Free The Flowers by Dagoberto Gilb Page A

“Shh! If he hears us!”
    Bud and Mary were the couple who lived in #7. He did construction. You knew because he wore a T-shirt with the name of a sheetrocking company on it. He was muscles and shoulders under that cotton shirt, his skin darkened from sun, his forearms bulging out like they were biceps, his biceps swollen like calves. Mary was a substitute teacher. I knew that because she took over one of my classes one time. She didn’t recognize or remember or even know me, and she didn’t ask about where or if I went toschool when I said hi then. Her face sagged as miserable as the rest of her when I saw her walking by my locker. At the table, she was eating chips from the bowl my mom put there, wearing her nice substitute teacher dress that, sitting down here, seemed like it was getting pushed at in more places about to burst. Bud made one of those glad-to-meet-mes, shaking my hand like it was a sport he always had to win and always did. My mom was cooking food. Really. She was even making something Mexican, even if she didn’t know how to cook it any better than anything else. One time I heard the Cloyd on the phone. He said,
I love to eat them tacos,
and
now I even got myself married to a pretty little Mexican gal.
He said that. Really. The dude who my mom married. She had some rice on the stove, and something was going wrong there, because her face was way close to the burner, watching it boil through the glass cover. I knew something was more messed up when Cloyd complimented her on the
chili salsa.
He might as well have complimented her on the tortilla chips, because she bought them at a store too. She didn’t correct him though. She had on a brand new apron. It was cute, she’d call it, probably from an expensive department store. She had a new dress on under it too, and she was fixed up like behind the stove door wasn’t enchiladas but one of those too-dark restaurants she expected to be taken to before she married him.
    My mom was already done with a tall drink of some kind and was asking Cloyd to fix her another. A whole lineup of colored and clear liquor bottles were out on the sink, and next to them was the silver ice cube bucket with tongs I couldn’t believe anybody used but my mom said you were supposed to have. Mary was drinking a can of soda. Bud and the Cloyd were drinking beer and were the only ones talking.
    â€œWe can’t let them take away the work from us,” Bud was saying.
    â€œBut don’t you hire them sometimes yourself?” Cloyd asked.

    â€œCheap as they are, shit yeah!”
    They both laughed and laughed.
    Mary was squirming like she wanted to move her underwear with her butt. She picked out the widest chips that were in the bowl in front of her. She ate one while she picked another, not stopping.
    â€œIt’s just that I don’t know where they think they are,” said Bud. “This is my home, if you know what I’m saying.”
    â€œPlease stop talking about this,” said Mary. “I hate this kind of discussion.”
    Bud didn’t like her comment. “Save some of the chips for the rest of us,” he told her, shaking his head. “Does this topic get you perturbed, Silvia?” Bud asked my mom.
    â€œGod, I hate when you’re drinking,” Mary said after she’d swallowed again.
    â€œSo now you see how come we have such a good sex life,” he told Cloyd. “We gotta make up every night.”
    The two men laughed.
    Bud said, “Maybe we have to limit our conversation to the black race.”
    The two men laughed.
    Mary said, “God, Bud.”
    Bud said, “Okay okay already.”
    Cloyd said, “He knows how to raise your hackles, Mary.”
    Bud said, “See, he knows I’m shittin’ around.”
    Mary shook her head.
    â€œSo, what about these Southern Democrats? Isn’t it only a matter of time they’re in our neighborhood?”
    â€œGod,