When I was eighteen, my best friend was Eddie Crespo, a recovering heroin addict twelve years my senior. More than a friend, he was a mentor, a teacher, a kind of father figure – albeit a flawed one.
He was an amazing guitar player, and a big part of why we hit it off was the guitar lessons he gave me. I’d been fiddling with an acoustic guitar that had been another gift from Mom’s friend Cuco. By the time I met Eddie, my chord library consisted of eleven badly played chords. He made me practice until I played passably well.
It was a give-and-take relationship: he taught me to appreciate the integrity and hard work inherent in music. I helped him to recapture the adolescence that had been stolen from him by heroin. He was also impressed that I kept coming back despite his irascible and gruff nature. Inexplicably for both of us, the ex-junkie and the naïve church boy forged a bond that persists some forty-some-odd years later.
At the time, Eddie was employed as a janitor in the boiler room of the dilapidated building he was living in, so, naturally, his jeans were always dirty and greasy. That was the case one day when he accompanied me to church to see my mother.
I hadn’t gone back to church regularly for two years. I couldn’t be Pentecostal and still play rock music. By this time, I was smoking cigarettes and drinking beer, hanging out in bars with Eddie, and doing minor drugs, just a little weed now and then. Despite all of that, my morality, my ethics remained intact. I was not a lost soul. In fact, I was pretty happy despite the sword of Damocles hanging over my head every night. I tried my best to ignore it, but deep down, in those moments just before sleep, I felt hell-bound. It wasn't exactly the call of a loving God, more like one of the pastor’s sermons.
Eddie and I walked into the church where I had spent much of my young life. We walked among people I had called family until recently: members of the Martinez family, Rodrigues, and Cotto. Even Enrigue was there. Some of them greeted me. Many didn’t. Enrigue didn’t.
While we waited for Mom to come out of the kitchen, Eddie and I gravitated toward the musical instruments at the front of the church. I showed him the dilapidated drum kit I had spent so many Sundays playing, and he laughed at its condition. We appreciated the amplifiers and Leo's keyboard like any musician would. Gradually, however, I began to feel staring eyes boring into my back, marking our movements with suspicion. I couldn’t understand it. Yes, Eddie was a stranger, and the church was located in a sketchy part of Spanish Harlem, so their reaction to him might have been justified if this wasn’t the house of God. No one greeted us. There was food being served in the kitchen – by my mother, no less – but no one invited us to join in the meal. They whispered and watched. I began to feel uncomfortable, as if I were in a department store with a security guard following me around surreptitiously, waiting for me to stash something in my jacket. When my mother finally came out of the kitchen, dish towel still in hand, she had a sheepish look on her face. She took my arm and, in a small voice, told us the pastor suggested we talk outside.
By the time we got to the front doors, my hands were balled into fists so tight my fingernails dug into my palms. I thought I might draw blood. As soon as we got outside, words shot out of my mouth in a rage-fueled torrent.
“Ma, what the hell? How the hell could they treat us like that? I was raised here., I’ve known these people my whole life! They’re a bunch of freaking hypocrites!” People across the street were stopping to see what the commotion was all about.
“And where the hell is the love of God, huh?” I was gesticulating wildly by now, pacing back and forth like Pastor Ortiz during a heated sermon. “It’s Tasha all over again, but worse! They’re supposed to be like Jesus? When did he ever turn away anybody because they were dirty? Sorry.” I directed that last to Eddie, who stood to the side quietly,
“s’all right,” he said.
“Ma!” I continued, “They treated us like dirt. Like criminals! Eddie’s a stranger, Ma, why should he ever come back to this fucking bunch of hypocrites!” I yelled. I didn’t care if the people inside heard me. Rather, I wanted them to hear. I wanted someone, preferably pastor Ortiz, to come out and confront me.
More people gathered across the street. No one came out of the church.
Through it all, my mother stood silent, gripping the dish towel tightly in her hands. I expected her to slap my face for cursing in front of her. I had never done so in my entire life. The slap didn’t come. Instead, when I finally looked at her, I saw she was crying…I had made my mother cry.
My ire evaporated. I’d never made my mother shed tears. I immediately reached out, expecting her to recoil in anger of her own. She didn’t. She let me hug her.
Eddie stood beside us, nonplused. He patted Mom on the back and said, “It’s okay, Ma, it’s okay.”
She was sobbing softly into my shoulder now. I stroked her hair.
“I’m sorry, Ma, I didn’t mean to yell at you like that. It wasn’t you.”
“No, Nene,” she whispered through her tears, “You’re right.” She let me go and turned to Eddie. She drew him close as he held out his arms like he didn’t know what to do with them, and with a confused look on his face, he returned her hug. She pulled his head down and kissed his cheek. When she released him, she wiped her tears with the dish rag.
“Go,” she said to me finally,” Go, we’ll talk when I get home.”
“Okay.”
She turned without another word and went back into the church. I wanted to scream again. How could she bear to go back into that house of cowards? No one had come out to help her. Not even to see what was going on. At least the gawkers across the street showed some interest in what was happening in front of the church. Its inhabitants couldn’t be bothered.
Then I realized that this was my mother’s home. She didn’t have any other place, and she didn’t know any other way.
I looked at Eddie, and he said, “Y’know, I’m never coming back to this fucking place, right?”
“I know.” I said, “Me neither.”
And I never did.