Jim-Bo had wanted to fuck his niece since puberty, and when he opened the door his gaze feigning indifference was nothing more than a cover-up of the fact. He was in a T-shirt like he always was when not on the street. When stepping out, he put on a shirt, even to mow the lawn. He was wearing khaki pants with the belt buckle lost under his gross panzota. When Skank of Choice came out her panza was bigger than Jim-Bo’s, and like his, her ass was lost in her jeans, and thick chin hairs popped out like pay parking-lot spikes. The rest of her face was gray.
Jim-Bo would not like it, Palma knew, but the bottom line was that her grandmother had gone downtown to a lawyer on the last days of her life. Everything she had to leave in the world was left to the granddaughter and Jim-Bo. The way Palma figured it Abuela had known he had a woman who might just try to take over the “estate” and turn it into Casa Pestilencia. Palma owed Abuela little beyond the tacos and tolerance she showed the girl until she moved out, but that was enough to go back there to see her wishes respected.
The place smelled of burned beans or maybe farts and she looked around for a window to open. Three TVs were on. Maybe two and a radio. Skank had a mop dog that started yapping the minute she walked up to the front door and wouldn’t stop after she got inside. Palma kicked at it. Don’t kick my dog, the woman said, her head of long, nappy hair partly covered with a rag. I didn’t kick it, Palma said. Go inside, Jim-Bo told his old lady, meaning the kitchen, bedroom, or hole she had crawled out of. She waddled off with the yapping shit in her arms and Palma thought the second she had the opportunity she was going to knock her out.
She went straight to Abuela’s room. It was all as Palma last saw it: bed, dresser, and everything, even the old woman’s clothes in the closet, but now piled high with new junk all over like an episode of Hoarders. Veronica’s just moving in, Jim-Bo said behind her. Skank a.k.a Veronica. Yeah, just moving in. Surely, she’d been there since Abuela’s passing while Palma was in Colombia. They went back to the living room. Maury Povich was trying to figure out who was the baby daddy. He was competing with a two-for-one-chef-master-contraption infomercial in the kitchen, and through the floor you heard Chuck Mangione’s flügelhorn sounding out “Land of Make Believe.” It was coming from the basement. Who lives down there? Palma asked. It was a guess. Her son, Jim-Bo said. The woman came out of the kitchen with a spatula, You want something to eat? Palma shook her head. I was talking to him, the nasty woman said.
I came to give you this, she said, handing over the lawyer’s card. Abuela left this house to both of us. What? He said, scarcely looking at the card, which she was sure he couldn’t read without glasses. This was my mother’s house, he said. I’ve lived here all my life . . . He stopped. Palma looked at him. She could feel the woman’s possom eyes drilling into the side of her head. Most skanks were just skanks. They didn’t have paranormal powers. She still felt a headache coming on. It was probably the sulfur smell in the air. Jim-Bo was very wrong. Her grandmother, having stoically mourned the loss of a wayward daughter, kept Palma in mind at the end. Palma also believed that Abuela was privately proud that she sought a profession—instead of leading a life that came off to the mainstream as living la vida loca but in truth was the slow and treacherous rock wall climb of a disenfranchised Latina out of the mire in which she’d been born.
You don’t want this house, anyway, Jim-Bo said. You traipse all over the world. You never called my ma. You don’t even live in Chicago. He looked around, and smiling, he showed rotted teeth. Palma turned away. Jim-Bo’s old lady, sensing herself one foot back on the street with her Quasimodo down there, held the spatula up like a fly swatter. Palma couldn’t wait to settle things, throw his ass out, open the windows, clean up and paint the place, and put up a for-sale sign. Abuela had wanted to move out for a long time but never had the nerve. Jim-Bo was like having a dead son laid out in state, which she couldn’t bring herself to leave behind. Palma had no issues with giving him his half after the sale, but if he thought he was going to fart his way to China from his lounge chair in the living room, he was dead wrong. Dead. The word of the day. Synonym for her past. Muerto. It was my grandmother’s wishes, she said, pushing open the storm door. Throughout the neighborhood she detested all her life, birds were chirping. It was a gorgeous June day.
3
The Art Institute had a new wing. It cost eighteen dollars for nonmembers to view. Whatever happened to art for the people? Most of it was from the twentieth-century collection they’d had for years and that Palma Piedras had long ago memorized. Some new. Ana Mendieta was exhibited there now. Palma was happy for the artist although she had flung herself (or was flung) from a window long ago. Mendieta couldn’t have been very happy for the failed pintora having to pay the equivalent of a meal downtown to see the work. Maybe she wasn’t a loser as much as a quitter. Anything worthwhile takes conviction, one of her instructors told Palma once. But how did one know she had the talent to “make it,” the “it factor”? And what of the rich kids in her classes whose privilege would open doors regardless of whether they worked at it or not? Barred from her, it seemed, were the gallery contacts, not glass ceilings but real glass doors. Eventually it seemed practical to take a straight job.
Palma skipped lunch and treated herself to the exhibit. She walked out high on art and made her way back down Michigan Avenue where she saw Pepito waiting. He had an ankle monitor, which allowed him out for a few hours a day to look for employment. He was wearing a tight, plaid shirt and sweating from the humidity. They made eye contact as if he thought only she could see him. Maybe it was an ex-con thing, thinking they were invisible—or hoping. Most were invisible to everyone except to their target. The fact that he saw her told Palma that he was ready for her. Or he thought he was. She was ready for him, too. The night of the day that she threw Pepito out of her room there were about twelve texts and voicemails on her cell phone. Basic message: please, please, please, Prima. He couldn’t let her go just yet, Palma was sure, because he had a live one on the hook. He wiped his brow with a cloth hanky and shoved it in his back pocket, his black, long hair tied back. When he walked he had a slight pimp gait. She hated everything about his gangster style. Palma thought for a moment about whether or not she hated him, too. Hey, he said.
Her small hand in Pepito’s grip, they headed straight to her hotel. As far as her little cousin was concerned, they were consenting adults. Let’s make up for lost time. We’ll recapture that day I went to see you when you were sick and I was cutting school, he said. Me, fourteen and you, twenty-four.
Palma left on her bra. She had this idea that if he truly desired her he would take it off. He never did. He was a big man, twice her size and weight. He laid on his back and propped the woman on his face. He was going to ring Palma’s chimes, float her boat and send her to paradise, he said. Cliché his way to her heart was how she took it. He knew she was with a woman so the intent was to show her he could do with his tongue whatever a female could do. She came so hard they may have heard her elephant mating calls in the next room. I’ve gotta go, he said, after getting washed and dressed. He glanced down at his ankle with the monitor. I’ve got a job interview tomorrow, he said. What time you leave for the airport?
What? Palma said, half believing what she was seeing and hearing. He’d wasted no time getting out of bed. Men were said not to like to cuddle, but as far as she knew this one had not been held for over diez años. He acted like a fugitive on the run. I saw Jim-Bo yesterday, Palma said. Pepito’s left eyebrow went up. He looked only mildly interested. Jim-Bo, you know? Your uncle? Most likely your father? Pepito made a get-out-of-here face, put on his cheap watch, and patted down his hair. I’m making him accountable about Abuela’s house, she said. It was the house we grew up in, man! Don’t you care? She pelted out questions, one after the other, with no response. Then he was out the door.
4
Two days later she was back in her stucco house in Albuquerque, her cat gone, and the dog still at Ursula’s. Ursula worked nights and hadn’t gotten around to bringing Dog back. Palma could get him but was too worn out from her trip down memory lane. The cat