I selected JP Infante because he has a dynamic and refreshing literary voice. So many things happen in this short story, Bagging Weight, but what comes across most brilliantly is JP’s love for his characters. The author deftly twists and turns the narrative with such deep honesty and introspection, a reader can’t help but feel a part of this world rather than just someone on the outside looking into it. — Jacqueline Woodson

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Roman says I defend Nereyda like she’s my moms or something. All cause I told him not to call her a bitch. I scoop and pour steady, not one molecule misses the stamped baggies. Across the glass table, Roman stamps empty baggies. I’m wearing my headphones half off like a DJ, half listening when Roman says he’s only “looking out” for me.

“Thank God you dumped her,” says Roman. “Children Services. Cop shit.” 

He doesn’t know Nereyda got fired from Children Services. And I don’t tell him because he’s a hater. He can’t believe I bagged a 27-year-old professional, bad, thick chick. Roman swallowed his thirst for Nereyda the first time he saw her, and it got stuck somewhere in his guts. Now, he can’t hold it in or let it out. He reminds me that Nereyda is older than me. And says New Jersey chicks like Nereyda cross the George Washington Bridge only to bag men on Dyckman. According to Roman, everything about Nereyda makes her a hoe. Her nails are long, pointy and colorful; she’s a hoe. She wears throwback jersey dresses like Mya in the “Best of Me” video; she’s a hoe. She doesn’t want a serious relationship with me; she’s a hoe. She doesn’t see herself as a mother in the future; she’s a hoe. She parallel parks her 2001 burgundy Toyota Sienna on one try; she’s a hoe. Roman hasn’t stopped complaining about her since I told him we broke up. My mistake was opening up to him.

“That scar under your eye ain’t tryna heal?”

“It’s healing. It will go away.”

“How you fall on your face popping a wheelie?” He asks me this like he’s trying to catch me in a lie.

The studio apartment we’re in is freezing cold. The AC is on full blast so the work doesn’t go bad. The smell of fried chicken is stuck inside with both fire escape windows closed. The lightbulb is daylight bright, bluish like noon on a cloudless day, and reflects on the cold, glass table like the sun. The light shines off the fingerprints I missed from my hand lotion. I wipe them with a napkin. Roman’s grease fingerprints from Popeyes are all over his side of the table. I told him to be careful. I told him to clean it minutes ago and he said: “Calm down.”

“It’s fucking cold,” I say and slam my fists on the table and the 250 grams of heroin crumbles, looking like the popcorn ceiling up above.

“You want me to turn down the AC?” asks Roman, who wears an AND1 black hoodie.

“I’m good. I want you to clean that grease,” I say. I’m in an XXL white-t shirt.

“Calm down, Nino.”

Roman smiles and keeps stamping. He doesn’t know the night of Larry’s funeral I was in a telly with Nereyda. If he knew, he’d tell the whole Heights I was a sucka-for-love. He’s a talker, telling chicks he deals weight like a boss when he only bags up. He can’t shut the fuck up whenever we bagging up. He keeps going, talking about Larry got shot cause he had a gun, but everyone knows that’s 34th precinct propaganda. I tell him he keeps talking about that innocent kid like that, we gonna have problems so he changes the subject back to Nereyda.

My cell vibrates. 

“Hello?”

“Nino, how are you?” asks Nereyda on the other side of the cell. She used to ask, “Como estas?” but that was before.

“I’m aight. You?” I make sure not to sound cold or nervous. I control my breathing and look at Roman as he stamps the baggies. 

“I need you to pick Ray-Ray up from Tia Dulce.” She clears her throat waiting for me to say something. “And take him home and wait until Mary gets home.”

Roman raises his head and chin, sticks out his lips while looking at me, asking who I’m talking with.

“OK, I got you,” I say. I can’t tell her, No, because I would have to explain and Roman would know I’m talking to her. I want to tell her to figure her own shit out. I want to tell her that me and her are dead because she killed us. But Roman asks, “Who?” without a sound, across the table.  

“It’s not for me,” says Nereyda, “it’s for Mary and Ray-Ray. Sorry to bother.”

“Can we talk about that talk we had?”

“Let me think about it. Thank you, Nino.”

“You’re welcome.”

I put my cell down. 

The AC’s hum takes over the studio apartment. Roman stamps baggies with VON DUTCH, a thump for every second it takes for me to say something. I fill up my baggies. Quick and in control. 

“Who was on the phone?” asks Roman.

“My moms.”

“Your moms speaks English?”

“She understands it.”

“I saw Nereyda’s new man on her aunt’s block. He looks gay and broke. Big curly hair.” Roman looks at the baggies while he talks.

“Don’t matter to me. Me and Nereyda are dead.”

“How did you dump her?”

“I told her it was dead.”

“You lying.”

“You think she dumped me?”

“No, I think you still with her even though she’s no good for you.”

“Why you hate on her so much?”

“Because you lost weight since you got with her. You look sad.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Bro, I heard you were with her the night of Larry’s funeral. I didn’t believe it at first, but now I think you missed the funeral to fuck some…some woman who is not in love with you. That was Nereyda on the phone?”

“That was my mother.”

Roman stops stamping, looks at me and says, “I heard a woman talking English.”

“You got hearing problems.”

“Bro, you don’t gotta lie to me.”

“I said you got hearing problems.”

“You can’t turn a hoe into a housewife.”

“Wipe the grease off the table.”

“What?” asks Roman.

“Wipe the grease,” I repeat and stand up and walk to his side of the table.

“Nino, calm down. It ain’t even that serious.”

“Wipe the grease.”

Roman takes a napkin and wipes his fingerprints off the table. 

Nereyda and I ain’t together no more. I know that, but we were never really together if you think about it. We just fucked around until the night of the hotel when shit got weird. She called me the morning of Larry’s funeral. We met at Mamajuanas on Dyckman. She kissed me on the cheek and asked about my blackeye. From Dyckman to one-six-eight, through Fort Tryon and The Cloisters, we talked about my pops sucka-punching me. She said not all rumors are true, but she don’t know my pops. She was talking when we passed by the altar for Larry in front of her aunt’s building, but I ain’t say nothing. We stopped at J. Hood Wright Park and stared at the George Washington Bridge. We watched the sun sink like a dope fiend nods off, disappearing behind buildings on the other side of the bridge. 

When we pulled up in front of the telly the night before I told her I only had cash and no ID. The 34th Precinct had my ID after they ran up on us on St. Nicholas for no reason. A devil said he’d take my wallet if I kept talking back and the devil kept his word. But Nereyda ain’t sweat that I ain’t have an ID. She took my cash and paid the hotel with her card. I did the math in my head without showing it on my face. I got cottonmouth from the thinking. I was thirsty. Before going to our room we hung out at the bar with a couple. The two white men were in their 40s. They were high school teachers in Jersey and looked like twins with the same beard and rocked the same black blazer. They joked and demanded everyone show their ID. Everyone pulled out their IDs, including Nereyda. I didn’t know how to tell them about all the shit the 34th precinct has done to me. I said she’s robbing the cradle and one of them gave me a high five. That’s when Nereyda said both men looked like the father in The Hand that Rocks the Cradle. Once the men remembered the movie, the three of them agreed the actress who played the babysitter looked like a young Hillary Clinton. I scrolled on my cell because I didn’t know the movie. Nereyda rubbed my leg and gave me a look that made me forget I ain’t belong. That night Nereyda told me she got fired from Children Services because she lied about Mary’s home conditions and her drug use.

The morning after Larry’s funeral I woke up wearing one sock on a Jersey telly floor. Nereyda looked at the Heights across the Hudson River from the balcony. Back in the room, I told her Larry wasn’t a drug dealer like the newspapers said. She said even if he was a drug dealer the cops should’ve never shot him dead. 

Back in the Heights, old heads by the fire hydrant under the tree slammed the last domino. No chirps from the cells with walkie-talkies. Ain’t no numbers on brown paper bags being bought and sold in the back of the bodega. No whips speeding through the avenue with speakers vibrating everything it leaves behind. No tires screeching far away. No motorcycle pops. No one’s sitting on milk-crates or parked cars or doing pull ups on the DONT WALK signal. 

The hood’s been quiet since the cops shot Larry. Altars with mad candles and pictures of Larry are in front of my building, in front of Nereyda’s aunt’s building and by one-nine-one station for the 1 train. I was bagging up with Roman when it happened. We heard two shots coming from Audubon Avenue, but kept on bagging up thinking it was M80s left over from July 4th. They been out here, passing by in unmarked cars. They on rooftops looking down at the corner. If you make eye contact with them on the street, they stop and search you no matter if you’re helping moms with the groceries. They stop and molest you slow like it gets them off, gripping your balls and fingering your ass. And if you defend yourself, react to their shit, they’ll beat you for resisting arrest. It’s been dead outside, but 5-O is still out here looking for something and when they can’t find it they’ll stuff it in your pocket to find it there. 

When I found out the cops shot Larry, I thought about calling my moms to tell her I was OK. She was at work babysitting an old white man in Long Island City. She never complains about spoon feeding the old white man or wiping his ass even though when she gets home she’s so tired she doesn’t say anything to me or pops. These days when I call her all she cares about is making sure the AC and the lights ain’t on. She reminds me of the cooked food in the microwave and my washed clothes folded on my bed. Only time we have a conversation is when she’s telling me about the nightmares she has about me.

The apartment is cold and bright, like a hospital. There is no sound coming from the other rooms. 

“I don’t mind cleaning a white man’s ass if it got me out of this damn apartment,” says Nereyda’s aunt while looking out the kitchen window. 

Dulce is a big woman and looks nothing like Nereyda. She asks if my moms could hook her up with a job and then remembers that her health won’t let her work. She says the kitchen window is her favorite cause it faces St. Nicholas Avenue. Dulce can’t stop shaking her leg. She drinks from a Starbucks coffee mug. On top of the fridge are tens of Starbucks coffee bean bags and Starbucks coffee cups. No Bustelo in sight. Each time Dulce takes a pull from her extra-long Marlboro, she sprays an air freshener and coughs. The apartment smells like a mix of Clorox, Fabuloso, cigarettes, and coffee as if someone was drinking and smoking while mopping.

“The news of the cops shooting that boy didn’t come out on Univision. The TV news doesn’t want to scare them,” says Dulce. “They moving in on this side of Broadway. St. Nicholas is going to be full of them. It’s going to look like Bennett Avenue on this side.” She puts the cigarette out. “Me. My son. You. Your mother. We gonna end up in the South Bronx or East New York.”

“They mentioned Larry in the newspaper. They lied and said he sold drugs.” 

“How you know he ain’t sell?” she asks.

“I knew him,” I say. “Even if he was selling, don’t mean cops gotta shoot him.”

“You sound like Nereyda. That boy was still hanging at a spot. Why hang out with drug dealers?” 

“So the cops should’ve shot him ’cause he’s friends with dealers?” 

“It’s not a stray bullet if you’re standing next to targets. His mother forgave the cops. She was on Univision News. She said they were doing their jobs.”

“Is Ray-Ray ready?”

“Yeah, he’s in my bedroom playing that Nintendo. What happened to your face? Cat got your eye?” says Tia Dulce, holding a new cigarette with two fingers and scratching her eyebrow with her thumbnail.

“Fell off a bike.”

“Don’t pick at it. Forget about it and let it heal.” She takes a drag, exhales, and sprays the air freshener. “Nereyda made you get him,” she’s whispering now, “cause I told her I’m not helping her take care of that crackhead’s kid, and she got all mad. That girl’s family lives in a big house in Jersey and she’s in NYC looking after tecatos.”

Dulce takes out her dentures. For the first time I notice her face looks blown up. She tells me she’s recovering from a cold; but she’s actually jonesing. She has a fat face—except it ain’t round like someone who eats more than they move—but fat from methadone recovery weight, stuffed like a dead body that drowned. “My son and his boyfriend are taking a break.” She waits for me to say something. She reaches for the Marlboro box on the windowsill with half a cigarette in her hand. “They both know they’re taking a break from each other.” She smiles and shows me a subway tunnel. She kills the half Marlboro in the ashtray on the windowsill and puts her dentures back in. She looks like someone else. “You don’t have to run errands for Nereyda; she’s not your mother.” 

“It’s not for Nereyda, it’s for Mary.”

“Who is Mary?” asks Dulce.

“The boy’s mother.”

“That boy’s mother is a crackhead.”

“We all have our thing we can’t stop.”

“What you mean, like being pussy-whipped?”

“Me and her ain’t together, I’m doing it for the mother.”

“You doing it for a junky. Nereyda told me the mother takes pills.”

“I’m just helping a mother.”

“So now you care about the same people you poison.”

“I don’t sell drugs.” 

“Oh, you just hang out with drug dealers like that boy the cops shot.”

Dulce’s not your regular aunt. It feels like I’m outside on St. Nicholas Avenue about to sell to a custie. The bundle of the Von Dutch dope burns in my pocket. I’m giving them out to fiends around the way to see how they score. Dulce is a fiend, but looks like she got her shit together. She lives in a clean home and looks clean. Dulce is the best type of custie, no ups and downs. Daddy’s-money-is-always-there-type. White custies, students from Columbia or Manhattan College or the suburbs upstate or across the bridge are consistent like that. Safe. They never OD. And if they do, it’s not around the way.

Dulce says, “Nereyda lost her ACS job because of that boy, but she’s still helping that mother out. That boy popped up in my apartment looking for Nereyda today, not knowing where his mother was. He walked all the way from 181st Street.”

“Nino!”  From the kitchen doorway, I see Ray-Ray. He holds a Gameboy Advance in his hand. He’s wearing a blue long-sleeve shirt with the New York Knicks logo and navy blue swimming shorts. He’s in socks. 

Dulce pulls out another cigarette.

“Mr. Rodriguez! Put your sneakers on; I’m taking you back home.” 

“He doesn’t have your mother’s permission,” says Dulce.

Ray-Ray stands still.

“The boy’s mother has an open ACS case. That boy can’t get a scratch or headbump. He can’t look dirty. You know how hard it is to keep a boy clean and still?” 

Ray-Ray still hasn’t moved. He stands in front of a washer machine between me and Dulce.

“Put on your sneakers, Ray-Ray, we’re leaving,” I say.

“No one in their right mind thinks a child is safer with a man than a woman. Only Nereyda thinks getting a man to take care of a child is a good idea..”

“Ray-Ray is safer with me than with you.”

“This home is clean and the fridge is full. The AC is on full blast. He is safe with me.”

Ray-Ray looks at his Gameboy and then at me, ignoring Dulce, who holds the air freshener like an aerosol paint can, tagging up an invisible wall between me and the boy. The particles disappear in the cigarette smoke. After the paint can’s hiss ends, I can hear the Gameboy’s music. Ray-Ray turns around and goes back to the room.

“Get in touch with Nereyda and tell her the boy didn’t want to go with you or that I didn’t let you take him. I’ll take the blame,” says Dulce.

Ray-Ray reappears with his sneakers on.

“Thank you, Dulce. Nice seeing you.”

As Ray-Ray and I walk out of the apartment, Dulce says, “Don’t let Nereyda’s baggage break your back, son.”

On the Downtown A train Ray-Ray stares at his Gameboy Advance next to me. He’s playing a Dragonball Z game. The game is in color unlike the Gameboy my pops promised to get me when I was his age but never got. Between stops my thoughts flash on the train cart window across from me. As the train pulled out of the one-six-eight stop, I remember telling my pops Larry had nothing to do with drugs but he didn’t believe me. Somewhere between one-six-eight and one-four-fifth, I think about Roman telling everyone on the block that I’m getting played by Nereyda. On one-two-fifth the white people taking over Harlem get on the train so I snap out of it to keep my eye on them. Between one-two-fifth and Columbus Circle I shake the thoughts out of my head and say, “No.” I catch a white man staring at me, judging me, so I stare back until he looks away.

“How’s Mary?”

“Good,” says Ray-Ray tapping on the Gameboy Advance. 

“How’s Chris?” 

He shrugs. 

“Did Nereyda tell you we saw your building from Jersey?” 

“No, she didn’t.” Ray-Ray focuses on the Gameboy. “What happened to your face?” 

“I fell from a bike.” 

“Where are we going?

The recorded announcement reminds us to stand clear of the closing doors. “You still friends with Frankie?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says. “Where are we going?” 

“To pick something up.” 

“For Nereyda?” asks Ray-Ray.

“No, something for my moms.”

“You’re being British. Kidnapping me.”

“I’m not kidnapping you.”

“Greg said kidnapping is a word that has “kid” in it because British people kidnapped kids and made them slaves.”

“Does Nereyda still hang out with Greg?”

“Not really. She doesn’t visit us like before, but one day Greg came to babysit when my mother disappeared.”

“Does Greg go over to your place a lot?” 

“He did before like you used to, but not anymore. Mary yells a lot.”

“You think Nereyda still likes Greg?”

“I think they best friends.”

AC is on full blast in the jewelry store on Chambers. The cold air dries the sweat on my back. It’s only me, Ray-Ray and a mean looking white woman. She wears red lipstick and is probably younger than she looks, because their skin gets old in a different way. She looks like she’d call the cops on you for playing music on a weekend. When the mean white woman makes eye contact with me, I’m not sure if she’s angry or scared. 

Ray-Ray is lost in the Gameboy. Nothing is happening around him. It’s like Nereyda didn’t find him alone and drop him off with a recovering heroin addict. It’s like in Ray-Ray’s world his mother didn’t leave him home alone this morning without telling him where she was going or waking him for breakfast. Ray-Ray doesn’t know the only thing stopping Children Services from kidnapping him is Nereyda. Maybe he does know, but right now, all he knows is whatever is happening in that Gameboy. He looks up from the Gameboy when the jeweler hands me the box. He asks if my moms pawned the gold chain. Just then the lights in the store go out and the AC’s hum dies. Ray-Ray’s face is glowing with the light from the Gameboy on his face. He hasn’t noticed the darkness around him. The sunlight shining through the glass door helps us see half of the store, the side with the display case for the street to see. The white woman exits the store. The quiet makes it so that we hear the Gameboy’s music. I try to call Nereyda, but I don’t have any service. 

The sun shines down hard on us in front of the jewelry store. Mad heads come out of the A train station in front of the jewelry store. Sidewalks are flooded with mad heads. Mad heads come out the Radioshack next door. Mad heads in front of the Dunkin’ Donuts across the street. I tell Ray-Ray to pause the game. He tells me I don’t have to hold his hands. Ray-Ray is on his Gameboy and hasn’t reacted to anything that’s happening around him, I don’t think he even feels that it’s like we’re in an oven. My hands are still cold. I haven’t moved, but I’m already sweating bullets. Chambers Street smells busy and rotten, a mix of wet garbage and car fumes. I take a deep breath and swallow the hot air. I can taste how thirsty I am. I dial Nereyda again and I can’t connect. 

A man in beat-up Timberlands and an orange vest helps a cop direct traffic after a Crown Victoria almost drives up a one-way down the block. I pull Ray-Ray’s hand by three fingers. A taxi and a steaming truck honk at each other at the center of an intersection. I push him in front of me and we zigzag between a white pickup truck and a yellow cab. We squeeze in between a silver SUV and another taxi cab. The heat comes off the cars and covers us. Once we reach the sidewalk Ray-Ray is back on his Gameboy. 

An airplane tears through the sky. Sweat runs down my back. Ambulance sirens grow closer. Up north, the Empire State Building still stands against a clear sky. I dial my moms, even though I ain’t got service. Across the street there’s a line for a payphone. I almost forget I’m with Ray-Ray. I want to smack the Gameboy out of his hands. 

At the intersection, dozens of people cross the street between a blue van and a black big body BMW. Strangers pile in the same taxi. A bald man in a jean shirt climbs out of a manhole in between car bumpers. Another man with the words “SECURITY GUARD” on the back of his black t-shirt points at the dead traffic lights and yells, “the trains, everything is dead.” The people on the corner look up at the traffic light; an old white couple with gray hair and hunched backs hold hands, a white woman in spandex carries a dog and holds a cell to her ear, and two white men and another man wear light gray suits. 

Ray-Ray is not aware of the chaos around him. I realize Ray-Ray doesn’t want to hold my hand cause he needs both hands for the Gameboy. I hold him by the neck and push him forward through the crowds while he plays the Dragon Ball Z game. I tell him to put the game away cause of the crowds, but he can’t hear me or pretends. I bend over and get in his face so he knows I’m there and when he looks up, the black in his eyes gets smaller like a fiend interrupted mid-high. 

The back of the cab is packed, but the AC is on full blast. I’m in between a white woman in her 20s and a white man in his 50s with an old face, white beard and brolic neck. Ray-Ray is on my lap.

The white woman introduces herself to Ray-Ray. He says, “Raymond,” without looking up from the Gameboy. The white woman then introduces herself to everyone else. Now everyone has to introduce themselves. They always look happy. Like they know something I don’t, like they knew this blackout was gonna happen. I tell her The Heights and she smiles and bites her bottom lip. I don’t know if she feels sorry for me or wants to fuck me. 

Once I asked Nereyda if she would fuck a white guy and she said, “Too late, buddy.” She laughed and I wanted to hit her back, but I stayed hit. It ain’t show on my face, but I felt it in my body. A white man on top of Nereyda looks like rape even if it isn’t. After that she said, “You’d make more money if you only sold to white people. Safer too.” 

The cab driver called it an “apagon” before calling it a “blackout.” He’s from the Dominican Republic, but no one says anything about this. After one word answers from the driver and no eye contact from me, the white man and white woman get friendly with each other. The white man is from Inwood and the white woman just moved to Morningside Heights, but I think she means Harlem. I make eye contact with the white woman as she drinks from a water bottle. She sees how thirsty I am and probably thinks I’m poor cause I need a shape-up ASAP. She offers everyone in the cab a water bottle, and says she has extras. The old white man takes her water, but me and the driver say no, thank you. She then offers the water to Ray-Ray and I take the water bottle. I say, “Thank you,” and the white woman smiles, thinking she’s done something special. Ray-Ray takes the bottle and gulps, water running down his chin. I whisper in Ray-Ray’s ear to pause the game. 

For the first time in a long time he looks up from the Gameboy, turning around to almost face me. “I can’t, it’s about to die.” 

“Pausing it will save battery life.” 

Ray-Ray doesn’t look up from the Gameboy. 

We get out on an intersection near Time Square after 15 minutes of being stuck in traffic. The white woman has to get out in order for Ray-Ray and me to get out. I snatch the Gameboy from Ray-Ray, pause it, grab him by the hand and run between the cars stuck in traffic. We run through mad bodies and I hear Ray-Ray laugh and yell, “Don’t drop the Gameboy.” We run through the honking, the sirens, the shouting and yelling. The billboards, giant screens, marquees are off like a giant plug was ripped out its socket. No cash on me, only a bundle of heroin and a useless Metrocard. My hands are cold and my throat is dry. I’m tired and nauseous, but I would feel worse if I drank that white woman’s water in front of her. We stop, catching our breath between laughs. I drink from the water the white woman gave Ray-Ray and I feel instantly better. 

“No, I told you it was going to die!” He presses every button he can find on the Gameboy and starts crying. 

“No shit it died, you been playing all day” 

“I have a charger. I need an outlet.” 

“That’s ain’t gonna help. There’s a blackout.” 

“Find an outlet in a restaurant.” 

“Ray-Ray, there’s no light anywhere.” 

“Why did you take me without Mary’s permission?” Ray-Ray turns around and walks south down 66th Street. 

“Yo! You going downtown.” 

“I’m finding an outlet.” 

I chase Ray-Ray down. I grab his shoulder and he kicks me. He swings with his right and holds the dead Gameboy with his left hand. 

“You addicted to that shit!” 

Ray-Ray freezes. “Don’t say that. You sell drugs.” 

I grab him by the wrists and the Gameboy Advance crashes on the pavement between us, cracked screen face up. People stare from the row of cars in the traffic jam going up Central Park West. 

“I’m not moving,” says Ray-Ray. “I’m telling the cops you kidnapped me.” Groups of people walk by us and pretend they don’t see a man fighting a boy. Someone shouts, “Listen to your father, kid.” 

We’ve made it to 96th Street and Central Park West on foot. My cell vibrates. I think Nereyda, look at my phone and see: LOW BATTERY. I’m thirsty. My kicks are tight on my feet. The soles got thinner since the beginning of the day. It’s like I’m walking barefoot. Sometimes I forget about the gold chain in my pocket. Ray-Ray somehow keeps walking and talks to himself. He hasn’t asked for water again. I tap him in the head with the water bottle the white woman gave him. He grabs it and empties it. 

I find a working payphone with only two people online. I have change for two phone calls. I call Nereyda and it doesn’t ring, but the payphone takes my quarter. I call Nereyda again and I reach no one and lose another quarter. We walk by restaurants for white people, they eat inside by candle light and outside by daylight. The customers eat the good part of some poor cow and drink wine. Some of them eat alone. I can’t stop thinking about how hungry I am and whether I should’ve called my moms instead. 

The white woman’s water changed Ray-Ray’s mood. He tells me about the game he was playing.

“Goku and his son, Gohan, visits his friend’s house. The friend asks Goku to find his missing porn magazines and then they kidnap Goku’s son… You watch Dragon Ball Z?”

“I seen some episodes.”

“Chris likes Dragon Ball Z. They watch it in the dayroom.”  

“I thought your stepfather was out of jail?”

“No, he got in trouble for getting in trouble again so he’s in jail again. I hate the bus ride too many crying babies and mad ladies. The cops touch me all over when I visit Chris. And they make you put your Gameboy in the locker.” Ray-Ray sits on the pavement. “I can’t walk anymore.”

“I’m tired, Ray-Ray.”

“I can’t move,” he says.”

“Get up!” I yell.

“No!” he yells back.

Tens of sweaty heads, forearms with rolled up sleeves, wet shirts and mini towels around necks, and sleeveless undershirts. They all see me and Ray-Ray argue and they don’t even look at us. Ray-Ray is in front of a flower shop with the see-through gates down and the front door open. 

“Get up, I’m tired of your shit, Ray-Ray. Stop whining and complaining.”

“Why did you pick me up from Nereyda’s aunt’s? I could’ve walked back on my own.”

“Because you’re a fucking kid. Now get up.”

“No, you need to mind your business, you’re not even my family.”

“I don’t have to be your family to be family.” I smack him in the back of the head. “I hit you because you’re my family.”

“Why do you and Nereyda always come to my apartment?” says Ray-Ray while crying. “I could’ve been home and now my Gameboy is fucked up. I’m not moving.”

“Fuck you, Mr. Rodriguez. That’s the last time I deal with your ass or with Nereyda. I’m done helping other people.”

I walk up the block and turn east on 110th and Broadway. Ray-Ray disappears behind a group of women in pencil skirts and collar shirts with men in suits who look to be in the same group talking to each other and another group of teenage kids in oversize white t-shirts. I wait until I know he’s scared and regretting acting up with me. I turn around and go back to the front of the flower shop and he’s not there. I go into the flower shop and there is an old man, a couple of women and three young men sitting around a table with bouquets in the dark.

“There was a little boy outside crying, did you hear him? He was just here.”

“No, no,” says the old man. The woman and the young men stare at me.

The whole group walks outside in front of the flower shop. I call his name, “Raymond! Ray-Ray!” They start calling his name too. 

There’s occasional car honking even though the cars are all stuck in traffic, moving a few feet a minute. A thud comes from up the block on 111th and Broadway and then yelling and honking. I run up the block and hear someone yell, “You hit him!” When I reach the group of people in between two yellow taxi cabs, I don’t see anyone on the ground. I just see tens of people bumping and passing each other. I call for Ray-Ray. And then I hear his voice, “Nino!”

He’s on the other side of the street on the top of a mailbox.

I cross over and carry him through the rest of the Upper West Side without thinking that I’m not thinking about Nereyda. He falls asleep on my back, his arms dangle over my chest. His sweat runs down my neck. Even while knocked out he grips the Gameboy with his right hand. Across the street from the restaurant mad people force themselves into a stuffed bus that’s trapped in traffic. I keep walking past buildings taller than the Dyckman Projects, but with less than half the windows. A tall, old woman pushes a stroller with a white baby. The thing is so white it looks dead. A doorman with my pop’s bushy mustache pushes an old white man in a wheelchair into a building, about the same age as the old woman pushing the white baby. The doorman returns to the lobby with the chandelier and disappears behind a coat rack on wheels. 

The Christmas I turned ten my pop’s shoulder failed him at a construction site, so during my winter vacation he was stuck at home with me while my moms worked. For two weeks all he did was drink and read the Dominican newspaper or fight with my moms about drinking and taking medications for his shoulder. That Christmas I knew I was getting a Gameboy—the original not Ray-Ray’s Gameboy Advanced—cause he promised he would after we saw a commercial on TV. Moms and pops always promised they’d buy whatever commercial I asked for and even though they never did I always imagined they would when they said they would. 

One weekday morning in December, days before Christmas, my pops thought it was Christmas and gave me a stuffed red envelope instead of the Gameboy. I ripped open the red envelope somehow still expecting a Gameboy and mad polaroids scattered on the floor. He said the cows in the photos were mine. He said I could sell them and even kill them and eat them if we went poor. He said if I do good in school, next Christmas he’ll get me a bull. 

By one-two-fifth Ray-Ray is snoring in my ear. It’s seven and the sun is still out. A woman shouts, “Only sleep and shower. So as you can see I’m not dirty!” Most stores are closed but the sidewalk tables sell incense, CDs, DVDs, books, paintings, and jewelry. A fat woman says, “Get your ice cold waters, don’t be cheap. Stop being thirsty.” I’m thirsty. A man in a black suit and a tiny bow tie offers people a newspaper. A slit shows the eyes of a woman covered in black crown to toe like a ninja and her eyes look like Nereyda’s. The M103 bus arrives at 8:02 PM. No AC. It’s all sweaty asses and armpits on the bus. My moms prepared me for days like this, days with No AC. She times how long the AC is on and at what hours of the day. She’s a genius, when she estimates the total we owe Con Edison every month she’s usually only off by cents. She can hear the AC’s hum from anywhere in the apartment. First a woman and then a white woman both offer me a seat. I take the white woman’s seat. 

Ray-Ray wakes up, “I’m hungry.” 

“We’re almost home, I’m sorry.” 

The white woman offers me a granola bar and before I can say, “thank you,” Ray-Ray snatches it. 

I say thank you, but I don’t look the white woman in the eye. 

The woman who offered the seat hands me a half-full water bottle and I take it. “Thank you, sis.” I open it and hand it to Ray-Ray. 

The bus rides up and down through the last blocks of Harlem. My hood is all hills that feel like mountains on foot. The bus driver breaks and accelerates and everyone jerks and rocks like rag dolls tied to the handlebars. 

On the way uptown, Ray-Ray tells me a white woman took on Nereyda’s caseload and now visits Mary asking her questions about Nereyda and about his doctor visits. Ray-Ray looks out the window. Every few blocks cops stand in the middle of intersections waving their arms with light sticks under dead traffic lights. The deeper we get into the hood, the lower the sun, the darker the sky, the closer to home. The sunset looks like a sunrise and I feel like I’m waking up sweaty from a bad dream. The sun is like a still blob in a lava lamp. It’s around that time the light posts are supposed to turn on, around the hour when the cops shot Larry.

My pops never uses a scale with me, he eyeballs whatever I’m coming with. He thinks cause he knows himself he knows me, but I ain’t him. My pops left for the Dominican Republic the other day cause his dogs got poisoned. Knowing him he poisoned them himself. Probably sent back bags of expired dog food to save money. He’s cheap, maybe cause he’s always broke or he’s always broke cause money’s always on his mind. 

Days after the cops shot Larry my pops left for the Dominican Republic rocking the Alex Rodriguez jersey I gave him. He woke me up at 2:30 in the morning. He turned on the lights and yanked the sheets off me. For a few seconds I thought I was in a nightmare where I’m locked up and a correctional officer searches my cell or contraband. My pops said he had told me he would need my help with luggage because his left shoulder was hurting again. I didn’t remember him telling me anything.

We got in the elevator where he hands me my moms gold chain and tells me to pawn it at the spot in Chambers our fam has gone to since forever.

I asked him, “Does Mami know?” 

“Knows what?” He kept pressing the button for the first floor. 

“You pawning her chain.” 

“We’re married. That’s our chain.” The elevator hadn’t moved. 

“But does she know?” 

“Of course she knows…Why is your chest out?” 

“The elevator isn’t working.” I grazed his hand when I pressed the button.

The elevator door opened. 

The building was dead quiet, except for the echo of my pops’ steps. He went downstairs with a small suitcase and a navy blue Nike duffel bag. I carried most of his shit, luggage stuffed with clothes and footwear we once wore. 

My pops stopped dragging the suitcase across the lobby with his good arm and said, “When I heard about that kid getting shot I thought it was you.” 

“You thought I shot someone?” I said. 

He picked up the suitcase then dropped it. “No, you idiot, someone shot you.” 

“I ain’t have nothing to do with that.” 

“Those drug sellers deserve what they get.” 

“Larry wasn’t a drug dealer.” 

“He could’ve been selling candy, you can’t aim a gun at a cop.” 

“Larry didn’t have a gun.” 

“Son, you really don’t know shit.”

“You right, I don’t know shit. Why were you coming down from upstairs? You were in Maria’s house—your coworker. ” 

We stand in the lobby, luggage and bags around us. 

“Don’t disrespect me. I’m your father.” 

“Your wife is my mother.” 

“You think I don’t hear her fighting with you about you getting home late?”

“There are stories between me and your mother, you’ll never understand.”

“I know you’re lying to her.”

“Your mother knows my story and I know her story. We know your story better than you. Don’t talk to me like we’re equals.”

“Mami is too good for you.”

“The problem is that you love your mother because you think she’s perfect. I love her even though I know her story and all her mistakes.”

“You saying she cheated?” I walked to him and pressed my nose against his cheeks. I smelled aftershave and Listerine. His breathing was shallow. At some point I got taller than him so I had to crouch down to level my face with his.

“You’re trying to intimidate me with the same tactics I used with you? Get out my face before I kick your ass.”

I faked a punch, pushing forward my right shoulder and my father shut his eyes and fell back landing on his left elbow. He sat on his ass with his elbow in his other hand looking up at me with the same angry face, but his eyes were in shock, wide eyes with a forced frown. He looked like he was expecting to be stomped on, weak and old. I felt sorry for him. It was all an act. His screaming and shouting and slamming things in the apartment when he didn’t get his way.

I told him, “Get your ass up, before you lose your flight.”

And my father got up by himself, I didn’t offer help. When he pushed his body up off the ground, he groaned and said, “Jesus.”

When Ray-Ray and I get off the bus we see the altar for Larry by the one-nine-one train station. People surround the candles and I don’t know if it’s because they knew him or cause we in a blackout. George Washington High School looks like a castle under stars. A speaker plays 50 Cent up the hill on Audubon Avenue. He raps, “Girl you know I like it when you climb on top, love muscle feel tighter than a headlock…” 

We pass my building and see the other altar for Larry. For a second I want to stop by my crib to check in on my moms, but I imagine Nereyda stressing in Dulce’s crib. Flashlight beams shoot up to the clouds and headlights roll down the street. A car speeds up and zooms by leaving merengue trumpets behind. Someone shouts phone numbers out a window with three nines in it. A person on the street shouts back the phone number, it’s quiet again, and we hear the fire hydrants full blast. 

Both fire hydrants are open on Dulce’s block, so there’ll be weak water pressure or no water in her building. Ambulance sirens sound off and grow loud and then go out and we hear the fire hydrants again and it sounds something like a waterfall. We can’t see the altar for Larry in front of Dulce’s building because the blue and red from two police cars get all the attention. People sit in chairs and on the stoop. Cars drive down Audubon Avenue. I imagine Dulce with foam coming out of her mouth, Nida calling the ambulance, Juan crying, police aiming gats, breaking down apartment doors way before paramedics leave the hospital. But all that’s just in my head. 

“They arresting someone?” Ray-Ray’s question brings me back to reality, the Heights lit up by police lights, headlights, stoop altars and flashlights. And the moon. I can see the moon and it’s bright and almost full. 

“Yes,” I say, not cause I know but cause it’s what they show up for. 

We cross to the front of the building and flashlights point at me and Ray-Ray. “ Sir?” asks a white man’s voice behind the light. A police officer. 

“That’s Raymond!” a white woman’s voice shouts. A woman—not in a police uniform. The white people’s faces appear in the darkness whenever the red and blue lights from the cop cars spin to this side and their voices sound all at once and I hear the white voices call my full government name. 

“Kidnapping…” 

“Anything you say…” 

The flashlights show cops. I see Dulce for a second. Voices ask: Why is he being arrested? Some in English and others in Spanish. Only the cops with flashlights can see in the darkness. The cop car’s blue and red lets the rest of us see for brief moments.

Somewhere in the darkness Dulce yells, “He had the mother’s permission!”

“We are taking this boy back to his mother,” says a police woman. A flashlight shows her pulling Ray-Ray by the wrist.

“My Gameboy,” yells Ray-Ray.

“I have your Gameboy.” I see Raymond’s face for a second in the blue and red of the cop car’s lights. Big eyes. Mouth open. His voice is so loud it’s like I can see it. Someone pulls on my left hand and someone else pulls on my right shoulder and I drop the Gameboy Advance. I try breaking free and knock over the candles on Larry’s altar. A knee or elbow or fist slams on my back and I’m on my knees. A lit candle rolls down the sidewalk. My face is on the concrete. A knee on my neck. The few candles that are still standing by the altar look giant.

“He didn’t kidnap me!” shouts Ray-Ray. “Mary knows. He’s my babysitter.”

“Give him the Gameboy!” I yell. 

The cops force my arms behind my back, squeeze the handcuffs on me and almost carry me to the car. The cuffs bite into my bones. The cop car’s blue and red lights stab my eyes as a hand pushes the back of my head down but I still hit the roof of the car.

“I told you to keep your head down,” says the white male cop. “You sick son of a bitch, that boy’s mother was crying her heart out.”

“He needs to get his head cracked,” says the other male cop, who looks white but is not.

I’m in a cage on wheels that smells like piss and liquor with bars between me and the two cops. The driver ain’t white. I can tell from his voice and the right side of his face. The cop being driven wears a white shirt and looks back at me, waiting for me to say something. Between the cops is a glowing screen—like a laptop—lighting up the car. I try to sit up straight to see where we are and where we’re going but I can’t feel my arms but feel my heart pump in my head. My saliva tastes like I got a mouth full of pennies. 

The officers talk like I’m not there. My hearing is off so I don’t know if what I’m hearing is coming from them or their police radio or my head. All the voices are inside and outside. A voice in my head keeps repeating, “My mother knows. My mother knows.” The white one is filling something out and keeps repeating 134. The driver asks him are you sure. The white one doesn’t respond. The white one says, “That one is a priority, the mother was supposedly in the newspaper and everything.”

I sit up a bit and notice there’s a white man handcuffed next to me mumbling to himself something about his mother. I look out the window to deal with the smell of piss and liquor coming from him. They drive down Wadsworth and turn on 187th right before the church. They’re taking me to the 34th police precinct. The police station protects the white people on Fort Washington and Bennet, Pinehurst, and Riverside Drive where it’s quiet from us on Wadsworth, St. Nicholas, Audubon, and Amsterdam. But they somehow also protect the people in Yeshiva from us too. 

They pass the 34th precinct and I know we’re still on Broadway, but I’m sliding back down in my seat. I feel a pain in my neck. I see the top of buildings, but in the darkness I can’t make out what building I’m looking at. When I’m walking in the hood I never look up unless I hear rumors that cops are spying on us from the rooftop. I sit up a bit and see some lights up ahead. I see lights coming from Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. 

The walkie talkies go off. The dispatchers give street names and numbers. The white one says, “134.” My eyes are heavy and the time passes between blinks. Everytime I open my eyes, I’m waking up and everytime I close them I fall asleep. I’m comfortable now. I can’t feel my arms, shoulders or neck, but I can see out the window. My head is against the right window and I can see movement. I can see lights. 

My pops is coming from the Dominican Republic either today or tomorrow. Maybe it’s tomorrow or did he get here already? On the block, no one believed me when I told them I’ve never been to Central Bookings. I once heard my moms on the phone tell someone I’d never been to jail and she said it bragging like I got accepted to some university. 

I open my eyes and we’re on the West Side Highway. I know that’s Jersey on the other side of the shiny moving darkness. And I don’t think about Nereyda. The moon follows the car like a cloud I can’t shake off. I see the moon on the Hudson River or maybe I’m imagining shit. I see stars. Many stars and it’s like I’m in a campo in the Dominican Republic. 

Mornings I got home from bagging up with Roman when the sun was barely out, I’d sometimes find my moms sitting alone in the kitchen. She woke up at four in the morning  everyday. She’d be sitting up straight, eyes shut with both hands on the kitchen table in the dark. Her shirt’s wide neckline would be showing her left shoulder and bra-line. She’s always been skinny in the same way my pops has always had a fat stomach. Anytime I see or think about my mom’s bony shoulders it makes me hate him.

On those mornings I got home right when the sun was about to return, we’d talk until she left for work. She talked about the Dominican Republic like something that happened and not a spot where she lived. She remembers a limestone path reflecting the moon from the days before she left for college. She remembers seeing a piece of moon through the cracks of a zinc rooftop. My moms talked with her hands folded on the table, the same way she did in McDonalds when I was a kid and she watched me eat. She never ate with me and I never asked her why. 

Maybe my father is right, I don’t know my mother’s story, but I know enough. And that’s what I should’ve told Nereyda when she got all defensive at the hotel. I should’ve told her, I might not know everything about my mother, but I know enough. Something was off about Nereyda that night at the hotel. It was like everything I said annoyed her.

She smoked a cigarette while looking over the Hudson River. When I asked why she liked cigarettes, she pretended like she didn’t hear me. She then asked me, “When are you moving?”

“Moving? I’m not. I’m on the lease. When my parents move back to the D.R. I’ll stay in the apartment.”

“So you’re going to live your whole life in the Heights?”

“I ain’t say that.”

She rolled her eyes and laughed. Whenever she’s moody like that we end up having sex and then just talk in bed. But that night was different. I wasn’t getting as hard as I usually get, so I told Nereyda to stand over me. When I want to get real hard, I have her stand over me. Sometimes she’ll turn around and her ass blocks the light from the ceiling and it gets dark for a second. Her body. Her eyes looking down on me like some God gets me hard like I’m on a pill. That night at the hotel she stood over me, but I didn’t get that hard and we both knew it.

We were quiet for a few that morning, waiting for check out time. She sat at the balcony smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee from the room’s machine, which she said tasted like shit because she got used to Starbucks.

“You have to move—the environment is everything. Look at your friend Gary. You said he wasn’t even selling drugs. He was at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Larry. Larry’s situation was shook cops shooting in the dark.

“True… but the Heights is just too much to think straight. You don’t want to move because you can’t get enough of the hoes. You gonna marry a recently arrived hick and make her a housewife, and get her papers.”

“Yeah, I’m a get a recently arrived virgin.”

“Mail order virgin brides don’t exist.”

“You can find virgins in church.”

“You won’t find an adult virgin that’s not brainwashed by the church.”

“You can find adult virgins, women who are about the church, but not addicted to Jesus.”

“When you see those women who join the church later in life—my age even—they trying to reset and start new, they got so many bodies they need to be resurrected.”

“I won’t marry a woman with mad bodies unless…”

“Unless she’s me?”

“Unless she’s a born again Christian and wears those long ass skirts.”

“Everyone has bodies.”

“This generation is out of control.”

“Not only this generation. Even our parents. Your mother got bodies.”

“No, it was different back then. My mother has only been with my father.”

Nereyda laughed and dropped her cigarette. She couldn’t stop laughing. Seeing her laughing at me. She looked at me while she laughed and when she saw my face she laughed louder.

“You think every bitch is like you, fucking like its kissing?”

“Don’t get defensive. Don’t call me a bitch.”

“I’m joking.”

“We both know you weren’t. Get the fuck out of here. I’m bored.”

“Who the fuck you kicking out, I paid for this room.”

“It’s not under your name. I want to be alone until check out. Leave.”

“You lucky you a bitch because if you wasn’t I’d slap the shit out of you.”

“You touch me and I’ll get you locked up.”

I slapped Nereyda. As soon as my shoulder sent the signal through my arm to my hands and the impulse that started in my head and ended in my fingers on her left ear, I knew it was dead between us and I wanted to disappear. After that I don’t know what happened until I was walking down the hotel taking pieces of nail out of the bottom of my eye.

I open my eyes and I’m still in the back of this cop car. They close again. The white man next to me says, “I didn’t do it.” I feel paralyzed. I can’t feel my body. I don’t know if we’re still on the West Side Highway. I don’t know if it’s been 10 minutes or half an hour. I can only see the inside of the car’s rooftop, wires like snakes moving on the car’s roof. And then I remember her legs didn’t tremble. The whole issue was that her legs didn’t shake the way I usually made them shake. I wasn’t hard enough and we both knew I wasn’t hard enough. I take a deep breath and control my feelings before I start bugging. Nereyda will forgive me like my father forgave my mother for her story, her mistakes if he’s telling the truth. The same way Larry’s mother told Univision News that she forgave the officer because they were just doing their job. Nereyda will forgive me for slapping her like I always forgave her for ignoring my texts and calls and then reappearing wanting to hang out, and then leaving me flat after asking me out on dates only to tell me she wasn’t in the mood last minute. She’ll forgive me because I forgave her when she scratched me and hit me and called me other men’s names because it helped her cum. Sometimes she said, “I’m sorry, Nino.” But she said it real low like I wasn’t supposed to hear it. 

The glow from the screen on the dashboard lights up the car. The moving snakes on the car’s roof are colorful.

The white man is looking at me and repeats, “I didn’t do it.”

I give in and ask, “What happened?”

The white man says, “They claim I spat at someone. And keyed a car. And…But I was jogging when the blackout happened. Why are you in this cop car?”

“I was doing too much.”