Chapter Text
Not that Benny’s cut up over missing another day of school, but Usnavi hasn’t answered any of his messages so he’s gonna need a lot more information than Kevin’s I need you to work the dispatch again today.
“Okay, but how’s Mateo and Rosa?” he says, and gets no answer. “Mr Rosario?”
“Dead,” Kevin says flatly.
“...What?"
Kevin gives a limp shrug, rubbing at his temples, and sits down heavily in a chair. His face is gaunt, blank.
It occurs to Benny that, of all the people in the barrio, Kevin’s closest friend is Mateo.
Was Mateo.
"Usnavi," Benny mutters, taking his headset off. “I gotta go.”
“Camila and Claudia are with him,” Kevin says. “Benny, I know you’re worried but I’ve been awake all night and I don’t want to spend all morning calling around for someone to fill in. You’ve been saying for months you want more responsibility, take the chance when it’s given to you.”
Kevin sounds desperate, and it isn't easy to drop the biggest opportunity he’s been given to prove himself, god knows Benny needs every chance and all the cash he can get. But what’s months compared to how long Benny’s been friends with Usnavi?
As respectfully as he can, Benny takes his tie off and puts it on the table. “Then fire me if you have to, man, I get it, but I ain’t staying here directing traffic when my best friend’s just lost his parents."
He leaves the dispatch without waiting for a response.
***
Vanessa always waits til last possible minute and then five more minutes after that to get out of bed and get ready for school, so she doesn’t walk with Nina any more because Nina likes to be punctual. Which is why it’s weird Nina’s at the door this late, when she hasn't even been answering texts since yesterday afternoon.
“Usnavi’s mom and dad died,” she says in a tiny voice.
Vanessa says, “the hell are you talking about?”
Not the response she means to give, but the one that comes out. She knew they were at the hospital in a bad way, but that can't be right. It wasn’t even long ago Vanessa been in the store and Rosa had called her princesa and Mateo had tipped his cap to her. True, they’d sounded pretty sick even then and it’s been Usnavi at the counter every day the past few weeks. But like, everyone gets sick, they don’t just up and die a month later. “Jesus. Is…is Usnavi okay? Are you okay?”
Nina, still standing uncertainly at the door, starts crying, the silent sudden-tears-on-face kind.
“Oh, hey, come on,” Vanessa says uncomfortably, bringing her into a hug. "Should you even go to school today? This is like...I don't even fucking know.”
“They’re only the same age as my mom and dad, Vanessa,” Nina says, and she’s not sobbing, she just sounds confused. “Mom said I could have the day off but I’ve gotta go to school ‘cause otherwise I’m gonna think about that and I don’t wanna. I've known them my whole life. What am I even supposed to say to Usnavi now?”
Vanessa doesn’t know either. What is that, is it a text, sorry you’re an orphan? She doesn’t even hang out with Usnavi at the moment, but even though they don’t all always spend every day together, they all grew up together, Vanessa and Nina and Usnavi and Benny, they're part of the fabric, something outside the make up break up dramas of other childhood friendships.
Mateo and Rosa and the De la Vega bodega have always been the fabric too. The store on the corner where everyone goes. And now they just aren't there.
Vanessa doesn’t say anything. But before she leaves for school, she does something she hasn’t done since middle school, and hugs her own mom goodbye.
***
Dani can read the atmosphere of a neighborhood like a restaurant menu, and passing the bodega's still closed grate gives her a chill down the spine like the falling snow that's drifting down in lazy flakes. There’s some juju in the air that Dani doesn’t like at all.
“No store again today,” Carla notes. "You heard anything yet?"
"Not yet."
She sets up the sign outside, sweeps snow away from the entrance so that nobody slips and tries to sue their asses, and then she sees Camila, leaving alleyway that leads to the side entrance of the De la Vega's building. It only takes an glance exchanged between them. Dani’s good at reading people, too.
“Ha pasada algo,” Dani says.
“Están muertos,” Camila says, simply, and Dani closes her eyes, shakes her head. “Both of them. We were there. I've left Usnavi with Claudia and Benny. He's--well, I'm sure you can imagine."
She doesn't want to. "Ay, that poor boy. And you, don't tell me you're going to work now."
“I have to do the payroll, I’ll get some sleep at lunchtime. If I don’t start it now there’ll only be more to do tomorrow.”
Isn't that always the way? Always more to do tomorrow, until there's no tomorrow left . Dani built her business alongside the Rosarios and the De la Vegas, all of them going through the same starting problems and stressful nights and days they thought it was all going to fall apart, and they all grew together and celebrated their successes together. Now Rosa and Mateo are dead, and Camila’s going to spend all day doing admin for the dispatch, and Dani’s going to spend all day cutting hair, and the bodega will stay closed.
“Did you expect things to end like this?” she asks.
“Call me naive, but I don’t think I expected things to end,” Camila answers.
“It’s too cold out here,” Dani says. “We’ll…no sé. We’ll talk about this later, sí? Take care of yourself, linda, it’s something we could all stand to remember more often.”
Back in the salon, Carla's turned the radio on, something bright and cheerful ringing out of the speakers.“That was fast,” she says cheerfully. "Too snowy out there, huh?"
Nothing like the feeling of being the one to break unheard news. For once, Dani doesn’t want to be at the epicenter.
“Carla, we need to talk,” she says, and she locks the salon door behind her. “En privado.”
***
Sonny’s trying to jump onto the kitchen counter so he can reach the peanut butter in the top cupboard when his mother’s half of her phone conversation in the living room catches his attention.
“—Sonny's en la cocina, do you want me to— sí, lo entiendo, I’ll tell him. Call us if you need anything, Miguel.”
Is she talking to his dad? Weird. He loves both his parents but Sonny is their only common ground, so they prefer to relay only necessary information through him and otherwise intensely pretend the other one doesn’t exist. It’s the only reason their divorce stays as civilized as it is. Easy enough usually, with his dad being in DR, but that only makes it weirder that he’s calling at this time in the morning, and that he didn't ask for Sonny, and besides Sonny only just spoke to him two days ago, that’s the day Pa always calls.
Mom comes into the kitchen and just stands there, phone in hand, looking at him.
“Was that Pa?” Sonny asks.
“Sonny,” Mom says, and he can feel something bad in her voice.
“¿Que pasó?” Sonny says. “Is he okay?”
“Your dad is fine. He just got a call from the hospital. It’s…it’s about your Tío Mateo and Tía Rosa.”
She tells him, about how his tío and tía who give him free candy and piggyback rides and who always make sure he gets the piece of the Rosca de reyes with the baby Jesus figurine are gone, and Sonny’s ten years old, he isn’t a kid who doesn’t know what dying is, except he never knew it could hit like a punch. He’s used to the idea that he can fix everything by trying hard and caring hard, but in an instant he knows there’s nothing he can do about this, and that’s the most frightening thing that’s happened since the day he realized he couldn’t fix his parents marriage either.
He’s got questions like he always does about everything, how could something like this happen or why would something like this happen, why didn’t anyone stop it, what’s gonnastop it happening to anyone else? and usually he’d ask all those and more in a single breath. Today he only asks what seems to him the most important question out of all of them, and the scariest: “but what about Usnavi?”
***
Claudia was the first to hear about it. Kevin called her as soon as they were home.
She takes her rosary in hand, and she thinks of a sky full of stars. As it always seems to, her lord’s prayer fades into only the names of those she’s seeking divinity for. She often got scolded by her mama for failing to remember the exact words of the bible verses, but Claudia struggles to read and hasn’t got the mind for rote memorization. Besides, she’s always thought there must be no words more holy to speak to the Father with than love, and today with all the love and sadness her years have brought her, she passes bead past bead and thinks Rosa, Mateo, Usnavi.
There’s nothing more holy than love, her balm to the increasing wear of age and time and a long, difficult life. Nowhere does she find strength more than in the youngest generation who are the ones she truly considers hers , watching Nina flourish into a such brilliant young woman and Vanessa with her proud fierce inner strength, and Sonny with his bright and noisy sense of right and wrong, and even though Benny came along later Claudia’s taken so much joy in seeing him go from a roguish little troublemaker to such a smart and ambitious man.
And Usnavi, with his father’s sweet smile and his mother’s music in his soul and all those little ways that are just himself. The De la Vegas came over to America on a warm September day, and Claudia met them just outside their building where she was feeding the birds from her stoop. The baby was kicking, and Rosa was so excited that she asked Claudia to feel before she even introduced herself, and told her how earlier that very day was the first time she felt him move while they were looking at the boats and reading the names aloud.
She was the first to meet him, at the hospital when he was born too early, too little. The first to hold him other than his parents. He was small and floppy like the ragdoll she still has carefully stored in a box, the only possession remaining of her childhood in Cuba beside a few old photographs. She’s been Abuela Claudia to the neighborhood long before any of the little ones were born, but it was meeting Usnavi that she realized she would never regret this life that had prevented her from having children herself: it was only patience and a trust in God through all of it that lead her to this boy who was unquestionably her own, and all her babies afterwards.
Claudia prays to her own Mama passed so many decades ago, asking her to help Mateo and Rosa find their path in the next life, and then she goes to do the same for her grandson left in this one.