She was crammed against the door of the 4 express train, which meant she saw only a glimpse of it flickering through the columns as the subway cars roared downtown towards Wall Street. But somehow it caught her eye, even though the woman on her left kept stepping on her foot as the subway car rocked and the man to her right had his armpit positioned four inches from her nose.
It was a chalk drawing, on a black square usually covered by movie ads, angels flying around a pyramid topped with a wriggling baby. They weren’t much more than stick figures, just balloon shapes with little squiggle lines around their arms and legs to show that they were moving. Lucia strained to look as the train squealed and bounced through the station. She thought about it as the train stopped at Brooklyn Bridge, then Fulton, and finally Wall Street, where she lunged onto the platform and climbed the stairs, her feet clad in white leather sneakers and tennis socks. It stayed with her as she walked the four blocks to the offices of Weinstein, Goldin, Marx and Lutzky, where she worked as a senior legal secretary.
But once Lucia changed into the pumps she kept at her desk, she put it out of her mind for the day. It was always busy at the office and she was a good worker, a conscientious worker, someone who did what she had to without being told. Her fingers flew over the keyboard and she never complained about last minute changes, rude lawyers, lunches ordered in from the deli and eaten in quick bites in between briefs. At 22, she was the youngest senior secretary at the company, and that was why the other senior secretaries resented her, older women who’d been with the company for 20 years and knew Lucia made as much or more money than they did. Lucia never tried to smooth things out either, never brought in cookies or shared pictures of her family, or gossiped about the lawyers at the coffee machine. For some of the secretaries resentment calcified into hatred, and they went out of their way to call her a “Puerto Rican bitch” in voices loud enough for Lucia to hear but low enough to escape the ears of the bosses. And they burned when she didn’t seem to care. What they didn’t understand was that Lucia didn’t hear them, that their words were being drowned out by something inside her, something she couldn’t explain to anyone. Not that there was any danger of anyone asking her to.
The only thing Lucia asked for in return was to leave work at 5, exactly 5, every day. The bosses gave it to her, to the shock and chagrin of the other secretaries. Leaving at 5 is unheard of at law firms, and Lucia never explained why she had to go home so early. But Mr. Weinstein told his partners, “We’re screwed if she quits,” so they gave it to her. Lucia strapped on her sneakers at five minutes to the hour every day and never seemed to notice that her polite “good-night” was met with icy silence.
And so at 5:05 Lucia was walking up Broadway towards City Hall, where she took the local train home every day. The trip was a lot longer when she stayed on the local, four extra stops between Brooklyn Bridge and 14th Street alone. But she always got a seat and the extra time was hers, time she usually spent with her eyes closed, thinking about the way things were before Mami died.
But on that day, when Lucia put her foot on the first subway stair, she thought again about the drawing, the angels fluttering over the baby. Instead of taking a seat, she leaned against a door and stared out the window at each station. That’s when she saw that it wasn’t just Bleeker Street, that whoever had done it had been to Canal, Spring and Astor Place as well. The drawings were all of bubble people, some of them climbing mountains, others bowing down in front of TV sets, spaceships and dollar signs. And more angels, floating as if their bubble bodies were filled with helium. All of the drawings were signed K. Haring.
“K. Hah-ring?” Lucia wondered. “Or K. Hare-ing?” If she ever saw him, she thought, she would demand, “¿Qué Haring?” Lucia repeated the funny to herself all the way home, even after she finally wedged into a seat at 86th Street, the station where almost all of the remaining white people on the train got off before it tore through Harlem and up to the Bronx. The train morphed from a subway to an El after Hunts Point Avenue, climbing out of the ground and screeching across the bridge over the Bronx River before landing at Elder Avenue, Lucia’s stop. She trotted down the long staircase to Westchester Avenue and walked the six bocks to Doña Pepita’s apartment. As usual, her brothers and sister had their books packed and coats on, dying to get away from the desiccated old lady, with her bloody Jesus on the wall and her statue of San Lazaro, dogs licking his oozing sores. They hated her, but Papi wouldn’t allow anyone else to take care of them because he knew Doña Pepita was from the old school, that she’d stop Erica from whistling like a boy and make Edwin and David take their hats off in the house.
The kids grabbed Lucia around the torso and refused to let go, walking that way with her down the street. As they trudged home, Lucia imagined herself as an angel, floating above them, while they ran around below, little squiggle lines around their elbows and knees.
As soon as they reached the apartment, Lucia sent the kids into the living room and paused for a moment to light the candles in front of Mami’s picture. There was also a bowl of fresh water, along with palmas in the shape of a cross and a vase full of pink carnations. Once Mami was taken care of, Lucia went into the bedroom she shared with Erica and carefully hung up her work suit, one of exactly five that she owned.
Next, Lucia cooked dinner. First she cleaned the rice, rinsing it until the water ran from milky white to clear. Then she poured Mazola oil into the oya, followed by sofrito and tomato paste, and seasoned them with Sazón and adobo. The rice was next into the pot, then the gandules, the olives and capers, and finally un dedo de agua, a finger of water, to cover it all. Once the rice began simmering, Lucia could watch it with one eye while she cleaned and seasoned the pork chops. Then she set the chops aside, because pork takes a long time to become sabroso, and started the tostones. Lucia didn’t have to make them, because arroz cón gandules and pork chops make a dinner. But Papi liked them, so Lucia peeled and sliced the platanos, fried them until they were golden brown, then smashed them flat with a can of beans before frying them one more time. She had just taken them out to drain on a plate covered with a paper towel when Papi got home.
“Querída hija,” he said as he walked into the kitchen. “Dinner will be ready in 10 minutes Papi, I just have to fry the chuletas,” Lucia answered. Neither smiled. Papi nodded wearily and walked to the living room, where the loud voices of the children dropped as passed through the doorway. “Did you do your homework?” he asked in the heavily accented English he used with his younger children. “Yeah, we were just finishing it,” Edwin answered, speaking for all of them as he always did with Papi.
Dinner was ready just as fast as Lucia had promised, and they ate it almost as quickly, or at least Papi and the kids did. Lucia ate just half of her pork chop and rice and none of the tostones. When Mami was alive she would stand next to Lucia and make sure she ate every bit of food on her plate, and seconds too, even after Lucia had graduated from high school and started going to Hunter College. But now no one noticed what Lucia ate, and she was able to sweep the food from her plate into the garbage, not even saving it for lunch the next day.