Sweet Nothing (3 page)

I climb out and move into the back. Mr. Lee sits stiffly in the passenger seat, staring out the windshield. Waves of rage and humiliation ripple off him. David starts the car and drives out of the parking lot. One of his knuckles is oozing blood. He checks on me in the rearview, his icy blue eyes searching for weakness. I do my best not to give anything away.

“Where to?” he says to Mr. Lee.

IN THE YEARS
between my father leaving and my mother marrying my stepdad, Mom dated a number of men and even let a few move in. I liked those who played Star Wars with me and let me watch R-rated DVDs and showed me how to load and shoot a .22. Others weren't so great: the one who made me go to Sunday school with the neighbors so he and my mom could have “alone time”; the one who punched me in the stomach when I scratched his truck with my bicycle.

And then there was Bill. He was one who stayed with us for a while, his excuse being that he was waiting for a big check the government owed him. He was a cocky, long-legged redhead just out of the navy who had lots of great stories about serving on the USS
Nimitz
. He'd call me sailor, and I'd snap to attention and shout out, “Aye, aye, Captain.”

One day he and I went to Walmart while my mom was at work. Two security guards stopped us on our way out and patted Bill down. Unbeknownst to me, he'd swiped a screwdriver, two Snickers bars, and a pack of D batteries. The guards searched me too, and I couldn't stop crying, because I was sure I was going to jail. Bill hung his head when they laid into him. What kind of man shoplifts with a kid, they wanted to know. “A dumbass,” Bill said. “A real dumbass.” One of the guards prayed with him, then they snapped his picture and let us go without calling the police.

Bill begged me not to tell my mom what had happened, said it was some pills he was on that made him forget to pay. I'd never had an adult ask for my loyalty before, so I gave it wholeheartedly. A week later he snuck off while Mom and I were at the grocery store, taking our TV with him.

Aye, aye, Captain, you son of a bitch.

WE TAKE A
short drive to a duplex on Normandie, a run-down heap with faded wood siding and bars on the windows. A pack of kids are kicking a soccer ball in the dirt yard and shouting at one another in Spanish when we pull up in front. David and Mr. Lee open their doors and get out of the car. I stay where I am, hoping they'll forget about me. When David leans in and says, “I need your help, Haskell,” I say, “I'm not doing anything illegal.”

David frowns and thumbs a bead of sweat from the tip of his nose. “Nothing illegal is going on here,” he says.

If I refuse, things might turn even uglier. That's my thinking as I leave the car and follow David and Mr. Lee to the side of the building and up a rickety staircase that leads to the entrance to the second-floor unit. At least if I'm there, I can get between them.

Mr. Lee unlocks the door to the apartment, and we walk into the kitchen. The cabinets are all wide open, and flies buzz around a dirty rice cooker sitting on the counter. The place smells like garlic and rose-scented air freshener.

“Wait here,” David says to me. He and Mr. Lee go down the hall, turn into another room, and close the door.

I flip through a calendar that's stuck to the refrigerator. Each month has a different photo of Korea: a neon-drenched cityscape, a stone temple, a group of women in colorful robes. I imagine Mr. Lee, homesick while he waits for his rice to get done, sitting with his head in his hands at the little kitchen table and wishing he hadn't given up on Seoul. A picture of Jesus hangs on the fridge too, and a Pollo Loco coupon.

The sounds of a scuffle drown out the shouts of the kids playing in the yard. Someone is slammed against a wall once, twice, three times, and the apartment shakes like it's about to come down on us. The door in the hallway opens, and David steps out. He storms back into the kitchen, red-faced and breathing hard.

“Go in there and tell him this is his last chance,” he whispers. “Say that you're afraid of what'll happen if he doesn't give me the money.”

“What money?” I say.

“He owes me for a stone.”

“David—” I begin.

“Look,” he says. “This is it. If you can't get him to pay, the matter moves up the chain, and next week the poor bastard will have a squad of ex-Mossad on his ass.”

I close my eyes and shake my head. David could be lying, or he could be telling the truth. Right now, I don't care; I just want to get out of here. I leave the kitchen without another word and walk down the hall.

Mr. Lee is sitting on the edge of an unmade bed, smoking a cigarette. The room is a mess. The dresser has been tossed; so has the closet. Clothes are everywhere, papers, pillows.

I gesture at Mr. Lee's cigarette and say, “Can I have one?”

He nods toward a pack of Kools lying on the floor. I pick it up, pull one out, light it with the book of matches tucked into the pack's cellophane. I deliver David's message pretty much as he told me to, and I'm not fibbing when I say that I don't know what he'll do if he doesn't get what he wants.

Mr. Lee stares down at the worn carpet between his feet. He's trying his damnedest not to cry. A tear gets away from him and slides down his cheek. He finally points without looking to a heater vent on the wall.

WE'VE DROPPED MR.
Lee back at the shoe store, and David is a happy man. He switches the radio from news to classic rock and bobs his head in time to the music. A big grin spreads across his face. He lifts the collar of his shirt to his nose, hoots loudly, and says, “Wow, I stink.”

I stare out the window, watching the buses and the wheelchair bums and the blowing trash with new appreciation. The Earth is flat, and I wandered too close to the edge. I'm glad to be back on the map.

“I'm sorry you had to see how the sausage gets made,” David says.

“Does Marjorie know you beat people?” I ask. “Does Claire?”

David's smile disappears. “I don't beat people,” he says. “That wasn't a beating.”

At a red light he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a wad of money. He peels off three hundred-dollar bills and holds them out to me.

“Keep it,” I say.

“What, you like it better when it comes in a check every month?” he says.

He thinks he's got me there. A real Big Daddy moment, a real life lesson. But hypocrisy is the least of my worries. I have plenty of other good stuff to hate myself for.

See, you can't teach anybody anything, David. That's the one conclusion I've come to as a substitute. All you can do is present the information, and the student has to make the choice to learn. And what you're laying down, I already know. Yes, we're all con men at heart, and, yes, the world is a swamp of misery and avarice. But what I'm searching for, David, what I need, is someone to show me how to live in it.

THAT NIGHT AT
the Bowl, Marjorie hands me her phone and tells me to take a photo of her, David, and Claire with the orchestra onstage behind them. She and David each place a hand on Claire's belly for the picture. Our seats are right in front, close enough to see the musicians' brows furrow when they play difficult passages, close enough to watch them flex their fingers during pauses. But still, the pounding of my heart drowns out the music.

Everybody in the boxes around us is drinking champagne, everybody's having fun. I hand the phone back and turn to gaze at the upper tiers where I sat last time. I remember looking down here and wondering,
Who the hell are those people?

I excuse myself and walk to the refreshment stand, where I use one of David's hundreds to buy two shots of Jack Daniel's. I down them quickly, then move to another window and order two more. The fist inside my chest unclenches a bit, and I notice stars overhead, lots of them, shining hard in the dingy purple sky.

Claire smells the booze on me when I get back. Worry clouds her pretty face. “What's going on?” she whispers.

She's gotten used to me tiptoeing these last few months. She's forgotten what kind of person I really am. I put my arm around her and squeeze her shoulders.

David, watching from the other side of the box, interprets this as a romantic gesture. He nods approvingly and raises his Korbel in tribute to young love. Anger dries my mouth and stiffens my spine. I want to twist him as much as he twisted me today. I lean forward so that only he can hear me, and, gesturing at Claire and myself, I say, “This is where I fuck this up.”

His eyes narrow to slits.

“What?” he barks.

I reload and get ready to repeat myself, but just then the fireworks go off, making us all jump. The orchestra surges, every instrument roaring at once, and the music finally explodes inside me and whips the tatters of my sick, sick soul. Yes! What a riot.

PUPPET SHOOTING THAT BABY
comes into my head again, like a match flaring in the dark, this time while I'm wiping down the steam tables after the breakfast rush at the hospital.

Julio steps up behind me with a vat of scrambled eggs, and I flinch like he's some kind of monster.

“¿Qué pasa?”
he asks as he squeezes by me to drop the vat into its slot.

“Nothing,
guapo
. You startled me is all.”

I was coming back from the park yesterday and saw it happen. Someone yelled something stupid from a passing car; Puppet pulled a gun and fired. The bullet missed the car and hit little Antonio instead, two years old, playing on the steps of the apartment building where he lived with his parents. Puppet tossed the gun to one of his homeys, Cheeks, and took off running. He shot that baby, and now he's going to get away with it, you watch.

Dr. Wu slides her tray over and asks for pancakes. She looks at me funny through her thick glasses. These days everybody can tell what I'm thinking. My heart is pounding, and my hand is cold when I raise it to my forehead.

“How's your family, Blanca?” Dr. Wu asks.

“Fine, Doctor, fine,” I say. I straighten up and wipe my face with a towel, give her a big smile. “Angela graduated from Northridge in June and is working at an insurance company, Manuel is still selling cars, and Lorena is staying with me for a while, her and her daughter, Brianna. We're all doing great.”

“You're lucky to have your children close by,” Dr. Wu says.

“I sure am,” I reply.

I walk back into the kitchen. It's so hot in there, you start sweating as soon as the doors swing shut behind you. Josefina is flirting with the cooks again. The girl spends half her shift back here when she should be up front, working the line. She's fresh from Guatemala, barely speaks English, but still she reminds me of myself when I was young, more than my daughters ever did. It's the old-fashioned jokes she tells, the way she blushes when the doctors or security guards talk to her.

“Josefina,” I say. “Maple was looking for you.
Andale
if you don't want to get in trouble.”

“Gracias, señora,”
she replies. She grabs a tray of hash browns and pushes through the doors into the cafeteria.

“Qué buena percha,”
says one of the cooks, watching her go.

“Hey,
payaso,
” I say, “is that how you talk about ladies?”

“Lo siento, Mamá.”

Lots of the boys who work here call me Mamá. Many of them are far from home, and I do my best to teach them a little about how it goes in this country, to show them some kindness.

AT TWELVE I
clock out and walk to the bus stop with Irma, a Filipina I've known forever. Me and Manuel Senior went to Vegas with her and her husband once, and when Manuel died she stayed with me for a few days, cooking and cleaning up after the visitors. Now her own Ray isn't doing too good. Diabetes.

“What's this heat?” she says, fanning herself with a newspaper.

“And it's supposed to last another week.”

“It makes me so lazy.”

We share the shade from her umbrella. There's a bench under the bus shelter, but a crazy man dressed in rags is sprawled on it, spitting nonsense.

“They're talking about taking off Ray's leg,” Irma says.

“Oh, honey,” I say.

“Next month, looks like.”

“I'll pray for you.”

I like Ray. Lots of men won't dance, but he will. Every year at the hospital Christmas party, he asks me at least once. “Ready to rock 'n' roll?” he says.

My eyes sting from all the crap in the air. A frazzled pigeon lands and pecks at a smear in the gutter. Another swoops down to join it, then three or four smaller birds. The bus almost hits them when it pulls up. Irma and I get a seat in front. The driver has a fan that blows right on us.

“I heard about the baby that got killed near you,” Irma says.

I'm staring up at a commercial for a new type of mop on the bus's TV, thinking about how to reply. I want to tell Irma what I saw, share the fear and sorrow that have been dogging me, but I can't. I've got to keep it to myself.

“Wasn't that awful?” I say.

“And they haven't caught who did it yet?” Irma asks.

I shake my head. No.

I'm not the only one who knows it was Puppet, but everybody's scared to say because Puppet's in Temple Street, and if you piss off Temple Street, your house gets burned down or your car gets stolen or you get jumped walking to the store. When it comes to the gangs, you take care of yours and let others take care of theirs.

There's no forgiveness for that, for us not coming forward, but I hope—I think we all hope—that if God really does watch everything, He'll understand and have mercy on us.

Walking home from my stop, I pass where little Antonio was shot. The news is there filming the candles and flowers and stuffed animals laid out on the steps of the building, and there's a poster of the baby too, with
RIP Our Little Angel
written on it. The pretty girl holding the microphone says something about grief-stricken parents as I go by, but she doesn't look like she's been sad a day in her life.

THIS WAS A
nice block when we first moved onto it. Half apartments, half houses, families mostly. A plumber lived across the street, a fireman, a couple of teachers. The gangs were here too, but they were just little punks back then, and nobody was afraid of them. One stole Manuel Junior's bike, and the kid's parents made him bring it back and mow our lawn all summer.

But then the good people started buying newer, bigger houses in the suburbs, and the bad people took over. Dopers and gangsters and thieves. We heard gunshots at night, and police helicopters hovered overhead with searchlights. There was graffiti everywhere, even on the tree trunks.

Manuel was thinking about us going somewhere quieter right before he died, and now Manuel Junior is always trying to get me to move out to Lancaster where he and Trina and the kids live. He worries about me being alone. But I'm not going to leave.

This is my little place. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a nice, big backyard. It's plain to look at, but all my memories are here. We added the dining room and patio ourselves; we laid the tile; we planted the fruit trees and watched them grow. I stand in the kitchen sometimes and twenty-five years falls away like nothing as I think of my babies' kisses, my husband's touch. No, I'm not going to go. “Just bury me out back when I keel over,” I tell Manuel Junior.

Brianna is on the couch watching TV when I come in, two fans going and all the windows open. This is how she spends her days now that school's out. She's hardly wearing anything. Hoochie-mama shorts and a tank top I can see her titties through. She's fourteen, and everything Grandma says makes her roll her eyes or giggle into her hand. All of a sudden I'm stupid to her.

“You have to get air-conditioning,” she whines. “I'm dying.”

“It's not that bad,” I say. “I'll make some lemonade.”

I head into the kitchen.

“Where's your mom?” I ask.

“Shopping,” Brianna says without looking away from the TV. Some music-and-dancing show.

“Oh, yeah? How's she shopping with no money?”

“Ask
her,
” Brianna snaps.

The two of them have been staying with me ever since Lorena's husband, Charlie, walked out on her a few months ago. Lorena is supposed to be saving money and looking for a job, but all she's doing is partying with old high-school friends—most of them divorced now too—and playing around on her computer, sending notes to men she's never met.

I drop my purse on the kitchen table and get a Coke from the refrigerator. The back door is wide open. This gets my attention because I always keep it locked since we got robbed that time.

“Why's the door like this?” I call into the living room.

There's a short pause, then Brianna says, “Because it's hot in here.”

I notice a cigarette smoldering on the back step. And what's that on the grass? A Budweiser can, enough beer still in it to slosh. Somebody's been up to something.

I carry the cigarette and beer can into the living room. Lorena doesn't want me hollering at Brianna anymore, so I keep my cool when I say, “Your boyfriend left something behind.”

Brianna makes a face like I'm crazy. “What are you talking about?”

I shake the beer can at her. “Nobody's supposed to be over here unless me or your mom are around.”

“Nobody was.”

“So this garbage is yours, then? You're smoking? Drinking?”

Brianna doesn't answer.

“He barely got away, right?” I say. “You guys heard me coming, and off he went.”

“Leave me alone,” Brianna says. She buries her face in a pillow.

“I don't care how old you are, I'm calling a babysitter tomorrow,” I say. I can't have her disrespecting my house. Disrespecting me.

“Please!” Brianna yells. “Just shut up.”

I yell back, I can't help it.
“Get in your room,”
I say. “And I don't want to see you again until you can talk right to me.”

Brianna runs to the bedroom that she and her mom have been sharing. She slams the door. The house is suddenly quiet, even with the TV on, even with the windows open. The cigarette is still burning, so I stub it out in the kitchen sink. The truth is, I'm more afraid for Brianna than mad at her. These young girls fall so deeply in love, they sometimes drown in it.

I CHANGE OUT
of my work clothes into a housedress, put on my flip-flops. Out back, I check my squash, my tomatoes, then get the sprinkler going on the grass. Rudolfo, my neighbor, is working in the shop behind his house. The screech of his saw rips into the stillness of the afternoon, and I smile when I think of his rough hands and emerald eyes. There's nothing wrong with that. Manuel has been gone for three years.

I make a tuna sandwich for myself and one for Brianna, plus the lemonade I promised. She's asleep when I take the snack to the bedroom. Probably faking it, but I'm done fighting for today. I go back to the living room and eat in front of the TV, watching one of my cooking shows.

A knock at the front door startles me. I go over and press my eye to the peephole. There on the porch is a fat white man with a bald, sweaty head and a walrus mustache. When I ask who he is, he backs up, looks right at the hole, and says, “Detective Rayburn, LAPD.” I should have known, a coat and tie in this heat.

I get nervous. No cop ever brought good news. The detective smiles when I open the door.

“Good afternoon,” he says. “I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm here about the boy who was killed yesterday, down at 1238?”

His eyes meet mine, and he tries to read me. I keep my face blank. At least I hope I keep it blank.

“Can you believe that?” I say.

“Breaks your heart.”

“It sure does.”

The detective tugs his mustache and says, “Well, what I'm doing is going door to door and asking if anybody saw something that might help us catch whoever did it. Were you at home when the shooting occurred?”

“I was here,” I say, “but I didn't see anything.”

“Nothing?” He knows I'm lying. “All that commotion?”

“I heard the sirens afterward, and that's when I came out. Someone told me what happened, and I went right back inside. I don't need to be around that kind of stuff.”

The detective nods thoughtfully, but he's looking past me into the house.

“Maybe someone else, then,” he says. “Someone in your family?”

“Nobody saw anything.”

“You're sure?”

Like I'm stupid. Like all he has to do is ask twice.

“I'm sure,” I say.

He's disgusted with me, and to tell the truth, I'm disgusted with myself. But I can't get involved, especially not with Lorena and Brianna staying here. A motorcycle drives by with those exhaust pipes that rattle your bones. The detective turns to watch it pass, then reaches into his pocket and hands me a card with his name and number on it.

“If you hear something, I'd appreciate it if you give me a call,” he says. “You can do it confidentially. You don't even have to leave your name.”

“I hope you catch him,” I say.

“That's up to your neighborhood here. The only way that baby is going to get justice is if a witness comes forward. Broad daylight, Sunday afternoon. Someone saw something, and they're just as bad as the killer if they don't step up.”

Tough talk, but he doesn't live here. No cops do.

He pulls out a handkerchief and mops the sweat off his head as he walks away, turns up the street toward Rudolfo's place.

MY HEART IS
racing. I lie on the couch and let the fans blow on me. The ice cream truck drives by, playing its little song, and I close my eyes for a minute. Just for a minute.

A noise. Someone coming in the front door. I sit up, lost, then scared. The TV remote is clutched in my fist like I'm going to throw it. I put it down before Lorena sees me. I must have dozed off.

“What's wrong?” she says.

“Where have you been?” I reply, going from startled to irritated in a second.

“Out,” she says.

Best to leave it at that, I can tell from her look. She's my oldest, thirty-five now, and we've been butting heads since she was twelve. If you ask her, I don't know anything about anything. She's raising Brianna different than I raised her. They're more like friends than mother and daughter. They giggle over boys together, wear each other's clothes. I don't think it's right, but we didn't call each other for six months when I made a crack about it once, so now I bite my tongue.