“It’s your job, mija.”
She muscled the chair around. “What do I get for it?” she said.
He smiled slightly but never opened his eyes. “You get all the money,” he said.
“Ooh. Is there a lot?”
“Sure, mija. Fifty, sixty dollars.”
Little Angel and Perla watched them roll inside.
“Ay Diosito lindo,” Perla said.
* * *
Little Angel found a dapper Caucasian in khaki Dockers and a crisp denim work shirt helping himself to a cup of his cardboard box of Colombian blonde roast. That’s my coffee, Little Angel thought. But there wasn’t any time to ponder it—a wave of Mexicans swept the kitchen clean, carrying its inhabitants out into the drizzle that had begun to sift upon the DJ spinning Nortec Collective Tijuana mariachi techno. “Tijuana makes me happy,” the song repeated. Kids and MaryLú danced on the damp grass with leftover funeral umbrellas and newspapers over their heads.
Paz stood before the spaghetti and KFC mounds with a look of utter disdain. She wore a platinum-blond wig cut in an Audrey Hepburn bob.
“Yeesus Krites,” she said to him, scowling. “Food for peasants. Jimbo food. We have better food in Mexico City.” She looked Little Angel up and down. “Food for gordos.” You could tell she hated fat people by the way she poured disgust into every trilled r in the word. Gor-r-r-r-r-dos! She looked over at Perla. “Oye, tú. No hay cauliflower?” she demanded in Spanish: coliflor. “Carrots? Celery?” She tapped her toe in irritation.
The DJ suddenly unleashed a mash-up of “Bootylicious” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” He said into his mike: “Smells like teen booty!”
“Qué es eso?” Paz said.
She dismissed the entire food table. “Nada bueno. Nothing. I thought so,” she told Little Angel.
He sat with her at one of the tables dangerously proximate to Tío Jimbo’s encampment.
“Dirty viejo,” she muttered.
Jimbo had his arm around the neck of Rodney, the African American college cousin. “What kind of a name is Rodney for a black guy? You named after Rodney King?” Jimbo was asking. Rodney rolled his eyes at Little Angel and withstood this storm of whiteness. Little Angel remembered why he didn’t come to family gatherings.
Paz was wearing only about six or seven pounds of gold and jewels. She caught Little Angel eyeing her tennis bracelets. She shook her wrist in his face. “You like?” Having rejected the eats, she sipped an unsweetened glass of sun tea.
Little Angel observed the coffee thief in his impeccable work shirt looming over Tío Jimbo, saying, “Are you some kind of fascist?”
He watched his family dance and wished he hadn’t come.
* * *
MaryLú was breathing heavily when she sat with them. She took the seat on the other side of Little Angel, as far as she could get from Pazuzu. Her face was glistening with sweat.
“You are sitting together?” she panted, carefully ignoring Paz.
“Qué nice,” Paz condescended. “You got some exercise.”
“I could get lipo like you,” MaryLú said. “How do you like the Botox?”
“I like it more than I like a saggy face, cabrona.”
They stared at the dancers as if this vista were utterly compelling.
“You got Botox?” Little Angel said.
“Don’t be an ass.”
“It cost her fifty dollars in Tijuana,” MaryLú told him.
“You should try it,” Paz shot back. “You could almost afford it. Maybe Leo can give you some money. He still does, doesn’t he?”
They breathed heavily. Little Angel sat between them like a steer trapped in a branding pen, just waiting for the burning to be over.
Finally, Paz said: “All you poor border peasants, feeling sorry for yourselves.”
“We are fine, thank you,” MaryLú said.
“Eating welfare food.”
Little Angel was reduced to looking across to Tío Jimbo for help, but Jimbo was busy flipping the bird at the Anglo Coffee Imperialist.
Paz took a sip of her tea. “It’s embarrassing,” she said.
“Come on,” Little Angel finally said. “Lighten up.”
Paz stared at him. “Really?” she said.
Her head hadn’t started rotating yet, so he felt he had a minute or so to make his point.
“You live where,” she said. “Alaska?”
“Seattle.”
“Uy-uy-uy! You really are a white boy. Everything you ever wanted.” Ju eber want. “How long since you went to Tijuana?” To his silence, she replied, “I thought so.” She drained her tea. “It is too much to hope you ever went to Mexico City.”
“Yeesus!” MaryLú said. “Otra vez con ‘Mexico Ceety.’”
“You and your mommy. Gringos.” It was almost as bad as gordos.
Little Angel saw that his brother had returned and took the coward’s way out and escaped. He hurried over to Big Angel, put his hand on his shoulder, and said, “Carnal, who is that guy fighting with Tío Jimbo?”
Big Angel said, “That’s Dave. He always fights with Jimbo. It’s a family tradition. They like it.”
“Oh,” said Little Angel.
* * *
The Satanic Hispanic had stolen some hair spray from Perla’s bathroom and re-lifted his coif to its preferred stellar heights. He sat with Pato, who was working on his fourth platter of party grub. His face was purple and his cheeks distended, and he crammed some more Wonder Bread with butter in there.
“Gmmf,” Pato said, chewing lustily. “Grnnf.”
“Right on, Dad,” he said. He was scanning the crowd, then did a double take. Who was that? He turned to watch her. Damn. “Check out that chick,” he said.
César was always ready to (a) eat and (b) check out that chick. He craned around. “Gwabbin,” he quacked through his food.
“Right?” Marco jumped up and waved Lalo over.
“You better check your hair, puppet!” Lalo said.
“Who’s that chick?” Marco asked.
“What chick? A million chicks here, dog.”
Marco pointed with his chin and his lips.
Lalo scoped her. She was pale and slender and had a long neck and absolutely pitch-black shades and a black Kangol turned backward to make a beret. She was smoking an electric cigarette.
“She’s like French or something,” Lalo said.
“How you know that?”
“Beret, homie.”
They nodded knowingly.
“Dude, I’m in love. She ain’t my cousin or nothin’?”
Lalo shrugged. “Ain’t everybody here your cuz? But I don’t recognize her. So she can’t be no first cousin. She’s a kissin’ cousin, probly. Second cousin, like. You could marry her. Swoop on her. I will if you don’t.”
Marco unleashed the Cookie Monster: “SHE SHALL BE MINE.”
Lalo said, “You sound like a chud,” and walked away.
Lalo strode to Little Angel, across the yard, slung an arm around his shoulder, and said, “Yo, Tío, I want you to meet somebody.” He reached out and grabbed a short young woman standing with a group of kids nearby. Her hair was purple in the back. “Tío,” he said. “This is my girl.”
“Your—?”
“My daughter, G.”
“Oh!” Little Angel put out his hand. “How do you do?” he said.
“How do you do?” she said back. “My name is Mayra.” She took his hand.
“That’s your tío, Little Angel.”
“But of course.”
“Mayra’s ladylike,” Lalo boasted. “She’s gonna be like a famous author and shit.”
“Ojalá,” she said.
“She’s gonna be a big deal in this world, Tío. No thanks to me.”
She headed over to hug Big Angel in his chair.
“Hey!” Lalo called. “Don’t be no teen mom!”
“I’m almost twenty,” she called back.
Lalo put his hand over his eyes. “Only good thing I ev
er done. At least I done one thing right.”
Little Angel looked away to allow him his moment. He gave his nephew a one-armed hug.
* * *
a new car—I never had one
good music—NOT rock and roll
spanish!—how could I forget??
banana slices in fideo soup (lots of lime juice)
la Minnie!!!
mi familia
The mist had burned off, though clouds still furrowed their portentous brows. Big Angel sat in the shade, receiving gifts and benedictions and hugs and hand kisses. He heard a demon roar behind him and twisted around, but all he saw was his nephew Marco. They waved at each other.
Little Angel came and sat at his brother’s side. He watched people take a knee before Big Angel’s wheelchair and murmur gratitude. Guys with jobs thanked him. Women getting their GEDs. Young couples.
A grizzled veterano came forward and removed his porkpie hat. “When I got out of Folsom,” he said, “you took me in and fed me. Nobody else even wanted to see my face. Now I’m doing good. So thank you.”
“Claro.”
Big Angel turned to Little Angel and said, “Carnal, rocks remember when they were mountains.”
They stared at the rocks in the garden.
“And what do mountains remember?”
“When they were ocean floors.”
Big Angel, Zen master.
A woman stood before Big Angel’s chair, held one of his hands in both of hers, and reminded him that he had paid bail for her son one year, and now that son was a manager at a Red Lobster.
“Carnal,” Little Angel said. “This is like The Godfather.”
Big Angel smiled and laid a hand on Little Angel’s knee.
“You’re like Don Corleone,” Little Angel said.
“I am Don Corleone.” And he gave his hand over to be fondled and kissed by strangers.
Then Jimbo stepped up. As if sent as a rebuke. He handed Big Angel a foot-long cigar. “Try that,” he said.
“No!” Perla called. “Yeem! Cancer!”
“Why not?” said Tío Jimbo, his mead buzz lifting him to Asgardian realms. “What can it hurt? Celebrate freakin’ gay marriage. You’re all libs, right? You’re gonna die anyway. Live it up.”
Big Angel hated boorish behavior. “By golly,” he said, turning his face away.
Suddenly, Dave the coffee burglar swept in and spun Big Angel’s chair away from Jimbo, saying, “You’re so rude, my friend. You have learned no social graces at all from your Latino family.” He wheeled Big Angel toward the pizza boxes; all the pizzas were gone.
“You got no idea what I learned,” said Jimbo. “You don’t know one thing.” He extended the cigar to Little Angel. “You want it?” he said.
Little Angel just stared at it.
* * *
People scattered when Pazuzu came into the yard from the kitchen. They could see the tequila buzz upon her like some electric halo of doom.
“Get out of my way,” she said, and they did.
She had changed into party clothes. Her dress was a skintight orange one-piece apparently made of T-shirt material. She wore knee-high boots. She was working her backside like a rumba dancer as she marched.
“Like two potatoes stuffed in a sock,” MaryLú said.
Paz stopped on the concrete apron of the porch and stared at them all. Her eyes looked bloodshot, though Little Angel was fully willing to own the fact that he was attaching occult terror to her presence. She turned those eyes on him and raised her lip in distaste. Leo could be seen absconding behind the backyard shed. Coward.
She mouthed Y tú qué? at Little Angel.
“Nada,” he said back. Maybe she wouldn’t kick his ankles.
Paz strode to poor Pato’s table and sat beside him. Little Angel watched his brother’s lips say, Mi amor. She sank her nails into his left thigh. They tongued.
“Ew,” MaryLú opined.
Lalo was sitting beside his dad when Little Angel went back to check on him.
“Pops,” a voice behind them said.
“Yes?” said Big Angel.
“Yeah?” said Lalo.
They all turned around.
It was Lalo’s son, Giovanni. Little Angel couldn’t believe it. The boy had been a mere pup the last time he saw him. He had to be what? Twenty-three now? He was physically small, dark, and ferocious, with tats on his arms and neck and a flat-brim baseball cap set at a quarter angle on his head. Dodgers. Los Doyyers. Gold chains, gold gauges in his ears, a gold grill spelling PLAYA on his front teeth.
Gio had two dirty-blond white girls in tow. They looked alike, though one looked like a better-fed version of the other. They wore identical, impossibly small cutoffs. White, or denim faded almost white, and very thin; shaggy stray fibers peeked out from the shadows beneath their buttocks. One of them had a stain on what there was of her back pocket. They were already bopping and bouncing to the music. Holding their hands up and mouthing lyrics like the Supremes.
Gio high-fived Lalo. “I saw the dude about the thing,” he said.
“And the thing be all, you know?” Lalo said.
“It’s tight, yeah.”
“I don’t need this, Son. And you barely even knew your uncle.”
“I got you. But, Pops, I’ve been on this shit forever. I wasn’t gonna let it go. Now we got to deal with.” Gio patted his side. He lifted his shirt and flashed the grip of Lalo’s own .22 poking out of his waistband.
“You been in my stuff?” Lalo said.
“Call of duty, ol’ man.”
Little Angel didn’t understand this conversation but knew it was nothing good. When the pistol appeared as if in a magic trick, he felt ice down his spine. Then it was gone so fast, he wasn’t sure he’d seen anything.
They got all shady and surreptitious all of a sudden, heads down, hiding shadowy eyes.
“You good?” Gio said.
Lalo was shaking his head.
“Got to do what you got to do, Pops.”
They walked away in a top-secret confab.
Little Angel watched them. Not this again, he said in silent prayer.
Minnie sidled up to him. “Crazy family, huh, Tío?”
“Not used to it,” he said.
Little Angel decided to say nothing about what he had just seen.
Gio came back, leaned down to Big Angel, and gave him a cautious hug about the shoulders. “Mad props, Grandpa,” he said.
“Gracias, mijo.”
Gio set a small wrapped object on the stack of small wrapped objects piled up beside Big Angel.
“Brought you sompin. Happy birfday.”
Behind him, Lalo was bouncing on the balls of his feet. “What you staring at, Mouse?”
“You high?”
“I ain’t shit. Check yourself, puppet.”
“Hungry Man,” she warned.
“You don’t know nothing,” he said. “I don’t got no problem. How many times I told you?” He was suddenly all sweaty. “You try this leg out, see how you like it.”
This silenced her.
“Gio! Let’s get gone,” he said. “Leave the ho’s.” He tipped his head dismissively at the white girls.
Minnie wadded up a napkin and bounced it off Lalo’s head. “So rude!” she said to his receding back. Then she turned back to Little Angel. “Say hi to these trailer-park girls.”
The girls offered blankly pleasant expressions.
“Talk about rude,” Little Angel said.
“Oh?” Minnie replied. “I’m rude? Girls, where y’all live at?”
“We live at the Twin Oaks trailer park over to Imperial Beach,” the chubby one said. “With all the Mexicans.”
“I ain’t rude,” Minnie said, walking away.
* * *
Before he could apologize to Minnie, the chubby white girl said, “My name’s Velvette? Rhymes with ‘Corvette’? My sister’s named Neala? Don’t rhyme with nothin’.”
She made everything a quest
ion, like poets do when they decant in poet voice.
“They call me Keychain,” Neala said.
“That’s interesting,” Little Angel replied.
“On account of my teeth’s crooked and they say I could open a beer bottle with my mouth, like a can opener.”
Little Angel stood there for a moment. He felt inexplicable love for these two waifs.
* * *
Little Angel’s notebook was getting full. He drew a Lalo page—a sad, drooping flower. On one side, a swirling bunch of dark bats. Gio. Off to the other side, on a facing page, one small hummingbird. Mayra. He felt overwhelming sorrow. His tenderness enveloped all the many pages of lines and scribbles.
* * *
2:00 p.m.
Now that it was afternoon, the sun broke through the clouds in dazzling avalanches of light.
The Satanic Hispanic watched the French Girl and felt nervous. He couldn’t think of an opening comment, an icebreaker, some suave shit to dazzle her. Damn it. He’d started toward her a couple of times but wussed out and rambled back to Pato and Pazuzu. He was pretty sure she was watching him back, though her dark glasses didn’t turn his way or anything. But for sure her eyes did. He thought she half smiled one time.
Pato sent a message to Manila on his phone: DO YOU HAVE ANY PICTURES THAT SHOW YOUR LEGS?
Marco sat by his dad and smacked his head with his palm. Loser. Why was it always like this?
The DJ was back—he was playing some wack oompa-oompa tuba Sinaloa narco music. People were dancing some Mexican thing that looked like galloping horses. He hated this Chapo bullshit. And he hated their dancing. He’d never been to a prom. Dude—he’d formed Satanic Hispanic so the chicks would talk to him, but only guys ever came to see them. Boys in black Misfits tees throwing up devil signs and banging their heads and moshing. Bloody noses, but no tasty ladies. Now this. The world’s foxiest fox sitting right there, bored. Scoping him out. He rubbed his hands on his black jeans. Sweaty palms. Great.
He got himself up and maneuvered through the army of cousins in his way and stood before her and grinned.
She stared straight ahead and took a steam hit, blew vapors in his direction.
“Hi!” he said.
She paused. Smiled vaguely. “Hi?”
“I’m Marco!” he shouted, holding out his hand.