Róber'

Illustration by Karina Diaz

The light bulb cooked the living room in pale yellow, making an eerie monolith of the shuttered bedroom door.

“Hey sweetheart.” His aunt Mayra greeted him in the softest tone a Latina could summon. Julio’s mom had dropped him off at her sister’s so she could go sew zippers on denim for five dollars an hour.

“Hi!” He kicked off his Reebok Pumps in the entrance.

She made a gentle “shhh,” setting her index finger across her smile. “Róber’ is sleeping, ok?” she whispered, and led him towards the living room, where his six-year-old cousin, Carlos, sat shirtless watching cartoons on mute.

Julio sat next to Carlos and patted his head to no acknowledgement. The boys’ crooked eyes remained soldered to the screen where Tom chased after Jerry with a hammer, knocking at the floor to scare the mouse out of hiding.

Julio recognized his old TV set. It had been his life vest after his parents crossed the Atlantic, moving him from the Island to Brooklyn. In those first years, that television became his teacher and his best friend. When the kids at school couldn’t make anything of him and his Spanish, it taught him English. It didn’t care that he wasn't white enough, black enough, brown enough.

His mom had handed the television down to Mayra after Róber’ had to go away, leaving her alone with Carlitos. “They need it more than we do,” she told Julio when he protested the gesture. Julio had seen the man only twice before, once when his cousin was born, once on a Fourth of July.

Julio remembered the story about how Róber’ landed at JFK using his brother's green card. It was easier back then, he’d heard the adults say. When there were no computers, the migrant wanting in and the border officer standing guard were equals.

From the kitchen the stove pilots clicked off before Mayra appeared with two glasses of juice on her way to the bathroom. By the time Julio took a sip Carlos had gulped his, dyeing the snot under his nose a bright orange.

“You got a mustache,” Julio tickled him, but his cousin remained unbothered. They watched Jerry plotting to fool Tom into banging on a faulty floorboard that would send the opposite end flying towards his rear. Julio remembered the episode, one of the few where the cat and the mouse spoke. It was only after he’d heard them bicker, that he realized they’d never said a word before.

He knew there was a trick to the volume. First you had to turn the knob left, a quarter of the way past the starting position until it clicked. That was the only way the sound would come on as you slid it right. He walked towards the television committed to handing down this knowledge.

Water drizzled from the bathroom. Through the crack of the door he saw his aunt flush the toilet, then stand in front of the bathroom mirror. She lifted her blouse where the brown skin along her ribcage was mottled purple and yellow, like fruit that had spoiled. Julio watched her press against her side and wince. He wondered if the light bulb had cooked her. He wondered if it would do the same to him.

He felt for the volume knob and put his fingernails in between the familiar crevices of the plastic molding. He slid it far left, then right. The banging of the hammer thumped into the room breaking the silence his aunt had guarded. Her face anguished in the mirror. Tom’s anguished on the screen. From the couch, Carlos looked at him and laughed.

“Shhhh!” Mayra scurried out of the bathroom. She shut the volume off and headed to the kitchen.

“Ma-y-ra.” a low voice growled from the bedroom. His aunt rushed back across the living room and into the bedroom holding a bowl of soup and a glass of water, shutting the door with her hips. Through the crevice, the light of a lamp beamed on.

Julio looked at Carlos. He checked his cousin’s arms, legs, and bare torso but saw no purple, no yellow. As they watched, Jerry smiled, satisfied, while Tom, furious, banged until he had no floor to stand on.