Trashed: An Eastside Brewery Novel

by Mia Hopkins

  He rolls out his usual dumb sayings. I’ve heard them all before. As he keeps talking, I pull myself up and brush the grass from my pants. I get my balance and start a slow walk around the lake.

  I’m trying to get my emotions locked down, but it’s a struggle.

  When I heard my father had been killed, I felt empty. Hollowed out. See, he’s called Dreamer for a reason. He doesn’t think things through, and he follows his weird ideas wherever they take him. This time, they took him down a dark path, and I wasn’t there to protect him.

  He finishes with his lecture, a mixture of twelve-step standbys and New-Age self-improvement quotes. “I’m worried about you, Trouble. You always wanted to be the one in the middle of everything, the one in the middle of all the action. You’re just like me. Isn’t that what I’ve always told you?”

  “Dad,” I say, suddenly tired, “just tell me where you are.”

  He’s quiet for a long time, making his decision. I hold my breath. Then he says, “Where are you staying?”

  “What?”

  “Where are you sleeping? Who are you staying with?”

  “With Rafa.”

  “In the garden?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. Go there tonight. I’m going to send you something. Wait for it.”

  “What are you sending me?”

  “Instructions. And a bus ticket.”

  He knows I’m on parole. I can’t leave the county. “Dad—”

  “You won’t get caught, if you do what I tell you,” he says. “I promise you’ll be okay.”

  I know what Dreamer Rosas’s promises are worth. I say nothing.

  “Do you want to know what really happened?” he says.

  More than anything. The mystery has been eating me alive. “Yes.”

  “I know you do,” he says, “but I’ll only tell you in person, mi’jo.”

  Why does he have to do this? Test my loyalty to him, knowing I’ll do whatever he asks, just like when I was a kid?

  “Are you still there?” he asks.

  “Yeah.” My voice is rough.

  “Whatever you do, don’t tell anyone where you’re going.” He pauses. “Don’t tell Sal.”

  Fuck. Secrets—again. “I won’t,” I say.

  “Promise me.”

  “I promise.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you when I see you.”

  He hangs up without saying goodbye. I snap my phone closed. I stare at it.

  Two cops park their cruiser in the lot on the other side of the lake. They walk up to a homeless guy who’s enjoying a private date with a bottle of cheap vodka. While one cop gives him a talking-to, the other stands there with his hand on his gun, surveying the park. The kids have all returned to school. That leaves me, sitting on a hillside by myself doing nothing but looking suspicious.

  I put my phone back in my pocket, stand up, and head back to Rafa’s.

  After dinner, Rafa and I share a bowl. I know I should be clear-headed tonight but I can’t face the ugly feelings rising up inside me.

  We’re sitting in the living room. I tell him about my father’s phone call. I watch as Rafa lights a shitload of candles, he says, to protect me. I try to ignore the real danger he might burn the place down.

  I hear a soft knock at the door. When I open it, no one is there. Quickly, I run into the garden and search the rows and the shadows. Still, no one. Annoyed, I head back to the trailer. A thick envelope sits on the top step. With one last look at the empty garden, I pick the envelope up and go back inside.

  “Who was it?” Rafa asks.

  “I don’t know. But they left this.”

  I open the envelope and empty it onto the coffee table. There’s a debit card of some kind plus a fat wad of cash, twenties and fifties, more money than I’ve seen in weeks.

  Rafa whistles. “Not bad.”

  A California driver’s license matches the debit card. I don’t recognize the name, but the face looks like mine. Rafa picks up the last thing in the envelope. It’s a piece of white paper, folded in half.

  “It’s a bus ticket for a private bus company.” Rafa squints and points at the downtown address. “I guess that’s the station.” He reads the information quietly. “You leave at eight o’clock tomorrow. Los Angeles to Wenatchee.”

  “Los Angeles to where?”

  “Wenatchee.” He shrugs. “Wherever that is.” He gives me the paper.

  I run my fingers over the paper. I’m buzzed—the lines of the bar code begin to blur. I rub my eyes.

  “Are you going to go?” Rafa asks.

  I nod.

  Rafa knows all about my quest for my father. He’s stood by and watched silently, but I know he’s worried about me. “I don’t understand. Why? Why go?” he shakes his head. “Why risk going back to jail?”

  “Because he’s my father. Because I have to know the truth.” Dreamer is a shitty father, but he is still my father. I can’t abandon him, even if that makes me an idiot.

  “Are you sure, mi’jo?” Rafa asks.

  “I’m sure.”

  “What about your girl?”

  I say nothing. She’s not my girl, but I don’t want to hear those words aloud.

  He shakes his head again. “Fine, fine. Be stubborn.”

  As I sit there on the floor of his trailer stoned as hell, Rafa lights some sage. Then he lights some copal. I breathe in the sweet, heavy smoke. He says some prayers in Spanish, in English, and in Nahuatl, a native language that I recognize because homies in prison used to study it to communicate in secret. The words mix together to become one language. Rafa’s voice leads me to a place between waking and sleeping.

  Slowly, I slip down into my subconscious.

  I walk through the familiar museum of regrets and painful memories, my many embarrassments and my bottomless pit of shame. I tiptoe past all of these things, trying to avoid the pain that always surfaces whenever I visit the past.

  But talking with my father has brought all the pain back.

  So tonight, instead of avoiding it, I face it.

  The washing machine.

  It’s simple, white, with three dials. It sits in the basement of the house where I grew up.

  I’m twelve. Sal’s thirteen. Angel is hanging on me—he’s eight, bug-eyed, eager to please. Sal’s holding Esperanza, and she’s hugging his neck, confused and fussy. She’s wearing her pajamas. Our little sister is only three years old.

  It’s the middle of the night.

  Our parents are fighting upstairs.

  Sal looks at me as he closes the top door of the washing machine, starting the water to hide the sound of the yelling. I hear the cold water pouring into the empty tub. I’m sleepy, so for a second, my hazy brain thinks, we’re going to get in trouble. Our mother is going to get angry that we’re playing with the washing machine, that we’re wasting water. In our household, everything has a price. We turn off lights. We finish every bite of food. Every penny counts, especially since my dad lost his job at the slaughterhouse.

  These days, my father doesn’t work. My father drinks. Three beers in, he begins to tell us his favorite stories about his past, his glory days in the neighborhood, his days in the game. Six beers in, he gets quiet—the angry kind of quiet my brothers and I know to avoid.

  Our mother doesn’t drink. Instead, she prays for our souls, says endless rosaries for her husband and her children. In her eyes, we live on a thin line, in constant danger of temptation.

  She tries to scare us with stories of hell and the devil, but at twelve, I’m terrified listening to my mom and dad fight.

  Tonight, they rip into each other in English and Spanish, letting loose all their frustrations on each other. They say all the bad words. They yell and break things. I hate it.

  Usually, by morning they’re back in the bedroom, the door closed. Everything is quiet, as if nothing has happened between them.

  But this time, something is different.

  Our mother is screaming at our fath
er because he’s back to hanging out with his friends in East Side Hollenbeck—ESHB, the letters tattooed on his knuckles.

  He’s told us he was a gangster before he married our mother. But it’s hard to see the gangster inside of the grumpy working man we’ve known all our lives.

  “Pinche Ruben!” our mom yells. “That piece of shit. You want to go be with him? Go be with him. But don’t you dare come back to this house.”

  “This house?” Our father laughs, low and slow. “This house? You think this is your house? This house is not yours. Every nail and board and window in this house is mine. I paid for it.”

  He’s bullying her—using her insecurities as weapons against her. Her lack of education. Her lack of work experience. Her complete financial dependence on him.

  “Every penny in your purse,” he spits. “Every thread on your back. I clothe you. I feed you. I pay for everything. What are you going to do, Amalia? Get a job? You didn’t finish school. You’ve never worked a day in your goddamn life.”

  Sal and me exchange a look. Anyone can see how hard she works for this family. She runs the household, cooks, cleans, looks after four kids, and serves our father hand and foot.

  “You have no idea what it’s like out there. Without me, you’ll starve to death.” To make his point, my father switches to Spanish. “I give you everything. You are nothing without me. So stop pretending you’re somebody. You’re nobody. Absolutely nobody.”

  When the washing machine starts spinning, my mother snaps.

  I hear her footsteps moving around the house. I hear the jingle of keys and I can guess she’s grabbed her purse.

  “You ain’t going nowhere,” my father says. He’s slurring now.

  We hear our mother open the door of Esperanza’s bedroom. She curses to herself. The basement door bangs open and we see her at last. She’s wearing sweats and a coat. She’s put on tennis shoes without socks. Her familiar face is clouded with anger. We are all scared of her when she’s like this. Her eyes latch on to our little sister. Sal realizes what’s going to happen before the rest of us do.

  “Amá, no, por favor.” He tightens his grip on Esperanza, who begins to cry. “Calm down.”

  I’m too young and stupid to understand until I see my mother wrap one arm around my screaming sister while trying to push Sal away.

  The little girl is terrified. She’s not sure what to do. She loves her brothers. She loves her mom. She loves her dad. I can see it on her face. Why is everyone yelling? What is happening?

  I stand with my hands on Angel’s shoulders, holding him back so he doesn’t get hurt. In the middle of the confusion, his face collapses too, and he starts crying. His screams mix with Esperanza’s screams and I have to tighten my hold. “Don’t cry,” I tell him, even though I want to cry too. “Stop crying. You have to stop crying.”

  He looks up at me with his wet eyes and sniffles. He rubs his face and tries to stop but new sobs keep breaking loose.

  “Stop being such a baby,” I say, which is stupid, because that’s what he is. That’s what we all are.

  Our mother shoves Sal so hard he almost loses his balance and has to catch himself against the spinning washing machine. She uses this moment to pull Esperanza away from him. She embraces the girl tightly and runs up the wooden steps, where my father is standing, looking at everything with a mixture of bitterness and anger on his face.

  “Don’t,” he says. “Don’t you dare.”

  He pulls his arm back to smack my mother’s face but I’m too fast. I bolt up the steps and stand in front of her. The blow glances off the side of my head, hard. My ears are ringing. Blood drips down into my right eye. He’s cut me with his wedding ring. I’m bleeding down my collar and my face is burning hot from the blow.

  Taking advantage of the distraction, my mother runs outside. She jumps into the car and locks the doors. My father pounds on the windows as she straps Esperanza into the car seat and climbs behind the wheel. I can hear my little sister’s muffled screaming. I run toward the car but Sal grabs me. Behind us, Angel is sobbing.

  “Are you going back to your mother?” my father yells in the driveway. “Good. Go back to Salinas. Don’t bother coming back. Bitch. Trash. You were trash when I met you, and you’re trash now. Puta. Vete a la chingada.”

  She puts the key in the ignition. Full of rage, my father smacks the windshield. He’s a big man—strong from years of manual labor—and we hear a crunch. His fist leaves a huge crack on the safety glass, white like a spiderweb.

  Dizzy, I sway on my feet. Sal grabs my arm and helps me keep my balance. Silently, my brothers and I watch as our mother starts the engine. My father plants himself behind the car, daring her to run him over. She puts the car in reverse and taps the brakes, lurching back inch by inch, pushing my father out of the way.

  Lights in the neighbors’ houses are coming on. Dogs bark.

  My father, overcome with anger, loses his footing and at last, falls onto the lawn. She hits the gas and peels out of the driveway. She shifts gears and speeds away before my father can get to his feet and chase after her.

  Sal, Angel, and me—we stand on the front porch. We don’t know what to say. Our parents fight all the time. But not like this. Not like this.

  Our father walks back to the porch just as the neighbors open their doors to see what’s going on.

  He looks at all three of us, the rage hot and deep in his bloodshot eyes. “Your mother—she’s trash. Human garbage. We don’t need her.” He turns to the street. We can see the brake lights of her car at the stop sign.

  “You’re trash, you hear me?” he yells. He spits on the ground.

  We watch as the car disappears around the corner, and the neighborhood gets quiet again.

  Twenty

  Back in Rafa’s trailer, I draw a breath, pulling the smoke as deep as I can. My buzz wears off slowly, melting like butter. My pain has a sharp, hot edge.

  Because this is a memory, I know what will happen next.

  Sal will put Angel to bed. He’ll sit me down in the bathroom and clean up the cut on my forehead. He’ll make sure we stay quiet so that our father in his drunken rage forgets about us.

  While we lie awake in bed, our father will trash everything downstairs. We’ll listen to the crash of dishes, glasses, and empty liquor bottles. He’ll overturn tables and chairs. He’ll rip our mother’s clothes from the closet, taking the rod down with them. He’ll shred the curtains. He’ll destroy our television and rip the telephone from the wall.

  The next day, like a storm that’s passed, he’ll be snoring in the bedroom.

  As our dad sleeps, Sal and Angel will clean the kitchen. I’ll fix the living room, sweeping up the broken glass and putting it in the trash.

  At noon, the police officers will arrive at our door.

  Our father will stand in the half-destroyed living room. I’ll be embarrassed for him with his stained T-shirt and wet, red eyes.

  One of the officers will say, “I’m very sorry to tell you this, Mr. Rosas. Your wife and daughter passed away in a car accident just south of Salinas early this morning.”

  Silence. After a long time, my father will manage to say, “What happened?”

  “A drunk driver swerved into their car from the southbound lane. It was a head-on collision. Your wife—she died instantly.”

  My father’s face will turn to stone. He will show no emotion, either to us, or to these strangers, these cops in our living room. “And my little girl?” he asks.

  “Paramedics tried to stabilize her,” the officer will say slowly, with a robotic voice. “They did everything they could. She passed away at the scene of the accident.”

  The darkness will close in on me, both then and now. It will swallow me whole until all I can see, breathe, feel is pain.

  Pain.

  So familiar.

  It almost feels good.

  Hours later, I wake up on the floor of Rafa’s trailer.

  He’s blown out all of the ca
ndles, put a blanket over me, and gone to bed.

  My buzz is long gone. I take off my shirt and go outside into the dark. I wash my face and brush my teeth with the ice-cold water from the hose. I go inside and put on another T-shirt. I sit down on the sofa and check my phone. Two in the morning.

  My head aches, but so does my chest. Once the memory surfaced, the pain rushed me like a flash flood. It’s been more than ten years, but I can still see my sister in the back seat of that car. I can still hear her wails. I can still see her fear.

  I cope by burying that memory as deep as I can—but sometimes it just breaks loose, and there’s nothing I can do but let it have its way with me.

  That night, everything changed.

  Our family’s story ended, and the story of four separate men began.

  After the accident, my father threw himself back into the gang. He made just enough money to pay the bills. Bottles turned to balloons, spoons and needles.

  With no one supervising us, my brothers and I ran loose. Sal tried to look after us, but soon the lure of East Side Hollenbeck was too strong even for him. He was jumped into the gang a few months after the funeral. Soon, he was sent away to youth authority for busting up some kid’s jaw. That’s when I got jumped in. I sold whatever the older homeboys gave me, held corners, broke into houses. When my brother got out, we teamed up and got really, really fucking good at stealing cars.

  When Sal and I were sentenced, we made arrangements for our little brother to live with our uncle and grandmother in Salinas. Angel was starting to get into trouble, so we pulled him out of the life. If one of us was going to make it out, it was always going to be him. But he hated us for sending him away—he still resents us. I know it.

  Without my mother, my father has been a walking disaster, one bad decision after another after another.

  Suddenly, another fear grips me.

  I’m alone.

  Is that what I’ll be too? Like him?

  I take three deep breaths and let each one out slowly.

  It’s time to go.

  Chest still aching, I stand up and put the few belongings I have in my backpack. A couple of shirts, clean socks, and chones. Two pairs of pants, one pair of shorts. I swap my real ID card out of my wallet and slide in the fake driver’s license. I hide my real paperwork under the sofa. Carefully, I place the bus ticket and most of the cash back inside the big envelope. I tuck the envelope into the bottom of my backpack where it can’t fall out.