Life Is Funny Read online

  I would have slammed him right then, but the dyed redhead who answers the phone goes, “Ooooh, Hectah, I’ma tell everybody you finally talk to a girl.” She looks at me. “You bettah take this good, sweetheart, ’cause Hectah don’t play.”

  While I’m trying to figure out which one of them to pop first, he loses the smile.

  “You are so beautiful,” he says.

  He doesn’t mean pretty. I know that because I’m not pretty and because of the tone of his voice. He means I’m beautiful, me, somewhere inside. Asshole.

  I haven’t shed a tear since I was six, but the next thing I know I’m out on the curb, crying so hard I think it could kill the baby, and he’s sitting next to me, going, “You date dark?”

  * * *

  I sleep over at Molly’s the next night, my sixteenth birthday. Her dorm room at NYU is the size of a bunk bed laid out on its side, but she’s got the walls lined with stack shelves and pull-out drawers and desktops that hinge out and prop flat. Molly’s a fucking genius. She got a full scholarship from her grades and SATs and her entrance essay, which was all about how our mom’s crazy but mostly on Sundays.

  “Happy birthday,” she calls, swinging open her door while I’m still way down the hall. She’s filled the place with yellow and white balloons and streamers and a little round cake with white and yellow frosting. She makes me open lavender-ribboned presents, one by one. I get a gift certificate for a thirty-minute massage, a videotape on childbirth, a fleece hat topped by three silver bells, a hardcover copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and a bag full of chocolate-covered pretzels.

  “You’re such a bitch,” I tell her, shaking my head to make the bells ring. “You know I can’t get you shit like this for your birthday.”

  “You’re welcome,” she says, and tries to give me a hug.

  I shake her off, but not too hard, because it feels good to have her touch me.

  The telephone rings. It’s my mother. I can tell by the way Molly’s voice gets extra polite. She hands me the phone. I hand it back to her. She hands it back to me.

  “You should have told me you were celebrating over there,” my mother complains. “I would have come.”

  “Uh huh,” I mumble. She’s full of shit.

  “What do we need?” she asks.

  “Toilet paper and English muffins,” I answer.

  She owns a hair salon. It’s open from eight a.m. to ten p.m., Monday through Saturday. I never see her if I can help it. I make sure I’m out or closed up in my room by nine forty-five and gone all day Sundays.

  “Happy birthday,” she says. “You can have a free cut and blow dry.”

  “Dried-up old whore,” I mutter, after we hang up, just to hear Molly tell me I’m disgusting.

  * * *

  Hector takes me out for pizza on his afternoon off. No white coat this time. Just those teeth and eyes. He asks me about the baby’s father.

  “He’s a crack addict,” I say.

  “Did you love him a lot?” His voice is deep, and he has an accent. His eyes are the color of my mother’s marbles. I can’t understand how a Spanish person can have eyes that look like glass. I can’t understand how anyone could.

  “How can you see?” I ask him. “It looks like you’re blind, or something.”

  He shrugs. “Did you love him a lot?” he says again.

  “Not a lot.”

  Hector tells me he graduated high school two years ago, and he’s in a nursing program part-time. His father used to beat him up because nursing is for women and fags, but then his father died of a heart attack. The kids in his neighborhood used to jump him until he started carrying needles around and telling people they had AIDS blood on them, and then everybody stopped fucking with him.

  “You have it?” I ask him.

  He shakes his head. “You?”

  I shake mine.

  “I thought maybe that’s why you’re so mad all the time,” he says.

  * * *

  He invites me to see his place. The neighborhood is mostly Puerto Ricans. They speak fast Spanish and sneak smirks at me, peppering their words with puta, which means “cunt” or “slut” or something.

  In front of his stoop, I finally get it. “You prick,” I tell him.

  “What?”

  “You want some white pussy to show off what a goddamn manly lay you are?”

  “What?” he says again. I shove him.

  “You piece of limp cock.” I spit at his feet. A group of guys on the corner start bullshitting louder, laughing.

  I shove him again, and he stumbles backward. I stand there, waiting for him to punch me, to yell, “Monique. Jesus. Monique. Please.”

  But Hector doesn’t move. “You don’t have to do that,” he tells me. He acts like he can’t even hear those guys squawking and screaming over at us. “You’re beautiful,” he says. “You don’t have to do that.”

  * * *

  I’m so out of breath and I have to pee so bad by the time I get home I think I might wet my pants, and then I realize I left my keys on the windowsill in my room. Damn it. I start bawling all over again, even though I thought I’d gotten myself under control by the time I’d hit Flatbush Avenue, and then I start cursing myself out for bawling over a prick like Hector. I’m still bawling and cursing while I check for the extra set of keys that’s supposed to be hidden behind the garbage cans three stoops down. When there’s nothing but old dog shit in plastic Baggies and white packing peanuts stuck to clumps of dirty leaves, I stop bawling and cursing, and I throw the neighbors’ cans all over the place instead, pretending they’re Hector, and after that I still have to pee worse than anything.

  The bawling tries to start up again on the way over to the salon, making me take deep breaths and letting them out with the word fuck to stop it, because I’ll be double goddamned if I’ll let my mother see me cry.

  “I need the keys,” I say, before I’m even through the door, before that blast of strawberry and fried hair and chemicals hits my nose.

  “Again?” she asks as I blow by her and the cash register, the old-fashioned kind made of brass and shiny black button keys and a crank on one side, the kind that nobody but her knows how to use anymore.

  “You heard me,” I say, slamming the bathroom door as hard as I can to piss off the idiot customers, and my mother’s idiot staff, and especially my idiot mother.

  After I’m done peeing, I think about how I shoved Hector and how he called me beautiful, and I want to smash the mirror with my fist or with my forehead. But instead I just stick my face under the swan sink fixtures for a while and then dry off with one of the green cotton capes from the stacks piled on shelves over the toilet.

  When I come out, a guy around my age is walking toward some woman sitting under a dryer. He doesn’t belong here because for one, he has a crew cut, two, he’s male, plus, he’s under forty.

  “Drew,” the woman says when she sees him, like she’s surprised.

  “I locked myself out,” he tells the woman.

  “Isn’t this funny,” my mother says, loud, to everyone, handing me her master ring so I can wiggle off our apartment key.

  Nobody answers but me. “Hilarious,” I say.

  The woman rummages through a leather purse. She’s wearing a Rolex you can tell is real, and her suit looks like the kind my sister’s boss wears. Expensive as hell. When she hands her Drew kid their key, her sleeve rides up, and you can see a bunch of bruises the color of the sky on a shitty day. And fingerprint squeeze marks all over. The same kind my father used to give me when I was little.

  I stare hard, feeling better by the second while she yanks her sleeve down and the Drew kid turns as pink as her nails.

  “What happened to you?” I fake whisper, fake polite, just to mess with them, just to be disgusting. “Looks like you pissed somebody off.”

  The words aren’t even half out of my mouth before he whips his head toward mine and goes, “Fuck you.”

  Then his mother’s messed-up arm f
lashes out to smack him, and in one part of a second he starts to jerk away, and he could, only he stops and takes the slap, and then she drops her hand and just sits there, and he just stands there, and the customers and staff are still and quiet, and my mother rearranges the shampoos in the display case, pretending she can’t hear or see any of it, and I want to keep on being disgusting, only the bawling starts up again, and I can’t help it, and I go, “I’m sorry. Shit. I’m sorry.”

  Hector calls me four times before I’ll talk to him. His messages are calm, quick. “Monique. It’s Hector. Please call me back.” Each time he calls I want to bawl and I want him to call back and I smash something. A plate, a ketchup bottle, a lamp, another plate. I can’t find my mother’s marbles.

  On the fifth time, the fifth day, I pick up. “What do you want?”

  “I want to be a part of your life.”

  “Where do you get that shit from? Do you watch soap operas?”

  “You’re real, Monique. I need to be with someone who’s real.”

  “Faggot,” I say.

  “That’s such immature bullshit,” he tells me. I roll my eyes at the phone. “You’re too smart to do all that,” he says. “You don’t have to keep doing all that.”

  “What makes you the goddamn expert?” I ask him.

  “What makes you?” he fires back.

  “I hate you,” I tell him.

  We agree to meet at the handball courts at five. I call Molly before I go. “I can’t do this,” I say.

  “Are you crying?” She doesn’t have to sound so shocked.

  “No,” I sob.

  “Don’t go,” she says. “What did this guy do to you anyway?”

  “I think I need to see him.”

  “Okay,” she says, really sarcastic. “Then go.”

  “Will you come?” I ask.

  “Now?”

  “Please?”

  “Monique, I’m at work.”

  “Bring Caitlin with you.”

  “To Brooklyn?”

  “Please. I need you to meet him.”

  “I’m not going to be able to tell anything just by meeting him,” she argues.

  “Yes, you will,” I beg. “You’re good at that.”

  “I have a class at eight,” she says. “I can’t stay long.”

  * * *

  The handball courts are empty, as usual, when I get there. While I wait for Hector and Molly to show up, I imagine them taking one look at each other and falling in love. I imagine them dropping to the pavement and fucking right there in front of Caitlin. I imagine Hector with his dick hanging out of his jeans, forgetting my name, and Molly with her skirt hiked up, apologizing and asking me to take Caitlin back to Manhattan for her.

  While I’m imagining all this, I feel the Doritos I ate earlier rising to my chest. At first I think I’ve made myself sick from being so mad at Molly and Hector for fucking on the blacktop, but then I remember I’m pregnant. My knees give out, and in the same second Hector’s here, catching me from behind.

  “Are you okay?” he goes, and he hugs me hard. When he finally lets go, Molly’s walking up, holding Caitlin by the hand.

  “Hi,” Molly says.

  Caitlin is staring at me. “There’s a baby in your stomach?”

  “Yeah,” I say. Caitlin is so small. Her whole face is the size of my palm, practically. I’m going to have one of her soon. God damn it.

  “I’m Molly,” Molly says to Hector, who looks confused.

  “That’s my sister,” I tell him.

  “I’m Caitlin,” Caitlin says. “Molly’s my baby-sitter, and we took two trains and a bus to get here, and there were men saying bad words to us on the bus. Do you want to hear what they were saying?”

  “No,” Molly tells her. “I told you.”

  “I wanted you two to meet each other,” I mumble to Hector.

  “Did she tell you what happened?” he asks Molly, after a minute.

  “I don’t think so,” she says, crossing her arms and glaring at me.

  “She stepped to me last week. Almost knocked me right on my butt.”

  “That’s none of her business,” I tell him.

  Molly puffs hair away from her forehead and glares at me some more.

  “Why are your eyes like that?” Caitlin asks Hector. “Molly, why are his eyes like that?” He kneels so she can see his face better, but otherwise he ignores her.

  “Did you knock her back?” Molly asks him.

  “Molly!” I go, loud.

  “I don’t play that,” he says, looking up at me as if I actually matter. “She lays a hand on me like that again, and we’re over. I mean it.”

  Molly looks impressed. So does Caitlin. “They’re like little snowballs,” she whispers. “How did you do that?”

  “Why do you like her?” Molly asks Hector, trying to pull Caitlin off him.

  Caitlin shakes Molly away, puts a teeny hand on each of Hector’s cheeks, and moves her face as close to his as she can. Their noses bump while she examines his eyes.

  “Because,” Hector answers Molly, as though that explains everything.

  * * *

  So many things happen before we’re even alone in a room together. Hector makes me talk to Ms. Crosky about that other high school. He signs us up for a childbirth class that won’t start for four more months. He meets my mother on a Sunday morning and watches her count marbles. “Why do you do that?” he asks her, very politely. “You never can tell,” she says. I piss in the bed twice more and don’t talk to him about it and don’t change my sheets either. We rent that movie about Greenland and watch it with Molly in her dorm room on a borrowed VCR. We eat a lot of pizza, and I try to pick a lot of fights. Sometimes he gets mad at me and has to walk away to cool off, and when he comes back, he makes me listen to him without swearing, interrupting, or rolling my eyes.

  It’s very hard.

  * * *

  We start off by lying down with our clothes on, stomach to stomach, hugging. He curves himself around the baby bulge and pets my head. I’m already crying, and then I start swearing.

  “God damn it, you better not fuck with me, you prick. You better not, or I’ll stab you a million times with a dull knife and send the pieces to your mother.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” he whispers. “You know you don’t have to do that.”

  “I’m so disgusting,” I try to argue, but his hands and his voice and his marble mother’s eyes won’t let it be true anymore.

  “No,” he says. “You’re beautiful.”

  Year Four

  Eric

  Mickey

  Molly

  Monique

  Linnette

  Hector

  Caitlin

  Jackson

  Eric

  ME AND MS. Hudson was hate at first sight. She always be staring at me like I’m gonna smoke her or some shit. She a English teacher, a white bitch who don’t even know I got two thoughts in my head. She be teaching mad boring shit and acting all like she a gift to God. She tell kids get out her room if they be messing, she tell kids who they think they is with they mouth so bad. She give you a A right in the start and then be taking away all kind of numbers on your grade if you don’t be doing homework or be raising your hand and kissing booty. She do a paper, look like you could buy on the corner, with bunch of Herbs writing mad boring stories and shit ’bout the school, then they get numbers put to they grade and they back up to a A. Fucking Herbs man, suck they grandma’s pussy for a A.

  I ain’t got a A my whole life. Special ed left my ass back two times. I be lucky they let me go to ninth grade next year. Only reason I be coming to this shit anyway for Mickey. Mickey seven, but he real smart and he maybe could turn something right if he grow up. I be all set to quit, I be cutting to go with Franklin Avenue, smoking weed and lifting watches from Super Mart, then Mickey starts nerving me all these questions like he motherfucking   Jeopardy. He say, what make the TV get the pictures? What make it go fuzzy?
Where water come from? Why Mama like putting a needle in her? ’Bout to kill me with all that ’cause I got to answer him every one, and answering whack questions make you tired. But that Mickey, man, he something else. He fix me Campbell chicken dumpling soups every night, fix up a blunt for me real good when I tell him, he don’t never pee my side the bed. He tell all the little bugs he see at school he don’t need no daddy ’cause he gots me.

  Ms. Hudson can suck my wad, she want, but I got to stay awhile ’cause if I get slammed, all they gonna find be my moms, nodding on Fourth Avenue or fucking some dick promising a white Christmas, then what they going to do with Mickey? They put him in some goddamn house in Queens, they got all kind of other kids beat the shit out of him, mess him, make him fuck they cat. Ms. Hudson want me to shit on her so she could fix me to leave, but I not going nowhere. ’Cause I not at school, I be on Fourth selling shit, lifting shit. School safer. Nobody don’t fuck with me ’cause I got fifteen in a month, and I be big. Teachers mostly leave me ’cause I stop messing them. Only that bitch want me out ’cause she think I ain’t got two thoughts in my head.

  Not so bad, ’specially since Mickey say he want to write words for my pictures, ’cause he like writing and he do it real fine. Every day I takes me paper from some Herb, takes me a pencil, I sits in the back every class, I draws me shit for Mickey. He like all that whack little bug stuff. He like spaceships, he like dinosaurs, he like guns and monsters and Ninja Turtles. He make up mad bad stories and put ’em next to my pictures and we makes us Mickey and Eric comics. He like this basketball dude I drawed, Jordan and Rodman mixed in, and I drawed wings on the dude’s legs, so he this superhero or some shit, and Mickey went dope with this dude. Mickey calls the dude Jordman and he make Jordman be all a hero every story. Mickey like those hero types, so I draws all kind of pictures of Jordman doing hero dos, saving little bugs and smoking motherfucker teachers and all kind of good shit. Mickey, he love the shit. He never get tired of making his words to my pictures. He keeps ’em all straight in a notebook I lifted him from Super Mart. He keep that notebook real careful in the place under the bathroom sink.