And that night, I was surfacing my own dragons, with a serrated knife, making those cuts, needing that pain. I was watching those dragons come to the surface. I was going out of my mind. I stayed in that room, lonely. I’d placed a call to Janie, but she never showed. I didn’t expect her to.
She wasn’t really who she was, in my mind. I had been in love with another girl, Gina, and Janie reminded me of her now, but more approachable. Gina had since left, on her way to school, following her dad’s career path, as a lawyer, likely a judge, eventually. She had a tremendous future ahead of her. Janie, Janie was here. Janie was staying here, not going anywhere.
The next day I showered, took care of the wounds, wore a long-sleeved shirt, and made my way to work.
At some point, I just left it all to hang and went home to pack. I drank a lot of beers while doing so, called and inquired as to when the next bus to Seattle was leaving.
“Where?”
“Seattle.”
“¿A donde es esso?” (“Where is that?”)
“Washington.”
“¿Donde?”
“Washington State. West Coast. Norte.”
“Oh. Hold on. Tonight, at 10:30.”
“Thanks,” I said. Click.
I got my things together, managed to sort and divide, cut ties to and shoved anything else I owned into two bags. I still hadn’t told anyone I was leaving, right then. About seven or eight that night, I was overcome with a need to explain to Dr. Blum what I’d decided, get his blessing. I drove to his house, across Brownsville, and very timidly, in the dark, rang his doorbell. His wife answered, and I sheepishly asked for the good doctor.
When he came to the door, I think I wept. I tried to explain to him what was happening, but I couldn’t. I was going crazy, I felt, like a top that was in the final stages of spinning, losing its center and wobbling out of control. And I couldn’t exactly explain that to him. “My dragons,” I said, and I pulled back my sleeves.
“Oh, Domingo,” he said. “The last of the dragons . . . ”
He was very kind to me.
I said good-bye to him.
I drove home, crying. It was still early, but I needed to get my car dropped off at the office—I had arranged for one of the owners of the newspaper to buy the car for $500 and send me the money later—and then figure out how to get to the bus station. When I got home, Derek was watching television, still unaware of what was happening. He was six years old and started following me around the house as I was gathering my things, preparing to go. He watched me finish packing.
“But why?” he asked.
“Because I’m going crazy, kiddo. It’s hard to explain,” I said.
“But why?”
“Because you’re not my age. It’s like, it’s like you have all your friends, right?”
“Right?”
“And they like stupid music. And you don’t like what they like.”
“I don’t like what they like. I like what you like.”
“I know you don’t, because you have good taste. You like the Beastie Boys. And the Butthole Surfers.”
“I like the Beastie Boys. And the Butthole Surfers.”
“Right, but your friends, they don’t like the Beastie Boys, so they make you listen to other stuff. Stuff they hear on the radio.”
“I don’t like the radio. They play bad music there.”
“Correct. And you want to listen to the Beastie Boys, with me, but they won’t let you.”
“Why don’t they let me?”
“Because they’re not as smart as me and you, Derek. We like things that are smart and funny.”
“Like the Beastie Boys?”
“Well, yes; sure. See, the Beastie Boys are funny and do things that are different, and interesting, so they can’t get on the radio down here. It’s hard to explain. But they’re smarter than the other stuff, because the Beastie Boys . . . that sort of music . . . that sort of art . . . they make you work for it. They make you think more. It’s not given to you over the radio, not spoon fed . . . and you don’t do it because everyone else is doing it. So yes; I mean, because the things you like are different from the things everyone else likes, that’s why we’re smarter. And you can either force yourself to like what they like or keep looking for the things you like, and keep finding them. But the thing is, if you stay around them too long, they start to win, Derek. And you start to like what they like, you start to be more like them, even though you didn’t at first, and parts of you start going quiet, and the quiet parts start getting bigger, and then eventually, you’re just quiet all over.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know, kiddo; but that’s just how it is. And right now, I feel like I’m dying, inside, and if I stay here any more, Derek, I’m going to die. Little pieces of me at first. I’m going to start dying, and people will beat me up more and more, until I start to help them in killing myself. Like Richard.”
“But why?”
“It’s just how it is, Derek. There’s no changing it.”
“But why?”
“Because they don’t like any one who is different from them. It’s evolution, sorta, I think. Can’t change the model too quickly. I’m a giraffe, born to a family of mules. Remember that, though, Derek. Remember that what you like, what makes you different, is that you are smarter than anyone here. If they were smarter, they wouldn’t be here. So by that rule, you’re smarter than everyone, get it? Don’t ever let anyone tell you different.”
“Because we like the Beastie Boys?”
“Well, yes. And no. Jesus, Derek, it’s not just about music. It’s about wanting more. Seeing more. There’s more. There’s so much more . . . and I . . . I just need it, Derek. Whatever it is, it just isn’t here. It isn’t in places like Brownsville.”
I’m finished packing at this point, and I’m standing in the door to the front driveway, where my car is ready, too.
This is it.
I’m leaving the nest.
The only people present are Derek and Gramma. Gramma, this whole time, has been running around behind me, trying to pack food into my bags, which I then remove.
She hands me five packs of chicken-flavored Ramen, begins to tell me just how miraculous it is—even has a bowl of it, in her hands, the noodles just about swollen to perfection—and she goes on, “Just ten pennies a pack! And you get a soup! And noodles! Look! Look! You’ll never have to worry about food!”
And it is in this moment that I finally see her clearly, like a figure standing in front of a lit-up doorway, outlined clearly, and because I’m about to leave, I’m breaking our definition, and I suddenly and forever understand my grandmother, her emotional and psychological development rusted shut at age ten, her one concern being food. I see her clearly at that moment as the young peasant Indian girl who had been farmed off because her family could not feed her.
Over a bowl of Ramen.
And it makes me cry for her, sort of. My eyes well up, seeing how poor this person really is, down in her soul, why she did the things she did. It hasn’t been money or power she has been hoarding all this time. It’s been food.
Gramma had brought all of us to America, but she could not enter. She was not allowed in. She had been our Moses, had made her covenant with America, for us, but it did not include her. This was as far as she could go. But here she was now, miraculously turning ten copper pennies into a bowl of noodle soup for me, showing me how I should never be hungry. Now, go.
Derek, on the other hand, cannot stop crying. He’s six years old at the retelling, but in my memory, he’s wearing diapers, and he sits down hard on the sidewalk leading to the car, and he cries, “June, please don’t go.”
I say, “Derek, I have to. I’m going to die here. I know it.”
“Please don’t leave. . . .”
“I’m sorry.”
“Please. . . .”
“You’ll understand when you’re older.”
He’s inconsolable, and Gramma—nan
ny that she’s been—sweeps him in, starts trying to feed him the Ramen, and my last image of my beautiful little brother is him on the ground, that night, crying, his face a mask of pain, of loss, as our hearts go pop, pop, pop with the disconnection of a time ended, of a change in circumstance, of one brother leaving another to fend for his little self.
And I never cried so much for Derek, not like that, not until the night fifteen years later when we thought he’d died. But that’s another story.
In the car, my heart is collapsing at the idea of leaving him in the maw of a family falling apart, a family no longer capable of taking care of its innocents. I am leaving Derek behind, sitting down hard on the sidewalk, as I drive away, crying.
Just writing this now, it tears me up. It’s one of my biggest regrets, in my life, how I hurt that beautiful little boy. In my wallet the only photo I carry is of him, one Easter, holding a rabbit with his pudgy little hands.
Before I leave Brownsville, I have to see my mother, who is working the late shift at the JC Penney, to pick up a bit of money we had previously agreed upon. The Penneys is near the bus station so I still have time. She takes an emergency break and follows me out to the parking lot, after I tell her my bus is leaving in forty-five minutes. I’m crying still, understanding what this means, and she isn’t at all sympathetic to my decision to leave so soon.
“June, what are you doing! You said you weren’t going for three months!” she says, when we get outside and are alone.
“I have to go now,” I say. “I have to leave, Mom; I’m going fucking crazy here.”
“June, just calm down; please, just calm down; what happened to your arms? Oh, Jesus, who did that to you?”
“Calm down; I did it yesterday, or the day before. You weren’t supposed to see it. It’s . . . it’s nothing. I just wanted the scars.”
“Aye, June; what is that? What are you doing? Just think about it. Just calm down. . . .”
“Mom, I can’t anymore: I just can’t. If I calm down, I’ll just stay another day, and it’ll happen again. And then maybe I won’t go that time. I just have to go now. Now. I bought the bus ticket already. It was $197. I need the money you promised me.”
“OK, I’ll get it to you, OK. Now. You make me so worried to see you like this.”
“It’s Brownsville, Mom. It’s this place. You don’t get it, and I don’t understand how you guys can just accept it, look at the same things I see and see something totally different. If I stay here, I know I’m going to kill myself soon. I know it. Really soon. Please let me go, Mom. Please, just help me this time. This last time. Please. I can’t be here anymore.”
There is a moment, and I see something in her eye, like a sadness, or an understanding. It may even be compassion, for the forgotten boy, at the end. “OK, June. OK. I’ll get you your money, like I said,” she says.
Motherhood, in the end, finally kicks in. And it’s sweet, special, because between us it’s rare.
“Yeah?” I say, unsure.
“Yeah. You need to be where you need to be,” she says. “You need to chase down your monsters, like Max.”
Here, I’m actually stunned into quiet, not even crying anymore. Some days before, I had pulled out Where the Wild Things Are, and showed her an image of Max, doing his Rumpus dance, and I had said to her and Derek that it would actually make a really cool tattoo. Mom, of course, had balked. (This was before tattoos had become so fashionably rampant.) But we had sat and looked at the book—Mom, Derek, and me, in a rare triumvirate of family that night, and we had discussed what Maurice Sendak had meant with the book, about the rage of childhood, the deep betrayals and painful shifts, and she listened to me talk, and Derek liked how I was drawing so much meaning from one of his books. We had been happy.
“You go and do what you need to do, June,” she says to me. “You go and find what you need. Your supper will be here, when you need it. Your supper will be warm. No matter where I am, that will be your home,” she says.
And I can’t believe it, watching her. That look on her face. It is all the love that I didn’t have growing up, making a face.
Chapter 26
DAN’S SECOND TO LAST FIGHT
Dan is shouting.
Dan is pointing.
Dan is raging from the bottom step of a shanty bar in Kingsville, Texas, on the campus of a remote college specializing in agronomy. He’s yelling through the door for some fucker to come out and fight him, square.
The night is thin and shallow, as murky as a recently disturbed mud puddle. It’s the color of gruel, the low-hanging clouds reflecting back the dim sulfur lights that spot the campus and blot out the stars.
There are two fat Mexican bouncers at the door, looking very nervous and annoyed, trying to stare back at him. This isn’t what they took the job as a bouncer to do, the look on their faces say.
Dan is shouting some more, challenging anyone he sees through the door to come out, to bring that fucker Larry out here. There are three steps leading up to the mouth of this low-shelf, black-neon college bar with cheap beer, and it’s a Wednesday night, would have otherwise been slow and dull and uneventful, if there hadn’t been that scuffle earlier.
I’m standing behind Dan, feeling remarkably unhappy about being there. I’m holding a nine iron, leaning on it, unsure of what I’m supposed to be doing. I want to pull Dan away from here, from the shoulder, tell him that this is madness and convince him that it is really OK to walk away from this, but he’s blind with rage, intent on fighting this guy, Larry.
There’s movement inside, blonde buzz cuts in cheap collared shirts holding spit cups. They can clearly hear him shouting, demanding satisfaction, are clearly unsettled by the pissed off guy at the bottom step calling out one of their “brothers.”
From behind the two diabetic pillars blocking the door erupts a large white guy, blonde buzz cut, in shorts and a T-shirt, suddenly running out of the door and parallel to Dan, who locks him in, and they both begin running sideways, staring at one another, and sprint in this manner for roughly fifty yards to a field across the street, a grass parking lot for the football stadium.
The rest of the fraternity and anyone else who happened to be in that bar pour out of the doorway, and I have no choice but to run after them, run after Dan, who’s pressed this way too far, and is now locked in a fight with a really big fucker and fifty of his fraternity brothers.
The crowd swarms around us, makes an impromptu boxing ring with Dan and Larry at the center, squared off. Up until this moment I’m clinging to the hope that this won’t happen, that they won’t fight, that we can get out of this and all he’ll do is yell at me, take his frustration out on me—me, who feels responsible—and then Dan steps in and swings at Larry, connects, and all the life drains from my arms and legs. I go weak as one of the bartenders steps behind me and puts me in a full nelson, I think for my own protection.
Seattle had been heavenly.
I spent a year there, taking in as much as I could, which wasn’t very much: I wasn’t prepared to see what I was seeing. It was an utter culture shock, and I just didn’t know how to process it. Everything was far too different, and taking it in, absorbing it, was impossible with my simple understanding of the world. I would have had to develop the right sort of vision, the right sort of feelers to receive this bombardment of information, this new, wet wilderness of civility.
Because of the weather, what should have been a three-day bus trip took five. I traveled by Greyhound up the length of Texas, into Colorado, detoured to New Mexico, then Utah, somehow ended up in Idaho, and then I think we turned left. I met strange people, some of them recently released from institutions, who were horribly drunk and attempted to make sandwiches on my legs while I slept.
When I arrived in Seattle, Dan was terribly happy to see me. We lived with Dennis for a while, but in the end that wasn’t a good fit, and Dan and I moved out, found roommates in a house in the “cool” neighborhood in Seattle. I was afraid to leave that ten
-block area, and I found a job throwing pizza and hanging out with kids my age. And I had met a girl, Karis—the very idea of the slim-hipped gentile, the prize that validates every American immigrant’s experience—and I had decided upon her, from the few times I had seen her.
At first the simple feat of getting out of where I was, in Texas, was enough for me. It took all the strength I had had just to do it. But scraping by eventually began to wear on me, since I had no plan beyond what I was doing then. But for that year, working on Seattle’s most interesting stretch of commercial property, was brilliant; I basked in the delight of how utterly different everything was up here.
Most of all—and I know that this sounds surprisingly naïve—I was deeply moved by the sincere and institutional absence of racial prejudice in Seattle, which, back then, came naturally and easily to the area, which was, again, my experience there. People took interest in me, would ask questions sensitively. They would ask about my origins and experiences, and have genuine, unprejudiced delight in my answers. I had never experienced anything like it. In return, I began to develop that same instinct, that sensitivity of identification.
Seattle was a land of winter, an American Norway, a land of never-ending rainy days, as I had arrived in October, and I could lie in bed and read all day long with no one mowing the same patch of lawn directly underneath my window over and over again. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
It was different here, so very different. It was full of possibility, and the nights were deeper and wetter, and the moon was closer, made your eyes water when it was full. And the crows . . . slick, shiny, and dark and smarter than most people I had grown up with in Texas. My first week in Seattle, I saw a crow eating a watermelon lollipop. It was like the Mexican flag, with the image of the eagle eating the snake, but much funnier.
Eventually I began to understand that simply moving here was not going to be enough. I had to get back to school, back to the spring semester at the only school I knew I could get back into, in Kingsville, Texas, where my sisters were studying. Finishing school was the next step, I had decided, now that I knew what the outside world looked like. I’d get certified at something and come back and make a more comfortable living and seduce the girl, while I enjoyed the shit out of being away from Texas. That was my new plan. But in order to do that, I had to go back.
Boy Kings of Texas Page 28