Crazy Is My Superpower: How I Triumphed by Breaking Bones, Breaking Hearts, and Breaking the Rules

by A. J. Mendez Brooks

  I know this because my family would eventually be homeless as well. Our worst fear in coming back to the States, that life would return to the chaotic struggle it had always been, came true. Within a year we were evicted from our apartment, yet again. There was a shared coin-operated laundry room that led to the apartment we were being thrown out of. Laying some disassembled cardboard boxes on the roach-filled ground, the five of us and a growing pit bull hid in the back of the room, trying to formulate our next move. We quietly watched as men broke down and removed the bunk beds my mom had proudly purchased after working hours of overtime in a nursing home. These uniformed men spent the afternoon dragging our sparse, but beloved, belongings out into the street with the rest of the garbage waiting for pickup. Ma strictly enforced a “no crying” rule, instructing that it was important to “have some pride” in these situations. But I couldn’t help but break into a sob when I watched the pink bicycle Dad had once rescued from the trash returned unceremoniously to it. I looked over to see if Dad had noticed, and watched his eyes fill up before he blinked the weakness away. I tried to follow suit.

  We slept hidden in the laundry room that night, piled on top of the broken cardboard slabs. But when we awoke, we found out we had not been as stealthy as we had thought. Covering every wall surrounding the washers and dryers were black streaks of spray paint. Written on the door to our old apartment was the cold message “Get Out Trash.” The building’s landlord called us out hours later, apparently having been notified by the tagger that vagrants had holed up in the laundry room. Dad stepped outside to talk to him.

  “Okay, guys,” Ma said. “Look really sad when he gets back in here. Take your shoes off. They threw your shoes out, okay?” At least Ma had a game plan.

  “What’s happening?” I asked, confused as to why Ma was pulling my socks off.

  “Your dad is gonna see if he’ll let us stay in the apartment tonight. You guys have to really sell it.”

  “Okay!” Erica was exuberant to be given an important assignment. But this felt like the opposite of “having pride,” and the mixed messages were beginning to make my head spin, though that could’ve just been the fumes from the spray paint. The landlord walked back in with Dad, skillfully avoiding eye contact, and removed the padlock from the empty apartment’s door. “Just one night,” he warned, “and make sure you stay quiet.” We spent the rest of the day throwing our bodies on Mugsy anytime he tried to bark. Though we had to sleep on the floor again, we were relieved to be behind a locked door. It really is the little things.

  The following morning we piled into Dad’s baby blue Monte Carlo and drove aimlessly around town. When a street seemed less crowded, Dad would pull over, turn the car’s engine off, and sit silently. “What’s the plan, Robert?” Ma would yell, inciting Dad to shout back even louder, “I’m thinking, Jan!” It seemed we were out of options. Borrowing money from their relatives and never paying it back had made us the black sheep of both the Acevedo and Mendez families. The last time one of my parents’ siblings had opened their home to us, they ending up moving out in a burdened frustration. No one wanted to be the helpful sucker this time. While they fought, Robbie, Eri, and I would distract ourselves by playing “mule kick” with Mugsy. The backseat was uncomfortably close quarters, and the now fifty-pound pit had to lap hop on the three of us to fit. When he would settle into position, one of us would discreetly tickle the pad of his paw, causing him to instinctively kick his leg back—directly into the stomach of whoever was holding him. Winding your siblings is a solid way to pass the time.

  At night we would find a street that seemed safe enough, and Ma and Dad would take turns with us kids getting some rest. I closed my eyes and tried to force myself to sleep, but every passerby would set my skin on fire. I could feel strangers peer into the car, wondering why five people and a dog were sleeping in a parking spot. I made the mistake of opening my eyes when particularly loud footsteps startled me. I locked eyes with a boy from my class who was walking past with his mother. He gave me a look asking, What’s going on?, but I was frozen in embarrassment. His mother pulled him close to her side, shaking her head and breaking his judgmental gaze. That night I couldn’t bring myself to sleep, but I closed my eyes tightly and pretended I was snoozing. In my head I repeated over and over, This is not happening. I am not here. I am not here.

  I decided the hardest part about living in a car was knowing that I was missing the Buffy the Vampire Slayer season finale. This truly was my greatest concern at the time. While we drove around for days, I set my mind to daydream mode. For hours upon hours I would stare out the car’s windows and imagine various scenarios in which I was Buffy, tortured by the memories of killing Angel (spoiler alert!), leaving Sunnydale in a Greyhound bus. At night, my fantasies would change. At night, lamps would light up the living rooms of every home we passed. I would stare into those illuminated windows, catching only glimpses of the smiling families sitting on their comfortable couches or surrounding a dining table for dinner. I made a special note of how most people’s furniture seemed to actually match, as if it were all bought in a set together, instead of a hodgepodge collection of hand-me-downs and street finds. I imagined myself in each home I stared into. I would eat their dinner. I would watch Buffy on their TV. I would sit in their fancy, coordinated living room, and I would be at home. “Home” was such a foreign concept, I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it right. I couldn’t put my finger on its exact definition, but I knew it felt warm and safe. It felt steady and dependable. It wasn’t the crowded backseat of a Monte Carlo. Home was on the other side of each window, unattainable and out of reach. Home was anywhere but here.

  One morning, my mom hopped out of the car to use a pay phone. She had been reluctant to ask her brother, the last remaining family member who would accept her collect calls, for help. But after some convincing, he decided to let us stay over at his house for a night. Ma was upset he was only offering a short twenty-four hours’ access to his home, but I was thrilled to have a change of scenery, no matter how brief. As Dad began the hour-and-a-half journey to our uncle’s house in the suburbs, he drove past our old apartment. Our furniture and possessions were still strewn about the sidewalk, a pile of “attempt and failure.” From around the corner, a young boy pedaled my bike, now crudely painted white. “He has my—” I cut myself off midsentence, disappointed I had let myself get attached to something I knew I could never keep.

  My aunt greeted us at the door of her beautiful two-story home. She was the only white person to marry into our extended family, and for that, she was an enigma to me. Did all white people have delicate, pointy noses? Did they all have houses instead of small apartments? And did all their houses have STAIRS? I was convinced stairs were the epitome of success. I made a mental note that if I could one day live in a house with stairs and matching furniture, I would have truly found home.

  “I’m sorry, we finished all the dinner I made, but I’m sure I have something in here,” she said while Robbie, Erica, and I sat around her kitchen table. We hadn’t eaten much while staying in the car, and my stomach was aching with hunger pangs. Rummaging through the fridge, she excitedly let us know she did indeed have some Hot Pockets she could share. Fuck. Yes. Hot Pockets were like a rare and majestic unicorn. They were too expensive for my parents’ budget, and on every trip to the supermarket, I would longingly push the cart past the frozen food section, staring at their flaky, cheesy goodness. She microwaved one for each of us and I inhaled mine in under thirty seconds. While I licked the crumbs and bits of cheese off my plate, she stared at me in a humiliating mix of shock and disgust. My body was in flames again. I suddenly knew why I had felt it in the car and why the burning fire encircled me once more. I was being pitied. Eyes were looking down upon me, like I was a sad, inferior creature. As if my unfortunate circumstances made me less than human. I immediately dropped the plate on the table. “Ummm,” my aunt began, avoiding eye contact. “Do you want me to microwave you another one?” I f
elt disgusting. I was growing weary of being a dirty, pathetic stray. “No, thank you,” I said while staring at my shoes. Gosh, I could’ve eaten twenty more, but the price of being pitied was not worth the reward. I silently promised myself I would never take anything from anyone ever again. I would never be pitied again.

  My father spent our allotted twenty-four hours using his brother-in-law’s house phone to make some calls to various acquaintances. The good thing about being a mechanic who would fix a tire at any hour of the night, and take in whatever bird, dog, or minihorse someone asked, was that Dad had made a lot of friends who felt indebted to him. The next night was spent at a former client’s house a few towns over from the apartment we had just left. Erica, Ma, and I crashed in the bedroom of the client’s young daughter while Robbie, Dad, and Mugsy slept in his garage.

  The night after that a man named Don let Dad know he could clear out some space in his home and we were welcome to stay there for as long as we needed to. My parents were ecstatic. However, that excitement quickly dissipated when we arrived to find out Don and his wife, Joann, were hoarders. I’m talking collectors straight out of the series Hoarding: Buried Alive. Every inch of their house was filled with items ranging from expensive antique furniture to worthless flea market finds, to thousands of trinkets that hadn’t had their tags removed, to more than a dozen cats. And cat shit. God, there was so much cat shit. When traversing through the obstacle course to get to a furniture-packed bathroom, I would step on at least three piles of cat shit just on the way there. If the miles of useless furniture had been removed, there would have been five extra rooms for my family to comfortably stay in. But these hoarders had a serious problem. When Don told my dad he would make some space for us, he meant he would make room for a twin-size mattress, a moth-eaten love seat, and a space heater in his screened-in porch.

  During the dead of an unforgiving New Jersey winter, my family of six practically slept outdoors. The armoires and shelves lining the screen walls of the porch were useful in blocking the frigid wind, but the temperature inside the porch was always painfully low. I looked forward to going to school, just to be inside of four solid walls. To be able to take my winter jacket off. We would take turns huddling around the space heater while watching a black-and-white TV Don and Joann had surprised us with one evening. “Check out this great find!” It was slightly comforting to know someone other than my dad brought home Dumpster treasures.

  Though we would all get sick on a weekly basis, we were grateful to technically have a roof over our heads, and we didn’t want to mess it up. Ma would limit our trips inside to their first-floor bathroom. Since she wanted us to remain as unnoticeable as possible, my sister, my mom, and I had to all take trips to the toilet together so as to avoid multiple disturbances. We were allowed to go once in the morning, once after school, and once before bed. We would shower every other day to limit our use of their hot water. And we never shared their food. I would, however, sneak upstairs with Robbie before Ma came back from work, to play Resident Evil with Don and Joann’s son. It was a mind-saving relief to have that video game to disappear into, if only for an hour. They did, kindly, invite us inside to have Thanksgiving dinner with their family, but I chose to finish my homework, sitting on the twin mattress, watching Friends in black and white, wearing my winter jacket. I would never take food from anyone again, I told myself.

  After about five months awkwardly living in a screened-in porch, my parents had saved up some extra cash. It wasn’t enough to put down a security deposit and first month’s rent on a new apartment, but we were all stir-crazy Popsicles, so they decided to use it to move on. Packing into ol’ Monte again, Ma tried to explain that we were headed to a weekly rated, extended-stay motel.

  “So we’re going to live in a hotel?” I had heard worse plans.

  “No, baby, it’s a motel. There’s a big difference.”

  She wasn’t lying. We moved into a room at the aptly named Hilltop Motel, a sprawling three-building establishment off the Jersey Turnpike, situated on the top of a tall, steep hill. The three-hundred-square-foot room we shared was a serious upgrade from Don and Joann’s porch. For one, there were four solid walls. No longer would a simple thin screen separate us from nature. Almost as important to me was a color TV. A glorious color TV that didn’t need bunny-eared antennae to get a proper signal and had at least ten different cable channels. I had heard about this magical invention called “cable TV” but had assumed it was an old wives’ tale meant to make poor kids feel even shittier. I didn’t know what HBO was but I knew I wanted to be a part of it. Particularly because my mother told me its content was way too graphic and mature for me. Oh, the forbidden fruit! There was also a small fridge, a microwave, and a round dining table for two, simple conveniences I had almost forgotten existed while camping in the snow. There was a bathroom a mere ten feet away from the table. I wouldn’t have to ration my trips to avoid being a nuisance or have to navigate a minefield of cat poop to…well, human poop. But perhaps the most comforting of amenities the motel room provided were two whole, separate beds. I wouldn’t have to sleep curled up on a cushion of a ratty old couch anymore. Dad, Robbie, and Mugsy shared one of the full-sized beds, and Ma, Erica, and I occupied the other. Ma thought Erica and I were too old to share a bed with boys, but I thought it was strange for a husband and wife to not want to sleep next to each other.

  A typical day at the motel would go something like this. Dad would walk Mugsy around the parking lot and pick up some continental breakfast from the motel lobby. He would wake us up with single-serving boxes of cereal, eight-ounce cartons of milk, individually wrapped Honey Buns, and bananas. It was a feast fit for kings. After breakfast, I would brew some coffee and prepare for my long trek to school.

  I had started drinking coffee around age seven and never looked back, probably because my body was too jittery to do anything but run in panicked circles. It was a habit that grew out of necessity. Having only tap water available for drinking, I desperately wanted to taste something with any kind of flavor and began experimenting with Ma’s espresso grounds. I think starting with the hard stuff made me a customer for life. I also like to blame my childhood addiction for stunting my growth, because in height and stature, I still very much have the body of a seven-year-old.

  The three Mendez kids would then pack up our backpacks with homework and pocketknives and head out for school. Dad had given us all the tiny weapons upon moving in because the motel grounds were a bit sketchy. The seedy motel attracted all sorts of unsavory characters and activity. We were told which rooms to avoid walking past, as it was understood by all residents that particular ones were designated “Buying and Selling,” which was either a thin veil for drugs or a lesser-known Property Brothers show. Occasionally, while walking to the vending machine at night, Erica and I would get asked “How much?” by a random drunk. To be fair, the motel was littered with prostitutes roaming for customers. However, I question anyone whose taste leans preteen. Flashing lights and sirens shone through our windows on a weekly basis, but Dad told us as long as we kept the door locked and were aware of our surroundings, we would be fine. But just in case, he wanted us to be packing.

  The Hilltop Motel, many years later.

  To get to school, we would walk down the quarter-mile-long steep hill with our backs leaned back so far you would think we were doing a bit, but really we were just trying to avoid tumbling down the hill face-first. The motel parking lot led to a thin sidewalk on the side of the highway. Cars would zoom past so close and so fast, I would just about jump out of my skin. After several blocks, our route to the NJ Transit bus stop would take us back up the hill for half a mile. After a forty-minute bus ride, we would then walk ten more blocks to school, and we’d reverse the process on the way back. Naturally, this grueling process began to wear on me.

  I hated having to lie to my teacher about why I was late to school, but Ma reminded us if anyone knew we were living in a motel, the state would undoubtedly t
ake us away. The goddamned state, again. I begged Dad to drive us to school, but he said he couldn’t afford to fill up the Monte Carlo’s gas tank and we should look at it as good exercise. I guess he was right, since I do credit these punishing walks for laying the groundwork for the monster quads I have today.

  For a while I was unbelievably happy living at the Hilltop. Sure, I would loathe traveling from the interstate into town and back five days a week, and I knew those loud bangs in the parking lot at 3 a.m. weren’t the firecrackers my dad pretended they were, but there was a sense of consistency, of dependability I relished.

  We lived in the motel for close to two years. It was the longest we had ever stayed in one place. It seemed paying fifty bucks a week was way more achievable for my parents than paying monthly rent. We even had money to have Wendy’s for dinner almost every night. Dad and Ma would walk down the highway to the adjacent Wendy’s fast-food restaurant and, arriving back at the motel, give the secret knock on the heavy metal door to let us know it was safe to open. Opening the door to the dark parking lot and seeing the beacon of light that was Ma and Daddy holding bacon cheeseburgers, fries, and chocolate Frostys will forever be ingrained in the sparsely decorated “happy childhood memories” room of my brain.