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.On la isla verde, if they could not have money, if they could not have happiness, they could at least have warmth and the coquís singing in the countryside.Gloria thought the place he missed must be heaven, and Regalo was an angel who had stumbled and fallen to earth.The first time he hit her, she knew he was human.She had given him a cup of coffee that was not hot enough for him, and he had slapped her.She had let it go.He had not meant to do it, he said.It would not happen again.But that was how it began, and when she could no longer hide her bruises from her parents, they forbade her to see him.“He’s crazy,” they told her.But even the crazy need love, and she loved him.“Coming to America made him crazy,” Gloria told her mother.“He was probably crazy before he left Puerto Rico,” Gloria’s mother said.“There are crazy people there.Once there was un tabaquero whose daughter ate her own flesh.She bit off pieces of her fingers.Crazy.”Although Gloria was forbidden to see Regalo, she snuck him in when her parents and César were not home.But one evening he began beating her, and she ran from the house.She escaped out the back door, and he chased after her.The Taylors were eating dinner, and through the screen door they could hear Gloria and Regalo coming toward their back door.Gloria kicked and fought her way onto the Taylors’ porch.Mikey jumped up from the table.Samuel moved toward the door, but before he could get there Gloria and Regalo had fallen against the screen.The door came loose from its hinges and crashed into the kitchen.The door hit the floor first, then Gloria, face up.Regalo landed on top.Mary Kate and the children were screaming, crowded in the doorway between the kitchen and living room.“What the hell is this?” Samuel said.“Get out of my house.”Mary Kate calmed down enough to ask, “She dead?”“She don’t look dead to me,” Samuel said, “just knocked out.”Regalo had gotten to his knees and was trying to revive Gloria.He kissed her and kissed her while he knelt among the scattered and broken plates, the pinto beans, corn bread, half-eaten chicken.“She dead!” Mikey yelled.“She dead!” And he ran upstairs.“Take them kids out of here,” Samuel yelled.“Get them out of here? They in they own house,” Mary Kate yelled back.“Where you want me to take them? Get them out my house!”Samuel glared at her.“What you want me to do?” he asked.“You can take them kids upstairs.”Regalo paid none of them any attention.He had begun to cry.Samuel looked out of the space where the door had been.A crowd had gathered, staring into the hole, right into the house.Samuel stepped over the couple and yelled at the people gawking outside.“What ya’ll want? Get out my yard.”Nobody moved.They were not scared of him.The children had quieted down, and Mary Kate went to the sink, wet a dishcloth, and handed it to Regalo.Gloria was coming around.She opened her eyes and Regalo picked her up.Without a word he carried her past Samuel, nodding to him as he went out of the hole.“Who going to pay for this shit?” he yelled after them.“He going to kill that girl if this keep up,” Mary Kate said.No one would have been surprised if Regalo had been found stabbed to death, Jesús having snuck back to kill him.But Gloria had had enough.She stopped seeing Regalo.He would still come around, a coquí crying out in the night, but she would not answer his calls.Finally, only an arrest kept him from coming back.He had been riding the bus from Buffalo, and when it was time for him to get off on Ridge Road, he did not have the ten cents to exit in the suburban zone.So, although other people had their exit fares, the driver refused to stop at the last three stops on their side of the bridge.“I’m sick of you people doing this,” he said.“The whole lot of you always wanting something for nothing.No more.No more.” He drove the bus right over the bridge to Capital Heights, pulled up across from the police station, and began honking the horn.When two officers in front of the station approached the bus, Regalo panicked.He tried to kick out a back window but only managed to crack it [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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