Jessica Diaz-Hurtado

The cicadas were humming as Ana pulled up around the corner from the Greenmont Apartment Complex. She sat at the wheel of her scratched up beige Toyota Camry, contemplating whether to bring out the baseball bat from out of the trunk. She meditated on the gentle sounds of flowing water from a nearby creek she used to run around in as a kid. 

“Let’s just go talk to him, we don’t need to do all that,” Yonas said, calming Ana’s shaking leg as she set the car in park. They were steeped in a humid August afternoon on the outskirts of DC. The Maryland working class neighborhood buzzed as the summer sun was stalking the White Oak trees. 

“I don’t know, I’m with her, if we need it then it’s better to have it. You know, easy access” David said, playing with his locs. Yonas gave him a shut up look. Ana darted a glance at David in the rearview mirror, seeking to make eye contact. He shrugged.  

“You know what. Let’s spark up before. We have twenty minutes ‘til dude gets here.” David rummaged through his backpack and started taking out his cleats and shin guards. He carefully pulled out a baggie of some skunky weed and a Swisher Sweet cigarillo. The crystals sparkled in the light.

Ana cracked opened the window, thinking to herself that she was glad she accepted the money her ex gave her and got her windows tinted. She didn’t mind stringing him along. 

“Hey Yoni, go to the back. I don’t want people thinking anybody is here with me. The windows are darker in the back.” Ana thought she’d seem less threatening if a passerby simply thought a woman was alone in the car, instead of a woman and two men. Yonas climbed to the back seat behind the passenger side, pushing David and his gym bag out of the way. 

“Hey, hey man, careful, I’m about to start rolling!” David croaked. 

Yonas groaned, “Man your gear smells like shit. You gonna wear this to the pick up game tonight? You gotta wash that man.”

David snickered and mumbled under his breath as he started to break down the weed on a book he found underneath the passenger seat. It was a tattered paperback of El coronel no tiene quien le escriba by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Ana bought it at a thrift shop for her Spanish literature course. In between classes back at her Midwest university, she’d work two jobs, sold weed on the side, and still cashed in on her FAFSA checks. Even though she hustled, she was a softie who liked to read books at heart. 

But it was in her nature to appear tough, it was an act of survival. Back in high school, Ana would walk or take buses and trains everywhere. Whether it was to DC or across the country, she always relied on someone else driving. The shit men had said and done to her on her way to her destination was always frightening, so having a hardened face became apart of her demeanor. Even after she finally got her license and a used car, her so-called bitch face seemed to save her when she walked alone at night. She was all by herself in the Midwest anyway. She had no family and relied on herself. Her mom would tell her that Ana reminded her of her younger self when she first came to the country. Ana’s mom used to carry a gun when she first arrived to DC back in the 80s. The stories Ana would hear about when her mom first got to the US from San Salvador were intriguing —bartending ‘til 5am, getting lost on the swampy metro trains and learning English from TV shows like The Jeffersons. She’d often work late, so her neighbor’s son sold her a gun for cheap for some protection. Nunca lo usé, she’d tell Ana as a kid. It was mostly to scare people off. That was always the goal, to scare people off and never let them see you in fear. In reality though, Ana never really had it in her. She never even got in one fight, the fear of getting her ass whopped kept her in check. Ana’s baby cousin Judy, on the other hand, seemed to do whatever the fuck she pleased in high school. Fights, parties, cutting class. Fear of getting her ass whopped did not scare her. Judy was an Aries, and that bitch was bold. And maybe the only person Ana would actually fight someone for. Judy was more than just a prima, she was like a sister that would never waver. 

Judy had grown up with Ana since she was about three years old in their tiny apartment above an Ethiopian coffee shop in Silver Spring, MD. Their mothers were prima hermanas and grew up together in Mejicanos, San Salvador. But when Ana’s mom left to the States, it got harder to stay in touch. Amid guerilla recruitments, bombs blown off in the city, and bodies being thrown on the street, Judy’s mother had to find some kind of shield. She moved in with a new guy who’d push her around, got her pregnant and would come home drunk. That’s what Ana’s mom would say, un desgraciado, aunque decía que era para el pueblo. Hijueputa es lo que era.  Judy, her mother, and her new guy ended up moving to a small home with this dude and his family south of San Salvador. 

On a Thursday afternoon during las fiesta navideñas in 1989, Judy’s mother had the rare occasion of having the whole house to herself. Judy was out of the house with her abuela. Her new guy, well she didn’t have an idea where he was on most days, and that day he wasn’t home. As she got up to clean her dishes, Judy’s mother took her last breath. A flash of light destroyed her home, and she diminished along with it. It was said that a US backed death squad dropped a bomb on the residential homes of labor activists and leftist organizers. Her new guy’s family were the leaders of the San Salvador chapters. After the news, Judy and her abuela fled San Salvador two weeks later and found themselves in the middle of a brutal winter in Maryland. Ana and her mom welcomed them with coats from the Salvation Army and un atol de elote waiting for them in their one-bedroom apartment in Silver Spring. That one bedroom saw it all. All the tea parties, shared birthday flans, first periods, stealing of clothes and make up, heartbreaks and impromptu karaoke parties of two. Judy always had the better voice, Ana thought. The weekly astrology readings from old Vanidades magazines, compatibility reports they’d do with their crushes’ birth dates, and the reading of each other’s palms. Those walls witnessed what sisterhood could hold, despite what the world thought about girls brave enough to love themselves. 

“I was thinking, if this dude tries to fight back, we’ll bum-rush his ass into his crib, tie him up and BAM! Bust that mother fucker upside his head. With that bat you got, Ana. Then we’ll just fuck up his place, like tear his couches up, burn his thighs with cigarettes. I don’t know, we can burn his whole place to the ground, I’m cool with that,” David said eagerly as he grinded the weed in his small metallic grinder with an illustration of a high Tweety Bird from the Looney Tunes. 

“David, are you crazy? You’re wild, like off the hinges man.” Yonas tried laughing it off as he shook his head. He searched for Ana’s eyes through the rearview mirror, half amused and half worried. She was looking out the window, with a half-smile on her face. She liked to imagine scaring this dude she had been waiting for. 

Ana knew that David had a little crazy in him, he was a Gemini after all.  He was the antsy type, always ready to fight the world, type. Not for nothing, he was still like a brother. Ana had been tight with David since freshman year of high school, right when David’s dad got kidnapped in Colombia. When the scrawny fourteen-year-old just moved to Maryland from Quibdo with his mom, there was nothing but fear in his eyes. Ana’s mom had a way of welcoming new people in the neighborhood, so the two women quickly became friends. They would get together on their 3rd floor apartment porch, drink box wine and smoke cigarettes while Ana, David and Judy played video games. After 98 days of being held, the paramilitary group let David’s dad go. Ana didn’t know what kind of shady shit David’s dad had gotten into. Only what her mom had told her, era abogado de los narcos. Por eso lo secuestraron. Y por eso le dejaron ir, she whispered to her one night, as if the narcos themselves were listening in. When David’s dad finally arrived in Maryland, he was somehow in one piece. Except for his fingernails. For the first year he didn’t shake anyone’s hand or look at people in the eye. That’s why David’s eyes always had a little wild in them. Like any minute he could pop off if he was pushed enough. He'd lived some mad things. 

 “David, you always take it too far, man. Do you see where we’re at? We can’t do people like that,” Ana said, surprising herself of her compassion. 

That’s something she didn’t have much of lately. 

“You know what I mean, rough him up a bit. Judy deserves better,” David said as he started to seal the rillo with his mouth. He licked it on the sides and placed it behind his left ear. David had a crush on Judy ever since they were kids. Like the type of crush where he’d buy her Jordans in high school and they never even dated. 

Ana turned on the radio to 92.7 and “Back That Azz Up” mid song blared out. David blurted out a big, “Ayyyyy, this my joint! You know I dedicated this song to Judy on the radio once, right?” It was hard for David to stay quiet for too long. Yonas and Ana made eye contact in the rearview mirror and they both shook their heads at the same time. Ana switched it to 88.2 and the local NPR station was on. A story was on about how the bees were dying and how the world would end if they kept dying. 

“Daaaaaaang for real? Y’all care more about the bees than my mans Juvenile? Alright then, fine. I’ll light this up then.” David was an attention hog. Yonas was anything but. He blended into the background often, a quiet observer. As David inhaled the first hit, a roaring cough followed by a smoldering smoke exited his lungs. 

It looked like trash burning on the side of a mountain, Ana thought. It reminded her of El Salvador. Ana and Judy would go back to San Salvador every other summer, almost a decade after the war ended. Enough time had passed for grudges to be fake forgotten. Having a bad memory was a requisite to ever getting the chance to return home. Sometimes, forgetting was safer than trying to seek any kind of justice. Forgetting was another kind of shield, but Ana always thought forgetting was for cowards. She never dared to say that to anyone in her family, she didn’t know what it was like to leave home because family members bodies were being found in mass graves. Or shootouts were happening in college classrooms. All she felt were remnants of that life. A heavy memory in her body that was passed down like an heirloom. She would forget this during her summers in homeland though. She would only choose to remember the pupuserias on every corner, beach days in La Libertad, and swimming in volcanic rainwater that would trail down to turquoise lagoons. Water had equally helped her with the remembering and the forgetting. 

“You got it all wrong my man. What we need to do is get dude’s password and hack into his accounts. Blackmail his ass and use that money to cover Judy’s hospital bill,” Yonas said as he took a hit, “use your head dummy.” Beautiful ribbons of smoke left his nose and lips as he teased David in Amharic. Yonas constantly taught Ana some words in Amharic ever since they met in middle school. They were in the same Social Studies class when he had these super funny looking glasses and bad acne while Ana had a rolling backpack because of her scoliosis. They were assigned a project on Latin America and once Yonas started speaking Spanish to her, it took her a second to notice his unfamiliar accent. Yonas hung out with all the Ethiopians, but he also had a dad that worked in kitchens in DC as a line cook. Everyone knew that no matter the restaurant, Salvadorans were kings of the kitchen. And if anyone wanted to survive as a cook, learning Spanish was a must regardless of where they were from. Ah, si, yo se español chica. Yo tengo un chucho y un hermano. Dame ese bolado dunda, the twelve-year-old Yonas told her while raising his eyebrows up and down. It was that kind of look that evoked see, I know your people’s Spanish. Then he taught her all the curse words in Amharic and they stayed been best friends ever since. 

Yonas passed the rillo to Ana, who took a deep hit and quieted her cough. But she wasn’t slick, her coughs intermittently spurted out as if she was trying to hold in a sneeze. Her eyes watered and she cracked open the passenger window as the hotbox started. 

“Damn Yonas, always with those smart-ass ideas. That’s cute but hacking into dude’s shit should be phase two.” Ana said as she took another hit. She stared into the weed, recognizing the strain. 

“Yea Yonas, stop being cute. We gotta give him a proper response,” David said as Ana passed him the blunt. 

Yonas shook his head. Ana knew he was trying to convince her to have a sit down with dude. To talk it out. But the photos the hospital sent Ana at the tail end of her Spring semester left her with an infuriating nausea that she couldn’t shake off. Judy’s right eye had been shut, it was a bulging black and violet color. Her bottom front tooth had sliced through her lip. Her head had been banged up so bad that she suffered a slight hematoma. When the hospital first called Ana to tell her the news, there crushing feeling in her chest. As if she’d been stuck in avalanche. She then immediately jumped up from her twin mattress held up by concrete blocks and left her Midwest college town for the summer. She packed up her little hooptie in a matter of minutes and did the fourteen-hour drive to help nurse Judy back to health. Ana couldn’t help but to feel a stream of adrenaline run through her veins every time she looked through Judy’s phone that summer and found texts from dude, trying to win her back. She wondered if his knuckles were bruised when it happened. If his skin split when he pummeled her. If he had scratches from Judy fighting him off. Judy was only 17. Homegirl hadn’t even graduated high school yet. She was a little badass, but she would give her kidney to Ana if she needed it. Even though she skipped school, snuck out at night to sing at bars, and gave Ana’s mom so many headaches, Judy had dreams too. They’d talk for hours about Judy’s hopes of becoming songwriter and producer, maybe even applying to the Berklee School of Music voice department. I didn’t even know you could study this. Plus I’d prolly get money too cus technically I was a refugee, so I gotta use that. Who knows, right Anita? she’d giggle over the phone 700 miles away. 

“Dude isn’t a minor, Ana. He’s twenty-two. He knows the law. Shit, he’s enrolled in cop school. We roll up on him with a bat in hand, he can call his cop homies and make sure your scholarship gets taken away. We’ll both get time and that’s too risky.” Yonas leaned closer and picked up the rotation to take another hit. 

Ana trusted Yonas with mostly everything. He’s the one who would check in on Ana’s mom while she was away at school. He’s the one who drove her back home when she got her molars removed. He even picked up Plan B for her once.

“Think about it,” he said as he adjusted his red Nationals baseball cap and took another hit. 

She knew he had a point, how couldn’t he? Yonas was a Libra, he always did his research. Whether it was the effect of mushrooms on the brain long term, the best pupusas in the DMV area, how college debt would affect the economy in the decades to come, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Name it, he had done his research on it. He was so good at researching that in high school, he figured out his family was being watched. Yes, watched. Not by a gang, or some creep or even the US government. 

It was his own people. Yonas’ cousin escaped Addis in the 2000s because of the Ethiopian-Eritrean war. His cousin had been a war correspondent for an international newspaper, but it became unsafe for him to live there anymore. His coworkers were getting kidnapped. Threats arrived at his doorstep. Strange phone calls were made to his home. When Yonas’ cousin arrived to the US, a refugee nonprofit helped him out with his legal status. Two months later, the nonprofit was broken into. And what the odd thing was that nothing of value was taken. No laptops, no TVs on the walls, not even any lock boxes in the office. They took just one file, Yonas’ cousin’s file. Yonas, fifteen at the time, did some sleuthing. From talking to his community in churches, coffee shops and even hacking into some authorized Ethiopian government systems, he put it together. He noticed strange men were showing up to people’s homes, looking for his cousin. Ethiopian espionage in the US was real. You can’t even trust your own people, he told Ana when he eventually found out what was happening. His cousin disappeared to Dearborn, Michigan and was never heard of again. So yes, Ana trusted Yonas with mostly everything.  

“Do you have those baklavas your mom brought back? She told me to tell you to share.” Ana’s munchies were kicking in. Yonas sighed, hoping to save some for later. But he obliged and pulled them out of his backpack. He’d do almost anything for Ana. 

“Fresh from the motherland.” They were a flaky, moist, and sweet dessert. Syrupy with a dash of spice. Ana loved Yonas’ mom. She’d always bring her these special baklavas back along with a bag of coffee for her mom. Yonas handed the coffee beans to Ana and she took a long deep whiff of the bag.

“Gotta hand it to you bro, you know my people are the kings of coffee, but those Ethiopian beans, oof! It’s hard to compete with that. Y’all aren’t like the kings, but like the freakin’ emperor, you know what I mean? Hats off. So, where’s my bag?” David asked as he started to slouch back. 

They were halfway through the blunt when Ana’s head perked up. She spotted dude walking into the apartment, and she started to feel her heart in her ears. He was wearing a white tee, dark jeans and some jacked up Jordans. The 1’s. That nausea started creeping up again and the lines around her mouth started to water. Yonas noticed the shift in her posture.  

“Let’s give him some time to settle in ok? Let’s finish this blunt and then we can decide,”

Ana’s breathing sped up as she gripped the sides of her chair. David broke the rotation and handed her the blunt. 

“Yo Ana, chill. Be like me. This stuff chilled me out man. Your boyfriend’s bud is strong. Where does he get it?” David said as he started to eat his second Baklava. 

“I told you he’s not my boyfriend. He’s my ex. And I don’t know. I don’t get in his business, and he doesn’t get into mine,” Ana smirked. 

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. When you told me you had just come from his house when you scooped me up this morning, I’m gonna be honest: I was shocked. I heard someone got stabbed at his crib a couple months ago. You know he’s not only selling weed right? Not with a house like that. I don’t know Ana. You gotta be careful.” Yonas said in an averse yet loving tone. 

Ana snickered but wasn’t worried. Her ex was a convenience. She knew about guys like him. How to handle them. Guys like the dude they were watching out for on the other hand, they were a different kind of fuck up. Once the blunt came back to Ana, it was shrinking into roach. She held it with her long nails that were chipping a red nail polish. I gotta go get manicure before I leave back to school, she thought. She had most of her bags packed and was planning to drive back to the Midwest with Judy and Yonas the following week to hang out before she started her junior year of college. She hoped Judy would be well enough for a road trip, maybe even consider moving out of Maryland. Anywhere to get her away from dude. 

“Don’t worry about it Yoni. My ex is a meantime guy,” Ana said, knowing damn well what kind of drugs he sold and the kind of people he brought around. She just pretended she knew nothing; it was easier that way. Her ex was alright. He’d send her money sometimes to pay for her books. She didn’t say no to the money, she needed it most days. She worked two jobs, one as an office assistant in the Neurology department and another as a hostess at a Mexican restaurant around campus. She was hoping to transition to a waitress for the tips, all the customers thought she was Mexican anyways. But she had to learn to cool her temper first. Instead, she continued to apply to one-off scholarships and get any kind of cash she could. She’d sell some pretty good weed on the weekends to her homies. And when she was getting more cash in, she’d throw parties and charge people at the door. She was doing anything to survive. How she kept her grades up was still a mystery to her. She had no idea what she wanted to do with her life after school. She could barely plan for the following semester. What would a degree in liberal arts get her? Come be my manager so I can make it big. Handle all my bookings, I’ll give you a cut, Judy would tell her. She thought of this when she stared down at Judy in the ICU bed the night she rushed from the Midwest to Maryland to see her. 

“Fuck men, man”, Ana blurted out as she straightened up from her sunken posture. Yonas and David knew better than to challenge her. She stared out at the apartment complex. It was a dilapidated building. The brown bricks had turned grey, the doors were scratched up and a couple of windowpanes hung on to their dear life like a loose tooth in a 6-year old’s mouth. It looked like a dump. 

The cicadas were at their crescendo and the mosquitos began to emerge from the brewing heat. The sun was past the horizon and the blue sky began morphing into shadowy purple as the streetlights sporadically switched on. Ana contemplated bringing the bat again. She looked over her right shoulder to her two friends in the back seat and nodded. 

They stepped out of the aging Toyota Camry as smoke rolled out the doors like dry ice. Ana threw the roach on the sidewalk and grabbed the bat from the trunk. David squeezed her shoulder, “I’m with you homie. I’ll go crazy on him if you want. Just give me the look.” Yonas accepted whatever fate would occur. As they entered Greenmont, a short Guatemalan lady walked behind them. She was wearing a colorful handwoven headband and a long black skirt. Her hands were full of groceries and Yonas offered to carry them for her. David opened the door. Ana was tight lipped and hid the bat behind her back. The four of them entered the elevator and they pressed the button for Floor 11. The lady pressed Floor 5. There was a stiff silence. It smelled of warm tamales and piss. Ana didn’t take her eyes from the lady’s embroidered shirt. It had a beautiful blue hummingbird drinking nectar from a pink flower. Once they reached Floor 5, the lady said a heartfelt, Gracias muchachos, aqui estoy bien. Cuidensen, que Dios los bendiga. She looked like Judy’s grandmother. Down to the smile, the brown creases around her eyes and graying braids. 

The elevator shut and Yonas let out a big old sigh. “Isn’t dude your peoples? Isn’t he Salvi too?”

Ana forgot that dude’s family was from San Miguel. But that didn’t matter. “You can’t trust your own peoples. I don’t consider him my people. Y’all are my people.” Ana was a Cancer. 

Loyal, to the bone. 

As she watched the elevator move from Floor 5 to 6, she wondered when dude’s family came from El Salvador to DC. Was it before or after 1991? Probably in the 80s. Did their family get their homes blown up too? Who knows, dude never talked. Did they come to DC first or NY? LA maybe. Had he gotten beat purple before? Probably so. Probably by his dad who he doesn’t even know anymore. Probably by his mom who also knew purple beatings too. What kind of rage lived inside this boy who pretended he was a man? Probably the kind that made stomachs turn. Who forgot to love him? Probably everyone. 

She felt heat exit her ears. 

The elevator halted at Floor 11. They all looked at Ana and she signaled them to exit. David first, then Yonas followed. Ana stayed in the elevator, waiting for the elevator doors shut. As the elevator chimed and started closing, she quickly interrupted it with the bat. She left it laying between the doors hoping it would hold open, and then she headed to unit 1105. 

The three of them stood in front of the entryway where the dude lived. Ana in the middle, Yonas on her right side and David on her left. Her mind was racing, and she didn’t realize it, but her whole body was rising with tension. Yonas squeezed her shoulder, waking her from her paralysis.  

Ana came up for a profound deep breath, as if she had been holding it underneath a running body of water for decades. 

She remembered. She forgot. She finally exhaled. 

Knock. Knock.