3. Blood on the sidewalk

Marina yanked Machi’s hand hard to pull him away from the frozen blood on the avenue but she was too late. He saw everything. “That’s Carlito’s blood.” He pointed to the shiny streams frozen while they were still red. “Why are you crying?” he said. He was still immortal. He studied her face, then nodded. “You're feeling he way I feel when I come to your house from Pa's or go to his house from yours.” Machi knew too much. He had already seen several of the young men from the block in coffins. He was about the age she’d been when her Abuela Tita died but not only was Marina not allowed to see the body, she was never actually told of her grandmother's death. Of course she knew, she overheard the adults all around her talking of nothing else.
The day of her Abuela's wake her parents Leo and Mirta took Marina to the apartment of Dionisia, a church member who lived nearby. Marina barely knew the plump and generous woman who sat her at a small eating table in the kitchen and fed her cofikei with white frosting and milk. Marina ate piece after piece and drank glass after glass, as much as she had ever wanted but had never been allowed to eat at once. Marina ate the cake and stared through the clear vinyl table cloth at the flowers embroidered with colored threads onto the cotton cloth underneath, naming the colors: red, blue, green, sunset pink, purple.
All the while she was eating the cake she could hear the lady from the church on the phone in the narrow hallway between the kitchen and the sala. She could tell Dionisia believed Marina couldn't hear her. Not only did adults believe los niños miran y no tocan, they thought los niños escuchan y no oyen. “La madre del Reverendo Zabala esta con el Señor.” Unlike Machi, Marina as a girl knew nothing of wakes, of open caskets. Years later she figured out Abuela Tita had been viewed at the protestant church where she imagined the City missionary intoned the eulogy with an American accent.
Now it was Machi’s turn to yank her hand. “There goes David, on the other side of the street, going to the panaderia too.” Machi called out and waved. Julia glanced at Machi and Marina. Without a greeting she turned away and walked into the store. The moment of reconciliation at Carlito's wake was over. Machi ran out into traffic to cross the Avenue, catch up to David. A red SUV screeched its breaks. Marina felt a pierce of pain and on its heels the fleeting thought, I don’t care if Julia doesn't want me. I didn’t want her first. She forgot this and crossed to the panaderia where Machi stood by the door, peering in to the bakery to watch his forbidden friend.
He took Marina's arm and led her inside. David’s face was glued to the glass case. Machi joined him and, in unison, both boys pointed to the row of chocolate donuts covered with sprinkles. Marina and Julia flanked the boys. Julia looked straight down through the glass at the napoleons and roscas and pudines and flanes. She gave Marina the old, blank stare. There must be ways to get past Julia’s rage. How many times could she say, I’m sorry? She stopped herself from saying it again. How was it that the important subjects were forbidden? Everyplace in her life it was precisely the truth that must not be stated, that her mother beat her, that her father put her in his bed when Mami was away, that her neighbor in Los Santos was a torturer...
...That when they both almost lost their boys on the subway maybe, maybe it was not Marina’s fault. She had talked Julia into going to the demonstration. She forced the memory from her own mind. Of course the truths could not be spoken when they could not even be thought. By not looking at her, not answering when Marina said, “What’s new?” Julia rebuilt the border. She wanted to ask why was there that moment at Carlitos’ wake when Julia had come toward her?
Julia bought a box of dulces and a café con leche. David clutched a white paper sack with a donut. Machi’s donut was already in his fist and brown frosting was on his chin and cheeks. “When can David come over?” Marina saw how Julia’s hard eyed look made Machi flinch. There was more than one way to hit a child.
Machi saw Ori on the stoop reading the paper and raced down the block, sat by his Father and gave him a hug. Ori raised his gaze, the unbearably sad eyes. Marina remembered she had dreamt of him last night, just Ori sitting on his bed, his legs under the dark brown quilt, sad. He smiled when he caught her looking at him and she wondered if the sadness was in him or her.
“Sorry we’re late.”
“We ran into David in the panaderia. If his Mother hates Ma can he visit me in your house?” Her son was a strategist and negotiator.
She kissed Machi and waved to Ori and walked down to the subway entrance. What had she been thinking? She didn’t want to go home to her empty three rooms, dustballs, and chaos. She walked past the subway entrance unwilling to plunge into the hole in the ground. She had to move, walk, walk as fast as she could. This feeling was chasing her, (or was she chasing it by throwing her life into chaos?), the feeling that she was a bit of protoplasm lost in space, barely sentient. Was she running from or toward the longing to strip herself of everything, as if that was the way back to a long lost core of solid rock.
The phone was ringing as she walked in the door. She dropped her bags, kicked off her clogs, and raced to the small table in the hallway, grabbed the receiver, almost screamed “Hello.” She wanted to bite off Ori’s head for not being Hal. “You didn’t leave Machi’s lunch box.” She wanted to scream at him to send the lunch in a bag. She collapsed onto the floor and shook. She didn’t plan to have nobody to come home to. She didn’t count on having the roommate whose household she joined, a woman five years but a generation younger than she, have her life fall apart and disappear after making a drunken pass at her at a house party.
She collapsed into the basket chair her vanished roommate Elisa left behind. She looked around the room. The hanging Indian bedspreads on the wall and on the windows, the philodendron vined over the archway to the alcove off the middle room where Machi’s toys were strewn, had all belonged to her. Marina rehearsed the strange unfolding of that friendship just to see if she could feel anything at all. She was in blister state, a blister of uncried tears. She walked over to the tiny kitchen, opened the tiny fridge and the tiny freezer door. She reached for the open can of dulce de coco. The syrup had too much sugar to fully freeze around the spoon she kept there. She scooped a mound of the sticky white sweet,walked herself over to the basket chair and slowly sucked the spoon clean.