by Reyna Grande
I finally gathered up the nerve to go talk to Luis during lunch the following day, and I told him my friend Phuong loved him, just as she had told me to tell him. Luis laughed and said she hardly knew him, so how could she love him? I didn’t know what to say to him then, because as he looked at me with those green eyes of his, I knew that I—just like Phuong—was a goner.
Every day I would deliver messages to him from Phuong, but that only took a minute or two and after that he asked me questions, not about Phuong but about me. Phuong wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t able to speak Spanish and couldn’t really understand what we were saying to each other from where she waited, but by the end of the week Phuong wasn’t talking to me anymore. She said, “You are bad sister, Reyna Grande,” and then turned and walked away.
I guess I wasn’t meant to be anyone’s Cupid.
I came out of Barney’s Liquors and Market with the charcoal lighter, and I knew I should hurry home because Papi was making carne asada on the grill and was waiting for me to come back. But Luis waved at me from across the street and motioned for me to come over. The light wasn’t even green yet, but my feet were already pointed in that direction, and I took a step onto the street. The light had turned green by the time I was halfway to Luis and his emerald eyes.
He said, “Let’s go for a walk,” and he got off his bike and walked alongside me. He didn’t talk much, and I didn’t either. Ours was a silent love. I glanced at him from the corner of my eye. He had curly hair, curlier than mine, and it was the color of crushed brown sugar, like the kind Abuelita Chinta would put on boiled ripe guavas to make them syrupy. Luis said, “Have you ever been kissed?” and I shook my head, feeling the ground turn into mud beneath my feet. I felt a rushing in my head, and I looked into his green eyes. I thought of the vacant lot by Abuela Evila’s house, of Carlos, Mago, and me driving the old car toward the Mountain That Has a Headache. Except now it was the mountain that was moving toward me, and I got lost in its velvety beauty.
Papi said, “Where the hell have you been?”
I glanced off into the distance, and in my dreamy haze I handed over the charcoal lighter and walked past Papi. I wondered if Luis was thinking about me and about the kiss we’d just shared. My lips were still throbbing.
Papi whacked me on the head with his hand. “Answer me,” he said.
“They didn’t have any lighter fluid at the liquor store, so I had to go to the store on Avenue 52,” I said.
He said he wasn’t stupid. He knew I was lying. He said, “As long as you live under my roof, you aren’t going to lie to me, girl. Now where were you?”
I couldn’t tell him about my first kiss. He would beat me for sure, ruin the whole memory of it. And why couldn’t he just let me be so that I could replay the most important moment of my life again and again without disruption?
“Answer me now!” he said, putting a hand on his belt.
“I don’t have to live under your roof if I don’t want to,” I said defiantly, thinking about the kiss. In my euphoria, all I could think was that he couldn’t treat me like a little girl anymore. “Whenever I want, I can go live with my mother.”
I turned around and headed to the gate. I walked toward the corner of Avenue 50 as if I were on my way to catch the bus. I didn’t really mean to leave, but I was tired of Papi always making me feel as if he were our only option. Maybe he was. Mami had never once told us to come live with her. How would we have fit in that tiny room of hers? But Papi didn’t need to know that.
Luis and his friends were sitting on the block wall surrounding the house on the corner. He lived on the other side of Granada Street. He was sitting there, and he and his friends whistled at me. Luis shouted something at me, and I didn’t hear what he said, but the next thing I knew my hair felt as if it had caught on something and was tearing right out of my scalp.
“Hija de la chingada, you’re not going anywhere!” Papi said from behind me. He pulled me back to the house by my hair, and I yelled for him to let me go. Luis and his friends whistled louder, and I thought I heard them laughing. I couldn’t see Luis through my tears, but I knew he was there, witnessing my shame. Papi took me into the house, and Mago and Carlos begged him to let me go, but he took off his belt and whipped me with it. I thought about Luis and his green eyes, and soon, I didn’t even feel the sting of the belt.
On Monday during lunch, I went in search of Luis. I wondered if he would ask me to be his girlfriend now that we had shared a kiss. But when I came up to him and his friends, Luis glanced at me and then turned around as if I weren’t there. His friends pointed at me, and Luis shook his head and didn’t turn to look at me. Farther down the hallway, I saw Phuong with her Asian friends. She smirked and then turned away from me, and it hurt me to know I had lost my friend for a boy who was no longer interested in me. Was I a bad kisser? Is that why he didn’t want to talk to me? Or was it that Papi had humiliated me in front of him? Did he think I was still a little girl because I got beaten by my father? I touched the right side of my thigh where Papi’s belt buckle left a raised tattoo. Maybe Luis thought like my father and like my mother. Maybe, it was just too easy to leave me.
I returned to my favorite spot—the steps that led up to the band room. Mr. Adams wasn’t there so I sat on the steps and took out my V. C. Andrews book because she, at least, was still my friend.
15
Mago, Mila, Reyna, and Papi at Mago’s graduation, 1990
IN JUNE OF 1990, five years after we arrived in the U.S., Mago made history. She became the first person in our family—from either side—to get a high school diploma. I became the third person (after Mago and Carlos) to graduate from junior high. My little accomplishment might not have been much to be proud of, but I told myself this was just the beginning. Through all his talks of the future, my father had instilled in me something I could not put a name to in English, but in Spanish it was called “ganas.”
When my father beat me, and in his drunken stupor called me a pendeja and an hija de la chingada, I held on to the vision of the future he had given me during his sober moments. I thought about that vision when the blows came, because the father who beat me, the one who preferred to stay home and drink rather than to attend my band concerts or parent-teacher conferences, wasn’t the same father who told me that one day I would be somebody in this country. That much I knew.
A second thing to celebrate was that, the month before, our green cards had finally arrived. We had become legal residents of the United States! Finally we could let go of our fear of being deported and look to the future with hope. Papi said, “I’ve done my part. The rest is up to you.” And the three of us clutched our green cards in our hands, imagining the possibilities. The first one to take advantage of our new status was, of course, Mago. It was just in time for her to be able to attend college and be eligible for financial aid. In Mexico, the biggest dream Mago had was to be a lawyer’s secretary. Now, Mago didn’t want to be a secretary—she wanted to be the lawyer who had a secretary. That is what Papi had taught us—that here in this country we could be anything. Papi took out a $5,000 loan under his name to help her with her college expenses because he said his “Negra” was going to make us proud.
In the summer, I attended band camp at Franklin High School because that was now my new school. I was glad Franklin had a marching band. I liked Burbank’s little band, but all we did was have a couple of concerts each year. But here at Franklin, we would be doing parades, football games, pep rallies, and lots of other things we didn’t do at Burbank. The best part was that the school provided each student with a marching uniform. It was navy blue and gold, and it had Franklin’s mascot—a panther—on the front. The only thing they didn’t provide was the marching shoes, which Mago bought me with the money she earned at a collection agency where she now worked part-time.
Every day we did drills and practiced marching around the football field. During our breaks, I would find a quiet spot to eat my lunch, away from the rest of the ban
d members. I hardly knew any of them. There was one boy, Axel, whom I had met in the band at Burbank. He was a year ahead of me, so this was my first time seeing him since he’d graduated from Burbank. He had his own friends now, and I was too shy to say anything to him except hello in the mornings.
After years of being laughed at because of my name and my “wetback” accent, which I still had no matter how good my writing skills had gotten, I was a full-blown introvert. I looked at Axel and his friends, and I wished I had the courage to go sit with them. Instead, I hid behind my eyeglasses and buried my nose in the Stephen King novel I had brought.
Band camp made the summer go by quickly. Next thing I knew August came to an end, and September was upon us. On the seventh, I would be turning fifteen.
I wouldn’t be having a quinceañera, as I had always dreamed of.
Papi said those kinds of parties were too expensive. A few months before, we had finally moved into the three-bedroom apartment so that Mago, Carlos, and I could have privacy. Papi said we were too old to be sleeping in the living room. Now with his and Mila’s part of the mortgage being much more than before, Papi said there was no money for anything, especially a party. Instead, that Labor Day weekend he was taking me to Raging Waters for the first time. I told him he couldn’t fool me. We weren’t going there to celebrate my fifteenth birthday. We were going there because Kingsley Manor was having an employee summer picnic. He said he wouldn’t be going if it weren’t for my birthday. I replied to him in English with a word I’d picked up at school from other kids.
“Whatever.”
A few days before our trip to Raging Waters, I came home exhausted after band practice. Mago arrived after I did. Together, we cleaned the apartment and made sure all our chores were done before Papi got home. He didn’t like coming home to a dirty house. Carlos wasn’t back yet. That whole summer he’d been going to the park to play soccer with his friends. We’d told him to get back before Papi arrived from work. Papi didn’t like to have us out in the streets too late.
When Papi and Mila came home from work, there was still no sign of Carlos. “Where’s your brother?” he asked. We told him we didn’t know. He grabbed a beer from the fridge and went to his room.
Soon, it was seven o’clock, and we still had no idea what was keeping Carlos. He had never stayed that late at the park. Mago and I asked Papi if we should go look for him, but he shook his head no. “You can’t be walking around in the dark by yourselves. Besides, your brother is already in big trouble, with me.”
Mago and I went into our room, and, while I practiced my sax, Mago bleached her arm hairs. Now that she had a job, she was always doing things to herself. She bought tons of makeup and was always practicing in front of the mirror, but no matter how much she put on, she couldn’t hide the scars on her face to her satisfaction. Then she came home one day with a pair of underwear that had padded buttocks because she said she hated her flat butt. Another time, she bought packets of gum that curbed her appetite because she said she was too fat.
“Come here, Nena. I’ll do your arms. They’re hairier than mine,” she said. “And look, when you bleach the hair it makes your skin look lighter!” she said as she extended her arm for me to see.
What saved me from getting my arm hair bleached was that we heard the door open, and we ran out to the living room to see Carlos being carried in the arms of two men.
“What happened?” Mago said as we rushed to help. Carlos’s face was pale and covered in sweat. He groaned with every step the men took. They carried him over to the couch.
“His leg is hurt,” one of the men said as he wiped his dirty, sweaty face with his soccer shirt.
“One of the guys from the other team tried to get the ball from him and kicked his shin instead of the ball,” the other guy said. “Your brother doesn’t have shin guards. We took him to a bonesetter, but I think that huesero only made things worse. I think his bone is broken.”
We thanked the men, and they left. Carlos was trying hard to keep from crying.
“I told you!” Papi yelled as he came out of his room and saw that Carlos was back. “I told you to stop going to the park. I told you to stay out of trouble, but you don’t listen to me. Ahora te chingas!” Papi started to walk away, heading to his room. What does he mean that now Carlos is screwed?
“Where are you going?” Mago said. “You have to take him to the hospital!”
“Well, I’m not going to,” Papi said as he paused at his bedroom door. “That will teach him a lesson.” Then he slammed his door shut.
Mago and I looked at each other in horror. How could he not take him to the hospital? What if his leg really is broken? We turned to Mila. We were waiting for her to say that she would take our brother. Hadn’t it been she who had always taken us to the doctor, anyway? Instead, she said, “Let me try to convince him,” and went into the bedroom.
We sat on the couch with Carlos. He winced in pain at any little movement. He said, “It really hurts, Mago. I can’t stand it anymore.” And then he started to cry. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw him cry. Even when Papi beat him, he held in his tears, even though this made Papi get madder and hit him harder.
Mago got up and went to knock on Papi’s bedroom door. I didn’t know why Mila hadn’t come back out. “You can’t leave him like that! He’s in a lot of pain!” Mago said through the door. But there was no answer. She just kept talking to the door, and no matter how much she yelled, Papi never came out.
Mago went to the kitchen to boil water. She came back with a pot of hot water, a container of salt, and clean kitchen towels. She poured the salt into the hot water and said that maybe that would keep the swelling down.
I wished I had the courage to do something. Call 911. Go get the neighbors. Something. Mago and I glanced at each other and quickly looked away, shame choking us up inside, for neither of us was courageous enough to defy our father.
All night long we took turns putting hot towels on Carlos’s leg. We gave him aspirin and tried to get him to sleep. It was a long, long night for the three of us. I thought about those nights in Mexico, of how Mago had helped us pass the time by telling us stories about our father, by digging out the memories that made her happy, like the one about the Day of the Three Wise Men when he had brought us gifts. But that night, as Carlos and I looked at her for comfort, she could not say anything. What was there to say? I thought about the Man Behind the Glass, of how I wished I hadn’t left him behind in Mexico. In his eternal silence, he had been a much better father than the one we lived with now.
Morning came and Papi still refused to take Carlos to the hospital, saying that he wasn’t going to miss work because of my brother’s stupidity. We looked at Mila, pleading with her, but she simply looked away, not wanting to go against Papi’s wishes. They both left for work. Mago left for work, too, promising to come back with help. That day was my last day of band camp and Carlos said I shouldn’t miss it. He said, “Go, I’ll be fine.” But I didn’t want to go. I couldn’t go and leave my brother like that.
At work, Mago told her coworkers about our situation and they volunteered to help her take Carlos to the hospital. They arrived during their lunch hour. It took five people to get Carlos out of the house. Two were supporting him by his shoulders, and the other three were holding up his legs, being especially careful with the left leg to keep it from moving. Any little movement would make Carlos cry out in pain.
Just as they were about to put him in the car of one of Mago’s coworkers, Papi got home. “I came to take him to the hospital,” he said as he got out of his truck.
“Well, it’s too late now,” Mago said. “I’m the one who is taking him.”
“He’s my son. I’ll take him.”
Mago stared angrily at Papi, and I thought she was going to argue with him about it. But she was smart enough to realize that Carlos had to get to the hospital, and it didn’t matter who took him, as long as someone did. She asked her coworkers to put Carlos insi
de Papi’s truck. They ended up putting him in the bed of the truck so that Carlos could keep his leg straight. We watched as they drove away, and poor Carlos kept wincing every time the truck went over a pothole. He came home with his leg in a cast. He had broken both his tibia and fibula.
“That’s the only way your father knows how to be,” Mila said to us later that evening. “He was abused by his parents so that is all he knows.”
We didn’t tell Mila we were sick and tired of her justifying Papi’s behavior with the same lame excuses. We understood what Papi must have gone through because we knew what Abuela Evila and Abuelo Augurio were like. But that didn’t make us feel better. If Papi knew what it felt like to be abused by his parents, then shouldn’t he understand how we felt? Shouldn’t he try to be a better father? Also, it wasn’t our fault that his own family had turned their backs on him, even going as far as stealing the house he worked so hard to build. So why take it out on us? Why take out all his frustrations and disappointments on us?
“I came back for you, didn’t I?” he said to us sometimes when we would speak up.
Then we would shut up and lower our heads, and we would continue to take his beatings. Even the time he punched me in the nose so hard it broke, as I watched the drops of blood landing on my tennis shoe, I told myself that maybe he was right. We shouldn’t expect anything better from him. He didn’t forget us, after all. We were here because of him. I was in this country because of him. I begged him to bring me. I got what I wanted, after all. How could I complain now, simply because things weren’t all that we had hoped for?
On Labor Day weekend, we went to Raging Waters as planned. Mago brought along her boyfriend, Juan, a guy she met at school and who lived down the street from us in the large apartment building by Fidel’s Pizza—her first official boyfriend since Papi had finally given her permission to date. They told me I could join them, but I knew I was just going to be in the way. Besides, I didn’t like Juan. Not that there was anything wrong with him. It was just that now, instead of spending time with me, Mago spent her free time with him. I wished Papi hadn’t allowed her to have a boyfriend. But Mago would be turning nineteen the following month, and even Papi couldn’t keep her from growing up. I was afraid of the day when she would no longer be my Mago, but someone else’s.