The Knife and the Butterfly (16 page)

And the thing is, even though it was crazy, with everybody in their own world like you’d see at a rave, they all looked so happy. Peaceful and excited at the same time, like they could hear some special music that I couldn’t. I looked over at Meemaw, and she was crying the same happy tears. I kept waiting for her to look at me, but she didn’t. Like she didn’t even remember I was there.

I felt like I was the only one in the whole place who was empty inside. When I was a little kid, I prayed with Meemaw for Jesus to come into my heart, and I’d done it a bunch of times at different summer camps and revivals. Because I never felt sure that it’d really stuck. That was the day that I knew it hadn’t. I was standing there all alone with no Jesus in my heart.

I don’t want to feel sorry for her, not even when I read about her sicko dad messing with her. I know if somebody tried to mess with Regina, I’d blow his ass right off the map, but I still want to tell Lexi to forget the boo-hoo, poor-little-white-girl bullshit. She’s never been hungry. She’s never gotten a beating. She’s never been on the run from
la migra
or the CPS. She’s never had to pack a baby sister off to California just to keep her safe. I want to write, TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK YOU KNOW ABOUT ME in Sharpie across every single page of her little diary.

But reading Lexi’s notebook also makes me think how everybody is off the record in a way. Not just fools like my pops who didn’t get their papers straightened out. Not just dropouts like me and Eddie wanting to stay out of the system. I mean that whole part inside of you that nobody else even knows is there. There’s a Lexi that talks trash to Janet, a Lexi that crosses her arms in group, a Lexi that writes in her journal. But there’s also this Lexi that nobody knows about, a Lexi inside of Lexi. That’s how somebody can be getting high or going to church but at the same time still feel like a seven-year-old kid locked out of the swimming pool. That’s how I can be clicking Eddie in, kicking the shit out of him but somewhere deep inside feel that I’m still his
hermanito
. Down there, there’s a little guy who just wants us to go home and make some ketchup sandwiches.

CHAPTER 30: NOW

I wake up to the sound of Gabe knocking the bars of my cell with a meal tray. For a second, I’m tripping because I think it’s breakfast and he’s going to take the notebook away. When I scramble out from under my cot tent, though, I see the steak fingers and corn, and I know it must be dinner. I take the tray and thank Gabe, but he just raises his eyebrows and shakes his head like he’s saying, the clock is ticking and why am I taking naps on the job?

I watch him walk away and think how his white hair is dry and fluffy just like this troll doll me and Eddie bought for Regina one time when my Tía Julia came to visit and took us all to Wal-Mart. It was a hippie troll with a little green suit, and she put those clothes on and took them off about a million times a day. When she was tired or upset, she’d suck on its hair until it was all one big slobbery spike. We made fun of her for it, but after she went to Cali, I would have given anything to see her curled up watching TV and sucking on her troll doll.

Now I swallow the corn in three bites and take the steak fingers with me under the cot. I’m about to duck under the blanket when I see the guy in Tiger’s old cell give me a look.

“
Y qué, cabrón
?” I say. “It won’t be long till you get what it’s like.” But I can’t tell if he even hears me. And I don’t have time to care.

A while back Janet and me played Scrabble, and then when I got sick of it, I just messed around with the tiles. I ended up making his name. It felt like it was on accident, but it also felt right. Like just exactly what I ought to spell out.

At first I just sat there staring at his name, thinking about how I first found out what it was. Gray Suit tossing photos and information sheets over to me in the conference room. His name on the page there like it was nothing.

Janet asked if I knew what Azael meant, and when I said no, she said she’d find out for me. Since then I’ve pissed her off more than once, and I thought probably she wouldn’t tell me even if she did find out. Then today she gave me a little piece of paper with some information on it. The main meaning she found for the name was “Angel of Death” or “Avenging Angel.” She said some magician wrote a long time ago about how the fallen angel Azael was tied up in the desert and tortured for everything he did.

I wonder what Janet thought when she read that.

What sucks today:

#1 – My hair is greasy as hell.

#2 – Powdered eggs for breakfast again.

#3 – No mail.

#4 – I haven’t been outside for three days. Fuckin rain.

#5 – My toilet backed up.

#6 – The cell smells like shit. Big time.

#7 – I’m thinking about him.

Today I started to tell Janet. Started to tell her just like I practiced it with Gray Suit. She brought some Play-Doh again, and I was mashing it in my hands. Halfway through my little performance, though, Janet took the Play-Doh out of my hand and put it away.

She gave me a dirty look and said, “That’s not you talking. Save that bull for your lawyer.” Then she just left me sitting there even though there were fifteen minutes before our time was up.

I should be doing my algebra problems so I can mail them in tomorrow, but my mind just drifts. Mostly I think about things that have to do with him.

Once I saw his name canned on a train car. There’s this spot on Montrose by some tracks where Cartoon and Slots liked to smoke and check out what was new in the pieces rolling by. On the trains you could see what gangs all the way out in LA were doing and who they were fighting, just by how they tagged up the rail cars. Plus there were lots of writers doing throw-ups that had nothing to do with gangs. People just wanting to make their mark. Slots likes to pretend he’s an original, but I could tell he got lots of his ideas just by studying their shit.

Slots started going on about this one piece way before I could see it. My eyes aren’t great. I’m supposed to wear glasses, but I never have. I can see good enough without them.

So anyway, when the train got closer, I could see what he was talking about. It was this design of a cloud that had bullets coming out of it. The curves of the cloud spelled out “R.I.P. Pájaro” in light blue letters. If you looked real hard, you could see that the puddles the bullets were falling into spelled out “Azael.”

Me and Slots were still talking about the piece when Cartoon started walking alongside the train, shaking up a can of brown paint.

I told him not to mess with it, that I liked that one. Slots was on my side, too, but Cartoon said, “This loser’s canning for MS-13. You can tell by the blue and shit. Why should I respect that?”

There was nothing I could say to change his mind, and then it was too late because Cartoon was already spraying over the piece with a sloppy Crazy Crew tag.

So I just sat back down and took a hit off their joint. When Cartoon came back over to us, I asked him for some bars. Then I just drifted, listening to them talk shit and staring through the ugly brown tag to that light blue cloud raining bullets. I watched all the different colors swirl together. By the time the train rounded the bend and passed out of sight, I was floating on my own cloud of nothing.

I remember canning that boxcar like it was yesterday. It was a while after Pájaro got cut down, but a busted-up feeling was still dogging me all the time. I did the design in my black book, then found a good spot on a boxcar in one of the train yards by Beto’s house. I went by myself that time, nobody to slap me on the back and tell me it was awesome. So I always wondered, did anybody see it? I’d like to beat down this Cartoon fool for disrespecting my artwork and dissing Pájaro’s memory. At the same time, though, I’m just glad somebody saw it first, even if it had to be wasted on Lexi and her little punk friends.

Gray Suit’s been coming twice a week lately because the trial starts in a month. All he does is drill me on my testimony. He even asked me if I could make myself cry.

I told him to piss off. By now he’s used to me, so he didn’t react. He just told me that if I don’t get this right, I’m the one who’ll be screwed.

I’ve been thinking about that for a long time. But I also keep going back to what Janet said. I think about how bad it feels to fake things, like all the times I’ve pretended to cum just to make a dude feel good. Just the idea of forcing tears down my cheeks in front of a bunch of strangers in a courtroom pisses me off.

There’s faking, and then there’s faking.

There’s no reason for me to be thinking about him. No fuckin reason. He’s nothing to me. So what if I know what his name means? So what if I saw a train with his name canned on it? Everybody does what they have to do, that’s just how it is.

But today, when Group Guy asked us to talk about who we feel closest to, I thought, him. How twisted is that, for me to think of Azael out of everybody in the whole world? When I didn’t even know his name before?

Even once I thought about how messed up it was, I still couldn’t get myself to think of anybody else. I know I have Meemaw. And Shauna, sort of. Maybe Janet, just a little. I used to have Cartoon and Slots. But none of them feel close. When I’m alone in here, they seem way far off, tiny specks like fleas.