Note:
This fanfic, like the previous one, takes place in Michigan (United States) but in this one the protagonist is part of an ethnic minority so let's do a mental exercise and assume that the dialogues and other things that are in "Spanish" are the parts written in italics (the slanted typography).
Italics = Spanish
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U. N. Owen: Thanks for commenting on the story, my friend...
Because a few people said the same thing on wtt I decided to listen to you and from now on I will post the story with this new format.
04-. Subway Stories
The sound of knives and forks clattering against each other or against the ceramic dinnerware filled the room; Cj and Carl ate hungrily, surely they would finish long before their older sister who was barely touching her enfrijoladas.
"So... tell us, dear, how was your day? How's school going?" Under the table and with a poorly disguised smile, Frida nudged her husband. "What? I'm just interested in our daughter's academic day."
"You know you can tell us anything, baby, we love you and we would never judge your actions... as long as what you do makes you happy," said Frida after helping Carlitos cut his chicken breast into small pieces and controlling her urge to laugh. "I don't know, maybe you have some secret that you're ashamed to tell us and..."
Disregarding the anguished look on his granddaughter's face as she was caught between his son and daughter-in-law, Hector Casagrande took a big gulp from his glass filled to the brim with soda cola before turning toward the kitchen.
"Dear, please come and eat something, all the food is very tasty." Terrified, the old man discovered that, although he was no longer making eye contact, he could still feel his granddaughter's silent plea for help. "Please Rosita, if you don't come quickly your food will get cold...and I don't think these two gluttons we have for grandsons will save you anything."
Unable, from the comfort of his chair, to convince his wife to stop whatever it was she was doing locked in the kitchen, and also to get away from his granddaughter's tormentors, the septuagenarian finally got up and poked his head around the doorway to the kitchen.
"Oh for heaven's sake, Rosa, I'm sure the girl will eat when she gets hungry, or at least you should..."
"I should what? Héctor?" Rosa walked steadily into the living room carrying a small tupper and with her husband walking behind, ignoring the loud conversation, or rather sermon, about 'planning well for the future' that Carlos and his wife were giving to their very nervous daughter. ""Waiting for Maria to come back from work for those two to fight again? I don't think so, and if you're so worried about me not eating, don't worry, I've got enough for both of us."
And without further ado, Rosa slammed the door on her way out of the apartment, leaving Hector standing in the hallway. To try to shake off the feeling of helplessness, the old man snapped his mouth and turned around, bumping into Carl.
"Is she going with Ronnie? Do you think we should go with her?"
"Those are ladies' problems, compadrito," Hector tousled the boy's perfect hairdo with one hand and gently pushed him back to the table. "From experience I know that it's better to let them manage on their own... besides, I'm hungry, aren't you?"
"There's no food left, besides mom and dad keep lecturing Carlota."
"Shit..."
Having her hands full, Rosa had to resort to an old trick to get into her daughter's apartment; with a slight hip bump she managed to open the door and slip inside before it bounced against the wall and closed again. As she had expected, the whole place was silent and dark, the only light she could make out was filtering in from her granddaughter's room under the door.
"Mija, don't you want to have some dinner?" by placing her ear against the door, Rosa heard how her granddaughter moved on her bed before staying still «she's on one of those little calls again» she thought slightly irritated. "Alright, if you don't want to get out of there at least open the door, it's rude to be talking to a piece of wood."
Offended and irritated at receiving silence as the only answer to her words, Rosa was about to unleash all her indignation in the form of a scolding when something similar to crying against a pillow reached her ears. Reapplying her hip trick, only much stronger, the old woman forced open the door of the old closet, it was pure luck that it wasn't locked with key, and before she could even set foot inside the improvised room, she was stopped by a hug.
Surprised to see the girl cry, as well as to feel her desperate embrace, Rosa almost spilled the warm contents of her tupper full of food before being able to contain her granddaughter's trembling body.
"What happened to you?! Baby, are you okay...?!"
"No, I'm not okay! I think Lincoln dump me!"
"What do you say...? Lincoln... Lincoln Loud?" Rosa was having a hard time understanding, although it was true that both teenagers were really close, Ronalda had never told her anything about a relationship and as far as she knew, the girl told her everything. "Why do you think he doesn't want to be with you anymore? No, wait... Since when are you together? Why didn't you tell me...? He didn't do anything to you, did he?!"
"We had a fight last week, it's just... It's just that we were on a video-call, but I could tell he was very... I don't know... distant!... and I was telling him about my day, but he wasn't paying attention to me and then I exploded!" after speaking so fast, Anne tried to regulate her breathing; the result was a watery snot dripping out of her nose, "and I told him... I told him 'if you're going to be a jerk I'd rather not tell you anything, after all, nobody is forcing you to listen to my day, but I thought you'd at least care!' or… or something like that…"
"That doesn't sound so bad... maybe a little selfish of you, but what woman doesn't like a little attention from her man? huh? "Feeling his granddaughter's slender shoulders shake helplessly under her hands, Rosa carefully carried her over to the bed. "But I guess there's more you haven't told me yet, aren't there?"
"And then he gave me the stinky eye... as if he didn't care about me before he even told me 'I'm not in the mood Ronalda', those were his exact words" a new outburst of crying came "I wanted to tell him off, but he just ended up saying 'we'll talk about it later, how about Friday?' I didn't know what to say so I just nodded and then he hung up on me!"
«Today is Friday» thought Rosa twisting her mouth before turning slightly and seeing her granddaughter's laptop turned on and crumpled on the bed with a "calling..." message on the screen, she knew at that moment that the matter was serious, she would have to think very well the next words if she wanted to end the problem and not make it worse.
"I don't know how these 'nintendos' work nowadays, but... If the computer call didn't work, have you tried sending him a message like you always do...? Maybe he's busy right now and can't...?"
"I already tried and that's the worst of it, look!" With some rudeness, Ronalda put the cellphone's screen a few centimeters away from her grandmother's face, Rosa had to take the device herself and move it away a little bit to be able to see clearly. "What do you see?"
The text conversation of the last few days were only messages from her girl to the Loud boy; at first they were only threats and some rather long sentences full of anger, but as the days went by without receiving a reply, the intimidations gave way to wails asking for forgiveness.
"I can't... I can't see anything, he has no photo and the messages haven't reached him since noon..."
"Exactly, that's what it looks like when someone block you!" A bitter cry that she'd heard many times before from Frida or her oldest granddaughter, but she never thought she'd hear from Ronnie, filled the small room. "Grandma, I screwed up! I'm sure he's already got another girl...! A nicer, nicer one...!"
Rosa wanted to tell her that she doubted it a lot, « girl, he's not exactly a stud or an adonis... although I didn't think he was the kind of jerk who would dump you without showing his face either» fortunately grandma's wisdom acted before her mouth did. Cradling the pubescent girl in her big arms and almost sitting her on her lap she said in a whisper:
"Then you know what kind of person he is, my mother would tell you " send him to fuck off" and to tell the truth I don't think your reaction was the right one, but without a doubt he gets the prize for asshole of the year, what's more... I swear that if I see him again..." the phone rang from the living room of the apartment behind theirs backs, interrupting Rosa and calling Ronnie Anne's attention.
"It's him," the girl gasped, before jumping out of bed with a slightly composed heart. "I'll answer it!"
"No child," Rosa gently pulled her granddaughter's hand and sat her back on the bed. "Let me talk to that animal first, while you... you calm down a little, don't let him hear you crying, don't let him make you less."
Marching into the living room, and with her granddaughter sniffling snot behind her, Rosa walked towards the phone, lifted it up and with a stern tone she greeted.
"Santiago Residence, who's talking?"
A few seconds passed in silence, seconds in which the old woman's countenance changed completely.
"Yeah, sure... here I tell her... do you want me to tell Bobby too?" A still greater sadness seized the girl's heart as she realized that it was not Lincoln who was speaking. "Ah! He already knows... tomorrow...? yes, no problem... ok, take care María."
Completely pale, and looking a little older, Rosa hung up.
"It wasn't Lincoln, was it?"
"No... girl, listen carefully, okay? There was a car accident or something, your brother is coming tomorrow to take you to the hospital with Lincoln."
-o-
The sun was beginning to set; the usual orange glow of the sunset was sliding down the walls of the buildings. The cars that early on promised to saturate the streets that Friday were gradually replaced by patrol cars and the occasional ambulance. Ronnie Anne was just arriving to another corner that was unknown to her, of course the streets were still familiar to her, it was her city after all, even if those weren't her paths. Ever since she started walking in random directions, in a childish attempt to run away from that strange man in the white suit, she didn't know exactly where she was, her intuition only told her that she was far enough away «Far enough of what?»
Actually, she had been looking for a convenience store for several streets, but she had no luck; her throat was starting to burn so dry and the desperation caused by thirst was taking over her mind, she was about to give up when on the other side of the street she saw the huge sign "SUBWAY" with the usual little arrow pointing downwards. The station, as usual, was surrounded by tiny stalls of all kinds of street food and also an infinity of knick-knacks.
The stunned teenager crossed the street with the intention of buying a bottle of water in one of those makeshift stores when a crowd enveloped her and pushed her towards the subway stairs. Just seeing the amount of people anxious to get down was enough for Ronnie to understand that trying to fight her way back to the surface would be impossible. Trapped by the crowd she managed to glimpse above her and on the walls at her sides the usual advertising signs, she read aloud the most striking one that said: 'The sea of tranquility is on the Moon'.
"Well, yes, we all know it's not down here." Ronnie said in such perfect Spanish that she herself was surprised, an anonymous man laughed behind her.
Dazed by the bright lights of the lamps and the deafening noise of hundreds of people walking in the same direction, she arrived, almost without noticing it, at the machines that allowed the entrance, where without having to put a ticket she was spat onto the platform.
Only then, thanks to having a little more space to see around her, did Ronalda discover a man looking at her, probably the same one who had laughed at the unintentional joke. It was an old Indian man with reddish skin and white hair, wearing a tie and a beige suit, to Ronnie's eyes it was evident that in another century he must have been a muscular man. The old man smiled at the girl when he was discovered, his eyes, a little sunken between his eyebrows and his cheekbones, seemed to sparkle.
"The train is always late," the old man remarked as if it were the most normal thing. "I am sure that when it arrives it will be crowded as hell itself."
The Santiago girl could hardly hear him since as soon as the old man had said that, the train arrived on the platform, its cars turned into an orange blur. The others waiting next to her on the platform as soon as they saw the train arrive began to jostle against each other to gain some advantage so they could enter first. Ronalda turned in surprise at the anxiety of those around her. When she discovered that there were indeed several rows of sweaty people behind her, ready to do anything to get in, she swallowed hard. Belatedly she realized what a dangerous situation she was in.
"I'll take care that nothing happens to you," exclaimed the old Indian, now Ronnie noticed that he was holding the hand of a young woman with black hair, perhaps the young woman had been by his side since the beginning but only now that she had turned completely around she had seen her, "Just remember that when you enter you must not stay glued to the door and you'll be fine.
After dismissing the companion's apathetic look, Ronnie wanted to thank the man for his attention, but she hadn't even finished formulating a sentence with her throat numb when the train's doors opened and a wall of people rushed out almost pushing the wall of people waiting outside.
"You know Inspector McCann? I had the dream again, the one where I'm lost in a red desert and a war explodes in front of me," said a somewhat hoarse girl's voice from somewhere in the crowd seconds before Ronalda was sucked along with half the crowd into the subway car.
After uselessly facing the combined force of the crowd, the Latina ended up at the back of the carriage, compressed between the bulky body of the old man and the breasts of her black-haired companion who preferred not to look at her directly and who apparently could only express her dissatisfaction by frowning at her and giving the old man several furious looks. The train started abruptly causing everyone to stagger inside.
Although she remembered that being surrounded by large numbers of people always caused her headaches and nausea, Ronalda couldn't help but look around greedily. Feeling so many bodies, so many breaths, so many voices, so many that some even seemed to come from her own mind she began to feel strangely comforted, her throat still hurt, but at least she had stopped feeling persecuted. 'Life is sweet' read a juice billboard. « For those who have lived many lives, it is not so sweet» the strange voice inside her mind answered again in Spanish.
Her mind began to wander through all the advertisements, promotional posters and conversations trapped inside the carriage. Then, calmer, she realized that she didn't know what line the train was running on, so why had she boarded the train instead of standing next to a ticket counter? She also realized that she didn't remember where she had come from, what she had done before waking up covered in ashes in the middle of a sidewalk. She just didn't remember.
A soft, melodious voice that was trying to sound hoarse and monotonous brought her out of her thoughts.
"Excuse me, girl," the black-haired woman asked, seemingly more defensive and serious than before. "Do you know where you are?"
The adult woman had almost embedded herself against the wall to avoid physical contact with her, Ronnie couldn't help but blush as he noticed the expression of triumph the woman gave the red-skinned old man when she didn't answer the question. The old man, on the other hand, looked at her calmly, as if it was normal for him for people to ignore where they were. Anne tried to hold back a nervous laugh, she had never felt so foolish in her entire life.
"What are you laughing at, girl?" asked the young woman even more defensively.
"Leave her alone, Angela, can't you see the state the poor thing is in? I'm sure something bad has happened to her."
Suddenly, the train stopped, the lights went out for a moment and people let out a collective sigh of annoyance, but it started up again after a few seconds with a jerk that sent Ronnie's body against the woman's belly and her mind back to the conversation the two adults were having.
"What do you mean you didn't know about the fire? Angela, but it was in one of the most historic neighborhoods in the whole city!"
To her right stood three people, at first glance they looked like two adult women and a girl; the heat was beginning to melt the blonde woman's thick make-up giving her face an uneven appearance, contrasting completely with the completely normal face of her red-haired companion.
"Awful! It's so hot I can't even breathe!" said both the blonde woman and the girl, which struck Ronnie as odd, but not enough to make a fuss.
"Hey shapeshifter, grab the bag tightly, we don't want all the evidence we've worked for to get lost."
"Aha, if they take it away from me, they'll have to take me with the bag and everything... besides," the other one began to say between her teeth and with an unfriendly expression, "we had already talked about this... to keep a low profile." this time only the blonde woman with the deformed face spoke.
"I'm sorry, I'm still not used to your new appearance, you understand that all this is still new to me..."
Ronalda turned her attention back to the ceiling 'Working and believing in our nation is the way to...' the billboard was incomplete.
"I'm telling you, if you keep insisting on this, you're going to get disappointed again. Remember those other three teenagers that you said only needed help?"
Ronnie stretched as far as he could and caught a glimpse, behind the sea of bodies, of a blonde and pretty woman walking quickly among the people, almost as if she were passing through them. And the group of chatty women? Another unsolved mystery of the subway, maybe they had to move from place, they would appear somewhere when they got off.
"Give a nice gift to your wife, to your mother with the new kitchen-gun...!" the voice of a peddler was only heard for a moment before it was lost with the rest of the passengers.
'Any abuse will be punished' warned another incomplete sign on the side of the emergency lever.
"Another fart? Really? How badly do you want to put me in misery?!" the voice of the red-haired woman who accompanied the other one with excessive make-up sounded again, however, Ronnie couldn't locate the new source of the noise. Although she couldn't see the women, she could still smell the famous fart, and boy, did it make her want to climb out a window! The stench reminded him of the smell of sulfur or burning hair...
'For that future we want so much...' that was a nice poster, too bad it was to advertise a new political candidate.
"So what? You want to take her to a hospital?"
The metro stopped in the middle of a new station, although it didn't look like it was going to open the doors or move forward. Faced with this new setback, some passengers began to show their more civic-minded side.
"Hey, Apu-rip-off, don't push me!"
"The new Paul's Bunion Cream has the soothing formula to make your bunions…!"
"All you need to do is just grab her by the…!"
The blonde in the light aquamarine dress was walking quickly back through the people, past all the commotion. She walked with a quick and steady pace, she seemed to be looking for someone inside the carriage.
In the seats closest to her, Ronalda saw a nerd, skiny young man stubbornly holding a bouquet of flowers 'get well soon, aunt May...' a handbag almost crushed the bouquet but the geek reacted in time, moving his hand just in the right moment to save his gift. Next to him, a fat, ill-faced short-man in a greasy red T-shirt stretched his legs rudely towards the seats on either side of him while exclaiming a lot of swearing to no one.
The red skinned Indian and his young companion had fallen silent. 'The future is in technical careers' a warm feeling began to fill Ronnie's body again, though the sweat refused to come out, her mind began to overflow with fragments of faces; some she saw in the subway car, others only appeared when she closed her eyes, voices and bodies that inevitably blurred between reality and hallucination. Her legs began to give out, but the crowd inside the train supported her, keeping her on her feet. The Indian of the voluminous body in which she had been fixed remained firm, creating a small bubble of free space so that she and his black-haired companion didn't have to suffer all the discomforts of the subway. The Latina girl wondered if anyone else, also with white hair, had ever given her the same attention.
A recording was broadcast over the loudspeakers: "Dear passengers, by official disposition you are informed that the present unit will not stop until..." and when it finished there was a loud jerk, the train had restarted.
She didn't go to the ground as she thought she would, because the black-haired woman had caught her midway.
"Another unforeseen public-work. These fools in the city hall don't know how to do anything right," complained a new, anonymous voice from a seat.
Then Ronnie noticed that breathing was becoming difficult, her eyes were blurring and her legs gave way completely under her weight.
"It's so hot! here"
"We need someone to pull the emergency lever!" The black-haired woman, who was now literally carrying Ronnie's body, shouted in desperation. "Somebody pull the lever, damn it!"
A newfound pain in her right hand caught Anne's full attention, as she brought the trembling hand up, Ronnie discovered that it held tightly the old crucifix her grandmother had given her as soon as she had arrived in the city «I have no family anymore, the only one that exists is me, fire always consumes everything» claimed a voice in her mind, "The sea of the moon is in tranquility..."
"Girl, are you okay?"
"No chicharron, I don't get off here," Anne said before fainting.
-o-
He had been taken to the A1 district police station on East 13th Street, the largest in all of Great Lakes city.
Bored, Carlos Casagrande counted fourteen men locked up with him in the same cell, from the typical muscular gang members rubbing their hands together in a vain attempt to wipe off their fingerprints to the occasional dazed teenager with disheveled clothes and a faint smell of cheap alcohol.
Having seen similar scenes countless times in his youth didn't make him feel any better. Although that had been in another time and under other circumstances.
He was almost twenty-two when he decided that enough debauchery had been enough. Had he continued in that path, he probably wouldn't have survived long enough to see the birth of his first child.
To distract himself a little from his old memories, Carlos passed his gaze over all the arrestees until he finally settled on a young man who was trying to get warm; it was the first time he saw someone trying to keep his body heat just by just rubbing his hands together, what kind of crazy guy goes out on the street without a sweater in the last days of November? the young man was almost the same age as he was when he started to get into serious trouble. His lips were starting to turn blue and a bruise completely closed one of his eyes.
Seeing the young man begin to shake uncontrollably, Carlos began to worry; soon he would be lying motionless, unconscious and breathing heavily.
It was obvious from the frown on his face that besides being frozen, the young man was angry, sore and quite nervous, the fact that a mature man with thick glasses was staring at him from the other end of the room didn't help his mood either.
"You got a problem, old man?"
The other thirteen detainees perked up almost instantly when they realized they had a potential fight on their hands.
"We're locked in a cell, son, I think we all have a problem," Carlos replied, the defiant look the young mobster was giving him was lost as he heard several of the men chuckle.
Now it was the young man who was staring at Carlos.
"I know you."
The teacher nodded.
"Street 1109"
"You're one of those Latinos from the grocery store "El Mercado". Fuck, you once kicked my father's ass."
"I guess he wanted to rob us or something."
"He tried to. Now he's an obese drug addict. But back then he was strong. Boxing champion at his high school."
"Is your father's last name Grant, by any chance? I think I remember him, the bastard thought he was the toughest... did you know the guy tried to rob us just to impress a girl?"
"Yes, to some Frida girl, he still tells that story to this day... my name is Ted Grant, by the way," The beaten man stopped shuddering for a moment to shake hands with the man in front of him. "Even now our neighbors keep telling him 'you shouldn't have messed with that family' I think he should have been more careful."
"He and some of his friends broke our windows during my first week in the family business, and as soon as we replaced them they painted racist slurs on the walls" the other men in the lockup began to lost interest as soon as they saw the pair chatting animatedly. "I cleaned up that mess too, and having had enough of those jokes, I sat down to wait. Not a month had passed when I caught your father trying to get a can of soup for free. I gave him something to think about and he ran off with his friends. That must have been over twenty-five years ago... since then the business hasn't had a single problem."
Ted looked quizzically at Carlos as he handed him his woolen gloves, the gesture, though strange, was very appreciative...at least enough to encourage the young man to ask a question he felt, would get him into trouble.
"By the way... What did you do to end up in here? Did you get caught beating up another thief?"
"I left that violent life behind, I'm a professor at Chavez University now... although I did get arrested for a fight... I guess you're here for the same thing."
"...I heard your niece started a fire..."
The small smile on the Latino man's face disappeared.
"That's something no one knows for sure, I don't think so," the man suddenly gave his young companion a cold look. "And that scenario becomes even more improbable if we take into account that two FBI agents without badges were trapped in the fire... and as far as anyone knows, no one has reported officially their deaths."
"Why would the government hide the death of two officers? And who did you beat to end up here?"
"To my ex brother-in-law."
"Carlos Casasgrande! Carlos Casasgrande, come out of the cell calmly!"
-o-
"See? she was just dehydrated, I told you she wasn't a bad person," with an unconscious Ronalda in his arms, George Roth, the red-skinned Indian man, waited for his wife, Angela Roth, to open the apartment door for him. "We'll just take care of her for one night and then I'll take her to a police station in the morning."
"I'm not worried about her heat stroke... you know I can see certain things in people."
"I have never doubted your clairvoyance, love, I only doubt your goodwill."
"On the subway... when she fainted, for a moment I saw something else in her... something huge... something frightening."
Sorry for the one week delay, re-translating something you thought was finished is quite a lot of work.