I refused to translate, but my brother was more than willing to sacrifice me to the horrible leash. I tried to kick him with the boots, but as soon as I lifted one, I fell over.
Papi nodded at the harness. Good idea, he said. The man asked the same about my brother, and with a smirk on my face, I translated. But my father clapped my brother on the back and shook his head. Mi hijo, he said, he will do fine on his own.
When it was Mami’s turn to get measured for boots, she shook her head. You go on without me, she said.
Ay, no, my father said. Hold everything. We’re all going together, no?
No way am I getting on those two little palitos and sliding down like a loca, she said.
But what about the vacation? he pleaded.
You show the kids a good time. I’ll be breathing in the mountain air and enjoying not breaking my leg. She handed him a hat she’d made for him, his old nickname sewn across the front—Neil—for his obsession with Neil Armstrong and the space race when he was in school.
Mami, wait, I said.
People gawked as we yakked in our loud foreign voices.
Shoulders back, mustering all the grace she had, my mother walked toward the lodge, telling us that we’d meet in the cafeteria later.
To put the skis on, you had to stomp into them with a vengeance, which I thought was fun. There was great commotion everywhere as we waited to go up the mountain—stomping boots, ratcheting buckles, creaking snow, and the mechanical drone of the lift. My father put on his hat so that it only covered the tip-top of his head, and he hummed, moving his hips while we waited in line.
Then, the chair scooped us up, and the ruckus of the lift line fell away. Papi told us to hang on for dear life. If anything dropped, it would be lost forever in the snow. The cold found every hole in our layers and slid in, finding its way to the tops of my ears, the back of my neck, and my wrists, where the jacket was too short to cover them. From way up, the white ground was peppered by neon jackets and packs of skiers in formations. From way up, they looked like balls rolling down against their will, pawns of gravity.
Some of those people are going really slow, Alberto said. They look like little abuelos taking a walk. If I get really good, I’m going to ski down through the trees. That silly wide trail is for viejos. For the elderly.
You can’t. It’s too dangerous. I’m going to hide your Mego if you do, I said.
Yup, he said. Just watch. I’ll be better than you. You’re going to be terrible with that stupid harness.
Papi, I said. He’s bothering me.
My brother pushed me into the metal bar holding us all in, and the chair swayed like it was dancing. I screamed. I didn’t want to get lost in the snow forever. Papi grabbed the back of my jacket.
Stop, he growled at my brother.
To me he said, You don’t think I’d let anything happen to you, do you?
I looked at my father and his faded ski outfit and his Neil hat, and I thought, as long as I stayed close to him, I’d be OK.
It turns out we would inherit our parents’ flaws. Alberto was like my father, a dreamer with a penchant for trouble, fighting every battle that came his way. Against all my wishes, I inherited my mother’s perpetual unhappiness. At least I did eventually leave Kissimmee with my children.
That ski trip was the last vacation my father would take me on, but I didn’t know it yet. I let the chair sway us like it was rocking us to sleep, wind whistling past.
My brother rocketed down the slopes. My father shouted, ’Pera! My brother responded, Hurry up! and continued out of control on the two narrow planks he was standing on. Papi held on to my leash and kept it taut, so all I had to do was sit back on my haunches, and the tight boots and my father kept me up. We slid into trails the signs called “Snowflake” and “Easy Rider” and “Klondike.” My breath dimmed my mask with fog. Years afterward I realized love could blind you like that—love for your father, or love for one country or another. You could ski off a cliff, blind like that, and for a moment feel like you’re flying.
During one run, Alberto whooped in front of us. Then I hit a bump and was flung up like a jack-in-the-box. Coño! my father yelled. I could feel him struggling with the harness and trying to steer us to safety. I was jerked into hops like a puppet on a string.
Moguls! my brother shouted, and then out of a tiny clear spot in my goggles, I saw his skis go flying and heard a crash.
Alberto! my father yelled, still up the mountain.
My brother struggled to his feet. I’m OK! he yelled back. He set his skis right and kicked himself back into them.
We are never taking Bonanza again, my father said.
Woo! my brother shouted. That was rad!
Then we were back up the lift, Papi pointing the way down again with his gloved finger. Skiers peeled by us in sudden whooshes. The landscape blurred by me in snippets of snow and trees, the tips of the mountains pushing their points into the inflated balloon of the sky, almost bursting.
After hours of this, we met my mother at the bottom to eat. We sat at a table in the crowded cafeteria filled with the sour smell of sweaty fleece jackets. I was starving, and my toes were numb.
So how did it go? Mami asked us as we ate, but she was looking at Papi, preparing to defend us against another of his disasters.
My brother said it was awesome. Chulo.
OK, I said, but then I changed my mind. Actually, it really was chulo, I said.
Really? That’s great, she said, her eyebrows arching. Well, at least the mountains live up to expectations.
I hugged my father, and again Mami said, Que bueno. And you could tell she meant it, too. She was glowing, although maybe it was the cold. It felt like the tide of her unhappiness and dissatisfaction was beginning to turn. I saw that my mother was willing to give things a chance, if only something would go right.
For all the fear my mother injected into us, she was the one who made us dinner every night, sewed new clothes for us so that we wouldn’t look ragged at school, and worried about practical things. When I turned eighteen and vouched for her to get her citizenship, I would see this tired hope in her again, hand raised up beside her, pledging allegiance to the flag, while a president she’d never meet congratulated her from a prerecorded tape.
Maybe it would have been fun, Mami said.
My brother shed his suspenders and then his gloves.
Don’t get too comfortable, Papi said. We’re going back up.
But I can’t feel my hands, Alberto said. I can’t ski when I can’t feel my fingers or toes. Cold weather is, like, my Kryptonite.
Real superheroes keep fighting, my father said. It’s New Year’s Eve. They’re turning the lights on and letting people ski at night, and our tickets last until ten. We don’t want to waste them.
Are you sure that’s a good idea? my mother said.
Mami should come! I said.
Yes, why not? my father said. Make the most of it?
Bueno, she said hesitantly and smiled.
As we went up the mountain again, I dozed off between my parents to the slow rocking of the chairlift, and the wind whistling in my ears. Even my brother was tired, but I heard Papi tell him, Don’t we want to show Mami a good time?
Alberto elbowed me. My father was telling us that he started hauling big rigs because he’d wanted to travel. Then he pointed to his Neil hat and told me he was pretty sure I was conceived on the night Armstrong walked on the moon.
Why would you tell her that? my mother said.
Don’t you remember my tíos came over to watch on your mother’s TV set? And then all your cousins brought over a sancocho and dragged us out to dance? I bet tonight will be like that, with the New Year, my father said.
We’ll see, Mami said.
At that point, the peaks were steeped in orange. Then the sky turned blue-gray, and lights turned on, spreading like a wave up the trails. Below our dangling feet, glimmering paths veined the mountains, every one of them urgent and calli
ng us down.
We took a few easy runs, and it looked like my mother had gotten the hang of going incredibly slow without falling too often. Papi was showing her how to make wedges with her skis. When she fell, she laughed and leaned against him. Alberto had graduated from wedges; he kept pointing his skis straight down the mountain to pick up speed.
Let’s do Smiling Elf, my father said when we’d reached the bottom again.
Papi, Alberto said, Smiling Elf is too boring.
Boring is good, Mami said, still struggling to stay balanced on her skis.
We have to get down somehow, Papi said.
I’m not going down unless it’s fun, Alberto said.
And what would be fun? my mother asked.
Bonanza, my brother said, grinning. The one with all the bumps.
Ni lo pienses, my father said. No way.
Bumps do not sound like fun, my mother said to my father. You took them on bumps? I told you to be careful.
Why do you have to go as slow as a vieja? Alberto said. It’s no fun with you here, Mami.
Alberto, my father warned. He looked at his watch and said, We just have an hour more until ten. This will be our last time up.
My brother was ready to mutiny. My hands are cold, he said, and you guys take too long.
One more time, Papi said. We have to get down somehow. I’ll buy you M&M’s at the top.
Stop being a brat, I said.
Alberto looked a little ashamed of himself, but not ashamed enough. I thought maybe if he wasn’t around, Mami and Papi could actually enjoy themselves. I decided I would live up to my promise to my father to make sure everything went right.
We were dragged into the boisterous lift line again. I inched along between Alberto and my parents. I said to Alberto what I thought I needed to say for the sake of all of us, knowing what he would do next. I knew exactly the right button to push, as siblings do, to send my brother careening down his own road.
But what did I know then about roads? I thought the future could be controlled with enough studying, like news anchors making sense of the week’s events. But roads—yellow brick roads, pavement roads, pebbled paths—were nothing but figments of our imagination.
The hollering of the drunks was just loud enough that no one but Alberto could hear me. You’re too good for this trail now, I whispered to him. Look at that silly wide path with all those viejos.
At the top, we found out that the lodge was closed.
You shouldn’t have bribed him, Mami said. She reminded Alberto that there were M&M’s in the truck, if we just went down this one more time.
Now look who’s bribing him, Papi said.
Alberto took off ahead of us, toward Bonanza.
Stop! my father yelled as my brother darted over a ledge and out of our sight.
Skiers zipped by us carving powerful turns, back and forth around the moguls, spraying snow into the glowing lamplight.
When we reached the top of Bonanza, Alberto was nowhere to be found. Skiers continued to pass us left and right.
Alberto, my mother called. Alberto!
Don’t worry about him, I insisted. He’ll be fine.
But after a couple of minutes, I became worried. I knew he wasn’t good enough to make it all the way down through the trees.
Let me tell you, my mother said to my father, he takes after you.
I don’t know what you mean by that.
If you don’t know, then I’m not going to tell you.
Stop! I said. It’s my fault. I told him to go off the trail.
You’re just a child, she said.
Those words stung hard and deep. I flung my hat into the snow, then picked it up. I am not a child, I said.
My mother ignored me. I’ll go to the bottom in case he’s waiting for us. She flew straight down, without bothering to make a wedge.
My father continued to call out and ski, dragging me with him. I felt helpless and guilty, like he must have felt most days since bringing the family to America. I started to cry and then swallowed it, determined, like my father, to revise my mistake.
Halfway down, he decided we must have passed Alberto, and my father took off our skis so that we could climb back up. After only five steps of following uphill in those heavy boots, my legs burned, my head pounded, and I felt woozy. I couldn’t find enough air to fill my lungs.
Papi, I said, I can’t do it.
Do you want me to leave you here?
I shook my head. It was cold and dark.
I managed another ten steps up the mountain before my father turned around, concerned he might lose me as well.
¡Ayuda! ¡Auxilio! He waved his arms so that the skiers swishing by us would help, but nobody stopped. He kept calling out, but nobody understood him.
I asked people in English if they had seen a twelve-year-old boy, but nobody had.
We stood at the edge of the trail and yelled into the darkness. Nothing answered us back. My father was helpless.
I want to go down, I said.
When a ski patroller on a snowmobile appeared at the top of the slope, Papi flagged him down and started spouting in Spanish: ¡Mi hijo está perdido en los árboles! Él no es buen esquiador. Por favor, necesitas ayudarnos!
The patroller looked at him—his hand-me-down clothes and his Hispanic features—curled his lip in disgust, and turned away. I wished my father could keep it together—like the King of Open Roads, like he did behind the wheel of his truck—but all he could do was ball up his fists like he was going to fight the man.
I yanked on the ski patroller’s jacket. Mister, I said, my brother is missing.
I was mashed between my father and the patroller on the snowmobile. The patroller radioed to the base, but there was no one down there fitting Alberto’s description. We rode back up to the scene of his disappearance, the mogul field on Bonanza. The snowmobile roared through the dark, then stopped, illuminating a thin path of light off the trail and into the trees. We saw a deer and a small animal’s eyes. The cold wind whipped into my face, my nose kept running, and I started crying again.
Above us, a sudden whistle and then a boom, like a plane dive-bombing and crashing. Fireworks, I shouted. The first boom was followed by five short bursts, which expanded into giant purple and red dandelions. The sound echoed off the mountains like the rushing of giant turbines. The light spread over the landscape, plain as day for a second here, a second there. Then a flash of neon orange popped out between the trees.
My father and the patroller jumped off the snowmobile and raced into the woods. They lifted my brother out of the snowdrift he was half buried in. He told me later he had almost given up trying to dig himself out.
I thought Alberto would be fine after he’d been found. But my brother was already on his own path. He would go on to serve three tours in Afghanistan and then Iraq. After his tours, when I’d already left the American, I drove him home to stay with us. My three boys adored their uncle Berto with his crazy ideas and his strange ranting when nothing went right. They crawled all over him, and when Alberto would wake up screaming with terror in the night in Spanish that there were bombs under the road or that he couldn’t see the shooter through the smoke, my children, who didn’t understand Spanish, would laugh as they set up sleeping bags to spend the night in his room—as if they already knew they would have to protect him. They were already from a different world.
Back in Colorado, my father kept clapping Alberto on the back. I contented myself to watch the rest of the fireworks show. The world erupted into tarantulas, chandeliers, maps, strings in a knot, like my family, and it all exploded.
The patroller set Alberto on the snowmobile between me and my father, and I could feel his arms holding on to me. He whispered to me that he’d thought he was going to die in that drift. Happy New Year, I whispered back.
We roared off to base on our skinny little ray of headlight as the fireworks finale bombed the sky. Concussions pounded our chests. The last firework glittered toward
us like a galaxy of dying jets. Then, silence and ghost trails of smoke disintegrated over us. And just like that, it was the year 1980.
The year Walter Cronkite announced his retirement from the CBS Evening News. Mount St. Helens erupted, gray plumes of ash rising over the Northwest, helicopters and reporters struggling to capture it on film. The Unabomber struck again. Iraq invaded Iran. Crowds held vigil outside the apartment building where John Lennon was killed, and we listened to his voice over a speaker system from just the day before when he was still alive, saying, We survived the upheaval of the world and we’re going into an unknown future.
Just like that, it was 1980, the year my father passed.
When we got to the base, people were blowing party whistles and shouting Happy New Year! Mami was frantic, screaming at my father until she saw Alberto, blue with cold.
The patroller pushed aside all the happy drunks and set Alberto next to the fire in the lodge. He took off my brother’s jacket, hat, and gloves. Alberto’s fingers were gray and stiff. The ski patroller dipped Alberto’s hands in a bowl of lukewarm water. When his fingers slid in, my brother flinched.
That’s good, the patroller said. If you can feel it, it means you won’t lose your fingers.
My mother held Alberto and me each under an arm. I’ll never forget the way she looked at my father then, her face full as I’d ever seen it with disgust. You’re supposed to keep my children safe, she said. Que pendejo.
My father never got the chance to redeem himself. In those last three months after the ski trip, my mother wouldn’t speak to him anymore, except to say she was going to leave him and to tell him things like, It’s not you, it’s this country that will never let me be happy; it’s not you, it’s how alone I feel here when things go wrong; it’s not you, it’s all of us. She started making sense for the first time in my life.
Then that March, when my father was hauling gasoline for Shell, his truck fell off a bridge on an interstate over a Louisiana swamp, and the rig exploded. The trucking company said he fell asleep at the wheel from his own negligence and wouldn’t pay the insurance amount. My mother was stranded in this country with us. To this day, she says the company schemed us out of our rightful due, of the thing that would have turned our lives around.
Day One, Year One: Best New Stories and Poems, 2014 Page 27