by Sergio Brito
I came in for a gallon of milk and crunchy peanut butter, like I do every Thursday, and every Thursday Enrico rings me up, I hand over the $5.27 and we chat about the weather as we complete our transaction, but not today. Today, Enrico is pointing a gun at Doña Rosario because, apparently, he caught sight of a cloven hoof hidden inside the bulk of her long skirt. To be honest, I didn’t see any cloven hoof, not today, or any other day I’ve crossed paths with Doña Rosario, but from my vantage point kneeling down behind the peanuts and beef sticks, I see the terror concentrated on Enrico’s sweaty face, his hands shaking so much his gold bracelets are jangling like wind chimes; it’s enough to make me almost believe him as he screams, “ERES EL DIABLO!” with his old revolver pointed right at her face, which I can’t see because she’s still standing at the register, completely still, with her back to me. Please don’t shoot Doña Rosario. Only a minute since he pulled the gun and I ducked behind the merchandise, a single interminable minute. I struggle to catch my breath. My pants are moist with sweat or maybe piss, I can’t tell, but there’s no way I’m going to move or take my eyes off Enrico and Doña Rosario for even one instant. Enrico keeps screaming at her, reciting the Lord’s prayer, threatening to shoot; she doesn’t move. Her own fear froze her in place I think, I hope her heart doesn’t stop. There’s no one else in the store, just myself and this standoff. I need to inch closer in case she faints. Please don’t shoot her. I should wait for the police, though I doubt anyone’s called them, everyone involved is inside the store and I haven’t seen anyone walk past the windows, which are frosted anyways so no one would suspect anything unless they happened to walk in, and so far, no one has. Doña Rosario is a small woman, I’ll guess around 5 feet tall, and she’s dressed in black with a black veil, the same thing she wears every day since her husband died during the pandemic; my grandma did the same when Tata died, too. I steal a glance at my phone in my pocket, ten minutes have passed since Enrico drew his gun from under the counter right beneath the cash register, which he keeps holstered and loaded in case of a hold up. Enrico, who’s usually laid back and cheerful, proud to serve the neighborhood from the store he worked so hard to buy.
Doña Rosario’s right shoulder twitches. Once, twice…until her entire body spasms, softly at first growing into violent, elastic convulsions. Please, please, PLEASE don’t shoot her! I want to yell but Enrico is coiled, tense like a rattlesnake. We watch her convulse, he’s stopped praying and my mouth is dry, no saliva, no words. Limbs flailing all around her, to me she looks like a wild angel descended from Heaven, but when I look at Enrico all I can see is the face of a man who truly believes that the Devil has ascended from Hell to reap his soul. Suddenly, she stops convulsing. Enrico lowers the barrel of the gun, whispers to her: “Doña, doña, esta bien?” She doesn’t answer but he looks less afraid, he must see on her face that she’s the same Doña Rosario that comes in to buy her grandchildren orange creamsicles and ice cream sandwiches on the sweltering days of their summer break. He’s not going to shoot her, I can relax, stop hyperventilating, ease the tension in my muscles because it was all a crazy misunderstanding and he’s not going to shoot her. His finger doesn’t leave the trigger but he points the barrel towards the ground; I hope we’re on the other side of whatever acute psychotic episode caused him to see Satan in Doña Rosario’s face, which I still can’t see because she hasn’t turned away from the counter. The refrigerators, filled with all sorts of colorful drinks, start to whir as they work to keep cool in spite of whatever may be going on in the store, and cars fly past the window in streaks of blue, black, grey, and white, no one stops to buy a drink or a pack of cigarettes, I’m feeling relieved, or the beginnings of relief, as Enrico shakes off the heat of the moment, he relaxes his furrowed brow and sets the gun on the counter and reaches up to wipe the sweat off his face and maybe sneak a few tears away. Doña Rosario is catatonic. We might need an ambulance, for both of them, so I fish my phone out of my pocket, unlock it, intending to dial 911 when the unmistakable deafening pop swallows the room, and then another, and another, and a shot of pain in my thigh, and a regrettable glance at the searing hot red dot gushing blood right above my knee, and a moment of panic before looking over and encountering Doña Rosario’s contorted face staring up at the ceiling with her own hot red dot in the center, blood trickling out forming a Rorschach test in red on the white vinyl floor surrounding her limp body. Before now, I’d never seen a dead body. Nothing prepares you for the moment you see someone you knew, even if only in passing, lying lifeless on the ground; it’s too much, it’s too much. What happened? Why’d Enrico shoot? Fuck, he really shot Doña Rosario. I can only see the top of his bald head behind the counter, bobbing from his violent sobs, the gun still in his limp hand, and I can’t hear anything except for the high-pitched ring that rode in on the gunshot and engulfed the entire scene. I can’t believe he shot her. Her grandchildren, her daughter, her neighbors, her friends. She’s dead, lying on the ground with a bullet hole the size of mine, except I’m alive, I think. ENRICO. ENRICO. I find the strength to call out to him, this man I see more than my friends and family, who sometimes gives me a free jar of peanut butter when he’s feeling generous, whose store has stood for decades on the corner of this block, who has a wife and two kids, who before today no one would even begin to expect anything but good from, who just minutes ago, while I looked at my phone and dialed 911 pulled the trigger of his gun, multiple times, and shot Doña Rosario in the center of her forehead, and me just above my knee. He doesn’t respond to me, I don’t even think he heard me. He needs help. I need help too, but he needs it more than me. I refuse to believe that he shot Doña Rosario, but he did, he murdered her based on a delusion, a terrifying, ridiculous delusion. He needs help but he’s not going to get it, because the police are here and they apprehend him like some dangerous animal, they beat him, 5 of them, and manhandle him out of his store and into one of the many police cruisers that swarmed the scene. Some minutes pass, I don’t know how many, maybe 5, maybe 30, but it’s just me inside the quiet store holding my bleeding leg and Doña Rosario still staring up at the ceiling as her body grows colder and colder and the blood surrounding her darkens. The smell of her perfume lingers in the air, I notice it for the first time today; it the same scent every Mexican lady, including my own mom and all my aunts, wears as soon as they hit a certain age, like a distinction reserved only for matriarchs of families. This smell is what I’ll choose to remember about her. Finally, a couple paramedics enter the store to remove me from the crime scene. They peel me off the floor and carefully lay me onto a stretcher, an ambulance awaits us outside. When they push open the doors, the harsh light of summer arrests my eyes; as they adjust, the scene outside develops like a polaroid photograph: a large crowd of curious onlookers, every single one with their phone out pointed at the store, at the patrol cars, at the ambulance, at me, whispering to each other, fascinated by the macabre event unfolding before them, eager to share it with everyone they know. When we reach the ambulance a dart of anxiety cuts through my overwhelming pain. With one last surge of adrenaline I frantically rummage through the pocket of my bloody jeans, which the paramedics are now cutting open to find the bullet lodged inside me, but I can’t find it; I must’ve left it on the ground inside the store.
"My phone," I whisper to the young woman in uniform tending to my wound, "I left my phone in there."
She assures me someone will go inside and find it, lifts me into the ambulance, and we take off for the hospital.
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Sergio Brito is a construction worker in Los Angeles. Follow him on IG @skergio and Twitter @BSkergio.
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