Pampers

David Chura

I wonder sometimes, sitting in the waiting room bullpen for my babies’ visit, what my life would’ve been like if mommy hadn’t run out of Pampers. Maybe if Camille had got toilet trained just a few months earlier, mamita would still be around, and I wouldn’t be nineteen, doin’ two years for some shabby grab-and-run at Pop’s Liquor Store—two whole years—in this shithole jail, having to see my two precious daughters in that dirty visiting room, afraid to let them touch anything or run around, even though little Loretta can’t wait to show her papi how she can walk now.

“At least Loretta’s toilet trained,” I tease Camille when she comes to see me, wearing her St. Ursula’s uniform. She’s so proud of her white blouse and plaid skirt, she wears it for visits so I can see she’s really doin’ something with herself.

But I can’t really blame her, I mean, she was only a little kid. It always cracked me up when she’d go in her diaper. All of a sudden she’d drop the doll she was playing with and run out of the kitchen and hide until mommy or grandma would call her.

“Camille, what are you doing?”

“Pooping,” she’d yell out from behind grandpa’s ratty old recliner.

Grandma would shake her head, smile at me, and wink.

But not mamita. She’d get real pissed and yank Camille into the bathroom.

“Yeah, it’s fine for you to laugh,” she’d scream at abuelita, “but I’m the one who has to clean up her shit.”

By that time, mommy was cursing at everybody, even her parents, and they gave up telling her “Don’t you talk to me that way, girl,” the way they used to when mamita was still their daughter, still respected them.

Truth is, even when I was ten, I knew if it wasn’t Pampers, it would’ve been something else. Cigarettes. Toothpaste. Weed. A bottle of Bacardi.

Either way, I’d still be sitting here in this stinking bullpen, in this tight-ass orange jump suit, looking like some kinda Mexican clown, which is what the real nasty COs call anybody whose name ends in “a” or “o” like me.

I’m always telling the young Spanish brothers, when they get pissed off, not to waste their breath trying to tell them assholes that they’re from Ecuador, or Panama or, like me, born in the US of A. I tell them, save it for visiting days when them honkies make you bend over and spread your butt cheeks and shove a flashlight almost up your hole.

But them skinny-assed kids with hardly no meat on their butts to spread, ‘cause crack has eaten them up, don’t listen. I don’t give a fuck. All I know is, the po-lice make me feel dirty, bending over like that just before visiting my girls.

Anyways, it’s them young kids, fifteen-, sixteen-year-olds, got pigs doin’ this to us, going and coming back from visits. They’re the ones sneaking around, trying all this stupid stuff, sneaking shit in and out of jail, swallowing something or sticking something up their ass.

All I know is that when mamita left that day, she didn’t worry about sneaking around, sneaking out. She just walked out.

I was doin’ homework at the kitchen table, when she told abuelita and abuelito that she was going to the store to pick up some Pampers.

“Please watch Rolando and Camille for me,” she whispered just as she was closing the door. I don’t know if I really heard her say that or if I made it up. Either way, mamita never came back.

I never knew if my grandparents called the cops when she didn’t come home for dinner. But grandma still set the table for five people that night, and the night after that, and the night after that. And she did something else. She left the tall red church candle she had in front of her statue of Mary burning all night and all day. Matter of fact, she never let it go out. It was still burning when I finally ran away from there, two years later when I was twelve.

Nobody talked about her those first few weeks, at least not to me. Camille whimpered mamita a lot, but the bean pot she loved to bang would always distract her. Me? I just kept watching grandma and grandpa’s faces.

Grandpa looked tired all the time, his eyes were black, like he’d been punched or something. He didn’t sleep in grandma’s bed anymore, instead he stayed in his chair all night, like he was waiting up for mamita to come back from the store, like maybe she’d need help with her groceries.

Grandma’s old lady friends still came around. They’d sit at the kitchen table, drinking tea with lots of sugar, but instead of shouting over each other like they usually did, they hunched close together, their big boobs squeezed up against the table, and whispered in Spanish. Grandma wouldn’t say much, she just kept looking over her shoulder like she was afraid bad news would come walking through the door.

It’s weird, but I’ve seen that same kind of scared, worried look on a lot of the mommies visiting their sons here. They keep looking over their shoulders like they have to protect their kids from traffic or something. But they know it’s too late, so instead they’re busy guarding their pint-sized grandsons with the fresh Jordans or their granddaughters with a dozen bows in their braided hair that they’ve brought to see their sixteen-year-old daddies.

Of course, those daddies are too busy scoping the room, looking over their shoulders for females, any female, they’re that hungry. Forget about the kid hugging their knees, asking to get picked up, unless some cute bitch across the room in the tight ass jeans looks like she thinks you’re cute ‘cause you’re a daddy, then all of a sudden you’re all over your kid.

I know, ‘cause I’ve looked over my shoulder like that plenty of times in all kinds of visiting rooms the po-lice run, back when I was a player, not worried about no babies, just babes and bitches, keeping an eye out while my latest shortie was visiting, hoping damn straight that some other girl I was fucking didn’t decide to show up too.

But the looking never stops.

Here I am, nineteen, wifey and babies coming to see me, and I still find myself looking over my shoulder in that visiting room.

But now it’s a different kind of looking. I’m looking for mamita.

I know that sounds crazy, but a part of me keeps thinking that maybe someday she’ll come walking in, and ask to see me.

Yeah, yeah, I know that won’t happen. If she ever did show up, she’d be sitting across the hall in the women’s visiting room, all hunched over, skinny as those skinny-assed kids, in an orange jumpsuit same as me, looking beat-up and worn-down, leaning over the same kind of table, talking to some legal aid lawyer. Or on days when I feel really shitty, I get to thinking I’ll see her sitting across from some guy just a little younger than me, the son she had after she left me, the son who made it in the world, white shirt, tie, sports jacket on the back of his plastic chair. Either way I wouldn’t recognize her, and I know she wouldn’t recognize me. But still, when I’m down there visiting, I keep looking over my shoulder like abuelita did at the kitchen table.

It’s strange to be looking for her after all these years. I didn’t then. I mean, I wanted her to come home, but it was a lot quieter without her and grandma fighting all the time about her drinking and staying out all night. And I didn’t miss her screaming at me, or hitting Camille for doin’ some dumb kid thing, and the house was a lot cleaner without all those empties rolling around. But you can’t tell people that, that deep down inside you’re glad your mother walked out on you.

I tried once.

It was the only time my grandfather beat me.

I’d just turned eleven. Auntie Lucille decided to have a birthday party for me. She was grandma’s baby girl, that’s what grandma called her. Mommy and Auntie Lucille never got along. Auntie would say that mommy was jealous of her, and after a while mommy and her would end up cursing each other out. Mamita was usually drunk, so she always got the meanest. One time, she shoved auntie, and grandpa had to pull them off each other, until grandma told Lucille not to come around unless mommy was out. So, once mamita left us, auntie was there all the time, and did nice things, like giving me a birthday party, and later, after abuelita and abuelito died, sending Camille to St. Ursula’s School.

After my party and all the cousins went home, grandma told me and grandpa to go into the living room and watch TV “while us ladies clean up.” Grandpa and I laughed about that.

“Okay with us gents.” Grandpa winked at me, but he almost fell over, he was so drunk.

That happened a lot after mamita left. Grandpa stayed in his chair and drank and smoked cigarettes and drank some more. He stopped driving the cab, and then he stopped going out of the house all together. We all knew it was ‘cause of mommy, but nobody could say that.

After a while there got to be just as many whiskey bottles and empty beer cans around as when mommy lived there. And he started shouting and cursing me and Camille, except that sometimes when he was yelling at Camille he’d call her Alicia, mommy’s name. But at least he never hit us.

Until the party.

That afternoon, after I helped grandpa into his recliner, he seemed happy, like he hadn’t been in a long time. I think that day we both wished I was small enough to crawl up on his lap like I used to. So instead I walked over and sat on the floor near his feet.

I don’t know what made me say it. Maybe I felt old enough to finally say what had really been going on inside me.

“You know, abuelito, I’m glad mamita left us, ‘cause now it can just be us.”

I don’t think he meant to hit me so hard—or to hit me at all, but he did. He keep kicking me and punching me, yelling mommy’s name over and over again, Alicia! Alicia! Alicia! until he finally hit me with a wine bottle on the back of my head.

There was a lot of blood and Auntie Lucille wanted to take me to the emergency room but grandma wouldn’t let her. She was afraid social services would take me and Camille away from them. They were already giving her shit about mommy’s leaving and grandpa’s drinking and us kids not being safe. Instead, they cleaned me up and made me lay on the couch with an icepack on my head where he hit me with the bottle.

Once he sobered up grandpa cried and tried to hug me and swore that he didn’t mean it and that he’d never beat me again, that he’d never lay a finger on me. I told him that I knew he didn’t mean it, and that I believed he’d never do it again.

I knew he’d never do it again, ‘cause that night after Auntie Lucille pulled me from under him, I swore to myself that I’d walk out on him as soon as I could. I’d walk out the same way mommy did.

And I did.

It was two weeks after I turned twelve. There wasn’t a party that birthday. Grandpa didn’t hit me, or anybody else. He hardly had the strength to lift a drink. He didn’t even seem to see us kids anymore, like we had disappeared with his Alicia. Camille made me a birthday card with a picture of Mickey Mouse on it, and her and grandma signed it. That was it. But that was okay with me. It made leaving easier.

That afternoon I told my grandparents that I was going to play basketball. The only thing I took was that birthday card.

“Please watch Camille for me,” I whispered as I closed the door just the way I imagined mommy did.

For a few days I did play basketball. I ate at friends, slept under their beds or in their garages so their parents wouldn’t know I was there. During the day, when school was going on, I hung out behind the gym and met my buddies. That’s when I started smoking weed.

I was surprised how easy it was—cutting school, sneaking around, copping weed. Pretty soon, though, I got bored, and after a couple of the guys got busted behind the school gym for cutting class and smoking dope, I cut outta there. I didn’t need no cops in my business.

That’s when I decided to check out this laundromat that I used to go to with grandma when I was little. It was run by this old guy, Eduardo, who was from Ecuador like my grandparents. On weekends, abuelita took me with her to the Bronx to buy chickens and stuff. Sometimes she’d get off the bus at the laundromat and have coffee with Eduardo. He always treated us like family. Maybe we were, for all I knew. He’d take us into the back room, pull grandma’s chair out for her, like he was some goofy gentleman, and give me hot cocoa while him and abuelita drank black coffee and talked. Once I’d finished slurping up all my hot chocolate, I’d wander out front.

I loved that place. It was hot and noisy, with all crazy types of women—Spanish, Italian, Indian, Black, mothers and grandmothers, and young chicks. They’d be sorting clothes, counting their change, folding laundry, yelling to each other over the salsa music blaring out of the radio. And there was always tons of little kids, about Camille’s age, running around.

I think that’s why I started hanging out at the laundromat. I missed my little sister. A couple of times I snuck over to her nursery school and watched her playing on the swings with her girlfriends, but I always hid behind a car across the street so she couldn’t see me. But it made me too sad to see her, and not be able to joke with her, or read to her, so I stopped.

Those first few weeks I stayed out of Eduardo’s way. I didn’t want to take no chance that he’d recognize me, even though I was a lot older since the last time he saw me and a lot taller. When he wasn’t around I did stuff like throw out the old newspapers and stack up the magazines people left. I’d sweep the floor or tie up the trash. Sometimes, when there was hardly nobody around, I’d read old Reader’s Digests.

At first, nobody paid any attention to me. Pretty soon, though, the little kids started following me around. They thought everything I did was a game, which I suppose it was, since I was just killing time, for what, I still don’t know. When they asked me what my name was, I told them Jovencito, “Little Man,” what grandpa used to call me before I started to hate him.

And I could’ve had some new older friends, too. Some of those mamas were real happy to have me help them fold their laundry, and they didn’t mind complaining to me about their big fat husbands who were too lazy to do anything. I pretended I didn’t know what they were talking about with that anything. The way they said “Jovencito,” all sexy and hot, scared the shit out of me, but that’s something I didn’t tell nobody, not even myself, and certainly not the hombres I still hung out with, like Roberto, who’d come over to the laundromat to pick me up for some hoops and stealing 40s from the bodega. Berto’s eyes would be poppin’, checking out all the ladies, him smiling like a dumbass kid.

“Yo, Rolando, who’s the bitch?” he’d ask me as soon as we got out on the street. “You see the way she was looking at me? Yo, man, she was open. Fuck the park, let’s go back in.”

I’d act like I didn’t care and keep on walking. I wasn’t about ready to tell Berto or anybody else that I didn’t really care about no bitches then. I was happier crawling around under a bunch a chairs with some two-year-old in smelly Pampers chasing me.

That’s where Eduardo found me the first time.

I saw his shoes the same time I heard him laugh.

“So this is Jovencito that I keep hearing about,” he called out to all the ladies in the room, sounding like some kind a game show host. “Si, si,” they all laughed and nodded and then shouted at their kids to leave Jovencito alone, he needed to talk to Señor Eduardo.

I didn’t have to worry about Eduardo recognizing me. I hardly recognized him. He was smaller than before, all stooped over, and his eyes were huge under some mad thick glasses. They didn’t help much, I could tell. He seemed to move around more by touching things than by seeing.

It was weird, that first day, how he showed me around the laundromat like he was hiring me for a job I didn’t apply for. He touched everything—the washers and dryers, the plastic chairs, the detergent dispensers, even the kids and their mamas—smiling and nodding and whispering all the time.

And he kept telling me stuff like he knew all along I’d be working for him. He even gave me a key and asked me to close up for him. “These eyes not so good at night.” He never said anything about paying me, and I never asked, ‘cause I wasn’t really there, if you know what I mean. We both seemed to understand that—that I just needed to be there.

And I was—all day. While I was taking care of things for Eduardo, the neighborhood women took care of me, the way they took care of their own kids. They fed me, smiled at me, thanked me when I did the smallest thing for them. But when the streetlights came on, and the cop cars started rolling by slow, and the winos and crackheads started coming out, looking for a place to crash, the ladies wished me good night and hustled home. Then I’d sweep the floors, turn out the lights, yank down and padlock the grate, and head down the block to the bodega.

Even there I was Jovencito, but a different Little Man, the one who smoked weed and drank 40s, who every once in a while carried packages, no questions asked, for Miguel who owned the place and who pretended I didn’t rip him off for cigarettes, beer, chips, ramens, and beef jerky just as long as I delivered certain things to a certain cab driver at the train station on the regular. I knew all about dope and guns, and I when told Miguel I knew “what’s up,” he looked all hurt.

“Whatta you talking about, Jovencito? Food for my poor sick mamita, that’s all.”

Then he’d smile and shove another package at me. Pretty soon, I was dealing all over the Bronx, but that was way later, after I ran away from the group home and did time in juvie.

But back then I was just Little Man, hanging out at the bodega for a couple of hours at night, then sneaking into Eduardo’s and sleeping next to the driers where nobody could see me, just waiting for the mamas and their kids to show up for another day of play.

I don’t know, it sounds crazy, but there’s something about being around little kids I’ve always loved. Even though I got two of my own, I’m still that way. I get dumb happy just hearing kids out in the visiting room. And the little kids? They love me, they just swarm all over me. It happens wherever I’m locked up.

Like last year, when I was doin’ another county bid, I got into deep shit ‘cause me and this little guy, maybe four years old, were making weird monster faces at each other across the visiting room and laughing. Then before I knew it, this crazy little dude comes running across at me, jumps into my lap, and wraps his arms around my neck, and gives me a big kiss on the cheek.

That’s when all hell broke out. These two pigs come charging across the visiting room, screaming at me, like I got a weapon: “Drop the kid. Drop the kid. Now.”

But before I could do anything, po-lice started pulling at him and shouting and the little man started balling and hanging on my neck even tighter until his mother got him off.

Cops called a code, and all of a sudden these two helmeted goons are slamming my face into the floor, cuffing me, and dragging me out of the visiting room in front of my babies’ mama and my two little girls. Back in the pen, CO stripped me and butt searched me hard, like the kid might’ve snuck me something. I got two weeks in the box, two stupid weeks, for playing funny faces with some little boy who got dragged off to jail on a sunny Saturday afternoon to watch his daddy and mama fight. But I didn’t give a shit. It was worth it. In some ways those fuckers were right, the kid did slip me something, ‘cause anytime I’m around a kid, any kid, I’m flyin’ high like some cokehead.

That’s why I make wifey bring the girls up here every week no matter what. It’s weird, but while the dickheads are searching me, I can almost feel my babies getting off the bus outside the gate, and then, when they’re in the visiting room. I swear I can hear my Loretta asking her mama, “Is papi coming? Is papi coming?” “I’m here for you, little ones,” I keep whispering to myself. “Don’t worry. I won’t desert you like mamita did me.”

But deep down, I know that’s bullshit, no matter how many times I brag to those young knuckleheads on the block that I’m not like them, dumping their seed, then leaving the bitch to deal with it. No matter how much I say I am, I’m not there for them.

And I know there’ll come a day when wifey and the girls don’t show up. That’ll be the day my daughters look at each other and finally realize, “Yeah, we know where our papi is—he’s in jail, where he’s always been.” Then they’ll turn to their mama and say, “Why bother?” and get back on the bus for home.

I know it’s gonna happen. Someday. But for now, I’m where I’ve always been, sitting in a filthy visiting room bullpen, trying to hear my little ones’ excited voices, waiting, hoping, praying, “Please, please, just don’t make that day today?”