Bronx Noir

All of this took until sunrise for Jasmine to explain. The story went through her mind so often, starting and stopping at different humiliations. By the time she got to the details of the descriptions, she was broken again, crying herself dry.

“There, there,” Yolanda said, patting her back. “Let it all out. It’ll make you feel better.”

“I’ll feel better when we put these guys in jail.”

For what? were the words Yolanda wanted to say. She wanted to explain that no one was going to care if two white boys beat up a Puerto Rican prostitute. Hell, they wouldn’t care if the prostitute was killed. You could see from the news that you had to murder a whole string of prostitutes before anyone started searching. Instead, she said nothing.

Jasmine fell asleep on the sofa. Yolanda brought a chair over from the dining room and sat watching her.

The next day she asked for leave from her job. It was a mission from God she was on, and the priest she ultimately reported to was a man who respected missions from God.

At the start of September, three weeks of vomit and chills later, Jasmine was mostly clear-eyed. Yolanda’s eyes, however, were bleared from lack of sleep. It was hard work making sure a young drug addict didn’t just escape and get what she wanted by trading herself.

Yolanda had asked over the last weeks where Jasmine ran off from, who her parents were, what her real name was, but she hadn’t gotten anything more than, “My name is Flor,” which sounded like a lie. She preached at the girl about the value of one’s own name.

“My father was a very proud man. No money, no education, no fancy nothing, but he had his name and no one could take that away from him. He could give it, but it couldn’t be taken away. You understand?”

“My father is an asshole,” Jasmine said.

Yolanda didn’t have an answer for that and gave up on the subject.

“School’s started already, baby girl,” she announced a few days later.

“I can’t go to school,” Jasmine answered. Of course, she was right. What were her experiences compared to those of her potential classmates? How could she make a friend? How could she answer, What did you do last summer?

Yolanda dropped the subject. She wouldn’t know how to enroll the child in a school without being the legal guardian anyway, though she figured that couldn’t be too hard.

The next day, Yolanda went out for groceries. When she came back, there was no Jasmine.

“Shit,” she said. It was afternoon. She wouldn’t know where to find the girl until night had fallen.

Yolanda sat for a moment. She was tired. She tried to calculate the chances that Jasmine had already scored and was shooting up or snorting or smoking something. Chances were good.

It was near midnight before Yolanda found Jasmine coming out of a parked car right where Farragut Street met Hunts Point Avenue. She was high and giggling, and she didn’t know how many men she’d been with.

Back in Yolanda’s place, Jasmine fell asleep, and Yolanda made a phone call. When Jasmine woke the next morning, Yolanda was out, and Ray Morales was sitting in an armchair, smoking a cigarette, and reading the Daily News comics. She was frightened and it took a few moments for her to figure out where she was.

“Who you?” she asked without getting up from the sofa.

“Ray,” the man said. He flicked his cigarette into an ashtray and turned the page on the comics. Ray was a small man—five-foot-two and maybe 110 pounds. Wiry. He wore shades though there wasn’t much sunlight coming in through any of the windows. His hair was dark and wavy, slicked back. He might have been forty years old like Yolanda, but if he was they had been forty hard years.

“You know Yolanda?”

The man looked up and smiled. “No, I just broke in for a cigarette and the comics” He laughed at his own joke. Jasmine wasn’t sure she got it, but she laughed too.

Ray just sat and read while Jasmine went about her morning business. She took a piece of toast for her breakfast—her hunger was for other things—then headed for the door.

“Nope,” Ray said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean no. You’re not going out. Yolanda wants you here when she gets back.”

“I’m just going to the store to get something.”

“No.”

“I really need to go.”

“No.”

“But—”

“No infinity. Sit your ass down.”

Ray looked mad when he said this. He hadn’t taken off the shades and he held his cigarette between index and middle fingers jabbing at Jasmine as he said his nos.

Jasmine did as she was told, but thought of some ways around this man. Her best option, she thought as she chewed her nails, was to make a dash past him to the door. If he caught up with her, she’d start kicking and screaming rape. With all her bruises, it didn’t seem like it would be that hard to get people to believe her. She was making up her mind to try this, trying to avoid Ray’s shaded eyes, when Yolanda returned.

“Who’s that?” Jasmine jumped to shout, a finger pointed at Ray.

“That’s Ray,” Yolanda said. “He’s my husband.”

Ray smiled again and went back to his comics.