This Side of Providence (35 page)

“Don't look at me,” she says to Lucho. “This is between the two of you.”

Lucho turns back to me. She clears her throat before speaking. “I'm sorry, kid. I wish it hadn't turned out like that. I really do.”

“Save it for someone who cares.”

Lucho shrugs. “Listen, if I could go back and change things I would. I hope you believe that.”

“Are you kidding me? I don't believe a word you say.”

Lucho stands there for a minute, then picks up her sweatshirt and walks out of the room. Mami follows her to the front door, carrying the bananas in her shirt like she used to do when I was little and we'd pick our dinner from the vegetable garden. I can't hear what they're saying, but I see Mami put her hand on Lucho's chest as she says good-bye. That's the only time I see them touch.

After Lucho leaves, Mami locks the dead bolt and pulls the chain lock through a deep groove carved into the wood, a homemade security system. She rests her head against the door, tapping it repeatedly, a little harder every time.

“Knock it off, Mami. You trying to give yourself a concussion?”

“I'm just trying to wake up,” she says.

I pull her away from the door. “You're awake,” I say.

Her eyes fill with tears and she looks away from me.

“Don't do that,” I say. “You don't get to cry yet.”

She closes her eyes and sniffs loudly, trying to pull herself together. I soften my voice, so I don't sound like I'm yelling at her, but it doesn't work. The anger can't seem to find another way out of my body.

“When did it start?”

She shakes her head.

“When?” I ask again, my voice suddenly louder.

She looks down, like she's reading the answers off the floor.

“It's only been a few weeks,” she says.

“The drinking?”

She nods.

“And the rest?”

She closes her eyes.

“Don't make me check your room.” I sound like I'm her father, which would make me laugh if I wasn't so pissed off.

She looks at me and then looks away. “It's just a slip, Cristo. It's not going to happen again.”

“Why'd you stop going to those meetings? I thought they made it better.”

She takes a deep breath, refusing to look at me. “Sometimes they did. But sometimes just being there made me want to kill myself.”

“Don't say that, Mami.”

“It's just an expression. You know what I mean.”

But I don't know what she means. She sits down on the couch, leaving room on either side of her. I want to sit down, but something tells me I have to stand to make it through this conversation.

“Are you still taking your medication?”

She nods. “Most days.”

“I thought it was bad, to mix drugs together.”

She exhales. “I'm sure it is.”

I see my reflection in the windowpane and for a second I think it's someone else. Someone I recognize but haven't seen in a long time.

“What about probation? Couldn't they send you back if they found something?”

“They're not going to find anything. This is it, it's over.”

I shake my head. “I don't believe you.”

She looks at me, her eyes filled with tears again. “I don't want to be like this. You have to believe that, Cristo.”

I look at her feet, which are so small she's wearing a pair of
Luz's shoes. “I do,” I tell her. “I believe you. But it's not enough anymore.”

“Don't say that, Cristo.”

I stare at my reflection again, trying so hard to recognize myself. “I thought being here would make it different, better somehow, but it's still the same.”

“No, it's not.” She shakes her head again and again like she's in a trance. “I'm not the same.” She looks down at her hands, like they can prove what she's saying is true. The skin is dry and wrinkled like an old lady's. “I promise I'm not,” she says softly.

I can feel myself wanting to cry, so I bite the insides of my cheeks. I'm still mad, but her voice is starting to break me.

“I know you tried, Mami. I can see that.”

“I did it for almost nine months. I was clean for nine whole months.” She locks her fingers together, cupping her hands around her knees like she's giving herself a hug. I wish I could comfort myself like that. “I can do it again, Cristo. I can get back there.”

“But I can't, Mami. I can't go back there.”

“I don't understand what you're saying.” She leans onto her knees. Her elbows are so bony it's got to hurt.

“Do you know what I did every day, when I was waiting for you to come back home? I don't mean school or taking care of Luz and Trini, I'm talking about what I did in my head?” She looks at me like I'm speaking in another language. “I tried to forget.”

“Forget what?”

I take a deep breath but no words come to me. Instead, I see old clips running through my head: the loud, angry fights Mami and Scottie used to have, and later, the long, drawn-out silences with Lucho; the empty fridge when there was no money or all-night binges when there was too much; strangers stopping by in the middle of the night, asking to borrow things they would never return; the sound of television turned up too loud; flowers rotting on the kitchen table; the smell of cheap cigarettes and liquor, of men with dirt or blood under their fingernails and women with too much perfume, covering
not just body odor, but sickness and the dried-out smell of a hunger that will never go away; the constant sight of Mami in pajamas, not able to shower, dress, or leave her room for days, chewing on her fingernails, on ice, on one of Trini's old pacifiers—anything to keep her mouth busy, to keep her from having to explain it all to us.

“It's not fair,” I finally say. “None of this is fair.”

She shakes her head. “You're right,
mijo
.”

Not fair to ask me to forget, but also, to ask her to change.

“I don't think I can stay here anymore. Not when you're like this.” I'm surprised that the words come out of me, and that my voice sounds so calm.

She drops her head into her arms. “
Dios mio
,” she says softly.

“I'm sorry, Mami.”

She keeps her head down. “Where you gonna go?”

“I don't know yet. But I can't stay here. I can't watch you do this anymore.”

“You were the one I trusted. To stay with me. To never leave.”

And now I want to take it all back. I want to hug her and say it's okay, that I will stay, that I'll never leave, but something won't let me do it. I have to blink to keep myself from crying.

“Just until you get clean, okay? When you're ready, we'll all come back. Trini, Luz, all of us.”

She lets out a small laugh, but her face isn't smiling. “Okay,” she says. “I guess you know what you want.”

“I want you to get better,” I tell her. “So you gotta promise me one thing, okay? That you'll keep taking your medicine. No matter what.”

She nods. A passing car catches her eye and she squints against the headlights. She stands up and pulls the shades down. With her back to me she says, “Will you put all the pills into that box you got me, with the different days? It helps me remember.”

“Sure, I can do that.”

When she's done pulling the shades she turns around to face me. Her eyes are glassy but she doesn't allow herself to cry.

“You know what's messed up? Using hurts just as much as
not using did.”

It's one of the only things she's said all day that I believe.

“So why do you do it?”

She tucks her hands into her armpits, twisting back and forth like a little girl.

“I can't control it. It's an addiction, you know, like when you want something really bad and you have to have it, even if it's not good for you.”

“Like too much candy on Halloween?”

“Exactly like that. It controls you. It takes over your mind and makes you think you can't live without it.” She scratches her arms, leaving long red streaks on her pale skin. After she rubs them away, she starts the scratching all over again.

“But I thought you were okay before, when you got out. You seemed fine. I thought you didn't need it anymore.”

“It's like a virus. It came back.”

“Why didn't you fight harder?”

She opens her mouth but nothing comes out. She shakes her head. “I did,” she finally says. “I thought I did.”

We're eye level now, and we stare at each other for a long time. It's hard to look at her this close up, but harder to look away.

“Do you have to start all over again now, with those twelve steps?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I'm back at one.”

Her eyes are all puffy and red, and her face looks baggy, like when all the air leaks out of a balloon. She looks like she needs to sleep for a very long time.

“You know what they never tell us at school, when they say all that stuff about not doing drugs? They never say why anyone does it in the first place. If it's so bad for you, why did you ever start?”

She takes a step back, sitting down on the edge of the couch. “I hope you never know the answer to that question.” She re-ties her hair in a ponytail, stalling for time. “I guess the truth is that sometimes bad things feel good. Like having sex without a rubber. But if you never do it, you won't know what you're missing.” When I look away she says, “I'm serious.
Maybe you're too young to hear that, but I'm not gonna lie to you about something this important.” She leans closer to me and locks her eyes with mine. “Most kids whose parents tell them not to do drugs, they're talking out their ass 'cause they've never done anything stronger than Tylenol. But I'm telling you now: don't do it. It's out there and it's going to tempt you, but if you don't mess with it, you'll never know what you're missing.”

Fifteen minutes later my backpack is filled with clothes and I'm ready to go. I tell her I'll be back later for the rest of my things. She's still on the couch, lying down now, and still in her pajama bottoms. My hand is on the doorknob, smooth and cold as ice.

“You can come back anytime,” she says, her voice low and sleepy. “It's your home, too. You know that. You're always welcome here.”

I nod, trying not to think or feel too hard, just knowing I need to go. I'm about to leave without giving her a kiss or a hug but something makes me walk over and kiss her good-bye. She sits up and leans into the kiss, pushing her hollow cheek into my lips. Then she grabs my free arm and pulls herself up. Next thing I know she's hugging me, both arms crossed behind my back. She's holding me as tight as she can, but it still feels like I could slip from her grasp.

When she finally lets go she holds my face in both of her hands. She plants a hard kiss on my forehead. When I look up, she's smiling at me.

“My handsome boy,” she says. “You're going to break a lot of hearts, kid. I know that as well as I know my name.”

I pull away from her, feeling hot now, needing fresh air. “I'll see you later, Mami.”

“Wait.” She licks her thumb and rubs it across my forehead. “Lipstick,” she says.

“Thanks.”

She nods, tears streaming down her face. She brushes them aside, but new ones keep falling. When I close the door she's waving at me, her hand as pale and thin as a tortilla. I look back into the apartment from the porch, watching her through the window. You wouldn't know to look at her, or this
house, that anything bad has ever happened inside. She stands in the middle of the room, both arms wrapped around her thin shoulders, hugging herself.

I reach for the door, suddenly wanting to go back in, to touch her one more time, but it locks behind me. When I look back through the window, she's gone.

It takes ten minutes of steady knocking to get Snowman to open the door. Lines of shaving cream streak his face like war paint and a towel hangs around his neck. He's holding a razor in his hand, not the cheap disposable ones Scottie used to use, but a long shiny one that looks like a switchblade.

“Yell next time,” he says, slapping the huge metal door. “There's no peephole.”

I nod, hoping that means there's gonna be a next time.

“You coming in?” He slides the door open and I can see the flicker of candlelight behind him. It smells like one of those stores at the mall, where Teacher took us last year to get school clothes, and for a second I wonder if he's got a lady here.

“Sure. If it's okay.”

There must be fifty candles spread throughout the living room. Most are in tin cups, sitting on the floor like lights lining the aisle of a movie theater. It looks like church during Christmas Mass, not that I've been since Abuela took me back in Puerto Rico. But I'm pretty sure this is how it looked.

“You got company?”

“Just my own.” He wipes his face with the towel, then uses it to clean the blade before tucking the razor into his pocket. “I don't like artificial lights,” he says, like he's apologizing. He stares at me for a few seconds before asking me what's wrong.