This Side of Providence Read Online Free PDF

cop’s back but I keep sliding off his uniform. The bigger cop picks me up off the floor and sets me down gently like a flowerpot. Like I could break or get him dirty.
    â€œYour mom’s in trouble, son. She’s sick, and we’re going to help her get better, okay?”
    â€œFuck you.” I try to kick him but my foot slips and I end up kicking the wall instead. The plaster cracks in the shape of a broken star.
    When he lets go of me I run outside and watch the small one walk Mami to the police car. She trips over a rollerblade and loses a sandal. The next-door neighbors are on their front porch but nobody says anything. When I get to the street he’s putting her in the backseat. She looks like she’s crying but I don’t see any tears. I run up and grab her around the waist. Her hands are tied so she can’t hug me back. I feel her kiss the top of my head, hard, like she’s planting a seed under my skin.
    â€œ Los aviones ,” she whispers into my hair. “ Los regalos estan con los aviones .”
    The presents are with the birds. I have no idea what she’s talking about.
    The cop palms her head like a basketball and shoves her inside the car. He slams the door. I try to give her the sandal but the back door won’t open. She smiles at me and turns away.
    I take off my backpack and throw it at the cop. He knocks it to the ground and the Pepsi bottle breaks inside, spilling the soda onto the street. It mixes with the rainwater and washes some of the broken glass into the gutter. The rain falls steady and hard, soaking my shirt in seconds. Droplets fall from my face like tears, but I’m not crying. I am too angry to cry. I can see my sisters in the living room window, staring down at us. Trini is screaming while Luz tries to pull her back from the glass.
    I see Lucho in the driveway, standing next to a lady witha badge around her neck who keeps saying she works for the state. She calls my name but I look away. I hear the lady ask Lucho if she’s my father. When I look back Lucho is shaking her head with a smile on her face. The lady has a file in her hand like at the doctor’s office. Lucho pulls out her wallet and hands the lady her ID. The lady wipes it on her jacket a few times, trying to clear off the rain.
    As the police car pulls away, I watch Mami through the back window, like I’ve watched lots of people leaving our neighborhood. She looks small, like a child, and I wonder if they put on her seat belt. I know it’s her, but already she don’t look like my mother. She leans her head against the window as if she’s going to sleep. Her hair falls like a shadow across her face. By the time they turn onto Manton, I don’t even recognize her.
    I’m telling this story because nobody else will.

Arcelia
    I don’t remember much about the precinct, except those asshole cops ask a lot of questions, and I don’t feel like talking. Which is rare for me, ’cause usually you can’t get me to shut up. Turns out they have everything they need to keep me locked up for a few years—two bricks as evidence and a few of my clients—but the lawyer they get me says if I plead guilty they’ll reduce it down to possession and I’ll only get nine months. With good behavior I could be out in six. He says it like I should be happy. Like six months is easy to do. The longest I been in one place since I left Puerto Rico is four months, and that was only ’cause I was pregnant. And I thought I was in love. They were both dead by the fifth month.
    I guess they popped some john I used to score with, and he gave me up. That’s the problem with this business: no loyalty. I suppose it had to happen—sooner or later everybody gets busted—and really I had a pretty good run, almost three years of using, selling, and working the streets without so much as a cop looking at me sideways. I think you could say I was better than