Chango's Fire by Ernesto Quinonez Read Free Book Online Page A

next year. But I had been cut. And that my mother would never understand. She’d never understand that no matter how much you try, how much effort you put in, and even if you do good, you are still considered not good enough. She wouldn’t understand that I also wanted that wonderful feeling of acceptance, the sweetness of being part of something. Even if I had to pay for it.
    Instead I had been cut.
    That’s why I loved Trompo Loco, because all he wanted was to join the team, to be everyday people. Trompo Loco was always trying. He was giving his best, as little as it may be to some people. He gave it all, but it was never good enough. Yet he was out there, swinging, like when we were kids and he was downstairs watching us play, absorbing all those insults so that maybe one day he could be like us. Instead Trompo Loco had been cut, he always got waived.

Complaint #5
    After night school I enter my building, walk up one flight and find Helen sitting alone on the steps. Helen is wearing a black skirt, black top, black stockings, and her shoes are these ugly, black earth shoes that look like clunky boxes. Her hands are hiding her face, and her shoulders jerk up and down as she wails and whispers little things to herself. I notice a half-empty bottle of vodka standing upright and proud near her shoes.
    â€œYou all right?” I ask her, placing my hand lightly on her shoulder.
    She shakes her head and her blond hair falls over her hands, which cover her face.
    â€œSomething happened to you?” She stays quiet, doesn’t even look up.
    â€œYou can just knock if you need anything,” I say, stepping over her, and walk up the stairs. I turn around to make sure she’s still there, watching her shoulders resume their motion, rise and fall, rise and fall.
    M
ira, Julio, se fue Kaiser
,” my mother tells me when I enter.
    â€œWha’?” I get upset, the image of Helen on the steps still clear in my mind. “Ma’, how could the cat escape?”
    â€œYour stupid father left the window to the fire escape open.”
    â€œHow could that happen, ma’? That was a nice cat.”
    â€œI know, I loved him,
‘tava mas lindo.”
Mom is a little sad. “I looked all over for him,
en el rufo, la escalera,
by the hallway, in the bodegas, I even went inside Papelito’s botanica next door, and you know I hate going in there.” She whispers,
“Si entras allí, se te puede pegar algo.
” Meaning something dark would cling to you. This dark thing was bound to come into your house, curl up in a corner and wait until you were sleeping, then uncoil itself and roam—maybe open the refrigerator, take the phone off the hook, leave the faucet dripping. This evil thing that all Pentecostals were warned about would hover over your dreaming body, hissing and murmuring unintelligible sounds. It’d lurk in your tiny apartment, and you’d feel its cold presence increase each day, until it became part of your dark family.
    â€œAllí no vive Dios.
But I went inside that botanica only to look for my cat, so
que el Señor me perdone.”
    I shake my head, not just because the cat is gone, but because my mother believes botanicas are houses of fallen angels. The angels Genesis speaks about, the ones that had left God’s heaven and materialized their bodies to have sex with the daughters of man. We were taught that, during the great flood, these angels left behind their bodies of flesh and returned to their celestial forms. But they were not let back inside the fraternity of God. Instead they were cast down to Earth where they played havoc on mankind. To Pentecostals like my mother, these demons are as real as invisible companions that lonely children play with in their made-up worlds. It was this fear, the fear of wicked angels, that prevented anyone from our Pentecostal church from visiting botanicas. These beliefs are so nailed into my mother’s head