Issue 19

Miguel Gardel

When I saw her for the first time, she was like the sun, all lit up and radiating beauty. But it was evening, so it was more like the moon, a glow, not sunshine, softly inviting me to come closer. And the smile. And no way was she going to smell like piss. The thought of it. Come on. And I was there next to her now, and I had to think about what he had told me. He, the Cuban boy. That he broke up with her because of that. Called it quits. Fool. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. And that he had ever seen. It was such a mystery to me. I had to constantly think about that every time I saw her that summer. An obsession. But I had been somewhat maniacal. Maniac looking for love. Lonely teenage wolf. And I crossed to the other side of the tracks, as it were. And there she was. Bigger than my life. Almost overwhelming. And right off she corrected my English.

But in a friendly way, accommodating, teacher-wise. Visually, she was the definition of white female beauty. Brown, shoulder-length hair. Soft, friendly freckles. A locket hanging from her slender neck: a heart. Tight blouse and tight blue jeans. Here comes Miss America. But she lived surrounded by Puerto Ricans, and by newly arriving Dominicans and Cubans, in a New York City neighborhood that had been, just yesterday, very Irish. She was beautiful and her mother was also beautiful. And not only was she beautiful, her mother was also a nurse and regularly drank beer at home after work. I sat on the sidewalk, leaned on the mailbox, and the beautiful mother looked out their first-floor window. How did it come to this? she must have been asking as she looked out with a can of beer in her hand. Looking and seeing nothing but brown people all around her. She had been seeing it for a while now. It’s really happening.

Lee had two brothers, boys from her mother’s first marriage. They were handsome and tall with thick blond hair and when they got home from school, they sniffed glue. Their father lived in California. Lee’s father, who was a metal worker and a proud member of the trade union, died when she was ten, and no one told her he had died of suicide. She pieced it together later.

Her brothers invited me to sniff glue down in the building’s basement. A headache for me, but they were flying high and spoke uncoordinated gooey words and looked stupid to me, vulnerable. When the Jewish man at the candy and toy store decided not to sell the boys model cars and airplanes because he found out they were sniffing the glue, they asked me to buy it for them. And because I wanted to get in good with Lee, I said okay. One of the boys was sixteen like me, the other eighteen. They had long hair and couldn’t wait for summer. There was a beach with a boardwalk in Southern California that they liked. Their summers were for surfing. Their father treated them like visiting friends and they liked that. Over there, they told me, there are lots of Mexicans in the streets.

Lee Flann said to me, Stop putting me on a pedestal. Her first boyfriend was the Cuban boy. He lifted her up on the pedestal, too. She didn’t like it. He had quit school and worked in the bodega stocking and delivering groceries. They were both learning how to kiss. He gave her loving pinches and, later, when I did it, she said, You’re just like Cubanito. All men are the same.

And her smile was supposed to be warm. But she was cucumber cool. Not sure how to act, but with decency always. Here comes Miss America; first it was her father who used to sing to her, and then her mother, too. And Sister Mary, the cheerful one, would say in school to Lee: Taller every day, huh. Keep those grades going in the same direction. And Lee, in school, belonged to a circle. The circle of girls who cared about the disadvantaged people of the city. But most were prejudiced as hell. More than half the girls were Irish, but they were all Catholics. Lee was the center of the circle and she was the tallest too. In the circle, they talked about movies and makeup and the boys in the neighborhood. I don’t like the “Spanish” boys, some would say. Others, a minority, did like the Spanish-speaking boys who spoke English, there were many of them now.

Lee liked the Cuban boy right away. It was easy, he was light-skinned and confined to the bodega. And she was in training, investigating, and looking for love. He was her Ricky Ricardo. She corrected his English before she corrected mine. I was new and I was darker.

And she was not in the know when I met her. She was in the dark. She wanted to know, and spoke sarcastically, why he, Cubanito, stopped paying attention to her when she walked inside the bodega. And he told me. That was when he told me. And I said, What? I couldn’t believe it. She’s beautiful, I told him. Yeah, he said, but … And I said, How can a beautiful girl like that smell like piss?

And I was intrigued. And though she was much taller than I, she said, Yes, I’ll go out with you. And never spoke badly about Cuban Boy. And my obsession began and a weird desire to smell her all over rose in me and she always smelled fine: perfume, cream, makeup, shampoo.

Must have been the two brothers. One of them. One day. Flying. Pissed on her sweater. Blouse. He couldn’t have pissed on her neck. Her head, her hair. And was this just once? He, Cuban Boy, said simply, She smelled like dry urine. Around her neck. And I asked no more. He just went on. I went over to her, he said, you know, I wanted to kiss her. We had already done it. But she always resisted, even just a little bit. But that day, she didn’t.