CHAPTER TWO
It’s funny the things you notice when you’ve been gone a while. The old brick building where I grew up is the same and somehow different. There are new graffiti tags on the foundation, but the sandy red color of the brick is just like it ever was. The creaky stairs going up to the third floor are just as dingy as they always were, but one of the knobs at the bottom of the railing has been broken clean off. One of the apartments has a wire hanging directly through the top of the doorway––someone bootlegging electricity so they don’t have to pay a utility bill.
I pull the keys from my backpack, which feel strange in my hand after two years. On the other side of the door, I can already hear the noise. My sisters, Selena and Maggie, are arguing about something. There’s the blare of the TV, some kind of cartoon––I’m guessing that Gabe, my baby brother, is watching Looney Tunes. Every now and then, there’s a bark, my mother’s low voice coming from the kitchen.
I put the keys in the lock and turn the knob.
Everyone’s a couple years older, but just like our building, still pretty much the same, I realize with relief. Selena and Maggie are on the faded orange couch going over some kind of magazine, their shifting weights making the plastic cover crackle every now and then. Gabe is on the floor working on some kind of homework in front of the TV. Yeah, I’m going to have to break that habit now. My brother is smart––always was. If any of us can go to college, it’s him.
The door shuts behind me with a loud creak, and almost immediately, the bustle of the room stops. Selena and Maggie are actually quiet for once in their lives, and Gabe pops up, his eyes big in his thin, horsey little face. His gaze alights on me, and a second later he’s up and off the floor, launching his skinny body across the room.
“Nico!” he shouts as he throws himself at me.
And I laugh. For the first time in two years, I laugh out loud as my sisters also clamber off the couch to squeeze the life out of me. I am covered by my siblings, with the first touch in a long time that’s not angry. I am overcome by the smells of home: the rice floating out of the tiny kitchen, the flowery scent of Selena’s cheap perfume, the dusty musk of bodies that sleep too close together. But I squeeze them all, because fuck if it doesn’t feel good to see them. People who don’t hate me. People who aren’t indifferent to me. My family.
“When did you get back?”
“Did you see how big I grew? I’m almost as tall as Selena now!”
“You got huge!”
“Did you know Maggie’s got a boyfriend?”
Suddenly they’re all throwing questions and comments at me as we push and laugh, my sisters looking me up and down like a piece of meat, Gabe flexing his tiny muscles while he prods at mine. I’m happy for the first time in years. I’ve seen them all a few times, when Alba took them up to visit. Selena and Maggie came for my birthday last year; Gabe always wanted to visit at Christmas. But the trip to Tryon is costly and long. It’s been months, almost a year. It feels so good to see them, no matter how annoying they used to be. God damn it feels fuckin’ good to laugh.
“Nico?”
Her voice, that voice I’ve only heard over a scratchy phone connection every Sunday, cuts through the room like a knife. Everyone goes silent, and my brother and sisters fall off me like the skin of an onion, breaking a natural path from me to the kitchen. My mother stands in the doorway, winding a dishtowel tightly around her hand.
She looks the same as I last saw her when we said goodbye in the courtroom. Young, too young to have three teenagers and a ten-year-old, her oldest––me––almost grown. Small and sturdy, with dark skin the color of coffee with just a touch of milk. Big, almost black eyes that she gave to all of her kids, fringed with thick lashes. Bristly dark hair threaded with gray, pulled into a small, tight knot at the base of her neck. The same grubby apron I’ve seen all my life covers the hand-me-down clothes she gets from Alba.
“Hola, mami,” I whisper, lapsing into the Spanish I’ve barely spoken in two years. The feel of it on my tongue is strange and familiar at the same time. “I’m home.”
She blinks, and I see the wet of tears cloud her big eyes. The sight of it almost makes me tear up too. My mother doesn’t cry. This is a woman who has seen some rough shit in her life, way worse than this building, this neighborhood. This is a woman who was smuggled across the Caribbean in a raft when she was two and orphaned in the process. Who has worked her ass off her entire life to make sure her kids don’t have to go through the things she did, and who didn’t even cry when her oldest son fucked up and was taken away in handcuffs.
But now I’m back. And it’s my mother’s face, crumpling the way it does, that finally breaks through this shell I’ve built over the past two years.
“Ven pa’ca.”
She gestures hurriedly, and in a second, I’ve dropped my bag, wrapped her in my arms, and pulled her close. She smells the same: like air freshener and rice and wool sweaters. Her tears come––I can feel them on my shoulder. She shakes. I’m surprised. I don’t remember her being this small.
“Ay, nene,” she says into my rough t-shirt, over and over again in Spanish. “Papito Nico.” My baby boy.
“I’m home, mami,” I tell her in a low voice, more than once so she’ll remember. Or maybe it’s so I’ll remember. “I’m home.”
My heart is full, like a cup that’s been bone-dry for years, set out in a rain. And then, just as quickly, it’s emptied again, kicked over as a shadow falls across me and my mother.
“Nico,” he says.
Some things do change. My shoulders tense. His voice isn’t as deep as I remember.
“Good to have you back, man.”
I release Ma and look up. Like hers, the eyes of David Esteban Martin Sanchez––names I’ll never forget because of the way he used to make me repeat them in time with his belt buckle––haven’t changed. They are deep brown with flecks of gray––a dull steel that doesn’t cut through the room, but saws, over and over again.
He seems smaller than before, even though he still has about three inches on me. A native New Yorker from the South Bronx, David has always talked about this city like it belongs to him more than anyone else. He’s not my dad, who cut out before I was even born. Not even my stepdad, since my mother can’t get married. David is Gabe’s father, and the dude who keeps coming back to this family for the last ten years like a bad cough we can’t get rid of.
Memories start popping off in my head, like a camera flash that’s stuck. Gabe crying in the corner. David with his fist lightly curled. Eyes like murder as he chased my mother into the bedroom with a folded belt. The screams the door could never block out.
Two years ago, he had at least eight inches on me and fifty pounds. Two years ago, I might have flinched under his sharp gaze, knowing that when I spoke up, he’d turn those fists, that belt, on me. But now I’ve dealt with enough shit that David’s fists and belt don’t scare me anymore. I look at him straight on, and this time, he’s the one who looks away first.
“That’s right,” I say. For the first time, I’m aware of just how low my voice has become. “I’m back.”
~
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