Names on a Map

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

  He asked for Gustavo.

  I didn’t feel like lying. “He’s left. He’s gone.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “He just left.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think you do know.”

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  “I think I’m not going to discuss my brother with you.”

  “Well, someday he’s going to be my brother-in-law.”

  I almost laughed. “I don’t think that’s ever going to happen.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’d have to be your wife. And I’m not going to be

  anybody’s wife for a long time. Not for a very long time.”

  “I can wait.”

  “Don’t waste your time.”

  “But I thought that we—”

  “No.”

  “But—”

  “Jack. Go and march into your life. Just go.”

  “I love you.”

  I was tired and numb and I didn’t want to do any explaining.

  I just wanted him to leave. I didn’t know what to say. Then I just said it: “I thought for a moment that I loved you too. Turns out I didn’t.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “I guess it isn’t.”

  “You love me. I know you love me.”

  “Go home, Jack.”

  “In a few days I’ll be leaving. I’m going to boot camp.”

  “I know. You’re going to be a Marine.”

  “You should be proud.”

  “I’m not.”

  He was sad. He was angry. He was confused. “We slept to -

  gether,” he said. “I thought—”

  It was mean of me, I know, but all I could think was that it

  wasn’t my job to turn Jack Evans into a man. That’s what he

  said that day. Make me into a man. And then I knew why I’d

  gone with him to that hotel—to get rid of the residual smell

  of the man who’d raped me. I wanted to be with a man that I

  chose. I chose Jack. Not a bad choice, really. He was beautiful.

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  But as far as turning him into a man? The hell with it. He could become a man on his own. I looked at him. “You thought what,

  Jack?”

  “I thought—”

  “Go away.”

  I was mean—and more than that, I just didn’t care.

  A part of me wanted to run after him as he walked away. But

  what would I have told him? Later, I was to get a letter from him.

  He told me I broke his heart. It wouldn’t be the last time I heard from Jack Evans.

  We all make our choices. Gustavo made his. Jack Evans made

  his. Me too. I could make choices too. Not that our choices always mattered. I remember my mother telling me that countries

  were bigger than boys. If countries were bigger than boys, then countries were certainly bigger than girls.

  I knew my father would never forgive Gustavo for what he

  did. It wouldn’t have mattered if Gustavo had told my father or not. No difference at all. It would all have led to the same thing, to the same place. Nothing would have changed. There might

  have been a little more drama. Who needed that?

  My father was a sad and disappointed man. I never really saw

  him for what he was until those final days before Gustavo left.

  For all his intelligence and discipline, for all of his other virtues, my father lacked imagination. He was just another man among

  the countless army of men who had come before him and had

  discovered that his life would end in nothingness. That sounds cruel and maybe it is cruel. He had once told Gustavo that only great and brilliant men made history. He was too blind or too sad or too jealous to see the brilliance of his own son.

  There were times I loved him deeply, my father, times when I

  was overwhelmed by his boyish and arresting tenderness. There

  was a baffling and inexplicable innocence about him that was

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  both moving and infuriating. I understood perfectly why my

  mother fell in love with him.

  But there were just as many times that I hated him.

  I suppose some of the times that I hated him, I hated him

  unfairly, hated him for who and what he wasn’t, hated him for his limitations, hated him for the expressions he wore on his face, for the way he smelled, for the shirts he wore, for the way he combed his hair, for not wearing anything except black ties. I judged him not for what he was or what he did, but for failing to measure up to some vague standard I had in my head, an imprecise and

  impossibly idealized definition of father.

  I was so hard on him, my father who seemed always such a

  foreigner everywhere he went, never quite at home anywhere in

  the world—not even in his own home. My mother told me once

  that a woman should reveal her love and conceal her hate. I don’t know where she got that from, but when it came to my father, I more than took her advice.

  I’m sorry now for the hardness of my heart.

  I still catch myself listening to my mother’s silence. She was never more alone than in the days and weeks and months that

  followed Gustavo’s leaving.

  As for my father, I hated that man who fathered me that night, that night when Gustavo came in, wet from the rain. My father

  failed him. In his blindness, my father failed to see what Gustavo was made of. How could he not see? I forgave my father all things.

  Except for the cruelty of that night. I did hate him for that.

  I am always in the next room. I am always too far away to com-

  fort him. All I can do is listen to his sobs. I’m listening. Even now.

  Gustavo, who didn’t believe in God, at least believed in the

  possibility of his own life. He wasn’t content to march into nothingness. He was more ambitious than that. He was more than

  a leaf torn from a tree. He was more than a stone with which

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  you built a road. He was more than a turned up onion in a field waiting to be picked. He was brave enough to throw himself into uncertainty, knowing that he would live in that uncertainty the rest of his life. He would die in that uncertainty.

  There had been many deaths.

  My mother and father did not speak to each other for what

  seemed an eternity. When we went to Mass, Charlie and I sat

  between them. I told Charlie we were like a DMZ. For a long

  time, I felt as if there were traps set around the house. We tread carefully.

  One day, three months after Gustavo left, we were all eating

  dinner, and my father said, “The stew is very good.” Matter of fact. An ordinary thing to say to your wife who’d cooked your

  dinner.

  My mother nodded. “I’m glad you like it.” Matter of fact. An

  ordinary response.

  There was no real drama in the moment. But those were the

  first words they spoke to each other since that night.

  We limped along, each of us licking our wounds.

  It was Charlie who had it the worst—because he, of all of us,

  expected life to be something good and beautiful. He expected

  happiness to be a way of life. Gustavo and I had always joked about the pursuit of happiness. But for Charlie, that was no joke.

  One Saturday morning, Charlie forced my mother to take

  him to the humane society, where he picked out a female puppy.

  Six weeks old. He named the dog Gussie, and when he brought

  her home, he took her into the bathroom and bathed her.

  My mom and my dad and me—we all watched.

  That was the first time in months that I’d seen my mother

 
and my father smile.

  Charlie needed to love. And he needed to be loved. That’s

  why he wanted the dog. But the rest of us, we weren’t any different than Charlie.

  adam

  Killed in action, Da Nang, Vietnam, December 21, 1967.

  His remains were buried in El Paso, Texas, Fort Bliss Na-

  tional Cemetery.

  It rained the day he was buried.

  lourde s

  I studied the look on his face closely as I spoke to him.

  He paced the room as I talked, occasionally stopping to drink

  from his brandy. He poured himself three or four glasses that

  evening, and he kept shaking his head.

  His anger didn’t surprise me.

  I did wonder who his anger was aimed at—me or Gustavo.

  It didn’t take me long to discover that I would be the target

  of his rage. Gustavo was gone. It was hard to aim your anger

  at someone who was absent—someone who was never coming

  back.

  At a certain point, when he began to process the news that

  Gustavo had left the country to avoid the draft, he began to ask questions. I’d seen him become an interrogator sometimes when

  he wanted more information from his children. He had rarely

  behaved that way toward me.

  “How long have you known that he was planning this?”

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  “I found his draft notice the night your mother died—folded

  up in his shirt pocket.”

  “So his first response was to go out and get drunk.”

  I didn’t respond to that remark.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I’ll tell you what I told him—it wasn’t my job. That was his

  responsibility.”

  “You’re letting yourself off the hook that easily?”

  “That easily?” I could get angry too.

  “You help your son plan an escape, and you don’t tell me, and

  you think you have no responsibility?”

  “I helped him plan nothing. I watched. That’s what I do. Isn’t that what you’re always accusing me of—watching my children

  too much? I watch. I watch, I watch, and I watch. I have kept watch over them all my life. When he was leaving, I caught him.”

  “Then why didn’t you stop him?”

  “It wasn’t my job to stop him.”

  “Not your job? Not your job to tell your husband that your

  son had received his draft notice? Not your job to stop him when he was escaping from his duties to his country? You’re his mother.

  You’ve helped him become a criminal.”

  “My son is not a criminal.”

  “He is a criminal. And a coward. He’s shamed this house. My

  house.”

  “Your house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Perhaps we’re all guests in your house. It’s a wonder Gustavo didn’t leave sooner—since he was always so unwelcome.”

  “He was never unwelcome.”

  “You’re not lying to me, corazón. You’re lying to yourself. Why do you think your son didn’t tell you he’d been drafted? Why do you think he didn’t tell you it was against his conscience to fight in a war he didn’t believe in? Why? You want to blame that on me?”

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  “I could never fix what was wrong between me and Gustavo.”

  I didn’t say anything. What was there to say? He paced the

  room like a caged and angry cat. He asked questions. I answered them.

  “You sent them—Xochil and Charlie, you sent them?”

  “I did.”

  “Why?”

  “They love him.” That was my answer. He grew angrier by

  the minute. He was frightening. I had never been afraid of my

  husband until that moment. But I was determined to answer all

  his questions and I was not going to lie for the sake of the peace.

  I knew there would be no peace in our house for a long time to come.

  “How will he live?”

  “I gave him my cousin’s address in Mexico City. Tomorrow, I

  will send a telegram and tell him Gustavo is coming.”

  “You will do that?” There was nothing but contempt in his

  voice.

  “Yes. I will do that.”

  “I can stop you.”

  “No. You can’t.”

  He stood in front of me for a long time, saying nothing—

  though I am sure his silence was only seconds long.

  “And what will he do for money?”

  I knew he would ask that question. And I knew my answer

  would enrage him even more.

  “I gave him Rosario’s ring.”

  “What?”

  “I gave him Rosario’s ring.”

  I had expected his rage. But even I had not anticipated the

  slap—the feel of the back of his hand against my jaw.

  I fell backward.

  Somehow, I did not stumble to the floor. He raised his hand

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  again. And I am sure the only thing that stopped him was the

  look on my face. I had always hid my own rage. But in that mo-

  ment, I let him see it.

  I let him see the side of me I had always kept hidden.

  In that moment I did not know if I would leave or stay.

  Somehow, I was free. Octavio would always live in a prison. But not me.

  He trembled. He started to say something but I stopped him.

  It will be a long time before I forgive you for that. I think that’s what I started to say. But I didn’t say that because I didn’t need to say it. “Gustavo is free of you.” That’s what I said.

  I slept in Rosario’s bed that night.

  I slept there for many months.

  The slap of the back of his hand.

  Somehow I did not stumble.

  a b e

  Sometimes I think it was all a fucking dream. Except I know

  it wasn’t. There are days when I almost forget that I fought in that war. It was such a long time ago. I was young, so young, so fucking young. And all that’s left of my youth is in my head. You know, the head, it’s like a map. Not a map that gives you directions, but a map with names on it—names of guys who were

  killed in the war, names of the people you left behind, names of countries and villages and cities. Names. After all these years, that’s all that’s left. Names. But no directions. And no way to reach them, no way to get back what you lost.

  I came back to the old neighborhood and lived there for a

  while. Sunset Heights didn’t change all that much over the years.

  The houses got older. So did the people who lived in them.

  I went back to school at the university. I didn’t tell anyone

  I had been in Nam. I didn’t go around shoving the fact that I’d fought for my country down anybody’s throat. Of course, some

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  people knew I’d fought there. Most people didn’t. I was just another fucking student. I even grew my hair long. I heard people say things. I tried not to explode. They didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about. So fucking cool to be against the war.

  What the fuck did they know? Look, I never joined in the discussions. Like I said, I was never a talker.

  One day, a girl came up to me and handed me a flier. I wanted

  to grab it, rip it, throw it in her face. Except when I looked at her, I remembered. Gustavo’s sister. She was even more beautiful than I remembered. She had the kind of eyes that really looked at you, the kind of eyes that made you want to believe the world was a good place to live in, the kind of eyes that broke your fucking heart.

  She smiled at me. “Do I know you?”

  I could have said I knew Jack Evans, the guy who had a thing f
or you. I could have said I was in your house once. I could have said I hate your brother. “No,” I said. “You don’t.” I took her flyer, folded it, and put it in my pocket.

  She was walking away, then she turned around. “You were

  there, weren’t you?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  She walked back toward me, took the folded flyer out of my

  pocket, and just nodded. She didn’t say a word. And me, I was as wordless as ever.

  My parents were tender with me when I got home. They didn’t

  know exactly what to do with me. They always had a look of

  confusion on their faces. For a month or two, all I did was sleep.

  Drink booze and sleep. And smoke. And sleep. They must have

  overheard my nightmares. I had me some scary fucking dreams.

  Once, I woke up as I was crawling down the hallway, my mother

  and father looking down at me. I could see the terror in their faces.

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  My little brother was standing behind them. I could see the

  frightened look on his face. It fucking killed me.

  That night, my father and mother took me into the kitchen.

  My father poured us all a drink. We drank. Then we drank an-

  other. “Talk,” my father said. “Talk.”

  “I can’t,” I said.

  My father nodded. We cried. All of us. Maybe that was the

  only conversation we needed to have.

  I don’t know when it was, but one day, I ran into Conrad García.

  I tried to avoid him. But he came toward me when he saw me.

  Shit, of course he did. “Come up to me call me a baby killer,” I said. It wasn’t a question. Something about that guy always set me off. Made me talk shit.

  He shook his head. “Why would I do that?” He smiled at me

  and offered me a cigarette. That Conrad, always offering everyone a smile and a fucking cigarette. I took it. We walked down the street like we’d done a lifetime ago. Walking down the street and smoking cigarettes. We were good at that.

  “You made it back alive,” he said.

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “I’m glad. Thank God.”

  I wasn’t gonna fucking cry in front of the sonofabitch. I wasn’t.

  But why the hell did I feel like crying? “Yeah, thank God. But no fucking thanks to you.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  I looked at him. “Did you go to prison?”

  “Prison?”

  “For not going?”

  “No.”