Pedro

  *You may also find this short story in Hunter's spring 2021 literary magazine, The Olivetree Review*

    When I went there, I was just a kid sitting in the backseat of my parents’ white mini-van with my younger sister, Steph and my older sister, Sherry.  It was raining so hard outside and it was night time and therefore dark out, except when the lightening illuminated clouds that otherwise would have seemed nonexistent.  Really, it was raining so much and the thunder rumbled loudly and my sisters and I felt it beneath our feet, which weren’t snugged in sneakers or sandals because we had been driving for so long that we had to air them out.  It was summer time, you see, and our trip down South to Florida from New York grew increasingly hotter and more humid with each mile.  

    God almighty, it was raining too much.  You couldn’t see the white dashes on the road and you got this funny feeling that all the other drivers, like us, were tense and in a perpetual sate of unease – an odd state as unending as this long road, and as persistent as this rain rushing down on us like sin and plaguing us like flees on a dog.  This road was Interstate 95 and US Highway 301/501, and we were traveling between the two Carolinas.  Not that there were many drivers on the road with us.  

    See, what I’m about to tell you is a story of something I witnessed back when I was a kid  of ten years and four months.  It was three in morning and being a kid still, awake and out of bed at that hour during a thunderstorm, created a sense of rebellion — and not just for me, but for me and my sisters.  On the outside I was scared as hell – of the massive sound of thunder as the lightning struck the earth, cracking the atoms in the air, and of the looming possibility of us getting into a car crash with the rain making it nearly impossible to drive in.  But in the inside I giggled and smiled and my heart jumped with this impish release of adventurous energy.  It was a kind of childish feeling shared among me and my sisters that was hardly discernible, but still tangible without a doubt.  

    God almighty: really, it was raining an awful lot.

*****

    It wasn’t our destination, but we needed to get some shut eye; yet how could we? The whole place was lit up.  To enter the parking lot you had to drive under the legs of this great big lit-up fixture of a Mexican man with a mustache.  It was almost as if he were straddling the entrance, and looking up at him, you saw that he was blazing against the opaque black sky with his red glowing pants and sombrero to match. 

    See, he was holding a sign that said: South of the Border.  

    Later on that night I learned that the mascot’s name was Pedro.  There were cartoon statues of him throughout this roadside attraction.  The rest stop was overly-themed with images of Mexican culture all the way from food and trinkets, down to the language used in the millions of billboards advertising the place even before we got there: 

PEDRO’S WEATHER FORECAST: CHILI TODAY, HOT TOMALE;

and,

FILL YO’ TRUNQUE WEETH PEDRO’S JUNQUE.

This was my favorite:

YOU NEVER SAUSAGE A PLACE. (YOU’RE ALWAYS A WIENER AT PEDRO’S!)

            

    I’ve never seen such a place quite like South of the Border.  The whole atmosphere filled my eyes with wonder as I indulged my senses in this new world.  The whole place was an artist’s rendition of a caricature of Mexican culture.  It was Mexican this and Mexican that, Pedro’s this and Pedro’s that.   It was a Mexican Time Square with neon signs and catchy phrases on windows of each restaurant and store.  Yet the rain, pure as it was, dirtied the place.  It was no ritual cleansing for sure.

    My dad parked the car in front of a souvenir shop that was still open this late at night.  With the engine killed, we heard clearly the rain vehemently tapping on the roof of the car like fingers anxiously drumming away.  Dad adjusted the driver’s seat so he could lie down and sleep.  Mom did the same.  But my sisters and I were wide awake, flushed with energized blood.  We begged our parents to let us walk around and explore the place.  

    Mom and Dad looked at each other and from their faces, I drew a sense that they understood what a thrill it was for us to be up at three in the morning, in a foreign place with adrenalin rain falling from towers of darkness, mirrors of invisible clouds.  Why explore the place in broad daylight the next morning when you can do so rebelliously in this fake and heavy, crazy aura.  It was much more exciting and risky, challenging our very immaturity.  Mom said, “Ok, fine.  Sherry, take care of your younger brother and sister, and be back by four.  You guys need to get some sleep too.”

    “Don’t worry, Mom.  I’ll watch them!”

    Sherry was the oldest of the three of us, meandering impulsively in her sixteenth year.  Like I said, I was ten and some change, a curious little bug was I, while my younger sister was nine and always following me.  We ran together into the souvenir shop, dashing around puddles of rain on the ground.

    The shop punched you in the face.  There were trinkets everywhere and of every color.  Mugs, T-shirts, key chains with Mexican versions of your name, dolls, bobbleheads, make-it-yourself airplanes made of balsa wood, ponchos and serapes, hats – there were so many different kinds of hats, the ones you find on people’s heads on Halloween.  One was shaped like a hot dog in a bun, another in the shape of an Alien head, and yet another – a cracked egg shell.  The funniest one was a hat in the shape of a person’s behind!  My sisters and I turned to each other and keeled over, laughing so hard that our lungs burned.  We bounced from one corner of the store to the other, looking at every little trinket the shop had to offer.

    After a little while, we began to disperse.  Sherry saw a guy hanging out near the lit-up magnets and, deeming him cute, strayed herself there, not before turning to me.  “Watch our baby sister.”

    “I’m not a baby!” cried Steph.  But Sherry only looked at me with that adult look in her eye that said she meant business.  I nodded, and she took off, prancing her way toward the guy.

    “I’m not a baby,” Steph said again.  

    “I know, I know.”  We went over to the mugs.  Phrases from the billboards we passed graced the face of each of them.  One of them had a picture of an eye ball, heart and Pedro.  “I think Sherry likes the guy,” I said.

    “Who? Pedro?”

    “No, silly.  The guy over there by the magnets.”

    “Really?  Disgusting!”

    “I know, I know.  Hey you wanna hear a secret?”

    “Tell me.”

    “Sherry made out with a boy once.”  Steph gasped and dropped her jaw.  “It’s true.  I was home alone with Sherry, and this boy from her class, Ronnie or Robert or whatever, came over and I saw them making out on the sofa while watching TV.”

    “Eww!  Was this when I was sleeping over Jenna’s house?  But then why is she hanging out with that guy?”

    “Yup.  How should I know!”  We laughed.

    Steph and I moved over to the T-shirts a couple of feet from a door leading to the back room.  We kept our eye on Sherry, who was listening intently to whatever the guy was talking about.  We both knew that Sherry wasn’t really listening to the guy because we knew that when she’s faking it, she nods way too many times.  With that guy by the magnets, she must have nodded no less than a thousand times.

    Then I noticed that the back door was ajar and I immediately thought for sure someone had left it like that accidentally.  I turned my head and instinctively looked.  Something was moving back and forth, a kind of motion on repeat like hard-working pistons.  I heard weird noises that sounded like someone – two people – who were both out of breath, and suspicion and curiosity churned my blood, making it course through me as with great, big waves rather than languid streams deep in the woods. 

    With her gaze on our sister, Steph didn’t notice a thing.  I turned to her.  “Why don’t you go to Sherry and tell her that we’ve got to get back to the car.”

    “Ok, but I just want to see the maracas first!” she said.  They were nearer toward the front of the store than where Sherry was, flaunting their Mexican colors with small designs of tacos, burritos, sombreros and guitars.

    “Fine,” I said.

    Once I saw Steph dash for the maracas, I walked over to the back door and stealthily peeked inside.  But God almighty – dear God almighty – the scene I saw crushed something inside me. 

    There was a man with his pants down to his ankles with his buttocks facing me, making dimples frantically.  His shirt, a bright red with his name tag – Jon – was tossed on the floor next to a pair of women’s underwear and a cupped bra.  On both sides of him he was holding onto the shaven legs of a girl.  The soles of her feet were facing me and I saw just around the side of the man one of her breasts, naked and flabby, with her areola the color of deep crimson, and in the middle – her nipple, hard and dark as a raisin.  That one breast was bouncing, sliding up and down her reddened chest as the man struck her in between, with pelvic animal-like movements.

    I was struck with anxiety and shock, and truthfully a little bit of horror.  See I had little to no idea of what was going on, only that at that moment, I saw for the first time something I knew (somehow), I wasn’t supposed to see.  It was something I heard about on the playground with skeptical ears in the backdrop of giddy kids in the jungle gym who giggled along with me.  But to see it?  To see it in the literal flesh? Deep, deep inside, I knew this scene, which would play over and over in my mind, surpassed any form of childish rebelliousness – I had gone too far and I wasn’t ready.

    I gasped.  The man must have heard me as he turned around and eyed me, all the while striking the girl.  He wasn’t stopping for anything, and his eyes never left mine.  At that moment I declared him a monster attacking my very innocence.  Even as he said nothing, no words but his panting.  The girl with her high-pitched voice, whined like a dog longing for a treat.

    I ran away as hard and fast as I could, toward Steph near the maracas.

*****

    “I told you to go get Sherry.”  I tugged at Steph’s arm.

    “I want to buy this maraca.  It has my favorite colors on it and a picture of a turtle.”

    “I don’t care.”

    Steph turned to me, “What’s eating you?”  She looked at me long and hard and her eyes landed on my shorts.  “Why didn’t you ask for the bathroom if you really had to go?”  I looked down and realized what I had done.  We found Sherry who finally dislodged herself from the guy.  “Look what he did.  He went on himself,” Steph said to her, a tone of complaint in her voice.

    “Oh God, what are we going to tell Mom?”

    I didn’t care that I pissed myself.  All I wanted to do was to get the hell out of there.  The place that had, in an instant, filled me with intrigue and excitement, now represented for me a place that should be torn from the map, a forbidden place.  I wanted to get out of there, and get out of there fast.  Flashes of the couple having sex electrified my brain and I couldn’t handle it.

    We got to the car.  Mom told my sisters not to make fun of me.  She told me to grab a new pair of underwear and shorts from my duffle bag, run to the bathroom inside the store and change.  She also gave Sherry money to help Steph buy the maraca she wanted, since she just had to have it. 

    I ran out of the car ahead of my sisters so I wouldn’t hear any more of their laughs.  The bathroom was past the backroom.  I couldn’t help but look inside to see if the couple was still there.  

    No.  Thank God.  

    I quickly changed and dashed out with my head looking only in the direction of the car outside.  “Wait up for us, will ya?”  Steph had shouted at me, as the worker – Jon, that same Jon from the back room – gave Sherry her change.  Where was the girl?  That question was only fleeting; I couldn’t have cared less at that point.  But then Jon did something that terrified the hell out of me.  He saw me and we locked eyes.  He winked.

    I screamed and ran back outside, back into the rain with the statue of Pedro, smiling at me.