Pt 2 of 4

The first time Anthony was left alone with Tío Gabriel was five months after they moved into his apartment. He had already turned seven.

Tío Gabriel called him over with a wave and pulled Anthony onto his lap. His belly pressed against his back, and his arm circled heavy around Anthony’s middle. He asked about school and if Anthony liked it here. He talked and asked while his hands began to wander, first above Anthony's clothes but then snaking underneath. Anthony sat stiff, eyes locked on the front door, counting the seconds between each question as if precision could hold him together until someone walked in.

No one ever came through that door. Not that day, and not in all the times after when he needed them to. What had begun that afternoon as a moment of shock, crept into the empty hours as a pattern, whenever the others were gone. With every new thing Tío Gabriel wanted to do, or at least try doing, the line kept moving into a place where “too far” stopped meaning anything. He didn’t have a name for it, he only knew the dread that settled in his stomach when the door shut. He almost told his mother once, but the words froze inside him. She had a way of lashing out first and asking later, and some part of him knew if he spoke the beating would land on him instead.

Nine months after leaving San Juan, his mother said she found them an apartment in a place called Allwick Crescent. It sounded like good news at first, until her next words made the air drain from the room. Sammy and Marco would go with her. Anthony would stay behind with Tío Gabriel, just for a short while.

The words hit him like a hand. He shook his head so hard his vision doubled.

“No! No, no, no!”

His chest tightened until every breath was a gasp. He begged, pleaded, his voice cracking into pieces. When that didn’t change her face, something wild snapped loose inside him. He screamed until his throat burned. He clawed at his own skin, beat his fists against his cheeks and forehead, the sting of each blow mixing with the panic that roared in his ears. He thought if he hurt himself enough she would understand. But she only rolled her eyes and told him to stop acting crazy. When he didn’t stop, her palm whipped across his face, a sharp backhand that sent his head lurching off to one side.

“Enough, Anthony! Ungrateful little shit. He feeds you, don't he? Roof over your head? You shut your mouth before I give you something to cry about.”

And he did. He pressed his palm to his face, choking down the rest of his panic.

He hadn’t known it then, but looking back, life with Tío Gabriel almost seemed simpler than what waited in the apartment in Allwick. At least in Tío Gabriel’s place there had only been one person to fear.

He was eight when she brought him to live with her and his brothers. He never understood why there hadn’t been space for him before, why she had left him behind at all, when in the end he and Sammy shared a narrow room anyway.

After Tío Gabriel came Rusty. Rusty was handsome, or had been once, in a way that showed through the ruin. He looked like a photograph that had been left too long in the rain, the shape of beauty still there but warped and fading. His skin was weathered, a patchwork of sunspots and broken veins that drink had carved across his cheeks. Thin plasters clung to his face, hidden in his stubble, like he was always covering up some fresh nick or scratch.

Rusty wasn’t nice to any of them, not even their mom, and he never paid for anything or helped around the apartment. When he wasn’t hurting her, they would disappear together. They sold the food stamps and left them with nothing but stale crackers to stretch across the week. Anthony didn’t know where they went, only that they always came back thinner in the face. She would smell different too, like sweat that had soured. She moved too fast for a while, then crashed into silence, and Rusty would pace the floor, searching through drawers as if something had been stolen.

Rusty chose a night when Marco wasn’t home to creep into his room while he slept. He knew Rusty wouldn’t have dared if Marco had been there. He woke to the sense of someone in the room, the sound of breathing that wasn’t Sam's. By the time he realized it wasn’t a dream, cold terror flooded him. He thrashed hard, kicking at the mattress, fists flying, striking blindly at the dark with all the fury his small body could muster. A blow caught him hard across the face, snapping the fight out of him in an instant. His body went rigid as Rusty moved him over onto his stomach.

In the midst of it, Sammy had climbed out of his bed, dragged his blanket with him, and curled up inside the narrow wardrobe wedged between the two beds.

The next morning no one questioned why Anthony’s face was swollen, and no one asked why his four year old brother stayed in the closet the whole day.

School was complicated, though not altogether bad. Anthony never liked it, not in Puerto Rico and not here either. But the building was cleaner, the floors polished and the teachers didn’t strike students across the knuckles when they made mistakes. He found friends quickly, even if he couldn’t follow half of what they said. Some were older and already towering above him, but they liked the way he laughed at the wrong moments and never refused a dare. Language didn’t matter when you were slipping packs of cigarettes from a teacher’s bag, lifting wallets from lockers, or sneaking into the supply room to smash bottles and spray paint the walls.

But for every boy who wanted him around, there was another who wanted him gone. They saw the threadbare clothes, the uneven haircut his mother hacked with kitchen scissors, and the way he always carried the smell of unwashed laundry. They called him names he didn’t understand, but the tone was clear enough. He came to know that fists spoke a language everyone understood. Sometimes a beating was enough to shut them up, but just as often it made them return louder, eager to see if they could make him snap again. It was a balance he never quite won, liked for his guts, mocked for the holes in his shoes.

On a sunny afternoon after school he had brought his friends home. They were hanging out in the stairwell at the bottom of the building, where the steps met the entrance, a single cigarette making its way from hand to hand. Each boy took quick puffs, holding the smoke in their mouths like they had seen grown men do, then blowing it out again without pulling it into their lungs. They laughed at the faces they made. 

His mother came home, and he could tell she was in one of her good moods. She chatted with the boys and asked their names. Joey, Karim, Denny and Jamie. She took the cigarette from Jamie’s hand and smoked it down in two long drags. Joey was perched on the banister rocking back and forth when he lost his balance and tumbled down the last few steps to the floor. The boys collapsed into laughter as he scrambled up, bowing like he had done it on purpose.

“You are stupid, man.” Anthony pointed at Joey.

Her laugh rose above theirs. “You are stoo-peed, maaan,” she repeated in a sing-song, while the boys roared. “Who’s ever gonna take you serious talking like that, Anto?”

Anthony laughed too, though it snagged in his throat. His ears burned hot.

The next day Jamie came alone. Anthony only opened the door because his mother wasn’t home. Jamie stood there with his backpack slung over one shoulder, his hair combed neatly to the side the way it always was. He was eleven and taller than Anthony, but not by much.

“I got you some books. So you don’t sound like an idiot.”

Anthony curled his hand into a fist and drew back. It didn't scare Jamie.

“Do you want help or not?”

He dropped his hand.

They cleared a patch of floor in the living room, shoving bottles and wrappers aside with their feet, then sat with the books spread between them. Jamie pointed at the words, sounding them out slow, and Anthony repeated. The syllables stuck in his mouth, but Jamie never laughed.

In the end Anthony decided the only ones worth perfecting were the curses. Fuck off. Cunt. Cock-sucker. Bitch. Whore. He pictured Doña Tere and how she would have crossed herself and chased him with her slipper if she heard it. Luckily, in English she would never know what he was saying.

From then on, Jamie corrected him. Not just the use of words, but the way Anthony bent his tongue around them. He never did it in front of anyone else. If Anthony slipped with the boys, Jamie stayed quiet and let the mistake pass. But when it was just the two of them, he’d nudge him and repeat the word until Anthony could match it.

He was nine the night his mom pressed pills into his hand. For a flicker of a moment he thought it was an act of kindness. Maybe she had noticed the headache that lived behind his eyes, the way light scraped at him until he squinted and rubbed his temples raw. The softness didn’t last. It melted into a strange heaviness, in his hands, then his legs, then the back of his skull, until even lifting his head felt like wading through syrup.

He half-remembered most of those nights. Strangers passed through the apartment, sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs, sometimes with voices he recognized, like Tío Gabriel. He lay still, caught between memory and blackout, and woke sick, the taste of them clinging long after they were gone. Each time they left, they took pieces of him with them. At first it was so small he almost didn't notice, a sliver here, a fragment there. The pieces grew larger with every visit, torn from him like strips of cloth, until it felt as if they were hollowing him out bit by bit, taking the parts he needed most to stay whole.

It didn’t happen every night, not even often enough to predict, but he knew the signs. Like fresh sheets pulled tight on her bed when she never cared otherwise. Sometimes an empty glass left on the dresser, or a pair of unfamiliar shoes tucked neatly by the door. It was always in her room. Marco was never there. Sometimes Sammy was, or maybe Anthony only thought he was.

When he refused the pills, the outcome never changed. They weren’t for the men, he realized. They were for him, to make him quiet and still. If he didn’t take them, it wasn’t their loss. If he fought, she’d let the men leave angry, then turn her anger on him. If he shouted, she’d cuff him across the mouth until his teeth cut his lip. If he hid, she’d drag him out by the ankle. When he thought he’d found safety in sleep, she’d yank him awake with cold water, strip the blanket off the bed, and leave him shivering until morning. She shoved him out onto the landing with nothing on, the door bolted behind him, and he would stand barefoot and bare-skinned in the dark hallway, until she decided to let him back in.

He found a way to leave while it was happening. Not the room, but himself.

It began with the ceiling. He would stare at it until his eyes watered, tracing a crack in the plaster, the stain that looked like an island. He stared until it dimmed and his body felt heavy and far away. Then, he slipped. It wasn’t a push so much as a slide, like water running over a rim, spilling into someplace else.

Suddenly he wasn’t inside his skin anymore. He was above it, a ghost hanging in the rafters. From up there the boy on the bed wasn’t him. Just skin and bones, something that could be touched and bruised and torn. Pain and shame belonged to that body.

When he drifted far enough, he could imagine the air outside. The hiss of traffic, the crack of voices in the street, the feel of sprinting across rooftops with the wind clawing at his shirt. He could go anywhere if he floated long enough. It was a talent. A secret door only he could see. His own escape hatch, hidden inside his head.

He stayed on the bed long after the man had gone, didn’t move while hours bled together. He could have been carved from stone.

It was much later when the door opened. She stepped inside without speaking. The mattress dipped under her weight when she sat beside him.

“You need to get up,” she said finally. “Out of my room.”

Something tore loose inside him. His body snapped up before his mind caught it, his fist driving hard into her face. The sound was blunt and awful, the recoil jolting through his arm. She gasped, staggered back, her hand flying to her cheek. He had never hit her before, that had always been Marco, or whichever boyfriend was around.

He braced himself, waiting for the storm he knew was coming. It didn't, instead she sank to the floor, her back against the dresser, and burst into sobs so loud they shook her shoulders. The hysterical, gasping cries made her look small.

Guilt came quick and choking. Anthony got up with weak legs, pain burning in his back, approached her slowly and crouched down beside her. His chin rested on his bare knees as he looked at her, unsure if he had won or ruined everything.

She lowered her hands. “You think this is fun for me? You think I like this? Every time it kills me. It hurts me worse than it hurts you.”

Anthony’s insides knotted tight.

“We need the money, baby. That’s what you don’t get.” She leaned toward him. “Without it there’s nothing. No food, no roof, no clothes. The police will take your brothers away from me. They’ll split us up. You’ll be out on the street. Is that what you want? To starve? You want them to take Sammy away?”

Her tears came again, sobbing into her hands. He placed a careful hand on her head. He remembered when her hair had been soft and fluffy like a dandelion puff. Now the strands clung together, greasy, sticking to his palm as he smoothed them back.

“I do what I have to, so you boys can eat. So you can have a bed. And you—you fight me. You hurt me.” 

She moved the blame outward, on landlords, on luck, on a world that didn’t care. Anthony had a chance to help them, help his family.

He chose to help. When he reminded himself he was helping the family, the day arranged itself into cause and effect instead of luck and weather. Choosing to help turned him from an object into a participant. If he was the one who agreed, then agreement belonged to him. If he kept count of what it bought, then the trade was his to own. He repeated it every time, before and afterwards: I choose to help. I choose my family.

Still, numbers never made sense to him. He didn’t know what groceries were supposed to cost, only that the cupboards were rarely full and meals stretched further when he made himself and Sammy eat less. Money came and went in ways he couldn’t follow, disappearing faster than food ever appeared.

I choose to help.

Those lines didn’t hold when no money at all changed hands. When she brought home a new Rusty, who wasn’t paying anything, and whose interest in her children seemed bigger than the interest in her. There was no reason to reach for then, when the door to his and Sammy's bedroom opened in the dark. Anthony would lie frozen, listening to the soft drag of footsteps across the floorboards, waiting to see which side of the room they would stop at.