Scottie and starts pulling the stuffed animals from his arms. He shoves her away and she falls to the ground, knocking her head on the bed frame. It sounds like a watermelon hitting the ground.

“Don't touch her.” I get in Scottie's face. “Don't you dare touch my sister.” I help Luz get up and we stand together, blocking his way out of the room.

“Move, Cristo.” I can tell by the tone of his voice he's getting angry. “Don't make me do something we'll both regret.”

I look up at Scottie, who towers over me like a building. “I can't make you do anything.”

“You're right,” he says. Then he walks straight through us like we're not even there. I grab onto his belt buckle, but he knocks me off with a backhand. His fist feels like a boot in my chest. He covers my face with his hand and pushes me to the ground. “Stay down, kid. Don't make me fight you.”

“Fuck off.”

When I stand up I come face to face with his fist, which is as hard as a doorknob. I feel needles coming from my nose and suddenly I can't breathe. The right side of my face goes numb. Blood spills into my mouth and I bend over to spit it onto the carpet. One of my silver teeth, smooth and pointed like a bullet, sits in the middle of the pool of blood.

Scottie rubs his hand. “Damn you got a hard head.” Then
he grabs Trini and walks out of the room.

More blood pours from my nose as I stand up. I wipe it on the back of my hand. Luz picks up my tooth but I can't see what she does with it. She runs to the door after him. “Why are you doing this? Why are you taking her?”

Trini is crying and yelling, “No, no, no” over and over again. Scottie tries to keep her quiet by covering her mouth with his hand. She flops in his arms like a huge fish.

“She's my daughter,” he says, struggling to keep hold of her. “I'm just trying to protect her.”

“And what about us?” Luz follows him down the stairs, her face filled with fury. “Why don't you want to protect us?”

Scottie stops next to his car, which is parked sideways in the driveway like a blind person was driving. “I'm calling the social worker when I get home. You guys shouldn't be living here, not alone like this. It ain't right.” He shoves Trini into the car and buckles her into the backseat, ignoring the car seat that waits in the driveway like a well-trained dog.

“This ain't right, Scottie,” I say. “You taking Trini like this ain't right.” I spit a chunk of bloody snot onto the sidewalk. The hole where my tooth used to be starts to ache, but I ignore it. Trini is still crying as she waves good-bye with two hands, one for each of us. I force myself to wave back.

Luz looks at me. “Cristo. Please.”

I turn away. “What do you want me to do? He's her father.”

“I don't care,” Luz says. “That doesn't mean anything.”

Scottie looks back at us. He stands next to the car, his hand on the opened door.

“What do you guys want from me?” He shakes his head, as if he can't believe what we're doing to him. “You know I can't take all three of you. You aren't even my kids for Christ sake.”

“Fuck you, Scottie,” I say. “Fuck you and fuck the social worker and fuck Lucho. We don't need any of you.” I give him the finger as he hops into the car and drives away.

“Come on, Luz, come inside.” I poke her in the arm. “We don't need the whole neighborhood knowing our business.” I walk back to the porch, hoping she'll follow.

She turns her head to me without moving the rest of her
body. Her face has no expression, but her eyes are filled with tears. I don't remember the last time I saw her cry.

“I can't believe this,” she says. She blinks to keep the tears from falling. “I can't believe he would do that.”

“Why not? He's always been an asshole. Some things don't change.”

“He took her like she was a piece of furniture. Like he owns her.” She slowly climbs up the stairs, coming to stand next to me on the porch. “We have to get her back, Cristo. I don't know how, but we have to do something.”

“I know.” I don't say it out loud, but all I can think is it would kill Mami if she knew what Scottie just did. It would make her want to kill.

“He's right about one thing,” I tell her. “We aren't his. We don't belong with him.”

Luz looks down at her feet. “Sometimes I used to wish he was our real father, when he and Mami were together and he used to do nice things for us. But now I'm happy he's not.” She picks up a sock that's lying on the porch and tucks it into her pocket. “I just wish he wasn't Trini's either. Then he would forget about her just like he's forgotten about us.”

I nod, even though I don't agree with her, because I know she needs me to. Now that it's just the two of us, I'm gonna have to do a lot of things I don't want to do, like spend extra time with her like when we were little and I couldn't get her to stop following me around.

We walk inside and clean up the best we can. If Scottie really does call the social worker, I figure we only got a day or two in this place, until some lady from DCYF shows up asking lots of questions about where our guardian went. I don't say anything to Luz, but in my mind I'm packing up the house already, taking only the small things we can carry on our backs. Fuck if I know where to go, but if Scottie calls the state we can't stay here. Lots of kids from school end up in foster homes and from what they say it never works out. They think kids can't take care of themselves, but we've done okay so far. Nobody died and we didn't burn the house down, and before Scottie flipped out all three of us were still together. Adults always think they know
what's best, but all I ever see is them making everything worse.

The fridge is empty so I make oatmeal for dinner, with nondairy creamer and Sweet'n Low I grabbed from Dunkin' Donuts. My mouth still hurts from where Scottie popped me, so I ask Luz to check it out after we eat. We find a piece of tinfoil to use as a mirror and stand under the brightest light in the kitchen.

“It looks okay,” she says, poking around in my mouth with a chopstick. “The bleeding stopped.”

I feel the fleshy gum with my tongue. “It feels like a piece of the tooth is still in there.”

“I don't see anything.” She pokes it again, which makes me cry out. A hot pain shoots into my skull, worse than an ice cream headache.

“Jesus Christ, Luz.”

“Sorry.”

I grab the tinfoil away from her and look for myself. It looks better than how it feels in my mouth so I decide to forget about it.

“At least it's on the bottom,” Luz says. “Nobody will be able to see it unless you smile real big.”

I ignore her lame joke and ask her what she did with the tooth.

“I put it in Mami's jewelry box, with Trini's baby teeth. In case she wants to see it.”

I laugh. “She don't want my busted tooth.”

“You never know,” Luz says. “She's kept stranger things.” We both look at the clock with the eagles on it and I'm about to tell her about the money when she hands me a bottle of baby aspirin.

“Here, I found these in the medicine cabinet. For the pain,” she says.

I grab a few and chew them up into a sweet cherry paste, which I jam into the toothless gum with the tip of my tongue. It burns a little, but then goes numb.

We play a few games of dominoes before bed. I let Luz beat me so she'll go to bed happy. When she asks for a bedtime snack I think about using some of the money from Mami's clock to
buy a couple of pizzas, but I figure if I spend it on food it will disappear by the end of the weekend. Instead, I empty packets of soy sauce into a bowl and we dip stale crackers into it. I thought we gave Trini the last of the powdered milk, but Luz finds some in a box under the sink. She offers to share it with me but there's only enough for one cup and I want one of us to feel full. She drinks it fast like she doesn't want me to feel bad and then fills the cup with water and drinks that, too.

After she goes to sleep my stomach is still growling so I pour ketchup into some water and pretend I'm drinking tomato juice. I thought I could handle being hungry all the time, but lately it's been hard. Some nights I can't sleep because my stomach aches so bad, and later when I do sleep I always have crazy dreams about eating tons of food. Then I'm sad when I wake up in the morning and that feeling of being full disappears.

When I'm lying in bed at the end of the night, I'm still thinking about Trini. I wonder how much she understands and if she knows she's not coming back here. She's the same age I was when Mami left me in Puerto Rico and all I knew was that Mami was gone and she didn't take me with her. We moved in with Abuela in the house where Papi grew up, and I slept on a cot in his old bedroom. All I had was a bear she left me and my baby blanket, and I remember looking at the ceiling for hours, crying while I tried to fall asleep. One night I cried so hard my nose started to bleed and when I woke up Papi, he told me to use my shirt to wipe it up. In the morning there was blood all over my pajamas and when Abuela came in she fell to her knees at the side of my bed and started screaming. When I sat up she closed her eyes and crossed herself and said
Gracias por Dios
again and again until she lost her voice.

Tonight Trini will go to sleep in a room by herself for the first time in her life. When she loses her blanket in the middle of the night, nobody will be there to cover her back up. She won't know what's wrong or why she's cold, but a part of her will know that something's missing.

In three months our family's been cut in half. If that happens again, I'll be the only one left.

Miss Valentín

T
he best thing about not being pregnant is that I can have a drink whenever I want. The worst thing: I'm still alone. I give myself the first week of summer to mourn the baby I never had. I sit around in my pajamas and watch tapes of
General Hospital
and eat entire packages of Entenmanns's coffee cake. I listen to gospel music and stare at a journal I bought years ago but have never written in. Then, on the eighth day, I make myself get over it. I shower and get dressed and thank God for sparing me the phone conversation with my parents, the morning sickness, the midwife checkups on my own, and the hours of drug-free labor I would have guilted myself into enduring. I tell myself I'm okay, maybe actually happy, with not being pregnant. But there's a part of me, the smallest, quietest, most frightened part, that still wants a baby.

That's when I decide to research adoption. I look into the options in Rhode Island and internationally, and then I contact the state about how to get started. They tell me there are classes I'd need to take and home studies to be done, but that if I wanted a child in my house, if I wasn't picky about race, sex, or ability, then foster care would be the fastest way. They say that some placements become permanent if the match is right, but others only last a few weeks or months. They ask me if I'm okay with that, or if I'll find it impossible to say good-bye.

“Well,” I tell the woman over the phone, “I want to be a mother, not a boardinghouse.” There is a long pause before she responds.

“You're looking for TPR kids then, the ones whose parents have already lost their rights. Those are the kids who are free.”

Before she hangs up she asks if I have any other concerns. I can't help but laugh.

“Lady, I bet I have as many concerns as you've got kids in the system.”

She doesn't laugh. “I doubt that.”

It takes me several minutes to list all my worries. She tells me I've cut into her lunch hour so she has to go, but I should bring my concerns to the orientation meeting. “Write them down so you don't forget them,” she suggests, her voice lighter now that she knows we're almost done.

When we hang up, I'm alone with my anxiety once again. I worry about all the standard problems: behavioral, emotional, and psychological. I worry about the child not attaching to me. I worry about wanting to send him back. I stay up many nights wondering if I'm brave enough to really do this, if I'm dumb enough, rich enough, smart enough, loving enough, desperate enough, hopeful enough to take a stranger into my home and love him like he came out of me. Some nights I don't have an answer.

What saves me is thinking about my class, all my kids, and how I love each one of them. Even the troublemakers, the whiners, the perfectionists, and the merely average. And I think about Cristo. If that kid can still show love after the life he's seen, imagine what you can do with a baby, or a three-year-old. You can practically start over. You can give them the life they deserve.

When César gets shot it makes me more certain—even the children who have homes aren't always safe. I take Cristo to the hospital as often as I can, but I also go on my own, in the off-hours when César's alone in the room and seems to be suffocating under all those tubes. I bring him the books we read in class last year, even the ones he hated (which was most of them) and read to him under the fluorescent lights of the stale hospital room. When he regains consciousness I bring him comic books, and even though he can't read yet he holds them tight by their glossy covers and won't let go. That's when I know he's
going to be okay.

I'm not there the day he starts speaking, but two days later, when I show up with lollipops for him and doughnuts for the nurses, the first thing he says to me is, “Damn, Teacher, you just missed Jerry Springer,” smiling with the remote control in his hand.

As the summer goes on César continues to get stronger. After they take him off the ventilation tube, he starts to walk and feed himself. The seizures decrease and his headaches, while frequent, are generally less intense. His eyesight in the left eye comes back and he starts playing video games on the Game Boy the nurses got him for his birthday. Sure, he's stuck in the hospital for the whole summer, but at least he's alive—and at least his personality is back. That's a blessing in itself.

In all the times I visit, I only see his grandmother once. It's during the first week, when he's still unconscious and we're all nervous and speaking in hushed voices, not sure which way it will go. She comes into the room while I'm reading to him and places a bouquet of white flowers in the plastic pitcher by his bed. The room fills with the scent of magnolia. I smile at her and she drops her head in response. She hums a song I know from my childhood, from visits to my
abuela
's apartment on Sunday mornings when I thought every beautiful song in the world was recorded on one of the albums she stacked like books on her shelf. His grandmother leaves before I can ask her the name of the song.

When I walk out I see her sitting in a chair by the elevators, knitting what looks like a baby blanket. I try to make eye contact but she won't look up. She keeps her eyes on her work, tying the knots so quickly her fingers blur together as if her hands were as soft and pliable as yarn, as if she were weaving pieces of herself into the pattern.

I get back from Puerto Rico the Friday before Labor Day, tanned and rested and excited about the new school year. I decide to go grocery shopping, the perfect activity for an overweight girl on
a Friday night, and my plan is to spend a quiet evening watching the Yankees destroy the Twins. I soon find out God had other plans.

It's after eight when I get back from the store and the game has already started. I carry the bags from my car to the back door in one trip, setting them down in the dark. I'd forgotten to leave the porch light on, still not used to the night coming on so quickly, and I see an odd shape in the corner, something that looks like a body. I'm so startled I bang into the screen door and almost fall right off the porch. At first it looks like only one person, a man, I think, homeless or maybe just drunk and lost, but when I see it move, see it break apart like a magic trick into two smaller bodies, two children's bodies, only then do I recognize them. Cristo and Luz, huddled together like seals on the beach, attempting to sleep under a canvas tarp meant to cover firewood.

“Sorry, Teacher, we didn't mean to scare you.” Cristo stands up quickly, struggling to fold the tarp into a neat square.

“Jesus Christ.” I lean against the house to catch my breath.

My groceries have spilled all over the porch, cans of beans and olive jars rolling along the dusty wood floor. Luz starts to repack. She picks up several bags of chips.

“You having a party, Miss Valentín?”

“They were on sale,” I tell her, which is a lie. It tumbles out of my mouth before I even know I'm forming it. As a child I often lied to my parents about food, but since college I've lived alone, so I'm not used to answering questions about my eating.

“Here, we'll help you carry everything inside.” Cristo grabs the remainder of the bags and leads the way up the back staircase. He knows my kitchen like he lives here, even though he's only visited twice, and he puts everything away without my help. When Luz asks to use the bathroom I take her there myself, showing her where the light switch is hidden and how to jiggle the handle on the toilet so the water stops running. Back in the kitchen, I ask Cristo an obvious question.

“What's going on?”

He shrugs and looks out the window into the dark. “Nothing.”

“You just happened to be in the neighborhood?”

He smiles that half-crooked smile. “Yeah.” He nibbles on the chips I set out, pretending he's not hungry.

“Have you eaten?”

“Today? Sure.”

“I meant dinner.” I look at the clock on my microwave, which reads 8:42.

“Oh. Not really.”

“I've got some rice and beans and leftover chicken from lunch. I'll heat it up for you.”

“No, you don't have to go to any trouble,” he says. “Unless you were already going to do it for yourself.”

I put my hand on his perfectly round head, the buzz cut now grown out, and turn his face to look at me. “Are you hungry or not?”

“Yes.” He blinks as if to punctuate it.

I put the leftovers in the oven to heat up and get some plates from the cabinet. He watches me while I set the table.

“How was your trip?” he asks.

“Nice. A little long, but it was good.”

“How are your parents?”

I look over at him, gesturing with a handful of silverware. “Can we stop talking about me for a minute? How are you, how is
your
parent?”

He looks down and shrugs. “Not so good, I guess.” He picks up his soda, takes a small sip, and puts it back down. “I'm in trouble, Teacher.”

“Why? What happened?” I try to keep my voice calm.

“It's a long story.”

I pull out a chair so I can sit down next to him. He talks quickly, looking at his hands the entire time.

“Lucho left and Scottie took Trini and we can't stay in the house anymore because he called DCYF and this lady is looking for me and we don't have anything or anywhere to go.”

“Okay, okay, hang on a minute. Back up and start from the beginning. Lucho left?”

He nods.

“When?”

“A few weeks ago. Maybe a month.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“I thought she'd come back. Every other time she came back. But this time, I guess not.”

“Where have you been staying?”

“At home.”

I cover my face with my hands. “Please don't tell me by yourself.”

“It's okay, Teacher. We were fine until Scottie found out and took Trini and called the social worker.”

“He did the right thing calling them. I would have too if you had told me.”

He plays with the salt and pepper shakers on the table. “So I was right not to tell you.”

“Maybe you were.”

He leans back in his chair, the front legs off the floor, just like he used to do in class. We listen to the clicks of the oven as it warms, saying nothing. Finally, he brings the chair back down, dropping it onto its front legs without making a sound.

“Well it doesn't matter anyway because we left and now I don't know where to go.”

“What about your mom's cousin, can't you stay with him?”

“Chino and Kim are in New York for the weekend. Their place is locked, I already checked. And Scottie doesn't want us, and our neighbors have their grandkids in town and there's nobody else.”

“Cristo.” I touch his hand. “If you're worried about where you're going to sleep for the weekend, don't. You can stay here, you know that. But once school starts… You need a real solution.”

“I'm not going to a foster home, Teacher. They'll split us up.” He pulls his hand away from mine. “They always split up older kids.”

“Relax, we won't let that happen.”

He shakes his head. “I promise you, I'm not going.”

“I'll talk to Chino and Kim. We'll work it out.”

“Why can't we stay here, Teacher? You've got room. And it would only be for a few months.”

“It's not that simple.” I stand up to check on the food. “I
can't just keep you like a bird I'd watch for a friend. There's paperwork to fill out and laws we have to follow—”

“Do you want money?” He pulls some crumpled bills from his pocket. “How much do you need?”

“
Dios mío
, put your money away. I don't want your money.” I inhale deeply and look up at the ceiling. “We have to do what your mother would want. And what the social worker thinks is best.”

“Mami wanted us at home, with Lucho. That's why she made her our guardian. She wanted us to stay together.”

Luz walks in and stands in the corner against the wall. She sucks on the end of her braid like it's made of honey.

“Come on, time to eat.” I open the oven door, shocked by the rush of dry heat. I close my eyes quickly, before they start to water, and blindly pull out the dish.

I serve them on TV trays and we sit in the living room watching the Yankees beat the Twins, seven to four. When Jeter hits a home run we cheer like we're at Yankee Stadium, sharing a three-way hug. After the game I make up the guest bed and tuck them in, leaving them together in the dark.

A long while later, when I'm certain they're asleep, I go back into the kitchen and serve myself the bowl of ice cream I would have eaten for dinner if they hadn't shown up. I eat it quickly, standing against the kitchen sink, and then I wash all the dishes, making sure to dry the ice cream scoop and hide it in the back in the utensil drawer so nobody sees it. I feel stuffed and guilty now, so I decide to go to bed, hoping to fall asleep before I start listening to the voice in my head that tells me how weak I am, right before it tells me to go eat some more.