The Knife and the Butterfly (2 page)

Then I’m seeing the red, just a flash of it, and that’s it. Yeah, so yesterday I was a little messed up from hitting the bottle and the blunt in the car and tossing pills before that. But I ain’t never blanked out like this. The memory’s there; it’s got to be. I just have to find it.

Plus I got to keep myself awake because I don’t want to miss it if somebody comes to bring more food. I’ve got some questions I want to ask. Maybe they just picked me up because I’m brown and some racist cop decided I was an illegal. Well, I’m not. I’m as American as him or anybody else. But I’m
salvadoreño
, too, because that’s in my blood.

“Be at peace, Ma,” I say out loud. When I think of El Salvador, I think of her. Maybe it’s because I’ve never seen my country for real, never even left Texas except to go to Cali once, but in my mind, my mom and El Salvador are kind of the same thing. That’s why the tat on my neck says
Perdóname madre mía
over the flag of El Salvador. Because
la vida loca
takes you places no mother would want to see.

Sometimes before a rumble I cross myself like Ma taught me when I was little, and I hold my fist against my chest. That’s where I’ve got the tat that’s just for her. It’s a big barbed-wire heart around a rose. Underneath it says
Descansa en paz
and my ma’s name, Rosa.

I can almost hear this song she used to sing to Eddie and me so we’d go to sleep, and I know she’s close. But I can’t remember what she looked like. I remember her hands, but I can never see her face. When I try, it’s like looking at a reflection in those cheap-ass metal plates they put up in park bathrooms instead of mirrors. I know what should be there; I know I’m looking for my ma, but what ought to be her face is just a bunch of blurred shapes.

CHAPTER 3: THEN

Me and Eddie were coming home from Pelón’s apartment when we saw cruisers outside our unit at the Bel-Lindo.

“
La placa
come to deport somebody’s grandma,” Eddie said, kicking a spray of gravel toward the cop cars.

“Come on,
huevón
!” I gave Eddie a shove. “If Pops ain’t home, we can finish off his beers. Race you!” I took off running.

“Cheater!” he shouted, but there was no way he’d win anyway.

Eddie was older than me by a year and a half, but I was smarter by three. He’d only just dropped out and clicked in with MS-13 even though at sixteen he still wasn’t done with ninth grade. School was a waste for us; I figured that out by the end of seventh grade. Better to work and send money out to our kid sister Regina in California. At least that way we was halfway good to somebody.

I was almost up the first flight of stairs when I heard Pops talking. I threw my arm back to stop fat-ass Eddie as he came up breathing hard behind me.

“What?” he asked, all stupid.

“
Cállate
, man. The
pinche migra
is right there.”

I looked up through the railing and tried to sort out all the I.C.E. flak jackets. Maybe that drunk-driving rap had to catch up to Pops sometime, but it wasn’t like immigration had nobody worse to mess with. Child molesters all running free.

“But what about my kids?” Pops was saying. “I got three, all U.S. citizens. Their ma, she’s . . . I’m all they got.”

“Child Protective Services will take care of them if there are no willing relatives.” The cuffs clicked around our dad’s wrists.

“Shit!” Eddie said. “I ain’t just standing here while they do that!”

“Shut up and think,
cabrón
,” I said, dragging him back down the steps and around to the side of the building. “We go over there, they’re going to have our asses separated into foster shitholes, get it? We got to stay clear for now.”

A second later the agents came down the stairs. We watched from the shadows as they pushed our pops into a cruiser. He didn’t fight.

Eddie shook his head and kicked the side of somebody’s busted-up Honda. He looked damn blubbery for a guy with a broken nose and a new tattoo blistering across his back. Our crew called him Etcher, but he’d always be fat-ass Eddie to me. Finally he pulled himself together. “
Pinche pendejos
. Guess it’s a good thing Regina’s in Cali with Abue. What are we gonna do? Hitch out there?”

“No way I want to spend my nights watching
telenovelas
with Grams,” I said.

“Think we should call Beto and Roxann?”

“Hell, no. Tío Beto hates my ass.”

“
Entonces, ¿qué?
Can’t stay in the apartment. They’ll find us for sure. And without Pops we ain’t got the
plata
to pay for it anyway.”

“We’ll get our shit and clear out, then. This is our hood, we know our way around. CPS ain’t going to care that much what happens to us.”

We waited till the cruisers pulled out, then we ran back up the stairs, loaded up what we could carry, and hit the streets.

CHAPTER 4: NOW

An ugly dream kicks me awake. I lie on my cot with sweat beaded up on my forehead and my mind full up with this image of Eddie’s face, then somebody’s hands covered in blood. Just a dream. Eddie’s fine. Probably he’s at Pelón’s eating a peanut butter sandwich, getting high, and scratching his fat butt. Nothing to worry about.

The light’s still on in the main hall, but everything is dead. I can see a couple other fools in cells across the way, most of them sleeping. That’s what I’ve been doing most of the time, too. Seems like the number one occupation around here.

I’ve got no idea just how much time is passing. I try to judge by how hungry I feel, but I’m always hungry. Becca’s the only girl I’ve ever met who didn’t freak out at how crazy I get over food. She just laughs and brings me back into the kitchen and dishes out some of her ma’s soup or reheats a
pupusa
for me. She’s cool about it. “
Come bien
, baby,” she said one time. “Eat up. You just got an appetite for life.” It was so damn sweet I wanted to throw her down and get freaky right there on the kitchen floor. Start working on making a dozen
Azaelitos
with her. Me and her and the
bichos
would roll in a tricked-out Hummer and we’d have a fine house with two bathrooms and a yard and everything.

Before Becca, I never wanted to stick with any one female. I love my homegirls, and nobody better mess with them. But I also know them like I know my streets, and everything about them is rough. How they talk, how they move, how they say your name, how they want to have sex. When we’re hanging, they punch me in the arm and say, “
Pinche cabrón!
” after a dirty joke. When we’re doing it, they grab me around my neck and scream, “
Sí, dámelo!
” when they come. I’m pretty sure they copy that shit from some Carmen Luvana porn.

My first lay was this older
heina
, Denise. Denise was seventeen and me just thirteen, but I wasn’t complaining. She taught me what was up. “Look,” she said, “you gotta learn how to touch girls. Do what they like, and then they’ll come crawling to you for more.” She showed me how to use my hands a lot of different ways.

Denise might’ve been a
ruca
, but she knew her shit. I used the moves she taught me, and the girls came back to me like puppies even if I treated them bad. But after we did it a few times, it’d get old. “Screw it,” I’d tell the girl, “I cain’t be tied down.” And that was it. If somebody asked me about the female, I’d just say, “Yeah,
me la di
.” I gave it to her, and then we were done. There was always more
heinas
; which one didn’t matter. I didn’t feel nothing anywhere except my gun.

Until I met Becca. Becca’s strong. She’s got this way about her that pulls you in like a magnet and this goodness inside her that holds you there. But that doesn’t mean she’s some innocent schoolgirl. Sex with my Becca is the closest a sinner like me can get to heaven.

Now I close my eyes and imagine her body like a prayer that can get me out of here.

I’m lying on the cot with my eyes still closed when I hear someone slide open the little metal door they use to pass meals into the cell.

I count to three, then I jump up, thinking I’m going to scare the guard. But this weird old cracker in a white uniform just stands there with a meal cart watching me through the bars like he’s not surprised at all. He’s got these crazy blue eyes in a pasty face crisscrossed with about a million lines. His hands shake a little, but his eyes stay on me. You don’t see that many old white guys working in the tank. This guy looks like he belongs in the pity post at the front of Walmart, greeting the grannies and handing out stickers to kids.

I read the plastic name strip pinned to his uniform. Gabe, it says.

“Hey, Gabe, what’s the story? Why am I in here?”

He ignores me and pulls a meal tray out of his cart. His hands tremble so much getting my juice out that I figure I won’t even need to shake it.

I try again. “Listen, you got my brother in here, too? Name’s Eddie. Eduardo Arevalo.”

His expression goes kind of funny, and he shakes his head.

“They gotta charge me with something to keep me here, right? And where’s the court-appointed fool they got to give me?”

Gabe points to the empty plastic tray on the floor and motions for me to pass it to him. He slides me the new one with a gray burger, a pile of something orange, some green Jell-O, and the juice carton. For a second, I almost get distracted by the food, but then I lock eyes with him.

“Is there something you want to discuss, son?” he says finally. His voice is pretty smooth for an old guy. Especially a guard. All the ones I ran up against in juvie sounded like they’d been smoking three packs a day since the day their mamas squeezed them out.

“Hell, yeah. I wanna talk about what day of the week it is and when I got here and what the hell happened and where my brother’s at. And don’t I get a phone call?”

He nods, then shakes his head.

“So what’s the deal?” I ask.

“I can send for your case worker. If you want to talk.”

“Case worker? Like a lawyer?”

Gabe shrugs.

“Okay, what the hell. Sign me up. How long I been in here?”

He ignores my question. “You need another blanket?”

“Screw that. What about my phone call?”

“That’s enough, son,” he says.

I holler after him, but he just pushes his cart on to the next cell. I look up and see Baby Tigs is laughing a little and shaking his head.

“Got a fuckin’ staring problem?” I say, but really, I don’t mind. He looks like he’s all right.

CHAPTER 5: NOW

I know it’s another day because Gabe brought breakfast a while ago. Now I’m drawing a picture in my mind, a big black truck with Becca sitting on the hood all sexy in a tiny blue bikini with rhinestones that I make sparkle. The clouds in the background spell out MS-13, but real subtle. It’s force of habit, I guess, to represent even though I’m trying to go straight.
La Mara
has been good to me in a lot of ways. The truth is that my boys are my family. Becca hates it when I say that. “It’s no good if it puts you in front of bullets or behind bars,” she says. “Let me be your
familia
, Azz.”

Maybe she’s right, but it’s hard to break away. I mean, I got gang tattoos.
MS
on my right shoulder,
13
on the left. Plus my whole back is covered with our sign, pointer and pinky fingers up and out, middle and ring fingers folded under the thumb. At the pool once somebody told me that it’s almost the same as for the UT Longhorns, and I thought, shit, even colleges got signs! But I was kind of embarrassed, too, that I didn’t know that. Anyway, even going clean, I don’t ever want to get my tattoos took off. They’re part of me, always will be.

I’m thinking all this when I hear footsteps in the hall, and I know they’re not Gabe’s because they’re heavier and the shoes are different. I get up and make my bed real fast like Pelón’s mom is going to come in and chew me out or something.

I’m guessing the man who stops in front of my cell is the case worker. I size him up and decide that he could beat my ass if we fought right now, but if he had to run a block or two first, I could pound his. Not that I’m going to try anything; that’s just what I think when I first see anybody under 50.

He looks sort of Hispanic, and he kind of reminds me of a younger version of my Tío Beto, which is no compliment because Beto is a real
cerote
. This guy has a white uniform like Gabe’s, but his belly goes way out. His bottom shirt buttons look ready to pop.

His eyebrows are thick and meet in the middle like maybe they’ve got some evil plan. He’s also got a big mariachi-style mustache, the kind you see in the lame paintings in Mexican restaurants. His name badge says Pakmin. Maybe he’s Indian. Like from India Indian.

“Martín Arevalo?”

“I go by Azael.” I don’t know why, but I feel like I shouldn’t mess with this guy. If his name really is what it says, he’s probably got a chip on his shoulder the size of Texas from being teased with Pac-Man jokes his whole life.

“Fine,” he says. He nods to somebody down the hall, and then after a buzz and a loud click, he rolls the cell door open. “This way.”

Pakmin doesn’t cuff me; he just has me walk two steps in front of him. While we move down the center hall, I try to take in the other cells without staring. Lots of fools are sleeping on cots just like mine. A few are sitting or standing, and they look my way, sizing me up. I stick out my chin. It’s a greeting or a challenge, depending on how you see things.

Just like at the Youth Village, here we’re mostly shades of black, brown, and yellow. I catch sight of one pink-skinned kid just before we turn a corner out of the cell block. Cracker must get his ass beat every time they uncage all these other
cabrones
.

Next we go down a narrower hall with lots of doors. Pakmin opens one, and we go into a little room like the one at Youth Village for talking to your lawyer. We sit down across from each other at the table.