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@PopularMechanics _ June 2019 81to die, because we’re all on the first floor, and it’s so tall.
The places your mind takes you.
Eventually, she runs out of words to describe what she feels, and
all that’s left then, she says, is the memory of who her family used
to be, and the reality of who they are now.
No one told her the city was going to demolish her house. Until the
day she saw it, smashed to the ground as if a giant fist had struck it from
the sky, she had believed that maybe they could go back to the way they
were. That she could put back together all the things that were broken.January 21, 2019
Offices of Sheff Law, P.C., Andover
10:30 A.M.
AS A BABY, Leonel didn’t like to be touched. He a lways wanted to do
things himself. What made him happy was other people. “Mayor,”
his mother, Rosaly, called him, because whenever they went walk-
ing together, he would stop to talk with everyone they met—little
kids, old ladies, teenagers—people she didn’t even know! The elderly
people in their North Lawrence neighborhood called him caballero.
Gentleman.
Rosaly Rondon has deep, soulful eyes and wears a silk scarf
around her neck. She is smiling, remembering her son.
He was a bit of a clotheshorse, and so vain. Worse than any
woman! He’d shop only at Macy’s. He used to wake up at 5 a.m.
because he needed so much time to get ready for school. To leave the
house for a simple errand, he would insist on changing his clothes,
fixing his hair. He would go through a full bottle of Abercrombie
cologne every month. The whole apartment smelled of it. His entire
school, probably! You can ask them.
Sometimes he would come downstairs to show her the outfit he’d
chosen for the day: “Do I look handsome?”
She would say, “You’re beautiful.” She would say, “You’re a puppy.”
That made him very happy. He was the spirit of the house, the soul
of the house.
She wipes her eyes.
He would cook with her at 1 a.m. He thought that food tasted
better at night, and his sister, Lucianny, did too—salami and egg
and plantains. He would go all around the house when he was mak-
ing smoothies: “You want some? You want some? Because I’m not
making any more!”
He fell in and out of love all the time. Yes, girls liked him back—
a little bit too much! That used to be the main issue—that girls were
in back of him.
He always had music playing, she says. He would make mixtapes
for everybody, from his mother to Lucianny’s two-year-old daugh-
ter, Rihanny.
Did Leonel spend a lot of time with Rihanny?
Lucianny is here in the lawyer’s office, too, and for a long
moment, the only sound in the room is her weeping.
“Leonel taught Rihanny how to dance,” Rosaly whispers. When
Rihanny was a baby, he would take care of her late at night so Luci-
anny could sleep. Rihanny would doze on his chest. He told everyone
that she was his own girl. His own daughter.LEONEL WAS JUMPING up and down after he passed his driver’s
test. That was on the twelfth, and he went to pick up the actual driv-
er’s license on the thirteenth. Had picked out a used BMW that his
mother was going to buy for him; with his learner’s permit, he had
been chauffeuring her all over town. Cars, girls, and music: He was
a teenage boy.
Leonel phoned her that afternoon from the Registry of Motor Vehi-
cles in Lawrence: He needed proof of residence. Could she bring it?
It was a ten-minute drive from their apartment to the registry.Leonel’s brother, Leonardy, rode with her, and they met Leonel on
the sidewalk outside at about 3:45 p.m. He didn’t want them to wait
for him. He was going back to the Figueroas’ house, around the cor-
ner, to celebrate. Just for a few minutes, okay? He would call them
soon to be picked up.
Leonardy and Mrs. Rondon drove to a pet store in Andover to
buy some tropical fish for his tank. On the way back, she noticed a
lot of ambulances and helicopters, but she didn’t pay them much
attention. She got home to find her husband and Lucianny watching
the news. Her husband said not to worry, the danger was far away.
The phone rang while she was cleaning her kitchen. It was her
nephew’s wife, saying Leonel was at the hospital.
There was confusion. You can’t imagine. Someone needed to
stay behind with Leonardy, Rihanny, and their little cousins who
were visiting. They decided Mr. Rondon would. Mrs. Rondon gave
her daughter her keys. Lawrence General Hospital was less than a
mile away, but she was shaking too much to drive.
Leonel lay in the hospital bed, in a horrible tangle of tubes and
wires, like a photograph somebody had scratched with a pen. Was
he conscious? She doesn’t know.
He was medflighted to Boston, so they followed him there, a
thirty-five-minute drive. Sometime after they arrived, Leonel died.
That’s the beginning and the end of it, for her. There will be
depositions and a lawsuit and she’ll go through all of the details,
but they’re all beside the point, aren’t they?
My son died.
Lucianny always tells her mom, Out of so many explosions, he
was the only one who passed away. When she says this today, in the
lawyer’s office, there is wonder in her voice. The family is devoutly
Catholic, and God’s plan for them feels like a mystery. But she
thanks God that other people didn’t suffer, because this is horrible.
Her voice cracks roughly on the word. The family struggles every
day. But they pray and they tell God thank you that nothing hap-
pened to children or the elderly or other people.
His mom hasn’t touched anything in his bedroom, except the
Abercrombie bottle on his dresser. She used to love hugging him
and breathing in his smell. But the scent of his cologne is beginning
to fade from the room, so sometimes she sprays a little into the air.
Lit tle Rihanny kisses the photograph of Leonel beside her bed
every morning. She’s always asking about him. Let’s go see Uncle
Leonel. She knows he’s at the cemetery, and that he wants to see
her, too.From left: Leonel’s
mother, Rosaly; his
sister, Lucianny; and
his father, Miguel.