CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Layla
I watch a little mournfully when Nico disappears down the dark, narrow hall. I don’t want him to go, but I can also see the pain on his face while his sister applies her makeup to my bruises. I should tell her it’s unnecessary––but what do I know?
“Where-where did my friends go?” I ask, finally aware that Jamie and Shama aren’t here.
“Friends,” Maggie repeats under her breath with a knowing look at her mother. Carmen purses her lips and raises her eyebrows, but says nothing. “They went home.”
The fact stings. But I remember the looks on their faces as they glanced around Giancarlo’s apartment––their shock that I was even spending so much time in a neighborhood that didn’t have perfectly pruned trees or buildings that weren’t power-washed.
“It’s hard for him,” Maggie says as she continues applying her makeup in big, broad strokes. I’m going to look a little like a mannequin when she’s done, painted a completely different color, but I don’t dare stop her. “He’s seen this kind of thing a lot. Too much.”
She glances at Carmen, who is watching us quietly from her seat on the chair. I wish my Spanish were better. Carmen is already quiet––I want to know what she’s saying when she does speak up.
Guilt sweeps through me all over again. I don’t know everything his family’s been through, but I know enough. I know that Carmen has had her share of nasty men around in her life
“When we were kids,” Maggie says, “well, when we were all kids, not Nico, there was this time, right after he came back from juvie, when Gabe’s dad was living with us.”
Carmen breaks in suddenly with a quick stream of Spanish, but Maggie just frowns and waves it away.
“Mami, hush,” she chides her. “She should know. No one is going to think less of you, okay? Just look at her.”
Carmen mutters something else, but in the end, she nods her head and flips her hands at us, as if to say “Go with God.” Maggie rolls her eyes.
“Anyway,” she says. “It was Gabe’s father. He’s wasn’t a good person. For a long time, he didn’t treat my mom so good.”
I stay quiet while she moves down my neck with the sponge.
“When Nico got out of juvie, David was living with us, and he used to, um, well, he was hard on our mother.”
From her chair, Carmen snorts, then emits another long string of Spanish.
I look curiously at Maggie. “What did she say? I couldn’t catch most of that.”
Again, Maggie rolls her eyes. Their relationship is familiar––the kind of relationship you’d imagine a close mother and daughter to have. Bickering, but also fond. My mother and I have never had that kind of relationship. She cares, sure. But we don’t joke. We don’t tease. We don’t really know each other.
“She says if I’m going to spill our family secrets, I might as well do it right. De verdad, Mami?”
Carmen pushes her full lips out in agreement and gives her daughter a sardonic look. Maggie just laughs.
Carmen turns to me. “He hit me,” she says in stunted English. “Gabriel father. Here and here and here.” She points to different spots on her face: her eyebrow, her cheek, her chin. “My kids, they see. And my daughter, she...the same.” She opens her mouth, like she’s going to say something else, but instead sits back in her chair and folds her hands in her lap.
Maggie watches her mother, but her attitude has vanished. She’s clearly used to the matter-of-fact way Carmen has when she speaks, but the bluntness takes me off guard.
“It was Nico who stopped it,” Maggie says as she continues applying makeup. “Every time.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“When he was in juvie, he started boxing. Did you know that?”
I shake my head. I know he likes to box for exercise, but he never said how he started. Nico really doesn’t like talking about his past, and it’s not like we had the chance much this year to get into it. I only know a little about why he ended up in detention to begin with.
Maggie pauses, probably wondering whether to continue. But she keeps talking. “Well, after he got back, he saw David beating on Mami, so he gave him a taste of his own medicine.”
At that, Carmen breaks in with another long string of Spanish, then nods at me. “Tell her,” she says impatiently.
Maggie sighs. “She wants you to know that he also told Ma he would take away me and Selena and Gabe if she ever saw David again. We were still minors, you know? And Nico was eighteen, Alba––that’s K.C.’s mother, you remember?––she transferred guardianship to him.”
I swallow. This is news. I always knew that Nico took responsibility for his siblings’ welfare, but I didn’t know he had legally been their guardian since he was eighteen. I’m twenty, and I can’t imagine having that kind of responsibility. And I definitely can’t imagine threatening my own mother with it.
“That sounds incredibly hard,” I say.
“It was,” Maggie says. “’Specially since five years later, he did the same with me. Told Jimmy if he didn’t get his ass into rehab, he wasn’t going to be able to see me or Allie anymore. And that if I let him back before then, he would call social services and sue for custody.” She emits a heavy sigh. “At first, I was mad. But now I’m glad he did that. It gave me some space, you know? To do what was right for me and my daughter.”
It makes sense now, as Nico’s words from March filter back to me, asking me all over again to leave Giancarlo. He made me angry. So angry. At that point, he was just one more person who was leaving me, one more person turning their backs, one more person who also thought they knew better. It never occurred to me that he already knew what it was like to watch someone you care about be hurt. And that because of that knowledge, he already knew what was going to happen to me.
“Do you...do you still see Jimmy?” I wonder.
Maggie nods. “Yes. But mostly for Allie. We aren’t good together because I make him too mad, and he drives me crazy.” She grins at Carmen. “I have a temper. Just like Mami.”
Carmen snorts again, but I don’t miss the warmth in her eyes as she looks at her daughter. Still, there is sadness there too.
“We learn,” she puts in. “From our family. Your father, he do this too?”
I almost want to smile. She really does know a lot more English than her kids give her credit for. But her question brings me back to my own family again. A year ago, I would have said no. I would have said my father wasn’t the slightest bit abusive and laughed at the idea.
But it would have been an uncomfortable laugh. High-pitched and over-exuberant, it would have been a laugh that covered up the truths of how he treated my mother and me. The insults. The condescension. The control. I don’t know if that makes him abusive. I don’t know what it means. But I do know that he caused us both a lot of pain, and that my mother always took it.
“He didn’t hit us,” is all I say.
Carmen appears to weigh the words for a moment or two, but eventually she nods with understanding and sits back.
Maggie finishes the makeup, then sits back to survey her work. “I think that will be okay.” She screws the lid on the jar and hands it to me. “That’s the brand you want. I got it at Duane Reade. It’s the only one that will cover everything up.”
I stare at the letters scribbled across the lid, imprinting them into my mind, then hand it back to her. “Thank you. I guess...I guess I should go home now.”
Maggie looks at me like I’m nuts. “Are you crazy? Do you have any idea what my brother will do?”
“What-what would he do?”
She clicks her tongue. “I don’t know. You’re the only person he’s ever loved, you know. That’s why you’re not going anywhere.”
She glances at Allie, who’s conked out on the floor, then turns the channel to some kind of show in Spanish––a telenovela, like the ones my grandmother in Brazil likes to watch. The women all wear flashy colors and too much makeup. And the men are all tall, dark-haired, and impossibly handsome. But none as handsome as Nico.
I settle back into the couch. You’re the only person he’s ever loved. Even if I can’t handle it, God, I hope it’s true.
~
The door opens again several hours later, and heavy footsteps tread down the hall. I’m half-asleep on the couch, and Allie is playing on the floor while Carmen is in the kitchen, making something to eat. Maggie stayed with me all afternoon, as if she and Carmen both understand how bad it would be for me to be alone. Our conversations have been content, content as we’ve all been to let Allie or the television fill the space. We’ve all just sat together. It’s been...peaceful.
Nico appears in the doorway, looking both tired and beautiful. There are shadows under his eyes, and his shirt and jeans are wrinkled. He finds me and gives me a weary smile.
“Hey, beautiful,” he says softly. Then he frowns. “What’s wrong with your face? You look...yellow. Like you’re sick or something.”
“Coño, it’s my makeup, okay? Don’t be a dick!”
Maggie throws a pillow at him, which Nico deflects onto the floor with a chuckle. It causes Allie to glance up from her dolls and grin. Nico winks at her, then turns back to me.
“How you doin’, baby?” he asks.
I shrug. It’s only five o’clock, but I feel like I could sleep for a week.
We just watch each other while Allie sings a song to her toys. Maggie glances back and forth between us, frowning.
“Papi,” she snaps. “Stop lurking in the doorway. You gonna take care of your woman, or what?”
Nico blinks. “What?”
Maggie nods at me. “Layla. I know that look. She needs you right now. She’s your woman, isn’t she?”
Nico gulps while he crosses and uncrosses his arms. His hesitation stabs, hurts more than I thought it would. After talking to Maggie and Carmen, I knew this was a possibility. That whatever he did, wherever he went, something about it might finally cross the line. That after this is all over, he might want nothing to do with me.
“No,” he says, loud and clear.
I try to ignore the way my chest feels like it’s going to cave in. It hurts. Oh, God, it hurts so much worse than Giancarlo’s hands or my ankle.
But Nico doesn’t look away––his gaze remains steady, bound to mine. “She’s her own woman. I’m just lucky enough to love her.”
Then he crosses the room and collapses next to me on the couch. Pulls me into his arms and cradles me to his broad, warm chest.
“I got you, baby,” he says, repeating those sweet, simple words that flood my body, my heart, my soul with warmth. With homecoming. “I got you.”
Slowly, my arms find their way around his waist. Slowly, I’m holding him too.
“I got you, too,” I murmur into his chest. The lines of his compass tattoo, black and broad, show through the thin white cotton. I kiss him there, and a low rumble, so low only I can hear it, stirs in his chest.
“I know, baby,” he says. “I know.”
We sit like that for several minutes, until Carmen emerges from the kitchen holding a spatula.
“Ya la comida está,” she tells us.
As we all gather around the small table to eat the chicken and rice that Carmen has made, Nico sighs as he looks over the food. It’s a good look. This room used to be where the TV was, and the other room was storage area for his and his siblings’ things. But since Carmen moved here, this apartment, which always felt more like a bachelor pad, turned into a home.
“Mami,” he says sadly as he dishes up some food. “Tienes que mudarte para tras a Hell’s Kitchen.”
I glance between him and his mother, not understanding what he said. But Carmen freezes as she dishes up Allie’s food.
“What? Why does she have to move back?” Maggie’s voice is sharp.
Carmen sighs wearily and finishes putting rice on Allie’s plate. “Por qué?”
Nico rubs his face and pulls off his baseball cap so he can run a hand through his hair. Carmen snags the hat and tosses it onto an extra chair behind her.
“He knows. Layla’s––the guy––he knows about Ma. Flaco and I found a whole bunch of coke stashed in his closet, so we called the cops. But when they were taking him out...” Nico sighs and takes his mother’s hand. “He said he knew, Ma. I think he’s gonna tell them about you.”
The desire to eat vanishes as my stomach drops to the floor. This is my fault. Yet another way I’m causing this family damage.
“Oh my God,” I say. “Oh my God, oh my God.”
Carmen is strangely still.
“I’m so, so sorry, Carmen. I told him because I––” I cut myself off, suddenly remembering the catalyst of everything that’s happened. The passage. The book. “Where did you put my stuff?” I ask Nico as I stand up.
His brows screw up in confusion. “By the door. Why?”
“Hold on,” I say. “I have to show you something.”
I hop down the hall and root around the trash bags until I locate my textbook––the one I had been reading when I came across the paragraph on Cuban immigration. Quickly, I flip to the page, carry it back to the table, and set it down in front of Carmen.
Nico scoots his chair over to look on with his mother. “What is this?”
“Look at the second paragraph,” I tell them.
Carmen scans the page, but it’s clear she can’t read English much better than she can speak it. She looks to Nico, whose dark eyes are flying over the text, his lips moving silently with it.
“Mira, mira,” he says, pointing at the paragraph. “‘Any close relative of a Cuban national can visit the country.’ Ma, do you understand this?” He looks at me, suddenly alert. “Does this mean what I think it means?”
I swallow and nod. “I think so. I think it means you can go to Cuba to get her birth certificate. I was on my way here to tell you that when Giancarlo, he––”
My voice fades away, and Nico, with obvious understanding, reaches around the table and takes my hand.
“This is why he got angry?” he asks. “Because you were trying to help my family?”
Wordlessly, I nod. “He found me here, about to press the button. This was before––before I called you.”
Nico says nothing for what feels like several minutes. He blinks, his long, black lashes sweeping across his cheeks in slow-motion.
“He would have done it anyway,” Maggie says knowingly. “Whether it was this or something else.”
“I know,” I say, more to Nico than to her. “I know.”
He blinks again, his eyes deep with emotions I can’t quite read. Then he leans over and pulls my hand to his lips.
“Thank you,” he says quietly. He kisses my knuckles again. “Thank you.”
I don’t respond, just squeeze his hand. He turns back to the book, flipping the pages back and forth, though he doesn’t let me go.
“There’s nothing else in here about how this works. Baby, do you know anything more?”
I shake my head. “No, I’m sorry. But––I could find out. I could ask my professor or someone who would know. I only saw this myself, and I tried to come and tell you as soon as I could.”
“Nah, baby, that’s okay. We’ll find an attorney.” Nico looks up suddenly. “Why didn’t we know about this?”
The entire family looks guiltily at each other around the table.
I shrug. “I don’t remember this being in the papers. It wouldn’t have been front-page news.”
Nico’s shoulders relax. He turns to his mother, who is still staring at the book, frozen. “Te comprendes?” he asks her softly.
Slowly, Carmen nods. She doesn’t shake or cry––something tells me that Carmen Soltero rarely does either of those things. But her stillness has the whole table frozen right with her, even little Allie.
“Well, then,” Nico says, looking back to me with shining eyes. “Looks like I need to get a passport, huh?”
~