Friday night (Back in the day)

Graciella held court every friday on the brown rug. she had lived in this apartment in the projects ever since their place in Bushwick burned down. The city relocated Abuela and her family to the Ravenswood projects in Astoria. It was there after a few decades that she began to reknit the family that remained with her friday gatherings. My brother and I lived there with her, witness to thall the random going ons of our family. It was kind of like the land of the broken toys, but for real.

Bosco was always the first to arrive. Named after that old chocolate drink popular back in the day, he was just one of Abuelitas many sons who had lost his way. He would make the trek over from his home in brooklyn to the projects by bicycle. It was a journey to welcome in the weekend with all the others who would arrive throughout the day. At three thirty on the dot, he would ride up to the kitchen window on a skinny little road bike that looked like it was just driven out of the bike store showroom. Of course the bike was older than me, but Bosco always took good care of things so that they tended to last well past their expiration date. He carried with him a double magnum of pink chablis, the kind so cheap the liquor store didn’t even bother storing it behind thier bulletproof glass. “Justin or Jared, one of you come get the back door.”, came the usual greeting. We lived on the first floor of the projects so he would always peek his head in to see if we were hiding from him. Though living on the first floor was a boon when shoplifters came calling to peddle their wares, it was not good for reasons such as Bosco or the occasional stray bullet that found its way around the neighborhood. Why in the world he didn’t use the front entrance is beyond my comprehension. His bicycle could have had him there in ten seconds flat. Once he spotted my brother or I it was too late. Within seconds he had jedi mind tricked us into getting the door with the treat of letting us walk his bike down the hallway and into the apartment. Next came hugs and kisses, the placing of the chablis in the freezer to chill, the moving of a chair from the kitchen onto the rug… Then and only then would he complete his arrival by stripping down to his wife-beater and acid washed jeans to regale my grandmother with the events of the passing week.

Bosco had been a master craftsman, a tool and die maker by trade, good with his hands. Things fell apart for him after two failed marriages and a few bouts of alcoholism, the only inheritance a Benitez could count on. All I ever saw him make was a case for his cigarettes using masking tape. I didn’t know such things could be made of masking tape. Every Friday I would watch as he meticulously repaired his case with few well placed pieces of tape, reinforcing the bottom that had frayed through the friction created riding over the Queensboro bridge. As an adolescent Bosco had been one of abuelas six children who were parceled out to relatives after her first husbands death. Money was tight and there was no way she could support six children on a garment workers salary, much less attract a new husband. He went to grandma Fefa, his fathers mother. Decades later after trying and failing to start a family of his own, he returned to live and care for Fefa. A perfect storm of his latest wifes abandonment concided with Fefa’s first stroke. His story always began the same, “These fucking home care attendants don’t know shit. They treat Fefa as if she was a rag doll with no idea of what was going on around her. I’d rather do it myself than god forbid she get hurt.” Abuela would generally respond with some sort of insult towards home care attendants that seemed more directed at calming Bosco down than at home care attendants generally. His complaining usually went on for about half an hour until he realized that Abuela was no longer listening because a rerun of her favorite detective show, “Hunter” had begun.

Bosco’s attention then turned to his sneakers. Homeboy was obsessed with them. They were the whitest champion brand hightop’s I have ever seen. Bosco had previously and religiously rocked a pair of crispy Chuck Taylors. He often struggled to keep them clean enough so as not be upset about their less than pristine condition. When he was introduced to the wonders of synthetic materials that the eighties sneaker boom produced, there was no looking back. While “Hunter” played in the backround, both sneakers were plopped on the kitchen table and treated to the most vigorous scrubbing by toothbrush you could ever imagine. Dirt had no chance against Bosco and his toothbrush.
Much like his sneakers, every aspect of Bosco’s appearance was meticulously cared for. He would do hundreds of jumping jacks and hip twists every afternoon to maintain his figure, not stopping even on his friday visits. He did them with such a fervor that it scared the crap out of abuela, distracting her from her tv shows. My brother and I would watch him carefully trim his mustache over the bathroom sink, using scissors borrowed from our neighbors every Friday evening. We sat on the toilet as he went through his routine, working a miniature comb he had through his stache’, trimming a little here and a little there along the way. Once done with his grooming regimen, Bosco would return to his spot on the rug and pull from his bag whatever book he was reading that week along. Also appearing from this bag was a tattered dictionary whose cover had been given the same masking tape treatment as all of Boscos other prize possessions. Bosco and his bag were the Puerto Rican version of “Felix the Cat”.
This dude was one of the most voracious readers I have ever met in my life. Every week he had a new book out from the library, constantly writing down every word he didn’t know to be looked up at a future date. He would troll the new arrivals sections at our housing projects local branch of the NYPL, searching for whatever new hot novel was out to read. He was a mystery and suspense type of guy, the one who imagined himself A gumshoe embroiled in a web of intrigue, escaping danger at the last moment with his life and the love of a good woman. He would spend the rest of the afternoon in that chair on the rug, sipping Chablis on ice, his attention alternating between the world of his novel and the running commentary he and my grandmother kept up through whatever rerun was on television. By the time he got too drunk to read anymore, he was well lubricated for the evening activities.
The doorbell rings. It’s uncle Henry. He bears a striking resemblance to Bosco. They both carry the Benitez curse of what appear at first sight to be large wing like protrusions where ears should be. It turns out they just have big ears, a fate that awaited me upon hitting puberty.

Henry was considered a big dog amongst those who took part in Abuelas Friday gatherings. He drank rum pulled from one of the higher shelves in the liquor store, paid for with money earned as a foreman in the garment district. The steady paycheck he garnered gave him alot of juice in my family. I had always thought he drank rum so he could catch up to uncle Bosco quicker. Bosco had a five hour head start, a luxury afforded to him by his unemployment and skill with a ten speed. Henry had his own keys to my grandmothers place and was able to let himself in. Several stints in the navy had seen his arms become peppered with tattoos of mermaids and eagles. These were invisible to those at his workplace but much like Bosco, his arrival at abuelas came along with the requisite stripping down to his wifebeater and pants. He loved to tell the story about where he got each tattoo. The stories were essential as the tattoos were now so faded that the memories were all that remained to explain the dark blotches on his arms. After serving himself a drink, he sat on the living room couch. The tv was turned off momentarily as abuela began de-briefing Henry on his week.

“Mijo, how was your week?”
“The same old bullshit ma’ , aint nothing changed from last week.”
“Bueno, such is life.”

Just like that, the tv was turned back on and Henry and Bosco began their usual banter about nothing and everything. Bosco complained about the home health care attendant and Henry compained about how his wife Gladys had joined some pentecostal church and was slowly funneling their savings into the church offers. Where it gets interesting is when Henry begins to complain about the fact that his sister in law, Hilda is moving in with them. Bosco sits there, nodding his head knowingly at Henry. My brother and I are sitting on the floor pretending to watch tv, all the while listening intently to their conversation.

You see, Henry isn’t really mad that his sister in law is moving in with his family. Actually, they had been sleeping together for over 5 years, since her husband fell into a coma and became an invalid. Things became more serious when his wife decided to get hitched to the Pentecostal church and moved to the couch. Never one to make a scene, Henry “massaged” the situation so that it was Gladys that begged Henry to allow her sister to come live with them, arguing that it was what good Christians were supposed to do. Henry, being the devout catholic he was, preferred to live in sin day by day than get divorced, “reluctantly” agreed to the whole thing. The complaining between Henry and Bosco goes on until more people arrive and the discussion expands.
My uncle David and cousin David Andrew were staying with us at the time. David had been clean a year after a decade long love affair with cocaine and its cousin crack. His wife Marilyn was not able to make the transition as smoothly and ended up in a psychiatric facility on Staten Island. Their home fell apart shortly after and the two Davids were taken in by abuela. Unemployed and with no palce to go, they slept on the nasty ass rug, where many others who abuela has sheltered have made their home during their intermittent periods of hardship.

Tio David fancied himself our resident comedian. He had taken a few classes in his twenties at the laugh factory in the city. He never missed an opportunity to perform material/bust balls. On friday nights at the house we were a captive audience. It not that he wasn’t funny, he was actually hilarious. The problem was his humor was that of our family. It mostly consisted of touching the most tender, vulnerable parts of people and exposing them for the world, or at least the family, to see. It was extreme yet not the most brutal form of the way my family had to demonstrate affection. Also, a year off cocaine still made him an irritable prick.

He started in on the easiest target, uncle Bosco’s sneakers. Though sharp witted, Bosco was not match for him in his drunken state. David made the rounds to uncle Henry and the topic switched to pentecostalism. This was a bit more difficult as Henry would occasionally throw David a couple of dollars to aid his job search. David was careful to make the jokes seem about my aunt Gladys and her religious beliefs when they were really about Henry’s need to appear together on the surface, when the reality of his life was as distant from perfect as could be. The performance continued until abuela tired and began to kick people out so she could sleep. For the last ten years the living room doubled as her bedroom.

Years earlier Abuela kicked my abuelo out of the apartment not for his drug dealing, but for his attempt to bring one of his girlfriends around the house. Ever since then, she slept on the couch and did not venture far from it, other than to occasionally bathe or change the remote in her batteries. The Davids unrolled the blanket they slept on. Henry called a cab. Bosco readied his bike, hoping he would sober up before arriving at the Queensboro bridge, lest he make the move he had been contemplating for years and jump in the east river. “Until next week mijos”