sat there while he tried to talk to me.
Cirilo, right? But they call you Güero, right?
Yeah, that’s it.
Coach Sánchez told me about you. He says you play real good B-ball. You ever thought of going out for the team? You’re built for it.
I went pssh. Basketball didn’t mean anything. Football was the only sport anybody cared about. The basketball teams played whole seasons with only two or three people watching, and these were just girlfriends or moms.
No vale, I said.
Anyway, son. He was one of those coaches who called his players son. He was trying to treat me like I was one of his football players so I would talk to him, so he could be the important male role model in my life for fifteen minutes. I came here to visit Karina. Were you at school today? Did you see what happened?
I thought, I did and I saw how you reached out for her, how you were the big man and all of us little boys couldn’t do anything. I said, Yeah I was there.
It was a miracle, let me tell you, that girl wasn’t supposed to die today. I don’t know how I caught her, but I did. It was incredible.
I said, Ya’mbre, you did a great job, we all love you. You have made such a difference in our lives. Teacher of the Year. At least you should get a nice coffee mug out of this.
Coach Bernál interrupted me and said, No son, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that that girl, she’s special. You’re her friend and you need to take care of her. Tell her that life is good, that it’s worth living.
Brenda and Gladis came out and they were crying, holding each other all dramatic like they’d just lived through a bombing or hurricane. The door buzzed and the lady in the window said it was okay if I went in now. Coach Bernál nodded at me to walk in and I was glad I didn’t have to listen to him anymore.
He said, You can speak words of life or death to her, son, it’s up to you.
What was up with that? My words never killed or saved anyone and never would. They were just words and always would be.
I walked into the cafeteria where they let everyone visit and there were families at tables, talking all quiet. All I could hear were their voices and the juice machine humming. When she saw me, she walked up real fast and held out her hands. She was crying when she said, Take me with you. I want to go home. I want to go with you. No wonder Brenda and Gladis had been crying. My girl was messed up.
She put her arms around me and looked up. Her mascara made black lines down her face and when she asked me to get her out of there again, her breath smelled sour, like she’d just woken up. She was wearing flea market rejects, this ugly night-shirt with a teddy bear on the front and these sweatpants. Why did they have to take her clothes too?
We sat down at one of the tables and I was still holding her when she said, I want to go, I don’t want to be here, I want to go home, take me home.
I told her, Ssh ssh ssh, it’s okay.
Then like I’d told her something mean, she pulled away real quick and said, Don’t tell me that, don’t you ever tell me that. Get out of here! Get out, I don’t want you here!
I said, Karina I was just. . . . I didn’t get to finish what I was saying because she slapped me in the face and kept on slapping. These big dudes with Charter Palms badges clipped to their belts came in and told me I had to leave. They pulled Karina up and told her visiting time was over, that she had to go to her room now.
Leave me alone! Let me go, let me out! She twisted her body and tried to get free from them, but they held her arms real tight.
They were moving her through the other door when she said to me, I can’t believe you hurt me like this. I can’t believe you’re not helping me, telling me ‘ssh’ when I just needed you to be nice. I hate you Güero, I hate you.
Karina had problems none of us could help her with. Right then I was sure of this, but I also knew something else. I would try to help her anyway, and I loved her even more, in ways I could not explain.
Later when I talked to Brenda about her, she said that Karina changed after that. She didn’t need to tell me, though. She was cold to me and for a long time, would not even hold hands with me, as if she was pulling away to some place I could not follow. Everyone saw it, how the girl we knew as Karina was slowly going away. She didn’t cry for anything like she used to and she started wearing those blue makeup tears on the inside of her eyes, which made her eyes look even blacker. She started drawing ghost faces and skipping school just to smoke cigarettes at Bonham Hill Cemetery and read the tombstones and would take a long walk to go spend time at the caliche pit where the kids had drowned in the bus accident. She had known a lot of them, and had even been best friends with one of the girls.
Because of this, and because of the Llorona tag she started drawing on her binder and papers, people started calling her Llorona. The only tears were the painted ones now. Then she started to get into more fights, jumping any girl who looked at her wrong, or talked bad about her. I knew she was doing it so everyone would forget about her up there on the bleachers, crying and messed up, out of control. But none of them would forget, and they’d never stop asking why she’d wanted to kill herself. I’d asked Llorona why, and she would ignore the question, as if she couldn’t hear me. How had she been hurt enough to want to kill herself? And if she did answer, she would only say, Maybe someday I’ll tell you, Güero. Maybe when I’m stronger. Months later, she would tell me the truth of what had happened to her, but I never told anyone, because it wasn’t my story to tell, no matter what she did to me.
Now Smiley said, “Let me tell you, Llorona’s no good for you. Into that brujería of her mama’s curses, hearing all that talk from spirits and devils, messing around with that Ouija board. You really want that? She’s got you messed up with one of her mama’s curses on you. I know from experience. Let me tell you one thing about my jefe. After he’d been drinking and he’d had a few, he used to tell us stories about a bruja he went out with before he met my mom.”
“This witch he was going out with was like Llorona and her mother. Any man who left her or did her wrong she would make sick, and just like that—” He tried to snap his fingers. He tried again and said, “And just like that.”
I snapped my fingers loud and said, “You mean like that?”
“Yeah güey, you got it, así, just like that, the man would die. Now do you want that?”
He talked and his eyes were all big, like he was telling me scary stories near a fire. I laughed because I knew one of his stories was coming, because Smiley was making me forget like he always could. His whole face moved when he told stories, every muscle in his face working to make you think of the story he was telling you, and not about what you were going through at the moment.
“Let me tell you one thing: before my dad married my mom, he was all serious with this witch lady from Mexico named Esmer. Esmer de las Something. Esmer de las Pacas, las Parrancas, Esmer de las something like that. Anyway, my jefe and this lady talked about getting married. My pops soon heard from one of my tías about Esmer’s hechizos on people and let me tell you, my pops didn’t want to be with a witch woman. So what he did was, he told Esmer he didn’t want to go around anymore and you know what? Let me tell you, she put an hechizo around him, but not a curse bad enough to kill him, because she loved him so much. That was the kind of mojo my Dad had with the ladies. But in a way güey, what she did to him was
