Killer In Cold Clothes

>(For anyone who has ever wanted to know what the story of the scar on the center my forehead)

Tuesday. Again. Waking up for school in the winter sucks. Especially on a Tuesday. Too close to Sunday to forget how fun the weekend was, just far enough into the week to forget how to have fun. That, and it’s still black as night at six-thirty in the morning in the Bronx, like God forgot to hit the switch on the sun here. I’m slipping on my clothes, which are cold as hell, which doesn’t really make sense, but if in hell they made your clothes out of ice that’s what this feels like. By the time I put on my Raiders hoody, which my mom got because they were sold out of Dallas ones, I swear I’m already frostbit. The streetlights reflecting off the snow are forcing orange through my window, so I can see my breath and everything. It looks like a ghost I gave life to by just breathing.

I make my way downstairs to head out for school, tip-toeing past mom’s room like a Navy SEAL behind enemy lines, each time my foot touches the floor it makes the sound of small firecrackers with short fuses popping off on a hot day. I sneak like this for like ten whole minutes, past her room, and pick up my backpack from the living room. I realize my house in the morning is like a train at four in the morning. ‘Cause you can remember it full of people and when it’s empty you feel like the world is upside-down. Anyway, I turn toward the kitchen and my there’s my mom, making juevos con tostones, filling the apartment with my infancy in PR. With half her Puerto Rican accent intact she says, “You know, it was cute to watch you sneak around when you was little. Not so much anymore.” She doesn’t know, but when mommy speaks, even when she’s mad, it feels so nice, ‘cause she gives me her attention. I said back to her, “You worry too much ma’. I’m twelve now, I can handle going to school by myself.”

“If that’s the case flaco, then how come your teachers say you miss school like twice a week? Don’t even try to answer, just take your butt to school, please!”

I leave the plate on the table, full, and steaming in the cold apartment. Mommy says some curses in Spanish at me, but I’m already out the front door, so it sounds like her mouth was duct taped, and she’s cursing her kidnappers out for dear life.

It makes me wish Papi was still here, he always knew how to calm her down. Mommy says he was a mad smooth Dominican chulo, and that he always wore pants so tight you could see his junk. That’s probably how he ended up with that Melinda lady. When I go with Papi some weekends she’s there with him, in their nice house, and she’s cool, and he’s happy. I have fun there, but when I think of how hard it is for mommy and me. I ask all the time, “Why did he leave?” She just gets mad and screams at me that I’m just like him, and I’m gonna leave her too. Makes me so mad to think about it, and I always think about it when mommy’s mad, which is all the time. Can’t be late, or they’ll mark me absent.

On my way to school I gotta watch my back, especially since it’s so dark out. I dip into the Domincan bakery on the corner of my block since it’s always lit up with bright pink and green neon lights that say Rainbow Diner spelled “Raimbow Dinner”. Knowing that when my mom comes in here for a coffee later, the pretty Domincan girl behind the counter with the beauty mark on her upper thigh that looks like Florida (my boy Alfredo told me) and them fake gold hoop earrings will tell her I came in and bought a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich with my allowance. It’s like a message in a bottle that always get’s where you want it to go. Bochincheras are good for that. I killed the sandwich quickly and ran to the bus stop like I was getting an Olympic gold medal. Anyway, I go back to sleep on the bus ride to school, I don’t really have a choice, the bus driver has the heat set on ‘desert’, which the setting after ‘Cuba’ and before ‘Africa’. Getting to school early gives me the same feeling as when I’m in my living room in the morning, except for one difference: excitement. No one is here, and the playground gates are wide open.

After running and skipping with joy to the playground, carefully bounding over the broken glass of last night’s drunken morons and dropping my bag in the snow, my day comes to a screeching halt: there’s a boy on the tire swing. There’s this little black boy sitting in the swing, he’s so weak that he can’t even move it, but he’s laughing so loud. It’s like a little black smudge on the all-white painting of my day. The sun is starting to come up now, and the blue light is tearing shadows into the calm of my early morning. Between the sun and the boy on the swing, I can’t tell which is pissing me off more. Don’t know where it came from, but an idea was climbing up my spine using the spaces between the bones. Next thing I know, I threw my hood on and let the dark colors of my hoody into my actions. By the time I got to the swing, I was sure between the sun and the boy, I could at least cause the boy some pain. Anything to get my swing back.

He was wearing a thin denim jacket with a white, furry collar, navy blue uniform pants, a sky blue button-down uniform shirt, and some Payless loafers. His clothes were the exact same color as the morning. That made me angry. Changing my voice to sound older I said, “You want me to push you on the swing?” He was shocked, as if he didn’t know I was there. He responded in a small voice, “No thank you. I’m okay.” He had to be a third grader, how did he get to school before me, or any of the other fifth graders? The fact that this kid got here before me just pissed me off, so I started to push him on the swing. Faster, and faster, and higher, and higher, then spinning one way, then spinning the other; hoping he’d fall off. The boy started to yell for me to stop, so I pushed harder and harder. It started to drizzle a bit, then it rained a little. The playground was lit with an even, grey light, like the world matched my hoody, matched my mind, matched my heart. I stopped pushing when the boy started crying. I was just trying to scare him, but he wouldn’t let go.

I went to pick up my bag when I noticed that the boy was too small to get out of the moving swing, he looked like a baby bird trying to take first flight out of the nest, so scared. Then he jumped out of the swing at its highest point, it was a good jump too. He landed like a cat, perfectly on his feet. Then the speed of his jump forced his upper forward while his feet stayed planted in place, half a second later he was falling face first onto the stone stairs that led to the swings. There was a crunching sound when his face hit, like stepping into fresh powdered snow and compressing the first footprint. I froze. He jumped up like he was asleep and realized he was two hours late for class, took three steps and dropped down. I ran over to him and asked what his name was, he said something like, “France” or “French”, and I was gonna go get help. Then I noticed that all the students from school were there now, the playground fully lit in a bright grey light, the school bell ringing. Right then, I could hear my mom in my head saying, “Flaquito, go to school now!” So I started walking toward the sound of the bell. I looked back and saw a pool of blood surround his body like a black hole opening under him, devils and demons waiting to dress the boy in cold clothes. I never saw the boy again, but I remember watching his breath leaving his mouth and wondering if his ghost was following me to school.

Written By: Frantz Jerome
(All rights reserved to the author.)