B E A T


MOM sways her hips from side to side as she presses buttons on the Oster blender. She pretends it's a drum-pad synthesizer. The rattling commotion has pulled me out of bed, and I peek from the hallway with my legs twined — I have to pee real bad but my older brother Jr. is locked in the bathroom, jackin' off probably.

Nelo is in the kitchen with my mom. His body twirls to the racket noise as he stains derby marks over the linoleum floor with brown leather huaraches. `Push it!,' he says, spinning in circles between pulse and crush speed. `Makes me spin faster. A'gen!'

`Okay,’ she says, hitting pulse with syncopated rhythm that bangs my brain in: a drilling wake-up call throughout the entire house. ‘You want cinnamon?' she screams.

`Yeeah! ... uh, no.' He's transforms into a spinning heli-man-copter with his arms out to his sides. His speed accelerates to the Streisand lyrics blaring out of the speakers above the fridge. `Something's coming, something's great! If I can waaait!' The cacophony and the orchestrated version of a Broadway hit hurts. I have one hand over my abdomen and the other pressed against my ear.

`Well?' Mom looks over her shoulder to Nelo with a perturbed expression, waiting for his answer, but he’s paying attention to the billowing apron around his waist. It ripple as he spins.

He loves that apron, found it in the kitchen the day we watched Rocky on HBO. We were sitting on the sofa and he twirled in front of the television with what looked like a communion dress, singing, `The daisies are dancing!' Jr. tried to ignore him but he couldn’t. He rolled his eyes and curled his lip, just as Mr. T knocked out Balboa.

‘Yeeah. I want cinnamon,' Nelo says. His eyes curl back like a Christian in re-birth and — BAM! — he crashes over his chubby knees. His dress deflates.

Jr. comes out of the bathroom and heads towards the kitchen. His hair is askew and full of knots. I know he'll say something so I keep peeking from the hallway even though my bladder burns.

`You sissy-playing?' he asks, lip curling after the question mark.

Mom pours a glass of banana milk and hands it to Jr. `Look. When you're done I need you and your dad to drag the SONY television out to the porch. I'm gonna shower. Mijo, your milk's on the counter.’ Nelo’s body is twisted like a mangera hose, slumped by the tinted stove door. Mom shakes her head as she passes me in the hallway, whispers ‘nosey’ under her breath.

`Help me take the tv out,' Jr. says. ‘Don’t be a sissy.’

Nelo satnds up and walks out of the kitchen, his head down. He grabs his banana milk off the counter, whispering under his breath, `Leamme alone.’

As he passes me I tell him, ‘It's a good ship lolly.' I run my fingers through his curls — I did that when he was younger. He used to sing to me under the covers.

He goes to his room. Closes the door.

I pull my pants down once seated over the toilet and tilt my head back. I hear the sounds of dripping water and my shoulders relax. It dawns on me, why the wake-up call, why the need to take SONY outside. The family is coming: los Espinozas. The HBO boxing match is airing today.



C R U S H

TIA LUZ, my Mom’s sister, has never been a ranchera singer, though she belts like one and laughs like one. She sits plumped at the end of the kitchen table cracking sunflower seeds in her mouth as she tells the rest of my tias, my aunts, all her gossip.

`Hector was livid Angelica! He stormed in the house and grabbed a Don Pedro from the cabinet, turned towards Sylvia with his arm up. "Madre!" I said. He's gonna hit her. But when he raised the bottle, she ran to her room screaming, "Que te chingas!" I screamed and told her that she can’t talk to her father that way.’

Mom ignores her, bent over the sink washing dishes with her hips swaying. She looks out the window at the rosebushes in the backyard bruising purple. I know she must be thinking of ‘buelita, my grandmother — roses were her favorite.

Outside under the portico, Dad and my tios slouch in plastic lawn chairs drinking Miller Lites, waiting for the moment to hear, `Vamonos,’ from one of my tias, meaning get the car we’re leaving.

Behind the garage my cousins play ‘Around-the-world’ with the basketball board while Junell, my cousin, and I slouch on the sofas near the kitchen. I tell her about a black guy I like named Isaac that lives in the back of the neighborhood. One day my Dad saw us walking home together and asked, `Who's that black guy?' the second I walked in the house.

Nelo walks in through the back door, passes us with a hand full of leaves. He looks at Junnel and blurts out the end of my story. Tells her, `Dad won't let her see `em because he's black and has a mohawk.' He raises his shoulder at the end of the sentence as though he’s proud of the fact that he knows, or maybe that’s his way of putting a period at the end of a statement.

`What you doing?' I ask, but he keeps walking towards the counter-top where Mom stands.

`Can you give me some Palmolive Mom?' he says. Junell and I look at each other wondering what he is up to.

`For what mijo?'

`I want to put some in the leaves and wrap'em like a burrito.’

Mom peeks down at him. `What are you going to do?'

`Plant ‘em,' he says, holding his hand up with the stacked leaves on top of each other, like folded laundry.

`Why?'

`To make bubble flowers.'

Tia Luz adjusts her chair towards the sink as Mom squeezes detergent into Nelo's leaves. One drop into each. He folds them the way my tias wrap tamales: left over right, downside up, around; like a gift.

`You want them to grow bubbles!? Why the hell you think tha's gonna happen?' tia Luz says as tio Hector steps into the kitchen. `What?... you playin’ with dishwashing liquid?' he asks, face pink and half-drunk on beer. `The guys are playin’ basketball behind the garage.'

Nelo continues folding; `I know,' he whispers, his chin down.

`Well? Why don't you go out there? Chingado,’ tio Hector says.

Jr. barrels in with a frown and sweat over his face `What's up with you?' Mom asks. I know that face. He must’ve lost the game. Jr. looks at Nelo, disfigures his expression like a wrinkled rag and throws up his hands. `What’s he doing now ma?'

Tio Hector leans his elbow over the counter and looks up at Jr. with a smirk. `Your bro is goin’ to plant leaves with detergent so he can grow bubble flowers.' His fingertips pop open when he says `flowers.'

`Imagination never hurt anyone,' tia Ellie says, my other aunt who never married and listens to everyone. She leans back against the edge of the counter. Jr. goes off, `No? You don't think it's gonna hurt when people kick his ass because he acts like a girl and twirls in an apron?'

`No! He does that Mercedes?' tia Luz asks, shocked with her own voice, sticking her nose out with circles around her eyes.

Jr. laughs as though it’s some kind of joke. `Yeah! ...he does!'

In the midst of attention Jr. doesn’t stop. `Hell... when he was born, we were trying to think of a name, whether to call him Nelo or Nela. I told ‘em, "Just call him Nellie,” like that he’s right down the middle and a bit of both.’ He drops his wrist the way ladies do and shoots his eyebrows up like some sort of movie star; busts out laughing. I cover my mouth because I think it’s funny. I laugh; so does Junell.

When I see Nelo’s face, there’s water in his eyes. The kitchen begins shaking, everyone is laughing, and the ground reverberates.

Nelo drops his leaves over linoleum and runs past the washing machine. The emerald Palmolive oozes in the center of the floor. My shoulders shudder when I hear the front door slam.

`Ah come on, we're only kidding' tio Hector calls, but Nelo is out of the house. Mom starts picking up the leaves and looks up at me, as though I started it. Not Jr.

But I stare back at her, trying to find the question to the answer she’s expecting from me.

`Hey girlie...you wanna get outta here?' tio Hector asks tia Luz. She gets up, pushing her belly forward and arching her back to get off the chair. `Yeah let's go. I'm hungry. We can stop at Arandas on the way home and pick up some tortillas.'

The Espinozas say good-bye, but tia Ellie says she’ll stay a bit longer. Tia Angelica grabs the plastic bag of sunflower seeds and Mom wipes the floor as dad hugs everyone good-bye. Jr. fills the Oster blender with ice cubes and pushes the crush button to make a chocolate shake. His eyes averted to an expression that is seemingly indifferent to what just happened.

Tia Ellie leans against the sink, looks out the window and spins her karat necklace between her fingers. It barely touches her neck.

L I Q U I F Y


I LOOK both ways when I run out of the house, passing magnolia trees and the scent of spring. Puddles line the alley street like gaudy diamonds. I search between bushes and under parked cars. I peek inside automobiles. Thunder strikes from the edge of the neighborhood and rain starts to fall. I run, all the way down Lourdes street to Pine Valley.

A yellow boarded house looks deserted. It’s a house a Chinese family used to live in. Tropical plants in their backyard have turned brown; their purple basil still fragrant. Windows are busted on the garage door and I peek inside, but there is nothing: dusty old moving boxes; a rusty pink tricycle; Playboy magazines from the 1970s.

I keep running. Thunder fades to a steady hiss above the lavender sky, and rain drips off my bangs, over my eyelashes, warm, like out of a garden hose in summer. I run to the back of the neighborhood and cut down Lourdes street to the Gospel church. I comb up and down the streets. I lose my breath; and run towards home.

I pass the Chinese house again and peek inside, but I can hardly see. I make a dome with my knuckles and press against the window pane, poking my face underneath. The garbage is in the same place, except for an open magazine showing poses of tangled legs and hard-ons.

Nelo is lying beside it, coiled in a fetal position. His brown huaraches stick out from underneath his apron like the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz. His head tilted watching a dream.

My weight settles and I fall into the garage door. He could wear it like a cape, like Superman, Batman, Zorro. But what would it matter? It’s the same flower polyester, same printed daisies. I stand there for a moment staring at him sleep, losing my eyes with the rain that dribbles between us. I doze off to forget where I am. Pay attention to the sounds of water.

A tapping noise wakes me up and I see Nelo’s hazel gaze peering directly at me from the other side of the glass. He stands with his apron wrapped around his shoulders.

`Why did he do that with his wrist?' — muted and underwater, a sheet of tears veils over his cheeks. His small frame shudders in one brief second. ‘I don’t do that do I?’

Ten seconds pass before I move, say anything, before I try to figure out why the hell it even matters, flowers instead of soldiers.

`Because you ... you act like a girl,' I say, without sound coming out. Just my lips move.

‘But what’s wrong with that?’ he asks. ‘Why is that so funny?’

I can’t answer. I don’t know. All I say ...

‘Mom’s making banana milk.’

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