She attended more funerals of former students, while others were sent up the river to a different kind of death. Brownsville even got its own Express bus—straight to Rikers. Two hours of nausea and security checks so you could talk with your loved one for thirty minutes.
Walter’s little sister Tammy was found dead in a basement in the Bronx. The way the news talked about it was almost a second murder. Everyone said Walter, now almost thirty years old, had tried to take his own life when he heard the news. He had not succeeded, but Lina could not muster the strength to visit Walter in the hospital or attend Tammy’s funeral. She mourned by fasting for two weeks with her window blinds closed, and the news channel became her access point to the outside world.
Ronald was a convincing actor, she thought. The president could make it seem like he was the savior, the benevolent father, when he was the one fueling the cartels. Demonizing the babies. Stripping her people of every means of survival.
Nellie’s son Wesley grew older, but he remained an outsider. He stayed in the apartment all day, drawing cartoons in a notebook. Sure the universe would punish her if she eased up, Nellie wouldn’t let him out of her sight.
“Let’s move somewhere else,” she urged Lina one night in the back seat of the car. “Atlanta. St. Louis. Anywhere’s better than here.”
Lina asked hesitantly, “They got Puerto Ricans over there?”
“We’ll drive until we find ’em.”
She knew Nellie was getting frustrated, but Lina couldn’t imagine leaving her mother, and there was no way her mother would give up her people in New York.
And the truth was, Lina herself was unsure. It was hard to say if this was love for Brownsville or fear of the world beyond. She’d never left the city. But if the white world was so determined to strangle Brownsville, how long would she and Nellie make it, on their own, on the outside?
Wesley wanted to seeThe Prince of Darknessat the Kings. On one summer day, Nellie finally let him, and the quiet teenager with the heavy brow ridge and the old man’s lips took the bus to Flatbush for the matinee. Deciding to save the change for a day his mother really needed it, he skipped popcorn but did enjoy seating himself right next to the air-conditioning vent.
He liked horror movies and had collectedThe Exorcist, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, andEraserheadon VHS. They made Brownsville look decent enough by comparison. It was the uncanniness of a rom-com that spooked him, reminding him of all he didn’t have.
After the credits rolled, he took the bus back to Brownsville, stopping by Motor City Salon to assure his mother everything had gone all right.
Back at Tilden, he rode the elevator with a teen he knew. Wesley nodded, but the young man was too distracted to take note. The teen wore a red bandanna and was anxiously fingering the cross that hung from his neck. When the elevator opened on floor eight, another boy with a blue scarf over his face lifted a Glock 9 mm and tore a hole in the neck of the wrong person.
Wesley shrieked. Crumpled to the floor.
His blood dripped through the crack between the elevator and floor eight.
Nellie went to the hospital without calling Lina, and Lina followed on the bus as soon as word reached her.
But he was already in the morgue when she arrived. Lina stared at Wesley’s soft face, and in death, he didn’t look like an old man at all. He had always been just a child.
There was no funeral. Lina paid for the tombstone in Cypress Hills.A loving son. 1969–1986.She thought about adding “stepson,” but did not know how to ask Nellie for this.
Nellie slept all day in Lina’s bed and wouldn’t eat. Lina tried to comfort her, but there was nothing to be said.
At night, when Lina was sleeping, Nellie would slip out and drive to the cemetery. Then she began missing appointments at the salon. She couldn’t offer stories or ask questions the way she used to, and everything Lina said dissolved in the haze of her eyes.
One morning, Lina woke up and found Nellie in the bathroom, holding a towel to her left foot. The cloth was soaked through with blood, and on the side of her foot dangled a loose flap of skin big as a quarter. She was still wearing her jacket and hat.
“Shit shit shit!” Lina gasped, squatting beside Nellie. “What happened?”
“The car has a flat,” Nellie said in no more than a whisper. “But I had to go to the cemetery.”
Lina was confused. “What do you mean? You walked there?”
Nellie said nothing. She wrapped her foot in toilet paper.
“That looks bad! I’ll take you to the hospital!”
Nellie turned her head away. “No,” she mumbled. “I’m fine. It’s my fault.”
Lina looked at Nellie, still not understanding. “How’d you cut your foot?” She surveyed the bathroom. “What shoes did you wear?”
It took her a moment to realize Nellie’s shoes were still on the rack in Lina’s bedroom closet.
“Babe, did you…?” But she stopped because she saw it all in Nellie’s eyes: her lover had walked to the cemetery barefoot. Three miles of bare skin against the glass-strewn streets of Brooklyn. Heels stained by cigarette bums. Toes sliced by beer caps and tuna can lids.
