Bulletproof Vest

by Maria Venegas

  “You haven’t gone to bed yet?” my mother asks when she comes through the door that leads from our garage into the kitchen.

  “I have an exam tomorrow,” I say.

  “I don’t know why you’re wasting your time with those books,” she says, making her way over to the dining room table and setting her heavy black purse down. “You should be reading the Bible, that’s what you should be doing.” She pulls out a chair and takes a seat. “If Jesus were to come back tonight, what good would all of this studying do you?” she asks, raising her brow and looking at me. I don’t say anything. I go back to plugging in numbers, hoping she’ll get the hint and leave me alone. “What good will all of this studying do you if you lose your soul, huh?”

  “Ya amá,” I say, because I know that if I don’t stop her, she’ll keep going, she’ll pull out her Bible and start preaching to me, and I’m sick of being preached to.

  “Ya amá,” she mumbles under her breath as she reaches over and grabs an orange from the fruit bowl that sits on the center of the table. She starts peeling it, and I go back to my problems. “So, have you heard the latest news?” she asks.

  “What happened?” I ask, looking up from my notebook, already knowing that whatever it is must have something to do with my father.

  “Your father will soon have a new family,” she says, glancing over at me. “The vieja he’s living with is pregnant.” She places the orange peels in a neat pile on the table in front of her. “He always told me that any time he wanted to, he could go off and start a new family,” she says. “That man never cared about anyone but himself. He never loved you guys.”

  This is something she’s been saying since the day he left, practically. Your father never loved you guys. I always knew that I wasn’t one of his favorites. Assumed it was because I was the only one with dark skin in the family—la negra. He had never taken me on the secret runs to McDonald’s that he used to take with Jorge and Yesenia, and though he’d tell them not to say anything, inevitably one of them would end up bragging about it, and after one of their trips my mother had found me lying in bed with my pillow over my head. She asked what was wrong, and between gasping for air and wiping the tears away I had managed to tell her that mi apá didn’t love me because he never took me to McDonald’s. A few days later, he ushered me out of the house and into his truck and we went to McDonald’s—just the two of us. On the way home, my feet were dangling off the seat, and my hand was in my pocket, rubbing the toy from my Happy Meal. When we pulled into the driveway, I reached for the door handle, and he reached for my bony knee. “Now don’t be telling people that I don’t love you,” he said, giving my knee a slight squeeze, and I clutched the toy in my pocket until something snapped.

  Let him have a baby, let him have ten babies for all I care. The more kids he has, the less likely he’ll be to ever come back. As far as I’m concerned, his having left is the best thing that ever happened to us. There are no more sleepless school nights, or the fear that he will come home in the middle of the night, blaring his music, shooting his gun, and waking the entire neighborhood. Though our new neighbors, who are all white, would probably not put up with his antics.

  * * *

  After Christmas break, we go back to school and there’s a new girl. I hear about her before I actually see her, because everyone says that she looks like me, looks like she could be my sister. That’s impossible, I think, as I’m the only brown person in the entire grade, my skin a few shades darker than everyone else’s. The new girl is smart—really smart. Though I was allowed to move up one level in all my subjects, except math, physical education is the only class we have together. When she walks into the locker room on that first day, I know it’s her. She’s tall, slim, and has long, dark, straight hair. She’s wearing a denim miniskirt, an oversized forest green sweater, and a pair of brown leather Frye boots—no one in that town wears tall leather boots. I want her outfit—the sweater, the skirt, and the boots—all of it.

  “Hi,” she says when she notices me staring at her boots. I’m standing there in my black polyester gym shorts and my black padded bra that is so worn out the stitching is coming undone. “I’m Sophia.”

  “I’m Maria,” I say, as I let my white turtleneck drop onto the bench between us.

  “I have that exact same shirt,” she says, looking at my turtleneck. “Except mine is green. My mother bought it for me at J.Crew,” she says. “Where is yours from?”

  “I’m not sure,” I say, because I’m not about to tell her it’s from Kmart. I reach into my locker and pull out my stinky yellow gym tee. She picks my shirt up off the bench and looks at the label. It’s black and has Jazz written across it in silver stitching.

  “Oh, it’s not from J.Crew,” she says, letting my shirt drop back onto the bench.

  I decide I don’t like her.

  A week later, a sign is posted in the girls’ locker room. Cheerleading tryouts are coming up. I think I’ll give it a shot, figuring it might be a good way to meet people. A few days after tryouts, the list goes up in the locker room and a crowd of girls gathers in front of it. I scan it, reading every name from top to bottom: Rachel Burns, Melissa Cunningham, Gina Mancini, Liz McCarthy, Trisha Shultz, until I get to the very bottom of the list and there is my name—Maria Venegas. Though I haven’t practiced gymnastics in years, it’s amazing how much my body still remembers.

  * * *

  Right before classes let out for summer, we hear that the guy who killed my brother has turned up dead. His body was found in the desert in Mexico, in Mexicali, somewhere near the Tijuana border. He had been stabbed over fifty times.

  “Do you think it was mi apá?” I ask my mother.

  “Probably,” she says. “Your father is capable of anything.”

  * * *

  That summer, we take a road trip to Texas, a family vacation of sorts—the one and only. There is a Christian youth convention in Brownsville and we caravan down with other members of my mother’s church. When we return, we haven’t even finished unloading the car yet when the phone rings.

  “Hello?” I say.

  “Where were you guys?” he asks. Though I haven’t talked to him since he left, I recognize his voice immediately, and I find myself wishing I hadn’t been the one who picked up the phone.

  “Texas,” I say.

  “Who gave you permission?”

  “No one.”

  “Were you with the hallelujahs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who drove?”

  “Mi amá and Maria Elena.”

  “Let me talk to your mother.”

  I set the phone down on the kitchen counter and go outside. Jorge is dragging a duffel bag that easily weighs more than him up the driveway. My mother is pulling soda cans and empty potato chip bags from the back of her station wagon.

  “Guess who’s on the phone?” I say, when I reach her.

  “Who?” she says, standing straight up, “your father?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “He wants to talk to you.”

  “Did you tell him where we were?”

  “He already knew,” I say, scanning the electrical wires across the street, almost expecting to see him perched there like a blackbird, watching us.

  “I have nothing to say to that viejo,” she says, and goes back to collecting candy wrappers and trash from the backseat. “You should just hang up.”

  I make my way back through the garage. Jorge is in the kitchen, pouring himself a glass of ice-cold water from the fridge. I pick up the phone, even think about hanging up, because I don’t necessarily want to talk to him either.

  “She doesn’t want to talk to you,” I say.

  There’s a long silence.

  “Y Jorge?” he asks.

  I wave my free hand at Jorge and point to the phone.

  “He wants to talk to you,” I whisper.

  “Tell him that as far as I’m concerned, he’s dead,” Jorge says, setting down the glass and heading back out to the gara
ge.

  “He doesn’t want to talk to you either,” I say, wondering if he heard that.

  Again there’s a long silence.

  “Y La Poderosa?”

  “Hang on,” I say, and go looking for La Poderosa. This is one of the nicknames he had given Yesenia, the baby of the family. I find her in the bathroom.

  “Hey,” I call out from the other side of the door. “Dad is on the phone and he wants to talk to you.”

  “Why?” she says.

  “Do you want to talk to him or not?”

  “Not really,” she says.

  I make my way back through the living room, the dining room, and into the kitchen.

  “She doesn’t want to talk to you either,” I say.

  There’s a silence that feels thousands of miles long, and I try to imagine where he’s calling from, probably from some public caseta in Valparaíso or, for all we know, he could be calling from a pay phone just up the road.

  “So,” he says, clearing his throat. “How are you?”

  “Me? I’m fine.”

  “Do you guys need any money?”

  “No, we’re fine,” I say, though I really want to say we don’t need your stinking money, we don’t need anything from you, and we certainly don’t need for you to ever come back.

  “So you guys bought that house you live in, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I say, getting the sinking feeling that he’s closer than we think, wouldn’t be surprised if he showed up at our front door next.

  “Where did you get the money for it?”

  None of your goddamn business, I want to say. You’re the one who left, started a new family, and you still have the audacity to call and question us?

  “I’m not sure,” I say, though I know that Mary, Salvador, and my mother pooled their incomes and qualified for a mortgage.

  He lingers on the phone for a bit, before hanging up.

  4

  THE HALLELUJAHS

  HE STAYS IN THE BOOTH for a while, his hand still gripping the receiver as if the phone might ring, as if the operator herself might call back and apologize—tell him it was a bad connection—a terrible misunderstanding. Maybe she’d even offer to pay him for his troubles, refund his call. The going rate to call the United States is thirty pesos for the first two minutes, and though those long moments of silence felt like an eternity, it probably hadn’t even been two minutes. Ninety seconds is what the call lasted—ninety seconds is all the time it has taken to prove something he already suspected.

  He fumbles around in his shirt pocket, pulls out his aviators, and puts them on before leaving the booth. He pays for the call and steps out into the glare of the afternoon sun. The last time he talked to his wife, she had told him none of his kids wanted anything to do with him, and though he hadn’t believed her, now he’d heard it for himself—not one of them came to the phone. He makes his way along the dusty streets of Valparaíso, his mind already racing ahead, looking for the excuse—for a way to justify something he doesn’t even know he’s going to do yet.

  He could have dealt with being rejected by his wife and by that country, even. His application was the only one denied, and if he ever wanted to step foot on American soil again, he had two options: cross illegally or use an alias. If he were to cross illegally and they caught him at the border and ran a background check, they would see that he was wanted by the authorities in Illinois for having skipped out on bail, and the last thing he needed was to land in prison on the wrong side of the border.

  His safest bet for crossing was to go under an alias, and when his wife had been in Mexico about a year ago, he had told her about a man that he knew, a man who fixed documents for people. If she were to wait a few more weeks, he could have a crooked passport made and they could drive up to the border and cross together. But she had not wanted to wait, and besides, she had told him, the business with a crooked passport sounded too risky. What if the name he was given turned out to be that of a criminal, then what? It would be best if she went ahead, borrowed a birth certificate from one of the brothers at her church, and then sent it to him. He could then have a passport made with it.

  “What about that birth certificate?” he asked, when he called her after she’d been back in Chicago for a week.

  “Mire, Jose,” she said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to come back right now. The police are looking for you. There is a warrant out for your arrest, and they keep sending letters and stopping by the house. Besides, everyone knows that you are living with that woman. Why don’t you stay with her, start a new life for yourself, and leave us alone.”

  So that had been it. Though she had known about the other woman all along, she had waited until she was safely back on the other side to say to him, from ten thousand miles away, what she would have never said to his face. All along she must have known that there would be no borrowed birth certificate, not from this brother, or any brother.

  “What about the kids?” he asked. “Let me talk to them.”

  “They don’t want anything to do with you,” she said.

  Back then, he had not believed her, but now he had witnessed it for himself, and the sting of that rejection pulls him into the cool darkness of the first tavern he stumbles upon. He wedges the heel of his boot against the chrome rail and orders a stiff one—anything to help douse the rage that is already gnawing at him. Not one of them had come to the phone—not even his baby girl, La Poderosa. This was the nickname he had given her when she was five years old and used to make him close his eyes before placing her hands on his aching head to pray for him, to ask God to take his headache away. When she was finished, she always asked, “Now do you feel better, Papi? Did your headache go away?” He always told her yes. Yes, he felt better. Yes, his headache had gone away. He promised he would never drink again. She had cured him. She was the powerful one—La Poderosa.

  But the day came when she refused to pray for him, refused to touch him, even. She was afraid that if she placed her hands on his head, some evil spirit from his never-ending hangover might slip through her fingertips—use them as a portal, and invade her soul. Even back then, the brainwashery had begun. He knew that his baby girl was afraid because her mother had made her afraid, had warned her that whatever evil spirit was in him could be transferred to her, and so La Poderosa stopped praying for him. But now, for her to refuse to even talk to him? He polishes off his drink and orders another.

  The hallelujahs had brainwashed his wife years ago. Their marriage troubles had begun on that hot summer day when she had found her way to a service that was held in the basement of a house. Ever since that day, there had been an almost imperceptible shift in her mood. There was a new ease about her, like she had relinquished some cumbersome load that had been bogging her down for years. He knew this could mean only one thing, because even though she was his wife, he was aware that her heart had always been shut against him, that the day might come when some cabrón would walk into the place that had been denied to him.

  “You don’t fool me, Pascuala,” he said, eyeing her from across the kitchen table one night. “You have fallen in love, haven’t you?”

  She did not deny it. She told him yes. Yes, she had fallen in love. She had asked Jesus to come live in her heart, and he should do the same, so that he too could feel the same peace and joy that she felt. He agreed to join her at a service, and on the following Sunday, the two of them stepped into the dank basement. He removed his hat, same as he would have done had he stepped into a Catholic church. Rows of foldout metal chairs sat under the humming lights. They took a seat in the back row, near the entrance, and while she bounced their baby on her knee, he took in the mayhem. Men and women spilled into the aisles, jerking about with their eyes closed and bumping into the walls and chairs—to him, they looked like blind chickens clucking about.

  The only thing that place had in common with the Catholic church was the wooden pulpit from where a minister delivered a sermon. He carried on and on, shout
ing about hell and damnation one minute and practically weeping the next as he spoke of a place where the streets were paved with gold and the seas shimmered like crystals, a place where there would be no more suffering and no more pain. His wife sat next to him, staring at the minister with an unflinching gaze. The minister went on, saying that the only way to get to the Promised Land was through Jesus, by asking Him to come live in your heart. And then the minister was extending an open hand to him, asking if their visitor would like to ask Jesus to come live in his heart. He told them no, thank you. No, he would not like to ask Jesus to come live in his heart. He had seen enough, his suspicions confirmed. It was so obvious—his wife had fallen in love with the minister. He forbade her to ever return to that church.

  Ever since she gave her heart to Jesus, she stopped cutting her hair, stopped wearing jeans, makeup, and jewelry—she had stopped doing all kinds of things. Such was her devotion to Jesus that she did not make any decisions, no matter how great or small, without consulting Him first. The holier she became, the more damned she made him feel. Damned for drinking too much and damned for being a Catholic—for worshipping plaster statues that could not possibly hear his prayers. Be that as it may, he would have never turned his back on his parents’ religion, no matter how hard she and the hallelujahs tried to convince him.

  On more than one occasion, they came to his home, wearing their polyester suits and cheap cologne, and calling him brother. At first, he humored them, took the time to sit and listen, to ask questions, even. “How do you know there is a hell?” he asked. “The poor devil who goes to the other side stays there. When have you heard of a man that has gone to hell and come back to tell about it? Never.” They told him that Jesus had died for his sins, had gone to hell and back, and someday, soon, he’d be returning for his people. “Jesus has been coming since I was a boy, and he hasn’t arrived yet,” he said, before showing them to the door. They had the audacity to make him feel damned while calling him brother. This is what the hallelujahs called each other—brothers and sisters—as if they shared a bloodline that could be traced directly back to God himself. Hypocrites. It was one thing for them to have brainwashed his wife, for them to have tried to brainwash him, even, but now for his wife and the hallelujahs to have brainwashed his kids—to have turned them against him—this was unforgivable.