Fiction by Amina Susi Ali
That was the day I figured out that Liz was out to get my man.
She was kneeling on the floor, reaching under the gold paisley couch, pulling out the box where she kept her records. She was looking up at him, her head in a tilt, her eyes smiling and beckoning, wearing black eyeliner and a shade of brown eyeshadow that was big in the Bronx that year. She sing-songed his name, asking him what kind of music he liked, as she reached down for her record collection.
We were having a party, which to us meant someone had weed, a bottle of wine and some Latin and Soul music. That day, we converged on Liz’s house, as we had done many times in the past. She was older than me, older than him, had a job and a bottle of Jean Nate and Avon dusting powder in the bathroom.
He and I were poor and in school. We had Colgate toothpaste and Ivory soap in our bathrooms. He was 18, I was 19. He lived with his mother and I with my father. Sometimes on the weekend we crashed on his cousin’s floor. We usually had a few dollars between us for some Boone’s Farm wine and pizza, or McDonald’s, or sometimes a plate of carne guisada with yellow rice and red beans, the big soft cubes of beef and potatoes inhaled by our hunger.
It was obvious she had taught herself to bat her eyelashes to get what she wanted. I never learned how to do that, nor did I necessarily know what I wanted. She dressed for guys, wearing hot pants and miniskirts. She wore mascara. She cooked frequently. She always had weed which she kept in a plastic box.
That was the day I knew I didn’t want anything to do with him anymore. I sulked through the dancing to Ray Barretto and James Brown. Every time I looked at his eyes, they were closed.
Two weeks later we broke up.
About a month later I was in the pizzeria and a mutual friend, Gloria, was there. She was one of the many people from my college and neighborhood crowd. She mentioned that he had moved out of his mother’s house to live with Liz, her ugly couch, cheap faux hippie incense, plastic bead curtains and Avon products.
Years later I saw both their Facebook pages. She lived in Puerto Rico with their grown son, who, according to a photo caption, did not get to see his dad very often.
It was a story like so many others. She had his baby, now he’s gone.
I friend requested him.
I’m still waiting.
Amina Susi Ali is a poet and short fiction writer. She was the First Prize winner in the 2019 Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival Short Story contest. Her publication credits include the New Voices Anthology (2016-La Pluma y La Tinta) and LatineLit, Summer and Fall 2023 issues, as well as Tribes, Long Shot, and other periodicals. She holds a Certificate in Creative Writing-Fiction from the New York University School of Professional Studies. She is a Diasporican and a life-long New Yorker, residing on the Lower East Side. Follow her on Instagram @aminasusi.
Photo by Joe Vasquez on Unsplash
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