Out of the Devil’s Cauldron 2 page

Unlike many other Hispanic families, my family never went to the big Catholic church in our neighborhood, but I had seen the crucifixes and pictures of Jesus and heard people call Him “God.” If He was God, why didn’t He show up in my life? Why did He allow my brothers and me to hurt at the hands of our own father—not to mention the anguish my mother endured? I pushed the thoughts aside as quickly as they came. It was too painful to dwell on what the answer might be.

One afternoon I went down the block to play in the schoolyard, but to my surprise I heard loud music emanating from it. Curious to see what all the commotion was about, I drew nearer and saw a large red tent with a church service going on underneath. Somebody was playing a keyboard, and a choir swayed at the back of the tent as they belted out songs about Jesus. For a while I stood at a distance, touched by the music and stirred up in my heart. I couldn’t put my finger on it,

but instinctively I knew something very special was going on in this place. While the choir sang, a man came around off the stage and touched people on the forehead randomly. Whenever he touched them, they fell to the ground onto their backs, as if going to sleep. They looked so peaceful lying there, and suddenly I wanted the same thing to happen to me. I felt a love there that was indescribable.

As if on cue, the man leading the event started moving in my direction. My pulse quickened. One by one he touched people in the crowd near me, the closest one being a man standing right next to me. The man fell out on his back, and I could see the blessing on him—that something special I longed for too. I looked up expectantly, waiting for the minister to touch me, but he had passed me by, moving to another section of the crowd instead. I left that event feeling heartbroken, unwanted, and unloved. Why couldn’t it be me they prayed for? Why couldn’t it be me they touched? The answer that flickered through my mind: I guess God doesn’t love me either.

My Father, My Enemy

Most nights my father came home already roaring drunk and enflamed by rage. For no reason at all, or any feeble excuse, he would beat my mother. My brothers and I cowered in our rooms, trembling with fear. We were all just little boys, and I would bite my lip and beg God to make the screaming and

hitting stop.

One night the sound of my mother screaming pulled me out of a deep sleep. I leaped from the top bunk bed where I slept and stumbled down the hallway, my stomach churning in knots. As I approached the kitchen, the sound of shattering glass exploded in the air. My dad had come home drunk—at two o’clock in the morning—and demanded the meal my mother always had waiting for him.

“You good-for-nothing woman! I don’t know why I put up with you!” he yelled, looking for something else to throw. My mother sobbed as she tried to serve him the dinner she spent all afternoon cooking. Suddenly a reheated meal of beans, rice, tomatoes, chicken, and plantains went airborne as he slammed his dinner plate against the wall.

“Eustaquio, no-o-o!” my mother wailed. I watched myfather’s face—her reaction flipped a switch in his drunken brain and unleashed a monster.

He grabbed her by the hair and began to beat her mercilessly. At one point during his pounding, my mother— literally knocked out of her shoes by him—managed to break away and run barefoot in terror down the hall into their bedroom. She struggled to lock the door in a futile effort to escape him. He lunged after her and broke down the door, and her screams grew louder as the beating continued. Though I was still a young boy, I knew I had to rescue her. I bolted into the room and jumped on my dad’s back to stop him from hurting my mother. He turned around, eyes blazing with fire, cursed me, and tore me off him with rough hands, throwing me

violently across the room. I hit the floor hard in a broken heap, feeling physically and emotionally hurt, angry, and powerless as he continued to beat my mother.

Finally, at four o’clock in the morning, his rage spent, my father passed out and the house returned to its now-eerie quiet. Shaking with fear and anger, I crawled back into my bunk bed and tried to go to sleep. In just three hours I would have to wake up, get dressed, and go to school as if nothing had happened. I would have to show a brave face to the world, pretending that my home life was not the living hell it truly was.

That night as I examined my bruises and thought about the injuries my mother must have too, my hatred for my father grew stronger. It was that night I first wished my father was dead. I didn’t realize it then, but one day my wish would come true.

Chapter 2

The Burnt-Out Bronx

Instead of getting better, life stumbled on with violent scenes repeating themselves as if on a demented loop, spiraling further and further down in our circular, hellish way of life. As my father’s neglect grew worse, our family’s financial condition sank to frightening new lows and we moved from place to place in the Bronx. In those days, slumlords wouldn’t repair their buildings, and the notorious slum villages lined the garbage-strewn streets of the South Bronx. No one who lived in the other boroughs was rushing to visit anyone in the Bronx back then. It was like a ravaged war zone.

Dishonest landlords set their own buildings ablaze for the insurance money, and the area became known as “the Burnt-out Bronx.” The nighttime sky would glow orange with fire whenever a slumlord decided to cash in his investment. In one apartment building, thirty families filled the dingy, cramped living spaces, but because the building was so rundown, many families moved out, leaving only three families—including ours.

This building had no hot water or heat in the winter, and some nights my brothers and I slept in our clothes, bundled in our sweaters, coats, scarves, and gloves just to stay warm throughout the night. We huddled in our rooms, the air so cold it felt almost like camping outdoors, with icy blasts of air coming from our mouths as we tried to get some sleep.

Shamed by the squalor, we nonetheless clung to the apartment because we had nowhere else to go, and my brothers and I took shifts staying up late watching out the window to make sure the local hoodlums didn’t burn the building down, thinking it was abandoned.

I stood by the window, my eyes heavy with sleep but forcing them to stay open as I watched outside, alert for any movement or the sound of breaking glass, signaling the approach of neighborhood “bandits” on the prowl looking for fun. I glanced over at the clock—the faint glow of the hour hand ticked off the hours . . . one o’clock, two o’clock . . . until my shift ended at 3 a.m. I stared out the window at the cold night, the light from the corner streetlamp shining into our bedroom window. Though my body yearned for sleep, I stood guard making sure my family wasn’t burned to the ground.

Gangs ruled the different neighborhoods of the Bronx, and ours was no different. A gang called the New York Reapers patrolled the streets and alleyways we called home, and in a strange paternalistic way they took care of the neighborhood residents—saving their blood-thirst for any rival gang members foolish enough to try to come onto their turf.

And when the rival gangs were foolish enough to

encroach on Reaper turf, it was time for a rumble.

“Hey kid,” a Reaper called to me, tapping his car horn to get my attention. His pimped-out Chevy Nova idled at the curb, the exhaust pipes rumbling. I glanced up from my task of filling two buckets with water from the fire hydrant. Once full, my brother Julio and I would stagger up five flights to our apartment, which had no running water, and return to make the same trip six or seven more times until there was enough water for the evening. I pretended not to hear him . . . maybe he would go away.

“Yo, kid, I said, you listening to me?” There was no way I could ignore him now. I looked him straight in the eyes, a flat expression on my face.

“A rumble’s going down tonight with the Flying Dutchmen, so get your chores done and make sure your family’s inside by eleven o’clock. You hear me? We don’t want nobody gettin’ hurt—except the Dutchmen.” He cackled at his joke and slid his hand along his slick black ponytail, a flash of silver showing from the thick, studded rings he wore on his fingers—the better for fighting with.

I nodded and went back to my chore, but I could feel my heart pump faster. Rumbles were frightening, no doubt about it. But they were also exciting. As soon as the Nova roared around the corner, I shouted to Julio.

“Julio, there’s a rumble tonight! Tell Mom, George, and Eustaquio!” My little brother was just emerging from our building with two empty buckets in his hand, ready for the next refill and trip back up the five flights to our apartment.

His eyes widened. “Really? What time?”

“Eleven o’clock. C’mon, go tell Mom so she can run to the market. I’ll get this round.” Taking the empty buckets from my brother, I watched as he shot like a cannonball back toward the front stoop of our building and disappeared inside.

A weird, almost tangible vibe ran up and down the streets of the neighborhood. Like an electric current, news of the rumble spread. Mothers did last-minute shopping at the battered storefront shops along Deli Avenue and 179 ^th Street. Little kids playing by the street jittered in a crazy hop-skip dance, and horns blared from cars, as if signaling the coming showdown between the rival gangs.

And at eleven o’clock, we would be ready for them. My brothers and I leaned on our open bedroom windowsill like we had ringside seats to a championship prize fight. “George, Julio —make sure Eustaquio doesn’t lean out too far!” I commanded protectively, assuming the role of little father figure in the absence of our real dad. In every direction we could see, people hung out their windows like we did. The only thing missing was the popcorn and Coke. A murmur of voices zigzagged across the streets and alleyways, now strangely empty except for the rats that scurried along behind the line of overstuffed garbage cans.

As if on cue, the Reapers took up their posts along the streets, inside alleyways, and up on the rooftops of the buildings, toting bats, chains, knives, machetes, guns, and trashcans full of bricks. As the Flying Dutchmen rolled into our neighborhood, a war whoop sounded from the rooftops, where

they rained bricks down onto the rival gang members’ cars while the Reapers on the street level dragged them out of the vehicles and beat them mercilessly. The Reapers came out like savage animals, and suddenly the streets below us churned with bodies and blood and the screams of broken men.

Confined to a one-block radius, the rumble roared on, and my brothers and I watched fascinated from five stories high. Close to five hundred gang members tore up the street below, jumping all over the cars, thrashing rival members, and firing gunshots into the night. Others were laid out in the street —the ones who might not make it home tonight or live to see another day. Not a cop was in sight. The police both feared and respected the gangs and had a sixth sense about when a rumble was going down. After an hour or so of brutality—their bloodlust spent for the night—the victorious Reapers celebrated, standing on the street corners drinking beer and whooping. But the act of vengeance wasn’t complete until they stripped the “colors” off the Flying Dutchmen and hung the rival gang members’ denim jackets from every lamppost in the neighborhood, declaring the Reapers’ victory.

An eerie quiet returned to the neighborhood, the only sound coming from the flap-flap of denim jackets hanging on the lampposts. My brothers and I crawled into bed and tried to sleep, our hearts pumping adrenaline—a natural internal protection against the cold on winter nights.

The Proving Ground

Violence has a trickle-down effect, and not just the gangs lived by the warrior code in the South Bronx. We kids did too. Even if you tried to avoid it, it found you. The tough kids—the thugs in the neighborhood—always tested news kids on the block, and since we moved around so much, my brothers and I constantly had to prove our mettle. These were the walking time bombs, the lowlifes in the neighborhood who wanted to get their way all the time, so they beat up on the weaker kids. If you didn’t stand up to them, or take part in whatever they demanded, your lunch money would mysteriously disappear at school and you might not make it home without a black eye or broken fingers.

I stood up to them but tried to play it cool, not wanting to become a thug like them.

“Hey, John! Come ’ere,” a voice called one day as I walked home from school alone. It was Jose, the leader of a group of lowlifes that hung around the basketball court whistling and jeering at the girls who walked by and making life miserable for any guy who wasn’t a part of their group.

“I can’t, I got to get to work,” I lied, pretending that a job other than my usual water-hauling chores beckoned me.

“Now, you know we’re not gonna let you off that easy,” Jose said, sidling up to me with five of his cronies hanging back, ready for action judging by the look in their eyes.

I sized up the competition. Jose I could take, and maybe one or two more—but six against one were bad odds.

Jose felt my hesitation and smiled a slow, devious grin.

“We’re gonna go down to the store and get a snack . . .

thought you could pick up a few things for us. What d’ya say, boys? Is John good enough to be one of us?” His friends sniggered and watched for my reaction.

I knew Jose wanted me to steal some candy bars, potato chips, and maybe a few canned drinks for them. Either I did it or I would be labeled a sucker.

Jose took his pocketknife out of his jacket and pretended to clean his fingernails, making sure I saw the shiny silver of the blade. “I’m not hearing an answer. Yo, are you down with us or are you a punk?” He looked up at me, his eyes glazed with hatred now. “ ’Cause if you’re a punk we’re gonna beat your face in.” He flipped his knife in the air. “Maybe even cut you up a little.”

“I’m not scared, I just don’t wanna waste my time doing that,” I said, looking Jose straight in the eye. The truth is I didn’t want to get caught stealing and end up with a record like all these hoodlums did. I wanted to finish school, not go to jail with these lowlifes, but my thoughts were saying one thing and my mouth was saying another. “Sure, I can do that, man. I just don’t want to. Why you tryin’ to test me?”

Bartering for time never worked with guys like Jose. They kept after you till you did it. I never got caught—I stole ice cream from the ice box, potato chips from the rack, sodas from the refrigerator. On other days pricier items made the hit list, and we’d all walk into a store and steal a jacket or two. I gained Jose’s respect but lost my own.

Shuffling home after a petty theft, I’d see my father’s

cab parked at the curb in front of a bar and watch as he opened the passenger side door for a pretty woman—his latest mistress or good-time girl. Sometimes he caught me staring at him and made a funny face in return, as if to say, Hey, boys will be boys . . . don’t tell your mom!

Hatred churned in my gut, a hatred honed to a razor-edge by his years of neglect and abuse. If he were a protective father, a real dad, maybe I wouldn’t have to stoop to stealing candy bars just to keep the neighborhood thugs at bay. Maybe our home life would be normal . . . that crazy word that always eluded the Ramirez family.

Walking on Eggshells

In spite of our miserable existence, my brothers and I looked up to our mother as our hero. She did the very best with everything, and she did whatever she could for us. But my father’s drinking grew even worse, and he became more abusive and savage than I thought possible. Soon he began demanding things, taking valuables and money from us. Sometimes he grabbed the money my mom had spent months scraping together—nickels and dimes—to buy his liquor, and often he’d snatch back the meager money he had just left us for the week.

I walked around holding my breath as soon as he left, afraid to relax. Finally, no sooner had I let out a sigh of relief, no sooner had my mother, brothers, and I restored the

craziness to order, harmony, and some small degree of peace, than my father would come back in and destroy everything again.

Things began to fall apart even more financially. We lived in the slum apartment buildings for what seemed like an eternity because it took my mother years to save up enough money for us to move out. Her worried face saddened my brothers and me; we knew she wanted the best for us but could not give it. But we were rich in the love she gave us. In spite of everything, we could count on just one thing—our mother loved us. Yet she seemed strangely bound to our tormentor, my father, and powerless to do anything about it.

Once in a while my dad bought things for us, and then months would pass before he bought anything substantial again. The end of the year and the holidays especially were a tough time in our home. When school started in September, it was the first strain of the end of the year on our meager household budget. My brothers and I had no choice but to wear the same clothes and coats from the year before because there was no money to buy new things.

“High waters!” some kid would yell as I got in line at the school cafeteria for lunch, mocking the way my pants rode a few inches above the tops of my shoes. “Hey, isn’t that your little brother’s coat,” another might call out. “It looks kind of short in the arms.” I played it off, trying to act as if I wasn’t embarrassed by the jeers, but the words sank deep into my spirit, fueling my resentment against my father.

The Dark Side Calling

For my brothers and me, Halloween kicked off the annual holiday season. We loved the masquerade nature of it, getting to be a superhero, cowboy, Count Dracula, werewolf, or ghost for a night. It was fun going from house to house to collect bags of candy apples and fruit, chocolate bars, and candy corn. Some years all four of us were decked out in our Halloween glory, and other years only two of us got real costumes due to the slim household budget. For the two of us left out, my mom compensated by painting our faces, transforming us into ghouls and devils from the neck up.

“George, Julio, Eustaquio . . . come on!” I yelled impatiently from the front door of our apartment, my face painted red like the devil, makeshift horns on my head. I had just looked in the bathroom mirror one last time and grinned at my reflection—my eyes, painted black as coal, even freaked me out a little.

Mamí came down the hall pulling Eustaquio by thehand. He kept tripping on his long black vampire costume and sounded muffled through the plastic mask that covered his face. “You keep an eye on your little brothers, you hear?” she said, pinning me with the look . “I want you boys back by 8:30 at the latest.”

I promised her we would and off we went, taking the stairs two at a time to get outside as fast as possible. The streets of the Bronx came alive on this night, with costumed

kids darting this way and that across the noisy streets. Even the hookers that worked the street corners traded their usual miniskirts and fishnet stockings for provocative Halloween costumes like cats and Playboy bunnies. We met up with some of our friends and headed for an apartment building rumored to have the best candy in the neighborhood.

“Oh, man, you gotta check out this one house!” my friend David said, his voice breathless from running in his Batman costume. “The lady who lives there made it into a haunted house with—”

“Don’t spoil it!” I shot back. “Let me see for myself.” As we climbed the stairwell inside the building, I heard

scary music playing and deep throaty voices chanting from the third floor. My heart beat faster, and when we hit the third-floor landing I saw that whoever lived there had transformed the entire area around her door into a witch’s lair with cobwebs, black lights, dangling skeletons, and black cat figurines. The door to the apartment was open, and white smoke poured from the dark room beyond. Our creaking footsteps on the landing signaled whoever lived there, and she flew out at us dressed like a witch, screaming and cackling into the hallway. We shrieked and laughed, enjoying the good Halloween scare, then held our bags out for the candy she offered. I went back to her door four times that night.

My fascination with the dark, mysterious nature of the underworld gained a foothold that year, and the supernatural seemed to step out to meet me. I started seeing things that shouldn’t have been there—or rather I saw things that weren’t

there . . . in the physical realm. Years later, as a warlock and high priest of Santeria, I would look back on this time of adolescence and realize my spiritual eyes were being unlocked for the very first time.

One night, after playing down the street with my friends, I came into our building and headed for the stairwell. Our apartment was located on the third floor, and as I rounded the corner at the first landing, a strange, dwarfish woman with a distorted cartoon-like head popped out from behind the second-story stairwell. She looked human, but her head was impossibly large—all I saw was this freakish head popping out, a clown smile on her face. My heart froze in my chest and I lunged back to the first floor. After waiting ten minutes, I tried again . . . and again . . . but every time I advanced up the stairs, she popped out, blocking my passage.

The woman looked very young, with long black hair and pale white skin. I had never seen anyone like her in our building before, and a sick feeling in my gut told me something was not right. She was not right. Desperate to get home, I ran back to the main lobby to see if anyone was going upstairs so I could walk up with them and make it past the dreaded second-story stairwell.

“Hey, can you help me, sir?” I called out when a man finally entered the lobby. He stopped and listened as I described my predicament—and the strange dwarf lady on the second floor—but when he went to check things out, he called back down to me, “There’s nothing here, kid! You’re seeing things!” and made his own way up the flights of stairs.

It took me an hour to finally make it home; in the end I walked upstairs with another resident of the building, and of course the dwarf lady never showed up.

Another night, at my grandmother’s house, I looked out the back window and saw a tall woman in a red dress running from one side of the alley to the other—except she didn’t run, she floated. Back and forth she went, in quick succession, and as she glided by she would turn her head and smile as if taunting me. Terrified, I ran into the kitchen.

“Abuela, come quick! There’s a lady outside,” I said, tugging on my grandmother’s arm.

She turned from the stove and looked at me. “What do you mean, Johnny? There are lots of ladies in this neighborhood.” But something in my eyes spoke to her, and an instant later she followed me back to the living room.

“Shhh. We have to surprise her,” I said as I hid behind the curtains and gestured for my grandmother to do the same. A worried look framed her face, and I knew she realized that whatever I had seen impacted me greatly.

I peeked around the edge of the curtain. “There!” I said in a loud whisper, but my grandmother was too late. By the time she glanced out, the gliding lady had floated out of sight, leaving only a flash of red behind. Once again, the apparition seemed intended for my eyes only, no one else’s.

One day weeks later I ran outside to meet a friend in the vacant lot beside our apartment building, and we fell into a rock-throwing competition, seeing who could score the most hits at a window on the sixth-story building across the street.

Tommy and I stood a good distance apart, taunting each other —“I got a better aim,” “No, I do.” Our verbal jabs volleyed back and forth, and suddenly something dropped from the sky and landed at my feet. I bent down to see what it was and saw a beaded Indian necklace with bright colors lying on the ground. I stuffed it in my pocket before Tommy could see because I knew he would try to take the necklace from me.

In that same instant I heard someone call my name, and it sounded like my mother. “My mom’s calling me!” I yelled to Tommy as I ran toward home. But my mother never called me. Years later I realized what I heard was a familiar spirit—a principality that roamed the air. When I went into our building, I kissed the necklace and put it around my neck. This is going to protect you was the immediate thought that came to mymind. A few years later, when I took my first steps into witchcraft, my main spirit protector was an Indian chief that called itself Tawata. It was this spirit that threw the necklace out of the sky, I realized—initiating me to the dark side before I ever even heard the word Santeria.

Unbeknownst to me, the strange portal into the supernatural was opening wider, and in my youthful innocence and hunger for a father figure I walked right into it—without realizing the price I would pay.

A few months later I stayed over at my Aunt Lydia’s house one night, and as the clock inched toward eleven she asked me to run to the store to get a gallon of milk for the morning. I put on my sneakers, stuffed the money deep in my pocket, and ran down the stairs to the street below. In the

street, I started fast-walking across the avenue toward the convenience store five blocks away, ignoring the cluster of Reapers gathered here and there on the street corners.

After picking up the milk, I started back toward my aunt’s apartment down the dark streets of the Bronx. Without warning I felt something creepy following me, and I cast backward glances over my shoulder. Looking up the street, from a distance I saw a blue Chevy parked under a streetlight. That looks like my dad’s car , I thought to myself. The closer Igot the more familiar the car looked. “That is Papí’s car,” I said out loud. As I approached the car I saw a man slumped over the steering wheel and knew it was him. Excited but nervous, I went up to the window and tapped.

“Papí, Papí, are you okay? Do you need my help?” I could tell he was very intoxicated, so much so that he couldn’t drive and probably didn’t even know where he was parked. He rolled down the window. For a fraction of a second my heart lifted and filled with compassion for him. Maybe this would be a father/son bonding moment—my chance to be a hero and rescue my dad for the night.

His voice came out in a pathetic slur, but I understood every word. “What are you doing, stupid. Leave me alone! Go home!” As I walked away I felt my heart shatter, and I knew that this person I called Papí was never my dad. I buried him that night in my thoughts, in my heart, in my life because he demolished me to the point where I wished he was dead. I came home a different boy that night. As far as I was concerned, I was open for a new love in my life, a fatherly love to a son.

Where would I find it?

Chapter 3

Initiation

The year I turned ten my Aunt Maria, my father’s sister, called my mother and convinced her to go to a tarot card reading. For some reason, my mom brought me along, perhaps as moral support for this venture into the unknown.

We turned down a side street near Tremont Avenue, stopping in front of a white two-story house situated close to the curb. A buzzing neon sign in the front window read “Tarot Card Readings.”

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 619