Trouble Is..., Page 2

Chapter 2

  The bus exploded. Fire raced at me, pushed me down, and ate my back. I screamed, but no one helped me. I screamed again and woke up, drenched in sweat. I listened for my brother, expecting him to pound on my door and tell me to shut up. Nothing. Maybe I screamed in my dream.

  My mouth was dry. I was thirsty and I had to go to the bathroom. I rolled to my side, gingerly pulled myself up, and sat on the edge of the bed until my head cleared. I walked quietly to the door and opened it a crack. The apartment was dark. Everyone was asleep. I crept across the hallway to the bathroom, carefully pulling the door closed behind me. I was afraid to turn the light on, afraid Frank would wake up.

  Red and blue neon lights from the bar across the alley blinked on and off through the window. Liquor flashed in red. Girls flashed in blue. I saw myself dimly in the mirror over the sink. My eyes were red and swollen. I was sixteen years old, dammit, too old to cry.

  My head started to spin so I bent over and leaned my forehead on the cold porcelain sink to keep from passing out. I turned on a trickle of cold water and splashed it on my face and in my mouth until the spinning stopped. Dry blood flaked off into the sink. I ran my tongue over my swollen lip. The cut was salty and tender. I splashed more cold water in my mouth, rinsed it around, and spit into the sink. When I straightened up and looked at myself in the dim mirror, the red and blue light reflecting through the window made my whole face look bruised. That’s me, I thought. Bruised.

  Back in my room, I stretched out on my stomach. I must have finally fallen asleep because I woke up with a jolt when Frank pounded on my door and hollered for me to get up. My T-shirt was wet with sweat. I’d been dreaming of my mother. I couldn’t see her face but I could feel her touching me on the back, fingertip by painful fingertip. I looked out my window. Rain. It never rained in September. Hell, it hardly ever rained in Los Angeles. So why did it have to rain today?

  In the bathroom, I slipped off my T-shirt and tried to see my back in the mirror. All I could see was my shoulder and it looked raw. Man, this shower was going to hurt. I looked at my face, wondering if I should shave or not. Not that I shaved that often, maybe two or three times a week was all. But I hadn’t shaved since the weekend and I was starting to look it. Too bad, even for McDonalds. They’d have to take me as I was. I wasn’t going to go scraping around my beat-up face with a razor. I turned on the shower and gritted my teeth as I turned my back to the flow of hot water.

  I found a pair of not-so-dirty jeans under my bed and pulled them on. I discovered a clean black T-shirt at the bottom of my underwear drawer. Last one. I’d have to get to the laundry one of these days. I pulled the T-shirt carefully over my head and down my back. Who’d have thought a little thing like a T-shirt could hurt so bad. Must be the shower got the welts and bruises on my back all heated up. I didn’t have any clean socks so I put on a dirty pair and pulled on my Nikes. Well, I thought, taking a deep breath, time to meet the family for breakfast.

  Frank was bent over his food. He didn’t say a word to me when I walked in the kitchen, just reached for another piece of pan dulce. Imelda was in the bedroom getting Jennifer up. I got some sausage patties from the stove and poured a cup of coffee. I was hungry because I hadn’t eaten since breakfast the day before, but I tried to eat quietly, not call attention to myself.

  Imelda came into the room and put Jennifer in my lap. She set a baby bottle on the table in front of me. I don’t know why Imelda didn’t like having me around the way she was always handing me the baby. I was a built-in babysitter. Jennifer started to cry so I put the bottle in her mouth. I cradled her head in my left arm and was able to hold the bottle with the same hand. That freed my right hand to eat. Jennifer looked up at me with her big brown eyes, stopped sucking for a second, and smiled at me around the nipple of the baby bottle.

  “Ricardo better pay me for those angels he broke,” Imelda said. She tossed some more sausage patties in the frying pan. They sizzled in the grease.

  “He’ll pay you,” said Frank.

  “When?” asked Imelda. “They were expensive. I got them at Rosa’s crystal party. And one of them was from Avon.”

  Frank took a bit of sausage. “He’ll pay you,” he repeated deliberately, his mouth full of food.

  “He’d better,” Imelda whined as she flipped over the sausages. I guess it didn’t occur to them that I was in the room and that they were talking about me like I wasn’t even there.

  Imelda carried a plate of sausages to the table, sat down, and dug in. I could feel myself heat up. I guess with the baby in my arms and my back on fire and with Frank and Imelda stuffing sausages in their faces and talking about me like I was piece of furniture, it just got to me. I hoped Frank would leave before my temper took over.

  He finally stood up, took his dishes over to the sink, and wiped his mouth on the dishtowel. He tossed it on the counter. “Imelda’s not feeling so good today and she’s got the baby, so you can clean the place up.”

  And here I was feeding the baby, trying to eat breakfast, and having to go to work in the afternoon with my body hurting like an infected tooth. I could feel myself start to lose it. “I’ve got to study,” I said angrily. “I have tests to make up.”

  Frank took a step toward me. I set the baby bottle on the table. He pointed at me. “You didn’t understand me yesterday?” His voice was quiet, but I could hear the anger in it.

  It seemed like hours, but it must have been only a second or two. Jennifer cried out for her bottle. The spell was broken. I looked down and gave Jennifer her bottle.

  I heard Frank turn away. “This isn’t a vacation you’re on,” he muttered as he left the kitchen. Imelda followed him into the living room with his lunch pail. I looked after them both, wishing I could cuss them out, tell them what I really thought. Frank pulled his Lakers cap on and looked my way. He caught my eye. “You’re going to work today. I called in sick for you yesterday, but not today.” I didn’t even nod. He knew I’d do what he said.

  Imelda scooped more sausages from the frying pan onto her plate, grabbed two pieces of pan dulce, took Jennifer from me, and went into the living room. I heard her click on the TV. “You better pay me back for those angels,” she called from the other room. “Francisco says you have to pay me out of your next paycheck.”

  “I’ll pay you back,” I mumbled as I started on the breakfast dishes.

  When my phone rang at 10:00, nutrition time at school, I knew it was Marco. “I called you last night, but Frank said you were sick. He beat you up?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I was talking as soft as I could so Imelda wouldn’t hear.

  “Bad?”

  “I’m OK,”

  “No, you ain’t,” said Marco. “I can hear it in your voice.” Ain’t had become Marco’s favorite English word ever since he had learned it from a couple kids in PE. “What’d he do? Hit you with his fists or a belt or what?”

  “Never mind,” I said.

  I heard a voice over Marco’s phone. “Put it away or I’ll take it away. You know the rule about cell phones.”

  “Gotta go,” said Marco. “I just called to say hi, see how you were, find out what that dumb ass brother of yours did to you, find out if you’re OK.”

  “I’m OK,” I repeated.

  The voice became louder, “Hang up now or your phone goes to the discipline office.”

  “Just saying good-bye,” Marco said to the voice. “Ricky, you sure you’re OK.”

  “You already asked me.” Marco was a good friend, but his mother and father didn’t hit him and jump all over him like Frank did me. When Frank got me bad, like he did last night, it was kind of embarrassing for me to talk about, even to Marco. He’d be nice to me and all that, but how could he know. It didn’t just hurt. It was humiliating. It was something that made you want to maybe kill yourself because you felt so weak.

  I heard the voice yell at M
arco again to get off his phone, put it in his pocket, and don’t pull it out till he was off campus.

  “Marco,” I said. “You better hang up.” He hung up so quickly he didn’t even say goodbye.

  It felt good to get out of the house, walk the mile to McDonalds, smell the air, clean after the morning rain. I touched my lip. It was tender and swollen. If anyone asked, I’d say a ball smacked me on the lip in PE.

  I had the register next to Maria de Leon. We usually worked the same shift, 5:00-11:00. I’d known her since ESL 2 at Harrison High and I’d always kind of liked her, but she hung with Locos 18 and I didn’t.

  It started bad right at 5:00 and got worse. I kept making stupid mistakes. I gave one lady two Big Macs instead of two bacon double cheeseburgers. Then I went and gave this other guy a chocolate shake instead of vanilla and he got mad. “Why don’t you people learn to speak English,” he said angrily. “I ordered vanilla. My wife can’t have chocolate. It’s got caffeine in it. The doctor says she can’t have caffeine.” Like I was supposed to care. Like I needed a lecture on his wife’s health problems. Like I hadn’t studied my butt off for two years trying to learn English.

  “Look mister,” I said, full of fire, but Maria interrupted me.

  “You’ll have to forgive him, sir,” she said, directing her comments to my angry customer. “His parents died in a car accident only four days ago. Now he’s the only one left to care for his younger brothers and sisters. He had to come back to work today because he couldn’t afford not to, but he’s still a little shook up. His mind’s not on his work, as you can well imagine.”

  She was beaming at the man, full of sincerity and genuine customer relations, or whatever they call it. I didn’t want to give her, or me, away, so I tried to keep down a smile that wanted to appear on my beaten up old lips.

  The man took a step back and his eyes grew wide. He stammered, “Oh! Oh, I see. I am sorry.” Then he leaned close to me, like he wanted to make some kind of a compassion connection. “Chocolate will be fine. One chocolate shake won’t hurt her. Or I can drink it. She can have my decaf coffee.”

  “Please, let me get you a vanilla,” said Maria. Her eyes sparkled.

  I couldn’t keep my smile down any longer so I turned around, my back to the register. The man probably thought I was feeling blue at the mention of my parents. “Is he OK?” he asked Maria.

  “He’ll be OK. We’re watching out for him. He’s a very strong young man, but McDonalds thanks you for your concern.”

  I was cracking up so bad the cut on my lip hurt like hell. I was afraid I’d split it open, but I couldn’t keep from laughing. I guess the man thought I was crying because after Maria gave him the vanilla shake he gave her a five-dollar tip and told her to give it to me.

  “He’s gone,” she finally whispered.

  Taking a deep breath, I turned to Maria and noticed, for the first time, how beautiful her eyes were. I felt my heart rise to my throat. “Thanks,” I said.

  “No big deal,” she replied. Then she got a customer and I got a customer, so we had to concentrate on our work.

  About an hour later, when the dinner crowd thinned out, Maria looked over at me. “What happened?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  She pointed to her lip. I’d been so busy with customers, I’d forgotten about how I looked.

  “I got hit by a ball in PE.”

  “No, you didn’t.” I didn’t say anything, just stood there looking into her eyes. “Father?” she asked.

  I unconsciously licked my lip and tasted the dried blood. “Brother,” I muttered.

  “Quarter pounder with cheese and two large fries,” said a customer at Maria’s register. She quickly reached over and touched my arm before turning her attention to the customer. I caught my breath. Her black hair was pulled back in a French braid, and her eyes and smile made me melt. I still felt her hand on my arm. I still felt her warmth. Man! I don’t know what happened, but somehow, between the beginning of my 5:00 shift and that moment, I’d fallen in love.

  I could have spent the rest of my life at my register next to Maria de Leon’s register. I didn’t want to say good night. I didn’t even know if she felt the way I did. She was probably just being nice to me because I looked beat up.

  Some guy from a bowling league gave her a huge order at 10:55, so I finished before she did. I took my time clocking out and then hung around, feeling stupid and awkward. I had horrible visions of her saying something liked goodbye and she hoped I felt better and she was sorry but she already had a boyfriend.

  I think I might have been praying when she walked toward me after she clocked out. She slipped on her black Raiders jacket, looked me right in the eye, reached under her collar, flipped her braid out, and said, “Let’s go.”

  The night air was cool. I’d forgotten to wear a jacket, but I didn’t care. I was warm all over. “Do you catch the bus or what?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I live that way about two miles,” she said.

  “You want to walk?”

  She zipped up her jacket, shook her head yes, and smiled at me like she’d been waiting for me to walk her home for a long time. “Let’s go,” she said again. I never thought two little words could make me feel so stirred up. I shoved my hands in my jeans pockets and we took off down the street. I’d forgotten my bus pass at home and my place was a mile in a whole other direction, so I didn’t know when I’d get home that night, but who cared.

  An ambulance came screaming around the corner, followed by a big red fire truck. The sirens were so loud we couldn’t talk, but that was all right because I couldn’t think of anything to say. Squeezing conversation into the middle of a busy work schedule was one thing, but trying to come up with something to say with two miles of just us, was another thing altogether.

  I head some loud laughter from across the street and saw a bunch of kids hanging around the 7/11. Part of the parking lot was still damp from the rain and the big 7/11 sign reflected all around the cars. I was ready to talk about anything, even the 7/11 sign, when Maria said, “How come your brother hit you?”

  “I was suspended. Tardies. He has to go have a conference with Wilkerson.”

  “Does he hit you a lot?”

  “No. It’s no big deal. He just got mad, that’s all. He’ll have to miss some work. Money’s tight.” I was lying. It was a big deal, but I didn’t want Maria knowing about my back, feeling sorry for me. And I didn’t want to talk about Frank.

  On the bus-stop bench a homeless woman was curled up under a ragged, dirty gray coat. She had it pulled up over her head and her legs stuck out. She had tennis shoes on, but no socks. In the yellow glare of the streetlight, her ankles were black with dirt.

  “Do you ever think that could happen to you?” asked Maria, as we passed the woman. She looked up at me as we walked along, but I just shrugged. “I do,” she continued. “I think about it a lot. I mean if you ask a bunch of kids if they’re going to be homeless, they’ll all say no, but ten, twenty years from now, you watch. There’s still going to be homeless people. And they have to come from somewhere and where they’ll come from is people who are kids now, like you and me.”

  “It’s not going to happen to me,” I said. “I’m going to college.”

  Maria laughed. “School’s forever. It never ends. Anything can happen in that time. What if your brother makes you drop out and work?”

  “He makes me work now,” I muttered. I didn’t want to think about this stuff. Working and going to high school was hard enough without making it harder thinking about it.

  “Hey, let’s rap cars!” Maria jumped in front of me and grabbled my hands.

  “Huh?” I asked. I didn’t know what she was talking about, but she didn’t explain. She took off down the street, hitting the windows of every car parked along the curb. Five or six of them had car alarms and off they went, beeping into the night
. I took off after Maria, but she was already running down the next block, setting off more car alarms. She waited for me, out of breath, at the end of two blocks.

  “You could keep the whole city awake if you had the energy to keep running up and down the street,” she said panting. She pointed back from where we’d come. “Look!” Sleepy men and women came out the front doors of their apartments, pointed their beepers at their cars and beep-beeped the noise away. One guy, with no shirt on, leaned out his third story window and tried to turn his car off by stretching his arm out with the remote fob. It didn’t work. He must have thought something was fishy, us standing there at the corner, laughing our heads off. “You!” he yelled at us. “You kids!”

  Maria grabbed by hand and we took off down the next block. At the next corner she shoved me across the street. “Double up!” she yelled. I ran down one side of the street and she ran down the other. There must have been twenty cars between us and we managed to set off eight or nine alarms.

  Maria hurried across the street to meet me and she pounded me on the back, laughing.

  The pain hit me like a knife and, without wanting to, I cried out.

  “What is it?” she asked. “What’s wrong?” She took hold of my hand.

  I pulled away from her. “Nothing,” I gasped, trying to catch my breath.

  “I don’t believe you. What’s wrong?”

  I wasn’t crying, but the sudden pain had made my eyes water. “I got something in my eye.” I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.

  “Don’t lie to me, Ricky.” I turned away from her, embarrassed, and she quickly, but gently, lifted the tail of my shirt. She saw the bruises and welts on my back before I could twist away from her.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.

  What could I say to her, dammit. I stuck my hands in my pockets and started walking away from her, down the street. She hurried after me, but I didn’t stop walking. I was so full of feeling I thought I’d explode. She jumped around in front of me and walked backwards, keeping up with me step by step.

  “You think if you told me you’d be embarrassed, isn’t that it?” she said. “You think I don’t know what it’s like to be hit. I know what it’s like and all the time my stepfather’s hitting on me, I’m thinking that I got my friends I can go to. That’s all I think. I keep it going through my mind and I’m OK. If you have friends, they make it OK.”

  I stopped walking. She took my hands. “You gotta find your family in the streets. Me, my friends, we talk about this kind of stuff all the time. If we didn’t, we’d kill ourselves.”

  My eyes got blurry. I wasn’t sobbing or anything like that, like the night before. I think I was crying because of what she said, because she was there, telling me it was OK.

  “Did you put anything on your back?” she asked. I shook my head no. “Come on, we’ll find a drug store. I know something that will take the sting out.”

  “I don’t have any money,” I said.

  “Yes, you do,” she said digging in her pocket. “You got a five dollar tip today, remember? And we should have enough change to get donuts.” She held my hand as we started down the street. I knew the friends she was talking about. Locos 18. But I didn’t care about that. I just wanted to be with her, no matter who her friends were.