Richard Lange - Sweet Nothing

“So that talk today was for nothing?” I say.

My yelling wakes Lorena, and she finds me standing over Brianna, who is cowering on the couch.

“Let her up,” Lorena says.

She won’t listen as I try to explain what happened, how frightened I was when I heard voices in the dark. She just grabs Brianna and drags her back to their room.

I wind up drinking coffee at the kitchen table until it’s time to get ready for work. Lorena comes out as I’m about to leave for the bus. She says that the boy from Brianna’s school came to see her again, and she was right in the middle of telling him to go away when I came in. She says we’re going to forget the whole thing, let it lie.

“I want to show that I trust her,” she says.

“Okay,” I say.

“Just treat her like normal.”

“I will.”

“She’s a good girl, Mom.”

“I know.”

They’ve beaten the fire out of me. If all they want is a cook and a cleaning lady, fine.

MY STOMACH HURTS during the ride to work, and I feel feverish. Resting my forehead against the cool glass of the window, I take deep breaths and tell myself it’s nothing, just too much coffee. It’s still dark outside, the streets empty, the stores locked tight. Like everyone gave up and ran away and I’m the last to know. I smell smoke when I get off at the hospital. Sirens shriek in the distance.

Irma is fixing her hair in the locker room.

“You don’t look so good,” she says.

“Maybe it’s something I ate,” I reply.

She gives me a Pepto-Bismol tablet from her purse, and we tie our aprons and walk to the kitchen. One of the boys has cornered a mouse in there, back by the pantry, and pinned it to the floor with a broom. Everybody moves in close, chattering excitedly.

“Step on it,” somebody says.

“Drown it,” someone else suggests.

“No! ¡No mate el pobrecito!” Josefina wails, trembling fingers raised to her lips. Don’t kill the poor little thing. She’s about to burst into tears.

The boy with the broom glances at her, then tells one of the dishwashers to bring a bucket. He and the dishwasher turn the bucket upside down and manage to trap the mouse beneath it. They slide a scrap of cardboard across the opening and flip the bucket. The mouse cowers in the bottom, shitting all over itself. The boys free it on the construction site next door, and we get to work.

I do okay until about eight, until the room starts spinning and I almost pass out in the middle of serving Dr. Alvarez his oatmeal. My stomach cramps, my mouth fills with spit, and I whisper to Irma to take my place on the line before I run to the bathroom and throw up.

Maple, our supervisor, is waiting when I return to the cafeteria. She’s a twitchy black lady with a bad temper.

“Go home,” she says.

“I’m okay,” I reply. “I feel better.”

“You hang around, you’re just going to infect everybody else. Go home.”

It’s frustrating. I’ve only called in sick three times in my twenty-seven years here. Maple won’t budge, though. I take off my gloves and apron, get my purse from my locker.

My stomach bucks again at the bus stop, and I vomit into the gutter. A bunch of kids driving by honk their horn and laugh at me. The ride home takes forever. The traffic signals are messed up for blocks, blinking red, and the buildings shimmer in the heat like I’m dreaming them.

I STOP AT the store for bread and milk when I get off the bus. Not the Smart & Final, but the little tienda on the corner. The Sanchezes owned it forever, but now it’s Koreans. They’re okay. The old lady at the register always smiles and says “Gracias” when she gives me my change. Her son is out front, painting over fresh graffiti. Temple Street tags the place every night, and he cleans it up every day.

A girl carrying a baby blocks my path. She holds out her hand and asks me in Spanish for money, her voice a raspy whisper. The baby is sick, she says, needs medicine. She’s not much older than Brianna and won’t look me in the eye.

“Whatever you can spare,” she says. “Please.”

“Where do you live?” I ask.

She glances nervously over her shoulder. A boy a little older than her pokes his head out from behind a tree, watching us. Maria, from two blocks over, told me the other day how a girl with a baby came to her door, asking for money. The girl said she was going to faint, so Maria let her inside to rest on the couch while she went to the bathroom to get some Huggies her daughter had left behind. When she came back, the girl was gone, and so was Maria’s purse.

My chest feels like a bird is loose inside it.

“I don’t have anything,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

“My baby is going to die,” the girl says. “Please, a dollar. Two.”

I push past her and hurry away. When I reach the corner, I look back and see her and the boy staring at me with hard faces.

The sidewalk on my street has buckled from all the tree roots pushing up underneath it. The slabs tilt at odd angles, and I go over them faster than I should while carrying groceries. If I’m not careful, I’m going to fall and break my neck. I’m going to get exactly what I deserve.

BRIANNA’S EYES OPEN wide when I step through the door. A boy is lying on top of her on the couch. Puppet.

“Get away from her!” I yell. I mean it to be a roar, but it comes out like an old woman’s dying gasp.

He stands quickly, pulls up his pants, and grabs his shirt off the floor. Brianna yanks a blanket over her naked body. As he walks out, Puppet sneers at me. He’s so close I can feel heat coming off him. I slam the door and twist the dead bolt.

IT WAS ONE month after my fifteenth birthday, and all everybody was talking about was a party some kid was throwing at his house while his parents were in Mexico for a funeral. Carmen and Cindy said, “You’ve got to go. We’ll sneak out together.” Stupid stuff, teenagers being teenagers. “You tell your mom you’re staying at my house, and I’ll tell mine I’m staying at yours.” We were actually shocked that it worked, to find ourselves out on the streets on a Saturday night.

The crowd at the party was a little older than we were, a little rougher. Lots of gangbangers and their girlfriends, kids who didn’t go to our school. Carmen and Cindy were meeting boys there and soon disappeared, leaving me standing by myself in the kitchen.

One of the vatos came up and started talking to me. He said his name was Smiley and that he was in White Fence, the gang in that neighborhood. Boys were always claiming to be down with this clique or that, and most of them were full of it. Smiley seemed like he was full of it. He was so tiny and so cute.

Things move fast when you’re that age, when you’re drinking rum and you’ve never drunk rum before, when you’re smoking weed and you’ve never smoked weed before. Pretty soon we were kissing right there in front of everybody, me sitting on the counter, Smiley standing between my legs. I was so high I got his tongue mixed up with mine. Someone laughed, and the sound bounced around inside my head like a rubber ball.

Following Smiley into the bedroom was my mistake. I should have said no. Lying down on the mattress, letting him peel off my T-shirt, letting him put his hand inside my pants — I take the blame for all that too. But everything else is on him and the others. Forever, like a brand. I was barely fifteen years old, for God’s sake. I was drunk. I was stupid.

“Stop,” I hissed, but Smiley kept going.

I tried to sit up, and he forced me back down. He put his hand on my throat and squeezed.

“Just fucking relax,” he said.

I let myself go limp. I gave in because I thought he’d kill me if I didn’t. He seemed that crazy, choking me, pulling my hair. Two of his homeys came in while he was going at it. I hoped for half a second they were there to save me. Instead, when Smiley was finished, they did their thing too, took turns grinding away on a scared little girl, murdering some part of her that she mourns to this day.