E. García-López

Eugenio

When his father left Eugene was twelve. His mother and younger sister Suzy lived across the hall from Mr. and Mrs. Kokolakis in a six-story apartment walk-up in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Compared to most of the neighborhood in 1976, Grove Street between Broadway and Bushwick Avenues was clean and usually quiet. Eugene’s mother did not need, unlike other parents in other parts of Bushwick, to keep her children in street clothes in bed in case of sudden late-night fires.   

Almost every Friday afternoon, Eugene, his mother, and sometimes Mrs. Kokolakis would walk towards Broadway Avenue to the A&P for groceries. Under the grimy elevated tracks of the J train were several blocks of the area’s main shopping strip. The barbershop where Eugene’s father used to take him to get their cuts was across from Chicas Nail Place, which was next to Mullins Jewelry and Repair on the corner.

It was uncommon for a white, older couple would move into these apartment buildings. Mostly they were moving out to Levittown-like suburbs with their sons or daughters or dying. A few weeks after the Kokolakis’ moved in, Eugene’s mother told him that they were Greek. Eugene scrunched his nose and tilted his head. 

“They are from a country called Greece,” she said.

Eugene looked up Greece in their world atlas, the one with the chewed cover. Suzy had used it as a tooth soother, one piece of soft cardboard at a time. South America up to northern Argentina had tiny tooth holes. Tierra del Fuego probably came out with her stool. A land lost forever. However, he found Greece with its conch-like shape and thousands of islands seeping from its coast, as if trailing grains of sand.  The boy fastidiously traced thick pencil sea routes from the south of Greece, around the boot of Italy, across the Mediterranean. His pencil sailed into the Atlantic, headed temporarily south to stop for water and food in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands, to continue to New York Harbor. Staten Island to port, Coney Island to starboard. Eugene, disappointed to discover Bushwick did not have a coast, disembarked in Red Hook. The convoy through Bed-Sty was not without peril.

Mr. Kokolakis had short stumps for legs, and thick limbs that seemed to push into an aching ground. Small tufts of gray hair gathered mostly on the front part of his head and stuck up like short feathers on a wild goose. Thick, salt-peppered eyebrows collided to become one. His eyes were dark moons wide. His chin and cheeks had a persistent five o’clock shadow. All year long, he wore what may have been the same baggy, brown corduroy pants. In contrast, his long-sleeved shirt was always sparkling white, pressed and buttoned to the collar. From the waist up, Mr. Kokolakis reminded Eugene of the picture of a distinguished old man in one of the volumes of the dilapidated encyclopedia that his mother guarded with zeal in their two-bedroom apartment.

“Mister Kokolakis doesn’t talk much,” Eugene’s mother said to him in Spanish. 

When they crossed paths with Mr. Kokolakis in the hall or when they passed each other in the narrow stairway, his mother would inevitably offer an amiable and heavily accented, “Good morning, Mr. Kokolakis,” or “Good afternoon,” or “How is Mrs. Kokolakis today?” This would extract from Mr. Kokolakis brief words like the taciturn grumbles of a petulant child. He talked more with his graceless limbs, his arms flying into contortions Eugene did not know a human being could do. 

In turn, Mrs. Kokolakis was a sickly, unhurried woman. Although she once was a few inches taller than her husband, osteoporosis stooped her spine and made them equal in height. She always gave Eugene and his mother a warm broad smile revealing the absence of one upper incisor. While Mr. Kokolakis went to work at The Symposium Diner in Manhattan, Mrs. Kokolakis stayed in her apartment gluing cubic zirconium and other imitation stones onto silver or gold-looking jewelry settings, or she chatted with stay-at-home mothers or the dwindling number of other older women. 

It was a common occurrence to see an ambulance come and take her away. During the days when she was gone, Eugene’s mother would bring dinner to Mr. Kokolakis. If he did not answer the door or was not home, Eugene’s mother would leave a container of white rice and kidney beans with a few pieces of fried chicken in a plastic bag hanging on their doorknob. She felt sorry for Mr. Kokolakis, she would tell Eugene, being all alone and having to visit his wife in the hospital. 

On Grove Street, scrawny, yet seemingly indestructible Norway maples spotted the edge of uprooted slanted sidewalks. “This street has changed so much,” repeatedly said the few Italian and German elderly widows left behind.  Their thick stockings rolled down to their ankles, they would shift their weight from one varicose veined leg to another and compare their latest attacks of gout. They would drag out folding chairs from inside their terra cotta-trimmed buildings with elaborate cornices crowning the archway entrance; they would never sit on the heavy, red brick stoops. 

The stoop was for the kids, like Eugene, who would run at breakneck speed up and down the stairs just to see who could do it faster without stumbling and leaving hard imprints of the brick surface on bloody kneecaps. They would play one of the stoopball variations: throw a pink Spaulding smack-hard into the stoop in such a way as to create a high pop-up for someone in the crowd of fielders to catch. On warm, inviting days, kids would play Skully, as some of the more zealous players flicked bottle caps weighed down with melted crayons across spray-painted street boards. Others would place soda or beer cans in the middle of the road so they would be squashed when cars traveled by. There was a thrill in seeing cars try --and fail--to swerve away from the cans. The flattened cans became game pieces inside chalk-scribbled squares on the sidewalk for the Grove Street version of hopscotch. 

On the other side of the street, someone would open la pompa just about all hot summer days. The hydrants’ rush of water cooled down children and teens. Or the youngsters would simply sit and watch the girls jump double dutch and let the stifling, languid summer days flit by.

One early summer night in 1977, when Eugene had just turned thirteen, some boys sprayed with a can of fiery red paint:

KOKO VIEJO LOCO

on Mr. Kokolakis’ apartment door. Koko crazy old man it said. Eugene’s mother saw the graffiti and told Eugene to paint over it. 

“But I didn’t do it,” he said in an outburst that surprised his mother. 

“I know that,” she said.

“Let Acho do it,” the boy said, louder. 

Acho was short for borracho, the nickname the neighborhood kids had given to El Super, whose breath constantly had the festering smell of the cheapest rum he could buy. 

Peripherally, he saw his mother’s hand rise. She had a custom of telegraphing this movement, maybe to give Eugene time to see it coming, and he had learned to pivot his head away, like an experienced boxer who deftly rolls punches. 

(Those days, every morning before his mother went to work in the last textile mill in Brooklyn, she would massage cocoa butter lotion into her hands, arms, and legs. Her hand had glanced, almost like a hurried kiss, by his face so many times that to this day when he smells cocoa butter, he flinches.) 

“Eugenio Evaristo Martinez Ramos.” 

Eugene moved a few steps further away from her. 

“Paint it,” she said between clenched teeth. “El Super is not here. I have the paint. I’m telling you to paint it.” Then, almost in a whisper, she added, “As a favor to our neighbor.” 

Eugene made several broad strokes with battleship gray paint until it melded into the door to become something akin to a silky fog. It lightly covered the red. He tried not to paint the metal plate that read 3C by painstakingly outlining the thick brush around it. Somewhat proud of his accomplishment, Eugene turned to walk back to his apartment door when Mr. Kokolakis opened his. The old man stared at him. A can of paint dangled from Eugene’s left hand, a gristly gray brush in the other. Mr. Kokolakis followed the odor of paint to the other side of his door. 

Eugene was not sure if Mr. Kokolakis was shouting at him, the unknown kids who had done this, or at the world in general. The old man’s voice rumbled from deep within his chest. He spoke fast and loud, moving his arms up and down, side to side, like a big disoriented bird flapping its wings trying to take off. 

Remaining motionless in the hallway, Eugene tried to restrain tears. He noticed that Acho’s previous half-assed attempt to paint over some wall graffiti had left faint blue writing. Small, shaky scrawls affirmed Mario Loves Kathy. Mario was a boy a year or two older than Eugene who lived upstairs. He had a nose like the snood of a bird and a huge Adam’s apple that bobbed when he spoke. They called Mario El Pavo, the Turkey. 

Kathy, from the apartment building across the street, had thick thighs, red hair, and freckles like stars placed delicately on her face. Her hair smelled like fresh, ripe strawberries. She was sort of going out with El Pavo. Gene loves Kathy thought Eugene. 

Mr. Kokolakis finished his ranting and stumbled inside his apartment, holding on to the doorframe. A line of gray smeared his brown pants when he leaned against the wet coat of paint. He slammed the door with such force that the curl of air swept Eugene slightly back. 

“We got to carry each other now,” his Mother said to him the morning his father left. She knew he would not come back. Eugene had woken up that morning to an anxious silence. The usual sounds of his parents ambling from bedroom to bathroom, whispers growing into murmurs, the shuffle of steps around the kitchen, and even the coos of two-year-old Suzy, had been obliterated. 

“We are going to be okay. We don’t need him. We going to be okay,” his mother kept saying to herself.

Eugene entered his apartment clenching tight the narrow handle of the paint can. He quietly placed it on the floor and looked down at his hand; a thin line marked across his slender fingers. His mother had the tub running while giving four-year-old Suzy, a bath. Delicately scrubbing the child’s glowing brown skin, she did not hear Mister Kokolakis outside their apartment hallway, or Eugene’s quiet, angry sobs in his bedroom.

Later that summer, amid a heat wave, Eugene's mother had returned from her part-time job as a home health aide to a bedridden Jewish widow in Park Slope. She had worked for three years winding, twisting, and drawing spools of cotton, wool, nylon, and polyester in a large textile mill, which had closed months before. At around nine-thirty that night, Eugene was sitting by his bedroom’s open window, trying to catch a breeze and a glimpse of Kathy. His mother was watching a rerun of Kojak. Suzy was in bed, but Eugene could hear her softly singing gibberish to herself. The lights flickered in their apartment, as the streetlights went out one at a time--then all the lights went out, everywhere. 

There were a few seconds of dazed silence; followed by “Oh shit, fuck, puñeta,” and the repeating of “blackout,” from the open window and streets. Suzy cried in the sudden darkness. His mother felt her way around the house to console her. 

“Eugenio, are you here?” his mother asked. 

“I’m here,” he answered. An unexpected sense of adventure made him nervously smile into the dark. His mother, with Suzy in her arms, felt her way to the kitchen in search of candles. 

Minutes later, they sat around a lone candle, while Suzy on her mother’s lap noisily sucked her thumb. 

“I hear people outside, let’s go outside,” Eugene told his mother in a nearly conspiratorial tone. 

“Okay,” she said reluctantly, “but you stay close to me. No wandering off.”

They went out to the stoop. The hot street was lively with mothers, men, children, and the older neighbors stranded in yet another predicament. Some were holding candles, lighters, lit matches, or flashlights. Kids were playing tag, screaming, and running up and down the shadowy street. Eugene, beside his mother, looked for Kathy among the faces drifting between light and darkness. From her window, Mrs. Kokolakis called down at whoever wished to hear that she was concerned. Mr. Kokolakis was not back from work at the diner. Eugene’s mother and others tried to reassure her that he would be fine. Someone told her not to worry; he would soon be walking home, laughing at the situation. Another person countered that no one had ever seen Mr. Kokolakis laugh. Most people snickered at that.

About twenty minutes into the blackout, someone, somewhere realized that the lights were not coming back. Eugene heard bottles thrown in adjacent streets, shrieks. When they heard store windows breaking, the neighbors knew it was coming from Broadway.  Some teens and quite a few adults ran chanting “Broadway, Broadway,” as they headed to the avenue.

When a youngster, ran by carrying a small television set, its power cord dragging behind him like a newly grown appendage, his mother gathered Eugene, held tightly to Suzy, and went back inside their dark apartment.

The pounding feet of looters ran through the street in frenzied waves. 

“Mami, what’s going on?” 

His mother got up to look for more candles. She was hoping she still had the religious candle that her aunt Lucia, the Espiritista, had left behind. Aunt Lucia had dropped it off after giving strict instructions to Eugene’s mother, who was supposed to make a specific plea, light the candle for ten minutes at ten o’clock at night, pray ten Hail Marys for ten consecutive days, and with the power of faith Eugene’s mother would have her request answered. Now she was praying that she had not thrown the thing out. It was buried deep behind unused baby bottles and old cans of Carnation evaporated milk.

The candle was a tall, green glass cylinder with a picture of the Virgin Mary holding a very blue-eyed baby Jesus. Green was for money, luck, and healing Aunt Lucia had told her. Eugene’s mother listened to the rage going on outside, looked around the dim, bleak room, and the expectant eyes of her children looking up at her. For a brief moment, she thought that maybe she really should have listened to Aunt Lucia. 

“Stay away from the windows,” she said in a shaky voice that made him more anxious.

Against the wall over the television set, Eugene created hand shadow puppets to entertain his little sister. His mother feigned giggles over the sound of police and fire sirens, smashing glass, and people screaming like in a demonic carnival. Eugene was trying to do the Bird in Flight shadow when there was a knock on the door that made him jump, his mother shrieked, and Suzy cried. 

“Who is it?” his mother asked, adding, 

“I have a fucking gun.” Eugene had never heard his mother curse in English before. 

It was Mr. Kokolakis. She opened the door and the old man stood with Mrs. Kokolakis behind him holding a candle that made her drawn features squiggle and dance.

“We want to know if everybody okay,” said Mrs. Kokolakis. 

“I am glad you made it okay, Mr. Kokolakis,” Eugene’s mother said. 

The old man stood before them in silence with a bewildered expression, new wrinkles seeming to line his perspiring face. His once impeccably white shirt was now soiled, and damp, with the collar button unfastened. 

“It like a crazy place,” he finally said. “People breaking store windows for stereos, diapers, clothes, all things. The trains not working. Anything they carry. I see some man drive a truck into metal gate, a furniture store. Two boys take a big sofa. They are running like wild ...” 

“Nikos please don’t say that. Desperate people do desperate things,” Mrs. Kokolakis said as they went, both shaking their heads, into their apartment.

The electricity did not come back until late the following day. Eugene walked to Broadway with his mother. They stepped over trails of scattered glass twinkling in the sun. Mannequin body parts sprawled on the sidewalks like victims of war. Bricks and rubble spread across the streets. 

“We need to get out of here,” his mother said. 

Later, El Pavo said he had a whole DJ audio equipment system while showing off his new Dr. J. Converse Pro Leather sneakers.

When Eugene was younger, his mother would read to him almost every night, and later to him and Suzy. During the frequent nights that Eugene could not sleep and the children’s book had been exhausted, his mother would lie beside him and read poetry, books that had belonged to her schoolteacher father. She would read the poetry of Jose de Diego, Gabriela Mistral, Luis Llorens Torres, Pablo Neruda, or Julia de Burgos. Pretty words and soothing phrases he did not quite understand flowed from her. He would fall asleep. 

(He still has most of those books. His mother gave them to him, all of them after Suzy died.)

Early autumn that year, Eugene resisted falling asleep. When this happened, he would read almost until dawn, sleep fitfully, and wake up listening for morning voices. This night he once again allowed Buck in Call of the Wild to take him along, but this time the dog’s adventures made him feel more uneasy. Hoping against hope that maybe this time Buck and Thornton would live together forever.

Sometimes during those nights, he would sit by the bedroom window, imagining he could see Kathy across the street. She would be dancing, shyly taking her clothes off, blowing him kisses, telepathically saying to him, I love you, Gene. You and only you. 

He had stolen a kiss from Kathy a few days before. They were alone outside. Kathy was talking; she was constantly saying something to someone. Eugene was half listening, waiting for his opportunity, having rehearsed it all the night before. Watch her until she lowers her head after a stream of sentences, looks down between her (each year growing larger) breasts, and move quickly.  

“…then I told Lisa that I’m not going to be her friend if she done that,” Kathy said, dropping her head. 

Eugene moved in. Before she could react, he met her moist lips with his. He had timed the kiss the night before for five seconds; she pushed him away, not too forcibly, at three seconds. Her face flushed a crimson that worried Eugene. She walked quickly away, then turned and gave a faint and, to Eugene, puzzling smile. 

Now, gazing across to the windows of Kathy’s building, he only saw blurred, indistinct shadows through gauzy curtains. The blue flicker of television sets. Yellow lamp lights going out, one by one. 

It was a cool night. He counted pedestrians and cars passing by. People 0 - Cars 0. People 1 – Cars 1. Wait. People 1- Cars 2.

The sparse leaves remaining on the hardy tree in front of the building beat against each other as a coil of wind stirred between its branches. Eugene caught a shadow walking halfway up, then down the street. He pushed half his body out the window, his stomach pressed against the windowsill, to get a better look. The walking guard came out from the shadows into a feeble light. It drifted like a ghost. Papi?  It was Mr. Kokolakis. A few days before his mother, in tears, had told Eugene that Mr. Kokolakis’ wife died in the hospital. 

Mr. Kokolakis disappeared only to return. Eugene watched him do this for a while. Maybe he lost something. Maybe he remembered something, forgot, and turned back, to remember and forget again? Maybe he is looking for his wife. 

Eugene hit his head on the window frame as he nodded off.  He awoke in the morning not remembering when or how he had gone to bed. 

The following night Eugene stayed up late. Again, Mr. Kokolakis came out of their building and continued his strange ramble. The next night the same. 

Eugene told his mother at breakfast. As she put in front of him a bowl of Cheerios drowning in milk, she said, “Maybe he can’t sleep.” 

“He only goes up the street halfway and turns back.”  

“Maybe he doesn’t want to go far and get lost.” 

He rolled his eyes as she gave Suzy her breakfast. Eugene looked down at his bowl, shook his head, and took a spoonful of the soggy cereal.

It had rained all day. By evening it had stopped, the day’s tepid warmth giving way to the hint of a cool night. The yellowish light from the lampposts gave the blacktop street a filmy sheen. Mr. Kokolakis was out again. His head down, hands in his pockets. Eugene wondered whether he should call his mother and tell her what the crazy old man was doing, or go outside and ask him and risk possible wrath. He put a jacket over his washed-out green New York Jets T-shirt, tightened the drawstring of his sweatpants, and quietly unlatched the apartment front door. Making his way down the creaky wood stairway with its stained step runners and tarnished wrought iron railing. 

Outside, Eugene sat on the bottom stoop. The dampness of the bricks almost instantly seeped through his sweatpants. Mr. Kokolakis walked towards him, talking. His lips were moving, but Eugene didn’t hear anything. The boy cleared his throat, “I’m sorry about your wife, Mister Kokolakis.”

The old man looked as if he did not recognize the boy.  His eyes were like wet black pearls. He wiped his glistening forehead with the back of his hand.

 “This my second wife that goes away,” he said low, looking down at his feet. 

The boy felt the strain of holding his body taut. Somewhere above them a door slammed, and someone coughed. Mr. Kokolakis turned to walk up the street, staggered a bit, and shook his head. 

“You had another wife?”  The boy finally said. 

Mr. Kokolakis turned to Eugene and took a deep breath. His exhale came out in broken bursts. “Years ago,” he said as he wiped his forehead again. “My first wife hit by lighting; you know.” 

Eugene stifled a laugh. 

“I don’t-- I didn’t. How did that happen?” 

Mr. Kokolakis moved towards the stoop. Eugene put his hands to his side on the cool bricks, ready to bolt. The old man wearily sat on the step above Eugene. Mr. Kokolakis had on dirty white, thick fleece slippers, like the ones old people have beside their beds for midnight shuffles to the bathroom. The hem of his corduroy pants was frayed to single strands. He wore a black, thin Members Only jacket. Above the zipper and below the dingy collar of his once-white T-shirt was a medallion of something that looked like a tiny blue eye.

“One day, when I was a young man, I am in a fishing boat when it begin to rain, a storm come from the sea to my father’s farm.” Mr. Kokolakis raised his left hand above him. “Over the farm, there is no clouds in the sky. My wife Katerina is bringing goats from the farm for milk and cheese. The dark and the light meet Katerina.”

 He suddenly smacked his hands against each other loudly, making Eugene flinch.

“Everybody say Katerina make the best cheese in all Skyros. They say I marry her not for her pretty face, but for the good feta she make.” Mr. Kokolakis wagged his stumpy index finger, “That is not true. I like her pretty face more.” 

Eugene could sense, not see, a smile on his lips. 

“I remember waking beside her that morning, I can still smell her lavender soap.”

Eugene inhaled deeply the car fumes, wet asphalt, and stagnant Bushwick air. 

 “We married only five days. I was sure the sun would not come out without her.” A car went by and Mr. Kokolakis followed its movement with his head.  “Evil Eye they say we got. I spit three times to Evil Eye.” He did, over his shoulder, dryly.

“What about --Mrs. Kokolakis?” 

“Andreas my son.” He pointed a shaking finger at him.  “Tell me, young boy? What do Andreas, a Greek born in America, know of the world? I tell Andreas not to go, but he goes to the war. My only son. He did not have to go. He goes to Korea, he come back in a box. America.” 

A fire truck siren wailed in the distance. A plane glided by.

 “Sofia lost many babies before they are born,” Mr. Kokolakis said. “Every baby not born hit.” He pounded his fist hard three times against his chest. “Like a big hammer.” The old man stared at a spot on the sidewalk where the roots of the tree had lifted the crevice between cement slabs. “Sofia dies more with every lost baby. She dies more after Andreas is gone.” He turned his gaze to the window of his apartment, “God give and God take away I tell Sofia when Andreas gone. What I do not tell her, I think God take away from us more than he give.” 

Eugene looked across the street at what he always wanted to be Kathy’s window. He felt a gentle touch on his shoulder.

“You are lucky. You have a good mother.” He waved his other hand, saying, “No father,” as if it meant nothing. 

“Yes,” was all Eugene could say.

Mr. Kokolakis looked up as if searching for a constellation he could not find.  “When I was a young man for Katerina, Sofia, Andreas, maybe I try to find a place safe to try make bad things not so bad.”  

Eugene realized he was shivering. “Mr. Kokolakis, it’s getting cold.  Let’s go inside.” 

The old man’s lips quivered. “You go. I will walk a little more.” 

They both got up. The seat of Eugene’s pants was damp from the stoop. “Mr. Kokolakis? What’s with the walking?” 

The old man squeezed his forehead muscles his thick eyebrows moved closer together. 

 “Some nights I talk to Katerina, sometimes to Andreas, other times is Sofia. Some nights I count blessings. My Sofia used to say to always count blessings.”

The old man shook his head. “In one hand I count, and I have fingers left.” 

Eugene went inside, made his way to his room, in bed he searched, labored, and at last his fingers counted to number six, only then did he fall asleep.