Buying blow Toa Baja

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Buying blow Toa Baja

My parents conceived me on a sofa in a department store. My mother worked in the underwear section and was a second-year nursing student. My father worked in the household appliances, hardware, and gardening section, and was a fifth-year social sciences student. Until that morning in May. No one heard them either, despite the fact that the sofa still had a plastic covering on the cushions to protect it from any stains. The sofa was more cream than yellow; it had solid wood legs and fit three people comfortably. As soon as my mother knew she was pregnant, she bought the sofa. My father hauled the rest in his Mazda pickup to save on delivery charges. Not that it mattered much that my father hauled their bed in his pickup; my mother slept on the sofa for most of her pregnancy, because of awful heartburn. Sometime later, I used the cushions as steps to get onto the TV stand and jump to the floor, like someone demonstrating the laws of gravity with his chin. When my younger sister was born, the sofa was my nuclear bomb shelter—the lamp on the side table was the mushroom cloud after the explosion. I saw the best concerts of my life on the sofa: the only time my father picked up the broom was to turn it into an electric guitar, and on the few occasions my mother held the TV remote, it was to use it as a microphone. I found my mother sleeping on the couch only once, because she had bought a high-priced vacuum cleaner without consulting anyone. But, honestly, my father held the record for sleeping there: once because he came home with lipstick on his neck; another time because he arrived at five in the morning, drunk; and the last time because my mother caught him kissing a cousin who was staying with us because her husband had given her a black eye. My father slept there for an entire month. Until my grandfather peed on the couch. That was the first sign of his forgetfulness. We had to move the couch to the patio because of the stench. We had to wash it with Clorox, and some of the color came off. When it dried, they got it reupholstered and my mother had no choice but to let my father back in their room. When the department store where my father worked closed its doors, the sofa was our ally. During that time I stopped eating candy, only to save money and leave it for my father. I was never chubby, but I lost a few pounds and even got a girl to notice me. I think my father always knew that I was the one who left him the coins, because when I started college, I took the sofa with me to the Rio Piedras residence hall. I still remember how hard we worked to carry it up the stairs. After moving it into my small room, we had a beer to celebrate our success. Sitting there, passing a cigarette back and forth, he told me about his university adventures, about the rocks he threw during the strike, and about his eventual expulsion. I knew he was lying a little, that he exaggerated. Yet his lie was restrained, even glorious—a tender and honest way to hide the failure that I had brought to his world. It was then that I saw him at peace with himself. Or so I thought. One day I found him asleep with a photocopied book of poems open on his chest. When I picked them up, I saw that they had been underlined. He apologized a thousand times, and from then on, if he wanted to see me, he left a note on the door or waited for me in a bar close by: in El Refugio, in El Boricua, or anywhere else that had a pool table. When I earned my degree in business administration, I returned to Levittown along with the sofa, and I went to live with my father. My mother had moved and was about to marry a retired PE teacher I hated as soon as I saw him. And so I did, joining him cleaning patios. Over time, we secured a contract with the Municipality of Toa Baja to clean and cut the grass of the Levittown baseball fields. Those were the best times we spent together. When we finished with the grass and picked everything up, we played baseball. He batted and I threw, then he threw and I batted, and meanwhile we talked. He told me that things had changed, that people no longer respected the baseball fields, that they used them as if they were garbage dumps, that he had come across dry Christmas trees, moldy washing machines, toilets, and even horses grazing. Other times he said that he still loved my mother, he had failed as a father, and all the things that a parent can tell a child when they begin to grow bald together. Months later he was diagnosed with cancer. He spent his last days on the old sofa, watching baseball games with me, documentaries on wildlife, fishing, Nazis, athletes, cooking, giant squid fighting with whales, and even one on space debris. We made lists of classic movies that my father wanted me to watch with him, until he died on the sofa watching the All-Star game that paid tribute to his favorite player: Ted Williams. I had gone out to buy his diapers, milk, and beer, and when I arrived, Ted Williams was on a golf cart, waving his cap and receiving a long round of applause. That applause was so long even God had to be envious. I thought my father had fallen asleep, and I put the things in the refrigerator. I opened a beer and sat down beside him to see how Tony Gwynn helped Ted Williams, already blind, throw the first pitch of the game. When I touched him, he was cold. Years later I found it interesting to learn that my father died of the same cancer Tony Gwynn suffered from. The smell of my father never left the sofa. The cleaning products I used gave only momentary relief. The sofa was old and had begun to produce lint moths. I took it out to the curb, beside the dumpsters, so the garbagemen would take it away. Furious, I never called. Every time they knocked on the door, I told them to go to hell. Of all my neighbors, those in front were the most insistent. It was then that I started my own war. One of the addicts turned out to be a famous boxer from Toa Baja, or so I thought. Tired of the looks from my neighbors, I bought a chainsaw to cut the sofa up and throw the pieces into the dumpster. But the morning I was going to do it, I discovered that a cat had given birth to her kittens under the cushions. There were three: two white and one with black and white spots. I gave each one the name of a dead baseball player, except the mother. One fine day the three cats disappeared and with them my closest neighbors. One afternoon a strange woman knocked on the door and asked if she could use the sofa—or what was left of it—to train. She was dark-skinned, had tattooed eyebrows, her hair closely cropped; she was short, muscular, wore exercise clothes, and carried that air of happiness of someone who had been unhappy. I was quiet for a bit, thinking about her proposal. She had a broken tooth, chipped diagonally. The first two days I thought I was watching an animal. I peeked out the window and saw her pummel the sofa. Sometimes she put the cushions between her legs and threw her fists as if at an opponent. She even bit the cloth, pulling out the wadding and then spitting it out. On the third day I offered to help. I held a cushion, like boxing trainers do, so she could throw her punches and kicks. She was really strong, and almost every time she knocked me to the ground. She only trained twice the second week. She said yes. That same day, when I was coming back from the grocery store with beers and snacks, I saw a sofa in front of an abandoned house and I felt jealous. I imagined the worst. I tried to calm down. I went home and waited for her. I went to the mouth of the river, stopped the pickup in front of the abandoned houses in the Third Section, in front of the ruins of a school and an abandoned gas station you can see from PR The one from the Fourth had small flowers, the one from the Third was made of microfiber, and the one on the beach seemed like it had molted its skin. I went to a gas station, filled two containers, and burned all the sofas. I watched each one burn in the rearview mirror as I drove away in the pickup. Since it was daytime and the mirror was long, the flames looked like butter on a table knife. It was wonderful. I sensed that all the shitty things that had happened in my life would never happen to me again. Two days later, she knocked on my door. I held up the cushions and resisted her blows better than ever. In a moment of carelessness, she knocked me down. She put me in an anaconda hold, cinching her thighs around my chest. I imitated cries of pain, hit the ground, and gave up. She raised her arms in victory, and when she finished exhaling like the noise of people screaming her name, she looked at my face between her thighs and smiled. Soon it would be night. Beneath me, freshly cut grass, and in the sky the moon was also missing half of itself. Cezanne Cardona Morales is a novelist, short story writer, professor, and columnist born in In he published his first novel, La Velocidad de Lo Perdido. In he published Levittown Mon Amour , a short story collection. He is also a translator of poetry and prose from the Spanish; his publications include the full-length poetry collections Image of Absence , by Jeannette L. Then the ivy shot up and closed in on her, snake-like, twisting around her feet and ankles. The fire was talked about all over. She finds it embarrassing to waste a Saturday morning on this nonsense. Home Subscribe Issues Support Us. October 21, Get Our Newsletter. Discover the extraordinary in The Common. 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