The Medicine Burns Read Online Free PDF Page B

they laugh at the messenger. Then, too bad for them .
    Leaning back in the patio chair, I thought of Key West. I was floating out over the hot backyard, flashes of green light and blue over the shrubs and trees, a tinted ocean of oil, the shrubs like stones jutting from it. I thought of my cousins, our playing in slow, elongated time, the long breathless dives and stretch of our bodies; my older cousin, whose body I watched for the past three years develop with rapidity against the slowness of our summers, like a swimmer against an undertow. I imagined the wet dark hair lying flat on his chest, tasting the salt of the water dried white on his body.
    Then a group of boys arrived: older, beautiful, and imposing. Their presence in the living room sends people out on the patio. It is suddenly crowded, and I have to stand to see what’s happening. People press against the patio screen, and some of the girls cover their eyes. I hear screaming and look out into the yard, flooded with light. A large pig ran through the yard, squealing, knocking into shrubs, while a gang of boys and men chased it with machetes. Some of the boys beside me laughed, holding their girlfriends like they do at movies, where squeamishness is sexual entreaty.
    Someone brought the blade down on the hind leg of the animal and the crowd reacted with horror and laughter. The pig dragged itself across the yard, the perimeters shrinking. The blood in the floodlights was as dramatic and high as a fountain. My knees buckled. I slipped in sickness to the ground.
    Sonia put me in her bed under a pink and white comforter, strangely cakelike and girlish. She is neither soft nor feminine, but strong and ruddy. Being in her room is like playing doctor with her, dispensation to look inside, touch things you’re not supposed to.
    The door opens and a crowd of Cuban boys, just three or four years older than I, stand around the bed. They reach for me as though retrieving a coat. “Someone has to dance with Sonia,” one says through a black mustache and gritted teeth. They are like heads of the same monster, each face mesmerizingly beautiful. My eyes linger too long.
    Another says, “Let’s teach the faggot to dance.” He is wearing a knit jersey, and I see his gold medallions of saints under the cuts in his shirt. They pull me out to the living room where people are gathered, expectant. There are plantains frying in the kitchen. One of the boys pulls a pint of vodka from his back pocket, pours it into the punch, then ladles out a glass and tells me to drink.
    They called Sonia out and pushed me beside her. She was thrilled, not understanding the spectacle we made—retarded girl and faggot. I’m thrown in the ring with something weaker. But her ignorance makes her powerful, natural. I stood woodenly against the music, colored by self-consciousness, a consciousness that comprehends everyone, the terrible probabilities of this amplified drunkenness. She began the Latin hustle to hoots and cheers. She took my hand and led. I could not match her rolling movements, the sensual slackening of her mouth, the low look of her eyes. Any expression of my being in my body would provoke the onlookers. She heard one of the boys comment, “ maricon, ” and frowned in his direction. They laugh at her dawning awareness. One girl said, “Let’s not watch anymore.” When the music ended, I walked through the group of boys who were throwing wadded up, wet napkins. I called my father to pick me up. “So early?” he asked.
    I stood in the gravel driveway, in night air that felt hot with my shame. I felt tapping all around me, lightly at first, then harder, more insistent. A rain of pebbles crashed over me, then a large stone hit the back of my head. “Good-bye faggot cock-sucker,” one boy said from the porch, flanked by two or three others. I felt the back of my head, the hair already wet, thick with blood. Another handful of