Duty or Desire Read online

  His girlfriends are his Berettas.

  11

  ALEJANDRO

  “This is where it happened,” I tell Chrissie. We’re at Powderhorn Park, where the basketball courts are crowded and rowdy. Yet the second Chrissie got off the number-five bus, no other sight or sound mattered. She’s more beautiful in person, which seems scientifically impossible.

  “Do you really want to talk about it?” Chrissie asks. Her voice is poetry in motion.

  I nod, strong and determined. “In group, at Woodland, they told us the only way to work through anything was to talk, ’cept when I talked about it there, nobody got it.”

  “That’s why I didn’t want to talk about it or want Lacy to post that video,” Chrissie says. “I just want it to go away.”

  “It won’t,” I counter. “And that’s the worst part, ’cause it’s like they still got control over my life.”

  When she moves her arm, I try to see if she’s got a tat. She’s free at least on the little bit of skin she’s showing. She’s got to know about me. “Like my old gang.”

  She’s quiet, which makes the noise around us seem louder somehow. “Old, like no more?” she confirms.

  I nod, but I don’t say anything. According to me I’m out, but according to Big Caesar and Lorenzo, I’m still in. Which I don’t get since they jump in new people all the time. All it takes is finding the right person at the wrong time in their life, and next thing you know, the 26ers are your new best friends.

  “Alejandro.” She waves her left hand in front of my face. She’s got her nails painted with sparkly stuff, with the same kind of sparkle around her eyes.

  “Sorry, I get lost in my thought some times.”

  “Me too.”

  We keep walking and talking about nothing much, but it seems like every minute, one of us says “me too.” When we get closer to the field house, she’s doing most of the talking.

  “Here.” I stop her, point toward the field house. “Back there.”

  I start walking, but she’s not coming with me. “You still don’t trust me, do you?”

  She stands still, arms crossed.

  I turn and walk back toward her. “Chrissie, I never want to cause another person in this world any pain. I mean, except—”

  “Except.”

  “Except the two cops that beat me.”

  I wait for her to say “me too,” but she doesn’t this time; she doesn’t say anything.

  I reach out my left hand. “Trust me, please.” She hesitates; I move closer. “Trust me.”

  Our fingers touch but don’t interlock. “Here’s what happened.”

  I tell how we were getting high after a day of making money for those above us. About the cops coming up on us, about Big Caesar and Lorenzo acting all tough, talking back. About the cops telling us to turn around and me snapping, tired of people—Big C, Olishia, teachers, cops, Ricardo, everybody—telling me what to do. I tell her about the orders from the cops, but mostly that black club they used. Big C and Lorenzo pushing me while they took off like it was my duty to take their beating.

  “Last thing I remember is seeing the club come toward my head while my friends deserted me. Or, people I thought were friends. After that, it’s all blackness until waking up in the hospital and seeing my mom crying.”

  I’m not crying, but close. I’m about to say something, but then she wraps her fingers around mine. “So, believe me when I say you can trust me,” I whisper. “Can I trust you?”

  She stays quiet, but when she nods and kisses me, it’s all the answer I need.

  12

  CHRISSIE

  A first kiss turns into a second and then into too many to count.

  There are too many similarities between us. His eyes show a pain that he can’t speak, and I know all too well. That’s why when my hand pulls him close and our lips meet, the concepts of space and time become nonexistent. My mind won’t shut down, caught up in confusion and passion.

  I snap out of it, feeling almost light-headed from all the blood racing through my veins.

  “I have to go.” I step back. “I’m sorry,” I say as I start to walk away from him.

  “Chrissie, wait.” He touches my arm softly. His voice and his light brown eyes are hard to resist. It takes all of me to stay put.

  “Why are you—” he starts.

  I cut him off. “We can’t do this,” a whisper of fear and doubt from deep within speaks for me. “I don’t lose myself in boys like so many girls. I did once, never again—”

  “Why can’t we?” he asks as he holds my hand tighter. “Is this because I’m Latino? Is it about my past?”

  “No, it’s just that—” I cut off. I don’t know what to say. Is it because he was in jail or in a gang? Or am I afraid of the dark path that desire can take a person down? I don’t know.

  “I’d better go.” I start to walk off again.

  “Chrissie, wait.” He stops me with his words, and I turn to face him. Is it weird that I don’t really hear or see anything else but him? I take off my hat, and he inhales.

  He gently kisses the scar of my forehead. “I feel like I know you. Please just trust me, please.” Alejandro is so sexy when he is serious. His eyes lock me in again.

  “A kiss seals the deal.” I say. We smile and share another kiss, perhaps our most important. We walk hand-in-hand away from the scene of the crime committed by the police.

  “Can I ask one more thing?” I whisper. Hands and lives entwined.

  He nods.

  “What part of Advanced Warfare are you on?”

  He laughs at my question and we’re both smiling as we walk and talk about Call of Duty.

  13

  ALEJANDRO

  “It was nice to meet you,” Chrissie tells Mom and Ricardo as I walk her out the door.

  “You don’t need to lie to my folks,” I whisper, and she laughs. Ricardo actually let me borrow the car to pick her up and take her home, though I’m not sure it makes up for what they did during dinner. They grilled Chrissie more than Mom did the skirt steak we ate.

  Chrissie takes my hand. “I’ve been through worse interrogations.”

  “Me too,” I point to my scar. “ ’Cept I don’t remember most of it.” I walk over, open up the car door for Chrissie, like Ricardo used to do for Mom.

  As soon as Chrissie sits, I kiss her. I should’ve waited until I was sitting too since I feel my heart racing and knees buckling.

  “Alex, come here!” Ricardo shouts from the front door. Knowing he’s watching, I hold the kiss. I could tell from the get-go, he didn’t like Chrissie. Mom not so much either. They already say I spend too much with her, but they don’t know that only forever would be enough.

  I break the kiss. “Be right back.”

  I stomp inside the house. “What?”

  “This is a bad idea, Alex, very bad.” Mom’s arms are crossed. Ricardo stands behind her.

  “You just met her!” I shout.

  “So did you,” Mom reminds me. “This is too much too soon, you need to focus on—”

  “But I love her.” These words escape my lips with ease.

  Ricardo laughs. “You don’t know the meaning of the word, son.”

  He doesn’t know it either, and I hate when he calls me son. “I love Chrissie.”

  More laughter from Ricardo, and a hard stare in return from me. “You kids use words like love and loyalty like you know what they mean. If you loved her, Alex, you wouldn’t leave her alone in the car. You’d protect her always,” Ricardo the Oracle pronounces as law.

  “You called me in here,” I remind him.

  “We know that—” Ricardo starts, and my stare rests on Mom. She turns away, examines the dinner table like Judas at the Last Supper. And Ricardo goes on using that word “we” like they’ve decided my life for me. He ends by telling me, “You should focus on your responsibility to be a good son and a soldier of Christ, instead of lusting after another ghetto girl you barely know.”
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br />   “You don’t know anything about me, or about her, but especially about us!”

  Ricardo sighs like he got punched in the gut; I’ll aim lower.

  “Ricardo, maybe when you marry my mom and earn your keep, then you can lecture me about responsibility to our family—”

  “Watch your step, son.”

  “She and I are the same person. We’ve shared the same experience. It binds us like wire.”

  Ricardo takes a step toward me, and I clinch my fist. But he doesn’t throw a punch or give me the back of his hand, he clutches my right arm over my 26ers tat. “So one day you’re loyal to your thug friends, that girl Olishia, and now to the first new girl who bats her big brown eyes at you.”

  “She’s not some girl.” I look over to Mom, avoiding Ricardo’s dismissive glare.

  “Loyalty and honor don’t work like that,” Ricardo retorts. He huffs and puffs, but he won’t blow my house down. “They are not words you say, they are things you do.”

  “Alejandro,” Mom says, “loyalty is love in action.”

  “And what should I do?” I pull my arm away. Ricardo starts to answer, but I cut him off ’cause I know he’s got no answers. “Rejoin the 26ers?”

  He shakes his head. Mom looks up, tears in the corner of her eyes.

  “But you don’t want me to be with Chrissie.”

  Another head shake from Ricardo.

  “Look, I’m trying to be a good kid like Eduardo, but it’s hard.” What’s harder, though I don’t say it, is that Eduardo’s not returning my calls lately. Last we talked, I’d just told him about meeting Chrissie.

  “Try harder,” is Ricardo’s predictable comeback.

  “So what is it, Ricardo? What should I do?”

  Our small house echoes with the roar of silence, broken quickly by my racing out the door, back into the car, and then driving with Chrissie into the heart of the dark night. She asks nothing of me, and that is why she can have everything.

  14

  CHRISSIE

  “What’s wrong?” I’m next to him in his stepfather’s car, fixed on his worried eyes.

  “Nothing.” Alejandro turns up the music.

  “You ran out of your house,” I say, “Slow down and talk to me.” But it’s just music as he drives toward my house. When we’re close, he pulls into an empty lot, one of many. We’re surrounded by nothing but each other and a quiet northside night without blaring sirens.

  He stares at the floor. “Mom and Ricardo say . . . we spend . . . too much time together.” For the first time I can remember, he fumbles with his words. My parents don’t feel that way because they don’t even know about him. It has to be that way. They think I’m out with my friends when I’m with Alejandro.

  “Do you have to stop seeing me? If that’s what you need, OK. But what is this really about?” I ask. “Do you want to stop seeing me?” I feel everything inside coil and tighten.

  “No! You know I love you. But . . .” he drifts off into nothing. A bus rumbles past.

  “You found me from a video!” We’re face to face, and my hands wave in the air. “You tell me to trust you, and now you don’t know what you want because your family tells you what to do. Where does your loyalty lie?”

  “My family doesn’t know what they are talking about. They think they know, but they don’t.” Alejandro turns away and tightens his grip around the steering wheel, choking it.

  “I don’t understand. You tell me to trust you, and now after all we’ve shared, you say you don’t know. How do you let someone control you so easily? I really want to know,” I ask.

  “No one controls me, but me,” Alejandro says. I think that’s how I used to feel, until those cops beat me down with hate.

  “Yeah, right. I get what I want, and I want you. But I guess you don’t want me,” I say.

  “I do. But . . .” he drifts off once more.

  “But you need to make up your mind! I have to know if you are in this without a doubt. If you are wasting my time, what’s the point?”

  He has no response. He tries kissing me, but I’m not having it. I got a hundred guys who wanna kiss me, but that’s not what I need. “If you’re going to break my heart, Alejandro, you’d better know something.”

  “Chrissie, I’m just confused. So much so soon. I’ve never felt this way before.”

  “I have, sort of,” My stomach rumbles at the memory of Reese. “I won’t let it happen again.” As I say the words, I know it’s not only about getting my heart broken. I’m wondering why I don’t feel the same about protecting other folks from getting beat by those cops like Alejandro and me were.

  15

  ALEJANDRO

  “Everything’s new,” Chrissie whispers to me.

  We’re lying in Powderhorn on our jackets on the first sixty-degree day of spring, which brings the whole city outside. After the hour we spent kissing, I lost track of time. We’ve spent the rest of the afternoon talking about how, because we share a past, we can build a future together. I told her I didn’t care what anybody said, not even my Mom. All I desired in the world was Chrissie.

  “It’s like anything’s possible,” I whisper back, then pull her right next to me. Her tank tops are hanging low, and that’s when I see it. “You have a tattoo!”

  She pulls down her strap enough for me to see the full thing. It sits just above her heart.

  “What’s the story?”

  She hesitates, so I wait.

  “So, ever since I was young, I always loved snakes. I’d be fascinated with the patterns of their skin and how they would shed. I think they are beautiful and the way they move so slick; I admire that trait from them.”

  I look again. “Two snake heads with their scaled bodies,” I make out.

  She nods. “They’re entangled in each other, and made of chain coils.”

  “Wow.”

  “I know, it’s a lot of symbolism.” She takes my hand and traces the tattoo. “I used to always let people tell me what to do. But then I liked the idea that I could, kind of, shed my skin. Be powerful on the inside. So I got this tattoo. Feels like it helps protect me.

  “You think I’m crazy now that I told you this,” she says, smiling.

  “You’re not crazy. You’re strong. There’s a difference.”

  She squeezes my hand as we lie there, peaceful. We stay that way, just beating heart to heart, letting the sun shine down on us like seeds waiting to grow.

  Then suddenly there’s no more sun, just a dark shadow. Make it two. Big C and Lorenzo.

  “Chrissie, don’t move,” I whisper, pull her tighter. I wonder if she feels my hands shaking. “A couple of my old crew are here. Let me handle it.”

  She rolls over, stands up, and readjusts her blue jeans and dual purple tanks which I did a fine job of rearranging. I rise, stand in front of her, and try to relive the part I once played.

  “Who is this?” Big C asks. I don’t like how he’s examining Chrissie with his eyes.

  “She’s none of your business,” I shoot back.

  “Speaking of business,” Lorenzo says. “When you coming back to work for us?”

  “We are ‘us’ now,” I say loud and clear. “Not you.”

  Big C snorts. “You said that about my sis too.” Lorenzo slaps his hands together in joy.

  “Sister. His sister?” Chrissie sputters and then takes a deep breath.

  Big C belly laughs. “A-hole didn’t tell you about him and Olishia hooking up.”

  Before I can say a word, Chrissie turns her back and retreats. Big C howls like this is the funniest thing he’s ever seen. “Chrissie, wait up!” I yell as her fast walk turns into a run. As I race after her, the sounds and smells of the park intensify. I’m in the present.

  I catch up with her and put my hand on her shoulders. “Chrissie, let me explain.” She doesn’t turn around. “There was nothing with Olishia, not like with you.”

  She pulls my hands off her bare shoulders and buries her face in her hands.
I get in front of her and apologize for not telling her about Olishia. “I never loved her,” I insist.

  Chrissie drops her hands and puts them in mine. She squeezes my hands, soft at first and then hard to the point where it hurts. “Was she smarter than me? More beautiful? Did she do things to you that I won’t?” I’m surprised Chrissie’s brown eyes don’t turn green as the jealous monster within her rises to the surface.

  “There is no one smarter or sexier or stronger than you,” I whisper. “You do something for me that Olishia never could. You give me a reason to wake up every morning.”

  She releases my hands and puts hers in front of her mouth as she takes deep breathes to calm herself. “So he was just saying that to hurt me?” Chrissie finally makes eye contact with me.

  “To hurt us,” I remind her. “Like I said, there is no me and you, there is just us.”

  Her breathing regulates. But the green of envy I sense, as I watch her hands ball into fists, is losing to red rage and her desire to be the white knight in shining armor. And just as quickly as she retreated from the battlefield, she walks back toward where Big C and Lorenzo still stand.

  They point at us, hands tilted like they were pointing pistols. They mock fire. Chrissie advances. She stands eye to eye with Big C. I try to get between them, but she pushes past.

  Her eyes narrow. Her voice is loud and clear. “These were the two that let you take a beating from those cops, right?” I nod. “Must be stupid and weak.”

  “Watch your mouth!” Big C yells in her face.

  “They ran, so why should we walk away from them?” she shouts over my shoulder.

  I’m trying to think of a good reason, but it’s hard to think with all the smack Big C and Lorenzo are talking. They drop every b-, c-, and f-bomb in the book. Chrissie doesn’t flinch.

  “What you gonna do, run away again?” Chrissie yells out.