Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bro Read online

  Puma dealt drugs, but he was no ordinary boy. He had appeared in Beat Street, a movie that chronicled the earliest days of hip-hop from the perspective of the inner-city kids who’d created it. The film, which would become a cult classic, portrayed self-expression as essential to survival, along with mothers, friends, money, music, and food. Beat Street showcased some Bronx talent, including Puma’s group, the Rock Steady Crew. Puma had cinematic presence, and he was a remarkable break-dancer, but when he met Jessica his career was sliding to the bottom of its brief slope of success. The international tour that had taken him to Australia and Japan was over, and the tuxedo he’d worn break dancing for the queen of England hung in a closet in its dry-cleaning bag. He’d spent all the money he had earned on clothes and sneakers and fleets of mopeds for his friends.

  Jessica was glad for anybody’s attention, but she was especially flattered by Puma’s. He was a celebrity. He performed solo for her. He was clever, and his antic behavior made her laugh. One thing led to another, and next thing you know, Jessica and Puma were kissing on top of a pile of coats. Similar things were happening between Lillian and Chino on another bed.

  Both girls came out pregnant. Jessica assured her mother that the father was her boyfriend, Victor, but there was no way to be certain. The following May, Jessica and Lillian dropped out of ninth grade. They gave birth to baby girls four days apart, in the summer of 1985. Big Daddy clasped Jessica’s hand through her delivery. At one point, Jessica bit him so hard that she drew blood. The grandfather scar made Big Daddy proud.

  Jessica named her daughter Serena Josephine. Lourdes promptly proclaimed her Little Star. It was understood that Lourdes would have to raise her; Jessica didn’t have the patience. Even if she hadn’t been young, and moody, Jessica wasn’t the mothering kind. Lourdes wasn’t, either—in fact, she wished she’d never had children—but circumstance had eroded her active resistance to the role. She’d been raising children since she was six. First, she’d watched her own four siblings while her mother worked double shifts at a garment factory in Hell’s Kitchen. She’d fought their neighborhood fights. She’d fed them and bathed them and put them to bed. Now Lourdes’s own four, whom she had been able to manage when they were little, were teenagers slipping beyond her reach.

  Robert and Elaine had been easy, but Lourdes felt their fathers’ families were turning them into snobs. Robert returned from his weekend visits with his grandmother smoldering with righteousness. Lourdes could tell he disapproved of her involvement with Santeria, but who was her son to judge? How holy had it been, when Jessica was pregnant, for Robert to chase her around the apartment, threatening to beat her up? Her daughter Elaine’s arrogance occupied a more worldly terrain. On Sunday nights, she alighted from her father’s yellow cab, prim in her new outfits, and turned up her cute nose at the clothes Lourdes had brought home from the dollar store.

  Jessica and Cesar were Lourdes’s favorites, but they ignored her advice and infuriated her regularly. When Lourdes stuck her head out of the living room window overlooking Tremont and called her children in for supper (she used the whistle from the sound track of the movie The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly), she was usually calling for Jessica and Cesar; Robert and Elaine were apt to be at home. Robert and Elaine worried about getting into trouble, whereas Jessica and Cesar had as much fun as they possibly could until trouble inevitably hit. Robert and Elaine were dutiful students. Jessica and Cesar were smart, but undisciplined. Jessica cut classes. Cesar sprinted through his work, then found it impossible to sit still; once, he’d jumped out of his second-story classroom window after Lourdes had physically dragged him around the corner to school.

  Jessica and Cesar also looked out for each other. One night, Jessica went missing and Lourdes found out that she had been with an off-duty cop in a parked car; when Lourdes kicked Jessica in the head so hard that her ear bled, it was Cesar who ran to the hospital for help. Another time, during an electrical fire, Jessica ushered Cesar to the safety of the fire escape. Jessica knew how to appease Lourdes’s brooding with cigarettes and her favorite chocolate bead candy. Cesar, however, had fewer resources at his disposal. He had learned to steel himself against his mother’s beatings. By the time he was eleven, when his niece Little Star was born, Cesar didn’t cry no matter how hard Lourdes hit.

  For Lourdes, Little Star’s arrival was like new love, or the coming of spring. As far as she was concerned, that little girl was hers. “When I pulled that baby out—Jessica was there—the eyes!” Lourdes said. “The eyes speak faster than the mouth. The eyes come from the heart.” A baby was trustworthy. Little Star would listen to Lourdes and mind her; she would learn from Lourdes’s mistakes. Little Star would love her grandmother with the unquestioning loyalty Lourdes felt she deserved but didn’t get from her ungrateful kids.

  Meanwhile, Jessica made the most of her ambiguous situation. She told Victor that he was the father: she and Victor cared for one another and he had attended the delivery; he also gave Jessica money for Little Star’s first Pampers, although his other girlfriend was pregnant, too. Secretly, however, Jessica hoped that Puma was the father, and she was also telling him that the baby was his. Puma was living with a girl named Trinket, who was pregnant, and whom he referred to as his wife; he also had another baby by Victor’s girlfriend’s sister. Despite the formidable odds, Jessica hoped for a future with him.

  Publicly, Puma insisted Little Star was not his. But she certainly looked like his: she had the same broad forehead, and that wide gap between her dot-brown eyes. The day Jessica came home with a videotape of the movie Beat Street, Lourdes had heard enough about this breakdancing Puma to go on alert. She settled on her bed with Little Star, Jessica, Elaine, and their dog, Scruffy. In one of the early scenes of the film, a boy who looked suspiciously like Little Star did a speedy break dance at a hooky house. Then he challenged a rival crew to a battle at the Roxy, a popular club.

  “Hold that pause,” shouted Lourdes. “That’s Little Star’s father! I will cut my pussy off and give it to that dog if that ain’t Little Star’s father!” Jessica laughed, pleased at the recognition. Puma could say what he liked, but blood will out.

  Puma’s confidante was a short, stocky tomboy named Milagros. Milagros had known Puma forever and considered him family. Puma was the first boy she’d ever kissed. Kissing boys no longer interested Milagros. Puma’s stories of Jessica’s sexual escapades, however, intrigued her; Milagros had noticed Jessica as well, when they both attended Roosevelt High School. Milagros knew that Puma still saw Jessica, but she kept it to herself. Meanwhile, Milagros and Puma’s live-in girlfriend, Trinket, were becoming friends.

  Milagros and Trinket made an unlikely duo. If a river ran through the styles of poor South Bronx girlhood, these two camped on opposite banks. Milagros, who never wore makeup, tugged her dull brown hair into a pull-back and stuck to what she called “the simple look”—T-shirts, sneakers, jeans. Trinket slathered on lipstick, painted rainbows of eye shadow on the lids of her green eyes, and teased her auburn hair into a lion’s mane. Trinket was looking forward to becoming a mother, whereas Milagros proclaimed, loudly and often, her tiny nostrils flaring, that she would never have children and end up slaving to a man.

  In the fall of 1985, some of Jessica’s friends returned to school. Bored and left behind, Jessica became depressed. She would page Puma, and once in a while he would call her back. Sometimes Jessica went looking for him in Poe Park, a hangout near Kingsbridge and Fordham Road, where the Rock Steady Crew occasionally performed. Usually, though, she found Puma at work, standing on a corner not far from the hooky house. Jessica had little chance of running into Trinket at his drug spot because Puma urged his wife to stay away. Alone with Puma, Jessica broached the touchy subject of what was between them: “Give time for her features to develop and you’ll see, it’ll look like you.” She thought the space between Serena’s eyes was a giveaway. On the small span of her infant face, the gap made her look as though she’d landed from a
nother galaxy. Jessica also thought that Little Star had Puma’s magnetism. “There’s something about her that brings her to you,” she said.

  Jessica harassed Trinket with crank phone calls. The calls were Jessica’s trademark: she would whisper, “I have Puma’s kid,” and then hang up. Eight months into her pregnancy, Trinket decided to confront Jessica. Whoever was or wasn’t a baby’s father, the business of claiming love tended to be a battle between girls. The next time Jessica called, Trinket told her she wanted to see the child. Jessica gave her Lourdes’s address. Milagros went along as Trinket’s bodyguard.

  “Where’s the baby?” Trinket asked. Serena hung forward in a baby swing. Her enormous head seemed too heavy for her scrawny body. Jessica propped up her baby girl to give Trinket a better look. She also produced additional evidence—“Love” and “Only you” written on photographs of Puma, in his own hand. The assessment took less than fifteen minutes. Milagros said good-bye to Jessica and hurried after Trinket, who burst into tears once they were safely back on the street.

  Privately, Trinket didn’t blame Puma for fooling around with Jessica. “Jessica had this sexuality about herself and her domineering ways,” Trinket said. “I was so closed-off.” Trinket attributed her inhibitions to having been molested by one of her mother’s boyfriends. Jessica had also been sexually abused, by Cesar’s father from the age of three, but Trinket didn’t know this. Jessica seemed so comfortable in her body. She flirted easily with girls and boys, men and women, alike. Jessica appeared to have no boundaries, as though she were the country of sex itself. Puma told Trinket that that baby could belong to anyone; he said that Jessica had been with everybody; she was no one’s girl. Trinket consoled herself with the thought that maybe Jessica’s promiscuity had resulted in a baby that had features from different boys.

  A month later, in January 1986, Trinket gave Puma his first son. Her position as his wife was secure.

  Jessica then began dating Puma’s brother, Willy. Willy and Puma were often together, but Jessica claimed she didn’t know they were related until Willy took Jessica to his mother’s apartment and she spotted Puma’s photograph on a wall. In fact, the brothers shared a striking physical resemblance: Willy looked like Puma with a mustache, although instead of Puma’s wiry expressiveness, Willy had a bit of a hangdog look. Both had a way with the ladies, though; Willy, who was twenty-two, had already been married, and had fathered four kids.

  That winter, Cesar’s father called Lourdes—he was broke, homeless, and heroin sick—and Lourdes took him in. The family treated him “like a king,” he recalled, but he soon left, unable to resist the drugs.

  Jessica’s depression grew. She started gouging small cuts on her inner thighs. Nobody wanted her—she had been neglected by her own father; then by Puma; and even by Willy, her second choice. She said, “I was never loved the way I wanted to be. Nobody in my family ever paid any attention to me.” That spring, after receiving a vicious beating from Lourdes, Jessica tried to kill herself by swallowing pills, and Big Daddy whisked her to Bronx Lebanon Hospital. The drastic action worked, but only briefly. “They paid attention to me for about two days afterwards,” Jessica said scornfully. After she had her stomach pumped, the doctor informed her she was pregnant again—with twins.

  Jessica claimed that Willy was the father, but once again, there was no way to be certain. When Jessica had been carrying her first child, Lourdes had indulged her cravings, buying her the orange drink morir soñando—“to die in your dreams”—and preparing her oatmeal with condensed milk, vanilla, and fresh cinnamon stick. This time, however, Jessica’s pregnancy didn’t grant her special status in the household.

  Jessica and Willy tried to get ready for the babies. Jessica’s older brother Robert got Willy a job at the paint store where he worked; Jessica sold clothes at a store on Fordham Road. If a man came in looking for an outfit for his girlfriend, it was Jessica’s job to model it. Jessica generated so much business that her boss let her keep some of the clothes. Her bestselling item was called The Tube. “You could roll it down and wear it as a miniskirt, and if you roll it up and hook a belt, it could be a dress,” Jessica explained. “Or a tube top if you fold it, or if you twist it, you could make a headband.” Day after day, men came in for an outfit for their women and departed with three or four, fully accessorized. Many of the men asked Jessica out. Her boss started bringing her into the back and asking her to model the new lingerie; he rewarded her with a gold-nugget necklace and matching earrings, and took her out to eat. Before long, Jessica had to quit.

  Willy had left his job as well, and soon they were both back to their old ways. Willy’s girlfriends included one of Trinket’s cousins, a schoolgirl named Princess. It was Princess’s turn to receive Jessica’s calls.

  “I’m pregnant from Willy,” Jessica said.

  “You’re a ho,” said Princess. Next call, Princess snapped, “You’re pregnant from that bum in Poe Park,” which was worse than saying the baby’s father was an immigrant.

  Willy may have lacked Puma’s lightning energy, but that September he quickly agreed to put his last name on the birth certificates: Brittany arrived at 5:01 P.M., several weeks early and two minutes ahead of her twin sister, Stephanie. They were scrawny, with that prominent forehead, a tuft of thin, black hair, and a sweeter trace of Willy’s hangdog look. Jessica had a C-section scar; Puma was an uncle; Willy was a father; Serena had two baby sisters; and Lourdes was a grandmother again.

  Jessica and the twins moved in with Willy at his mother’s, but even with the babies, Jessica had no legitimate place. Her relationship with Willy’s family was shrouded in shame. Puma’s mother accepted Serena, but some of his sisters considered Jessica a home-wrecker, and privately called her worse. She holed up with the babies in Willy’s bedroom, and he sometimes got physical when he was drunk. Trinket paraded through with Puma’s precious son, trailed by Milagros. Milagros said, “Jessica was always sad and alone. She would be in the room by herself. Nobody talked to her. They all loved Trinket. They knew what Jessica did.” Milagros made a point to stop and say hello. Sometimes she visited without Trinket, and she and Jessica started becoming friends.

  Puma ignored Jessica around his family, but they still got together on the sly. Once, he slipped Jessica a note. She met him at a nearby bus stop. He bristled: “Hearing you with my brother, don’t you know how bad that feels!” Jessica was moved that Puma cared. Puma discouraged Willy’s affection, though:

  “Why you going out with her? She’s a slut.”

  “You picture her the way you want,” Willy would reply defiantly. “I’ll picture her with me.” But it was hard for Willy to hold on to his private image of Jessica when the real girl had such wide appeal.

  By November, Willy had also become involved with a girl who lived upstairs. One rainy night, after an awful fight, he kicked Jessica out. Desperate, Jessica called Milagros from a pay phone: she was standing with the twins, drenched, on the street. She had two plastic bags that held all of her things, two two-month-old babies, and no welcoming place to go.

  The call didn’t surprise Milagros. Plenty of people moved house to house—she had herself—and girls with babies had it extra hard. They would move in with boyfriends and their mothers, but more people created more problems, and the welcomes wore out when the money thinned at the end of the month. Mothers’ husbands or boyfriends’ brothers or grandfathers and uncles couldn’t stop their roving hands. Or a boy could get too possessive when a girl moved into his bedroom and mistake her for a slave, or the mother-in-law wanted a baby-sitter for her other children instead of a daughter-in-law, or the family was just plain mean. Some grandmothers were unable to tolerate another crying baby; some had already lost their own babies—young ghost mothers gone to crack. Or they resented the young lovers, especially if they had no love of their own.

  Sometimes girls turned to men like Felix, a friend of Lourdes’s who lived on Mount Hope Place, just around the corner from East Tremont. Lourdes w
ould send her daughter to Felix when she needed cash. Occasionally Felix gave Jessica money as well, but Jessica hated going there alone. Sometimes Lillian went along, but Felix drank, and the girls would have to fend him off. Worse-off girls stayed in abandoned buildings, with other teenagers and adults on the run from other crowded apartments. But even for a girl who gave up what she had to—sex or pride or the mere idea of independence—the rate was unpredictable, and for gorgeous, sexually untethered girls like Jessica, the length of the welcomes at other women’s apartments seemed especially short. It didn’t help that Jessica wasn’t in any hurry to clean or cook. Girls with attitude discovered that the shirt your man’s sister gave you suddenly turned into a loan, and when a twenty went missing, nobody said it but everybody was staring at you. Even if your man backed you up, you were left in the house while he went to the street. A little brother or sister or nephew or niece might bring you a plate of food or keep you company, but it was impossible to feel at ease.

  That night, Milagros did what she’d done for other girlfriends countless times: she took Jessica in. Milagros was living with Puma and Trinket, but she told Jessica to take a cab and meet her at her mother’s apartment, in Hunts Point, where Milagros had been raised. Hunts Point was a heavily industrialized area, even rougher than East Tremont. Streetwalkers worked the barren blocks after the warehouses shut. Career junkies dragged themselves to Hunts Point when every other option failed, nine lives lived, waiting to die. Milagros waited for Jessica outside her mother’s building and paid the driver. She scooped up the babies and led Jessica up two flights of stairs. She fed Jessica and the twins. The twins fell asleep, but she and Jessica broke night. Milagros’s bedroom window overlooked the Bruckner Expressway, and cars and trucks rushed in and out of the city, headed west, to New England, or upstate. They talked till the sun rose, their voices mixing with the traffic din.