When I got home, everything was quiet. I saw Magda through the window of her room, cleaning bits of dust from her records. On the porch, Pedi was playing jacks with a golf ball Nardo had stolen from Bonneville Lakes Golf and Catering. I tousled her hair and stepped inside.
Dad was sitting on the living-room couch, his feet propped on the coffee table, drinking a can of beer and nipping little gulps of tequila from a pint bottle. In the kitchen, Mom was scrubbing the counter. She had her black hair braided into a solid coil in the back and was wearing a flower-print apron with the sleeves puffed like biscuits.
Mom was wild about daytime movies. When the music on the TV quickened, she’d angle her head through the doorway and watch the action. When there was a lot of talking, she’d scrub hard on the daisy-print linoleum. I thought she was going to grab me by the collar and plant me in front of the sink to wash dishes; instead, she said, “Mijo, you’re blocking the TV!”
“What are you watching?”
“A Tony Curtis movie.”
Standing behind a liquor bar, Tony was rustling ice cubes in a glass and twirling a spoon in suave, romantic circles. He glinted his eyes enticingly at some jazzy-looking blond lady—Marilyn Monroe, or somebody—lounging on a billowy couch. The blond lady didn’t suspect a thing. Or maybe she did. Mom sure in the hell did. She knew Tony.
While I was standing there watching the off-and-on squiggles on the TV, Mom grabbed me by the shoulder and shoved me aside. “Move, mijo!” she said, craning her neck.
Although sitting close to the TV, Dad was pretending like he wasn’t watching. He’d get interested in the parts where Mom’s eyes glued on Tony, though. He’d stretch his leg across the coffee table to block out part of the screen, knowing this annoyed her, although she was trying hard to ignore him.
After a while, Mom came into the living room like gravity was pulling at her. She sat on the arm of the couch and propped her chin on her palms. So close was Tony to the blond lady that you could practically zipper their eyelashes together.
That’s when Dad got up, snatching angrily at the air, and huffed into the bathroom. He washed, slapped on aftershave and smoothed his hair back with Red Rose brilliantine. He came out wearing a white shirt and black pants, like he was dressing for a funeral. Fat chance he was going to stick around to watch Tony smooch with the blond lady, while Mom swooned. He was heading back to Rico’s to see if he could connect again with his lucky shooting streak. He stood over Mom for about a minute to see if she’d lift her eyes, then grinned meanly, grabbed his keys and pint of tequila and stormed out.
Mom just kept watching the TV. I guess she figured she could scold him for starving us, scold him about the unpaid rent or the job somewhere in the world waiting for him to try harder, but she was tired of all that. She knew if she cluttered his ears with too much griping, it would only thicken his stubbornness. He’d smolder around the house for hours, grumbling and haranguing until he gnawed her patience down to shreds.
Outside, I heard the car starter winding, but it wouldn’t kick over. “God dammit!” Dad shouted.
I pushed the curtains back and saw him wrestling with the arm of the gear shift, which sometimes stuck. He slammed his feet on the floor and shook the wheel; then, relaxing his hands, he stared hard at me, like I was weeds growing wild in a field that some day he’d have to chop.
Mom came up behind me and pressed down on my shoulders, her hands smelling of ammonia. We watched as Dad got out of the car and walked across the parking lot, grumbling. The hoof-mark clouds in the sky had burned away, and already I could see the wind beginning to smooth out the wrinkles of the afternoon heat. Pedi was still on porch, erasing some sparrows tracks on the dusty concrete.
Two of the Garcia brothers, Bobby and Stinky, snuck out from behind our neighbor Sophie’s house and followed Dad, laughing and shoving each other with dares. They threw little pieces of gravel at him, trying to land them inside his neck collar, but he only swiped at the air behind his head and kept walking.
I turned around and saw the thick cords on Mom’s neck, pulsing. She looked at me, and with a funny smile squeezed her fingers against my cheeks, sparking tiny needles of pain. When she let go, my face stung with a glowing warmth.
3
Charity
The next day, Mom began thinking about the future. She wanted me to go to a better school across town, where all the white kids got educated. So I grabbed the number 42 bus down Chandler Avenue, walked two blocks to the brown, ivy-rusted walls of my high school, and presented a note from my mom to Mrs. Kingsley, the secretary. Mom had heard rumors that they didn’t like kids leaving my school and sometimes would mix things up for months, so she wanted me to get a record of my grades in person.
Mrs. Kingsley was an old white lady with cat-eye glasses dangling on a silver chain necklace. She had a pasty face, thick berry-painted lips and enough wrinkles on her neck to make a parachute. After giving her the note—she seemed to know what it was about, but asked me to read it anyway, I guess to test my English—she slid out a manila folder from a squeaky steel cabinet and, with an “I know more than you” smile, handed me the records. Her eyes casually dropped along the length of my arm, and just as I was about to grab the folder, she pushed it away like a worm had plopped down on it from the ceiling.
While waiting to catch the bus, I thought about calling Dad to see if he’d give me a ride home, but figured he was still numb from drinking the night before and would probably scold me for the hell of it. Besides, Mom wanted to keep it hush about me attending a school across town. She thought schooling could graduate me into places that would make her eyes gleam. Dad thought I should cut school altogether and get a dishwashing job. Start on the bottom and work your way up, that’s what he’d say. Only most of the people he knew started on the bottom and worked their way sideways.
I got hooked watching cars swish by on the street. They’d skirt against the curb trying to crowd into a gas station at the corner. The pump man was this big, muscly guy with bleachy hair and angry clusters of pimples around his face and neck. He was tanking up the cars, banging the nozzle around like a cattleprod and pretty much doing a lousy job of wiping the windows. None of the customers seemed to work up a sweat about it, though, or maybe they just didn’t want to tussle with a beefy guy spitting sunflower seeds.
I was watching this when my old history teacher, Mr. Hart, came up and stood beside me. I remembered him because his favorite subject was the Civil War. He was wild about General McClellan, who he swore was a military genius and only needed a chance to put his sophisticated designs of warfare to work. Of course, on the battlefield, McClellan got chopped up bad by Robert E. Lee, but that didn’t matter to Mr. Hart a bit; it was the beauty of the plan that counted. Once, I remember during class, after he’d gotten all teary-eyed about the battle of Gettysburg, this smart-aleck guy named Malcolm Augustus leaked out this cheesy little snicker and the whole class bursted out laughing. Mr. Hart’s face pumped red with embarrassment.
At first he pretended he didn’t recognize me, then he raised his eyebrows. “What are you doing here!?”
“I came to get my grades.”
“What on earth for?”
He sounded concerned, so I told him. “My mom wants me to go Hawthorne School across town.”
“Mmm,” he said, looking down at my shoes. “You have the grades. You’re a pretty smart boy.” He was thinking hard, but he kept staring at my shoes. They were my dad’s old pair that had got chewed up by dogs when he left them outside. My feet slid around in two extra sizes of space. The tongue flopped out of the left, and a jagged crack split down the sole of the right from stomping on shovels. Neither shoe had enough lace to grip more than three rings.
“What have you been doing this summer?” Mr. Hart asked finally, snapping out of his thoughts.
“I have been working in a variety of jobs.”
I spoke organized English to Mr. Hart, maybe a bit too organized. He was a twitchy kind of teach
er who got all pushed out of shape if you talked to him natural. He was always wearing stay-pressed slacks and a white shirt with a black tie thin as an exclamation mark. I liked him because he wasn’t one of those movie-star teachers who all the girls giggle over and guys respect, who act like they’re your buddy and want to shoot the breeze when really they’re just snoops and end up reporting you for smoking in the restroom.
“That’s fine, real fine, Manuel,” he said. “Most kids don’t carry their own weight, you know.”
I shifted the shoe with the floppy tongue behind the other, regretting I’d worn them.
“How much money did you make for school?” he asked, smiling but holding back his teeth.
“Well, sir,” I said, “we made enough.”
Searching for words—mostly to keep his eyes away from my shoes—I told him we went to San Jose, but that was to pick figs, and only for a week. We never got to see the city.
Mr. Hart smiled again, still holding back his teeth, and rubbed his chin. He kept flicking at his nose, sliding out little flakes that he’d leave dangling. It looked awful.
“Did you ever stop to think, Manuel, that maybe you have to go places, experience things?”
“Well, sir, I never thought about it, actually.”
He studied my shoes some more.
“How about it if I give you a ride home?” he said, rubbing the back of his hand.
Before I could unclog the surprise from my throat, he poked into his pocket and brought out a small paper bag and a pencil and scribbled something down.
“I’ll be heading your way in a little while. Why don’t you come with me.”
Just then the bus came and I edged to the curb, telling him thanks but no thanks. I talked with my hands to steer his eyes away from my shoes, but he kept staring. I was about to jump on the bus and bury myself in the crush of people when he smiled, this time agreeable and with a blare of teeth. He grabbed my arm, “Come on,” he said. “You can keep me company.”
My eyes followed the orange-lined bus as it pulled away from the curb. When I turned around, Mr. Hart was shaking his head and smiling at the ground where I’d been standing.
The school had been closed for summer, except for the administration building and some bungalows for half-day summer classes. Mr. Hart’s room was on the second floor next to the typewriting class. Without all the ticking and tacking that goes on during regular school I could hear our footsteps whispering in the hallway.
Mr. Hart waved me into his office and asked where I lived. His room smelled salty; not ocean salty, or can of potted meat salty, but a musty, papery saltiness, like books sweating. He motioned me to sit down, but I stayed standing. Then he showed me what he had written on the paper bag. It said, Give the Hernandez boy $20. He pointed at the amount and asked if it was enough.
“Enough for what?”
“Enough for school supplies. You know, papers and pencils, binders, stuff like that. You’ll need them at your new school.” He was upping his voice to sound official.
Too embarrassed to tell him that attending another school was just a dream of my mom’s—another one that probably wasn’t going to hatch—I assured him that I had money by lightly patting my pocket. He nodded, then folded the paper. He reached back for his wallet anyway, and opened it to a spread of bills, tugging one out. Then, a shade embarrassed, and clearing his throat, he grabbed my hand and pretended to shake it, slipping me the money.
The sun was milky when we finally got going, and the air had a weight that made me swallow hard. Then a little wind came, but instead of being cool it snapped hot sparks in my face.
When we got to his car, Mr. Hart, antsy over the heat, revved the engine once and put it in gear. I cranked down the window as we pulled out of the parking lot, and the wind rolled in a small tidal wave of heat, splashing my face.
Mr. Hart decided against going down Chandler Avenue to the projects, where I lived. Instead, he took me in a roundabout journey across town, down Nestle Avenue, where he said I’d be going to school. From the window I could see the clean, green lawns of the houses closest to the road, the hoses neatly coiled, the driveways without a smear of oil. I’d only been there a few times to see the Christmas and Nativity scenes that during December were the main attractions. Antlered reindeers and cherry-cheeked Santas tramping on fake rooftop snow; Jesus as a swaddling baby; and camel caravans, complete with the Three Kings glowed among floodlights spread across the lawns. The whole avenue at that time of year was brilliant with lights and Christmas spangles.
I didn’t really feel like talking. I mostly said “Yeah, yeah,” whenever Mr. Hart shot his arms out to assemble some words above the steering wheel. There were houses behind forests of maple and pine trees that couldn’t be seen from the road, except maybe a dip of a driveway or sun-splash of a window in the distance. I leaned my chin on the dashboard and asked, “Rich people live out here, huh?”
“It’s just another place to live,” Mr. Hart said blandly, “middle-class, some upper.”
I could tell by the quickness of his voice that he was disappointed that I was excited, except that I wasn’t excited, but scared; scared of all the new kids I’d be meeting; different kids, the kind that lived in houses like these. Mr. Hart smiled and patted me on the shoulder.
“You’re sure right about that, Mr. Hart,” I said, nervously.
When we finally neared our projects, I asked him to drive around back and drop me off by the irrigation ditch near Frankie’s house. He didn’t know our project was lousy with snoops. People hanging outside on their front porches saw something suspicious in a white guy driving somebody home in a cream-colored car.
If my mom happened to be in the front yard, for instance, watering her plants, she’d have a heart attack for sure. She’d think somebody from the public housing works was coming to complain; or worse, think it was one of those unmarked police cars bringing her son home to psychologically torture her before locking me up forever.
Mr. Hart ignored me about dropping me off by Frankie’s, and instead drove straight into the parking lot. Luckily, Mom wasn’t home. But my dad was. When we pulled up he was plucking mint leaves by the water faucet. He zeroed his eyes angrily on me, and an icy, powerful mist began peeling away the inside walls of my lungs.
My dad had it in for white guys like Mr. Hart, who had good jobs and dressed in white shirts and black ties. It didn’t matter that he was my teacher and that he was nice enough to give me a ride home. It didn’t matter that, for whatever else one could say about him, Mr. Hart was an okay guy. What mattered to my dad was the possible panic I might cause my mom, or worse, that he’d be beholden to some white man for giving his son a ride home. No matter how many sophisticated ways I could turn it over to convince him, nothing would make sense to my dad. Letting Mr. Hart take me home was the worst acid I could have poured into his stomach.
He didn’t say anything, though. When we got out of the car, he was sifting through the spearmint stems and shaking off the loose dirt with his thumbs. He did nod hello to Mr. Hart.
“How are you doing, sir,” Mr. Hart said, walking across the yard. He stretched out his hand.
Oh no, I thought, Dad’s gonna flip him. Instead he said, “Oh, fine, I’m doing real fine.”
He said this good-naturedly, begging off Mr. Hart’s outstretched hand with a wave of the soily mint. With his mouth like clay that couldn’t be massaged, he continued coolly prying apart the stems. When Mr. Hart turned to admire the yard, Dad lifted his eyes and gave me a look that could crack concrete.
You could tell Mr. Hart wanted to say something stupid, like how neat the yard was or what a fine impression our project house had on him. If he had, I think Dad would have mowed him down.
Luckily, he didn’t say anything, and when he turned his back again, I put my head down quick. I could still feel Dad’s eyes boring a hole through my skull. Toward Mr. Hart, though, he was a reservoir of calm water barely touched by the wind.
Fi
nally, after a couple of minutes of nervously standing around, Mr. Hart waved a generous good-bye and tried again to shake Dad’s hand. Dad just lifted the spearmint in one final excuse.
When Mr. Hart had gone, Dad came over and stared me square in the face. His eyes were dead and black, like a deep anger had eaten away the light. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t signal my legs to move. My heart quickened as he threw down the spearmint and grabbed me roughly by the shoulders. He stuck his hand in my front shirt pocket. Being Nardo’s hand-me-down shirt, it fit loose, and when Dad pulled, the pocket came down almost to my belly button. He yanked out a piece of smashed lint. Then he dug his fingers into my pants pockets and with grunting satisfaction pulled out the twenty-dollar bill.
“He give you this?” he asked, his voice croaking and the cords on his neck pulsing as he took in gulps of air. He didn’t really expect an answer. He looked over at me with glazed eyes, then turned toward the house. As he reached the door, he swung back around and pointing right at the president’s picture on the twenty-dollar bill, said, “Don’t you think I know people like this?”
4
The Bullet
The twenty-dollar bill Dad took from me went into his drinking bankroll. Once he started a binge, he wouldn’t stop until every cent drained from his pockets. For two days he didn’t come home. On the second day, while we were sitting around the dinner table in front of some potatoes in red chili sauce and corn tortillas, our necks stiff, staring at the walls as if looking for scratches, Mom finally said we better go get him.
Having eaten only cornmeal that morning, my stomach gritting like hungry teeth, I sure wasn’t in any mood to go to Rico’s again. But I knew Mom. Until the problem of Dad was solved, she wouldn’t let anybody eat. Already, the red chili sauce was thickening in the potatoes, and the corn tortillas were warping like records in the sun.
“Could you take care of the baby while we’re gone?” Mom asked Magda, whose eyes stabbed angrily back at her. They’d been arguing all morning, and had established a polite buffer of silence between them.
Parrot in the Oven Page 3