Sweet Nothing Read Online Free PDF Page A

this country, to show them some kindness.
      
    AT TWELVE I clock out and walk to the bus stop with Irma, a Filipina I’ve known forever. Me and Manuel Senior went to Vegas with her and her husband once, and when Manuel died she stayed with me for a few days, cooking and cleaning up after the visitors. Now her own Ray isn’t doing too good. Diabetes.
    “What’s this heat?” she says, fanning herself with a newspaper.
    “And it’s supposed to last another week.”
    “It makes me so lazy.”
    We share the shade from her umbrella. There’s a bench under the bus shelter, but a crazy man dressed in rags is sprawled on it, spitting nonsense.
    “They’re talking about taking off Ray’s leg,” Irma says.
    “Oh, honey,” I say.
    “Next month, looks like.”
    “I’ll pray for you.”
    I like Ray. Lots of men won’t dance, but he will. Every year at the hospital Christmas party, he asks me at least once. “Ready to rock ’n’ roll?” he says.
    My eyes sting from all the crap in the air. A frazzled pigeon lands and pecks at a smear in the gutter. Another swoops down to join it, then three or four smaller birds. The bus almost hits them when it pulls up. Irma and I get a seat in front. The driver has a fan that blows right on us.
    “I heard about the baby that got killed near you,” Irma says.
    I’m staring up at a commercial for a new type of mop on the bus’s TV, thinking about how to reply. I want to tell Irma what I saw, share the fear and sorrow that have been dogging me, but I can’t. I’ve got to keep it to myself.
    “Wasn’t that awful?” I say.
    “And they haven’t caught who did it yet?” Irma asks.
    I shake my head. No.
    I’m not the only one who knows it was Puppet, but everybody’s scared to say because Puppet’s in Temple Street, and if you piss off Temple Street, your house gets burned down or your car gets stolen or you get jumped walking to the store. When it comes to the gangs, you take care of yours and let others take care of theirs.
    There’s no forgiveness for that, for us not coming forward, but I hope—I think we all hope—that if God really does watch everything, He’ll understand and have mercy on us.
    Walking home from my stop, I pass where little Antonio was shot. The news is there filming the candles and flowers and stuffed animals laid out on the steps of the building, and there’s a poster of the baby too, with RIP Our Little Angel written on it. The pretty girl holding the microphone says something about grief-stricken parents as I go by, but she doesn’t look like she’s been sad a day in her life.
      
    THIS WAS A nice block when we first moved onto it. Half apartments, half houses, families mostly. A plumber lived across the street, a fireman, a couple of teachers. The gangs were here too, but they were just little punks back then, and nobody was afraid of them. One stole Manuel Junior’s bike, and the kid’s parents made him bring it back and mow our lawn all summer.
    But then the good people started buying newer, bigger houses in the suburbs, and the bad people took over. Dopers and gangsters and thieves. We heard gunshots at night, and police helicopters hovered overhead with searchlights. There was graffiti everywhere, even on the tree trunks.
    Manuel was thinking about us going somewhere quieter right before he died, and now Manuel Junior is always trying to get me to move out to Lancaster where he and Trina and the kids live. He worries about me being alone. But I’m not going to leave.
    This is my little place. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a nice, big backyard. It’s plain to look at, but all my memories are here. We added the dining room and patio ourselves; we laid the tile; we planted the fruit trees and watched them grow. I stand in the kitchen sometimes and twenty-five years falls away like nothing as I think of my babies’ kisses, my husband’s touch. No, I’m not going to go. “Just bury me out back when I keel over,” I tell Manuel