Give It To Me. Ana Castillo

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      Jim-Bo stayed in Abuela’s house after she died. He had lived there his whole life. He brought a skank to live with him and make his tortillas. Abuela had made him fresh flour tortillas every morning of his life. His skanks could hardly keep themselves clean so Abuela’s house must have become a percolating petri dish. He always got into the mowing and trimming so outside the place looked good when Palma Piedras walked up the familiar steps of the modest bungalow on the South Side. The windows were mucky from winter grime and that was the first sign that Abuela was gone. Her Generala Abuela had the granddaughter clean the windows while growing up. Come spring, it was newspapers and vinegar buckets every Saturday.

      Jim-Bo had wanted to fuck his niece since puberty, and when he opened the door his gaze feigning indifference was nothing more than a cover-up of the fact. He was in a T-shirt like he always was when not on the street. When stepping out, he put on a shirt, even to mow the lawn. He was wearing khaki pants with the belt buckle lost under his gross panzota. When Skank of Choice came out her panza was bigger than Jim-Bo’s, and like his, her ass was lost in her jeans, and thick chin hairs popped out like pay parking-lot spikes. The rest of her face was gray.

      Jim-Bo would not like it, Palma knew, but the bottom line was that her grandmother had gone downtown to a lawyer on the last days of her life. Everything she had to leave in the world was left to the granddaughter and Jim-Bo. The way Palma figured it Abuela had known he had a woman who might just try to take over the “estate” and turn it into Casa Pestilencia. Palma owed Abuela little beyond the tacos and tolerance she showed the girl until she moved out, but that was enough to go back there to see her wishes respected.

      The place smelled of burned beans or maybe farts and she looked around for a window to open. Three TVs were on. Maybe two and a radio. Skank had a mop dog that started yapping the minute she walked up to the front door and wouldn’t stop after she got inside. Palma kicked at it. Don’t kick my dog, the woman said, her head of long, nappy hair partly covered with a rag. I didn’t kick it, Palma said. Go inside, Jim-Bo told his old lady, meaning the kitchen, bedroom, or hole she had crawled out of. She waddled off with the yapping shit in her arms and Palma thought the second she had the opportunity she was going to knock her out.

      She went straight to Abuela’s room. It was all as Palma last saw it: bed, dresser, and everything, even the old woman’s clothes in the closet, but now piled high with new junk all over like an episode of Hoarders. Veronica’s just moving in, Jim-Bo said behind her. Skank a.k.a Veronica. Yeah, just moving in. Surely, she’d been there since Abuela’s passing while Palma was in Colombia. They went back to the living room. Maury Povich was trying to figure out who was the baby daddy. He was competing with a two-for-one-chef-master-contraption infomercial in the kitchen, and through the floor you heard Chuck Mangione’s flügelhorn sounding out “Land of Make Believe.” It was coming from the basement. Who lives down there? Palma asked. It was a guess. Her son, Jim-Bo said. The woman came out of the kitchen with a spatula, You want something to eat? Palma shook her head. I was talking to him, the nasty woman said.

      I came to give you this, she said, handing over the lawyer’s card. Abuela left this house to both of us. What? He said, scarcely looking at the card, which she was sure he couldn’t read without glasses. This was my mother’s house, he said. I’ve lived here all my life . . . He stopped. Palma looked at him. She could feel the woman’s possom eyes drilling into the side of her head. Most skanks were just skanks. They didn’t have paranormal powers. She still felt a headache coming on. It was probably the sulfur smell in the air. Jim-Bo was very wrong. Her grandmother, having stoically mourned the loss of a wayward daughter, kept Palma in mind at the end. Palma also believed that Abuela was privately proud that she sought a profession—instead of leading a life that came off to the mainstream as living la vida loca but in truth was the slow and treacherous rock wall climb of a disenfranchised Latina out of the mire in which she’d been born.

      You don’t want this house, anyway, Jim-Bo said. You traipse all over the world. You never called my ma. You don’t even live in Chicago. He looked around, and smiling, he showed rotted teeth. Palma turned away. Jim-Bo’s old lady, sensing herself one foot back on the street with her Quasimodo down there, held the spatula up like a fly swatter. Palma couldn’t wait to settle things, throw his ass out, open the windows, clean up and paint the place, and put up a for-sale sign. Abuela had wanted to move out for a long time but never had the nerve. Jim-Bo was like having a dead son laid out in state, which she couldn’t bring herself to leave behind. Palma had no issues with giving him his half after the sale, but if he thought he was going to fart his way to China from his lounge chair in the living room, he was dead wrong. Dead. The word of the day. Synonym for her past. Muerto. It was my grandmother’s wishes, she said, pushing open the storm door. Throughout the neighborhood she detested all her life, birds were chirping. It was a gorgeous June day.