—East New York, 1965
Payday, late winter afternoon, skylights the color
of dirty laundry. Sewing machines chugged down,
women at long tables snapping off lamps, sighing
back from a week of fastening cross straps
& straw sunflowers to summer shoes. Laughter,
bursts of Spanish. The floor shuddered as a
stamping machine smashed out a final leather
pattern. A pregnant supervisor, Glory, rolled her
neck & drifted to a window, called down to her
guy. We milled around, waiting for our checks,
& I noticed money changing hands—a bet
of some kind was on. In a swept space near
earthen mounds of leather, tiny Pepe stood alone.
After a moment, he raised his arms & dove
into a handstand. A feathery bounce & he held it
like iron, did it again, one leg higher than the other.
Smallest man in the place, thin as banjo string,
a gold tooth showing when he smiled. Smaller
than most of the women, too, in their slender
twenties, though he was older. All of us breathing
a marinade of leather & glue we carried home.
Most mornings, as I jogged down the steps
of the El, the train rumbling off, I could almost
see a cloud of it reaching out for me before
the tilted-open factory windows swung into view.
In Puerto Rico, the story went, Pepe’d been
a circus flyer until the night he grabbed nothing
but air, the sawdust smashing up at him.
Lived with his sister’s family, now, in Flatbush,
a sickening dip in his gait as he pushed shoe racks
between stations, stubby wooden wheels rattling
madly over floor beams so thick they must have
come from trees grown tall before the birth
of time. Our numbers runner, too—Pepe, quick-
witted Boleta Man. As he stood in late shadows,
looking thoughtful, subtly shaking out his arms,
a crowd gathered. The last sewing machine died.
Pigeons scratched at the skylights. A chunky guy
who liked to tease the Dominican women made
a show of crumpling a ten & placed it on the floor.
With no fuss, Pepe popped his handstand,
locked in above the money, the four-inch cuffs
of his jeans sliding halfway down his calves.
He lifted away his left hand, fingers open, as if
signaling for quiet, leaned right in counterbalance,
& levered himself down. His arm muscles jumped
like mice under his skin. Dios mio, breathed the
woman crushed in next to me, one of the team
that slapped glue onto cork heels. Pepe didn’t waver.
He pursed his lips, kissed the bill, pushed back up
with almost a full day’s pay in his mouth. We
whooped & stomped. Even the guy who’d lost
was laughing. Springing back to his feet, minus
the inverted grace of his handstand, Pepe almost
buckled, his bum leg folding in. He caught
himself, held up the ten. In the dimming light,
his gold tooth shone.