PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2019 Read online

  There’s just one other customer, a vaguely familiar woman who wanders the narrow aisles, looking up at me with a half-startled expression, as if trying to remember the fifth item from the list she left on her kitchen table. She’s pretty in a pale, remote sort of way. She raises her hand to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, and I realize I’m doing it, too. We turn away from each other at the same time.

  The store smells faintly of bait, fryer grease, and fir sachets. Everything is twice the price and twice as old as in the supermarket down the road.

  The pale, quiet woman disappears, but a minute later we spot each other again. She stops, as though she is going to speak. Then I realize I am staring into a mirror on the back wall. There is nobody else here. I didn’t even recognize myself.

  I buy an apple and a small bit of rope looped into a cloverleaf.

  “They’re coasters,” Jana says. “People usually buy two or four.”

  I am planning to let Clint chew on it, but I don’t tell her that.

  “Maybe I’ll have a bottle of water, too.”

  My maybe seems to annoy her. “Yes or no?” she asks, tapping a bottle on the counter.

  I nod.

  “Seven dollars.”

  Clint starts to twist and fuss in his seat, and I hand him the coaster as I fish in the pocket of the stroller for my wallet. Jana comes around the counter and crouches in front of him, tickling the underside of his chin until he laughs.

  “I could keep him here with me for a while,” she says without looking up. “It’s pretty dead. Two people came in for lunch, and you and Clint make four. I’d like the company.”

  For a minute I think about saying yes. I think about the things I should cook, clean, and organize, and about the material in my sewing machine: blue canvas and silk. The needle is down, impaling them, and the seam has been an inch long for months. I’m not sure I remember how to work the levers, buttons, and dials. I think about the silence and how it would press against me. What if I don’t want him back?

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe next time.”

  “Okay.” She stands up. “You two have a good afternoon. Got any plans?”

  “No, just a nap. It’s been a rough morning.” I feel my voice catch. I am naked in front of her. She knows how I watched the dust fall through the sunlight as the baby turned red with anguish.

  “Bye, then,” she says in a tired voice.

  Near the door I say it, as quiet as dawn: “Help.”

  There’s no reply. Did she hear me?

  I push the stroller outside and maneuver Clint out of the straps and buckles to check his diaper. He kicks his legs and chews determinedly on the rope.

  WALKING HOME IS almost more than I can bear. The stroller is like a block of stone on greased skids. It would be such a relief to let it slide away.

  Clouds thicken in the west until the blue sky becomes a thin sliver on the horizon, then vanishes. Wind gusts across the road, blowing the blanket off the baby’s lap. He falls asleep on the last hill and startles awake as the thunder begins.

  The rest of the afternoon is the same: thunder, wind, rain, crying. The five-minute nap he took while I pushed him up the hill tricks him out of any more sleep. Eventually I cry, too, and Clint looks at me with saucer eyes and answers back with a flat, panicked wail.

  I pick him up and open the kitchen door. Within a minute rain is dripping from my nose, along with snot and tears, and my bare legs are papered with wet, windblown leaves. Clint looks somewhat calmer outside, where other, less-alarming noises drown out the ones I am making.

  Across the road is a hayfield, mowed into a giant spiral of golden stubble. It winds around to a flat-topped granite boulder at the center. I walk through the field, and the rough grass scratches my legs. The rock is a pedestal, a frame, an altar: a place to put something important. Clint’s eyes shift from my face to the rock and back. At first I am afraid to do it. Then I lay the baby there, carefully, in a hollow on the top of the boulder. It holds him like a cradle. I don’t want him to roll off and land with his soft cheeks in the brittle stubble of the field, to scrabble on his stomach until his face is torn and he breathes in dirt. I just want him away.

  I watch him look up into the rain, twitching and blinking every time a drop hits his eyes. He never turns his head toward me. I walk away and leave him there on the rock, and I think I will die.

  A small cry floats to me on the wind. Back in the yellow house, I sleep.

  I WAKE UP and remember. Oh, God, how long has it been? How long has my baby been lying outside in the storm? I struggle out of the quilt, which has glued itself to my wet clothes and muddy shoes. The kitchen door is still open, and the rain has slowed. I stumble across gravel, over weeds and grass. The sky is violet, edging toward dusk. The leaves of the birches flicker in the wind. Alive, alive. Let him be alive.

  What I see on the boulder is this: two curves of eyelashes against pale cheeks, lips the same purple as the sky, a blue-tinged arm escaped from its wet blanket. I whisper his name, then, “Please”—hardly a word, just a pinch of air. When I lift him in my arms, I feel a tiny, warm breath on my neck.

  HEADLIGHTS SWEEP UP the hill and across the field. My husband’s car turns in to our driveway.

  There is no place to hide a soaking baby.

  The adrenaline doesn’t drive me to action. My legs are slow and heavy as cement. The front door is standing open, and John will walk in and see puddles of water and wet leaves on the kitchen floor; our bed, muddy and littered with weeds; and an empty crib. He may think at first that someone has stolen our beautiful, dark-eyed baby—Who wouldn’t want him? John might say—and that I rushed out into the storm to save him at great peril to myself. But that story will fall apart, and we will be left with the truth. Whatever way I tell it, it is the same. John stands at the open kitchen door.

  I call, “Help! Help!” as I walk toward him. He lifts his arms. I think he is reaching out to take Clint from me, but he puts his arms around us both.

  Laura Freudig lives with her husband and six children on the same Maine island where she grew up. She is a reformed multitasker, strong-coffee drinker, and the author of a children’s book, Halfway Wild.

  EDITOR’S NOTE

  In “Without a Big One,” JP Infante provides the reader with a glimpse at the impact of incarceration on black and brown families. This powerful short story also touches upon issues of love, poverty, education, and mental health, all through the lens of one young child in Washington Heights.

  The narrator of this story is Ray Ray, a boy whose stepfather is “in school” for selling drugs. From the first read, the editors of Kweli were united in our love for this story, and the humanized family at the center of it, and every subsequent reading has been a gift.

  Prison reform and prison abolition are receiving increased mainstream attention, from the work of Angela Davis to Jay-Z’s newly created Reform Alliance. “Prisons are an obsolete institution,” Angela Davis tells us, “because they exacerbate societal harms instead of fixing them.” As readers, we see the harms done to the family at the center of “Without a Big One,” and we can only hope it will be healed over time. Community intervention has its place. Cages do not. Infante’s art helps to move us away from these cages and closer to a more just and equitable society.

  Laura Pegram, Editor in Chief

  Kweli Journal

  WITHOUT A BIG ONE

  JP Infante

  1.

  You’ve thought about jumping.

  It’s a cold winter night. You sit next to Queeny on your fire escape. The cars on the freeway come and go like waves. The lights from the George Washington Bridge reflect off the Hudson River like the shine in glassy eyes. The river is a giant bathtub without a ship or boat to save anyone who might be drowning.

  Your babysitter, Nilda, says suicide is like killing someone, and if you were to survive jumping off the fire escape, the police would arrest you for attempted murder. If you do try killing yourself,
you plan to live through it because suicide only works if you survive. Nilda laughed when you told her the attempt is meant to get people’s attention. She laughed because it’s true.

  You feel the cold wind. Look at the buildings across the river in New Jersey. They are far apart with too much space in between. There’s no space between you and Queeny because you both need the warmth.

  They used to call you Minene, and, before that, Chungo, even though your birth certificate says another name. Your stepfather, who’s been away at school for three months, calls you son. Son, get me the TV controller. Son, listen to your mother. Son, stop talking about your heart.

  Your stepfather can draw you and your extra-small heart. Queeny asleep at your feet. He can draw anything and anybody. He knows everything about sports, anime, video games, comic books, and toys. He’s the strongest man you’ve met and the only man who has ever kissed you. He has never lied. When he turned himself in to school you felt like crying, but didn’t, because you’ve never seen him cry.

  Mary gave birth to you. She calls you Minene or Ray and sometimes your stepfather’s name by mistake. Mary doesn’t hear it when you call her mom. She calls you Raymond when Queeny plays with her shoes or does poo in the house. Mary doesn’t love Queeny like your stepfather does. Mary is younger than all of your friends’ mothers. Mary looks young like your babysitter, but you know Nilda’s younger because she’s happier than your mother.

  Sometimes you sleep with Mary in the bedroom. You like rubbing her hair on your nose. Sometimes the smell of shampoo and cigarettes makes you sleepy. Sometimes the mix keeps you up at night. You usually sleep on the sofa bed in the living room because of your bladder disease. Recently it’s been hard to hold your piss at night.

  Your new doctor says konnichiwa all the time. He said kids who drink soda wet the bed and Mary believed him. You don’t trust this doctor because when you asked if he was Chinese, he pointed to a red circle at the center of a white rectangle and said, Japanese. Then he smiled at Mary.

  One night you fell asleep with Mary in the bedroom and her snoring woke you around midnight. The TV showed old men talking about bladder disease. The next morning at the kitchen table, you told Mary about bladder disease. She was shuffling mail, knife in hand. She stopped, looked at the bowl in front of you, and said, Mentiroso, before cutting open a red envelope in one try. She usually doesn’t speak Spanish so you didn’t understand her. The way Mary pronounced that word made her a stranger.

  That morning you realize the Chinese doctor was flirting with her. You make a mental note to tell your stepfather when he calls from school. He’s only called a couple of times since he left because the apartment phone is always being cut off and there are never minutes on Mary’s prepaid cell phone.

  Your babysitter, Nilda, calls you Ray Ray. She loves Queeny. Nilda is taller than Mary and has a fat ass. Whenever you hug her, you touch it and she doesn’t say anything. Nilda is in love with you. You don’t tell her you know because she has a boyfriend. Every time Nilda sees you she laughs, but not at you. It’s just she’s embarrassed of being in love with someone your age. At night in bed you imagine kissing Nilda and licking her lips.

  Nilda is smart and Nilda is beautiful and Nilda reads you stories with curse words and words you don’t understand. She says you’re mature. She says you should draw your own drawings instead of tracing. One day, Nilda told her friend with the huge boobs you’ll be a heartbreaker. Her friend asked, Would you be my boyfriend? It took a while before you answered because you didn’t want to hurt Nilda’s feelings. You blurted out, It depends, and Nilda’s friend laughed. Nilda barely giggled because she was jealous. That day you knew you had to make it up to her. So when Nilda asked for a drink you put ice in her ginger ale. And when you gave her the soda you saw her face through the glass and Nilda looked like she was made out of gold.

  Nilda reminds you of your homeroom teacher, Mrs. Vicioso, because she doesn’t paternize. Paternize is a word Nilda taught you. When she caught you tracing your stepfather’s sketches Mrs. Vicioso said, You can do better.

  Your stepfather did a sketch of Big Ralph, the supermarket owner from New Jersey who is always eating. Anytime Ralph tells you something he ends it with, Know what I mean, Jellybean? Ralph is scary because he’s bigger than that gorilla you saw in the zoo. His breathing sounds like he just climbed up the stairs even if he’s been sitting in a chair. Sometimes while standing he nods off. It looks like he’s gonna fall on his ass and never get up.

  Nilda called Ralph a Glue-Ton once. She says the word comes from the Latinos in Greece and it means “to swallow.” Nilda says Latino is a language that’s dead because it killed itself or someone killed it. You’re not sure how Latinos made it to Greece, but Mrs. Vicioso says they live all over the world because of Spain. You know the word means more than “to swallow.” It has to do with someone who can’t get enough of something, but you can’t remember what Nilda said.

  Ralph used to bring shopping bags full of food from his supermarket before your stepfather left for school. The fridge has been empty since then, and you haven’t seen Ralph. You have seen Nilda’s secret friend, Gregorio. You almost forget about him because Nilda said not to tell anyone he comes around. You don’t like Gregorio because when he visited he only paid attention to Nilda. You went to trace your stepfather’s drawings and fell asleep on the sofa.

  2.

  Today you wake up to the smell of piss and alcohol. Not the type the Chinese-Japanese wannabe doctor rubbed on you, but the one Mary smells like. Did you wet the bed? Feel your underwear. Take them off. The faded Superman looks normal. Dry. Put your clothes on for school. Mary is not awake to make you shower.

  Today is different. You won’t walk the long way through boring Riverside Drive or climb up a mountain-hill to Fort Washington Avenue. Today you’ll take the shortcut with your best friend, Frankie, even though your stepfather told you not to take the short way without him.

  Frankie calls you Ray Ray like the rest of your classmates. When the two of you walk to school he talks nastier than a cockroach-filled radio. You two have always taken the long way because the shortcut goes under the George Washington Bridge through a pathway of broken glass and needles. Where zombies live. Frankie says zombies smoke crack. He knows all this because he has two older brothers. One is away at college, like your stepfather, and the other is in jail for having weed.

  Frankie decides to wait after school to take the shortcut. After school you meet Frankie and follow him through Fort Washington Park. He ignores the other kids on the monkey bars and swings. You notice two empty swings, but Frankie doesn’t stop. Ask yourself if you’re scared. Are you scared? The thought of taking the shortcut without your stepfather makes you wanna pee. You pass the dog pen and wonder what Queeny’s doing. Some dogs bark and others sniff around and the rest run in circles.

  Frankie sits on a bench that faces New Jersey when you reach the back entrance of the park. He starts talking about two airplanes crashing into the George Washington Bridge and ends up talking about his brother calling from Rikers.

  “Is he scared of jail?” you ask.

  “Nope. It’s only the skinny guys who get raped.”

  “Are you scared of taking the shortcut?”

  Frankie doesn’t answer. He kicks a diaper down the stairs.

  You remember your house phone might be back on so you stand and exit the park. You rush down the stairs that lead to the freeway. Shattered glass crunches like cornflakes with each step. You almost slip on frozen garbage. You make it to the sidewalk next to the freeway and see a large brown box under the scaffolding between the George Washington Bridge and the buildings on Riverside Drive.

  “There’s a shoe coming out the box over there,” says Frankie.

  Pick up a plastic bottle. Throw it. The bottle bounces off and rolls down the cracked pavement. The shoe doesn’t move.

  “Shit, Ray Ray, he’s dead,” says Frankie.

  Frankie and you collect whatever b
ottles and rocks aren’t smeared with shit. Wait. 1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . . Attack! Bottles shatter and rocks dent the box. Stop. The laughing ends and the hum of speeding vehicles on the freeway and the bridge return. The box stands still.

  Walk on the sidewalk by the freeway. There’s a path that diverges into the street that leads to your building on Riverside Drive. The cars pass fast and close to this narrow path so you walk under the scaffolds where the zombies live. The scaffolds are part of an abandoned construction next to the bridge. There are broken handrails, burnt benches, and dirt with cracked pavement. A zombie folds a garbage bag big enough for two bodies. He smiles at you.

  “That crackhead keeps looking at us,” says Frankie. The two of you turn around before walking any closer to the zombie with the giant garbage bag. You walk back the long way home. When you reach the stairs that lead to Fort Washington Park you notice there’s no shoe coming out the brown box.

  “He’s not there cause he’s alive,” says Frankie.

  “Let’s see what’s inside.”

  Pick up a bottle. Frankie is behind you. Glance at the stairs that lead to Fort Washington Park and the dog pen and your school and everything that’s safe. Touch the cold cardboard. Listen. Meowing. Look through a hole while holding your nose. No cats. Turn around and a few feet away a zombie in a ripped black sweater has a rock in his hand. You freeze. Frankie runs up the stairs. The zombie throws the rock. You duck.

  Frankie shouts from the top of the stairs. “He’s got a knife!”

  Worry. Hold the dirty glass bottle with both hands. The zombie walks like he’s on a tightrope about to fall. The closer he gets, the more it smells like piss and the more you want to pee. You hear someone calling your name. Look up the stairs. Frankie’s gone. Look over your shoulder. Feel the cold wind from the passing vehicles. Imagine your stepfather is watching, waiting to yell at you for taking the shortcut without him. Throw the bottle. It bounces off the zombie’s chest. Run up the stairs and take the long way home.