Crying at the Supermercado

In the year 1994, Rolandito Salas Jusino was born. I was four that year. He was four when he disappeared.

In other words he was by himself in the community park and he was four and he had mousy ears and he was four and he was light-skinned and he was four and he smiled through many milk carton photographs and he smiled frozenly, smiled frozenly four, in many news reports and in many news hours and news half hours and news quarterly reports and commentary sessions and black and white El Nuevo Día Puerto Rico’s Finest Newspaper shots and in many Front Page color shots—smiling frozenly four: a smile that’s fit to print, frozen into the year 1999, his eyes emanating from some center, his eyes in print and in monitor seeing the eyes seeing him on the milk cartons and the reports and the television screens and the FBI Missing Persons page.

He was called Rolandito like I was called by my parents and my grandparents. But this is about Rolandito not about me, this is about a four year old, actually no it’s about something else, it’s not about 1999 when he was 4 and I was 8, it’s about 2000 when I was a little older, a little young but still a little older, and Rolandito was still four even though he might have been older too, because he was frozen.

I was nine maybe and I was in a classroom with drawings of test tubes on the walls and it was always hot in there we were talking, I think maybe we had gone off-topic and the off-topic topic was done with and we were just talking about something off the off-topic, and I don’t know how it was brought up, conversation-wise, but I know that it all started with a raised hand, the raised hand of a boy, a boy named Christian, or that’s how it starts for me in my memory anyway, with the teacher looking at a seat behind me, me turning my head to see the raised hand of Christian, the athletic boy who never let me play volleyball, who always had an it-wasn’t-me face.

He said, “Missi,” as in Missus, pronounced Mee-See—he said “Missi,” as in Teacher, as in Maybe You Have The Answer Because I Didn’t Ask My Mom Because I Don’t Ask My Mom Things Like This—he said with his hand up, “Missi,” and Missi said, “Yes?” “Missi, I was in the supermercado the other day, I was with my mom, and we were at the cashier’s box, paying, I mean I wasn’t paying but my mom was,” and the lighting was fluorescent and pale and people always look gray then, “and two aisles ahead, I saw Rolandito’s mom.”

Rolandito’s mom, unlike Rolandito, was not frozen, and the year 1999 ended and 2000 began and time continued for her and the only way Rolandito grew for her was through those digitized age progression pictures. Or that frozen one.

“I saw Rolandito’s mom,” Christian said, “and I didn’t get it, Missi.” And then Missi said, “What didn’t you get, Christian?” And Christian said, “Well, it’s just,” and he even rolled his eyes a little bit, because he knew it was very obvious, “it’s just that she wasn’t crying.”

And so Missi, middle-aged and attractive, Missi who had her own daughters and her volleyball body and her volleyball career and her volleyball hotness and who taught science and who had a great ass even though I didn’t know about great asses then or if I did I wasn’t aware on the “Look She Has A Great Ass” level—Missi with the great ass said, “Well, Christian, life goes on.”

Now we were all confused: how can life go on? She expanded: “We can’t always be crying in the supermercados and the supermalls and the supermax and the wal mart,” she said or something like that, “we need to do what we need to do. Believe me, Rolandito’s mom had had a lot of time to cry. And maybe she still does, but not in the supermercados. It’s okay not to cry at the supermercados.” But Christian still didn’t understand, I could tell. 

I didn’t understand it either. 

Ecclesiastes 9:11

It came first as a black blur.

Only when I heard the thump on the front of my car and the chaotic scream from below did I realize that the blur had four legs and that the shriek resembled the panicked hiss of a  cat.

It was night and this particular street had little to no lighting, with condemned and graffiti-decorated buildings to boot. It was the kind of street populated only by the occasional junky sleeping on a stoop.

I had tried to swerve, and while I managed to get the wheel out of the cat’s way, the cat’s head bashed against my car’s bumper. My car’s underbelly must have knocked it around before releasing the animal again to the street.

In the rearview mirror, I saw the cat flopping its way to the gutter, like a fish out of water.

It was a one-way street, but I hit the reverse anyway. I went back half a block, and saw the cat there, lying on the gutter, misshapen, hissing in pain. I saw lights behind me. The street was narrow, and the person driving that car would not wait for me to perform heroics.

Besides, I didn’t want to. The cat blood would have made a mess in my car, and I wouldn’t have known what to do with it. I wish I could feel bad about this, but I don’t. But why else am I writing this?

I went around and drove back up to the spot. I looked down at the gutter and saw it. A small pool of blood had formed beside its face; one of its eyes had a crimson coat; its mouth lay agape. This was a street cat if there ever was one: squalor-thin, its fur black with grey patches all over—red smudges, too.

It was frozen.

I’d killed a sentient being.

But I guess everybody needs a first time.

Don’t get me wrong—this is not a “this is what real men do” thing. But I think this is the kind of episode you have to be prepared for when you live in a city. Just one of the many small gifts of urban Puerto Rico—the random misery that could hit you at any moment, regardless of how careful you are. The hoodlum might rob you and might be coked up enough to give you chrome to the head. The policeman, in a bad mood, might decide to shoot you to bits. The bullet thrown to the air may land on your beautiful daughter’s head.

Your decision to go to McDonalds suddenly takes on a cosmic importance.

And you think you’re lucky, but you’re just as susceptible as the cat.

People often use the meteorite cliché when talking about chance. But we don't need a meteor. A meteor can’t win against the man who puts a blowtorch unto his family. Or against the disgruntled man who decapitates and dismembers the queen. Or against that lost bullet in the sky, dipping its way from the stratosphere into a fallible human head.

Don’t talk to me about meteors. It’s the bullets that hang like a black mist over us, willingly plunging.

    

But what the fuck. I was just talking about a dead cat.