Week 4: Open Up

“There are men at the door.”

Previously: The Heathens are on a rampage to re-enchant the world.

○ The Great Opening: Week Four, Caracas

“Mauricio, wake up,” whispered his mother in Spanish. “There are men at the door.”

Mauricio’s eyes sprung open. He threw off the blanket and dashed past his mother, snatching a white tank top off the dresser. He crawled into the living room on all fours so no one could see him through windows. Then he made it to the back of the room.

There was a loud thumping sound on the door followed by a muffled voice: “Open up!”

“Mama, tell them I slept at a friend’s house,” he said, stretching his arms through the tank top. He unbarred the shutters to the back window. “Mama, no matter what happens, I––.”

“I know. Go!” she coughed.

Mauricio jumped out the window into the alleyway. 

Distantly, he heard his mother open the door, and a man saying, “Ma’am, we have undeniable evidence that your son broke lockdown and organized an illegal protes….” The voice faded away as Mauricio climbed over bags of trash, using an electrical pole as leverage to vault to the corrugated steel roof.

“Hey!” The men had heard him.

But Mauricio was already leaping from roof to roof down toward the bottom of the barrio. He spared a glance over his shoulder. Terraced ranchos built with cinderblocks and cardboard sloped upwards, downwards, and to both sides as far as the eye could see. 

Sparing a glance behind, Mauricio saw that the men were jumping down toward him. One pointed and lifted a walkie-talkie. He was reporting Mauricio’s location.

When Mauricio turned back around, a man leapt down in front of him, sprinting to cut him off.

He dodged left. Straight into the elbow of a man in a bulletproof vest.

Mauricio stumbled backward, holding his nose. 

The man took out a pistol and aimed it. “Let me see your hands!”

Mauricio removed his hands from his nose and held them to the sun. Blood dripped down his white tank top.

The other men caught up. They surrounded him on all sides as Mauricio’s neighbors gathered above and below to watch the unfolding scene.

“On the ground! On the ground, now!” yelled the man with the gun.

Slowly Mauricio lowered himself to his knees. “Where are your badges?”

A man with a mustache walked forth and showed him: Sergeant Perez, it read. Policía Nacional Bolivariana – Venezuelan National Police. 

“You’re fucked,” barked his comrade with the bulletproof vest, still aiming his gun at Mauricio’s head.

He was right. Mauricio was fucked.

“How can you support him?” Mauricio shouted at the ground. “When the people I know need to sell neighbors their toothpaste by the squeeze. When my grandma can’t afford her medicine! How can you support a dictator?”

No one spoke. Yet immediately, Mauricio had an answer: …They didn’t. They didn’t support their dictator. Mauricio didn’t know how he knew. He just knew.

He looked up at the cop with the mustache, the one who’d identified himself as Sergeant Perez. “Being a Chavista does not mean being the president’s lapdog.”

Sergeant Perez glanced at the other cops. How can you support a dictator? None of them did. Now, somehow, they all knew: They each hated the president.

…Except for the man with the gun. 

Mauricio stood up. 

“Get back down!” the man shouted from behind his pistol.

The ghost of Mauricio’s question echoed out across the barrio, jumping from mind to mind, even to those out of earshot: How can you support a dictator? None of them did. And now, they knew that one another knew. 

All along they’d assumed that those around them must support the president – at least the police. Otherwise, how could this go on? They looked at one another with astonishment.

Mauricio backed away from the man with the gun.

“Arrest him!” the man shouted to his fellow officers. He stared desperately at Perez. “He is a criminal!”

“But Private Gomez,” said Perez, “So is our leader.” 

Gomez’s eyes went wide. 

Sgt. Perez looked at Mauricio and nodded. The other officers glanced at one another with unease, and then resolution. Pvt. Gomez sucked in a loud breath.

Like birds flocking through the air, their intentions mingled: For a moment, everyone knew what was about to happen before it did.

Mauricio backed away toward the gap between roofs. 

Sgt. Perez reached for his pistol. 

Pvt. Gomez felled his sergeant with a shot to the kneecap. Then he brandished the gun barrel to hold another officer at bay. A young man from the barrio landed on the roof behind Gomez and pulled his feet. Gomez’s gun went off a second time as his legs were taken out from under him. 

Mauricio fell between roofs. He hit the ground of the narrow alleyway. He heard screams from the bright slit of sky above. Something bad had happened to him. He looked down at himself. He was bleeding from a hole in his shirt. Then the pain arrived.

His auntie rushed into the alley. “Mauricio!” She pressed the fabric of her dress to the wound, which she felt as her own. “No te preocupades. Vas a estar bien. Vas a estar bien.”

“What?” said the young man. Where was he? Oh, she was speaking Spanish. Auntie Adriana? How did she get here?

“Vamos a cuidar de ti. No te preocupades, Mauricio.” 

Mauricio? Who the hell was Mauricio? 

More and more people crowded the alley, feeling his fear, offering comforts, absorbing his fading consciousness, and passing it on to their neighbors. He would live on.

Live on? Where was that thought coming from? Oh. Oh shit! He was bleeding! What the fuck?

Oh shit, this shit’s real. He felt his life fading. Am I fucking dying?

Mikey woke in a cold sweat. He looked around his room. Dragon Ball Z figurines lined his shelf, standing next to Spider-Man comics and limited edition Nikes. Jerseys and shorts that smelled like dry sweat formed a deep heap on the floor alongside empty tubes of Pringles. To his right was his brother’s bed, unoccupied now that he’d moved a few block east with his girl and his friends.

Cristiano Ronaldo looked down at Mikey from a poster on the wall.

He looked back. “Had enough of this trippy shit, Cristiano.”

Mikey tried to shake the dreams from his head. It didn’t work. How to get good again?

He stood up and slapped his cheeks a couple times. Then he opened his window. The sounds of Harlem came blaring in.

Down below he saw someone walking out of the bodega under his apartment. Someone who, from overhead, looked like a pathetic dot staining the sidewalk.

“Yo, E!”

Elijah looked up and straightened his glasses, the fucking nerd.

“Nice haircut, dickhead. It new?” Mikey couldn’t feel Elijah from this far up, but he saw the kid stare down at the sidewalk and take a big breath. “Yeah, big breath, bro. Yoga-mom teach you that?”

Elijah clenched his fists and walked away down the block.

”I’ll see you back at school…if it ever opens!” Mikey called after him.

Shit, that dream was still on Mikey’s mind. The stacks on stacks of houses. Somewhere in South America? His mom was from there; he could ask her about it. No, it would be weird to tell her one of his dreams.

Mikey sat back down on his bed – his bed that was definitely in New York City – and stared out the window for a while. 

Mauricio…, he thought. Had he heard that name before?

Mikey didn’t want to stay in his room anymore. It was too still. He walked to the living room. 

His mom was on the couch, eyes fixed on the TV. A news host in a fancy suit was talking. “…Over rumors that the Venezuelan president has been deposed earlier today. After over a decade in power, it appears that the president’s reign….”

“Shit just keeps getting crazier and crazier,” his mom said without turning. There was a crunching sound. She was eating dried peas. “Thank god your granny moved me here when I was a kid, right? Look at this.” She said pointing at the the TV. “Not that it’s much better here, right? The city says they got it under control, but from what I’m hearing, everyone’s still quitting their jobs, having mid-life crises, business negotiations breaking down, people seeing miracles…. They say two Jesuses are walking the streets. Not one, two. And I walked right through one by accident the other day. He was black. They need to expand the holy trinity now. It’s the holy quadrinity.”

“Mom?”

“And in Venezuela?” She shook her head and clicked her tongue. “It’s a good thing your granny moved me out of there when I was a kid, that’s all I’m saying. And lucky your auntie just got out of there too. We’ve got to call your auntie later today, OK? She’s not doing too good since your cousin got shot down there. You remember your auntie, Adriana? From when you were little?” 

“Mauricio…. That’s my cousin’s name right?”

Mikey’s mom turned around. One eye was bruised purple.

“Mom!” Mikey ran to the couch. “Dad do this to you?”

“No. Another crazy in the street, having a meltdown. Yelling, ‘It’s too much. It’s too much.’ I got near him and I asked him ‘What’s too much?’ trying to be helpful and he knocked me in the face. Do you believe it? Too many crazies in the streets these days, and being around these crazies makes me feel crazy. They need to come up with a cure for this Psi thing, a vaccine or something.” His mother rubbed her head. “I’ve had too much of this. ‘It’s easy, just ignore it,’ they say. Ana and Rosa told me that the other day. But I can’t. I cannot. Like, right now, you’re hungry, right? You’re always hungry, but I can feel it now.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Maybe it’s just me.” She took out a dried pea, paused, and then bit off a tiny piece of it. “Three weeks and I still have the cravings. Rosa too. Rosa can’t stop eating spinach.” She ate the rest of the pea, then she finally looked at Mikey. “Shouldn’t you be at school?”

“School’s still closed, mom.”

“Oh. I remember. That’s right. Hard to keep things in mind these days. My mind’s all…” she shook her hand near her head. “OK then, put your Yeezos on.”

“Mom, I told you a thousand times, they’re called Yeezys.”

“Well put ‘em on. We need to see grandma Carmen at the hospital.”

“I don’t know, mom, I’m feeling pretty weird….”

“Mikey Russo, get your––”

“OK, fine!”

“––damn Yeezos on!”

A chaotic subway ride later, Mikey was in a white room with a soft beeping noise. Granny was lying in one of those mechanical beds, still, like, real still.

He looked around. His mom was in the hall talking loud and annoying in Spanish on her phone.

There was only the nurse standing behind him. The nurse had a good vibe. He would have known that even before Psi. “She can still feel you, you know,” the nurse said. 

She was talking to him like a baby. He didn’t like that. 

The nurse put a hand on his back. “You can tune in.”

Mikey shrugged her hand off. “How do you mean?”

The nurse looked surprised.

“Sorry, I got you. The tuning in thing, it’s just not my thing, you know? I like to keep myself to myself, you get me?”

Mikey could tell she got him. So that meant that he was already doing the tune-in thing. He might as well tune into granny too. But then he looked at her lying all still like that, and he wasn’t really feeling it.

Just as he thought this, Mikey sensed…a presence. All of a sudden, his eyes itched. He brushed them.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” said the nurse. She went outside.

“Granny, that you?” Mikey looked around the room again. He was alone. He stepped closer to granny. The presence grew stronger. “Abuela. That’s Spanish for granny, right? Abuela, I’ve been watching your old movies. They’re kinda slow. But that’s just how old movies go though, yeah? No disrespect.” Granny lay still. Then Mikey felt something. It felt good, like, something like a smile. “Abuela, you looked real good in those movies though, don’t get me wrong,” he said. “Not that you look bad now, you still have that fashion sense. Maybe I got that from you.”

Mikey rubbed his face. He looked around the room again. There was a picture in his head. He saw a hand with red-ass nails, real bright – they had to be granny’s. They were holding a baby’s foot. Somehow he knew that baby’s foot was once his. 

He didn’t like that. He didn’t know why.

Mikey turned and started for the door. Then he stopped and waited for more words to come. 

“I feel you, granny.”