Page 32 of The Slayer
“It’s easy. I’m going to draw you a diagram.”
“Please don’t.”
“Juan!” Marcos shouted, leaning back on the bench and looking toward the open door to the house.
“Mierda,” Chuito cursed and turned around, looking for his shirt that he couldn’t find. He jumped up, keeping his back to the door. “I don’t have my fucking shirt on.”
“What?” Juan asked as he came to the door.
“What do you mean, what?” Marcos asked him sharply, speaking Spanish save the wordwhatthat he spat out bitterly in English. “Why are you always speaking English? We’re home now. We don’t have to speak English at home. Save that shit for school.”
Chuito reached over and hit Marcos’s head on instinct, making sure to keep his back to his brother. “He can talk however he wants. He’s smart.”
“So what? He can’t be smart and speak Spanish at home?” Marcos argued. “The gringos here make you think if you speak Spanish, you’re not smart. We’re fucking smart, Juan. We’re smarter than those motherfuckers. Speak Spanish. Represent.”
“He’s eleven.” Chuito shoved him again. “Stop fucking swearing in front of him.”
“Wow.” Marcos gave Chuito a look of disbelief and then turned back to Juan. “Get me paper. I’m drawing Chu a diagram.”
“Of what?” Juan asked in English.
Marcos put a hand over his face and mumbled against his fingers, “Just get the paper.”
Juan turned to leave, and Chuito started searching for his shirt again, because he didn’t want his brother to see the star tattoos on his shoulders that branded him a thief. “Where the fuck is it?”
“Just let him see the ink. Who cares? My mother already tanned both our asses for it. Which I still think is bullshit, ’cause she doesn’t mind spending the fucking money we make, but we paid for the crime anyway,” Marcos grumbled. “And Juan knows we steal cars. I’m tired of wearing my shirt all the time. I work out to show this shit off.”
“I care,” Chuito argued as he found his shirt under the bench. “I don’t want him to think being a gangster is okay.”
“But speaking English all the time is okay?”
“Look, we live here now. He needs to know how to speak English. Let him speak it. It’s not like he’s going to forget the Spanish,” Chuito argued as he pulled his shirt over his head. “Doctors and shit need to know how to speak English really well.”
“That really pisses me off,” Marcos whispered. “It should piss you off too. No one has more Boricua pride than you.”
“I have fucking pride because he’s smarter than the rest of these pendejos. Let him be him. Let him be better than us,” Chuito said as he sat back down next to his cousin. “Why do you think I steal all the cars and got the fucking stars so we can sell them to Victor without hearing shit from the other Los Corredores? It’s so Juan doesn’t have to know what it’s like to starve and worry about money.”
Marcos snorted. “Yeah, it’s not ’cause it gets your dick hard.”
“That too,” Chuito agreed with a laugh. “Better than dealing for them, right?”
Marcos shrugged, clearly ambivalent about it. “A motherfucker can go down for either one. What does it matter now?”
“I’m not going to let you deal,” Chuito promised him, because Marcos was a reluctant criminal at best. “You’re not going down like your father.”
His cousin just gave him a look, but then Juan appeared with paper and pen before he could argue.
Marcos took them from him. “Gracias.”
“Get lost,” Chuito said to his brother. “Go do your homework.”
“Is this about the cars?” Juan asked as he looked at the paper, because he knew the two of them weren’t going to be drawing diagrams for school. “’Cause Tía Camila said—”
“It’s not about the cars,” Marcos said as he put the paper between him and Chuito on the bench and started drawing. “It’s to make your brother chulo. You want to stay and get chulo too?”
“It’s about chicas?” Juan raised his eyebrows curiously. “I want to see,” he said in Spanish, obviously to get on Marcos’s good side.
“What the hell do you know about chicas?” Chuito barked at him. “Get out.”
