Creature Feature

By Richie Narvaez

My cousin came from Puerto Rico and killed our dog.

That summer of 1972, our dog Barbie had been acting bizarre. My sister had named the dog after her doll. She had curly white hair (the dog, not my sister) with those brown-red streaks under her eyes that some dogs get. I was seven, and Barbie was my best friend.

She used to wake me every morning by licking my face. She sat by me whenever I watched TV and listened whenever I wanted to talk about comic books.

But Barbie hadn’t been waking me anymore. She no longer ran to me when I called. She wouldn’t eat. She growled for no reason.

Every night Barbie ran from room to room in our Brooklyn apartment. I would wake in the middle of the night, and I could hear her in the darkness. Her long nails clicked on the floor as she went back and forth, from the bedrooms to the kitchen and back.

My sister Evie tried picking her up, to hold her to calm her down, but Barbie whimpered and wiggled until Evie had to let her go. Then she ran off again, back and forth, never stopping. We were scared. Our brother Rafael didn’t care because he didn’t like the dog because he didn’t like her name. So it was just my sister and I who had a conference to decide what to do.

We knew the dog needed a doctor, but we knew doctors cost money. So we went to ask Mami.

Evie said, “Something’s wrong with Barbie. She needs a doctor.”

Mami was making breakfast for us at the stove, fried eggs, platanos, fried Spam. She was smoking a cigarette. She said, “Ask your father.”

But it was never easy to ask anything from Papi. He didn’t live with us, and he only came by in the afternoons to do the numbers, so he was busy. But once in a while he would play with us, and that summer he and I were building an Aurora monster model set together.

Although he did more of the building. He said I would make a mess and that he didn’t want me to sniff too much glue. He laughed when he said that. I didn’t know why.

We were making the glow-in-the-dark Phantom of the Opera where Lon Chaney rips off his mask and grins. I wiggled each model piece off the plastic grid and handed them to Papi when he asked for them.

Papi had just finished gluing the mask into the Phantom’s hand when Barbie ran into the room and then ran back out.

Fearing my father’s reaction, I said, “I think Barbie needs a veterinarian.” Which I said slowly, to make sure the word came out right.

Papi laughed to himself again. I didn’t know why.

* * *

That same summer our cousin Abdon, from Mami’s side, came to stay with us. He was from back in Ponce, and he had a wife and baby girl back there. He came to the city to find work.

Abdon was thin as Jesus and had hair on his chin like a goat. He mostly spoke fast Spanish that was hard for us to understand because we mostly spoke English in the house.

But I liked that he could crush beer cans in one hand and that he taught me how to play Geography. He and I would sit in the living room with a world atlas that Mami had bought from a neighbor for ten dollars. Abdon opened to a page and said, “Portugal.” Then he slid the atlas to me. He smoked a cigarette and drank beer while I searched.

“Portugal!” I said, pointing.

“Awright. You good,” said Abdon, and he looked at me with his eyes that were green as boogers. Then he said, “Ecuador.”

I liked learning and was always good in school because Mami said being good in school, learning math, learning history, learning to speak English correct, was the only was to succeed in this country, the only way to get rich.

So I liked Abdon and I thought he liked my sister, my brother, and me. But one morning I heard him and Mami talking in the kitchen. He said, “Estos no tienen respeto.”

“Si,” my mother said. To my mother, you were no good if you didn’t have respect — for priests no matter how much they smelled, for the landlord who banged on the pipes, even for old people who wanted to eat you like that old man who walked down our street and screamed that he would eat us. It didn’t matter. You had to have respect!

“Edgar, he’s the freshest one,” Abdon said.

“Si,” I heard Mami say. “Mr. Ants in His Pants.”

They called me that because I had broken Mami’s plaster panther and her plaster horse and her plaster shepherd. I was always breaking something. My hair was always a mess, Mami said, and she always had to tuck my shirt back in. Every time I went down the stairs, it was at a run.

We had a small black and white TV. When I wasn’t reading, I watched it, Sesame Street and Electric Company at the start of the day, then game show after game show, then cartoons, the 4:30 Movie, and Eyewitness News, then reruns and sitcoms and cop shows until it was time to go to sleep.

One night Abdon told us we should be in bed. “Awright, kids, to sleep now,” he said in his thick accent, a cigarette hanging from his mouth.

It was only 9. Mami allowed us to stay up to 11.

“Sleep,” Abdon said, towering over us. But we ignored him and kept our eyes on the TV.

That was when the belt came out.

We were no strangers to the distinct sound of a buckle, although my mother preferred using chancletas.

Abdon pulled me up first by my little left arm so that he could get at the back at my legs. Smack! It was sharp and hard and it hurt like a hit from God.

“Ai!” I yelled.

Smack! Smack! Smack!

“That . . . what . . . you . . . get,” he said, a smack between each word.

My brother was faster than I was and caught only one in the back of his legs.

I wriggled free from Abdon and ran crying, “Mami, mami,” and “It’s not fair,” all the way to my bunk bed.

In the bunk below, my brother cried and then stopped, but when he heard me cry, he started again.

Later, my mother came in to say goodnight and kissed me on the forehead and said, “You see. Abdon is a man. You have to listen and respect him.” Then she told me to say my prayers.

* * *

The next weekmy brother and my sister Evie and me were in the bedroom my brother and I shared. We were on the floor, with all our monster models on the floor in front of us.

Barbie used to sit and watch us play, but she was walking around the apartment now, never stopping.

Fever said that his favorite model was Godzilla because he put it together all by himself.

“The hand keeps falling off, but I like it when the spikes in the back glow in the dark,” he said. But he felt bad that he lost the little glow-in-the-dark fire piece that was supposed to come out of Godzilla’s mouth.

He pointed to the Wolfman model and said, “Who can tell me who this is?”

“Me,” I said. “The Wolfman’s real name is Larry Talbot and he became a werewolf because he was bitten by a werewolf and he changes into a monster and he can only be killed with a silver bullet and they shoot him in the end.”

“Very good,” said Fever. Then he pointed to the Mummy and said, “And this monster?”

“The Mummy,” said Evie, “is from Egypt.” She could put her model together herself, but she liked to have Papi do it. “He drinks tea made from the leaves and then he comes alive. Then it goes out and likes to choke people until they die.”

Fever pointed to the Creature of the Black Lagoon and said, “What is the name of this creature?”

We busted out laughing, Rafael shaking his head, Evie saying she was going to pee herself, me barely being able to breathe. I fell back on the floor and that was when I saw our cousin Abdon turning away from the doorway. He had been watching us. He probably thought we were crazy.

* * *

I was on the living room floor, drawing on old notebook paper. My father and my cousin Abdon were drinking Rheingold and watching the Mets on TV. Barbie was going back and forth, from the kitchen to the living room, her nails scratching on the floor.

“In Puerto Rico, is hard to get good work,” said Abdon, crushing a beer can in his hand. “In New York, is harder.”

“No, it’s not,” Papi said. “Depends where you look.”

Then Papi told Abdon about all the jobs he had had since he came to New York: dishwasher, waiter, bartender, factory worker, carpenter, plumber, janitor, encyclopedia salesman, delivery man, garage mechanic, short order cook, electrician, gravedigger, house painter, numbers runner, roofer, construction worker, driver, and even a dentist —for himself, he said, pointing out the space in the side of his own mouth where he had taken out a tooth with pliers.

But Abdon said that was just my father, that no one would give him, Abdon, a job.

After another beer, Papi told Abdon he could help him do a roof in Bushwick. Abdon asked him what would he have to do. Papi said it was just a lot of lifting and walking.

The next day, Papi picked up Abdon early in the morning. My sister Evie and I were wide awake and excited to see Papi at a different time a day.

“Go back to sleep,” Papi said.

Abdon came out of the bathroom, looking sleepy.

“You ready?” Papi said to him.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Abdon.

After they left, Evie and I somehow ended up fighting over a Yoo-hoo. She gave me a charleyhorse, and I cried to Mami, who yelled at her.

In the afternoon, I was eating crackers when Papi and Abdon came back.

Right away Abdon went to lie down on the couch, where he slept at nights.

In the kitchen, Papi started getting his numbers papers together. Mami asked him how did everything go.

“You can’t ask a lemon tree to give you oranges,” Papi said.

“Que paso?” she said.

“He lifted more beers than anything,” Papi said.

* * *

I was alone in the bedroom playing with my action figures. I had an Aquaman whose head wouldn’t go back on because the rubber band inside his body broke. It was a hot day and no breeze was coming through the open windows. I was tired, cranky, hungry. All of a sudden Abdon came in and started yelling at me. I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I told him to leave me alone.

“Que!” he said.

I heard the clinking metal sound.

That is when I said he should do a four-letter word to himself.

He got me with the belt once across the back before I was gone. I was small and slippery. This was my only advantage in all the fights I had with my brother. I got past Abdon, through the short hallway between the bedroom and living room, and ran into the bathroom before Abdon could get me.

It was a tiny bathroom, with a claw-foot tub, a toilet with the tank above it, and no sink. On the door was a little latch that went into a little ring. I held onto the door knob and pulled it to me with all my strength.

Abdon banged on the door and it shook. There was a glass in the front of the door that had been painted over a hundred times. I was worried he would smash through it, but I knew, I hoped, I prayed he wouldn’t do that. Would he?

“Abres la puerta,” he said.

“No, fuck off!”

“Open the door.”

“Fuck off!”

My brother and sister had been in the living room when I ran past. I knew they were watching. I also knew my mother was in the kitchen.

Thinking now about what happened next, I feel bad. But knowing what happened later, it’s hard to regret it. I was a small boy against a drunk, raging man. I used the only power I had.

“Open the door!” he said.

“Opeen da doh!” I said, imitating his thick accent.

I heard Fever and Evie start giggling. I heard Mami out there. From the way she laughed, I could tell she had a cigarette in her mouth.

A hamper sat in the corner on the edge of the tub. Above it was a little square tunnel that went up into darkness. When I asked my mother how could Santa Claus visit us when we didn’t have a fireplace, she said he came down that tunnel.

I started imitating Abdon more, talking about going to “Chay Stadium” and saying “Otro cerveza. Otro cerveza.” 

Abdon banged the door again, but with less force.

“Malcria’o,” he said. “I gonna get you.”

I stayed in there for another hour, doing impressions of Abdon and Jerry Lewis and Abbott and Costello and Bugs Bunny.

When I came out, I looked — Abdon was not around. Fever and Evie looked tired from laughing. Mami asked me if I wanted something to eat.

* * *

I had just finished fighting with my brother for no reason. He had given me a charleyhorse, and I cried to Mami, who yelled at him.

So I was watching TV alone, on the floor, in the dark. Suddenly I turned — and there was Barbie. She was curled up behind me, still and quiet as a sleeping puppy, with a wet, wet nose. Like she had never been sick at all, like she was all better.

I was scared to move because then she would move and maybe she would change back. I stayed still for as long as I could.

After a while I had to pee. I got up as slowly as I could, and Barbie stayed where she was, calm and still.

But when I got back she was gone from her spot. She had started running back and forth through the apartment, faster and faster.

All through the night, despite the summer heat, I stayed under the covers.

The next day, when Papi came in the afternoon, he drank beer and listened to the Mets on the radio.

It was Evie’s turn to talk to him. She said, “Papi. Can you please bring Barbie to the doctor, please?”

Abdon was there, too, and he and Papi started speaking in fast Spanish. Finally, Papi said he would bring the dog to the doctor the next day, but that night Abdon would put the dog in the bathroom so it wouldn’t scare us.

Evie and I were happy. Our dog was going to be okay!

That night Abdon put Barbie in the bathroom like Papi said he would. Then he came to our room, where Fever and I had bunk beds. He stayed in the doorway, and I could not see his face because it was in the dark. He told us, “Pray for God to make the dog better.”

I began saying the Lord’s Prayer. If my brother ever prayed for anything, it was a new baseball glove.

When I got up the next morning Barbie was not around. Maybe Papi wasn’t back from the doctor yet. Abdon was not around.

My mother was in the kitchen, washing clothes in the sink, listening to the radio station that played the old music she loved.

“Where’s Barbie?” I said.

“She die,” said Mami, without turning from the sink. “Pobre perrito.”

“What? Oh no,” I said.

Mami pointed with her mouth to the back window. There, right outside the window on the roof of the apartment below, was something in a clear plastic garbage bag. Barbie’s teeth stuck out from her black lips. Her head was twisted almost all the way around.

My mother told me, “Abdon say she hit her head on the tub and die.”

“Oh,” I said. I didn’t cry. I knew I should be, but I didn’t and I didn’t know why. I said, “What . . . what are we going to do with her? Can we bury her?” I was thinking about funerals and how much they cost and if they had them for pets and could we afford it.

“Abdon will take her to the river,” Mami said. “C’mon, eat some breakfast.”

A month later, just before school started, Abdon’s wife and baby came from Puerto Rico and they moved to an apartment in Brownsville.

That fall my sister asked Papi and Mami for another dog, and one day Papi brought Evie another poodle mix. She named it Barbie.

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Richie Narvaez is author of the award-winning collection Roachkiller and Other Stories and the gentrification thriller Hipster Death Rattle. His latest novel is the historical YA mystery Holly Hernandez and the Death of Disco.