The true death of Juanito Rodriguez

by LEIGH BRACKETT

The crowded west side of New York and one Puerto Rican family is caught in that vast human jungle

IT was dark in the room. The windows were shut and the blinds drawn, although it was bright morning outside and already warm. On one wall, on a small shelf, a votive candle flickered beneath a small, brightly-coloured image of the Blessed Virgin with the Child in her arms.

Luisa put the bowls of cereal on the table, setting them down as quietly as possible. Then she went to help Tina do up her buttons and comb her hair. Both the girls wore dresses of rusty black, streaked and wrinkled from Luisa's inexpert washings. Their black cotton stockings had lumpy ridges in them where Luisa had mended them, sewing up the holes because she did not know how to darn them.

The girls sat down at the table and began to eat. They did not talk, and they kept their eyes fixed on their bowls. Once or twice Luisa stole a sidelong glance at Madre, hoping that perhaps today it would be different, perhaps today the real Madre would have returned. But the strange woman sat in the chair, dressed all in black with the black shawl over her head and her eyes black and burning in her still face, staring at something Luisa could not see. Luisa bent her head again and finished her cereal.

When she got up from the table she was still hungry. She seemed to be always hungry these days. The food she cooked was not very good, no matter how hard she tried. She wished Madre would cook again. She wished Madre would speak to them, and let them take off these black things that were so ugly and hot. She yearned for the pink and blue and yellow dresses they used to wear, fresh and smooth from Madre's iron. These dresses hung on the peg in the alcove that belonged to her and Tina, but she dared not mention them or even look at them. Tina had done that, and Madre had come suddenly out of her stillness crying, "Your brother is dead no more than three weeks and already you are through with mourning, you have forgotten him." Luisa had felt then that her mother hated them.

She cleaned up the dishes, standing on tiptoe to reach into the sink. Then she kissed Madre dutifully on the cheek. She wanted to cry and throw her arms around her, but she had tried that, and that too was an experience she did not wish to repeat. Madre continued to stare straight ahead of her while Tina in her turn kissed the pale flesh that looked so cold but felt so hot to the lips. The children picked up their books and went out, closing the door very quietly behind them. They walked sedately down the grimy steps of the tenement and out into the sunshine.

All the way along the block, where the curtained windows faced them, they went slowly with their heads bowed. As soon as they turned the corner they joined hands and began to run and skip. In a moment they were laughing.

In the close, dark room, Josefina Rodriguez rose and locked the door,

An old tin trunk stood in a corner. Josefina opened it and dug down through the packed layers of her life—the few documents, the pictures, the keepsakes, the christening dress that had served all four of her children, the wedding dress she had brought with her from Puerto Rico. The mourning she had worn for Juan had been in this trunk also. Now she wore it again for Juanito.

On the bottom of the trunk, beneath the wedding dress, she felt the hard bone grip of the revolver and lifted it out. It was heavy, with a very long barrel. It took both of her strong hands to hold it steady. Long ago a friend had left the revolver with Juan and had never come back for it. Juan used to keep it clean. Now there were flecks of rust and places where dirt and oil had caked together and turned black. But it was still loaded.

She carried it to the window and carefully opened up a torn place in the blind. The hole was large enough for her to see through. above the barrel of the gun. She stood, holding the gun in her two hands, looking through the bright hole.

Children were passing on their way to the school. Many children, of many sizes and colours. Her view of the street that ran immediately below was restricted by the blind, but she had a clear view of the opposite sidewalk. She watched the children. After a while a boy came. He was perhaps ten years old, Luisa's age, or perhaps eleven. He was a. thin. pale boy with very light hair. His hair shone yellow in the sunlight. Josefina moved the gun so that she was looking at the bright hair through the notch on the rear sight.

"Your father," she said to the boy, "has murdered my son. Why should your father have a son when I have none?"

She asked this same question of him every day. She swung the pistol barrel slowly, following the boy as he walked.

"Not today," she said to the boy. "You are clever, there are always too many others around you, and you know it is too far for me. Go to school. Eat and drink. Play in the sun. There is time."

The boy walked almost as though he heard her, keeping close to the group, his head turning constantly from side to side.

Josefina smiled. I know why you do that, she thought. I see them too, standing in that doorway, sitting on those steps, watching you. They were Juanito's good friends. They saw your father kill him. They know how it was. They know you. But I am the one you should fear, baker's son with the thin shoulders, baker's son with the white hair ...

She could not see him any longer.

She put the pistol away and then she stood beside the trunk, just standing, doing nothing.

Someone knocked on the door. "Josefina—"

It was Carlos, who wanted to marry her. She was a widow with four children and two of them grown, but she was not old yet and much of her beauty remained. A kind man with gentle hands, a good worker, and he wanted to marry her.

"Go away," she said.

"Please, Josefina. Let me in. I have brought food."

"Go away."

She heard him sigh, and put the heavy sack down outside the door. But he did not go.

He spoke again, in a way she had never heard before. "How long is it to be like this?"

"Always," she said. "I have told you."

"Because of Juanito, even though he is gone."

"I have told you."

"You have told me," Carlos said. "Now tell me something else. Why was it that Juanito hated me? Why did he tell you not to marry me?"

Because you ..."

Because lies. He lied to you, but he knew that he could not lie to me."

"Go away!" she cried. "Go, go. Do not ever come back."

"You are a foolish woman, Josefina," said Carlos softly, sorrowfully. And now she heard him go.

She tried not to listen. Instead, from the dark places inside her she brought forth the sound of Juanito's voice, the loved, remembered sound, telling her ...

She felt weak, with a hollow weakness. She was not conscious of hunger, but since there had been a mention of food she realised she could not remember when she had eaten. She would not touch the food Carlos had brought. In the tiny, hot kitchen she found bread and part of a bottle of wine. She devoured them with the fierce simplicity of an animal and, when she was through, she went to the closed door of the room that had been Juanito's. She herself slept in the bed in the one big room, and the two girls shared the bed in the alcove, but Juanito had had a room of his own and it was still his, just as he had left it.

She went inside.

That afternoon she watched the baker's boy, the thin German boy, walking on his way home, his head filling the sights of the rusty gun. Once he lifted his head and she saw his face framed in the notch, with the post of the front sight between his eyes. For a moment it was almost as though he were looking at her through the hole in the blind, but she knew that was impossible, and anyway he did not know her. He might not even know that Juanito had had a mother.

How ugly he is, she thought. So thin and pale. Ugly German boy, why should you live when my beautiful brown Juanito had to die?

She put the pistol back into the trunk before the girls came ...

When they came, their sister Consuelo was with them. Consuelo was eighteen, two years older than Juanito, and she was married. She walked through the door with a child circled in each arm, and then suddenly she stopped and turned them round and told them to go outside and play.

"But Madre does not wish us to play."

"Go," said Consuelo, and shut the door behind them. Their feet went rattling down the stairs. Consuelo turned on her mother.

What are you doing to those little ones?"

"They are mourning their brother." Josefina's eyes burnt on Consuelo's white skirt, her bright blouse. "You are not welcome here."

"Was I ever, after he came? I don't care now, but those two ... I went to the school to see them. They are thin and dirty." Josefina began to speak, but Consuelo's voice rose louder. "You should take care of them, they are yours to care for, just as much as he was."

Josefina moved towards her, and all at once Consuelo's voice became quiet and her eyes held such anger that Josefina was startled.

"You throw us all away," said Consuelo. "We are only girls. How could we compare with our brother?"

"He was a man. I loved you, but a boy is different—a son. He was all the man I had after your father died." Josefina was trembling. "Always you were jealous, always you ..."

He laughed at you, "said Consuelo cruelly. "He could tell you anything and you believed it." She raised her hand quickly and struck aside the blow that was aimed for her face. "Not any more, Mother. And do not talk to me of love, not when I see what you do to those poor babies."

Josefina stood with the black shawl tight around her where her straining fingers pulled it. "Four weeks ago your brother was murdered, murdered ..." She repeated it three times. "And no-one cares. The police don't care, he is only another Puerto Rican, a dirty spik. What do they care? Let him die—they will do nothing. His murderer walks free. And you, you shed no tears, you have no grief for your brother, your father's son."

"I have no grief," said Consuelo. "No more than the little ones, who are too small to pretend. Juanito left no grief behind him except yours." She looked at her mother, and then she went to the alcove and lifted down the small dresses that hung there, faded pink and blue and yellow. "I will take the girls home with me," she said, and went out.

Josefina did not try to stop her.

That night she went to sleep on her knees in Juanito's room, her body fallen forwards across the bed.

The next morning, with the girls gone, she could take up her post by the torn blind much earlier. While she waited, she watched the fronts of the dingy tenements across the way where the slim dark boys lounged and smoked and talked togetherJuanito's friends. She knew about them, because he had told her. They had all come to the funeral dressed in their best clothes, and they had spoken to her and said how evil it was that Juanito's death should go unpunished. Good boys, like Juanito, and if sometimes they were in trouble it was the fault of this city, this huge, dirty, noisy city that seared you with heat and stabbed you with cold and drowned you with ugliness and rolled on over you as uncaring as time. She remembered Puerto Rico with an aching nostalgia. She had been young there, and poor, and happy. She was still poor, but now neither young nor happy, and this city had taken from her more than it would ever give ...

The boy came walking. She watched till he was gone, her finger unsteady on the trigger.

At a quarter to twelve, Father Chavez knocked and she opened the door.

He looked around the room, and sighed, and shook his head. He was a young priest, with a round, smooth face untouched by sorrow.

"You still do not come to Mass, Mrs. Rodriguez."

"No, Father."

"Why not?"

She did not answer.

Is it because you feel that God has deserted you?"

"No, Father."

"Is it then, that you have deserted God?"

Her face was closed against him, as tightly closed as this breathless room. He put out his hand towards her. Please, I wish to help you. Let me help you."

My boy is murdered, "she said. "Can you help that, Father? Do you wish to help?"

Father Chavez let his hands fall to his side. He said very carefully, as he had said before, "Mr. Hoffman did not murder your son. He acted in defence of his own life and property, and even then he did not intend to kill the boy, it was an accident that he fell. Your son ..."

"Not even you, Father. No. Not even you may say those things."She stood by the door. "You ask why I do not come to Mass. That is why, because of what you believe about Juanito."

"I will tell you again, "he said, "that hatred is a sin, that you are endangering your immortal soul."

She stood by the door, implacable.

"I will not give up, Mrs. Rodriguez. I will come again tomorrow."

He moved past her and then turned, looking deeply into her eyes. "And I will ask you to wonder why it was that you would never look for yourself to see what your son was doing. Was it because you truly believed everything he said to you, or was it because you were afraid of what you would find?"

You are like all the rest, "she whispered, "in spite of your cloth. I will never come to Mass."

She closed the door behind him and stood against it, feeling lost and cut off, drowning in a dark sea. "God forgive me. God forgive me, but he does not understand." Suddenly she flung herself before the Madonna, in an agony of need. "You know! You know what it is to lose a son."

At three o'clock she stood at the window, holding the pistol, waiting.

Presently the children came, but the baker's boy was not with them. She waited longer, and still he did not come. She became nervous and excited, pressing closer to the hole in the blind, trying to see along the street. Perhaps he had been kept late at the school? Or perhaps he had found another way to go to and from his home? Perhaps his father had gone away with him and she would never see him again?

But after a time, the boy came into sight.

Tears of relief stung Josefina's eyes. The boy came closer, walking quickly with his head down, moving it from side to side as he always did. But this time he was all alone.

The slender dark young men lounged in the doorways and sat upon the steps, watching the son of Juanito's killer go by.

The boy's feet went more and more quickly, and then they began to hesitate as the young men moved, so casually that at first Josefina was not sure they were moving at all.

But they moved. They drifted gently towards the boy.

The boy stopped. He looked from left to right and back again along the hot street with the tenements baking in the sun. Then he ran straight towards the building where Josefina stood watching. He had seen the alley that opened beside it and he was going there, hoping for escape. Only there was no escape that way. None at all.

Josefina hid the long pistol under the end of her shawl. She opened the door and went out of the dark room, into the hall and down the stairs and then along the shadowy, sweatand-spice-smelling corridor below to the back door, hurrying...

The boy was there when she went out. He had come through the alleyway and found that there was nothing at the end of it but this oblong space with the walls of hot brick going up high on all sides, and the corners deep with rubbish, and the old paving stones black with grime, and stinking. He had stopped at the far end of this space, where the alley came into it. He stared around it, and he stared back along the alley, his mouth open, his eyes wide and wild.

Josefina stood by the door, the long pistol in her hand underneath the shawl.

The boy saw her. He whimpered, and a change came over his face. He ran towards her.

She watched him running with his arms outstretched.

His arms went tight around her and his face pressed into her body. He began to cry against her body.

She looked down at him and thought, The gun is heavy but it will not be necessary to lift it far.

Juanito's friends came towards her out of the alley. "Good afternoon, Mrs. Rodriguez."

"I see you have caught him, Mrs. Rodriguez."

"That is good, Mrs. Rodriguez. We will teach this wasp child and his father that they cannot kill us so easily."

"Let us have him, Mrs. Rodriguez."

She looked at their faces in the hot shadow cast by the walls.

"Let us have him, Mrs. Rodriguez. He will pay for Juanito. "And these are the good boys, she thought, Juanito's friends. "But your faces," she said to them aloud, "are the faces of wolves."

The child's arms were tight round her. He buried his face against her so that he should not see them coming, the six young, grown men against his single smallness.

"No," she said. "Wait."

They looked at her in astonishment. "Wait? Why?"

"The boy did not kill Juanito. It was his father."

I say this? she thought. I who have killed this child every

day in my mind since Juanito was buried?

Their faces fascinated her. She saw them looming towards her, wavering strangely in the shadow. Had her own looked like these?

"But we do not have the father, Mrs. Rodriguez," said the faces, sneering, smiling. "We have only the son." One of them reached out his hands for the boy.

"No," she said. "Let him alone. He is only a child, and frightened."

They stopped smiling. "Get out of the way, you old fool," one of them said, and stepped forward.

The long pistol was suddenly free of the shawl. It pointed towards them. Josefina saw it, with a kind of remote surprise, pointing at them steadily. It did not feel heavy at all.

The eager one stopped. He stared into the round, black, rust-flecked hole as into the eye of death. They all stared, their mouths coming open.

"Who held the knife," she said, "on the night Juanito died?"

The hot air hummed with little noises and the great silence of oncoming truth.

They began to mock her. "Should we tell you that, Mrs. Rodriguez? No, why should we tell you that? Did Juanito ever tell you of the knife, Mrs. Rodriguez? Did Juanito ever tell you anything?"

They laughed. And then one of the young men humped his back suddenly like an angry cat and screamed at her. "You stupid woman! You silly old woman!"

"Go, "she said. Her voice sounded strange in her ears. The voice of a dead woman, she thought. A dead woman I stand here, a dead woman I speak. And now truly I have lost my son.

"Go quickly," she said. The black, rusty eye of the pistol peered from one to the other.

Oh, truly and for ever I have lost him.

They began to move back. When they were at the other end of the court they made obscenities, but she only stood and watched them, a tall woman in black with a boy clinging round her waist.

In a moment she said to the boy, "They are gone."

He did not understand her words, but he knew what she was saying. He lifted his head. She touched it with one hand. She smiled at him, but her eyes were crying. He took his arms from around her waist, and he said, "Thank you," because he did not know what else to say. It disturbed him that she was crying. He was still very much afraid.

He realised that he would have to go out on to the street again. He took hold of her hand. "Please, will you walk home with me?"

Slowly, in halting English, she answered, "In a moment I will walk with you, even as far as the church. In a moment ..."

She sank to her knees and he continued to hold her hand, wondering, trying to comfort her, as she wept with her face pressed hard against his chest.