Dressed in a dingy wife-beater undershirt with yellow stains beneath the armpits, Eduardo stood glaring at him from the open refrigerator. His hairy arms were covered with faded green-black tattoos from two stints in Rikers Island prison. His mother, a tiny woman with a strawberry-shaped birthmark on her right cheek, sat mutely in a chair at the small kitchen table, using a tissue to dab at the blood that trickled from her mouth.
Eduardo caught Felix glancing at his mother and the look of sorrow that passed between them. He pointed at his wife as he snarled at his son, “See what you made me do, you little hijo de puta?!”
Felix nodded his head. “Yes, sir. I… I… I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? Sorry don’t cut it. Where’s my fucking beer, pendejo!”
The words slammed into Felix like fists. His father rarely spoke unless it was to yell with the occasional Spanish curse word tossed in. “I don’t know,” he said, lowering his eyes again. “I didn’t take it.”
“Liar!” Eduardo screamed, slamming the door and moving toward Felix with his fist raised. “There was one more in the fridge when I left for work this morning! You took it, fucking thief!”
By “work” Eduardo meant gambling and boozing, but Felix wasn’t about to throw gasoline on the fire. “Okay, okay,” he cried. “I took it. I… I… I’ll go buy you-”
The attempt to mollify his father was cut off by the backhand blow across his face that knocked his glasses off. “I’ll teach you to steal my beer!” Eduardo started to remove his belt.
Amelia Acevedo jumped up from her seat and darted behind her husband to look in the refrigerator. “Look, Eddie, there is another beer, it was behind the carton of milk,” she said, holding up a forty-ounce bottle of cheap malt liquor.
Eduardo looked at her suspiciously. Then he nodded as if he’d just realized some great truth. “Puta!” he spat. “You bitch! You hid it on purpose! What? You got some asshole over here doing you all day while I’m at work? You giving him my beer?” He raised his hand again and started for the cowering woman.
“No! It was me, I hid it,” Felix said. Without his glasses his dad’s face was fuzzy, but he knew it would be a mask of rage. “I was going to the park, and I wanted to bring some beer so that the other guys would think I’m cool.”
Eduardo stopped and looked back and forth from his wife to his son as if he couldn’t figure out which one to hit first. With a snort of disgust, he reached out and grabbed the bottle from his wife. “You owe me a six-pack for trying to steal my beer,” he snarled at Felix, though he stopped shouting. He then turned to his wife. “This ain’t gonna last, bitch.”
“I was just going to the store,” Felix’s mother responded with a look at her son that signaled it was time for them both to leave. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”
“Make it ten if you know what’s good for you.”
As quick as they could, Felix and his mother left the apartment and were soon standing on the sidewalk in front of the run-down tenement building. “You… you… you should leave him,” Felix stammered.
His mother didn’t raise her head. “Where would I go? This is my home.”
“Home?” Felix cried. “A home for rats and cockroaches, you mean-at least until winter, when even they won’t stay because we can’t pay for heat. You could live better if he wasn’t around to drink and gamble all your money away.”
“He’d find me, and when he did…” Her voice trailed off but they both knew what she was going to say.
Felix flushed with anger. “Someday I’m going to be a famous rapper, and I’ll buy you a nice house. And if he comes around, I’ll get the dogs on him.”
Amelia looked up at her son and smiled through her tears. She reached out and patted his cheek where a bruise was already beginning to show from the blow his father had given him. “You’re a good son, Felix. Now, you be safe tonight and stay away from people who can get you into trouble.”
Felix thought about the ring that was making a lump in his wallet. He’d filed the name Al off but left the “Always.” He wondered what his mother would say about his dreams of someday giving it to Maria Elena, the pretty girl with beautiful dark eyes he hoped to talk to that night. “I’ll be safe,” he promised. “I’m just going to see my friend Alejandro.”
Amelia looked worried. “Wasn’t he in a gang?”
“The Inca Boyz over in East Harlem,” Felix admitted. “But that was a long time ago, Mama. He doesn’t do gang stuff anymore. He’s a famous rapper now, and he’s my friend.”
“Well, he better take good care of my son or he will have me to deal with,” Amelia said with another smile as she brushed some food crumbs from the front of his sweatshirt. “I should have washed this,” she said. “You are so messy.”
“Aw, Mom,” Felix complained, aware that he and his mother were getting amused looks from some of the neighbors out enjoying the mild April evening.
“Do you know how to get where you’re going?”
Felix blushed. He knew that he was considered “a little slow”-he had difficulty comprehending what he read and math just made him confused. He had been held back in the sixth and eighth grades, and despite being nineteen years old he had just graduated high school. If there was too much going on, his brain seemed to shut down. Sometimes he’d come out of it and not remember where he’d been or what he’d done, but such episodes embarrassed him and he didn’t like to talk about it.
However, he could remember word-for-word anything he’d heard, so now his mother pulled out a piece of paper. “I got this off the Internet last night at work,” she said. “Catch the Four train to Grand Central Terminal and then the Seven to Times Square. Walk south on Seventh Avenue and then west on Thirty-eighth Street until you get to the Hip-Hop Nightclub. If you have any trouble, ask a policeman.”
“Okay, Mom, I got it,” Felix said, and kissed her on the cheek.
Amelia bit her lip and looked like she might cry again. “Are you sure? I don’t like you going out so late at night. And how are you going to get home?”
“I’m fine. Alejandro said he’d give me a ride back,” Felix responded, anxious to get going. She pulled a twenty-dollar bill from her purse and stuffed it in his front pants pocket over his protests. “Take it and have a good time. It’s not often I can keep anything from your father. Buy yourself a soda and maybe something to eat.”
“Thanks, Mom, I love you,” he said.
“And I love you, hijo,” she replied. “I always will, no matter what.”
Felix walked across Mullayly Park to the subway station at 167th and River Avenue and caught the 4 train into Manhattan. Repeating his mother’s instructions over and over to himself, he found his way to the nightclub, a former warehouse on West Thirty-eighth Street. He was pleased that he didn’t have to ask for help and made only one wrong turn-heading east on Thirty-eighth until he realized he was going the wrong direction. He was not so happy that there was already a line of people waiting outside the door to get in, but he took his place.
He didn’t have to wait long, however, before a limousine pulled up to the curb and Alejandro Garcia stepped out. The crowd cheered the appearance of the big-time recording artist.
Then Garcia spotted Felix. “My man,” the rapper said, which was followed by an embrace, “what you doing standing in this line? You’re a performer, homes, come with me.”
Garcia started to lead Felix to the front door but he pulled up short when he got a look at the right side of his friend’s face. “Who gave you that bruise?” he said with a scowl.
Felix shrugged. “No one. I ran into a door.”
“Don’t lie to me, Felix,” Garcia growled. “Was it your old man again?”
“It was an accident,” Felix said with a sigh.
“Accident my ass,” Garcia spat. “That fucker needs a lesson.”
Felix looked up in fear. “Please don’t,” he begged. “It’ll just make it worse later.”
Garcia studied Felix for a moment and then nodded. “Okay, homes, let’s forget about it for tonight. You ready for your big coming-out party?”
Felix smiled shyly. “I’ve been practicing a lot.”
“Good,” Garcia replied as he nodded to the bouncer at the front door who let them in. “Just try not to show me up tonight. Now, let’s see what’s shakin’ in the VIP room.”
The night went even better than Felix could have hoped. He performed raps by Common and Ol’ Dirty Bastard to the delight of the crowd. However, the highlight was when Alejandro Garcia bounced onto the stage and talked him into doing a duet with his latest hit, “Spanish Harlem Sistas.” As the crowd shouted encouragement, they traded verses, and although Felix had only heard the rap twice, he didn’t miss a word or mess up the beat. But it
