In Perfect Light

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

  Vicente nodded.

  “What kind? What kind of ice cream do you like? Vanilla?”

  He shook his head.

  “Chocolate?”

  He shook his head.

  “Orange sherbet?”

  He nodded.

  “Good. That’s my favorite.”

  All the way home, Mister stared at Vicente through the rearview mirror. Alert, he moved his head from side to side as if he were studying his new surroundings, almost as if he were sighted. As they neared his house, he heard Vicente’s small voice. “Mom.” And then, after a moment, Vicente repeated the word again. “Mom.”

  Mister smiled. That’s where all our stories begin, don’t they? With Mom. Me and you, kid, our stories are as different as our mothers. He pulled into the driveway. He turned off the car. He turned around and reached out his hand and touched Vicente’s wandering face. “Mom. That’s a good word. A holy word. Hand. That’s a holy word, too. Let’s go inside. I’ll teach you a new word. Home. H-O-M-E. Home.”

  He carried him inside. He could feel Vicente’s breath on his neck. He smelled of apples. His breath hadn’t changed yet. There was nothing rotting inside him yet. Mom. Hand. Home.

  Mom. Dad.

  Andrés, You Are That Boy

  Andrés turned eleven that summer. That August. They’d lived in their new home for almost three months, and the days didn’t seem so long, though they were hot. Everything they needed, food and beds and walls and clothes and shoes and a bathroom and even a television that mostly Yolie and Ileana watched. Andrés had no interest in television. In Spanish or in English, didn’t matter, the people he saw who lived in the television weren’t saying anything he understood. It was as though he had to read their lips, and when he finally succeeded in making out the words, it wasn’t worth the effort. But they had everything they needed—even a fan in every room to keep the house cool, though it wasn’t as cool as the air-conditioned house they’d had in El Paso.

  Andrés dreamed of Mrs. Fernandez, and sometimes he got Mrs. Fernandez and his mother confused—in his dreams. School was starting. But that was in El Paso. And he no longer lived in El Paso. He lived in Juárez. And he liked a part of that. He liked the Spanish. And he liked going to the market every day. He especially grew to like watching the chickens hanging upside down and the stacks of chicharrones behind glass cases. Better than steaks, any day. Chicharrones. The woman who sold them, sometimes, she would give him one for free. He liked the vendors, the way they talked.

  Yolie always bought them a burrito or tacos al carbón, or sometimes they even sat at one of the outdoor stands and ate a plate of enchiladas or carnitas—and they all ate as if they hadn’t eaten for days, ravenous. And then they would buy aguas frescas. Ileana always ordered an agua de sandia because she liked the color. Yolie always ordered an agua de piña, and Andrés, he always ordered an agua de melón. He loved cantaloupe. Cantaloupe reminded him of his mother.

  He’d made a few friends, and his Spanish was getting better and better, and the neighbors had stopped making fun of them because of the funny way they spoke Spanish, and they had stopped calling them “pochos.”

  Yolie found a bookstore because she knew Andrés liked to read, and she let him pick out some books. They were all in Spanish, but somehow Andrés found them easy to read. Well, maybe not so easy. But not so hard, either. And he had time. He wasn’t in a hurry. So, if it took him a long time to read, it didn’t matter. And in El Paso, school was starting. And he wouldn’t be going. And he was sad. Because he liked school. But he didn’t say anything to Yolie or Mando because he knew they would laugh or shake their heads or maybe even make fun of him because they’d never liked school, and had only gone because they were forced to go, and what good was school and learning when there was money to be made and a life to be lived and a world to be savored? And didn’t they have everything they needed? And wasn’t it because Mando was working that they had everything? But where did he work? It scared Andrés to ask that question, so he didn’t. Because there was a part of him that knew.

  He was turning eleven that August day. That boy who still carried the streets of his old neighborhood in his heart, that boy who still ached to ride a bike. Not any bike, but his bike, the one his father gave him.

  “What would you like for your birthday? How about a bike?”

  Andrés looked at Mando and shook his head. “No,” he said, then looked away.

  “You don’t want a bike, carnalito?” That’s what he called him now, carnalito.

  Andrés shook his head. “I want a typewriter.”

  “A typewriter, carnalito? What the fuck are you gonna do with a pinchi typewriter?”

  “Type things,” Andrés answered.

  “Type things?” Mando laughed and lit a cigarette. “You know what, Andy, you’ve always been a weird little guy, you know that?”

  Andrés shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I mean, it doesn’t matter what I get. A bike is okay. Or anything. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Look, carnalito, it’s your frickin’ birthday,” Mando said, “so let’s see what we can do about that typewriter.”

  His girlfriend, Xochil, was standing at the door. She had a towel around her and another towel around her head. Clean and showered, and she and Mando looked at each other, and Andrés knew they wanted each other like they’d wanted each other last night when Mando had asked him to go sleep out in the courtyard—which he didn’t mind because it was nice there, the way they had fixed it up, and it was cooler there at night. But he’d heard them moaning the way he’d heard his mother and father moaning a few times. And he knew that Yolie and Ileana must have heard them, too. Not that Mando and Xochil cared. They just wanted each other.

  “You wanna go and find Yolie and Ileana at the market?” Mando stuck a five-dollar bill in his hand. His father had never given him five-dollar bills. He didn’t want to think about where that five-dollar bill had come from. He didn’t. He knew Mando didn’t have a normal job, the kind his father once had.

  Andrés nodded and took the money. Xochil kissed him on the forehead as he passed her. She smelled something like his mother. Something like that. At least Xochil was nice to him. And nice to Ileana, too. She and Yolie, well, they were nice to each other, too. But he knew there was something hard between them. He knew that.

  He found Yolie at the market, and she was talking to some guy that had been hanging around. He didn’t know where they’d met, but they’d met somewhere. Maybe they’d met when Yolie went out in the afternoon, or in the early evenings. Andrés knew that the guy was from El Paso and was even more of a pocho than they were, because his Spanish was very broken—even though he looked very Mexican. He knew he had lived in El Paso all his life. Yolie was talking to him in Spanish, and he would answer back in English, and neither of them seemed to mind and they looked at each other in the same way that Mando and Xochil looked at each other, and Andrés knew that his father would have sent Andrés away with one of his looks or one of his hard words and he would’ve made Yolie go inside and wash the dishes. But those rules weren’t there anymore, and Mando and Yolie said it was better that way.

  Yolie bought him an agua fresca and bought Ileana one, too. “Why don’t you go and walk around for a while. Come back in half an hour.” Andrés looked at his watch—the watch Mr. Fernandez had given him. And he nodded. He took Ileana’s hand. Yolie and her guy friend wanted to talk about things, maybe each other. It didn’t matter. He smiled at his little sister. “Mando gave me five dollars. I’ll buy you something?”

  Ileana smiled at him. “There’s a rabbit in a stand over there,” she said, pointing.

  She was pointing toward the outdoor stands where vendors sold clothes and shoes and toys. And Andy knew she was talking about a stuffed rabbit. “Let’s go see it,” he said. And he kissed her. And she laughed. And Andrés thought that as long as he had Ileana, then everything would be very good.

  On his birthday, Mando and Yolie had a party for him.
There was Coke and a cake and Mando had gotten a table for the courtyard from somewhere and Yolie had decorated it with a party tablecloth and there were balloons and Yolie’s boyfriend was there whose name was Eddie, and Eddie had brought him a present. And Xochil had brought him a present, too. And his three friends who lived on the same street, Lalo and Chilo and Oscar, they were there. They didn’t bring presents, but he didn’t care because he knew they were poor. Their houses didn’t have all the nice things his house had. No, he didn’t care about presents. He was glad they came. And Ileana’s friend, Elisa, she was there, too. And they all sat out in the courtyard and it was cool that day, and the breeze smelled like rain, and Yolie and Mando were happy. He thought that it was strange that they were happier now than they had been when his mother and father were alive. And he wondered about that. And he thought that maybe his parents’ death had been a kind of freedom for them. But that’s not the way it had ever felt to him.

  He blew out his candles, and he made a wish. He wished he could see Mr. and Mrs. Fernandez again. He wished he could go to school. That’s what he wished. But he knew it was useless to wish those things. He was embarrassed to open his presents in front of everyone, so he decided to let Ileana open them for him. And she squealed and kissed him and she looked at the presents and decided to open the one Eddie had brought for him. And when she ripped it open, Andrés smiled at what was in the box: watercolors and a pad of watercolor paper. Andrés thanked him, and he smiled at Yolie because she must’ve found the drawings he kept underneath his bed. And he wanted to kiss her. Because even though she could be so angry and get mad at the littlest things, she could also be very good.

  When he opened Xochil’s gift, he nodded. And smiled at her. A shirt. It was a very beautiful shirt. He kissed her on the cheek because he knew that Mando would like that. It wasn’t bad, to kiss her on the cheek. She was nice. And then there was a bigger, heavier box. Ileana couldn’t lift it from the table. Andrés had been looking at the box all evening. “I can’t, Andy,” Ileana said. “It’s too heavy.”

  So Andrés reached for the box and ripped off the wrapping. And there it was. His typewriter. He hadn’t meant to cry. But he did. He cried.

  Mando held him tight—just like his father. “Hey, carnalito,” he said, “¿que pues? Hey, hey, maybe you’ve had too much Coke.”

  That made Andrés laugh.

  “And one more present,” Yolie said. And she walked into the house and walked back with another present. When Andrés opened it, he saw that it had two reams of paper and typewriter ribbon and pens and pencils and two yellow pads of paper.

  And he never loved Yolie and Mando more. He could never love anyone more than this.

  “You know, I was just thinking. The typewriter. I’d forgotten. It was the first thing that got sold when we needed money. Yolie didn’t even ask me. She didn’t even tell me. It was just gone one day. I hated her that day. For taking it away from him.”

  “Him?”

  “From that boy.”

  “That boy is you, Andrés.”

  “No. I don’t think so. That was someone I used to be. I’m not that boy anymore.”

  “We don’t shed our former selves that easily, do we?”

  “At what point do we let go, Grace?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it, Andrés?”

  “There’s more than one question.”

  She nodded. “Yes.” She leaned into her desk. “What did you write, when you had your typewriter?”

  “I typed out a journal. Like a diary, sort of.”

  “Did you address it to anyone?”

  “To Mrs. Fernandez.”

  “Why her? Why not your mother?”

  “Because my mother was dead. It made me sad, to think of her. So I decided to write these, well, these letters to Mrs. Fernandez. I knew they weren’t really letters. But it made it easier to write, if I pretended to be writing to someone.”

  “What happened to the letters?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember. When the typewriter got sold, well, I just stopped writing.”

  “What was wrong with just writing with a pencil or a pen?”

  “I was mad. I don’t know. I just didn’t want to write anymore.”

  “But you still write?”

  “No. Sometimes. Not much.”

  “When you write, what do you write about?”

  “Yolie. Mando. Ileana. And I don’t want to write about them. I want to forget they ever existed.”

  “How will that help?”

  “What’s so great about remembering?”

  “You think forgetting is a better alternative?”

  “What’s the difference between letting go and forgetting?”

  “Big difference, Andrés.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  He’d lied to her. He knew exactly what had happened to his writings. He remembered every detail of that day. And he hadn’t told her, hadn’t wanted to tell her. Why the hell did she have to know every little detail of his fucked-up life? Couldn’t he keep something? He had never been allowed to keep anything—not even his gifts, not his bicycle, not his typewriter, not his mother and father, not his brothers and sisters, not his body, not his heart, not the things he kept locked up in his memory, not his fucking life. Nothing.

  So he hadn’t told her.

  “My typewriter, Yolie, it’s gone. I went to get it from under my bed—it’s gone.”

  Yolie looked at him, then turned her attention to the meal she was cooking.

  “Yolie, it’s gone! My typewriter!”

  “I sold it,” she whispered.

  “What!” Andrés screamed. “What!”

  “I fucking sold it. And stop your goddamned whining.”

  “Why’d you sell it?” Andrés whispered.

  “We needed the money, you little asshole. Where do you think I got the money to buy what we’re having for dinner? Where the hell do you think I get money from?”

  Andrés nodded. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “I should’ve told you.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It’s just a typewriter, Andy.”

  “Yeah.”

  They didn’t say anything to each other over dinner. Ileana was sick that day, and Yolie gave her soup. And it was cold in the house. But at least they had blankets. That’s what Yolie said. And they had food. And what did a typewriter matter?

  Andrés couldn’t sleep. He was thinking about Mando and how he missed him. He was thinking about his typewriter. He was thinking about his bicycle. And then he remembered his father’s ring. He kept it in a box under his bed. Yolie knew he had it, knew it was gold. Maybe she’d sold it. He lit a candle and looked under his bed. He took out the box. It was there, in a pouch. She hadn’t sold it. Not yet. He took it, and walked out into the courtyard. He dug up one of the bricks and buried the ring there. He placed the brick back in its place. No one would find it. No one but him. If the ring was safe, then he would be safe, too.

  He went back to bed. And still, he couldn’t sleep. He had a candle burning in the room and the shadows danced and they scared him. And then he decided what he should do next. He took out all of his letters into the courtyard. All of the letters he’d written to Mrs. Fernandez. Among the letters, there was a story he’d written, a story about a boy who counted stars and all the wishes he made. It wasn’t a good story, anyway. What did he know about writing stories? He took all those stupid pieces of writing into the courtyard. Useless pages of typewritten words, and what good were they, anyway, all those words?

  And then he began to burn the pages.

  A few pages at a time. He burned them. Burned them all. And when he had finished, he smelled the ashes and he thought that maybe the ashes were the only thing he would remember.

  It was cold. And then it started to rain. And he stood in that cold rain until he couldn’t stand it anymore. And he thought to himself that a real man would’ve stood out in the rai
n for a lot longer than he had. And then he went inside and dried himself off and put himself to bed and he whispered to himself what Yolie had told him. “At least we have blankets.” And he told himself that typewriters and letters and words didn’t matter. And he told himself that he would forget all of this.

  One day, he would forget everything.

  Andrés hadn’t forgotten that boy everyone called Andy. If he had, he wouldn’t be sitting here in his apartment. At one o’clock in the morning. Chain-smoking and writing down memories of the Andrés he used to be. Andy. He hated that boy. But there was no way of getting rid of him. Why was it that the past was more real than the present? Was there a name for that sickness?

  Mother, Son, Mister, Grace

  They led him from room to room. They started in the living room. Slowly, Mister placed Vicente’s hands on things. This is a plant. I give it water twice a week. On this wall, books. Books. Tonight, I’ll read you one about a dog who loves tortillas. He seemed to know what they were. Books. A couch, a chair, a table, a lamp that gives light, we’ll talk about light, me and you. Lots of discussions about light. He placed his hand near the bulb of the lamp. Light. Hot. And this is a desk. He sat Vicente down at the chair, then let him feel the wood of the table he used as a desk. And this is a computer. He let him touch the keys of the keyboard. Then he took his small finger. Let’s spell your name, V-IC-E-N-T-E. He clapped.

  Then the hallway, then the kitchen, a stove like Mrs. Rubio’s, a table like Mrs. Rubio’s. A toaster. Liz guided his hands, and together they put a slice of bread in the toaster. She let Vicente feel the heat. Not too close. Ouch. Burn. When the toast was done, Mister picked him up and gently sat him on the counter. This is a counter. I slice things, onions. He took an onion from the basket and placed it in his hands. Vicente smelled it and made a face. He took the onion from him, and all three broke out laughing. And then Mister took him in his arms and swung him around. Vicente squealed, and the house had never been this full.