Mexican WhiteBoy

by Matt De La Peña

  He works on each pitch in his arsenal a bucket at a time. Same routine he had in Leucadia, after the team was done with the field. Starts with a bucket of fastballs, followed by a bucket of curves, a bucket of sliders, a bucket of changeups. Then he starts over again with his fastball. After several rounds of pure pitching, Danny starts thinking about his control. Why’d he perform so poorly at tryouts last year? He never goes too long without asking himself this question. Picturing all the wild pitches he threw. Why’d it happen? Out here he’s putting each ball anywhere he wants. He’s painting black on either side of the plate with four different pitches. At the fair, too, when he was drunk. His control was perfect.

  Why’s it that when he’s in front of the Leucadia Prep guys he tenses up? He always comes back to this question, but he can never find the answer.

  He remembers the time his mom took him to have his eyes checked. It was a complex appointment. On the one hand, if it came back that his eyes were bad it would explain why he was so erratic on the mound. Why one tryout pitch would zip right down the middle for a strike and the next would soar behind the hitter’s back. Back in Little League he’d amaze all his teammates with his pitching, the parents in the stands, the coaches. His dad. But then his family split at the seams. And he, Julia, and his mom moved a bunch of times. Now when he toed a rubber in front of the team, he had no idea where his next pitch would end up.

  On the other hand, Danny wasn’t even sure he’d wear glasses if they were prescribed. In the waiting room he slipped on a pair of sample specs and checked himself in the mirror. He looked soft with four eyes. Looked like a sissy. And a Lopez boy wasn’t supposed to look like no sissy. What would his dad have said?

  It was bad enough he was at a private high school, wore a preppy uniform and made the honor roll every semester. Could he really take it a step further and don a pair of Coke-bottle glasses?

  Danny never actually had to make that call. He covered both eyes for the doc, one at a time, read letters off the chart, and was diagnosed with perfect vision: 20-20.

  After an hour or so of pitching solo, Sofia’s sister, Vanessa, and her boyfriend, Jesus, pull up in a revamped Mustang. Vanessa pops her head out of the rolled-down window and shouts: “Come on, Danny, we’re all going to Gram’s for dinner!”

  Danny looks up at the Mustang.

  Vanessa waves him on.

  He picks up his bucket, collects a few loose baseballs and climbs the ice plant slope toward the Mustang.

  2

  After Danny and his entire family finish their huge feast, everyone’s in a Mexican coma—which, according to Uncle Ray, is directly related to the Mexican minute. The women are buzzing around the table, collecting dirty dishes, glasses, silverware, wrapping what’s left of the mutilated turkey in Saran Wrap and making fun of the men.

  Sofia waves Danny into the backyard. Outside, she looks at him with a sly smile and says: “Guess what I just heard from Carmen.”

  “What?” Danny says.

  “That new girl, Liberty, thinks you’re cute. Carmen talked to Guita about it last night at the movies. And Carmen called me this morning. Plus she bet on you at the fair. Out of nowhere. She never talks to nobody.”

  Danny feels the blood rush into the tips of his fingers and toes. He looks down at his Vans, a little dirt on the tip of his shoe from dragging it after each pitch.

  “I know you like her, cuz.”

  Danny looks at his cousin.

  “Your cousin knows these things. Trust me.”

  Danny’s just about to say something back when Uncle Ray walks through the sliding glass door followed by his two tough-looking buddies. The bigger one puts both hands on his stomach and says: “Damn, I could barely move, I’m so stuffed.”

  “Told you, boy,” Ray says. “My moms hooks it up.” He pulls a cigarette from his pack, puts it to his lips. Hands the pack to his smaller buddy and pulls a lighter from his pocket. He looks up at Danny and Sofia, says: “You guys up to no good out here?”

  “Just talkin’,” Sofia says.

  “’Bout what?”

  “Danny’s girlfriend.”

  Uncle Ray pulls his cigarette from his mouth, stares at Danny. A smile breaks over his face. “You already got yourself a little girl down here, D-man? You just like your old man.”

  “No,” Danny says, looking at Sofia.

  “She don’t barely speak English, though.”

  “A border broad, eh? How you gonna talk to her, D-man?” Uncle Ray cracks up with his boys a little, then introduces them as Rico and Tim.

  Everybody stands there in silence for a while until Sofia says: “Anyway, I gotta go help clean up.” She punches Danny in the arm and goes back inside.

  Uncle Ray stares at Danny for a sec, says: “Wha’chu guys do then, D-man? She don’t speak no English. You don’t speak no Spanish. You just talk with your hands? Do sign language?”

  Danny digs into his arm with his fingernails until a sharp pain hits his brain.

  “Wish I couldn’t talk to my old lady,” Rico says.

  “I hear that,” Tim says, laughing.

  As Rico and Tim go back and forth a bit, Ray pulls Danny to the side, says: “What I don’t get, D, is why your old man never taught you Spanish.”

  Danny shrugs. Digs in again.

  “I think maybe he didn’t want you to be a Mexican. You know he gots a big-ass chip on his shoulder ’bout that, right? He gets pissed off about how Mexicans get treated. Maybe he didn’t want it to happen to you.”

  Danny digs into his arm some more until Uncle Ray notices and smacks his hand away. “Wha’chu doin’, D-man?” He holds Danny’s arm and takes a look. Sees the new markings, the old scars. He looks Danny in the eyes for a few seconds with a serious face, lets go his arm. But he doesn’t say anything. Instead he stares at the fence that separates Grandma’s small backyard from the neighbor’s, pulls another drag. “Well, I know this,” he finally says. “Your pops loves you, D. More than you could ever know. Right now you ’bout all he’s got.”

  Danny nods.

  “You remember that.”

  Danny nods.

  Uncle Ray shakes his head and drops his cig, stomps out the red tip with one of his Timberlands. “Hang in there, D-man. He comin’ back.”

  Danny looks up at his uncle. “When?”

  “When the time’s right. You just keep writing them letters. They mean a lot to my brother.”

  3

  A while later, Danny’s sitting in his grandma’s living room, watching a Padres game with the rest of his family. But he’s not really watching. He’s thinking about the fact that he doesn’t speak Spanish. He only speaks English. And it really starts to make him angry. He wishes his dad had never even married a white woman. Then he’d have grown up down here like everybody else in his family. In National City. He imagines how much different his life would be. How much better.

  “Yo, D!” Ray suddenly shouts from across the room. “Yo, you could help me write this letter to my old lady?”

  “Which old lady you talking ’bout now?” Uncle Tommy calls out from the couch.

  Tim and Rico crack up.

  “Lucy.”

  “Lucy Gonzales?” Tommy says, slipping an arm around Cecilia’s back. Slipping his free hand between his full stomach and loosened belt. “You mean that heina still talks to your cheatin’ ass?”

  “Shit. After I write her this letter, big brother, she gonna do more than just talk. D, you could help me?”

  Danny nods.

  Ray gets up from the couch, goes over to Gram’s sewing table and scoops up a pad of paper and a pen. He hands them to Danny, explains the gist of how he wants the letter to go, and Danny starts writing.

  This isn’t the first letter Danny’s written for his uncle, and he already knows how it’ll play out. His well-thought-out words will work like magic on this woman, Lucy, and Uncle Ray will call him a couple days later to explain that he got him laid. Again.

  But halfway th
rough the letter, just as he gets to the part where he compares their roller-coaster romance to the rise and fall of a North County tide, Danny realizes that in writing this letter, consisting merely of lines of poetry he’s memorized from English textbooks, he’s not actually getting closer to his favorite uncle, but further away.

  “Mr. Smart Boy,” his uncle Ray will tell him over the phone.

  Danny will switch the receiver from one ear to the other, secretly wishing his uncle had called him Mr. Bad Boy instead.

  “I owe you big-time, D.”

  “You don’t owe me anything, Uncle Ray.”

  There will be a slight pause and then his uncle will say:

  “Yo, that’s three times you helped me. Know what? I’m gonna take your ass to a Padres game, D. For real. You know they got that new stadium, right? I’m gonna get us some prime seats, right behind home plate. How’s that sound?”

  “Cool!” Danny will say back, fully aware that there won’t be any Padres game, and that because he’s forced his uncle to make a promise he’ll never keep, he couldn’t possibly get further away.

  It all hits him as he stares at a half-finished love letter. No matter how many words he defines or love letters he composes or pieces of junk mail he reads aloud to his grandma while she waters spider plants potted in old Folgers coffee cans, he’ll still be a hundred miles away from who he’s supposed to be.

  He’s Mexican, because his family’s Mexican, but he’s not really Mexican. His skin is dark like his grandma’s sweet coffee, but his insides are as pale as the cream she mixes in.

  Danny holds the pencil above the paper, thinking: I’m a white boy among Mexicans, and a Mexican among white boys.

  He digs his fingernails into his arm. Looks up to see if anybody’s watching him. They aren’t.

  Sometimes he’ll just watch his family interact in the living room. The half-Spanish jokes and the bottle of tequila being passed around with a shot glass and salt. The laughing and carrying on. Always eating the best food and playing the coolest games and telling the funniest stories. His uncles always sending the smallest kid at the party to get them a cold sixer out of the fridge and then sneaking him the first sip when Grandma isn’t looking. But even when she turns around suddenly, catches them red-handed and shouts, “Ray! Mijo, what are you doing?” everybody just falls over laughing. Including Grandma.

  And it makes him so happy just watching. Doesn’t even matter that he’s not really involved. Because what he’s doing is getting a sneak peek inside his dad’s life.

  Danny looks up at his uncles and cousins from the table, pencil dangling in his right hand. Ray is standing up now, telling a story about the construction site he’s currently working at in Point Loma. How some fat Mexican dude, straight off a border crossing, fell into a small ditch and couldn’t get out. They threw him a rope, and everybody had to pull. All ten of them. And still they could barely pull him out. And everybody’s laughing. Including Danny. Because nobody’s better at telling a story than his uncle Ray. Nobody.

  But then Rico shouts something in Spanish. Everybody laughs even harder. Uncle Tommy yells something back in Spanish.

  And all Danny can do is go back to his uncle’s letter.

  Call from San Francisco

  1

  A couple mornings later Sofia walks into the living room, where Danny’s eating a bowl of cornflakes. She cups the phone and mouths: “Your madre.”

  The three previous times his mom has called, Danny’s waved Sofia off, told her to say he wasn’t around. But this time Danny rolls his eyes and takes the phone. He puts the receiver to his ear, mumbles: “Hello?”

  “Oh, Danny boy. It’s so good to finally hear your voice. How are you, hon? Good, I hope. We miss you so much up here. Me and Julia and Randy. You might not believe me about Randy, being that he’s only met you once, but just last night he turned to me at dinner, swear to God—we were at this real nice Chinese place near the marina, the best General Tso’s chicken ever! Anyway, he said: ‘So, how’s my boy Danny making out in National City? He getting along okay with his aunt and uncle?’ It moved me, hon. Because you and Julia are my life and here’s this beautiful, well-established man who wants to share that with me. I said, ‘Well, I don’t know because he never seems to be there when I call. Either that or he’s mad at me and purposely ducking my calls.’ I hope you’re not mad at your mom, Danny boy. Anyway, how are you, pumpkin?”

  Danny stares at his cornflakes, literally growing soggy in front of his eyes. “Good,” he mumbles.

  “That’s what I like to hear. Make sure you help out around the house, hon. And Randy, bless his heart, he’s gonna start sending down money for you, too. He already gives Tommy a couple hundred a month, which I’m pretty sure you’re aware of. But he thinks you should have some kicking-around money. Pretty nice gesture, right? He doesn’t have to do it. Anyway, look for a letter from him, Danny boy. Every other week. First one should be there by Saturday, I would think.”

  “Okay.”

  “Things couldn’t be better up here, if you wanna know the truth. San Francisco is such a gorgeous city. My God. The fog rolling through the hills, Fisherman’s Wharf, Chinatown, the amazing shopping, all the different restaurants. And the culture, hon. You realize real quick how little San Diego has in the way of culture. The problem with San Diego is that all the races live in different pockets of the city. The blacks are in the southeast or in Oceanside. The Mexicans are by the border. Or else they’re working in somebody’s kitchen or yard. That always got me about San Diego. Mexicans are treated as such second-class citizens. But it’s not like that in San Francisco. Here, everybody lives together. By the way, I’ve started taking two classes. Intermediate yoga and classical photography. Randy says I’m a natural with lighting. And your sister’s taking three different dance classes. Randy’s taking us out to Alcatraz today. I’ve always wanted to go out there. Those prisoners back in history, being shipped out there. It’s so interesting to think about, isn’t it? God, Danny boy, I think this man might be the one. I mean it, honey. I think this might be it for your crazy mom.”

  Danny doesn’t say anything.

  “Okay, hon, gotta run. Randy’s out hailing a cab. Hailing a cab—can you imagine, baby? Can you picture your mom and sister running around this famous city? Okay, you take care down there, and say hi to everybody. We love you, Danny boy.”

  The phone clicks dead in his ear and Danny sets it on the table. He looks at it for a few seconds, trying to imagine what San Francisco might look like. Trying to imagine his mom and his sister and Randy all piling into a cab. He pushes his bowl of soggy flakes away and leans back in his chair. How could his mom do this to his dad? He wants nothing to do with her ever again. He doesn’t care if he has to sleep on a cot the rest of his high school career. He’s not going back with her. He reaches out for his bowl and takes the spoon, resumes eating the soggy flakes so he’ll have energy when he works out today.

  Senior Explains Poverty

  1

  “All right, lemme put it to you another way,” Senior says, holding an index finger in the air. He snaps. Looks Uno right in the eyes. “Say you ain’t from round here. Say you just some random Jack who got lost on your way to Mexico. You jump the gun, turn off the freeway into National City. That’s the only way you could know how you livin’, son. Your boys from down the block? They can’t tell you nuthin’. Your moms? Nah. But an outsider, Uno. Wouldn’t need to hear no words neither. The answers would be in his eyes.”

  On the walk home from the barbecue joint, Uno asked his old man what would happen if he couldn’t raise all the money. The whole five hundred. Would he still be able to move to Oxnard? Uno watched his dad stop cold. Watched him spit into a gutter and turn to him, fire building in the whites of his eyes.

  Senior took Uno by the arm, veered him into Sweetwater High’s parking lot. Up the ramp. Into the football bleachers. And that’s where they’ve been for the past forty-five minutes. Senior talking. Uno
listening.

  “Get too close to somethin’,” Senior says, pointing at his eyes, “it ain’t no longer possible to see. An outsider, though, lookin’ in on shit with virgin eyes. That’s the person who could shed a light on your reality. I mean, I done lived here with your mom, a Mexican woman, for years. So I understand the cultural background and historical symbolic stuff. You follow?”

  “I think so,” Uno says. In his head he tries to connect the dots. He brought up Oxnard and Senior’s talking about an outsider. But they have to relate somehow.

  “But a true outsider,” Senior continues, “he drives past the Lincoln Acres picnic table area, sees old Indian-lookin’ women sittin’ huddled in the shade, crochetin’. Hardly a word passing between them. The outsider sees bus after bus, filled to the capacity with factory workers, faces like the worn-out leather on your baseball mitt. On they way to minimum-wage jobs. He rolls past an alley full of weeds after school, sees a pack of los ratas tape firecrackers to the back of a stray cat—then pop! pop! pop! they scatter away in they rags, laughin’. The outsider passes the run-down taquerias and liquor stores that line Highland Ave like old, broken-down Aztec warriors. Standing at the edge of the street with they arms folded.”

  Uno nods. He’s no longer sure what these things have to do with Oxnard, but he’s still listening. He’s never thought of his Mexican neighborhood like this. He looks out over his high school. Wonders if he’s gonna go through his entire life without paying attention.

  “It’s people who wander into your city, Uno. They the only ones who could see your life for what it is. National City, boy. Ain’t but a forgotten slice of America’s finest city. And you know what’s on the tip of all y’all’s tongues? Each and every one of y’all?”

  Uno turns back to his dad. Shrugs.

  “Money, baby.”

  Uno nods. What his dad’s saying is totally true.

  “Ain’t just you, son. It’s every fool down here. If it ain’t money they talkin’ specifically, it’s some pseudonym of money. Some materialization of the concept. Maybe they usin’ a different word. Like dividends. Dough. Funds. Scratch. The Mexican cats call it dinero. Or billetes or scrilla. Back in the day we used to call it paper. ‘Yo, you wanna get down with homegirl you gots to have paper, son.’ ‘I got paper.’ ‘Not that kind of paper, you don’t.’ Or maybe they talkin’ around money. They talkin’ food stamps or government cheese. Supplemental housing. Unemployment checks. Disability. Welfare. Or maybe they so beaten down from a lack of funds, they don’t have no talk left in ’em at all. But even these folks, Uno. They thinkin’ ’bout money. Ain’t that right?”