If I Knew You Were Going to Be This Beautiful, I Never Would Have Let You Go by Judy Chicurel Page B

asked.
    Susie shrugged, fitting a Herbert Tareyton between her lips. “Could have been anything,” she said. “That’s just how it is with the spics. It’s not like you can expect things to work out for them.”
    “How’s Eddie doing?” I asked Ramone now.
    Ramone jerked his head toward the slot in the door. “Ask him,” he said. I recognized Hutchy Michaels, a boy from the Dunes, hunched over the slot, earnestly placing an order. I knew Ramone wasn’t talking about Hutchy.
    “So Eddie is—”
    Ramone shrugged. “We take turns,” he said.
    “A Lopez family franchise,” I said, and then I was sorry. That’s the trouble with hanging out with the people I hang out with, everyone’s a smart-ass and you get into the habit. Ramone only shrugged, but his smile was uncertain, and for a minute I wondered if he knew what a franchise was. I remembered he had either dropped out of high school or gone to BOCES, the vocational program, somewhere out on the Island. Behind him, I heard a slight scraping noise, and Ramone’s eyes darted quickly to the loose panel in the wall. “Just a minute,” he said, and he walked back through the panel and then he was gone.
    “Katie.” Nanny and Voodoo were suddenly beside me. Behind them were hundreds of eyes in the night, and the glowing embers of what seemed like a thousand cigarettes. I could see Bennie farther down the line, craning his neck to look at me. I was flattered that he could take his mind off copping drugs for even two seconds.
    “You know that guy?” Voodoo asked. In the dark, you couldn’t tell that his Afro was blond. You couldn’t tell that he was a white boy who wanted to be Jimi Hendrix. In the dark, he looked like one of the junkies who hung out on the playground swings at Central District Elementary.
    “Yeah, I know him,” I said.
    Voodoo leaned forward and whispered, “Bennie wants to know can you talk to him, maybe get us a discount?”
    •   •   •
    I had known Ramone since he was a skinny kid in the fourth grade. He and his cousin, Ophelia, were in my class at Central District Elementary, and my first crystal-clear memory of us all together was when Mrs. Rothman, our teacher, lost patience with Ophelia and slapped her hands because she couldn’t understand English. Ophelia burst into tears, tying her two satiny braids across her face in distress. Ramone had drawn his cousin into a sturdy, protective embrace. Mrs. Rothman’s face wassweating, like it always did when she was angry. I walked over and took the two of them by their hands and began leading them out of the room.
    “Where do you think you are going, Katharine?” Mrs. Rothman cried; she deplored nicknames and always called us by our formal names. But there was no heat to her words and she made no move to stop us. She knew she should never have slapped Ophelia. She would never have hit a white kid. “I have the pass,” I said, holding up the beaten piece of cardboard with the word “Pass” written across it in big, black letters. As the frosted glass door closed behind us, we could hear her droning on about the importance of diagramming sentences.
    Once in the hall, I walked in front of them, leading the way to Mrs. Myer’s sixth-grade classroom down the stairs, on the first floor.
    “Where are we going?” Ramone asked.
    “I’m taking you to your sister,” I said. I honestly felt bad about the way Mrs. Rothman had treated Ophelia, but I had an ulterior motive. I actually couldn’t wait. I couldn’t wait to get to Mrs. Myer’s room and ask permission for Olga to come out in the hall. To say, “It’s a family matter.” I had heard Jody Klein’s older sister say that when she came to get him from our class the day his grandfather died, and I’d thought it impressive. And I had the pass, so Mrs. Myer would think I had permission from my teacher.
    The truth was, I was fascinated with the Lopez family, with all the Puerto Ricans in our school. They were always