Give It To Me. Ana Castillo

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      14

      That night back at the hotel room there was no reply to her texts or voicemails. Palma Piedras had been detained at the station in the spirit of being further embarrassed. She hadn’t been harassed by the city’s finest for such public displays since her high school days at the pier on summer nights. Kids parked their cars and steamed up windows all the time and if they didn’t have a car and were adventurous enough they went down to the beach. It closed at 11:00 p.m. and by 11:05 the cops were patrolling the area.

      That day in front of the cemetery there was no proof of any lewd public display. Sitting in a parked car, a rental, Pepito, who even in a Silverman Brothers cashmere shirt looked like the last Aztec warrior with Ray-Bans, undoubtedly sent off the chota alert. Bingo. The cops found out he was on parole. She wasn’t putting it all on her gangsta cousin. A brown woman in the compromising position that Palma was found in spelled puta for pay. It wasn’t just the white conservative neighborhood. She had been propositioned, harassed, and even manhandled from Paris to Ibiza, fancy beaches, promenades with expensive shops and tourist night hot spots, taken for a prostitute, for no other reason that Palma could think of except for her so-called exotic features among Eurotrash Mulches. She always thought such sordid affronts occurred because she had been unescorted, but apparently being escorted by an “exotic” man cancelled it out.

      When Palma didn’t hear from him after returning to Albuquerque, his prima worried that the incident had been enough to send Pepito back to prison. She’d forgotten about the box until at the airport the kid who took the keys at the rental found it and came after her. Not until Palma was home did she start getting itchy to open it before Christmas, but in the end she put it away unopened. Palma got back to her translations, went to a Zumba fitness class, and started telling herself that she was pregnant. Pepito’s prima was in love. It had been a long time, but the symptoms were there. Each hour of every day that went by with no word from him was like being hung by her heels. A week went by and then another. She didn’t answer calls or emails.

      The editor from Greene & Gaye skyped. Palma took the video call. Well done! the woman said about the work. When Palma was finished with the project, her publisher had a novel to translate by a new English writer. The story is reminiscent of Chéri, the editor said. You know Colette? Yes, Palma knew who the French writer was, and she knew the story of the young man who was ruined by an older woman. It was scandalous writing back then, even in Paris. Sex was the forte of the French. Along with Bourdeax and chocolate croissants. Those people had produced the Marquis de Sade. Palma said she’d do it.

      She’d gone to Chicago to put Abuela’s house up for sale. The lawyer reported that Jim-Bo said he was not in a position to buy out her half. She was not prepared to buy out his ass, either. He has a right to stay, the lawyer told her, although you can ask him for rent. Good luck to me with that, Palma told herself, and decided the only way to get things moving was to go there in person, thus, the main purpose for her recent visit. (The morning she went by was the same day when she met Pepito later at the cemetery.) Jim-Bo was at work, but the squatters were there. When Veronica opened the door she immediately grabbed up her dust mop on four legs as if Palma was the dogcatcher. She didn’t exactly invite her in and the uninvited guest didn’t exactly give a rat’s ass.

      Palma shouldered the woman out of the way and went straight to Abuela’s room to start collecting her grandmother’s personal possessions. In all frankness, most of it would end up at the Salvation Army, too worn or worthless, but Palma took photo albums with sticky, clear pull-back sheets and random family pictures back with her to Albuquerque for when she sat down to write the cautionary tale that had been the Life and Times of Palma la Piedra. The house was going up for sale, but the lawyer warned her that Jim-Bo didn’t have to take the first offer. Eventually, he’ll have to accept a reasonable one, the attorney said, but with this economy it might take a while, you know.

      She wasn’t in the mood to look at pictures of her pubescent self before her hair thickened. Or of Pepito with a missing-front-teeth grin over the Lego Space Center his big cousin bought him for Christmas. Jim-Bo bought nothing for anyone, and except for carrying Abuela’s fake Christmas-tree-in-a box and ornaments up from the basement, he did nothing to mark the occasion. Abuela, at her church most of the time, did little more. The tree was for Pepito. Before he came to the house to live, the old woman had already determined the girl had grown out of childhood and had no right to indulge in such notions as Santa Claus or los Reyes Magos who were said to bring children treats, left in their huaraches on the Epiphany. It might have been the old woman’s religion behind the lack of Christmas spirit toward the children, but the granddaughter was of the mind that being a soldier of the Lord just gave her Grandma Scrooge the excuse.

      One day Palma finally heard from Pepito. They hadn’t sent him back to the joint. What law did I break, man? He said defensively when she asked. The detachment she’d felt from the duration of silence was confirmed by the sparse conversation. His call almost seemed like a perfunctory check-in. It was hardly what a woman expected after a consummation that broke the sound barrier.

      Look, Palma, he said (finally, speaking his mind), you’re the most special person in my life, but I’m not in love with you. Right after the whack on the back that knocked her breath out, he added, And you’re not in love with me. We are in love with the notion of being in love. What you and me have is an infatuation.

      It was like being stunned with a Taser. All they had was a foolish crush? She’d come to pine, cry, made her stomach bloat with a psychological pregnancy, prayed like a soldier’s wife “return him safe to me,” in other words did all the things that any sonsa did over any sonso—how did a woman exit gracefully from that?

      Then he eased her out. I gotta get back to the floor. Love you, prima.