Pescado, Paletas

by Jazmin Aminian de Ferreccio

The one redeeming factor about the holy-water popsicles that Primitivo sold was that they did not smell like fish. He packed the popsicles next to the bass and the rainbow trout inside a battered Styrofoam box filled with ice. He then strapped the box to the handlebars of his bike and pushed through the streets of Sun Valley, California, or el sur de california, as it said on the side of the box. Black leather belts from his suit pants kept the box shut, and Primitivo blew a high-pitched whistle that sounded like an angel caught in a storm. He had strapped bells next to the box, and the faster he walked the harder they hit the bars on the bicycle. It was these sounds that cut the inside of his ears like small switchblades.

On the corner of Peoria Avenue and Rincon Street, Mathilde stood with her baby girl in a stroller. Mathilde threw gold glitter in the air to get Primitivo's attention and to keep her baby from crying. "I have a long way to walk, mucho, mucho," she said, pushing her stroller in his direction. The baby pointed at the glitter and flirted with the stars, the no-stars, in the late afternoon sky.

When Mathilde approached Primitivo, he clipped a rose from a neighbor's yard using his thumbnail and index finger, and placed it in her coarse black hair. He saw the bags of groceries hanging from the handles of the stroller and asked if she had already bought her fish for dinner. "No fish tonight, Primitivo, just let me buy some of that holy ice water. Quiero tres paletas para mis hijos." The glitter settled on the stroller and on the sidewalk. He handed her the popsicles and took the three dollars that brought him closer to the ten dollars a day he needed to pay rent, buy groceries, and maintain his bicycle.

Thunder clouds formed in the skies, and Mathilde reorganized her groceries. Her daughter blew at the clouds and it began to rain. The baby's lips kissed a downpour.

As Mathilde and her baby left, many cars began to splash Primitivo, so that he could no longer hear the squeaks of the departing stroller, which would help him tell her fortune. Primitivo would know if her husband would come home with money in his pocket, or if she would be left alone again, left promising her children a trip to a yard sale where they could look for Spiderman shoes. Whether her children would ask, when? And she'd say, when the sun is out and it's not time to sleep. Maybe Primitivo would hear her tell them how high they would jump in those Spiderman shoes, while feeding them bread and tripe, and then feel her struggling to think of one more house to clean, so that she would have the money to spend on Spiderman.

The stroller wheels would even tell him the future of the rose: if it would stay in her hair or fall into the gutter, be washed away into a storm drain, passing stray dogs that sought refuge from the rain. But the thunderheads and the rain weren't going to let him hear any fortune. Neither her future nor that of the rose would be his bedtime story tonight.

He walked on, as fast as he could through the downpour, with the three dollars that just minutes before had belonged to Mathilde.

Inside the Styrofoam box, the hard fish knocked against the popsicles. As Primitivo passed laundromats and bars now being used as places of refuge from the storm, women's blouses were coming undone, loose buttons slipping out of stretched eyelets. "No one has time to sew anymore," he thought.

And then he saw a man standing at the corner of Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Peoria Avenue, just in front of a bus stop."This man is a stranger and he smells of no soul," thought Primitivo. "Pescado, paletas," Primitivo shouted, louder than the wind. The man on the corner wore a long coat, a thick coat. "Alpaca," Primitivo thought. The man seemed warm and his face clean enough to split drops of rain. Primitivo wondered if his coat collar smelled of cologne.

"Give me your money, hijo de puta," the man said, brandishing a knife.

Primitivo hesitated although he did not attempt to flee, so the man drew him in, with a hug. He placed his knife above Primitivo’s ear and said, "Feel this?" And he let the blade nick the top of Primitivo’s ear. Primitivo felt the warmth of his own blood.

"Now give me the money."

Primitivo took Mathilde’s three dollars, and the twenty singles he carried as change, and he handed them to the man.

The man counted the bills.

"Our business is done?" Primitivo asked.

The man didn't look up, didn't answer; he just whispered to himself, "What can I buy with this?"

Primitivo pedalled away in the rain, away from the man and the money. Cars stopped at the traffic lights and sat in pools of water. He turned into an alley behind a Thai restaurant, left his bicycle, and bandaged his ear with the toilet paper he kept in his pocket. The thunder and rain screamed. Primitivo held his ear and began to pant, letting his voice sound like the song of a wolf. He looked for a back door into the restaurant -- he wanted to hear people putting away their keys, he wanted to hear them rattling change. The back door didn’t open, so, instead, he opened the Styrofoam box and bailed out the crushed ice. In the midst of the fish, he found manna. Not surprised at this gift from heaven, he placed the ice mixed with the manna upon his ear. And he cried.

Then he continued his ride home. He noticed that clouds bandaged the night sky and that the stars dropped their heads, as if waiting for a story. The cold wind passed in streaks, unzipping coats from patrons leaving strip malls, and pushing Primitivo's bike so hard that he didn't need to pedal. "Mathilde’s baby will grow up to be beautiful," Primitivo thought, and he promised the next piece of manna from heaven would be hers.

He walked the bike into his garage and unstrapped the box from the handlebars. Tomorrow, he would start again to earn money for the things that kept him alive, the things that let him tell fortunes and receive manna. And so, on bent knees, he set the box in front of him. He opened the lid and pulled out each wet fish, one by one, their bellies now soft like jelly—so soft that he could gut them with his thumbnail—and when he did, gold glitter, blood, and water streamed down his forearm.

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Jazmin Aminian de Ferreccio is a first-year creative writing graduate student at UC-Davis. She lives in Reseda. This is her first fiction in print. E-mail: jferreccio@aol.com