Trouble Is... Read online

Trouble is...

  By Anne Knowles

  Copyright 2012 Anne Knowles

  For Jacklyn

  who made it through

  Cover Design by Laura Shinn

  Chapter 1

  The door was locked. I was only five minutes late, but Mr. Stamos wouldn’t let me in biology without a tardy pass. Trouble is this was my sixth tardy in only the third week of school. Harrison High School took tardy sweeps seriously. Six tardies and they suspended you. Your parents had to come for a conference before you could get back in school. Trouble is I didn’t have parents. I had an older brother, Frank. He’d kill me if he had to miss work to come to school because of me.

  Things were hard enough at home with my brother’s wife, Imelda, not liking me no matter what I did. And her having a new baby made it worse. The last thing I needed was someone from school calling home about me. I had to figure a way to get out of this mess without Frank finding out.

  I backed away from the door and looked up and down the long hallway. Beige metal lockers lined the walls. At the far end of the hall, a kid shoved his books in a locker, clanged it shut, and took off down the back steps. Ditching. I did some quick thinking. Ditching was better than being tardy. Most kids wrote their own excuse notes anyway. The attendance office either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Tomorrow I’d give them a note that said, “Please excuse Ricardo Chavez for his absence first period Wednesday. He was not feeling well.” I’d sign Frank’s name to it. Mr. Stamos would have to let me back in class, and he’d have to let me make up the test I was missing. And no one would call my brother.

  The tardy sweep hadn’t reached third floor C-Wing yet, so I still had a chance. I headed for the back stairs. If I could make it to the football field, I could hide under the bleachers until the bell rang for second period.

  I took the stairs two at a time, hit the landing, turned the corner, and ran smack into Mr. Wilkerson. He was six foot two and strong as a defensive lineman, but I wasn’t afraid of him. In fact, I kind of liked him. He always remembered my name, and it seemed like he didn’t mind talking to me now and then. “Where’s your hall pass, Ricky?” he asked as he put a big hand on my shoulder to stop me from dashing back up the stairs.

  “I don’t have one.” No use lying. Wilkerson was too smart for that. I shoved my hands in the pockets of my blue jeans and looked down at my white Nikes. I’d really wanted black, but that’s what the gangbangers at Harrison wore and I didn’t bang. I didn’t want anyone to think I did, either.

  “How come you’re walking this way?” asked Wilkerson. “Tardies go to 104 for a pass. You should know that. The semester’s just started and you already own the tardy room.” He smiled, but he had me firmly by the arm.

  “I was going to ditch,” I said. “I didn’t want you calling my brother.”

  “If it’s been six times, we’ll call him.” He turned to me. “Why? Does he get too angry?”

  I looked at him so long I’m sure he thought I’d lost my hard-earned ability to speak English. I wanted to trust him. I wanted to tell him, “Yeah, he gets too angry, and then he beats me up good.” But what if they called Children’s Services? What if they took me out of there and put me in a home? Or worse, what if they just gave Frank a warning and then left me there to deal with him. He’d send me back to El Salvador to my Uncle Jose. I’d lived with him for a few months after my grandparents died in a bus crash. All my uncle did was drink and hit me. And there was never any food in the house. Uncle Jose made Frank seem like a saint.

  Wilkerson repeated his question. “Why don’t you want me to call him? Does he hit you?”

  I liked Wilkerson and wanted to trust him, but I was more scared of what I didn’t know than I was of my brother. “Nah,” I lied. “He won’t beat me up. We get along good. He and his wife have a new baby, that’s all. I didn’t want you bothering them.”

  Wilkerson started me down the stairs to the first floor, his hand on my shoulder. “He’s your legal guardian. He’ll have to be bothered,” he said. At the bottom of the stairs he told me to go to 104. If I had six tardies in the computer, the supervisor would send me to Wilkerson’s office where I was to wait for him. I didn’t say anything, but I knew it was six already.

  After he went upstairs, I looked out the back door to the quad. The sky was blue. The sun was hot and bright. The grass was still green because school hadn’t been in session long enough for it to be trampled to death. I remembered how green the grass was in El Salvador the day my neighbor told me about my grandparents. It was over two miles to town on a dusty, dirt road, but I ran all the way. Pieces of the bus, black and charred, were scattered on the grass. I couldn’t look away from the grass. Yellow green. Hard, hot yellow. Like the sun. More painful than the sun. It made my eyes hurt. It made tears run down my cheeks.

  I looked away from the window and took a deep breath. Dammit! Why couldn’t I get up early enough to catch the bus that would get me to school on time? I did it the year before. Made mostly A’s, too.

  I came up six tardies in the computer in 104 and ended up in the discipline office on one of the uncomfortable, straight-backed chairs lined against the wall. I hunched over, my arms on my knees, my head down, staring at my shoes. They were the first thing I’d been able to get with the money I earned at McDonalds. Frank made me start working in July after I turned sixteen, but I didn’t mind. I wanted to work. Trouble is I got home so late, it was hard to get up for school.

  Frank took most of the money I earned for rent and food, but I saved what he let me keep, didn’t spend it on sodas or anything. And last Saturday, I’d bought my shoes. Man, if I was eighteen and had my own place and worked and didn’t have to answer to anybody, I’d be happy. I’d make something of myself, too. Maybe be an engineer, work on stuff that goes in space. That’s what I really wanted.

  My stomach hurt from thinking about how mad Frank was going to be. I realized I was holding my breath. I slowly let it out, trying to relax. I hated all this. I hated being only sixteen. I hated my father who took off before I was born. I hated my mother for coming to the United States when I was three and then getting a boyfriend who didn’t want me around. I hated the drunken son-of-a-bitch who swerved into the bus that killed my grandparents. I hated my uncle and my brother and his wife. I hated every bit of my life, except maybe my Nikes.

  I slouched back in the chair and stretched my long legs in front of me. Why couldn’t schools ever buy comfortable chairs? I don’t think even the teachers got comfortable chairs. I looked over at the coffeepot on a table in the corner. There were a couple inches of thick, black coffee in the glass pot. It smelled like it had been heating there since the school was built. The minute hand on the clock ka-chunked each time it moved forward a minute. My back ached.

  Two cholos from a Salvadoran gang called Locos 18 were escorted into the office by campus police. They were told to sit on the chairs against the wall and wait for the Mr. Wilkerson. I knew the guys, Angel Olivares and Leonardo Blanco. I’d had English as a Second Language with both of them. It looked like Angel had been in a fight. His shirt was ripped and his face was smeared with sweat and dirt. Mostly I could tell he’d been fighting because he was so high on adrenaline he couldn’t sit still.

  I heard a commotion in the hallway outside the Discipline Office. Angel and Leonardo jumped up and started for the door, but Wilkerson came out of his office and told them both to "sit down and be quiet and if you move again I'll call the police." There was a picture, I thought, Wilkerson standing in the door of his office, a cup of coffee in his hand, pointing with his other hand at these two punk cholos, ordering them to sit down. He never spilled a drop. Wilke
rson’s skin was so black it was almost blue against his white shirt. His top button was tight against his neck and his tie was straight and neat. He looked calm. Like he did this kind of stuff every day. That was the picture. This older guy in a white shirt and tie, facing down two punk gangbangers in pants so baggy they were nearly around their knees. Calm, not even putting his coffee down, knowing he wouldn’t spill it. You could see it in his face. He might have gotten excited the first time he faced down gangbangers, but no more.

  Angel and Leonardo sat down. Angel squirmed on his chair and I could hear him cussing out someone named Eddy under his breath. Security brought a kid with a bloody nose to the door of the office.

  “Don’t bring him in here,” Wilkerson said. “These youngsters think if they come from different countries they have to kill each other.”

  I recognized the kid. We’d had P.E. together. His name was Eddy Gonzalez, and he was part of a Mexican gang called Westside Raza. “Take him to the nurse, call his parents, and we’ll deal with him after I take care of these two,” said Wilkerson. He went back in his office.

  Leonardo and Angel huddled, but I could hear them talking. I guess Angel and his girlfriend Sandra had a big fight the night before and she wanted to make him mad. so she flirted with Eddy before school. Borrowed money from him for a soda or something stupid like that. Who knew? I thought all that gangbanging stuff was crazy. My best friend, Marco Quintanilla, was from Mexico. We’d make sorry cholos, the two of us, supposed to be fighting each other, and instead sneaking a beer in the alley behind my apartment on a hot summer night.

  I jumped when Wilkerson called my name. He still had the cup of coffee in his hand. Why did everyone who worked in a school drink coffee all the time? I sat in one of the two chairs in front of his desk. He picked up the phone and, as he punched in the number, I reached over and turned the mug so I could read the words written on it. It said, “I’ve used up all my sick days so next time I’m calling in dead.” The mug was cold.

  Wilkerson glanced at me messing with his mug. “Do me a favor, Ricky. Dump that out in the water fountain and get me some fresh.” He turned his attention to the phone, and I guessed that someone had answered at the other end.

  “Francisco Chavez, please,” Wilkerson said into the phone. “This is Harrison High School calling about his brother, Ricardo.”

  I took the mug out and dumped it in the water fountain in the hall. There was a rotten brown apple core in the fountain and a couple of chewed up pieces of pink gum. The cold, black coffee swirled around the apple core and the gum. My stomach got queasy. I pictured Frank being paged in the back room where he handled produce for Cambden’s Supermarket. He’d never gotten a call about me at work.

  I filled Wilkerson’s mug at the coffeepot in the front office where Leonardo and Angel still waited on the straight-backed chairs. They smiled, but I could see them whispering “barbero” to each other. Teacher’s pet. I smiled back and lifted the mug to them in a toast, managing to hold the mug so that I was throwing the finger at them. They saw it and laughed. I walked in Wilkerson’s office, handed him the coffee, and sat down. He didn’t take a sip, just held the telephone to his ear, waited on hold, and held the cup. Security I guess, or a bad habit.

  He put the cup down. “Mr. Chavez?” The school was always so polite to my brother. It made me sick. Just because a guy was your legal guardian didn’t mean he was like a real adult. “Ricky’s been tardy six times since school started. He’s being suspended until you can come to school for a conference about him. You’ll have to come in by Monday so we can get him back to class.” He listened for a minute. My heart pounded in my ears. “OK, bring him to school Monday morning and I’ll meet with you before first period.” He hung up. That was it. No way out now.

  Wilkerson picked up his coffee mug and finally took a sip. He made a face. I could tell by the way the coffeepot had smelled that the coffee probably tasted like a mixture of vomit and tar. He set the cup on the desk and slid it away from him. “How come you can’t get to school on time this year?” he asked. “What’s up?”

  I shrugged. “The RTD bus gets here too late.”

  “No,” he replied. “It’s not the fault of the bus. You have to catch an earlier bus.” My school records were already on display on the computer monitor on his desk. Mr. Wilkerson scrolled to the attendance page. “You were never tardy last year,” he said. “What’s going on this year?”

  “I can’t get up that early. I work till 11:00 at night.”

  “School starts at 8:00. If you don’t get here by 8:00, you’re tardy. Six tardies and you’re suspended. You know that.”

  “I know,” I mumbled.

  “A’s and B’s last year. That’s not going to happen this year if you can’t get here on time.”

  “I know.”

  “Get yourself straight home, Ricky. We’ll talk about the bus situation and about what time you’re getting to bed when your brother comes for the conference.” Like that was any of his business. “How many hours a week do you work?” he asked.

  “Thirty.”

  “Maybe you need to quit your job. Maybe it’s too much for you.”

  I’d like to see Wilkerson try to tell Frank I should quit my job. That would make for some interesting fireworks. “Can I go?” I asked.

  “Yes, you can go. Stay out of trouble, Ricky. You’re a good kid and a lot of us want to see you make it.”

  Yeah, sure, I thought bitterly as I walked out of the office. I knew I was supposed to leave the school campus, but I wanted to get my books from my locker so I could study at home. I’d be missing an algebra test, a vocabulary test, and an American history quiz, plus the biology test I’d already missed that morning. If my teachers let me make up the tests, I was going to be ready.

  When I was off campus, I texted Marco that I’d been suspended and asked him to get all my assignments. He and I had most of our classes together and I didn’t want to get too far behind.

  That evening, I thought Frank would never get home from work. Part of me prayed he wouldn’t walk in the door ever again. The other part of me just wanted to get it over with. I tried to study, but I couldn’t concentrate. I gave up and went into the living room to watch TV.

  I sat down on the sofa, put my feet up on the coffee table and snapped on I Love Lucy just as Imelda came in from the market with two bags of groceries in her arms.

  “Is Jennifer still asleep?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I replied.

  “Get your feet off my coffee table,” she said. “I don’t clean it so you can get it dirty with your dirty shoes.” I looked down at the bottom of my shoes as she disappeared into the kitchen with the groceries. Like my new Nikes were dirty.

  I’d been trying hard to get along with Imelda, so I didn’t say anything. I knew she didn’t like having me around, especially now that she and Frank had their own kid. She wanted my room for Jennifer. I heard her and Frank arguing about it late one night. Imelda got on me even more than Frank did. Do the dishes. Take out the garbage. Go do the laundry. She was always telling me that Francisco paid the rent and I had to do what she said because she was his wife.

  Jennifer woke up and started to cry, so I turned up the TV. “Go pick her up!” Imelda yelled from the kitchen. “I’m putting away the groceries, and I gotta put dinner on.”

  I went into Frank and Imelda’s bedroom and lifted Jennifer out of her crib. I tried to snuggle her against my shoulder, but she arched her back and screamed even louder. Why would anyone ever want to have a kid. I don’t know if Frank and Imelda wanted her or not. They got married because they had to, and now they had this little three-month old baby.

  I got her pacifer out of the crib and tried to get her to take it, but that made her even more furious. I carried her into the kitchen to give her to Imelda, but she was still putting away the groceries. “I’ll feed her in a minute
,” she said. Hell, I didn’t know what to do with her. I went to the living room and sat on the sofa. I bounced her across my knee. Tried rocking her in my arms. Nothing worked.

  On I Love Lucy Ricky Ricardo was playing his congo drum with the band. Right beside him was Little Ricky with a little congo drum. I really wanted to see this, but Jennifer kept crying, so I tried walking back and forth behind the sofa. Then above the noise of Jennifer’s crying and the two Ricky’s congo drums, I heard Frank’s footsteps, heavy on the wooden stairs that led up to our apartment. Time was up. I froze.

  The door opened and Frank stepped in the room. He was taller than me and about thirty pounds heavier. His eyes were black and angry. He tossed his baseball cap and his lunch pail on the couch and took Jennifer from my arms. Didn’t say anything, not a word, just took Jennifer to Imelda. I backed toward my room, but he came for me fast. He grabbed me by the arm and back-handed me hard across the mouth. I staggered, but he held on to my arm and smacked me two or three more times before he let go. I crashed against the bookcase, knocking all of Imelda’s glass angels to the floor. There we lay, broken wings and cut lips and all. From a distance I heard Imelda’s voice whine, “Francisco, my angels.” I hurt bad, but I knew it wasn’t over yet.

  Frank grabbed me by the arm and hauled me up. I guessed he was done being a father to me, slapping me across the mouth, because now his fists were clenched. I took two in the stomach, doubled over and fell to the floor like I’d been shot. I couldn’t breathe. Frank had done some boxing in El Salvador and he could hit like a prize-fighter.

  He hauled me up again, dragged me to the door of my room, and shoved me in. I hoped it was over, but Frank followed me in, slamming the door behind him. He pulled his belt through the loops on his jeans, shoved me face down on my bed, and laid into me. I buried my face in my pillow and grabbed hold of the metal bars of the bed’s headboard. I squeezed tighter and tighter each time he hit me with the belt, trying to keep from crying out.

  I didn’t feel it stop. I just heard the door open and slam shut. It was quiet. Then I heard myself crying. My back was on fire. My whole body was shaking.

  A long time later, I became aware of an ache in my arms. My hands still gripped the bars of the headboard. My fingers were so stiff I had to open and shut my hands to get feeling back in them. I rolled to my side and sat on the edge of the bed, my head in my hands. All I could see in the dark were my new white Nikes. I kicked the shoes off, tossed them in the corner, and lay down on my stomach again. I guessed I had a few tears left because my eyes went blurry again. Damn, I thought. Being five minutes late to biology could sure ruin your whole day.