Saturday morning I drove Marilyn to work without saying a word to her. She had no words for me, either. The tension between us was obvious and seemed to mark the beginning of a violent storm coming our way. When we arrived at her job, she got out of the car without saying good-bye, and I drove off as if I were relieved to be ridding myself of her.
I picked her up from work that afternoon in a forced happy mood and asked her if she would accompany me shopping for business clothes to wear to my new job. I explained that we could go to secondhand stores and rummage through the clothes there. She agreed and actually seemed calmer and in a better mood than that morning. She was her old talkative self and went on and on about her day of work in the clinic. That day, she told me, they had arrested a teenage girl who came into the clinic pretending to be a patient but then started to scream out passages from the Bible and calling people murderers once she was inside.
We went to several secondhand stores and ended up with a wardrobe of eight shirts, six pairs of pants, two suits, and five ties for less than a hundred dollars. We then tried to make it back home before a nearby dry cleaner closed so we could drop the clothes off. On the way home, she brought up her day at the clinic again as if this day in particular had really bothered her.
Marilyn asked me if I had given any thought to the idea of getting married. I told her that I had not, but that I would love to marry her once we worked out all of our problems. I sensed a moment of romance developing between us. I expected to hear sweet words of everlasting love in our future, and of determination to make it together. Instead Marilyn stated that if we got married she did not want to take my last name. Marilyn suggested that we could combine both our last names and create a new, original name that would only belong to us and our children. That name would be Sancia (“San” from Sanchez and “cia” from Garcia).
I found Marilyn’s suggestion laughable and outright idiotic. When I told her that I was completely happy with my current last name, she suggested that I marry a white woman or at the very least a weak Latin woman. I questioned why she thought a woman who took her husband’s last name was weak. She said that it’s not a man’s world anymore and I just needed to get used to that idea. I began to get aggravated with Marilyn because she would not elaborate any more as to why she felt that way. I felt an instant of uncontrollable anger burning within me and tried with all my might to contain it. But then Marilyn proceeded to talk about abortion as it pertained to a child I might father.
“If I get pregnant, I’m getting an abortion, so maybe you ought to look into getting a vasectomy if you don’t want that to happen,” Marilyn said nonchalantly. I gripped the steering wheel with both hands, tightly determined to control my anger. I asked Marilyn if she was pregnant and braced myself for an answer I might not want to hear. “If I was, you’d never know it,” Marilyn said, looking away from me.
I felt my heart begin to beat fast and my skin getting cold. I looked in all directions, desperately trying to distract myself from the growing feeling, but I just couldn’t. In an instant my muscles tensed, my face got hot, and I exploded in anger.
“What the fuck are you talking about, bitch? Who the fuck do you think you are, thinking you can kill my child without my knowledge? I’ll fuckin’ kill you—I’ll kill you and eat your fuckin’ pussy for lunch, bitch. You don’t know who you’re fucking with!” I yelled while I drove recklessly at a breakneck speed.
Marilyn was petrified by my outburst. She sat silent and frightened. My heart was pumping hard and my breath was heavy. I envisioned pulling over and throwing Marilyn out into oncoming traffic. I realized the craziness of the thoughts running through my mind, and to keep them from becoming real I began talking to my imaginary girlfriend in my mind to calm myself down. Finally, I felt able to look at Marilyn without feeling the need to strangle her. “I plan to be a father one day, and my kids will have my last name, so I don’t think a marriage between us will ever happen,” I said in a calm and collected voice. After I said those words, I felt at peace with myself. For the first time I began to look at Dallas as a place I could call home on my own.
WE ARRIVED AT the dry cleaner, and Marilyn waited outside as I walked in and dropped off my clothes. I walked out of the establishment happy because they did in-house dry cleaning and would have the clothes ready for me the next day. The smile on my face and my change in attitude gave Marilyn the courage to talk to me again.
“I thought you would be more open-minded about abortion,” Marilyn said. “Well, then, excuse me for sounding like a hypocrite but I don’t think an abortion is necessary if at least one of the parents is willing to love and make sacrifices for the child,” I responded as I drove out of the parking lot and headed home. “It seems to me that it takes two to make a child so it should be the decision of two to abort it. In the same way you are surprised about my closed mind, I’m surprised at your selfishness.” “It’s my body,” Marilyn said in a soft voice. “Yeah, well maybe you should think about a hysterectomy so that no one else has to be burdened with your self-serving decisions made solely by you and your body,” I responded. Nothing else was said until we got home.
We walked around the apartment silently getting ready for bed and avoiding each other. I lay down and tried desperately to fall asleep before Marilyn came into the room, but I ended up just staring at the ceiling fan as it went around and around in circles. Marilyn came in and lay next to me and stared at the ceiling too. “Do some research,” she said. “I can do anything I want with my body and you have no say.” “You’re talking to the wrong person when it comes to respecting the law,” I said as I turned and faced away from her.
Neither of us said another word to the other for the next couple of days. We went out of our way to completely avoid each other, knowing that the slightest provocation would create disaster. We lived like pit bulls in a cage waiting to attack and destroy each other at any moment. I knew the time would come when our thoughts would explode into words of anger. I knew it would come and I feared it.
ON TUESDAY NIGHT, the second day on my new job, all seemed to be going extremely well. I felt so good about my future at the college that I stopped by Kroger on the way home and resigned from my job there. When I got home, Marilyn was in the kitchen cooking just enough food for her. She said she didn’t think I’d be home so early and that I could cook for myself once she finished. It wasn’t so much that she told me I had to cook for myself that aggravated me, it was the way she said it. She snickered as if the idea of me doing something for myself was asinine.
I turned on the television and sat on the floor with my back against the wall separating the kitchen from the living room. “Oh I see, you expect me to be your housewife. I don’t make a very good one of those,” Marilyn said. She came into the living room with a plate of food in her hand and sat in front of the television to eat. I stared at her, wondering what had gone so wrong with us. As I watched her eat, and as she totally ignored me, I began for the first time to regret leaving Chicago. “What the fuck am I doing here,” I said as I got up. Marilyn didn’t look my way, or even stop eating. My blood began to boil.
I stood at the window looking out at the parking lot, filled with cars but with no signs of life. “I’m going back to Chicago when the apartment contract expires,” Marilyn said. “You should stay here in Dallas. I think you’ll do well. You have a decent job now and there are plenty of your type of women here.” “Fuck you, Marilyn,” I responded, still staring out into the parking lot. “I’m never going to be that stringy-haired Barbie with no opinion of my own,” Marilyn said as she got up and went into the kitchen.
I grabbed my head tightly with both hands and ran my fingers through my hair as if I were trying to pull it out. I sat in the corner with my back against the wall and wrestled with the anger boiling inside. “What the fuck is your problem with white women?” I asked Marilyn in the calmest voice I could conjure. She didn’t respond. She went about washing her dishes, completely ignoring me. “If you do
n’t like the way you look, then do something about it and stop blaming the world. Maybe if you had blue eyes and stringy hair you’d be more of a woman and less of a bitch.” I was getting more furious with every word.
Marilyn stopped what she was doing and walked out of the kitchen angrily. She stood about three feet away from me and said, “Look at you, look at you, such a fine example of a man with the nerve to pass judgment on what a good woman is or isn’t. The king of Humboldt Park, God’s gift to women. Well, maybe if your cousin hadn’t fucked you in the ass, you’d have a clue what it means to be a man.”
Marilyn’s words shot through me like high-voltage electricity and made me tremble. The one and only person I had ever opened up to about that experience with my cousin had just used my own words to destroy me. If her intension was to hurt me, she had succeeded. She had also succeeded in sending me into a rage. I rushed her, grabbed her by the neck, and squeezed unmercifully. I felt the need to strangle her and beat her to death. Her eyes bulged out and began to roll back in their sockets as I felt the life in her body drain through my fingertips. I watched her face turn red as she gasped for air and realized I was about to kill her. I threw her to the floor and fell to my knees, crying hysterically. It was the first time I remembered exploding in violence without darkness accompanying my actions. I thank God for that.
That night was the first time that I actually looked into the eyes of my victim. Marilyn’s eyes had a look of horror that until then I thought existed only in mine. I thought about all the people who had experienced that horror at the expense of my satisfaction and began to feel ill. I ended up curled in a fetal position on the floor, crying my heart out, begging God for forgiveness.
A couple of hours later, I opened my eyes into the darkness that had engulfed the living room. I sat up and found myself alone. I got up and took a step toward the bedroom but immediately stopped myself. Instead, I turned on the television, grabbed pen and paper, and sat in a corner of the room and wrote this poem.
In my little corner of the world, violence and pain.
In a crowd, yet lonely.
Try to rise above, but held back by those who say they care.
The past haunts me, but not by my own choice.
My honesty is bad, my lies are believed.
I accept myself, my faults, my strengths,
My weaknesses, my feelings.
But I’m expected to fail.
My achievements are overlooked,
My failures glamorized.
I know nothing. I’m not responsible.
A disappointment is what I’m made to be.
Loneliness is my best friend.
Dreaming is my pastime.
Understanding is my desire.
My little corner of the world is priceless.
After I finished writing it, I read it over and over and cried myself to sleep.
I awoke to the sound of Marilyn making breakfast. I went into the bathroom, showered, and prepared for work. When I came out of the bathroom I found that Marilyn had left without me. My first thought was to go after her and give her a ride to work but, after thinking about the previous night, I decided not to.
Although I was well aware of what I had done to Marilyn the night before, I also felt a certain calm. I felt that I was no longer afraid of my thoughts, no longer confused about my past actions, and no longer afraid to be alone. In fact, I suddenly yearned to be alone. I realized that Marilyn and I were not and would never be a functioning couple. The trauma I had inflicted on her was something I knew she would never forget, and neither would I. We had to get away from each other and start our lives anew. All I had to do was wait out the time left for the apartment contract to expire and she would be gone. Then, and only then, would I find out if my new sense of awareness was real.
OVER THE NEXT two months Marilyn and I continued to have our disagreements, but my feelings never went anywhere near violence. I made peace with the fact that Marilyn wasn’t for me and didn’t approach her for sex or any other type of physical contact. I left the satisfaction of my sexual desires to my imagination. I looked forward to Marilyn’s departure and to living in Dallas on my own.
Marilyn eventually apologized for using her knowledge of my rape to hurt me. I apologized for hitting her and guaranteed her that it would never happen again. I purposely kept my vision of the night I’d grabbed her by the neck fresh in my mind. It served to remind me of the evil I was capable of, and of the person within me I didn’t want to be. It bothered me to look at Marilyn and see a person who had firsthand knowledge of the terror that lived inside of me. I felt convinced that I could not be at total peace until Marilyn was gone. While I waited for her departure, I took refuge in writing poetry and becoming a hard-working and dependable employee at the college.
The lack of meaningful conversation at home led Marilyn to make a habit out of spending hours on the phone talking to friends and family in Chicago. By the time we realized it, the phone bill had grown to close to a thousand dollars, and, one month before the apartment contract expired, it was shut off.
As the countdown to the day we needed to renew the apartment contract or vacate it began, Marilyn made no secret of her intention to move back to Chicago. She gave notice at her job that she would be quitting, and to the apartment complex that the contract would not be renewed. I in turn, began looking around for a cheaper apartment where I could live after Marilyn left. Then all of a sudden Marilyn had a problem with me staying in Dallas.
As the end of the contract approached, Marilyn became more persistent in her desire for me to go back to Chicago with her. She became upset when I found a smaller, cheaper apartment and submitted a rental application. She was also displeased when I asked her to help me clear my name with the phone company by paying at least half the bill she had mostly built up herself. Finally, Marilyn began saying that she might want to stay after all. She expressed a desire to complete our journey to California in the near future.
I should have been happy to hear that, after all I had put her through, she was still willing to give life with me a chance. But I wasn’t. I wanted to be alone, and I began to feel desperate when Marilyn acted as if she didn’t believe me. I told her I wanted time to think, time to grow, time to assure myself that I would never hurt another human being physically or otherwise.
Marilyn thought my intentions were noble and said she would help me achieve all of my goals. What she didn’t know, and couldn’t understand, was that I needed to go through a growth period on my own. When I was convinced that Marilyn wouldn’t be leaving, I decided to put a fear in her heart that would change her mind.
I rented an efficiency apartment, which we moved into upon the expiration of the contract of the apartment we lived in. Our new apartment was small, but it was at a price I could afford without assistance. From the moment we moved in, I began to pester Marilyn about paying the phone bill. I routinely followed that request by agreeing to pay the bill myself if she went back to Chicago without me. Marilyn countered by paying the phone bill and the deposit required to connect phone service at our new apartment. Still, I persisted in trying to get Marilyn to go back home until one day she blew up at me.
“You fuckin’ asshole!” she yelled. “Now that you can afford to live without me you don’t need me anymore. What happened to your fear of being abandoned? What happened to not being able to live without me? Don’t fool yourself, Rey, you’re no better a person now than you were when you were in a gang.” Marilyn paced the floor of the small kitchen.
I walked up to the counter separating the kitchen area from the main room, reached over, and grabbed a knife. I ran the knife blade over the palm of my hand slowly as I looked at Marilyn like a maniac stalking his prey.
“I bet this knife cuts really good, but it won’t cut me. Think it will cut you? I think so. You know I could chop you into little pieces, throw them in the trash compactor, and no one would know the difference? Think I’m afraid of going to jail? Been there, done
that. Remember? You’re right. I’m no better than when I was in a gang. Once a King, always a King, bitch. Now fuck with me!” I said these things to Marilyn while I looked her straight in the eyes and continued to run the blade of the knife on the palm of my hand.
Marilyn was in shock, unable to talk or move while I went through my routine. I felt so much pity for her, knowing it was all a ploy but not caring about the trauma I might be inflicting on her. Finally I put the knife down and walked away. As soon as I turned my back on her, tears began rolling down my face. The next day, she purchased a bus ticket back to Chicago for that same night.
We said very little to each other on the way to the bus station that evening, and there wasn’t a long tearful good-bye. She looked at me sadly as she walked up the steps to the bus, and I lowered my head to try and avoid eye contact. I walked as fast as I could out of the bus station to my car and cried all the way back to the apartment. Six months after moving to Dallas, I was finally on my own.
During the first few weeks, I learned how to deal with the tragedies of my past without getting the rest of the world involved. While I was at work, no one had a clue about the turmoil I was going through. At home I was a broken mess. I thought about Marilyn every second I was in my apartment, and I cried nonstop for hours at a time. I began forcing myself to recall the abuse at the hands of my family members and the violent episodes in the streets of Chicago. Only now I wasn’t angry, and I wasn’t wondering why; I was rejoicing in the fact that it was all behind me. I was happy to be alive and in a position to prove to myself that I wasn’t born to be the good-for-nothing monster of my past. I cried out all the pain that had haunted me for so long and enjoyed being alone more than I could have ever imagined.
Once a King, Always a King: The Unmaking of a Latin King Page 23