Disorder
Before
leaving for school on the morning of Friday, October 31, 1975, Angel and Eddy
got dressed in the Halloween costumes they had chosen for that year. The school
children had been encouraged to come to school that day in costume. They were
also promised special treats and a school-wide Halloween party to be held
before dismissal that day. The boys were excited!
Julia told
them she would meet them on the sidewalk outside after school and that she
would take them around the neighborhood trick-or-treating. She sternly warned
them to wait for her and not to venture out on their own.
Angel wore
the clothing of a pirate. He had on black shoes, a pair of brown pants, and the
torn-up remains of a black dress shirt with no sleeves, which he wore over a
white long-sleeved shirt. Around his waist, he had a red sash tied in a knot on
his right side, with some of its material sloppily hanging down to his knee. He
wore a black bandana decorated with little stars, tied and secured at the back
of his head. Using finger paint, he fashioned a mustache and beard.
And he
carried a sword made of cardboard, which he had carefully crafted to look as
real as possible.
With an
eager desire for approval, he asked, “How do I look, Mommy?”
“Shiver me
timbers!” Julia playfully responded, delighting Angel.
Eddy’s
costume wasn’t as elaborate. He wanted to look like a hobo, so he wore
dungarees torn in various places, an old brown tee shirt with several bleach
stains, suspenders, and an oversized sports jacket that Tyrone had loaned him
for the day. He dirtied his face with black chalk, especially around his eyes,
and he wore an old fedora the neighbor Rafy had given him. Julia had pinned a
baseball cap to the inside lining of the hat so it would more-or-less fit the
small crown of his head.
“What about
me, Mommy?” Eddy asked.
“Well,
doggonit, don’t be getting any ideas about jumping on a train for a free ride!”
They all
laughed.
Almost all
of the school children came that day wearing costumes of every imaginable type.
There were princesses, superheroes, monsters, vampires, nuns, wizards, kings,
and many other imaginative outfits. And the whole day was filled with lots of
fun and joy.In every classroom, before the children left that day, teachers
handed out large paper trick-or-treat bags and warned them to be careful
walking the streets, but to have a good time.
Julia had
told them she would be waiting outside the school at three o’clock, but when
the boys met each other outside after dismissal, she wasn’t there. Many parents
were there to meet their children. Some even wore costumes themselves.
Gradually, all of the students dispersed with those who came to collect them,
but by three-thirty, only Angel and Eddy remained on the sidewalk in front of
the building.
They both
held their trick-or-treat bags tightly and looked about in every direction for
their mom.
They kept
looking as they stood and waited, and waited some more, but Julia never came.
“Where’s Mommy,
where is she?” Eddy cried to Angel several times.
“I don’t
know Eddy, but I think we should probably go home to see if she’s okay.”
And so, they
slowly walked together the couple of blocks back home to Moore Street. Both
boys were afraid, disappointed, and mad, all at the same time, as they walked
home in silence together.
Once inside
the building, and as they walked up the steps to the third floor, they could
hear Amanda crying loudly, something not very often heard and quite unusual for
her.
They opened
the door to the apartment, and entering, they found Amanda sitting on a filthy
kitchen floor completely naked. She had crap all over her legs, held her dirty
hands to her mouth, and had a look of horror on her face as she unconsolably
and loudly sobbed.
Julia was
lying on the couch, completely asleep and obviously and absolutely unaware of
the sad and anxious weeping of her daughter. On the floor next to the couch was
an empty bottle, just lying there.
“Eddy, it
looks like Mommy has had too much apple juice again. Let’s get Amanda cleaned
up and back into her crib. It doesn’t look like we’re going out again today.”
Eddy started
to cry nearly as loud as Amanda. And Angel, throwing his sword and
trick-or-treat bag onto the kitchen table, got to work cleaning while trying to
bring some kind of order back into their home.
Redro
By the spring of 1976, Angel had clearly become an energetic and very
beautiful little boy. He had penetrating dark brown eyes, shiny black hair, a
wide smile, and a very gregarious personality. It never took long for Angel to
capture the hearts of others. He was “everybody’s friend,” and this was
apparent even after just a first encounter. The boy was greatly loved, even by
those who barely knew him.
Drina would often wrap her arms around him tightly and say, “How’s my
sweetheart, my gorgeous little Angel doing today?”
And he loved being loved.
Always small for his age, many in the neighborhood called him “Redro” or
simply “Red,” nicknames coming from the Spanish word “redrojo” meaning “the
runt.”
To many adults, and children too, his small stature served to amplify his
cuteness. However, as on all playgrounds, the bullies would sometimes attempt
to use his size to their advantage. Ever conscious of his size and his nickname
“Redro,” Angel sometimes felt the need to prove to other children he was not
afraid of anything. He often won these
sporadic fist fights with neighborhood bullies, but typically came home with
bruises and an occasional black eye for Julia to nurse.
One time on the street in front of
his apartment, Angel fought with a nine-year-old boy named Alvaro Molina. The
other boy had smashed a bottle against the steps of the building, and Angel’s
neighbor Rafy shouted from his window, saying, “Go away, or I’ll call the
police on you.” Alvaro taunted, “You can’t do nothin’ to me, old man. You’re
nothin’ but a feo viejo who can’t even walk without a cane!”
Angel had been coming across the
street from Hodes. He yelled at Alvaro, defending both his home and his
neighbor. “Get lost, you punk,” he screamed. Then Alvaro rushed him and pushed
him into the gutter, shouting, “Mind your own business, Redro, you little piece
of shit!” Angel struck back with fury. Needing to protect his honor, to stand
up for Rafy, and to defend his home, he attacked Alvaro with rage.
The two boys kicked and punched and
knocked each other to the ground where they wrestled and pulled on each other’s
hair and clothes and yelled vulgar insults at one another.
Finally, Angel pinned Alvaro to the
ground and sat on him. He punched him in the face, giving the older boy two
black eyes, and then the fight was over.
Alvaro ran off, swearing, “I’ll be
back with my brother ’cause I ain’t gonna let a fuckin’ little Redro get away
with nothin’.”
Rafy, still sitting in his window,
thanked Angel for standing up to Alvaro, but he added, “Red, it’s always better
to avoid trouble, but I gotta have respect for a man who knows the meaning of
chivalry. But pórtese bien, chico . . . be a good boy.”
Although small for his age, Angel
would not usually let others push him around. No way!
Angel didn’t always win.
Once, in July of 1976, while Angel
and Eddy were in the nearby playground, four older kids, all at least ten years
old, surrounded seven-year-old Eddy and slapped and kicked him, and then pushed
him to the ground. They taunted him, one of the boys saying, “You’re just a
no-good hijo de puta, son of a prostitute, and scum like you ain’t allowed
here.”
A middle-aged and very overweight
woman known to people in the neighborhood as Lolly had been passing by. She saw
what was happening and angrily chased the older boys away from Eddy.
“If you little brats don’t get away
from that child, I am going to put my foot where the sun doesn’t shine!” she
screamed, as they took off running.
Eddy, crying, distraught, and angry
over the incident, clung to Lolly as she helped him to his feet.
Nearby, Angel stood helplessly with
his back against a fence. He looked stunned and, bawling, mumbled, “Nobody can
push Eddy around and say things like that, but I didn’t do anything to be on
his side.”
Angel felt defeated. For the first
time, he had been forced to stand helplessly by while someone hurt his little
brother.
Lolly knew Julia from when she
worked at Yolanda’s. She knew they were her children and was aware of Julia’s
reputation, but those kinds of things didn’t matter to her all that much.
She walked the two home, stopping to
buy them Italian ices from a vendor pushing a cart near the corner of Humboldt
and Moore Streets. “It’s a shame kids have to be so mean to one another,” she
said to Julia as she arrived with the boys at the door of their apartment.
That day, Angel resolved never to
betray Eddy again. He never forgot what happened. He remembered how helpless he
felt and how, in his eight-year-old mind, he should have done something to
protect Eddy, but didn’t or couldn’t.
EIGHTY-FOUR
Papi?
Angel turned nine in March of 1977, his
third-grade year. During that spring, he
began to spend a lot of time at home isolating himself with drawing projects or
just sitting in the front window watching the world go by. In spite of his
normally energetic demeanor and loving disposition, there was something sad
about him, something that caused him to withdraw from everything. Sometimes he
would sit and stare at nothing, and something in those beautiful dark eyes
seemed terribly far away.
From the third-floor window of the
Moore Street apartment, which overlooked a busy commercial street, Angel would
often study the many people who passed below. There were people of every race
and color, panhandlers, hawkers, street evangelists, shoppers, the Hasidic
landlords, assorted men, women and children, and the ever-present police.
His spot in the window was also the
stage of a tremendous fantasy world. There, Angel would sometimes pretend he
was a king in a castle and controlled all the people below. Or he would think of
himself as a superhero, watching and waiting for the moment when he would have
to rescue someone from danger.
But his most habitual thoughts, as
he sat in the window and watched the people below, especially when he saw men
with children, were about his mysterious missing father.
Angel wanted a papi, just like Berto
had, a nice man who would work during the day and come home at night to stay
with his family. He wanted his family to have a real “man of the house” who
could protect them and help his mother, somebody like Mr. Gutierrez or Mr.
Thompson, who always seemed to be with their families.
Julia often said to him, “Angel, you
are the man of this house, and we can manage without a big man if we have to,”
but he knew she didn’t really mean it in the real way, and he knew she wanted
somebody like that too.
When Angel watched from the window
and saw other children with their dads, he would dream about what it would be
like to have his own. These thoughts saddened him because the only thing his
mother had ever told him about his father was that he had left a long time ago
and would never return.
He convinced himself the reason his
father was gone was because he had been a soldier captured by some unnamed
enemy in a distant land. Someday, Angel thought, his own papi would appear at
the door of their apartment and tell him how much he loved him and missed him.
Often, as he gazed down at the
street below, Angel would scan the crowd, hoping to see that stranger who would
be looking up, searching for his son in the window, but he was never there.
EIGHTY-FIVE
What Good are Art Classes Anyway?
Angel began
the fourth grade in September of 1977.
His favorite
subject in school that year was art class. He loved to draw and would often
make pictures depicting his active fantasy life. He had a collection of
drawings. Most were simple pencil sketches, but some were elaborately colored
with magic markers or chalk. He stopped using crayons by the time he was four
because he said they were “too babyish.”
Julia hung a
few of Angel’s drawings on the refrigerator in the kitchen and on the walls of
the apartment. His favorite drawing, and one Julia loved as well, was one he
had made when he was six. Done in brilliant colors, it hung on the wall above
the bed in the front room.
On the right
side of the page was a woman floating on a sea of brilliant light, as if on the
sun itself. She wore a large, hooded, ragged brown shawl and looked cautiously
confident as she crouched, clutching three small children tightly within its
folds. Each seemed content and secure within the safety of her arms.
The woman
looked toward the distant threat of a very large monster-like creature floating
on the left side of the page. The monster was incredibly ugly and seemed to be
spitting something like blood from his grossly contorted mouth. The look of
rage on his face was both incredible and harrowing. The lower part of the
monster’s body faded into a very dark abyss filling the whole left side of the
page.
An army of
numerous small yellow angel-like creatures, each holding a flaming sword
defensively toward the monster, formed a shield across the entire length of the
page. They stood between the woman and the monster, dividing the light from the
darkness.
At the
bottom of the page, in simple block letters written in the script of
six-year-old Angel, was the word:
LOVE
Very early
during that fourth-grade school year, close to the end of September, Angel’s
teacher, Miss McHugh, had reported to Julia that his artistic skills were far
superior to those of most children she had ever taught. She encouraged her to
look into a special art program for gifted children she believed was offered at
the Pratt Institute on Willoughby Avenue, but right in front of Angel, Julia
laughed at the suggestion.
I can barely manage to put food on
the table and pay the rent, much less throw away money on some fancy art
program, she
thought, but she never said those words
out loud.
Besides, she thought, he draws good
enough, and what good are art classes anyway?
EIGHTY-SIX
Preparing for Thanksgiving at the Southside Mission
By the time Angel was nine years old, he had become more
than accustomed to the visits to soup kitchens and food pantries Julia
regularly made with the family. There were always long lines of people waiting
to be served at those places, and the lines always seemed crowded with
desperate people, not very unlike what they themselves had become.
Standing in those lines had become for him an
experience of shame and humiliation.
They would wait together while strangers, and some who
by then had become familiar faces, huddled around them, sometimes with a kind
of solemn silence, and at other times engaging in what seemed like useless
small talk and occasional forced laughter. Each of those clients, as the
kitchens and pantries called them, hoped for the same bags of groceries, cans
of food, boxes of cereal, powdered milk, or whatever else happened to be
available on the days those places were open. The sense of shame he felt as he
watched his mother accept whatever was handed to her was simply tremendous.
But more than anything, he hated the possibility of
being seen in those places by someone he knew, maybe a classmate or another kid
from his block, or even by one of his teachers or other adults from the
neighborhood for whom he had respect and admiration. He always hoped none of
them would ever know.
Angel didn’t fully understand what poverty was, and he
certainly didn’t know about all the reasons his family had been taken to those
lines. But he was old enough to understand the feelings of embarrassment and
discomfort those realities caused. He thought other families, indeed most of
those he knew, never needed to beg for food.
He was old enough to know other people bought food in
corner bodegas and big grocery stores, while his family couldn’t always do so,
and instead would often have to stand in those lines waiting for strangers to
give it to them. Sometimes, while waiting in those lines, his thoughts led him
to feelings of anger towards his mother, but he couldn’t fully understand why.
On Wednesday, November 23, 1977, Angel and Eddy were
dismissed after a half-day of classes at P.S. 147. In most of the classrooms
that day, the children spent much of the morning cutting and pasting
different-colored pieces of construction paper and creating Happy Thanksgiving
cards to take home to their folks. Angel was particularly proud of his version,
which depicted a large, smiling turkey with lots of brown and gold feathers.
Stepping away from her usual routine because of the
early dismissal in anticipation of Thanksgiving the following day, Julia met
the boys outside the school. On the way there, she had struggled to push
Amanda’s stroller with her blue two-wheeled shopping cart folded up and hanging
heavily from one side. The boys were expecting her that day.
When Eddy saw her, he rushed to his mother and
excitedly gave her the Thanksgiving card he had created just a short time
earlier.
“That’s lovely, Eddy,” she said before wrapping her
arms around him and kissing him.
Angel appeared a moment later, his own card in hand,
but he didn’t show any enthusiasm about it at all, and he immediately tucked it
into a pouch hanging from Amanda’s stroller. Julia hugged him as well, but
Angel seemed indifferent to her affection.
Julia reminded them they needed to walk all the way
over to Marcy Avenue and the Southside Community Mission at Transfiguration
Church as soon as possible.
“Yeah, I know. How could I forget,” Angel responded.
Amanda was in her usual stroller and as quiet as ever.
Angel pushed the stroller, with the food cart still attached, most of the way
to Marcy, as Julia held Eddy’s hand during much of the long walk from Bushwick
Avenue and through the neighborhood.
When they arrived at the Southside Mission at about
12:35 p.m., there was an unusually long line outside. It stretched all the way
to the end of the block. Father Bryan Karvelis, the church’s pastor, as well as
two religious sisters, were walking up and down the line, greeting and
welcoming those who waited.
One of the sisters, Kathryn Margaret Walsh, known to
everyone as Sister Peggy, approached Julia and said, “Oh my, it’s so good to
see you today, Julia, and now I finally get to meet your beautiful children!”
Julia shook Sister Peggy’s hand as she responded,
“Thank you, Sister. Yes, this is my oldest, Angel, and this is Eddy. And I
think you’ve already met Amanda.”
“Yes, I remember this little sweetie pie, and she’s as
cute as ever!” she responded.
Angel took the Thanksgiving card from the pouch
hanging behind the stroller and offered it to the sister.
“I made this today in school, and you can have it if
you want,” he said, holding the card out to her.
Sister Peggy knelt down in front of Angel and, taking
the card and looking him in the eyes, said, “Oh, this is so beautiful. I love
the colors, and especially that broad smile on the turkey’s face. If your mom
is okay with me having it, I’m gonna take it home to the convent and hang it
right on our refrigerator.”
“Of course, Sister, take it,” Julia said. “That’s so
sweet of you, Angel!”
Angel wrapped his arms around the sister, who was
still kneeling before him, and hugged her.
“Thank you so much, Ma’am. I like the smile on the
turkey too. Happy Thanksgiving!”
Then Sister Peggy rose to her feet again and told
Julia, “I made sure they’re giving you one of the twelve-pound turkeys, and I
put a note on it in big red ink that says, ‘PLEASE MAKE SURE TO HOLD THIS
TURKEY FOR JULIA DELACRUS AND HER FAMILY. THANK YOU. SR. PEGGY.’ I’m sure it
will be there for you when you get to the door.”
They then waited on that line for at least an hour.
Julia had been there the previous week, on a day
scheduled by the Mission, to sign up for one of the free frozen turkeys and
well-stocked boxes of food being distributed for the Thanksgiving holiday. On
that day, the volunteer who had been filling out paperwork and collecting names
and information had warned her, “You need to be in line before 12:30 to pick up
your turkey. Every year, by then, we start giving away any that haven’t been
picked up. I’m sure it’s gonna be like that this year too, like always.”
As the line slowly progressed and each client took
their turn at the door where things were being distributed, Angel carefully
studied the faces and appearances of those around him. And although most of
them were women, there were all kinds of people there.
There were men dressed in sharp-looking clothes who
had gold chains around their necks and rings on their fingers. One very short
woman with red-colored hair held a small transistor radio to her ear and, apparently
without an iota of self-awareness, loudly sang along with songs only she could
hear.
There were old people and not-so-old people, and even
a lot of kids just like Angel and Eddy at their mothers’ sides. Some of those
children rambunctiously ran around, away from and back to the lines, seemingly
without any attention or direction from their moms.
Some of the people on the line looked like maybe they
had just woken up and were very tired. It seemed like some of them even had a
hard time standing for too long, and some leaned heavily against buildings,
while others even sat on the ground as they waited for the line to move again.
And Angel was wise enough by then to get the idea that
a few of those people in line were just “bad on their luck and maybe even drug
addicts,” as Julia had explained in other similar circumstances.
As he took it all in, he kept asking himself, Why are
WE here?
At one point, while they were still waiting on the
line, Angel brazenly asked Julia, intentionally loud enough for others to hear,
“Mommy, I thought we were all going to Drina’s house tomorrow for Thanksgiving,
and that they are going to have more than enough food for everyone. I heard
Drina tell you, ‘You don’t have to bring anything but the family.’ So, why are
we here today?”
Julia glared at Angel and simply said, “Shut up, or
you’ll be sorry you said anything,” and the conversation was over. But Angel
fumed inside.
After waiting in the line for that endless hour, Julia
packed the box of canned goods and other foods into the cart and then placed
the frozen turkey on top of everything else, and the family headed back to
their Moore Street apartment. Angel continued to push Amanda’s stroller, and
now Eddy held onto the side of the food cart as Julia pushed it along.
Before they got home that afternoon, Julia told the
boys she had to make one more stop. When they got to the corner where the
liquor store was, Julia told Angel to watch Amanda and Eddy and the food cart
for a moment while she went into the store “to get something.”
She picked up the frozen turkey and took it into the
store with her. About five minutes later, she came back holding a brown paper
bag with something inside, but the turkey was no longer with her.
Angel muttered under his breath, “Oh, I forgot, you gotta
have your special apple juice again.”
Julia just ignored him and said, “Let’s go home, kids.”
No comments:
Post a Comment