Try to Remember

by Iris Gomez

  “You shouldn’t move a broken leg,” the big-shot ugly kid interjected.

  Pablo grinned. “I can’t, stupid.”

  I checked the bedroom window nervously for my father. “Are you sure it’s broken, Pablo?” I dropped to my knees to check, but my brother slapped my hand away. “Ouch! Don’t touch it. It hurts,” he said.

  While the four of them waited, I leaned back on my haunches and anxiously assessed the situation. I remembered Fernandita’s offer to help. Maybe she could take Pablo to the doctor? But how would I keep my father in the dark about the incident, especially since he was bound to hear El Loco’s car and big mouth? Calling an uncle would require telling my father, who would get mad at us for causing trouble, and then—? Oh God! Why had Mami gone to that funeral? I knew something bad would happen.

  I stood up and gave my brothers a look of grim defeat. “I better get Papi.”

  Pablo put a protective hand over his leg.

  “Don’t move anything,” I warned. “I’ll be right back.”

  As I approached my father’s bedroom, his compulsive scribbling stopped and he looked up at me bug-eyed, like a person who hasn’t slept enough. “¡Mi’jita!”

  “Pablo fell, Papi,” I announced bravely.

  My father gulped hard, then did it again and again. He was so bony-looking now that his Adam’s apple made the tic especially conspicuous.

  “Pablo hurt his leg,” I repeated, waiting for a response.

  He didn’t answer. Perhaps he hadn’t understood? “Pablito hurt his leg,” I reiterated.

  “¿Sí?” At last, my father slid the chair away from the dresser and followed me out.

  Petey and his dog were gone. Johnny started to explain the obvious, but I cut him off. “My father doesn’t understand English.”

  With his bug eyes, my father examined Pablo slowly, as if he didn’t recognize his son. Pablo squinted up without the customary charming grin.

  Suddenly, my father turned on Manolo and started viciously whacking my brother’s head with the knuckles of his right hand.

  “Whoa,” said Johnny, backing away as the knuckling intensified.

  “Get out of here,” I told him in a low voice.

  Johnny took off right away. He looked a little shaky, glancing back over his shoulder to watch my father pound Manolo harder and harder. My father was muttering weird, angry gibberish while Manolo struggled to cover his head and cry, “No, Papi, no.” The fierce knuckling alternated with manic shaking of my brother by his hair. I feared Manolo’s brains would be scrambled forever, but when I opened my mouth to scream “¡Papi!” the sound refused to come out. It was like screaming in a dream.

  My father’s high-pitched threat, “¿Quieres que te mate?” shocked me into reaction.

  Kill? With two hands I grabbed Manolo with all my strength and he stumbled out of my father’s grip and fell. My father swerved furiously toward Pablo and me. “¡Mierda!” he cursed, eyes wild. He lifted a foot to terrified Pablo on the grass.

  “¡Papi!” I screamed at last. Something had gone terribly, terribly wrong. “¡Papi!” My father looked so strange, as if he were in some mad killer’s trance. “Papi, listen. Listen.” I tried to control my voice, to slow it down and sound normal and gentle like the old groundskeeper’s. “It was that other kid who pushed Pablo and made him fall,” I pleaded softly. “The other kid,” I breathed, desperately holding my father’s eyes in mine. “It wasn’t us, Papi. It wasn’t us!”

  My father stared at me with such a wild expression that my body trembled a little.

  All of a sudden, blinking hard, he seemed to recognize me. He looked down at Pablo with surprise. “¿Qué fue?” he asked.

  “Pablo’s leg, Papi,” I said quietly.

  “What’s wrong, Pablito?” my father inquired solicitously.

  “I think it’s broken,” Pablo practically whispered.

  “¿Sí?” My father stared at me. “We need a doctor, mi’ja.”

  “Yes, Papi,” I replied, giving Pablo a look of relief. “Why don’t you call Tío Victor, Papi?”

  He nodded calmly. “Sí, está bien.”

  We watched him go, the door swinging shut behind him.

  Manolo got up, wiping his face with his T-shirt. “I hate this fucking family,” he spit out in bitterness and then ran across the street. Pablo and I traded guilty looks. Why did Manolo always get the brunt of my father’s anger? It wasn’t fair. “I’m sorry!” I yelled out after him, because no one else ever would, I guessed. “Come back before it gets dark!”

  I turned reluctantly back to Pablo. “I better go check on Papi.”

  My father had finished making arrangements and was just hanging up with Tío Victor.

  I suddenly realized how badly I needed to go to the bathroom. As I raced in there and dropped onto the toilet, my legs and arms began to shake. I couldn’t get up for a while, not even when I heard the ambulance, quickly followed by my uncle’s Chevrolet and his voice as he disembarked. Finally, once my trembling subsided, I rose and went outside. Tío Victor was talking with the paramedic.

  “Do you want to come?” my uncle asked me.

  I shook my head, still feeling ill. “I better wait in case Manolo wonders where everybody went.” I hesitated for a moment over what to tell my uncle. “Tío, I don’t think you should leave Pablo with Papi,” I suggested. “Just in case he might form a problem.”

  “What do you mean?” Tío Victor probed.

  “He was acting sort of badly, Tío.” I glanced at my father, who was waiting peacefully in the Chevrolet with his arm propped on the window. “Papi had some kind of attack.”

  “But Pablito said he fell from a tree.”

  I nodded. “It happened after—” I took a breath. “After Pablo fell, Papi started hitting Manolo really hard, talking crazy, about killing. It didn’t make any sense.”

  My uncle pursed his lips and pulled his pants up higher by the belt loops while studying my father. “We’ll resolve this later, Gabrielita. I’ll call you from the hospital.”

  They took off then, and I went into the house, but the sudden switch to its cooler environment brought on a cold sweat. After another mad dash to the bathroom, I barfed all over my arms as I reached the sink. Never again, I swore to myself while heaving up the rest of the marvelous lunch, would I eat ñame, carne de res, yuca, maíz, plátano verde, or plátano amarillo.

  When there was nothing left to throw up, I felt profoundly empty. How could my mother have abandoned us like that? How could she?

  A while later Manolo crept into the house carrying a small package. “Where’s the old man?” he asked.

  “They’re at the hospital. Tío Victor’s taking Pablo to his house after.”

  Manolo grabbed a screwdriver from the drawer, along with his personal hammer that Mr. Byatt had given him and the package he’d brought. Purposefully, he carried the stuff toward his room.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, following.

  “I’m putting a fucking lock on my door.”

  “I think Papi’s staying at Tío Victor’s until Mami comes home,” I said.

  “I still need a lock.” He twisted in a brass screw.

  “I guess we should have locks on all the doors, huh?”

  “I can get you one, if you want,” Manolo offered.

  “Oh no, I just meant, you know….”

  Obviously, the door against my father was a door against Mami as well. I couldn’t help but chew on my lip and worry as I imagined the expression on her face when she found the lock Manolo had installed to protect himself from his own father.

  Moments later, that became the least of my worries. A vigorous rapping called me to the door, and I opened it to find a cop, who greeted me pleasantly.

  “Hello there.”

  [ FOURTEEN ]

  THE SMILING OFFICER ASKED to speak to my parents.

  “They’re not home,” I answered politely, my hand fixed tightly on the doorknob. It occurred to me that in the u
niverse of immigrant-only rules perhaps my mother wasn’t even supposed to leave the country. Fretting over that, I switched tracks. “My father had to go to the hospital, on account of my brother. He hurt his leg. I’m not sure which hospital.”

  “That’s all right,” she answered mildly, tilting her head to examine me better. “What’s your name?” The officer’s high blond ponytail was pulled up so tightly that her blue eyes beamed bright as searchlights.

  “Gabriela de la Paz,” I responded, then for some reason felt compelled to add, “I go to Flagler Junior High.”

  “Uh-huh.” Cracking a smile, she glanced behind me and asked, “You live here, Gabrielle?”

  “Yes—” I nodded, pausing. Should I call her M’me? “Yes, Officer,” I resolved, “with my family.”

  “I see,” she replied. “So—was there some kind of incident here today?”

  “You mean, my brother’s leg?”

  “Sure, tell me about that.” She aimed her blue lights at me.

  “They were in the yard,” I began cautiously.

  “Who was?”

  “My brothers. And their friends.”

  “What about your folks?”

  “Well—” I parsed my words. “My mother had to go to a funeral. But my father was home.”

  “Outside with the boys?”

  “No, in the house. Working. That’s why he didn’t hear it when my brother fell. I didn’t either,” I clarified. That sounded suspicious, so I added, “I mean, I was inside too. So then Pablo—my little brother—jumped out of the tree and broke his leg and my other brother came to get me. Us, I mean. My father and me.”

  “And then?”

  “Oh, then—” I twirled my hand around the aluminum knob. “I guess my dad was kind of mad at them for fooling around, but he just said we had to see a doctor so he went inside to call my uncle—we don’t have a car,” I added, by way of explanation. “Then my uncle came, and the ambulance and everything like that.”

  She turned her head slightly right when a sound drifted out of my brothers’ room, then gave me her friendly officer smile again. “We got a phone call earlier from one of your neighbors. She seemed concerned.”

  Neighborly concern only disconcerted me. Remain silent, I advised myself.

  “Everything looks pretty quiet now,” she noted.

  “Mmm, fine,” I murmured.

  She gave her ponytail another swing and shot me one last smile. “Let your folks know we stopped by, okay? Maybe we’ll come around again. Toodle-doo,” she added, wiggling her fingers goodbye as she left.

  “Bye,” I answered faintly.

  I forced myself to wait a few seconds before going inside to give Manolo the blow-by-blow. Afterward, the two of us watched the squad car idle out front for a while before it drove away.

  When I called Tío Victor later about the house call, he wanted to pick Manolo and me up right away, but I was more worried about no one being at our house if the lady officer returned. There was also the difficulty of getting Manolo to work, so my uncle relented.

  “It’s only a week until Mami returns,” I reassured him. “We’ll be fine.”

  That night, though, as we slept alone in our house for the first time—Manolo locked in his room, courtesy of his new lock, and me hyper-alert in mine—fears stole in and grew large.

  In the morning when I awoke, I ransacked my parents’ room for a business card I remembered El Chino providing. I left three phone messages with Arthur, who finally suggested it might be simpler to book an appointment for my parents to see Mr. Korematsu in person. “He has a hard time keeping up with calls,” Arthur explained.

  “But I just have one question,” I repeated for the millionth time.

  El Chino finally called the next night way past normal office hours. “What’s up?” he asked. “Arthur says you’ve got a question.” Though his tone sounded mocking, I was grateful he’d called back.

  “It’s about my father, Mr. Korematsu,” I explained. “This police officer—”

  “He got arrested again?”

  “Oh no, he’s okay. They just came over. But the thing is, I don’t know what might happen with my mom. She’s in Colombia and she’s supposed to come home, like, this week. But I’m worried because of all the stuff with my father. So what I wanted to know is, well, do you think they could not let her back in?” The teensiest decibel of panic trilled out.

  “What happened?” he asked sharply. “Why did the police go to your house?”

  In a flash, I unleashed the story, including my father bashing Manolo right in front of that Johnny kid. Since El Chino knew about my father’s temper, I thought it was safe to be honest. El Chino asked me questions and with surprising patience began sorting through each of my fears one at a time. For one thing, he said, it didn’t seem like my father was being charged with anything, at least as of yet. The police visit was probably a routine domestic violence unit check, and I shouldn’t worry too much about it.

  “As far as the surveillance,” he went on, “it wouldn’t hurt to keep a low profile—you know, cut it out with the loud noises, family arguments and all that—just so Protective Services doesn’t come calling while your mom’s gone and happen to find two juveniles living there unattended.”

  “I’m fifteen.”

  “You’re a minor.”

  “Oh yeah… but there’s a kid at my school who’s sixteen and… lives unattended.”

  “Maybe he’s emancipated. The law’s kind of slanted. Though I’m sure you’re very emancipation-worthy,” he wisecracked quickly. “But we don’t have to get into that. What else?”

  “About my mother, about her coming back.”

  “Right, the immigration issue. But she doesn’t have an immigration issue. Or am I missing something?”

  “I thought we could lose our green cards. If my father got the two crimes, like you said.”

  “He could. Not your mother. We don’t have collective punishments here.”

  “But what if he gets arrested for another one of those crimes? Wouldn’t she have a problem getting back then?”

  “No. Not unless she’s gun-running or smuggling drugs or something herself. Orphans. Parrots. Something.”

  “She doesn’t do any of those things, Mr. Korematsu,” I declared earnestly. “But I was worried. I thought they could kick us all out, on account of my father—”

  “They’re not going to kick you all out just because your dad got busted,” he said kindly.

  “Oh. I guess I didn’t get how it worked.”

  “No problem. So, any more questions?”

  “No, I guess that was it. Thanks.”

  The questions I had left weren’t legal.

  Had my mother deceived me—or had she been confused?

  In the days that followed, I watched the windows uneasily. A police car sometimes passed on the street, but none stopped.

  Manolo reported that it was Johnny’s mother who’d called the cops.

  “Why did you have to go and blab?” I chastised my brother. “You want to get Papi arrested?”

  “Johnny told her! Anyway, that didn’t happen!”

  “It could,” I replied angrily. “What if Mami came home and found out Papi got kicked out of the country because of you?”

  Manolo gave me a puzzled look. “What are you talking about? You know we would just go too if something did happen.”

  I folded my arms and stared at him dubiously. What if I told him about my talk with El Chino—and that maybe our family could just split up if my father got deported. Fat chance! I could hear Manolo retort, and he would be right. Mami was more likely to fight tooth and nail to drag us along with my father into the Colombian village mud she so dreaded.

  Tío Victor finally brought her safely home from the airport without any of the immigration problems I’d feared, just as El Chino had assured me. Home, too, came my prodigal father and a grinning Pablo, proud of his cast. My father headed directly to the trunk and pulled out Mami�
��s heavy suitcase. As he lugged it toward the house, he tried to muss Manolo’s hair with his free arm, but my brother pulled away. A lump in my throat kept me from answering the “Hola, mi’jita” that my father threw in my direction.

  Tío Victor waited for my father and brothers to go inside before addressing me. “We told your mother about what happened Sunday,” he reported. Then, looking Mami in the eye, he said, “You can’t let this situation go on, Evi. We have to sit down with Roberto.”

  Lines deepened in her forehead, as if every worry she’d left in Miami returned all at once. “Ay, Victor,” she sighed, “what good would it do?”

  “Maybe there’s some kind of treatment, Evi. You can’t avoid it forever. He might get worse.” Tío Victor nodded in my direction. “Ask your daughter.”

  Instead of facing me, she looked away.

  Tío Victor suggested a heart to heart talk with my father.

  “All right,” she capitulated.

  I hustled inside so I could question Pablo. “What did you and Tío tell Mami?”

  “That Papi beat up Manolo,” he answered matter-of-factly.

  “What about that stuff Papi said?” I pressed on.

  “Like how he was gonna kill everybody? She wouldn’t let me talk about it.”

  “Did Tío Victor tell her?”

  “He just said Papi’s temper is outta control, he’s a peligro to his family.”

  “He said Papi was dangerous?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Hearing it from Tío Victor sounded much more frightening.

  I went to the kitchen, where Mami was busy but uncharacteristically silent. After watching her for a minute, I decided to broach a less loaded subject—summer work for me. But she sent me off with an “ahora no” as her eyes clouded with a worry she hadn’t yet found a name for.

  To my great relief, Tío Victor called the next morning to say he’d gotten my father a medical appointment, and that he and Tío Lucho would come over soon to confront my father. Later that day, Mami’s friend Camila visited, singing the praises of the disability checks she’d received for her husband who didn’t work anymore because of his cancer. Mami pondered hopefully to me afterward, “Maybe your father could get a check too.” As she washed out the coffee cups, I tried to ride her wave of optimism.