CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Nico
I dump the box of old magazines into the dumpster and then jog the rest of the way up the stairs. Gabe, Selena, and I are all helping Ma clean out her apartment. The lease––the lease in my name––is up at the end of the month, and for the first time in almost ten years, the landlord asked me for verification that I live here and wanted all residents’ names and ID numbers on the new lease. I checked, and he’s been asking everyone in the building for the same thing.
Bastard. He knew exactly what would happen. He knew there was no way in hell my mother was going to put her name on any kind of legal document. He knew she would move out, leave her home––tiny, run-down home that it is, but still a home nonetheless––before she made herself vulnerable that way.
I have a couple of days between my interview and my physical, and even though I’ve worked out a few times, a little extra labor is the best way to get rid of the jitters I feel. Well, there’s one other distraction I can think of, but she won’t have anything to do with me.
I tried to call Layla this morning, when I thought that maybe she’d have cooled off enough to accept my apology for last night. If I’m being honest, I’m not really sorry. I don’t care if she’s with someone else, I’ll never be sorry for anything we are together.
The only thing I’m sorry for was the look on her face when she said that loving me hurt. That pain makes me feel like my guts are being torn out.
Which is why, in the end, I didn’t call her again. I don’t want to hurt her, even if it’s physically painful to leave her alone. Knowing she’s probably staying a few blocks from where I am made for a night of really shitty sleep, I can tell you that.
“I still think you should just tell her your plans,” Gabe says when he confronts me after I tell him what happened. “They’re going to hire you. Peter didn’t even get an interview yet,” he says, referring to his friend who also applied. “In six months, you’ll be a fuckin’ firefighter for real. FDNY, man. That’s the shit.” He nudges me in the shoulder. “You’re the shit.”
I smile at the ground and rub the back of my neck. “We don’t know what’s going to happen.”
And that’s the truth. I hoist another big box of linens down the stairs so my brother doesn’t have to see how scared I am that I’m going to get to this final stage and not make it. It’s the same reason I haven’t told Layla. I don’t think I could take getting her hopes up that I’m coming back to New York only to rip them away again.
I want this so bad. I’m scared to admit to myself how badly I want it––more than anything I’ve ever imagined for myself. I want this more than I wanted to get out of juvie, back when I was seventeen and locked in a jail for kids. I want this more than I wanted the job at FedEx, which was the first time I was ever given a legit job. I want it more than I wanted to leave New York...and I never thought I’d want anything more than that.
For the first time, I feel like I’m on the precipice of doing something great. Not just a change. Not just something to help me or my family get by. But something truly worth doing in my life.
I never had that kind of opportunity. And now that it’s here, I don’t know how I’ll handle it if––no, when it does get ripped away.
“Yeah, well,” Gabe interrupts my thoughts as he arrives at the rented truck with me. “I guess she got Lurch anyway.”
I look up from the back of the cab, frowning, and turn my cap on backward so I can look at him. “Who the fuck is ‘Lurch’?”
Gabe blinks uneasily. “Um, Layla’s boyfriend. At least, that’s what I think he looks like––that guy from The Addams Family. He lives up by CUNY. Maybe five, six blocks from our place.”
“And how the fuck do you know this?” My voice is sharper than I intend it to be.
Now it’s Gabe’s turn to rub the back of his neck. “I might have walked her there last night. She was standing on our corner looking like a lost kitten. It was, I don’t know, like ten, eleven? Something like that? I just figured you’d want me to walk her to wherever she was going.”
“You thought right,” I say. “Thanks. So you met her...the guy?”
Gabe nods and makes a face. “Yeah. Dude was wack. Tall, pale, skeleton-looking asshole with glasses. He talked to her like he was her dad, all pissed that she missed curfew.” I must have a pretty awful look on my face, because when Gabe looks up, he actually takes a step back. “Sorry. You want me to stop?”
I shake my head. “No, it’s okay.”
“He’s actually in one of my classes.”
I stop. “Serious?”
Gabe nods. “Yeah, my algebra class. But he’s always missing or leaving early, or else he’s on his phone, texting someone while the teacher talks. She fuckin’ hates him because he doesn’t listen for shit.”
I snort, even though I probably shouldn’t take so much pleasure in that. But if I’m being honest, the guy is a little intimidating. He’s everything I’m not––smart, college kid, from a good family, probably rich. Way closer to what Layla’s family would want for her than I am.
So yeah, it’s nice to hear he’s not perfect.
“You think he’s into something?” I ask, thinking of Flaco’s comments about the guys on the block.
Gabe shrugs. “I don’t know. But it’s weird how he’s always up and leaving. His phone buzzes and ‘boom,’ he’s gone. She said yesterday that he works at a club, but I don’t know, man. What kind of club business takes you out of class at nine thirty in the morning?”
I frown. I don’t know where this guy works, but I’ve worked in nightclubs for a long time. It’s not impossible that Evita has errands for a manager first thing in the morning, but most people who work in the nightlife industry keep hours like bats. And I don’t know a single promoter who starts their job before noon.
“Hey.” Gabe stops walking toward the buildings when he notices I haven’t followed. “You want me to keep an eye on him?”
It’s tempting. But I don’t need my little brother getting involved with this guy, especially if he’s into anything bad. Gabe needs to focus on school. That’s it.
“Nah, man, it’s okay. Thanks, though.”
We jog back up the stairs to where Ma and Selena are finishing up. Alba is coming over tomorrow morning to help everyone clean the place. There’s no deposit to get back, but we don’t need to get slammed with an exit fee.
Ma walks out of the kitchen carrying a box of dishes. The apartment is looking really bare. We got rid of the last of the furniture a few days ago, and they’ve been moving her things gradually uptown so as not to attract the suspicion of the landlord up there. The move is almost done; all that’s left is to take a few more boxes uptown and haul the rest to the Salvation Army. Then we clean and get the hell out.
“Ay, bendito,” Ma remarks for the tenth time as she looks over the empty living room. It seems bigger now that it’s not crammed with furniture and the clutter of four kids. She’s been sighing like that for the last few days.
“It’s hard to say goodbye,” she says in Spanish.
My mother moved here when she was ten, so I’m pretty sure she could speak English if she wanted to. But for most of her life, living in the shadows the way she has, she’s kept to the community of people from Puerto Rico and other Hispanic countries that originally populated this part of Hell’s Kitchen, until one by one, most of them left, scattered across New Jersey and the Bronx as it became harder and harder to pay the rent in this part of the city. We’ve been seeing it our whole lives, especially after the police cleaned up the neighborhood. It was only a matter of time for us too.
I walk over and put my arm around her shoulder, and Ma lays her head against me for a moment. She says nothing more, but I know what she’s feeling. She and Alba moved into the building when they both had K.C. and me in tow, and until I was eighteen, the apartment was under Alba’s name, just like anything else my mom needed legal identification for. But Alba moved out years ago, and eventually so did most of the other people. Things are changing. It’s time for her to change too.
And she deserves more than this. More than living in a place that doesn’t meet housing codes and has a bathroom in the middle of the kitchen. More than moving from building to building like a fugitive. Always living in fear of being discovered. Constantly worried that one day, her habit of staying out of the way is going to catch up to her. I want more for my mother. More for all of us.
Still, I get it. This was our home, for better or for worse. The scent of beans and rice, always cooking on the little stove, still lingers in the air. If I listen hard enough, I can hear the shouts of laughter when my siblings and I would chase each other around the room until one of us got a house slipper thrown at us.
But I can hear other sounds too––the shouts and screams when my mother fought with David, Gabe’s dad, or one of the other shitheads who preyed on her vulnerability until I was old enough and big enough to tell them all to fuck off. It took threatening to take away Gabe and Selena and Maggie to get her to stop with those types, but she’s stayed good to her word, even now, when all of us are finally grown. Things are better; our family finally has a peace we rarely had when I was growing up. But all of us still bear the scars of those times, inside and out.
I squeeze her shoulders and then take the last box from her. No matter what happens with my job, I decide then and there that after it’s all over, the next thing on my agenda will be to get my mother on the path to legal residency. And my brother and sisters––they have to help too. Plenty must have changed since she was told in the seventies she had no chance. It’s been over twenty years. She deserves more.
~
By the time Gabe and I load the rest of the boxes into the truck, it’s close to dinner. Ma wants to stay one last night in the apartment by herself on the mattress that’s getting tossed in the morning, probably to say goodbye to the first place that was only hers. She didn’t have much time to herself––just a few months after I left and Gabe moved out. I can’t actually tell if she was happier alone.
I still want to work out or do something to burn off some steam before my interview tomorrow, which will probably mean running up and down the Hudson until I get too cold to do it anymore, then picking up some food uptown before I get a good night’s sleep.
“We’ll see you up there?” Gabe asks as he shuts the cab. Selena is waiting in the front seat, messing around on her phone.
I nod and hand him the keys. “Yeah. See you there.”
They drive off, and I take a final look around the neighborhood. I don’t know how much I’ll come back here anymore. Probably every now and then to see Alba, who’s really like my second mother. But beyond that...this is a goodbye for me too. Really, it’s a goodbye for all of us.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I answer it without looking, still stuck in my memories.
“Hello?”
“N-Nico?”
The voice, small and tentative, cuts through the rumble of car horns and people.
“Layla? What is it? What’s wrong?” I swear to God, if that motherfucker hurt her...I’ll kill him myself.
“I’m fine,” she says, and relief floods me. “I just...I need your help.”
“Where are you?” I demand, already jogging toward Tenth Avenue to hail a cab.
There’s a long pause, and I wonder for a second if she’s joking. But then she answers, and I’m not sure if I heard her correctly.
“Hunt’s Point?” I ask. “Is what you just said? That your boyfriend sent you to Hunt’s fuckin’ Point?”
“Y-yes,” she says, and then rattles off an address. For a second I feel like I’m about to faint. Because Layla just told me she’s alone in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in New York, and I’m standing here like an idiot, miles away.
“Don’t move,” I order as a cab pulls over. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
~