I know as you read this that you have already turned into a very fine young man. How could you not be? Vicente Silva raised you.
I love you more than I can bear. You saved my life—if only for a little while. Not everybody lives a long life. But not everybody gets to give life to a boy as beautiful as you.
All my love,
Mom
I remembered what Mima told me. “Your mother was a beautiful person.”
I hadn’t known so many things, and I’d been so afraid. Maybe I was afraid that she hadn’t loved me. Stupid. Here was this letter from a mother who loved me more than she’d loved anything else in the world and who died too soon. I understood what she’d done for me. I understood that she had fallen in love with Mima because she’d never known a Mima in the world she came from. I understood why she married my dad. To give me a family, a family that knew how to love.
I pictured my biological father slapping my mother to the ground. Maybe I had a little bit of him in me. A little bit. But not much. I didn’t have to be afraid of becoming like my father. I wasn’t that man. And never would be. I think my mom ran away from a selfish and violent man. She saved herself. And saved me, too. I knew myself enough now to know that I’d taken out my fists because of my sense of loyalty to the people I loved. Yeah, I’d struck out at Enrique and other boys, but Dad was right—my anger had come from hurt. I wasn’t proud of any of those moments. Hurting other people because you’ve been hurt? No bueno.
Every time I’d pulled out my fists, I thought I now understood the reflex. Or at least I was beginning to understand. I couldn’t bear to see anyone hurting the people I loved. Because I loved them so much that it hurt me, too. And I couldn’t stand anyone calling me a white boy because I belonged to a family, and when people called me that, all I heard was that I did not belong to that family. And I did belong to them, and I wasn’t going to let anybody tell me otherwise. And one more thing: I didn’t want to admit that I had anger living somewhere inside me. But that anger didn’t make me a “bad boy.” All it did was make me human. There was nothing wrong with getting angry. It was what you did with that anger that mattered.
All this time I’d been so scared that I was going to turn out to be like a biological father I’d never met. I’d underestimated myself. In the end, wasn’t it up to me to choose? Didn’t we all grow up to be the kind of men we wanted to become?
I was trying to explain to myself why I was so happy. I hadn’t ever felt this happy. I finally understood something about life and its inexplicable logic. I’d wanted to be certain of everything, and life was never going to give me any certitude. I thought of Fito, who always lived in hope when life had offered him no hope. Certitude was a luxury he had never been able to afford. All he’d ever had was a heart incapable of despair.
I thought of Mima and Sam’s mom and Fito’s mom and my mom. They were dead. They were like the falling yellow leaves of Mima’s tree. Life had its seasons, and the season of letting go would always come, but there was something very beautiful in that, in the letting go. Leaves were always graceful as they floated away from the tree.
There would always be cancer, and people would always die under its awful and unforgivable weight. There would always be accidents because people were careless and weren’t paying attention when they should’ve been paying attention. There would always be people who suffered and died from addictions that were powerful and mysterious and uncontrollable.
People died every day.
And people lived their lives every day. There were always survivors in the aftermath of all that death.
I was one of those survivors.
And so was Sam.
And so was Fito.
And so was Dad.
I’d watched them in all their beautiful courage. I’d watched them as they struggled through their hurts and their wounds.
And there was one thing I could be certain of: I was loved.
I pictured Mima pointing at my dad. I knew exactly what she had been trying to tell me. She wanted to be sure that I understood that I had been raised by a kind and tender man, that there was no cruelty in the world that could rob him of his dignity. His heart could not, would not, allow it.
God, I was happy.
I texted Sam: Are you awake?
Sam: Just about to fall asleep
Me: Wftd = nurture
Sam: What?
Me: As in nature vs. nurture
Sam: You okay cray boy?
Me: Go to sleep. I’ll tell you in the morning
Sam: Sweet dreams
I went outside and sat on the back steps. And all of a sudden it mattered so much to me where I went to school. I wanted it to be Columbia. That’s where my father had met my mother. That’s when they’d fallen in love with each other. It wasn’t the usual love story. But it was a love story. A love story like mine and Sam’s.
I held the letter in my hand. Dad said that Mima would always be with us. And my mom, she’d be with me too. That’s the way it was when you loved someone. You took them everywhere you went—whether they were alive or not. I read the letter over and over and over. I didn’t sleep all night. I wasn’t tired. I wasn’t tired at all.
I was happy sitting there on the steps, my mother’s letter in one hand and my essay in the other. I remembered the first day of school as I walked home in the rain and how I had never felt so alone, the weight of the rain blinding me.
I wasn’t alone. Mom. Dad. Mima. Sam. Fito. My uncles and aunts. My cousins. No, I wasn’t alone. I never had been. I never would be. Alone was not a word that applied to me as I sat there. Waiting for the sun to rise.
Salvador
I HEARD MY FATHER grinding the coffee beans in the kitchen.
I walked inside. He looked up at me. “You’re up early.”
“I wanted to watch the sunrise.”
Then he studied me. “You look like you’ve been crying.”
I held up the letters. “My essay,” I said. “And Mom’s letter.”
“Oh,” he said.
Just then Sam walked in, ready for her morning run.
She looked at me—then at Dad.
I dangled my letters.
Sam’s eyes got really big. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve never been better.”
Dad said, “I need a cigarette.”
And Sam said, “I’m going to text Fito.”
I am watching my father sitting on the back steps. He is smoking a cigarette and reading my mom’s letter. Sam and Fito are sitting next to him and reading it with him. I am throwing the ball up in the air and catching it in my glove. I am playing catch with myself as they read.
They have just finished reading the letter.
They are looking at me, Dad and Sam and Fito. I drop the glove and the ball on the ground. I walk toward my father.
I take the sealed envelope from him—the one that holds the information about my biological father.
I ask him for his cigarette lighter.
He hands it to me.
I look at Sam and Fito and say, “Word for the day.”
Sam understands and says, “Nurture.”
I take the unopened envelope. I am watching myself as I take the lighter and place it over the edge of the paper.
I am watching the envelope burn. I am watching the ashes floating up to the heavens.
I am hearing myself as I tell my father, “I know who my father is. I have always known.”
And now I am laughing. And my dad is laughing. And Fito is smiling that incredible smile of his. We are watching Sam dance around the yard as Maggie follows her and jumps up and barks. Sam is shouting out to me and the morning sky, “Your name is Salvador! Your name is Salvador! Your name is Salvador!”
Epilogue
I GOT TO THINKING about the essay I wrote to get into Columbia. I think it might have been different if I’d read my mom’s letter first—but it’s no use living in regret. My dad told m
e once, “If you make a mistake, don’t live in it.” He also said that we do things—important things—only when we’re ready to do them. I think he’s right. But sometimes life forces our hand. Sometimes we have to make decisions whether we’re ready to make them or not. I suppose I will have to learn to bend to the inexplicable logic of my life.
So this is the letter I sent to Columbia University (which fit none of the guidelines):
Dear Admissions Committee,
My name is Salvador Silva. My name represents the story of my life. My name matters more to me than I can ever explain. If things had turned out differently, I would have had a different first name and a different last name. And I would have had a different life.
My mother died when I was three. Her name was Alexandra Johnston. She met the man who was to adopt me, Vicente Silva, while they were undergraduates at this very university. My father came from a poor Mexican American family, went on to study art at Yale, and has become a rather well-known artist. I think it’s important to mention that my father is gay, not that it matters to me (though it seems to be something that bothers other people, mostly people who know nothing about the kind of man my father is).
I believe that the friendship between my dad and my mother was something incredibly rare. Their love created a family. A real family. When I was three, my mother died of cancer, and the man I know as my father adopted me. He was my mother’s birth coach, and he was in the room when I was born. You could say quite accurately that he was my father from the very beginning.
For some reason my mother decided to name me Salvador. And I’m very happy to have the name she gave me. My last name, I got from my father. I grew up feeling and thinking that I was as Mexican as my family. And even though, technically, they’re not Mexicans—as they have been in this country for several generations—my uncles and aunts and my grandmother have always thought of themselves as Mexican. That’s how I think of myself, too.
The most influential person in my life, other than my dad, is my grandmother. I call her Mima. By the time you read this letter, she will probably be dead. She is suffering from the last stages of cancer.
It’s difficult to put into words what my Mima means to me, so I’m going to end this essay with a memory I have of her, a memory I have carried all my life and will carry until the day I die. I want to be worthy of being called her grandson. If I can live up to that, then I think I just might make a very fine addition to your university:
I have a memory that is almost like a dream: the yellow leaves from Mima’s mulberry tree are floating down from the sky like giant snowflakes. The November sun is shining, the breeze is cool, and the afternoon shadows are dancing with a life that is far beyond my boyhood understanding. Mima is singing something in Spanish. There are more songs living inside her than there are leaves on her tree . . .
Dad said it was a great letter. “It’s really beautiful, son.”
Sam said it would get their attention. And she loved my memory of the yellow leaves. She said it was like a poem.
I don’t really believe it’s the kind of letter that’s going to get me into Columbia. Would be nice. I know I have the grades to get me into a few of the schools I’ve applied to. No matter where I go, I’m going to have to take me along for the ride. But the good news is, I’ll be taking everyone I love with me too.
Someday I want to go to the beach with Fito and Sam. Sam and I, we can watch Fito walk on the sands of the beach for the first time. And see the expression on his face when he looks out into the horizon, where the water meets the sky.
Tonight Dad is taking Sam and Fito out for pizza and a movie. Sam and Fito have been arguing about which movie for the past half hour.
And me? I’m going out to dinner with Marcos. It was my idea. He gets to pick the restaurant—and I get to pay.
It’s time I get to know the man who loves my father. It’s time.
Acknowledgments
WRITING IS A journey. This writer, me, Ben, walks around in the world and one day gets an idea. I live with that idea, and then it starts turning into a story, and the story grows and grows in my head until I have to get it out so I won’t go completely mad.
Writing novels is always difficult, challenging, and beautiful. When I got the idea to write about a young man who had been adopted by a gay man, the wheels in my head started turning. Fiction is fiction—but no novel comes from nowhere. I admit there are bits and pieces of my own autobiography scattered throughout this book. Because my own mother had recently died when I began it, I knew the arc of the story would be about the narrator’s grandmother dying. In a sense, writing this novel helped to heal my wounds. But writing has always helped me to survive my own pain. This is why I say that writing has saved my life: It’s the truth.
It took me a couple of years to finish the novel. And when it finally arrived on the desk of my editor, Anne Hoppe, there was still much work to be done. Countless conversations and emails and revisions. Then more conversations, then more emails, and then more rewriting. Anne always asked the right questions, challenging me to wring the most out of the material. Sometimes I felt she knew my novel better than I did. Her commitment to my work not only challenged but amazed me.
Writers love to thank their agents—and I am no exception. Patty Moosbrugger, who has been my agent for more than a decade, is a true friend. She not only believes in my work—she believes in me. Me. Ben. What more can a writer ask? I do not know where I would have ended up if she had not been traveling by my side. It was she who placed this book in the compassionate and capable hands of Anne Hoppe. It seems impossible to thank her enough.
And then there’s this thing called family. This thing called friends. No writer creates a book all by himself. Without the support of the people who love me and have often helped save me from myself, I would be absolutely nowhere. This book is very much a creation of the village around me, the village that raised me and supported me and loved me, the village that gave me words and language and my voice. And so I shout out my gratitude to my village. This is the book that we all wrote together. Let’s go write another—shall we?
SingularReads.com
About the Author
Photo by Cybele Knowles
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ is an acclaimed poet and fiction writer for children and adults. His first book of poetry, Calendar of Dust, won the American Book Award, and his most recent volume of short stories, Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club, won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. His teen novel Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe won a Michael L. Printz Honor, the Pura Belpré Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and the Stonewall Book Award. A visual artist as well as a writer, Mr. Sáenz lives in El Paso, Texas.
The Inexplicable Logic of My Life Page 29