Amor Sucks Annecy Báez Wednesday, January 12, 1972 Bronx, New York "Hump Day" Cousin Eva and our best friend America lock themselves in the bedroom with the boys. They usually start slowly. Eva goes with Snake and then Rica follows, then Pito. I stay alone in the sunken living room, hearing the Temptations or watching “One Life to Live”. Sometimes it is quiet here and I can listen to the noises they make and the giggles. Today, Pito stays with me watching One Life to Live, until he hears the sounds coming from his father's bedroom, the ohh, ahh, ahh, and the laughter calling out to him like spices. He says “you want to come?” and I say “Na, I’m not ready for that,” and catch myself worrying that Pito will think I’m not tough enough to be a Dragon Slayer. Pito and his brother, Snake, are the leaders of the Dragon Slayers, and so being with them makes us Slayer girls. Kind of. The Dragon Slayer’s wear black leather jackets with a red and yellow dragon on the back, and multi-colored letters drawn on the bottom that say “Dragon Slayer”. We’re not officially Dragon Slayer girls until we wear our jackets with our pants. But at the moment, we're not allowed to wear pants, and the jackets don’t look cool with our dresses. I wear mini dresses, but Eva’s religious father forbids her to wear them. Eva wears colorless clothes; black knee high skirts and whites blouses, like she's going to church. She looks like a saint, but she doesn't fool anyone at Wade Junior High because Eva is tough and beautiful. Today, she wore Snake's jacket over her long black skirt and no one dared to mess with her because she's a Dragon Slayer. Someday I’ll wear Pito’s jacket, and I’ll feel beautiful, strong and cool too. Snake and Pito are twins, but I can tell them apart because Snake is mean and willful, just like Eva. He likes to grab and touch what doesn’t belong to him; he’s hard like an old callus. Pito is sweet, and won’t try anything unless he thinks you want him too. He’s calm and gentle when he’s alone with me, but when he’s with Snake he acts just like him, mean and tough. Pito wears a whistle around his neck. That’s why they call him Pito. He tells me his mother bought him the whistle when he was just five years old. Shortly after that she died of cancer. He wears the whistle proudly, it’s his protection, he says, and a memory of his mother. He won’t let anyone touch that damn whistle. Now, Pito stares at me, and gives me his hand. “You don’t want to come?” he asks, and I just stay quiet, wondering what to say next. My hands start to shake as he comes close to me, and I hide them underneath my skinny thighs, but they still tremble like the trees on the Grand Concourse on a stormy night. He kneels in front of me, and I steady myself with a deep breath. “I don’t know,” I say because I'm not sure I'm ready for the kissing and touching stuff they are doing to each other in the bedroom. I could act like I know, like I’m ready, and be scared in there, or I can say I’m not ready and not play hooky with them anymore. Except that I don’t have the guts because I want to belong. I want to be loved, and to be part of something big, something like the Dragon Slayers. Pito sits next to me on the sofa. I sit like a good girl with my hands on my lap. My thighs sweat and stick to the plastic of the mustard colored sofa and I don’t dare look at him as he comes close to me. I look at my folded hands, and move my face away when he tries to kiss me. He stops and stands up. “You don’t want to come?” he asks. I look at him closely, he’s standing in front of me and I realize I want to go wherever he wants me to go because I like him, but I’m not ready for that. My heart starts pounding and I can see my chest rising. Pito is beautiful and I want to please him. But I don’t want him to think I’m so easy like a puppy “sit” or “stand”. I have to give myself, importancia, a sense of importance and then I give in, according to Eva. Eva knows everything. Up and down, I look at Pito. He’s tall, and has dark, brown, long, curly hair, soft to the touch. His lips are always wet and smooth, reminding me of a ripped juicy mango. I'm quiet, and don't know what to say to him. I’ve never liked a boy this much. I’ve never had a boy, as cute as Pito, want me and just because of this I feel my heart swell. I feel so important and special, different from everyone else. Pito stares at me now, waiting for my response. I say, “What?” “Do you want to come to the room?” He shakes his head a little towards the direction of his father's bedroom. He's sitting next to me now. He leans towards me with a kiss; this is not one of our usual, little pecking kisses, but long, his tongue twirling and locking to mine. I taste Juicy Fruit gum and a hint of his musk oil. I want to eat him. I return his deep wide kiss as if I know how to do this with a boy. I kiss him like I see people kiss on “One Life to Live” only better. His kisses release something new inside of me, like butterflies flying inside of my stomach, deep within me this new feeling takes wings. I want to fly. I don’t know what to do with these feelings because something is happening to my pompo private part as he’s kissing me, a new sensation, slight flutter, something moving about down there as if my palpitating heart just went on and sunk there like an anchor. I am wet. I feel like I must pee. Thoughts of Papi come to mind. A warning. I push Pito away. Full of shame, I take a deep breath. I don’t know what to say to him. But, God, a part of me wishes I could just run into that bedroom with him because there’s this new feeling inside of me. I want to kiss like this for a long time, and float on the riverbed of his father's room, letting him hold me and play with me. Pito stands up and says, “come!” as he gives me with his hand. I say, " Na, you go," I say, "because I’m not ready,” and he goes and that’s ok. Saturday, January 29, 1972 Day of New Beginnings “Are you coming?” Eva asks me. It's late at night and I’m lying on my back staring at the ceiling in Eva's bedroom. Eva is next to me staring about me and asking endless questions. I like to stay over on the weekend. Our whole family lives in the same building on 170th St. in the Bronx, one on top of each other, like steps on a ladder, my grandmother, La Güela, three aunts, Martirio, Tristeza, and Tati, their husband's and children, my two oldest sisters, their children, and a whole bunch of cousins. I stare at her. "Coming?" I ask. I take a deep sigh and I can smell the coconut oil of her hair, the cool peppermint scent of her mouth, and see the sparkles of talcum powder left on her breast, now exposed through her thin nightgown. Eva is so pretty with her light smooth skin like sea stones, and eyes a blue violet set upon her heart shaped Dominican face. Her dark hair is chin length and kinky like Brillo, pelo malo, “bad hair” the family calls it, but Eva doesn't go around envying the straight more silkier hairs of her cousins because at fourteen she looks eighteen and her huge breast are a source of pride to her. Often, she measures them with the hope that they continue their promising course. Me. I'm odd. I don't have the almond shaped light eyes of the women in my family, or their heart shaped face with the pointy little chin, and the straight, small nose. No, I have a wide nose like sighing mountains across my face, and large thick lips Papi calls a “bembe”. “¿Y ese bembe?”, he’ll say to me whenever I pout. Bembe, lips, big lips, lips so big I often try to hide them by pressing them against each other in a thin line. And I don't have Eva's eyes, I have small Asian dark eyes like my great grandfather Pepe Chong and I'm skinny and tall, not the kind of girls the cute Dominican boys in the corner colmado say things to like, "Mami tú si 'ta buena" and stuff like that, the kind of stuff they tell Eva when she passes by them. Eva shouts at me, "Are you coming?" I awaken from my thoughts, "Where?" "To Pito's idiot," "Oh, Pito's" It’s been two weeks since I’ve seen Pito in his apartment. I see him in school, in the hallways fooling around with the girls, pulling their hair or talking to them softly. I won’t speak to him for hours afterwards. When I stay with Eva we often talk about the boys and plan our whole week at Wade Junior High School. Before the boys, we used to skip school, go to Alexander’s, and look at clothing. Sometimes we’d sneak in the white people’s buildings on the Concourse. We'd sit on the pretty sofas in their building entrances, or maybe take the elevator up and down until one of the old women with blue tattooed numbers on her wrist asked us to leave or threatened to call the police. Lately, I’ve been thinking it’s dangerous to go to the Pito's apartment. I can have babies now because blood flows through my legs once a month. My Godmother, Tati, says that these bad feelings are presentimientos, and when you have a presentimiento she says it’s your inner voice telling you to be careful. She says women have a strong inner voice. Lately I don’t listen to my inner voice. “I don’t know Eva,” I say to her and she jumps up from her side position. “What?” “I said I don’t know. I think we’ll get caught,” “Are you getting chicken shit on me?” she asks and ignores the baby part. “No,” “Oh, ok,” she says, “so that means you’re coming, right?” “I guess so,” We lie on the bed, and she is on her side looking at me. “You’re not going to change your mind,” “No,” “Cause Pito’s expecting you,” she says “You know?” "Yeah?" I question because I want to hear it again. "That's right," I smile, and the thought of Pito wanting me there makes me feel warm all over and my heart swells at the thought of him. I get on my side and stare at her, our faces close to each other. “I'm coming,” I say, and she smiles. Thursday, February 22, 1972 Amor Sucks I’m getting scared of playing hooky because I’m kissing Pito more times than I probably should. I know Eva and Rica are doing sex things with Snake in the bedroom, but I act like I don't know. Now, Pito and I, we have kissing marathons, long kisses without breathing, sucking kisses; light nibbling kisses and dry kisses that leave our lips chapped and tired and these kisses are so powerful they make us want to do more than just kiss. Now, Pito won’t go with Eva and Rica in the bedroom, but wants to stay with me in the living room. He says I’m beautiful, more beautiful than Eva and Rica. He says I’m smart too and that he likes that. He says I’m his special girl. I’m scared because I really like him and when you really like a boy you want to do everything with him. You want to share the world with him. My inner voice is now a whisper. I don’t listen to it anymore, that inner voice inside that warns me of danger all the time. I don’t. I listen to my body which reminds me of the fun things I’ll experience when Pito’s soft lips suck on my lips or his hands touch my breast through my dress leaving his memory all over my body. I don’t listen to that voice even when kids in school tell me Pito does this stuff with other girls or when x Dragon Slayer girls remind me that they were in my place just a month or two ago and out of the blue Pito dumped them. I don't listen to them. I ignore lies and gossip of have beens. I only listen to my heart. Maybe those rumors are true, but Pito has a special place for me in his heart. I’m different from other girls, I remind myself. I'm special. Lately, I've been feeling very, very special, but Rica, says this is trouble. She says you have to be real cool with a boy, not take him too serious, expect that he might leave. She says boys are like dogs and the next thing you know they need a brand new bone to bone and I laugh, but what she means it that the next thing I know is Pito could be gone, gone with some other girl, gone like the wind with no cause or reason. That happened to Rica when she was with Romero. All she did was feel special and then he left her for Julieta. And what did we see? Hearts all over the handball courts, on walls and in the bathroom. Hearts that said Romero and Julieta 1971 forever. Hearts in Spanish that said "Amor para siempre," Love forever, Romero y Julieta, and Cupid's arrow inside of the heart connecting them until death separated them. Rica was devastated, but it didn't last long, because Eva wouldn’t let her feel sorry for herself. She said boys were like lollipops, they came in different flavors and there were too many of them to cry over the loss of one, so underneath the hearts for Romero and Julieta they drew hearts, large hearts with daggers in between them that said "Amor Sucks" Saturday, March 4, 1972 Day of Resolution La Negra, my old cloth doll from Santo Domingo and I are sleeping over Eva’s tonight. It’s a dark night and the moon is full. The wind whistles loudly outside, banging at our window like a warning. I tell Eva I can’t do it anymore, “Just once more,” she says, “Ana, Please!" “Ok, Eva, but we promise, after this no more hooky playing, ok,” I say, but I don’t look convinced and Eva says “Scouts Honor,” and that makes me laugh because we are not Girl Scouts. Our family is too strict for that. They don’t allow us to participate in any group activities, to visit the homes of other kids or to have friends other than our cousins play with us. We're not even allowed to go on school trips and Papi and Mami, they’ve never even been to Wade Junior High. I wish they were there just for one day, so they could feel the danger. Just the other day, the Javelins, plotted to take Shaquana's wig off. She's a big, bald, black girl who wears a wig. When they took it off her wig we saw her bald head. She started to scream this wailing sound so painful I can still hear it in my head. "Mama, Mama, Mama" she screamed as if she were dying, "Mama, Mama, Mama" and she threw herself on the floor, crying so humiliated by her exposure, "Mama, Mama, Mama," she cried and no one dared to go to her until the gym teacher came and took her to the infirmary. Her wig dangling from the hand ball court fence. Papi is still under the erroneous belief that school is a safe and that we are being taught the lessons of the day. He doesn't know that the books are old, torned and in poor conditions. He doesn't know that for the most part we are too scared to learn. So, one day I said to Papi, “Things have to change around here because the world out there is not the world of this family.” Papi slammed his fist on the table. He broke a plate and gave me one of his dirty looks and I felt as if he’d smacked me. I know never to remind him that in Junior High I live in one world and at home I live in another. I’m safer with Pito, though, no one messes with me because I’m a Dragon Slayer. So, Eva is asking me about playing hooky and I weigh what I will do in school with what I will do with the boys, and the boys are winning out, although I know it's wrong and I can get pregnant and I can shame my family. “We won't get caught," Eva says. "We'll stop, right?" "Dragon Slayer's honor," she says and we laugh. The heater hisses like a train, and the room is unbearably hot. Eva suggest we take our nightgowns off and we do, and I can feel her large, sweaty breasts brush against my arm. She makes fun of the largeness of my nipples and I make fun of the fact that she has huge breasts with tiny nipples like dots at the end of a sentence. “You won’t be able to breast-feed” I tell her. “There are other things better than breasts feeding,” she says and leaves me wondering, but I guess I know what she means. We lay in bed, and we’re uncomfortable, unable to find a good sleeping position in her twin bed, we decide to curl up like spoons, and Eva hugs me tight as she tends to do. I can feel her hand caressing me, soft circles around my back, up and down motions, sliding towards the front, on my stomach now and I begin to feel those feelings I’m not ready for, and I say “pinky promise," and give her my pinky. “No more hooky playing.” “Pinky promise,” she says and we cuddle together in the night, Eva sucking on her thumb until she falls asleep and me holding on to La Negra, my favorite doll Papi bought me from Santo Domingo. Even now, she smells like vanilla milk and cinnamon sticks. I hold her tight by my side. Wednesday, Hump Day Last Day of Hooky Playing March 8, 1972 Eva and Rica lock themselves in the bedroom with Snake, and they want Pito and me to join them. They remind us that the bed is a waterbed, and I say “five’s a crowd,” and Pito says, “Yeah, five's a crowd”. Pito and I stay in the living room and he start to kiss me as soon as the door closes. We hear the waterbed rolling like an ocean. He kisses me in that special kind of way that leaves me open. He starts to touch my breasts through my dress, as his mouth is wide open on my mouth. I don’t wear a bra because Mami won’t let me. A bra will give me ideas that I’m a woman she says, even though you can see my breasts, and I can have babies now. Parents have crazy ideas, and Mami, she’s crazy like that sometimes. Now, I can feel the warmth of Pito’s hands through my dress and my nipples get large and hard. They pop up through my thin dress and he smiles. He rubs them between his thumb and index fingers. My pompo private parts start palpitating like a heart. Does a pompo have a heart? I wonder. Pito touches me softly now and whispers that I’m the best kisser ever, better than Eva, better than Rica, better than any of the girls at Wade Junior high, he says. I’m proud. He tells me he has all these feelings for me and that I’m his special girl. I feel like I’ve won some love competition against a whole bunch of girls I haven’t even met. I’m feeling special, so special that I let him put one hand up my thigh, his hands going up and down my thigh bringing up new feelings. I’m not allowed to wear pants to school, just short dresses with buttons in the front, and knee high socks. I'm silly putty in his arms. I start to laugh at my own thoughts. He takes a deep breath around my cheeks. His tongue traces the faint veins on my neck while he holds me tight. I feel warm, he kisses my neck making me feel a tingle down my spine, and he says, “relax”, and I do. He kisses my cheeks again. I open my mouth waiting for him. He kisses me, and I breathe him in deeply. He stops and then he murmurs in between kisses, “You want to blow my whistle," I’m surprised because no one touches Pito’s Metal whistle. Pito wears his whistle around his neck; there it dangles on an old brown suede cord like a medal. I smile and touch his whistle and he moves away from me “Not that whistle, silly,” and he takes my right hand and puts it on top of his pants where his zipper has been open for some time. It’s warm, hard and lumpy there where he places my hand and I’m surprised because I wouldn’t know how to blow that whistle at all, and I say, " No thanks." “It would make me very happy,” he says, and I know it would, but I can’t. I would only blow the metal whistle around his neck and he says “No one touches that whistle”, I smile and kiss his eyes and his ears and his neck breathing in the scent of his musk oil. I kiss him slowly on his chest where the metal whistle is waiting for me. I give him small little baby kisses on his chest until I reach his metal whistle, and kiss it slowly; I look at him and kiss the metal whistle again. He lets me. I look at him slowly, and put the metal whistle ever so gently inside of my mouth, and he lets me do that too. I blow it and now I feel really special because no one I know at Wade Junior High has put Pito’s whistle in his or her mouth and has blown on it. Now, my tongue is all over Pito’s whistle. The metal is warm. Then Pito kisses me gently on the mouth, me with the whistle in my mouth and we kiss there, me, Pito and the whistle. I open my eyes as he kisses me and I stare at him, his eyes are dark and his lashes long, he opens his eyes and looks at me. Eva says it’s bad luck to open your eyes when you're kissing, but there we are kissing with our eyes wide open. Pito sees in my eyes what I want to say to him, that because he let me touch his whistle, the whistle no one touches, now I let him touch my breasts, the breasts no boy has ever touched. So I let him. I start to think of God, la Virgencita de la Altagracia and baby Jesus and I feel so close to God, closer than I’ve ever been and then I start to tremble in his arms and he laughs. He kisses my lips and then my eyes and he says, "Now you are a woman," "A woman?" I question. "A Dragon Slayer," he responds. Suddenly I think of Papi, of what Papi would say if he knew his thirteen year old daughter was out with a boy in his apartment, letting him touch her breast, and liking it. I see my father's angry face, and I see Mami, crying in the palm of her hands. I think of Mrs. Cross, my typing teacher, with her shriveled face and her hunched back reminding me that I need to learn to type, it’s a way to get a job. I hear her screaming at me because I've missed her class. I remember she told me if I missed one more class she'd call Papi and Mami and I'm wondering now if she's done that. Suddenly, these entire faces loom over me, pointing their fingers at me, disappointed at me and I feel great shame. Pito comes towards me for a kiss. “I can have babies now," I say repeatedly and he starts to laugh his hands still inside of me. "Not like this, Ana," he says to me. "All I did was touch you," he says. I push him away with a sudden feeling of disgust. “I love you,” he says “you make me so happy,” he adds, and my hands are trembling as I button my blouse and I start to cry because no boy has told me he loves me, not like Pito, not like that. No boy has touched my breast and made me trembled in his arms. I button my dress, and tears begin to fall down my cheeks onto my lap. I’m glad this will be the last time I play hooky, I say to myself because I don't know what I'm doing and a part of me can't stop. I get taken over by these feelings that are too strong for me to understand and I’m lost, so lost. And what about all of these feelings in my body? Is this love? Yes, it has to be love I say to myself. I must love him too or I wouldn’t be feeling these feelings, but I want to throw up. I’m disgusted with the whole thing and I can’t say I love you back to him. I just can’t. I get up nervously. I ignore him when he tries to hold my arm. I go towards his father's bedroom and I knock on the door. I tell Eva it’s time to leave. I can smell the marijuana coming from in there, mixed with strong incense and I can hear the Temptations real low on the radio. “Let’s go, Eva,” I say to her as I knock. I hear the waterbed rolling, making wave sounds as they move on it. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” I hear Eva whispering. “Eva, Eva let’s go,” I say. “Yeeeesss, yes....” I hear her say “I...I...I’m coming,” she says as if in pain. “Ok, Ok, I’ll wait,” I say, and so I wait. THE END Annecy Báez is poet and fiction writer. Her most recent literary work has appeared in Vinyl Donuts an anthology from the National Book Foundation. Callaloo, an African American Literary Journal from John Hopkins University, has recently published an anthology on Dominican Culture and Literature and her poetry and short story are in this publication. Her poetry has also appeared in Brujula and in Tertuliando/Hanging Out a bilingual literary anthology published by Hunter Caribbean Studies. She is the member of Daisy Felipi De Cocco Latina writer’s group. “Amor Sucks” is one story from her novel in progress. LATINO ARTISTS ROUND TABLE