Love War Stories Read online

  When Veronica gets home, she lies on her bed, listening to the cars in the alley, the noise of the TV in the living room, and the raised voices of her mother and her mother’s boyfriend Willie. They aren’t necessarily fighting, they always talk real loud to each other. She rolls her eyes, turns on her side, and dwells on Ralfy because that’s all she has to think about. She wonders where he could be, and why she hasn’t heard from him. Veronica doesn’t like being home, but appreciates that there are always a few minutes of refuge there, where she can let her mind wander. But inevitably, she is pulled toward fighting with her mother, Willie, or her little sister Gigi.

  Veronica can hear her sister bossing around some other girl in the alleyway, and she wants to go out there and tell Gigi she’s being out of pocket. But instead, Veronica puts a pillow over her eyes and hopes she falls asleep before she hears the girl start to cry.

  “But Maria said she saw him last night at Tito’s house. Do you want to see if he’s on Chestnut now?” Cassandra says.

  “Is that what she told you? She didn’t even mention that to me. What the fuck is going on?” Veronica says.

  They walk through Jackson Parkway, and for the first time in weeks, Veronica spots Ralfy on the playground across the street. Her disappointment that he is there and hasn’t called is deflating. “You think I should be a bitch, or act nice?” she asks Cassandra.

  Cassandra shrugs. “Let’s see what he has to say.”

  She looks down at the cracked sidewalk and tries to let the happiness at seeing him overrun her. “Ralfy,” she calls from across the street.

  He acknowledges her with a nod and heads toward her.

  “So what’s up? I haven’t seen you,” Veronica says as she leans over to kiss him.

  “Nothing, you know, same old shit. Cops were sweating me, so I’ve been chilling at my mom’s house in Springfield and I just got back last night.”

  “Nice to let me know. I’ve been looking for you. I beeped you like ten times.”

  “Oh, my batteries died, and I didn’t get new ones until this morning.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, I’m serious,” he says as he encircles her waist with his arm and pushes her forward so she leans against his body. “Next time I’ll make sure to call you. Come on, don’t be mad. I haven’t seen you in a while; I don’t want to fight. Defend me here, Cassandra. Tell her to chill.”

  Veronica looks at Ralfy’s bronze face and sees that beautiful grin, that smile she really wants to believe exists only for her. It breaks the hardness of his face, and he seems like two boyfriends at once. Since she was thirteen, she’s seen him at all the parties, and even then she wanted to be the girl he invited into hallways to rap to. He entwines his fingers with hers, bites his lip, and presses his forehead against hers, until Veronica has to return his wondrous smile. Despite his bullshit, Veronica is elated Cassandra is here to observe this moment, so that all those people who talk shit can know, can see, he really does love her. She pulls back and kisses him on the lips and asks him what he’s up to now. He says that he’s waiting for Tito, but he’ll call her later so she can come over.

  When Veronica and Cassandra stride away, Veronica beams with energy. She turns back to admire Ralfy and loves the way he looks with his hands in his pocket, a hoodie over his curly hair. She feels the heat of her heart spread. These are the only times she can be connected to her feelings, when she is with Ralfy, because even Holyoke girls are allowed to hope for love.

  Veronica squeals with delight as Ralfy tickles her and tackles her onto his bed. She kicks her legs underneath him.

  “Oh my god, let me tell you how at school I was voted most likely to get pregnant.”

  He slaps her stomach and kisses it. “You want a baby from me? Shit, I can give you a baby.”

  “Only if you want one,” she says coyly. “If I had a baby I could just leave my house and have my own shit. I wouldn’t have to go to school anymore, and we could be together more.” She strokes his head on her stomach. “But my mom keeps giving me speeches about not getting pregnant.”

  Veronica’s mother stopped asking her where she spends the night. It is safer to think Veronica is at Cassandra’s house. It is easier for her to jump to that conclusion—the one that has the safe ending. If she had to think any harder, then her imagination would unravel like red ribbons and she may have to think about her little girl fucking and how their lives have started to follow the same trajectory. Then there would be no more choices about what little Veronica is doing—no alternatives for mother or daughter to mull over. Just knowledge of what lies ahead.

  “She still thinks I’m a virgin,” Veronica says and laughs. She had waited to lose her virginity until she was fifteen, even though no one believed her. They all thought there was no way. But this was one way she could be different from all the other Holyoke girls.

  “Seriously, if she only knew how many times I pounded that pussy.”

  “Eww, don’t say it like that.” Veronica slaps Ralfy’s arm.

  Sex with Ralfy isn’t like in the movies, where some guy comes over to the woman’s house with flowers and he’s willing to do just about anything to please her. The woman is always wearing pretty matching underwear, she always seems to know what to do in bed, and they always orgasm at the same time. With Ralfy, clothes don’t have to be off. They don’t use protection; she doesn’t think about the size of his dick or if he’s making her feel good. She just thinks that sex isn’t as great as she had heard it was. When he finishes, he rolls off her. And it is over just like that. She doesn’t know there can be better, just that this isn’t as good. And this is the whole world for her. Sometimes I wish I could reach down and put my mouth over hers, breathing into her a new life.

  Down in the Flats, cars filled with the Polish rammed Puerto Ricans against the red-brick apartment buildings. The za chlebem immigrants, once landless, who came to Holyoke to claim their own parcels and reap from the mills, once again felt the loss of green or concrete under their feet, and they decided to fight. But the smashing of the Puerto Ricans did not keep them out. They broke through. And now, the Polish don’t even remain like the Irish. No vestiges to mark that the Polish were actually once here.

  Every Thursday, Veronica heads to Cassandra’s house. It’s only the two of them because they both live in South Holyoke, and Maria moved to Jarvis Heights, an apartment complex in another part of town, a few years ago. It’s a nice spring night and while Veronica waits for Cassandra to come down to the stoop, she checks her beeper to make sure she hasn’t missed a beep from Ralfy. She hasn’t. She tries to pinpoint when this shadiness first started and can’t find a clear-cut difference between before and after. Because, if truth be told, Ralfy has always acted this way. Guys are supposed to hold girls at a distance. Veronica never believed he would act in an extraordinary way, but with all her suspicions, only now is it starting to get to her.

  “V, oh my god, look at what my mother found,” Cassandra exclaims as she skips down the stairs and plops down next to Veronica.

  “Oh shit,” Veronica says when she opens the book, The Boys and Girls of Holyoke. “Are you in this too? There is a picture of me somewhere in here.”

  “Yup, look, there I am. Look at this shit. I said I wanted to be a nurse. Can you believe that shit?”

  “That’s so funny. You want to be a nurse for real? Let me see what I told that man,” Veronica says turning the pages to find her picture. She stares at herself.

  “What did you say?”

  “Oh, I said I didn’t know.” Veronica barely recognizes herself in the picture. Doesn’t believe she was ever that young. That there was a time she didn’t have this body or left the house without makeup. Staring down at her quote on the page, she now remembers that day, that man and his camera, his notepad, and all of his questions. She had wanted to tell him her “career dreams,” but some of her classmates were standing nearby and she didn’t want to sound corny. So she told him she didn’t know. The
man kept asking if she was sure. Veronica knew she disappointed him and wasn’t sure if she would make it into the book. She was exhilarated when she saw herself in the group photo on the cover, and she had a page to herself on the inside. When she read everyone else’s answers to the man’s questions, she gasped and punched the book. Even if she had whispered it in his ear, she wished she had told him.

  Cassandra pulls out a smoke and says, “Look, there’s Jeanette. She just had a baby. Guess she won’t be a doctor now.”

  “Do you think any of them meant it?”

  “Probably not. That is some shit you say when you’re young. I bet most of them don’t remember saying any of this,” Cassandra responds.

  Veronica nods because, sitting on the stoop now with Cassandra by her side, the book on her lap, she feels her heart press against her. She instinctively pulls out a cigarette, hoping the smoke will reach all the way down and shroud her heart.

  Cassandra turns on the boom box she brought down with the book. It’s Thursday and from six to eight they listen to clubhouse dance music, softly singing the words to the songs of Judy Torres, TKA, Cynthia, Coro, and India. This is one of Veronica’s most cherished pastimes. Every week without fail, Puerto Ricans all over Western Mass., in their cars or their kitchens, tune into STCC FM, and they all know the words by heart. Most of the songs are about heartbreak. Veronica’s favorites are when the guy sings about how he made a mistake with a girl, how he fucked up and now wants her back. That that could actually happen.

  Veronica has always imagined herself sitting with Cassandra doing this on Thursday nights, but now, flipping through the book, she wonders what the years will bring. For once, she thinks the future isn’t written. This fills her with sadness, and just a small pocket of hope.

  The girls hawk the cars going by. When they peep guys they know, and walk over to the double-parked cars, Veronica is left knowing that if she were to ever leave Ralfy, one of these double-parked guys would love to step.

  The last to arrive, to work in the tobacco fields, were the Puerto Ricans. They came in the fifties. Not the fifties memorialized on TV. These people came to work. Not in offices. No clean, crisp, white shirts at the end of the day. No nice homes to return to by six o’clock. No doting wives. They came to work with their hands. Maybe just like they did in Puerto Rico. Tobacco instead of sugar cane. By the time they came, though, everything was almost gone. All the promise. All the upward spirals. All the paper like gold.

  Last weekend, Veronica and Cassandra had a girl’s night instead of going to a party like they normally do. But Maria didn’t want to be involved; she went out without them. Veronica and Cassandra were excited to do something different. Just like when they were little girls, they wore pink and blue plush pajamas with clouds and small yellow thunderbolts, watched The Little Mermaid, and undid each other’s hair. Bangs hair-sprayed into ski slopes were finger-combed out. Bunned hair was unfurled and let loose. Their faces stripped down. Cheeks glistening from the removal of makeup. Most of the night they laughed with their mouths full of popcorn—wide and with abandon.

  They had planned to do the same this weekend, but by the end of Monday afternoon, Veronica heard that Gail was grinding on Ralfy at a party and she will not be punked any longer. She turns to the right and the left in the mirror. Wearing her baggy jeans, black boots, and black halter top, she wonders if she looks pretty enough tonight because, like most girls, she thinks beauty is the best way to keep a man. And she’s right: in Holyoke and at her age, that’s all there is. Gail with her small tits and flat ass can’t be competition, plus Ralfy always said he would never date a white girl. But Gail is different. She’s not a regular white girl. She’s gone out with Puerto Ricans, and a long time ago, in elementary school, she was friends with Maria. A month ago, Veronica never even paid attention to Gail, but now Veronica watches to see what Gail’s wearing or if she’s hanging around Puerto Ricans because if she is, that changes her status, makes her more competition.

  The thing about Holyoke girls is that they don’t realize how important other girls are to them. Their hearts pound for each other when they walk into parties. The way the night unfolds has nothing to do with rapping to a new guy, but if they fight with another girl. That is more life altering than what boy they end up with. Will the girl’s friends jump in? Who won’t talk to her Monday morning? One mechanism changes and they have to wait to see how all the other parts will react. Mutation.

  Between the crowded bodies at the party, Veronica sees Maria with her arms wrapped around Ralfy’s neck. Across the room, she can clearly see Ralfy’s trademark smile beaming at Maria. Veronica turns to Cassandra and says, “What is this shit?”

  “Easy. You don’t know anything for sure yet,” Cassandra says.

  Veronica marches over to Ralfy, purposely bumps into Maria, and pulls him outside. “You’ve been mad shady lately. If you’re cheating on me, then just let me know because I don’t want to put up with this shit. I’ve been hearing a lot of noise about you messing around with Gail. Is that true?”

  “Veronica, baby, please. You keep saying things like that. Maybe it’s you, huh? You got another man?”

  “Don’t turn this on me. Why were you dancing with Maria like that? Are you fucking her?”

  He laughs. “Veronica, why would I mess with your girl? She’s not even cute. We were just dancing,” he says, flashing his smile at her.

  “You’re a fuckin’ liar,” Veronica says as she slams her fists into his chest.

  I wonder if she ever sat down and thought for just one second that perhaps love doesn’t exist. Because who has she ever known that has ever been in love? Not her parents, not her neighbors, and most certainly not her friends. How is it that you can begin to believe in something when you have never seen proof of it? And weren’t these notions of love based on movies and books that in all other respects did not reflect her life?

  But girls will be girls.

  Girls think they’ll be better than their mothers—burst out dramatically, have an effect on a man’s life. In Holyoke, girls wanting to be in love is as inevitable as fighting in the streets.

  Veronica hauls back into the party. “Are you fucking my man?” she huffs in Maria’s face.

  Veronica doesn’t bother to wait for Maria to part her maroon-colored lips. Her heart knows the answer. Veronica does what she must and smacks Maria’s head back into the wall. Before Maria can remember who she is, Veronica grabs her by the hair and smashes her head against her knee. The party people roar and cheer Veronica on. She knocks Maria to the ground and stops only when Ralfy pulls her off. When he envelops her, Veronica’s heart bursts.

  And she does the unthinkable.

  Veronica starts to cry.

  THE SIMPLE TRUTH

  Mr. Jack Agüeros provides a very idealized portrayal of Julia de Burgos in his introduction to Song of the Simple Truth, what he proclaims is a volume of her complete works. But as one reads his introduction, one finds that some of her poems are irrevocably lost. His version of her love affair with Dr. Juan Isidro Jimenes Grullón is very different from any of the others I’ve read. Agüeros is the only one who depicts her as a heartbreaker; other portrayals hint she suffered some abuse. Some say she was a dipsomaniac because she could not have Dr. Grullón, and that she ultimately died on the streets of Spanish Harlem, on 104th and Fifth Avenue, like a common pauper because this great man took his love away. Even the ex-president of the Dominican Republic, Mr. Juan Bosch himself, believes that.

  But I dislike that story. It makes her seem frivolous—like any other woman I could pass on the street. So I accept Mr. Jack Agüeros’s word on it. I suspect he wants to see Julia in the same light I do.

  I am careful where I step in my apartment. The first thing I will do tomorrow, well maybe Sunday, is clean this place or else I will end up with Fluffy’s hair on all my clothes. I lock him out of my room to keep my dress free of his hair. I spent at least four weeks looking for this dress. It’s black, knee-l
ength, with red lace flowers. When I saw it, I imagined Julia in it looking like a coquette. I carefully model my hair after the photo of her that Jack Agüeros chose for his cover, the one where she is looking straight at you and smiling as if she shares secrets with the person taking the picture. I throw a red scarf over my shoulders and have to laugh. Everybody dressed up tonight as if it were the 1940s. I take one last look in the mirror and hope I will be as striking as Julia.

  Stepping into the empty ballroom, I take it all in without the throngs of partygoers set to arrive in two hours. Tonight is the third annual ball to benefit the Julia de Burgos Cultural House. I interned there last summer, and they offered me a job after I graduated from Barnard. I started in July as an assistant to the archivist, Jose, who let me head up the exhibition for the ball because he plans to retire next year. My ex-boyfriend Alex usually accompanied me to parties and tonight, without him, I feel nervous. A night where the end is a mystery.

  I met Alex my first year at Barnard, and we had been together ever since. This past fall he went to Harvard for graduate school. Everyone thought he would propose to me before he left, so that we could be married by the time he finished. He did ask, but I said no. Probably the bravest thing I have ever done. My mother and father clashed on many things, but their thought processes were always parallel. Her disdain for something ran as deep as his love for the same thing, but at the end of the day, they disentangled themselves from their views and created a storied love that I have yet to find with any boyfriend.