Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bro (8 page)

Whenever Richie asked Coco about her plans for the future—whenever he asked her even a simple question—she’d say, “I don’t know,” and
he’d say, “‘I don’t know’ is gonna be your middle name.” Richie wanted Coco to think ahead, but his advice was vague: “Always have a plan A, and behind that, always have a plan B.” When it came to garnering heroin money, Richie worked the entire alphabet. He had once fallen off a fire escape while attempting to rob a neighbor and broken both his wrists and ankles. He had then filed a lawsuit against the landlord, claiming that the fire escape was unsafe. But Coco could see that even the most inventive plans routinely failed and that Richie’s needs still often came down to Foxy’s salary. Sometimes Coco would hand over her allowance to stop the arguing; she couldn’t stand to see Foxy upset and Richie heroin-sick.

That chaotic autumn, Coco’s only plan was Cesar, who had yet to speak to her.

At first, Cesar noticed Coco the way he noticed all kinds of girls. She was pretty, “real short and thick.” He wanted to have sex with her. His friend B.J. told him to forget it: Coco was a virgin. Cesar wanted her even more.

The high days of virginity put a girl in demand. For the girls, it was not simply a state but an asset that gave them a rare and coveted form of power; virginity could put sneakers on your feet. Ideally, it was something that a girl could make up her own mind about, something that really mattered. And, unlike good looks or real fathers or money, virginity was democratic. Even skanky girls who had it—while they had it—possessed something tangible and clean. For boys, catching a virgin was an accomplishment. It was like winning the dice games—hope skimming the sidewalk, playing calculated odds. Getting a virgin, they told one another, meant a lifelong open door: girls always held a soft spot for their first.

“Yo, forget about her, man,” B.J. said to Cesar, “she won’t give no sex up.” Wishman had not had any luck.

And Wishman had tried. Coco had once given sex to Kodak, he reminded her. He’d say, “You let Kodak. You know I shoulda been your first.” Coco agreed. It had mortified her that her brief, disappointing encounter with Kodak had been broadcast along her block like a street fight or a bust. She had since resolved to keep her romantic interests to herself. Coco may no longer officially have been a virgin, but she was as close to a virgin as you could get. Her pact of privacy did not exclude confiding in Dorcas about Cesar, however, both because Coco was no good with secrets and because they were best girlfriends, best friends for life.

Cesar wasn’t the only boy who had noticed Coco’s chunky figure and appealingly sassy attitude. Her body had long generated unspoken acknowledgments. But now she’d entered the dangerous age, stepped
into the open marketplace, and the desire behind men’s eyes came out in compliments and crude remarks. Smooth offers chased appraising glances. Boys lobbed aggressive comments, begging for a response. Older women warned her off:

You think he’s so wonderful? He ain’t so wonderful, ask him where he been!

Let me tell you, baby, he might buy you sneakers but he ain’t gonna pay the rent!

Check you out, Shorty!

Look at the way she walk!

Whatchu do, paint on those pants?

Their banter supposed that men never passed up sexual opportunity and that young girls were good for little more than waving the chance at them. Men will be men. Boys were worse. Girls were naive, stupid. To Coco, the women’s warnings sounded like jealousy, as if they wanted their dire predictions to come true. They seemed eager for the girl to lose what made her powerful. If older girls and women were supposed to have the knowledge and teach girls about love, the way they went about it wasn’t right. Coco noticed such discrepancies.

Cesar thought Coco sounded like a challenge, and he loved challenges. His friends were always daring him to do crazy things. Once, to Rocco’s great amusement, Cesar had undressed at the dry cleaner’s and walked home, along Tremont, in his underwear. Cesar already had a way with women—real women (his mother’s friends), young women (Jessica’s friends), and girls his age. He varied his approach—from nice guy to bully—depending upon the girl. He bet B.J. $100 that he could have sex with Coco within two weeks: her panties would be the proof. And although he had never even spoken to her, Cesar promised B.J. that Coco would deliver the evidence herself.

Freed from school one afternoon, Coco and Dorcas headed for the bodega on Andrews Avenue. Coco had her black hair pulled up severely, with a dollop of Vaseline on her bangs to tame the curl, and two lollipops stuck in her ponytail. Her skin shone. She used Vaseline as a moisturizer, but also to protect her from scarring if she got into a fight. Conspicuous signs of wear were shaming in the ghetto, which was partly why Coco liked her clothes neat and new. “That was one thing, my mother always tried to keep us in style,” Coco recalled. She preferred shirts that exposed her midriff, and tight pants or short-shorts that showed off her thighs. The pants in style were called chewing gums because they stretched. Foxy
bought Coco a pair in every color—blue, red, green, yellow, black, and pink. Foxy got a 30 percent discount on everything she bought at the Rainbow Shop. Coco was extremely proud of her thickness, which the chewing gums did right by. She said, “I used to rock those, they used to cling to my butt, I used to love it.” That day, Coco wore a turquoise Spandex pair. She swished her way into the bodega. The cleats on her tiny feet clacked against the floor.

“Yo, what’s up with that girl?” Cesar asked.

“Yo, what’s up with your friend?” B.J. asked Dorcas. “My friend thinks she’s nice.”

Coco returned to the sidewalk, and Dorcas filled her in. “Why can’t he talk for himself?” Coco said pertly.

“I can talk for myself,” Cesar said.

“So what happened then, why you telling my friend?” Coco asked. She pursed her lips in one corner, lifted her thick eyebrows, and leaned into her hip. On a woman the position would have looked caustic, but not on Coco. Her nose was small and turned up. Her eyes looked happy and playful; there was hope in them, maybe even trust. Cesar held a pack of Mike and Ikes and sunflower seeds in his big hand. A smile formed on those bee-stung lips. Within seconds, the words spilled out.

“We began to conversate,” Coco recalled. Soon, Coco began cutting school.

Cesar found himself actually liking Coco, and so he defaulted on his bet with B.J. He liked her more each time they spoke, and they’d spoken every day. They always had things to talk about. He spent less time robbing and mugging, preferring to visit with her instead. A girl could save a boy from the street, but Cesar wasn’t looking to be saved, and Coco wasn’t looking to rescue him. She liked the excitement and wasn’t thinking further than that. She waited for Cesar in the lobby of Dorcas’s mother’s apartment building. They talked and talked and then they began to kiss and kiss. They kissed in Dorcas’s mother’s lobby, in stairwells, on sidewalks, against graffitied walls and ravaged trees. They kissed with Cesar sitting on the hood of a car, bent over Coco’s uplifted chin. They began to make love and Coco stayed silly and happy, not scared and sad like other girls he’d been with. She was spontaneous, which was like being with a new girl every day. “It was never the same-old with Coco,” Cesar said. “She was adventurous.” Cesar wasn’t ashamed to introduce her to his friends. Once, Cesar brought a friend to Dorcas’s mother’s apartment for Dorcas, but the friend wasn’t interested. “She was
too
fat,” Coco said, and
Dorcas’s clothes were stained and worn-out. So Coco outfitted Dorcas in new clothes that Foxy had brought home from the Rainbow Shop. Coco’s generosity exasperated Foxy—perhaps because it was a flaw they shared. Then Cesar found a fat friend for the spruced-up Dorcas, and everything worked out.

A few months after Coco and Cesar got together, after kissing throughout one early-winter afternoon, Cesar announced, “Coco, I want to take you somewhere.”

“Where?” she asked.

“I want you to meet my moms.”

It was a big moment. Coco had never been in Cesar’s mother’s house. Cesar had not spoken much about his family.

On University, Cesar flagged down a livery cab. They climbed in. Off they went, sinking into the cushiony backseat for the bumpy ride to the east end of Tremont Avenue.

Lourdes placed her hands on her hips and raised one eyebrow as she scrutinized the short girl who sat beside her Cesar on his queen-size bed. The weight of Lourdes’s beeper made the string of her apron sag. There had been plenty of girls in and out of this bedroom, but she could tell that her baby cared for this one: he’d tucked a picture of Coco in the edge of his mirror. The girl’s feet were swinging. They didn’t even touch the floor.

In the silence that followed Cesar’s introduction—“Ma, I want you to meet my girl”—Coco noticed that Cesar had inherited his mother’s bubble lips. “From all the girlfriends he brung here, from all the girls you seem like you okay, you a nice person,” Lourdes intoned. “But let me tell you, I’m going to tell you one thing. One thing I don’t like about you.” The darkness of Lourdes’s eyes emphasized the paleness of her skin. She wore her waist-length black hair in a single braid. The lady knew how to make a pause count for something.

“How you going to say you don’t like me, for you just met me?” Coco asked sincerely.

Lourdes ignored her and continued, “That eyeliner, it’s got to go. It don’t go with your eyes.” She paused again. “To be honest with you, baby, it looks like shit.” The insult was a gesture of inclusion. “What’s your sign?” Lourdes added solemnly.

“Sagittarius,” said Coco.

“No wonder! Cuz I’m a Sagittarius!” Lourdes exclaimed. With that exchange, Lourdes and Coco became coconspirators on the subject of
Cesar, whom they both loved. Lourdes found a fresh audience for her old stories, and Coco, just coming up, found a veteran guide for the bewildering turns her life was about to take.

Jessica, who was also home the day Coco met Lourdes, was the most beautiful girl Coco had ever seen: light-skinned, with dead hair like a white girl’s, the bangs and feathered edges blown forward like a commercial for shampoo. She also had a perfect body: a big butt without a stomach, nice breasts, and nails polished by a manicurist in a beauty salon. Her wide smile was like Cesar’s—sexy—crowded with those same white, even teeth. She smelled like a rich girl—not of the sharp scents you got at the dollar store, but of a name-brand perfume. She was friendly, which surprised Coco, because a girl with all that could have been a snob. Even across the room, the way Jessica spoke felt pressed up close. The day they met, she wore thigh-high black leather boots with pointy toes.