"Frankenstein's heart." "It's alive?" "It is immortal."
My first fight with Malo was over TV. We had a small black and white TV that sat in the middle of our entertainment center. In the summer, I watched Sesame Street in the morning, then Electric Company, then waited alllll day for the game shows to finish to watch cartoons in the afternoon, then the 4:30 Movie, then Eyewitness News, then my brother would come in from outside, where he seemed to live, and we would watch reruns of the Dick Van Dyke Show, Gilligan’s Island, and Beverly Hillbillies, like that, and then That’s My Mama, Good Times, Happy Days, Welcome Back, Kotter, and Chico & The Man, like that, then the cop shows like Baretta, Rockford Files, and Starsky & Hutch, like that, until it was time to go to sleep at 11.
One night at Malo told us we should be in bed. “All right, kids, get to sleep,” he said, a cigarette hanging out the front of his mouth.
Sleep! But there was so much TV left to watch!
If we went to bed now we would just lie in our beds for hours, tapping our feet, cracking jokes, and laughing until my sister peed on herself.
“Get to sleep,” Malo said, towering over us. But we kept our eyes on the TV.
And that’s when the belt came out.
We were no strangers to being hit. My mother favored her chancletas for a quick smacks across our legs or behinds. One time, though, she was cooking with a metal spatula. I had done something wrong, dropped an egg or spilled milk, and she was yelling at me. My brother was nearby and laughed. She immediately turned and hit him in the arm with the spatula. It split his skin and he bled. I think she felt bad, though, later.
What Malo had was a thick leather belt. He pulled me up first by my skinny left arm so that he could get at the back at my legs. Smack! It was sharp and hard and it hurt like hell.
“Ay!” I yelled.
Smack! Smack! Smack!
“That’s . . . what . . . you . . . get,” he said, a smack between each word.
My brother went running and caught only one in the back of his legs.
I wriggled free of Malo and ran crying, “Mami, mami,” and “It’s not fair,” all the way to my bed.
My brother cried and then stopped to listen to me cry, then he would cry again. I did the same, listening to him in the darkness. My sister, who had been listening to the A.M. radio, immediately got in her own bed and began crying with us.
Later, my mother came in to say good night and kissed me on the forehead and said, “You see. Malo is a man. You have to listen and respect him.” Then she reminded me to say my prayers.