I had to look away from them. Julissa. And my boy Pipo. He had my back since jump. Short little fuck, but never backed down off a fight. I took a quick sip of the quivering air, like a pull from a Dutchie. Kept walking. My eyes searched the floor, then found the stenographer. I swear she looked like Ms. Gregory from seventh grade. That teacher broke my name up into pieces twenty-six years ago, as if saying it whole was too much of an effort.
“Ja-vi-er?”
Broken. Like they try to break you up in here over the years.
“Do you mind telling the class what you find so funny about Newton’s Law?” she said that day.
Funny what you remember.
I turned around to look at Tommy, Pete, and Frankie whose faces showed no sign they were the ones cracking jokes on Ms. Gregory calling her Toucan Sam. The thought of her face on a box of Fruit Loops made me bust out laughing. I looked at Ms. Gregory and back at the boys.
When I first arrived from Colombia, it was guys like Tommy who teased me and made fun of my clothes and sneakers. Especially my kicks. Mami couldn’t even afford the bootleg Jordans. Instead I made do with the discount joints you gotta search for in bins at spots like Mini Max or Bobby’s. Damn. Those Guidos rode me hard. Mothafuckas with their hair slicked back with gel, rope gold chains around their neck, loads of Cool Water cologne on, and the real Jordans. They called me a scrub. Wetback. But in middle school, I had the newest Jordans and the only time my English wore an accent was when I was tired or angry. And back then when I was nervous I laughed. I laughed in Ms. Gregory’s face and she sent me to the office.
Confused I turned towards the boys for a quick second, but their eyes looked down. Mouths tight like pencil lines. I got up real slow. Being blamed for shit I wasn’t guilty of was nothing new.
“Now!” Ms. Gregory’s face got all pink.
“Bitch!” I called her, as I high-fived the boys on my way out.
That was wrong. Disrespectful. I get that now.
Later in the cafeteria Tommy told me how they couldn’t get in trouble or their pops would come after them hard. Ha, Mami was harder than any man I knew.
“No big thing,” I lied. Mami swung not just with her fists, but anything near her.
We all sat in different parts of the lunchroom. The Italian kids all sat together, the Blacks in one side, the Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Colombians, Ecuadorians, and Mexicans on the other. The Asian kids hung out in their own little part of the cafeteria. It was as if they were these borders placed around the tables without anyone putting down a damn thing.
They tell me it’s still the same. Everyone with their own kind.
#
In the courtroom that day, I itched to rub my jaw. The grip of the cuffs only seemed to tighten the more I struggled. Julissa sat on the second to first bench from the front of the courtroom. I looked away. Settled my eyes on the judge’s huge ass desk. Bird Eye behind me. Pointy Feet in front. Fuckers acted like they were teachers about to give stickers to whoever sat with their hands folded in front of them. All the lessons school taught, and not one had to do with learning. It wasn’t even at school where I learned to make words dance on the page. Nah, I learned to write poetry listening to Mami’s vallenato music. Colombian blues, she played late into the night, when her heart was lonesome for the man I figured was my pops or the string of assholes who followed. I loved the wail of heartbreak spilling out of Raphael Orozco’s mouth. Corazón feliz como fiesta en pueblo. I wanted to string words together. I wanted to create something new.
“Keep moving Macondo.” At nineteen I couldn’t hustle a jog with those damn sneakers if I wanted to. Bird Eye breathed down my neck. “Time to face the music.” He let out a long and low whistle.
He was enjoying himself. I shot him a dirty look.
Bird Eye was just like all the fuckers at school who loved to see me being sent to the principal’s office. Didn’t matter I kept stacks of notebooks under my bed filled with the worlds I had created. Julissa was the first person to read my notebook full of bars. Fresh lines with the tightest rhymes. My bars morphed into poems later.
El Desparaser, you never fade all at once, but in small waves. No one notices. Least of all you.
I looked straight ahead and kept stepping. Not about to try to walk fast and trip over my feet because Bird Eye needed to go and scratch his balls. I caught sight of my lawyer, Sam. Court appointed. Suit three sizes too big, surrounded by a mess of papers and folders.
Then I heard it. Heels like exclamation points on the courtroom floor and a voice that boomed throughout the courtroom. “M’hijo!”
Hardwired to respond, I didn’t realize my body turned to the direction of the voice until I faced Mami. Dressed in a tight turquoise dress, she swished to the bench Julissa sat in. I shot a look at Pointy Feet whose eyes lingered over my Mami’s ass.
#
We arrived in Jackson Heights Queens from Colombia, days before the start of school. I was seven, but placed in a kindergarten class on account I couldn’t speak a damn word in English.
We rented a room in an apartment with a Colombian family. We had no one in Nueva York. The family we rented from arrived a few months before us, and acted like gringos since they could read the local Chinese takeout menu. The dad got drunk every night before el noticiero finished, and cracked jokes in order to get on my good side. Bum even offered to take me to the park with his little daughters. I always said no. Remembered how he looked at Mami when she crossed the living room or ran into him in the kitchen. And how he hit his wife late at night when he thought we were asleep.
As soon as Mami saved up we moved into our own place. She cleaned houses during the weekday and on Saturday mornings she dusted and vacuumed a doctor’s office. I’d go with Mami and trail behind her as she wiped and polished. I just remember being surprised the office had nothing but a long couch and a chair in front of it. I wondered what kind of sick you were to come here. Mami later explained it was the kind of doctor you saw when you had money to pay someone to listen to your problems.
Every afternoon, the first Saturday of every month, Mami walked into Delgado Travel with me stepping at the back of her shoes. I had this feeling if I didn’t rush to keep with Mami she’d just keep walking and leave me behind. Mami handed over most of her earnings to the teller after she asked for the dollar to peso exchange rate.
I had a lot of questions back then. Why did American dollars do what Jesus did and make shit multiply? It was always double or more, when it came to dolares to pesos. Why Mami sent money back home? Why Abuelo and Abuela couldn’t understand we needed it so bad? We needed a bigger place. And maybe I’d finally get a pair of real kicks. Why they called Jackson Heights, Little Colombia? It looked nothing like the streets of Barranquilla. No palm trees or houses the color of fruits named sapote, maracuya, or guava, just hungry looking trees, like the skinny streets kids in Colombia, and rows of busted buildings the color of rotten fruit.
But, I also learned to not ask questions. We always did our food shopping at the corner bodega. The Dominican owner who everyone called Monstro let you run a tab as long as he knew you were good for it. Then one day Mami said we were going to do a big compra at a supermarket called Western Beef. I was amazed by the rows and rows of food. I followed Mami, twisting and turning my head back and forth from the aisle on each of my side. At age eight I was still shorter than most of the other first graders in my class, but for once felt like my height paid off as all the good stuff was within my reach. Then we got to the aisle with the Nesquik, and I came to a halt. Mami kept walking towards the meat section.
Unable to take my eyes off the square can which promised sweet pink milk just like the rabbit on the wrapper held in his own rosy paw. I ran my finger over the container, ignoring the roach crawling on the shelf. Nueva York was a filled with roaches not unlike Barranquilla with mosquitoes. Desperate to dissolve and be like everyone, hating the daily glasses of avena, I grabbed a can. “Mami,” I called out several times as I walked up and down the aisles in search of her. I clutched the straps to my superhero book bag. I heard her before I saw her.
“Mi’jo,” she called out.
I turned around and charged towards Mami and waved the can of Nesquik. “Mama, can we get Nesquik?” I flung my arms around her waist, and felt something cold and hard in shape of a square. At first I thought it was part of a belt, my fingers lingered, and my hands traveled underneath the long jacket Mami wore. Mami ripped my arms from around her.
“What is that?” I asked. Though I knew Mami sometimes took cleaning supplies from the doctor office or crawled behind me under the train style to not pay for either one of us. But this was different. Stealing meat from the supermarket.
She responded with silence. Her eyes settled somewhere above my head.
I wished I were tall like a man, not just to meet Mami’s eyes, but to keep her from boosting. Because I had become her accomplice right then and there.
By the time I was sixteen, I stopped giving a shit about what was wrong or felt wrong. I gave Mami fat rolls of twenties to send back home the first Saturday of the month. She would ask me how business was when the rolls were smaller, but never how I was.
#
Days before the sentencing Sam sat down with me. He reminded me of those smart kids in school who were nervous wrecks all the time because kids were always bullying them to do their homework. Only the poor ass wet backs got bullied more because we had nothing to give. Sam shuffled papers, popped open his briefcase, and tapped his pen against the desk in between us. “We need to strategize.” He pulled out a legal pad across the table.
My leg started to do that thing it always did when I just wanted to bolt. It bounced up and down nonstop in those old man sneakers they issued us. Slip on canvas.
“First, I want to go over the why.”
“I’ll tell you the why. I’m here because my dumbass got caught,” I mumbled. “I took the plea. I saved everyone a lot of money and time. Plead that I’m guilty. Why you stress’n?”
The hard part was over, I thought. Now it was hearing how long I’d be locked up.
“We can argue for a lesser sentence if we ask them to consider the circumstances which led you here.”
“What you mean?” I looked at Sam. This dope hadn’t cleaned his glasses or washed his dirty tie in a minute.
“How the educational system that is suppose to protect you created this mess.” Sam rubbed his forehead and took a long sigh. He looked down and read from his notes. The crew was his family. A substitute. Morality does not exist only loyalty. How did he get there?”
“Hijueputa,” I muttered, low enough for no one around us to hear, but loud enough for Sam to hear. “Yo! This sounds like a snitch move. I did it. Nobody put me up to this.”
Sam cleared his throat. “Not per se, Javier. However, they are larger systems at play here, and they also need to be held responsible.”
“Bullshit! If your talking about school, they never had my back. Why should they have my back now? I told you I’m no snitch.” I glared at Sam.
“Javier, we needed to get you the least amount of time. Pointing the finger at a system is not snitching.
“Nah not gonna happen.”
“If you won’t do this for yourself, can you do it for your girlfriend? Sam motioned his hand in an effort to recall J’s name.
“Julissa. We not together.”
Again my leg began to bounce.
“She contacted me. Said she wanted me to set up a meeting before the sentencing. There is something important she needs to tell you.” Sam pulled out what looked like a black and white picture printed on thin paper. “Julissa has been trying for months to talk to you. What she has to say can effect how we approach your sentencing.”
“We are over!” I screamed.
“Calm down,” Sam said. He turned towards the guard who walked over. “It’s nothing.” Sam held his hands up to the court officer as if he was the guilty one.
“I’m guilty. I took a plea. I don’t give fuck all the years they throw my way. I’m not gonna go out like a bitch.” I growled.
“What about just going over some of the information I gathered looking at your file. Maybe if you see it all listed out it will change your mind.” Sam pushed the legal pad in my direction.
At the very top of the sheet written in all caps: JAVIER MACONDO, and then a list with: name, address, date of birth, country of birth, and names of the characters witnesses, mother, Julissa, and old neighborhood futbol coach. Mami’s name was circled, Eugenia. The word PRIORS: assault, assault with a weapon, and possession of marijuana, trespassing, vandalism, and gang affiliation. NO FATHER followed by a bunch of exclamation points, an arrow pointed towards the words: MOTHER, linked by a line, circling back to my name. I thought of the list of priors, which could be written under their names. Mother: boosting, beating a minor, and choosing lousy men. Father: Criminal. Absent. I stopped wondering about my real father, when I realized who my father wasn’t.
“Fuck you Sam. I’m not going to have people feeling sorry for me.” I said between my teeth.
“I’m afraid they are going to give you the maximum sentence under the plea agreement Javier. You insisted on taking sole responsibility as part of the plea.”
It was true. When Sam came to discuss a plea, I agreed right on the spot, but with one condition. I would take full responsibility as long as my boy Pipo got less time.
“You didn’t listen to counsel during the plea agreement when I told you to take your share of the responsibility and not all of it. You had nothing to prove to Pipo.”
Pipo was my boy. He was my first real friend. We met when they sent my ass to alternative high school.
“At sentencing we can ask for the mercy of the court.” Sam insisted.
Pipo got a deal that got him three years. Neither one of us ratted his cousin. I faced more time as I had self-declared myself the mastermind. I looked at Sam. His shoulders stooped. Motherfucka acted like he was going to prison for seven to ten years not me.
“I’m guilty.” My mouth went dry and I struggled to swallow. “It was all my idea.”
But it wasn’t.
In and out, those were the words Pipo used when he described breaking into some rich white guy’s house in Long Island. According to Pipo’s cousin, who worked installing cameras in the house, the guy was not only loaded, he never activated the alarm system, and the cameras were to catch his wife with the guy next door. The fool even told Pipo’s cousin he was taking his wife away for a weekend getaway. Sucka, made it mad easy. Then it wasn’t. No one counted on a visiting family member staying over, who called the cops from an upstairs bedroom, and within minutes they forced Pipo to the ground. Then they tackled me. My face pressed in the dirt and all I thought about was my father when he got caught.
#
Whenever I asked Mami to tell me about my father, she shrugged her shoulders, pressed her lips and remained silent.
Then one day, while still living in Colombia, I asked yet again, but this time Mami pulled my ear, and asked, “if I tell you, will you stop asking about him for good? No more questions.”
I nodded yes. I would have agreed to anything, just to have a father even for a moment.
“Well you see your father is a very famous and powerful man.” Mami grinned.
“Who is he?” For a second I wondered if I was the son of Raphael Orozco.
Mami pointed to the headline of the newspaper, SE BUSCA PABLO. It was July 1992. In a little more than a year I would be in the United States, but I didn’t know this at the time. A picture of Pablo Escobar, recently escaped from the Cathedral he was holed up in, loomed at me. I studied the eyes of the most wanted man in Colombia, and searched for evidence that indeed I was his son. I held the newspaper next to his face in the cracked mirror above the bathroom sink, and finally saw the resemblance. It was their eyes, not so much the color or the shape, but how our eyes settled in the distance, searching.
A year and a half later when every noticero televised Pablo’s apprehension and murder, Mami looked over at me and said: You were a bobo to believe a man so rich and powerful could be your father. Your father was just some trafficante. He’s got caught before you were born and killed right after.
#
Pointy Feet got a serious mug. “All Rise, for the Honorable Adam Furman.”
I fixed my eyes ahead, but the rest of my senses took in everything. A trick, which kept you from being rolled on as you covered your corner.
The prosecution went first. “Javier Macondo is a life long criminal with a record as far back as his first year of high school.”
Now, I understand how fucked up that shit was. I mean a life long criminal at nineteen. But the system does that distorts the truth, making you believe shit lies, needing you to see it as truth. I already entered a plea of guilty. Bastards had to stick my face in my own shit to remind me of just that. I’m shit!
Sixteen. The age I turned when I caught my first charge, assault. Ronald was the name of the asshole that jumped me twice freshman year. I was not part of a crew and with no one to have my back I was a target. Unwilling to deal with Mami and the latest man she called her boyfriend, calling me a marica if I came home with another black eye. My mind went blank, and this time when Ronald came at me, I swung and did not stop. I was not a fag, but a beraco, all heart. At the end I gave Ronald two cracked ribs, a broken nose, and a concussion. Punk ass bitch, Ronald ratted me out, and his parents pressed charges. It was my first offense, given probation, forced into an alternative high school, with group therapy built into my schedule, along with metal detectors and gang colors. After a week at my new school I was kicking it with Latin Kings, and by the end of the first semester I was initiated. And by the start of the next school year, I dropped out, posted in a corner in Jamaica Queens first selling weed, and later the little white packets of yeyo.
The prosecution went on and on about what a low life piece shit I was. My eyes ahead, I pretended I didn’t hear the sniffles and sobs coming from J. If Mami cried she kept that shit was to herself. When it was Sam’s turn, he blabbered about how the system failed all the Javiers. Fuck you Sam! I clenched my jaw. I told Sam I would take whatever was handed my way. I wasn’t going to beg like a bitch.
Judge Furman peered at me from his glasses. “Before I impose my sentencing, does Mr. Macondo want to address the court?”
Sam looked over and nudged me.
I cleared my throat. I refused to feel like I did when I was scared little kid during los apagones in Colombia. Those blackouts went on every night for over a year, a message by La Farc. Guerilleros who knocked power lines in el centro del pais. And the rest of the country had to ration the power. A whole damn country of people sat around waiting for the lights to turn back on twice a day, all because of a rebel group. I was sick of being at the mercy of others. It felt like the same shit, but different country.
I rose as if it were someone else standing up and not me. “I’m guilty. I take full responsibility,” I told the court. Didn’t tell the court Pipo’s girl was due any day now, how three years without a father was better than ten, than a lifetime. How all the Macondo men were fatherless criminals, it was a family sentence.
Judge Furman got real serious. Put up his hands together like a priest and told me how much I would serve as part of my plea agreement. But I tuned out. “To be served in Rikers.”
Those words found me.
“Mi hijo,” Mami cried.
Julissa called my name between sobs.
“Javier, I’m sorry…” Sam said.
I looked ahead. There was not much said after that. I shoved fear away and pushed the manila envelope across the table to Sam. Six months of letters from Julissa, unopened. “Give this to her,” I said.
Bird Eye was right behind me, gripped my elbow, and re cuffed my hands to my back.
Julissa voice penetrated the muffled words of the courtroom. “Javier, look at me.”
I kept my eyes far away as if I was searching for something. I began to strut. You know that, I-don’t-give-a-fuck dip and lean.
Bird Eye beside me. Whispers. “You are cold, Macondo. That’s your kid she’s carrying, right?”
My head snapped. Julissa walked towards me. A mound of a belly I had not seen before when she was seated.
My knees buckled.
To this day I still remember Bird Eye’s smile.
NOTE: Revised from the original.
Contributor Notes
Connie Pertuz-Meza writes stories about her life, family, and ancestors. Called to action as a New York City public school teacher, and mother of a teenaged daughter and middle-school aged son. Currently working on a semi-autobiographical YA novel. Documenting her life through personal essay on her blog, CONNIEPERTUZMEZA.WORDPRESS.COM. Staff writer for Hispanecdotes.com, a monthly online literary magazine.
Writing published by The Rumpus, Longreads, Narratively Memoir Monday, Medium/Heinemann, Accentos Review, MUTHA magazine, La Pluma y La Tinta's Peinate Anthology, La Pluma y La Tinta Emerging Voices Anthology. Forthcoming essay in Latina Outsiders: Remaking Latina Identity Anthology and 2017 Brooklyn Non-Fiction Prize Finalist and Honorable Mention. A two-time VONA/Voices fiction fellow (2015 and 2017), participant of Christina Garcia's Las Dos Brujas (2017), fellowship at the Cullman Teaching Institute with Salvatore Scibona (2017), Tin House Craft Intensive participant (2017 and 2018) and a two-time Kweli fellow (2017 and 2018). Member of M. Colleen Cruz’s writing group for teachers who write, based in Brooklyn since 2004.
