Richard Lange - Sweet Nothing

Manuel was five years older than me. I met him at a party at my cousin’s when I was fifteen. He’d only been in the U.S. for a few years, and his idea of dressing up was still boots and a cowboy hat. Not my type at all. I was into lowriders, pendejos with hot cars. But Manuel was so sweet to me, and polite in a way the East L.A. boys weren’t. He bought me flowers, called twice a day. And after my parents met him, forget it. He went to Mass, he could rebuild the engine in any car, and he was already working at the brewery, making real money: they practically handed me over to him right there.

Our plan was that we’d marry when I graduated, but I ended up pregnant at the end of my junior year. Everything got moved up then, and I never went back to school. My parents were upset, but they couldn’t say much because the same thing had happened to them. It all worked out fine, though. Manuel was a good husband, our kids were healthy, and we had a nice life together. Sometimes you get lucky.

I DO THE dishes after dinner, then join the girls in the living room. The TV is going, but nobody’s paying attention. Lorena is on her laptop, and Brianna is texting on her phone. They don’t look up from punching buttons when I sit in my recliner. I watch a woman try to win a million dollars. The audience groans when she gives the wrong answer.

I can’t sit still. My brain won’t slow down, thinking about Antonio and Puppet, thinking about Lorena and Brianna, so I decide to make my rounds a little early. I can’t get to sleep if I haven’t rattled the lock on the garage door, latched the gate, and watered my flowers. Manuel called it “walking the perimeter.”

“Sarge is walking the perimeter,” he’d say.

The heat has broken when I step out into the front yard. The sun is low in the sky, and little birds chase one another from palm tree to palm tree, twittering excitedly. Usually, you can’t hear them over the kids playing, but since the shooting, everybody is keeping their children inside.

I drag the hose over to the roses growing next to the chain-link fence that separates the yard from the sidewalk. They’re blooming like mad in this heat. The white ones, the yellow, the red. I lay the hose at the base of the bushes and turn the water on low, so the roots get a good soaking.

Rudolfo is still at work in his shop. His saw whines, and then comes the bang bang bang of a hammer. I haven’t been over to see him in a while. Maybe I’ll take him some spaghetti.

I wash my face and put on a little makeup. Lipstick, eyeliner; nothing fancy. Perfume. I change out of my housedress into jeans and a nice top. My stomach does a flip as I’m dressing. I guess you could say I’ve got a thing for Rudolfo, but I think he likes me too, the way he smiles. And for my birthday last year he gave me a jewelry box that he made. Back in the kitchen, I dig out some good Tupperware to carry the spaghetti in.

Rudolfo’s dog, Oso, a big shaggy mutt, barks as I come down the driveway.

“Cállate, hombre,” Rudolfo says.

I walk to the door of the shop and stand there silently, watching Rudolfo sand a rough board smooth. He makes furniture — simple, sturdy tables, chairs, and wardrobes — and sells it to rich people from Pasadena and Beverly Hills. The furniture is nice, but awfully plain. I’d think a rich woman would want something fancier than a table that looks like it belongs in a farmhouse.

“Knock-knock,” I finally say.

Rudolfo grins when he looks up and sees me standing there.

“ Hola, Blanca.”

I move into the doorway but still don’t step through. Some men are funny. You’re intruding if you’re not invited.

“Come in, come in,” Rudolfo says. He takes off his glasses and cleans them with a red bandanna. He’s from El Salvador, and so handsome with that Indian nose and his silver hair combed straight back. “Sorry for sawing so late, but I’m finishing an order. That was the last little piece.”

“I just came by to bring you some spaghetti,” I say. “I made too much again.”

“Oh, hey, gracias. Pásale. ”

He motions for me to enter and wipes the sawdust off a stool with his bandanna. I sit and look around the shop. It’s so organized, the lumber stacked neatly by size, the tools in their special places. This used to crack Manuel up. He called Rudolfo the Librarian. The two of them got along fine but were never really friends. Too busy, I guess, both working all the time.

Rudolfo takes the spaghetti from me and says, “Did that cop stop by your house today?”

“The bald one?” I say.

“He told me he’s sure someone saw who killed that baby.”

Someone who’s just as bad as the killer. I know. I run my finger over a hammer sitting on the workbench. If this is what he wants to talk about, I’m going to leave.

“Are things getting crazier,” Rudolfo continues, “or does it just seem that way?”

“I ask myself that all the time,” I reply.

“I’m starting to think more like mi abuelo every day,” he says. “You know what he’d say about what happened to that baby? ‘Bring me the rope, and I’ll hang the bastard who did it myself.’”

I stand and brush off my pants.

“Enjoy the spaghetti,” I say. “I’ve got to get back.”

“So soon?”

“I wake up at two thirty to be at the hospital by four.”

“Let me walk you out.”

“No, no, finish what you were doing.”

Puppet and his homeys are hanging on the corner when I get out to the street. Puppet is leaning on a car that’s blasting music, that boom boom fuck fuck crap. He’s wearing a white T-shirt, baggy black shorts that hang past his knees, white socks pulled all the way up, and a pair of corduroy house shoes. The same stuff cholos have been wearing since I was a kid. His head is shaved, and there’s a tattoo on the side of it: Temple Street.

I knew his mom before she went to prison; I even babysat him a couple times when he was young. He went bad at ten or eleven, stopped listening to the grandma who was raising him and started running with thugs. The boys around here slip away like that again and again. He stares at me now like, What do you have to say? Like he’s reminding me to be scared of him.

Baby killer, I should shout back. You ain’t shit. I should have shut the door in that detective’s face too. I’ve got to be smarter from now on.

I HAVEN’T BEEN sleeping well. It’s the heat, sure, but I’ve also been dreaming of little Antonio. He comes tonight as an angel, floating above my bed, up near the ceiling. He makes his own light, a golden glow that shows everything for what it is. But I don’t want to see. I swat at him once, twice, knock him to the floor. His light flickers, and the darkness comes rushing back.

My pillow is soaked with sweat when I wake up. It’s guilt that gives you dreams like that. Prisoners go crazy from it, rattle the doors of their cells and scream out confessions. Anything, anything to get some peace. I look at the clock, and it’s past midnight. The sound of a train whistle drifts over from the tracks downtown. I have to be up in two hours.

I pull on my robe to go into the kitchen for a glass of milk. Lorena is snoring quietly, and I close her door as I pass by. Then there’s another sound. Whispers. Coming from the living room. The girls left something unlocked, and now we’re being robbed. That’s my first thought, and it stops the blood in my veins. But then there’s a familiar giggle, and I peek around the corner to see Brianna standing in front of a window, her arms reaching through the bars to touch someone — it’s too dark to say who — out in the yard.

I step into the room and snap on the light. Brianna turns, startled, and the shadow outside disappears. I hurry to the front door, open it, but there’s no one out there now except a bum pushing a grocery cart filled with cans and newspapers down the middle of the street. Brianna is in tears when I go back inside, and I’m shaking all over, I’m so angry.