Right now, he’s not home. My mother is snoring on the couch while the six o’clock news blasts out of the Magnavox. Everyone else is either out or out of sight. It’s like some muse of my adolescence is saying, Here’s your chance, baboso.
Peering into his drawer, I take inventory of the tokens that make Dad Dad. His tin of Pomada de la Campana, some cologne in a boot-shaped bottle, shoe polish for his work Oxfords, a few ragged pesos, tangles of man bracelets, old watches and chains, random pens collected from various customers, some old keys, a pack of Camels, an engraved silver lighter and a single copper-headed bullet. These are the trinkets of my dad’s personal mythology, all jumbled together with the carelessness of a working man.
Recalling how he applies the pomada on his fryer grease burns, I rub some on my hands and I douse my neck and face with his cologne, which burns into my raw pimples. I slick my hair back with his hair cream. Then I put the cross that he keeps on a gold chain around my neck, unbuttoning my paisley shirt down to my sternum so it shows, then try on one of his dead watches. Finally, I look at the structure of my new self in the mirror. El mero mero. The real-real.
El mero mero slinks out of the house and goes around to that derelict field where the cotton used to grow to shoulder height. He leans against the wall by the sere clumps of tumbleweed and breathes in his newfound musk. He looks down at the cross catching the sundown light. He rattles the bracelet around his skinny wrist as he raises a cigarette to his lips and lights it with his beautiful lighter. Oh, the sound of that lighter. Suppressing a cough, he looks out toward the blue-grey silhouette of the mountains in Ciudad Juárez where he imagines all the real men of the world are nodding their somber heads in unison at the spectacle of his arrival. El mero mero.
A group of three slouchy vatos in white tee-shirts and baggy khakis, old enough to drive a car but not old enough to own one, stroll down the street on their way to someplace better than where they were. El mero mero turns his gaze their way and they must feel it ’cause one of them looks right back at him and sneers ¿Qué ves, puto? El mero mero looks away and that’s when he hears them laughing. Not even very loud, not even with much derision, just the kind of laughing that diminishes a guy, the kind of laughing that flattens the sunset and puts it out of reach and causes all the fine hairs of a person like el mero mero to wish themselves onto some other body, not his. Little flecks of shame and anger swarm over him, and he doesn’t even finish the Camel. El mero mero knows he’ll slink back inside and put his old man’s bracelet and cross, his crumpled pack of cigs and silver lighter back in the drawer and he’ll wash off the pomada and cologne in the shower along with everything that makes him el mero mero. Except that in the little pocket of my high-water flared jeans that I’ll wear for another humiliating month in a year of humiliating months, I’ll keep a shiny copper-headed bullet for the day when I understand the real-real.
NOTHING HAPPENS
WHAT GOOD IS A STORY if nothing happens in it, if you don’t know what the hell is even going on, not just in your school, your city, your country, but in your own damn thirteen-year-old heart where you feel but can’t make sense of the same vibrations of rage and frustration buzzing in everyone else’s head like guitar feedback, like the droning cicadas of the waning summer of 1970, tying knots in our throats till we spit them out as words we didn’t know before like Raza and Aztlán and MEChA and especially Chicano, which is something you suddenly are, someone different from your parents, distinct from them by birth and earth, a new species of American with a sense of purpose forged out of our common brownness and out of the crime you’re hearing on the news about Rubén, Rubén our brother killed in Califas, one of our own, born in Juárez, raised in El Paso, now working for the prensa in LA, now dead, killed at a rally broken up by the cops, which is why we’re marching for him, your buddies say, we’re gonna walk out of school on Monday and march for Rubén, and they ask you if you’re marching on Monday too and all you say is I gotta ask for permission, but your mother says, Oye, don’t you dare miss your classes, no skipping school, and your father warns, I better not see you on TV, ’cause he knows the revolution will be televised but you tell them you’ll be live on the six o’clock, you’re that high with your thirteen-year-old’s rebellion, your buddies too, all high on the weekend’s anticipation until Monday comes, the buzz inside you getting louder as you start to see it in others, the anticipation of la marcha, the glory of revolt like fire ants in their eyes, even as Principal Dorgan says over the intercom anyone walking out will be marked as truant, but we’re going anyway, even this girl I like and her friends are going, only the goody-goody ones staying, but not you, the lunch bell declares, not fucking you, as you head down the hall toward the big glass doors when this nausea hits you with a thousand questions, like are some of them walking out just so they can ditch classes for the rest of the day, do they care what the cause is, do they know enough about solidarity to protest, get arrested, maybe even killed by some damn tear gas canister, don’t they just wanna smoke Salems and drink Blue Nun by the river, and what if most of them are really going into the streets with the heat in their hearts for Rubén and what if this is the moment that defines not just an era but a whole people and what if this is your defining moment, will you miss out on that or do you think that by not walking out you’re making your own statement about how to move the cause forward and do you really believe that ’cause you might be saying that so you don’t feel so chicken-shit, all these questions, dirty questions detouring you back to your locker to your notebook to your social studies class, where nothing happens to you sitting alone with the teacher except the buzz turns by increments to subtle tonalities of shame, while you throw a longing look out the louvered window where some better part of you, a real Chicano, is marching for Rubén Salazar? So what good is a story if nothing happens but that?
EL KITTY
MY SISTER IS FIFTEEN IN her hippy blouse and maxi skirt squinting into the Polaroid lens as she stands in our carport on the first day of school, her smile weighed down by some vague apprehension, maybe some inkling of the blitzkrieg that adolescence will rain down on us, or some remnant of earlier turmoil, a secret that an only daughter in a family of boys might harbor. I see her with that plastic flower in her hair and the light on her so splendidly diffuse, the way sunlight always appears in recollection. Se ve tan triste, mi carnala, and it’s a sadness she plies admirably today, annealed as it is in her face by the processes of time, work and childbirth into something sturdy and defiant, which is how we’re able to bear our inner trials.
All those days she took care of us are the catalogue of her grace, and it’s these that reveal the more complex image of her. Younger by two years but older than me in every way, she plays the parent while the parents work. On these childhood afternoons she’s there holding us safe in the aura of her soothing voice, her tender remonstrations, her radar wary over three unruly brothers storming the house with their Hot Wheels race cars and the orange tracks they ride on. She lays our little pink fingers on her lap and with a needle coaxes the splinters out; she presses bags of ice against the throbbing purple acorns on our foreheads while she sings us sana sana colita de rana / si no sana hoy, sanará mañana; she crawls under the bed with us when we’re scared of thunder and thundering fathers, counting the seconds between each clap of the storm until it’s a game for drawing our fears further off.
One of these games between us rises out of real grief. We have a cat, a tomcat I adopted but never really tamed, and he roams the neighborhood at will. He’ll be gone for weeks then turn up mean and hungry on the porch, except for the one time he’s gone for more than two months. When he finally appears on our doorstep with a leg completely stripped of fur and swollen raw with pus, we know it’s not for food. My father calls Animal Control, who takes him away and that’s as much as I need to know. But somehow, in the containment of my sorrow, in the kind of miracle that only dumb nine-yearold kids dream up, I become the Kitty and my sister obligingly
takes on the Mommy. I curl my little brown fists into paws and lick them for her. I meow. I crawl on all fours to cuddle and be cuddled. I soften my voice and pitch it high like a cartoon while hers is soothing, unmistakably maternal. Our brothers also play with her like this, but for me, it’s a special relationship built on the intimacy of loneliness and loss.
We play before bed and under the table and on the car drives to the Big 8 Grocery Store. We play in the closet among the musty shoes and old relics of Mamá Concha and in the backyard tree where the cicadas drone all day like lawn mowers. Games of primordial childhood in which I play at misbehavior and she scolds me, games of tickling and games in which we make up songs together, simple, private jingles that stumble forth from our little mouths to smooth the serrated tensions of a silent house.
Meorr.
Kitty.
Meorr.
Kitty, come.
Mama mad.
I’m not mad. I want to pet you.
Meorr.
You been good?
Uh-huh.
You had a bath already?
Uh-huh.
Let me see your paw.
No.
Let me see it.
No.
Why not?
’Cause.
I won’t hurt you.
Meorr.
Oh, you have a splinter. Let me take it out.
Meorr.
See? It didn’t hurt. I’ll give it a besito to help it heal.
Meorr.
Silly thing. I always take care of you.
We start this when we are too young to know what young means, when the candles on our cakes seem longer than our fingers. Now, as we grow older, we play less and less, but whenever things are fraught and I start gnawing at my fingernails and even the skin around them, she gently pulls my hand away from my mouth, folds it into a paw and whispers
Kitty.
And Kitty comes back.
Early one languorous Saturday afternoon, I hear music coming from her room, and I find her sprawled on her bed on top of the covers, looking up at the tiny crystal glints in our popcorn ceiling, caught in Roberta Flack’s contemplation of the first time ever she saw that face. The blinds are closed against the jarring sun. Her hands drawn up to the base of her neck. She’s hardly aware of me at the doorway. I creep in on my hands and knees and crawl up next to her, take her hand and purr into the crook of her neck. Giving my hand an imperceptible squeeze, she permits herself the thinnest sigh, as if to blow some trouble off her lip.
Meorr.
She scarcely blinks.
Meorr.
The tiny pulse in her neck bounces to the bass line in the song.
Meorr.
I look at her profile and find that something in Roberta’s voice has balanced a tear on the lashes of one eye. Anything more, even for a girl of eleven, would cheapen the heartache. But instead of leaving her to her study, I let the Kitty purr. It’s my turn to offer solace to my sad carnalita with a playful tap of a ghost cat’s paw.
Meorr.
In one sweeping gesture, she pushes my hand away, sits up and turns a scowl on my Kitty face. When are you going to quit this? When are you going to grow up? No eres el Kitty. Ese gato ya se murió.
She slaps on her shoes with a brusqueness new to me and leaves the room, like she just remembered something more important. The song isn’t even over. Roberta drones on. But the cat is dead. It died years ago. One day I might thank my sister for this exorcism, for sloughing off the last bits of our stale infancia, but for the moment I kneel by her bed feeling the burn in my ears spread over my face as I uncurl my paw and inspect my ravaged fingers.
LOCURA
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE BANANAS, really.
I see her at our first meeting of the Drama Club in September. Frisky freshman girl, blood high in her cheeks, sparkling eyes. Her name is Valentina and for a long time after, I’ll always associate that name with the kind of longing that turns otherwise sensible boys into fools. ’Cause without even having a word with her, I tell myself she’s the one.
She’s got other ideas, though. With the deftness of a girl who’s already had to deal with a ton of homeboy crushes, Valentina gently tempers the fires of this skinny brown kid. She’s pleasant and warm, but not warm enough to warrant any hopes of something deeper. In little notes painstakingly composed and perfumed with the musk of my want, I launch my heart across the room at her. But they hardly elicit anything more than a genial smirk and a shrug.
Instead of letting it go, what I do like an idiot? I gather up all my hurt into this nasty little fixation and suck it up like a drug. All the rest of that year, I’m throwing her sad cholo looks that say, I do it all for you.
Then come these black moods that I fall into like manholes. I grow moody and taciturn. Every day is dusk. Something’s off inside of me for sure, pero ¿qué? I make up symptoms that cry for some diagnosis. Like losing the feeling in my right hand. I drop notebooks, pencils, paper cups, usually stuff that won’t break or spill on people. I develop a new kind of schoolboy amnesia, where I conveniently forget the names of teachers, homework, simple tasks. At work, Cisco thinks I’m hitting some really strong pot. My drama coach wonders if puberty is making a late hello. My friends think it’s an arty affectation. I don’t know the word languor yet, so in my head I call it Locura.
What does Valentina think? How does she react to my afflictions? With complete indifference. It’s like she knows I’m the star of my own private soap and it doesn’t matter if she’s in it. Sometimes I think I almost see concern glance across her face. Other times, she seems bemused. Maybe she knows how it ends in bananas.
A few years before all this, down in the village of Nazas deep in northern Mexico, exploring my grandparents’ crumbling old house, we stumbled on a family secret in one of the back rooms. An uncle hidden from the world. He’d been called up for military service but took a bad fall during his training and apparently landed on his head. They sent him home to recover, but he was never the same. They kept him in that dank empty room like a sick animal and fed him bananas. We saw him shoving bananas in his mouth. All his life bananas. Our first glance at Locura.
Almost a year goes by. There’s a big dance at the school and I know Valentina will be there. I stride all firme into the gym where the streamers are hanging and buy a cup of soda with ice. The lights alternate red, green and white on the basketball court. The discothèque music boom-booming off the ceiling. All the girls in their tight dresses. I got my best duds on, clip-on bow tie, platform shoes, a good dab of Brut cologne on my neck and armpits. Shiny watch on my left wrist, Locura on my right. And directly before me is Valentina in her mini-skirt and heels talking with her friends. Soon as I’m in her line of sight, my cup of soda slips out of my hand and splashes onto the floor. Instead of showing concern for the haywire nerves in my hand, everyone snorts and thinks what a dumb klutz.
But Locura does an encore. In the next beat, there’s a wavering of speech, an unbuckling of joints, then a tumble to the floor. I feel the bass-beat pulsing against my face as all these bell-bottom pant-legs and bare kneecaps encircle me. I make my tongue go numb. My limbs go slack. I let my vision blur, except for the split second it takes to look for Valentina. She’s not there, though. I reel around and scan for any sight of her by the soda stand, the DJ station, the bathroom line, but in a moment, it’s all crowded out by the back-lit heads of the teacher-chaperones. I hear them asking if I’m drunk. Someone smells my breath. Someone says, Call his parents.
A few more boom-booming numbers later, I feel her standing over me. Not Valentina, but Mom. I know it’s her, I can make out her wrenched face in the dark, and yet I make myself forget, and in my quavering voice, I say, Amá? Is that you? She sobs once and tightly clenches me to her chest. Some of the guys hoist me to the car. Everyone distressed but not as much as I thought. I hear them in the dark outside.
He was fine a few minutes before, señora.
I thought he was going to th
row up on me.
He just needs to sleep it off.
It was nice knowing you, vato.
They bring me home and put me to bed. I lie there sweating into the pillow. Inexplicably, Valentina is a thousand miles from my mind. I don’t want to her to know what happened. I don’t even want to think about the shit I just pulled off. I’m more interested in what they’re saying on the other side of the door, my parents, the whole family.
What’s wrong with him?
Maybe he was drinking.
Maybe someone slipped something in his Coke.
Like what? Liquor? Whiskey?
That or maybe a drug.
Ay pobrecito mijo. He didn’t even know me.
What if he’s gone psycho?
Ay Diosito. ¡Ojalá que no!
What if he’s faking?
Why would he do that? ¡No seas estúpido!
Should we take him to the hospital?
Are we locking him in his room from now on?
Are we going to feed him bananas every day?
Every day? ¡Chale! We can’t do that. Bananas are expensive.
It could happen. This Locura, if I’m being honest, is only love. But who wants to be honest? I put on the best acting performance of my life for the attention of this girl who wasn’t even there to see it. Locura and I fooled everyone, but now here I am about to live out my life like my poor idiot uncle. In a diaper sitting in one corner of the empty room and in the opposite corner a mass of banana peels piled all the way up to the ceiling. Here comes Mom with my breakfast. Buenos días, mijo. Mira, your favorite: Choco-Milk y bananas.
Next morning before everyone is up, I take a shower and go for a run at the track at school. Cured of my Locura. All my infatuations, all my disorders, sweating them off in a few laps. In their place, feelings of embarrassment and relief that I didn’t cause more harm than I did. Thankfully, they hardly even mention the episode when I get home.
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