The Angel Esmeralda - By Don DeLillo Page 0,26
lost in the low ruins of an old firehouse.
“Who is this girl,” Gracie said, “who’s out there in the lots, hiding from people?”
Ismael looked at his crew and one of them piped up, an undersized boy in spray-painted jeans, dark-skinned and shirtless.
“Esmeralda. Nobody know where her mother’s at.”
Gracie said, “Can you find the girl and then tell Brother Mike?”
“This girl she being swift.”
A little murmur of assent.
“She be a running fool this girl.”
Titters, brief.
“Why did her mother go away?”
“She be a addict. They un, you know, predictable.”
If you let me teach you not to end a sentence with a preposition, Edgar thought, I will save your life.
Ismael said, “Maybe the mother returns. She feels the worm of remorse. You have to think positive.”
“I do,” Gracie said. “All the time.”
“But the truth of the matter there’s kids that are better off without their mothers or fathers. Because their mothers or fathers are dangering their safety.”
Gracie said, “If anyone sees Esmeralda, take her to Brother Mike or hold her, I mean really hold her until I can get here and talk to her. She’s too young to be on her own or even living with the crew. Brother said she’s twelve.”
“Twelve is not so young,” Ismael said. “One of my best writers, he does wildstyle, he’s exactly twelve more or less. Juano. I send him down in a rope for the complicated letters.”
“When do we get our money?” Gracie said.
“Next time for sure. I make practically, you know, nothing on this scrap. My margin it’s very minimum. I’m looking to expand outside Brooklyn. Sell my cars to one of these up-and-coming countries that’s making the bomb.”
“Making the what? I don’t think they’re looking for junked cars,” Gracie said. “I think they’re looking for weapons-grade uranium.”
“The Japanese built their navy with the Sixth Avenue el. You know this story? One day it’s scrap, next day it’s a plane taking off a deck. Hey, don’t be surprise my scrap ends up in North, you know, Korea.”
Edgar caught the smirk on Gracie’s face. Edgar did not smirk. This was not a subject she could ever take lightly. Edgar was a cold-war nun who’d once lined the walls of her room with aluminum foil as a shield against nuclear fallout from Communist bombs. Not that she didn’t think a war might be thrilling. She daydreamed many a domed flash in the film of her skin, tried to conjure the burst even now, with the USSR crumbled alphabetically, the massive letters toppled like Cyrillic statuary.
They went down to the van, the nuns and three kids, and with the two kids already on the street they set out to distribute the food, starting with the hardest cases in the projects.
They rode the elevators and walked down the long passageways. Behind each door a set of unimaginable lives, with histories and memories, pet fish swimming in dusty bowls. Edgar led the way, the five kids in single file behind her, each with two bags of food, and Gracie at the rear, carrying food, calling out apartment numbers of people on the list.
They spoke to an elderly woman who lived alone, a diabetic with an amputated leg.
They saw a man with epilepsy.
They spoke to two blind women who lived together and shared a seeing-eye dog.
They saw a woman in a wheelchair who wore a fuck new york T-shirt. Gracie said she would probably trade the food they gave her for heroin, the dirtiest street scag available. The crew looked on, frowning. Gracie set her jaw, she narrowed her pale eyes and handed over the food anyway. They argued about this, not just the nuns but the crew as well. It was Sister Grace against everybody. Even the wheelchair woman didn’t think she should get the food.
They saw a man with cancer who tried to kiss the latexed hands of Sister Edgar.
They saw five small children bunched on a bed being minded by a ten-year-old.
They went down the passageways. The kids returned to the van for more food and they went single-file down the passageways in the bleached light.
They talked to a pregnant woman watching a soap opera in Spanish. Edgar told her if a child dies after being baptized, she goes straight to heaven. The woman was impressed. If a child is in danger and there is no priest, Edgar said, the woman herself can administer baptism. How? Pour ordinary water on the forehead of the child, saying, “I baptize thee in the name of the Father and of the