Every night Truely walked down the back alley, climbed a set of fire-escape stairs to get to his modest un-air-conditioned room, which he entered by stepping through a large window that doubled as a door. But he liked his tiny apartment just fine. It was like living in a small oven, reminiscent of his boyhood room in Mississippi. As a bonus, he was able to pick up part-time hours waiting tables at the restaurant downstairs — sometimes Ernesto paid him in meals, which was okay with him. He’d taken some Spanish in high school. He had a naturally lazy tongue to go with it. So after a while he’d managed all right.
IT WAS AT MEXICAN FOOD that he first met Jaxon, a nice-looking guy, big and blond, who made Truely think of a Nebraska farm boy except for his devotion to tacos, which he ate by the half-dozens. It turned out he was a California semicowboy who grew up on a commercial farm over in Fresno. Like Truely, Jaxon had some country boy in him too — cowboy boots, shaggy hair, a hearty appetite for which he was famous and a fondness for loud music. He was a couple of years ahead of Truely at San Jose State, an unlikely computer programming major who was always game to drink a few beers and hang out at some of the low-rent neighborhood clubs where there was live music and women of all persuasions could be glimpsed. Truely’s first year in San Jose he must have danced with a hundred different women. Jaxon, more of a slow-dance kind of guy, had danced with a few girls too. They weren’t guys looking for love exactly — just two guys looking to find their way in the world and have a good time trying.
They became friends by default. Jaxon used to joke, “Just how many people do you actually meet eating three meals a day at Mexican Food? Before you showed up Ernesto and Maria were the only friends I had.”
Truely and Jaxon had more in common than love of the land and love of pretty women who were quick to laugh and willing to slow-dance. They had a fascination with computers and the untested possibilities that loomed. Jaxon taught Truely about collecting data, designing spreadsheets, and letting the computer do some of your thinking for you. Truely was a fast learner.
In time the two would go into a small start-up business together — a couple of young guys who’d started out just fooling around with search engines — and had as an unanticipated result attained a degree of financial security that far exceeded their original modest aspirations and left them as connected as blood brothers. But more important than any of that, it was Jaxon who introduced Truely to Jesse.
Five
JESSE WAS CRYING the first time Truely saw her. Her eyes were swollen into tiny zippers. Her nose ran and she carried a dishcloth in her hand which she periodically swiped across her entire face in surges of despair. Jaxon had mentioned her before, this girl, his buddy Jess. “She’s cool,” he’d said. “But too damn serious. You know the type. Out to save the world.”
Now they were standing in the parking lot outside her apartment on Seventh Street. She had called Jaxon to come over because she said something awful had happened and she needed his help. “They’ve taken him,” she sobbed.
“Who?” Jaxon asked.
“Rubio.”
“Who’s Rubio?”
“He needs to know none of this is his fault. I need to tell him that.” She bent over and covered her face with the dishcloth. Truely stepped toward her with his hands out, ready to catch her because her grief frightened him and he thought she might collapse. She reached out unconsciously and took his hand — the hand of a stranger. She looked right into his eyes. “This is awful.” Her hand was small and strong in Truely’s. He didn’t let go until she did.
“Who’s Rubio?” Jaxon asked again.
“Remember? From the park. He had that cast on his arm. You signed it.”
“The kid?”
“Social services took him away from his parents. They won’t tell me where he is. I’m not family, so they won’t tell me. I tried to make them understand that I’m one of his student teachers.” She turned to face Truely then. “A student teacher is still a teacher,” she said, as if she were expecting him to argue with her. She was nervously slapping at her leg with the dishcloth. “They’re punishing him when they should be punishing his father. If you can call a creep like that a father. His mother is just as bad. She doesn’t do anything, Jax. She lets it happen.”
“What was it this time?” Jaxon asked.
“His dad is a monster. You know that. He gets drugged up and takes his rage out on little Rubio. He beats up a second grader, Jax. A grown man. He beats him up. Precious Rubio.” She swiped the cloth across her contorted face. “He didn’t come to school the last few days so I made some calls, right? When I finally got a call back they told me he was taken to the hospital over the weekend. His neighbors called the police when they heard his father go at it again. I really hate that man. I went to see Rubio at the hospital after school today, but when I got there they said he’d been discharged to a temporary foster family.”
“Shit,” Jaxon said.
“He’s shy, Jax. He’ll be afraid.” She put her hands over her face and caught her breath. “Somebody needs to kill that man, Jax. Really. I would kill him if I could. He doesn’t deserve to live. What good is he?”
“You want us to kill him, Jess? Is that it?” Jaxon sounded dead serious.
“Of course not,” she said. “It’s just that Rubio doesn’t have anybody else. Just me. Just the school. We’re all he’s got.”
Even before the three of them piled in Jaxon’s truck to try to get to the social services office before it closed at five, Truely thought he might already be falling in love with Jesse. Jaxon had never mentioned that this girl was gorgeous — in a messy sort of way. Her hair was a noncolor brown. She had pulled it back into a sloppy ponytail, but wisps had come loose and hung in her face. She kept pushing them away. She had big beautiful eyes, hazel — or maybe green — that flashed with anger one minute and compassion the next. He had never witnessed such overt passion in his life. Love radiated off this girl. When she spoke he was mesmerized by her mouth, her full lips and big white teeth — the way the movement of her mouth forced you to pay attention to what she was saying. He would swear to himself later that meeting her was like a sort of religious experience for him, like she was as near to Jesus as he might ever come. Someday he planned to tell her that.
Truely never took his eyes off Jesse even for a second that first day. He noticed her jagged, chewed fingernails — she bit them when she was nervous, he guessed. He noticed that when she smiled her dimples cut into her face just perfectly. She had a Band-Aid on her big toe — well, it was half on, half off. She needed to shave her legs, the blond hair on her legs catching the sunlight. A loose thread was hanging from the unraveling hem of her dress. It all came together just right. She transcended every notion he’d ever had about what made a woman attractive. He was tongue-tied for maybe the first time ever. He wanted her to like him, girls usually did — but for some reason he was afraid that this girl might not. It was the first time he remembered fearing being dismissed as inconsequential.
From listening to her he found out she was an elementary education major, the disrespected curriculum people liked to make fun of. “Isn’t that where lots of girls major in drawing Snoopy posters?” He’d heard that sort of remark from other students. But they didn’t know this girl. He could barely breathe in her presence. She felt called to work with children, she told him. She wanted to be a teacher the way other people wanted to be president of the United States — or wanted to make millions of dollars selling something useless that nobody needed. “Teachers sell the future,” she told him. “With certain kids that takes the greatest salesmanship in the world. It’s a daunting task, but it’s worth it because it’s something everybody needs, right? A future?”
Truely was speechless.
She had always wanted to be a teacher, she said — since the day she was born. When other little girls were playing Barbie, she was scouring the school Dumpster looking for school supplies teachers had discarded. Her parents wanted her to aim higher, sh
e told him, maybe be a lawyer or a pharmacist, which made her furious. “You can’t aim higher,” she had explained to them again and again. She and her parents had had lots of arguments about her financial future. “They’ll come around,” she’d said confidently. “They have no choice, really.”
Truely listened to this story and others she told and was riveted. He had never laid eyes on her before, but he felt oddly connected to her, like maybe he had known her in some other life. She was a strange mix of the hypnotic other and the painfully familiar. His own mother had wanted to be a teacher too. He remembered her saying wistfully, “I always wanted to be a schoolteacher. I think I might have made a good teacher, don’t you, True?”
“My mother wanted to be a teacher.” Truely blurted this as they drove toward the San Jose Department of Social Services. He knew he sounded like an idiot, even to himself.
“What stopped her?” Jesse was sitting in the truck cab between Jaxon and Truely. She had on a sleeveless cotton dress that buttoned down the front, and it was soft and wrinkled in a nice way. He couldn’t even tell exactly what color it was, but only that it was the best dress he had ever seen a woman wear. She had insisted she needed to get her purse before they left. It was worn leather, the size of a knapsack. “They might want my ID or something,” she’d said. Now her thigh was pressed against his, and even though Truely was sure she had not noticed, he definitely had. He found it nearly impossible to believe that she didn’t feel the stinging heat they generated from accidentally touching.
“My mother didn’t go to college.” Truely cleared his throat.
“Why not?” she said. “If you don’t mind my asking.”
“No money,” he said. “Plus, I don’t think my daddy wanted her to. He came back from the service and just wanted to get married and start their lives together. Keep things simple, you know.”
“Oh.” She looked at him curiously. “Too bad.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “They were happy.” He wanted to kick himself. Why was he saying this? What was wrong with him?
“Good then,” she said. “Happy parents make a big difference. But, you know, not everybody, I mean — then there are kids like Rubio.”
“Right.” Truely went silent.
The ride to social services was a wild goose chase. The office was closing when they got there and it was nowhere even near five o’clock yet. The secretary was turning off the lights and locking up. She told them to come back tomorrow. But Jesse persisted. Sat in a chair in the waiting room and refused to budge until she finally persuaded the secretary to give her the number of Mrs. Leong, Rubio’s social worker. It was the only chance the secretary had of getting Jesse to leave the office voluntarily. She was not a girl who took no for an answer. Truely noted that.
Afterward Jaxon invited Jesse to stop at Mexican Food or someplace and have some cheap sort of supper with them, but she declined. “I’ve got papers to grade,” she said. “I’ve got things to worry about. I can’t eat when I’m worried. But thanks anyway.” So they dropped her off at her apartment.
As they drove off, Truely punched Jax in the arm. “Damn, man, you been holding out on me. You never told me your buddy Jess was so crazy beautiful.”
Jaxon laughed. He looked over at Truely, who was still watching her in his side mirror. “Jess? Beautiful? You’re kidding, right?”
BY THE TIME she finally tracked Rubio down several days had passed. Jesse had spoken with Mrs. Leong, who had agreed to bring Rubio to Naglee Park, not far from his old school. He’d been forced to move to a school across town. This disturbed Jesse no end. “They’re afraid his mother will come and snatch him,” she explained. “The sad thing is I doubt she would bother.”
Jesse invited Jaxon and Truely to come with her to meet Rubio and Mrs. Leong at the park. Jesse had put together a new backpack for Rubio, filled it with notebooks, papers, pencils and markers. But also jelly beans and chocolate-covered raisins. She put two new T-shirts in it — one SJSU and one Forty-niners. She gave him a list of phone numbers to call if he needed anything. One was her apartment phone number, one was her parents’ home phone, one was Mrs. Leong’s number and one was the police station. She put in some toy Hot Wheels and some sugarless gum and a twenty-dollar bill in an envelope. She wrote him a card he would probably be unable to read. It said, Rubio, you are a special boy. You will grow up to have a good life. Always remember that. God will bless you and watch over you. I promise. She signed it Miss Chase, your teacher. She had struggled for what to say. Even when she sealed the envelope she was not satisfied with the note.
“Here I am promising him God will watch over him.”
“God will,” Truely said. It was a Mississippi thing to say.
“Well, so far he hasn’t,” Jesse reminded him.
It was not a point either Jaxon or Truely was equipped to debate.
“Mrs. Leong says they might send Rubio to live with his paternal grandmother down in So Cal,” Jesse said. “I’m totally against it. How can the woman who raised someone like Rubio’s dad be good for Rubio?”
“They’re his family, I guess,” Truely volunteered. It all ran together in his mind after a while — the stupid things he said, the odd sound of his own voice.
“Family, family, family,” she snapped. “Families can be overrated sometimes. I guess the only thing worse than a family — is no family.” Truely had never heard anybody say such a thing.
Little Rubio came to meet them wearing new shorts and tennis shoes and a little red muscle shirt with BATMAN on it. He had a shy smile, but a smile nonetheless. He was missing one of his front teeth. When Jesse hugged him she nearly cried, but Rubio didn’t. He noticed the backpack immediately. She handed it to him and he unzipped it like a kid on Christmas morning who had not expected that Santa would ever find his house. He was cautious though. He kept looking at Jesse and Mrs. Leong to make sure he wasn’t doing anything wrong, his eyes darting from their faces to the backpack. He saw the gum first thing and his eyes lit up. “For you,” Jesse said. They watched him slowly unwrap the gum and fold a piece into his mouth.
Mrs. Leong asked to speak to Jesse alone. Jaxon and Truely took Rubio over to play on the climbing equipment, but he was still sore from his beating. Bruises on his thin legs were obvious. What appeared to be seeping cigarette burns dotted his neck and arms. He had trouble moving with ease like a little boy should. “Damn,” Jaxon said, “the kid is hurting.”
Rubio had liked the swing and the slide and being carried around on Truely’s shoulders. He laughed when Truely ran and bounced him up and down, his head bobbing back and forth, his small fists gripping Truely’s hair. The sound of Rubio’s laughter was beautiful to Truely. Jesse was right. Rubio needed to know that nothing that happened to him was his fault. He deserved a happy life if any kid ever did.
Later that afternoon, after saying good-bye to Rubio, watching him walk away with Mrs. Leong, his new backpack on his small shoulders, his obedient wave to them, Jesse managed to stay surprisingly composed. But Truely didn’t. He wiped his eyes with his hands and cursed under his breath. “Damn,” he muttered. “This ain’t right.”
That night he lay sweating in his matchbox of a room, listening to business as usual downstairs in Mexican Food. He could hear Ernesto shouting out orders to the kitchen help. Truely was reliving the day’s events for the hundredth time. This was new to him. Until he laid eyes on Jesse he had never met a woman that made him flash forward this way. He had never looked at a woman before and seen the mother of his unborn children. He didn’t think like that. Ever. Now here he was obsessing about Jesse, and the houseful of kids he suddenly, for the first time in his life, imagined having. He looked at her and saw himself as a father and a husband. It was scary as hell.
The way the story should have gone was that Truely had asked Jesse out right then, that day at the park, and they immediately got busy falling in love. But for reasons he didn’t understand nearly a month went by and Truely never called her. He did
n’t know why. Goodness knows he thought about her day and night. He thought of her hair pulled back into a messy ponytail, her strong tan legs, her flip-flops and toenails with the chipped polish. He thought of the way she had hugged Rubio, the note she had written him, the money she had hidden in the envelope. Truely obsessed over Jesse’s pure emotion and raw strength. He took to driving by her apartment two or three times a day. Only once he thought he glimpsed her, walking up the stairs with a bag of groceries. He fished for news of her from Jaxon whenever he could. But Jaxon had met a girl himself — Melissa. She played on the San Jose State women’s water polo team. So Jaxon wasn’t much good anymore. “Jess? Yeah. She’s doing okay. Why? Who’s asking?”
THE NIGHT Jesse wandered into Mexican Food Truely had no idea she was there looking for him. It actually occurred to him that she was lost or had stopped by to get three tacos for a dollar. He saw her speak to Ernesto, who motioned her inside, and pointed to the back. Truely was waiting tables in the back. Just the sight of Jesse standing there in her jeans and Spartan T-shirt, her hair long and loose on her shoulders, made his blood surge. When she saw him she waved nervously and made her way to the back of the small restaurant. Truely stood, watching her, waiting. “Hi,” she said. “Jaxon told me you worked here.”
Eat, Drink, and Be From Mississippi Page 5