Kulti

by Mariana Zapata

“I’m just telling you because I love you,” she said in Spanish, picking up on how her comment irritated me. “You’re just as pretty as any other girl, Sal.”

  “You’re all ugly. I’m hungry, let’s go,” Dad said with a clap of his hands, his face too cheerful.

  He knew. He knew how much Mom’s comments bothered me. Maybe they didn’t piss me off or make me cry, but they bothered me. The fact she was saying it in front of my friend didn’t help.

  Staying in place, I smiled at my sister and her friend as they followed my parents out the door. Ceci hadn’t said a word to me, and I didn’t want to start crap with her tonight. I gritted my teeth and tamped down my emotions. Today was about my dad, not about my mom or Ceci.

  Since we wouldn’t all fit into my mom’s sedan, Kulti and I drove separately. It was the same restaurant we’d gone to for the last three years so I knew exactly where we were heading.

  I had barely turned the ignition and driven to the corner of the block when the German spoke up. “I don’t like the way your mother speaks to you.”

  My head snapped over to look at his face.

  He on the other hand, was busy facing forward. “Why do you let her belittle you in that way?”

  “I…” I turned back to face out the windshield and tried to tell myself that this moment was real. “She’s my mom. I don’t know. I don’t want to hurt her feelings and tell her that her opinion doesn’t matter —“

  “It shouldn’t,” he cut me off.

  Well… “She just has a different view on how I should live my life, Rey. She always has. I’m not ever going to do what she wants me to do, or be the person that she wants me to be. I don’t know. I just let her say whatever she wants to say and I suck it up. At the end of the day, I’m going to keep living the way I want, regardless of what she says or thinks.”

  Out of my peripheral vision, I could see his head turn. “She doesn’t support you playing?”

  “She does, but she’d rather see me do something else with my life.”

  “Does she understand how good you are?” he asked completely freaking seriously.

  I had to smile, his belief in me almost made up for my mom trying to guilt me into having a boyfriend and dressing up to feel like a woman. Blah. “You really think I’m good?”

  “You could be faster—“

  I knew he was only trying to piss me off by calling me slow. I turned to look at him, outraged. “Are you serious?”

  He ignored me. “But yes, you are. Don’t get a big head about it. You still have quite a bit of room for improvement.” He paused. “She should be proud of you.”

  I was torn between wanting to defend my mom and wanting to give him a hug for the nice things he was saying. Instead I went with “She is proud of me. It’s just… it’s hard for her with me, I guess. I know she loves me, Rey. She goes to my games, wears my jerseys. She’s proud of me and my brother but…” I scratched at my face, debating whether or not to tell him for a second. It’d been years since the last time I told anyone. Not even Jenny or Harlow knew. Marc and Simon did but that was only because they’d been in our lives forever. It hadn’t helped that Cordero had been the last person to talk to me about it, and he’d left a bad taste in my mouth. Everyone should know, he’d said. He hadn’t liked when I told him no. No way.

  My brother Eric had started early in his career putting a stipulation in his contract about the type of personal information that could be released about him. I’d followed in his footsteps with my Pipers contract and fortunately it had paid off to be so secretive. But if there was one person that I could tell, it would be Kulti.

  Swallowing, I asked, “Have you ever heard of Jose Barragan?”

  “Of course I have,” he said with an insulted snicker.

  Jose Barragan was a legendary Argentinian soccer player who had lived as big off the field as he had in real life.

  I would know. “He was my mom’s dad.”

  The silence in the car was no great shock to me.

  “La Culebra was your grandfather?” he asked me gently. The Snake. My grandfather had been called The Snake for a dozen different reasons by millions of people.

  “Yup.” I didn’t say anything else because I knew he was going to need a second to process it.

  La Culebra had been a star. He’d been the king of a generation way before mine. He’d led his country to two Altus Cups; he’d been a superstar in a time before technology and social media. My mom’s dad had been a sport’s shining star, their flesh and bone trophy.

  “Does anyone know?” he finally asked, that creepy calm silence still ringing in my ears.

  “Yeah, a few people do.”

  Another pause. “No one has ever said anything to me about it.” I could see him out of the corner of my eye shift in his seat. “Sal, why is it a secret? Do you understand how much money you could make off endorsements?”

  Cordero had asked the exact same question. The only difference was, Cordero was an asshole only trying to make himself look better. La Culebra’s granddaughter on his team? Especially when he came from the same country? He immediately saw dollar signs, but I wasn’t about to let him exploit me or my family. I’d never figured out how he’d found out, but it hadn’t mattered. No meant no.

  “I wouldn’t want to put my mom through that,” I explained. I squeezed the steering wheel a little tighter. “Did you ever meet him?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you know he wasn’t the nicest man in the world.”

  His lack of a response was more than enough.

  “Rey, I met him maybe ten times in my life. I saw him on TV more than in person. He told me once when I was eleven that I was wasting my time with soccer. He said people didn’t like to watch athletes that were women. He told me I should be a swimmer or a ballet dancer. Fucking ballet. Could you imagine me in pointe shoes? When I was seventeen, he showed up to the U-17 game I was playing with the national team and tore apart my game afterward. When I was twenty-one, he came to the Altus Cup match and asked me why I didn’t play for Argentina instead. Nothing was ever right or enough for him.

  “That was just him. From what I’ve heard my mom say, he was a really shitty father and a worse husband. Supposedly, he’d hit my grandma when he wasn’t cheating on her. My mom wasn’t a fan of his, and I know she blamed soccer for his behavior. I don’t blame her. She met my dad on vacation in Mexico; they got married and moved here. The last time I saw him, he called my dad a stupid Mexican and told my mom she wasted her life marrying someone so beneath her.

  “I love my dad and I owe my parents everything. They’re the hardest working people I’ve ever met, and I don’t appreciate anyone talking badly about them. When my mom says something unsupportive, I try to be understanding that my mom hates that my brother and I play soccer. She can’t stand that we took after him.

  “Once my agent did try to sell me to a company by telling them La Culebra was my grandfather. You know what they told her? If I was his illegitimate daughter’s daughter, they’d want me. Or if I were anything but Hispanic, it’d be a story. They made it seem like I cheated to get to where I was, like his genes and my Hispanic heritage immediately gave me an advantage. As if I didn’t bust my ass day after day, working harder than my teammates to improve.”

  I took a calm breath and blinked back the tears of frustration. It had been so long since I had made myself feel so small. “I’ve had to work twice as hard as everyone else to prove to myself that I didn’t get here because he’s my mom’s dad.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner but,” I shrugged, “I just… I want to be me. I want people to like me for me, not because of who my brother or my grandfather is, or what I freaking wear… I would have told you eventually. Someday.”

  In the five minutes it took from that point until we were pulling into the parking lot of the family-owned restaurant, Germany didn’t say a word. I was familiar enough with him to recognize when he was pissed off or annoyed, and I couldn’t sense e
ither of those emotions from him. He was simply silent.

  I didn’t feel like talking about it much anymore either, so I didn’t force the conversation. Talking about that old man always gave me indigestion and a heavy heart. It really nailed home how lucky I was to have the people I had in my life.

  We didn’t speak to each other as we met up with my family; they were waiting by the entrance. We didn’t say anything as we walked into the establishment and took two seats next to each other. My dad was seated at the head of the table, my mom on one side with Ceci beside her and her friend at the opposite end.

  “What would you like to drink?” The waiter had started with my mom and made his way around, getting to Kulti before me.

  I’m not positive what I was expecting, but it wasn’t “Water.”

  “And you, señorita?” the waiter asked me.

  I’d been planning on getting a margarita because that was usually my treat, but I had a possible drinking problem sitting right next to me and I was driving. “Water too, please.”

  My mom started talking about one of her brothers calling earlier to wish Dad a happy birthday and how he was planning on coming to visit within the next month, when the waiter came back with our drinks and to take our orders.

  “For you?” he asked Kulti.

  The jerk-off did it.

  “Tacos,” he paused dramatically and I had to be the only one that really caught it, especially when he knocked his knee into mine beneath the table and shot me a side look, “al Carbon.”

  I snorted and tapped my knee back against his, curling my lips over my teeth to keep from smiling. I barely remembered rattling off my meal because I’d asked, knowing damn well they didn’t, “Do you have any German Chocolate Cake?”

  Why would they have German Chocolate Cake at a Mexican restaurant? They wouldn’t, but I was going to be a pest and look like a moron at the same time.

  “Umm, no. We have sopapillas and flan?” the man offered.

  Before I got a chance to answer, someone pretended to drop his napkin on the floor and in the process of bending over to retrieve the imaginary item, decided to dig his sharp elbow right into the meaty part of my thigh.

  It lasted all of a second, but the squawk that came out of my mouth was so ugly even my dad, the king of ugly noises, made a face at me.

  “We don’t know her,” Dad said to the waiter in Spanish.

  I laughed and turned to Kulti, way more amused than I was embarrassed, “You’re going to get it later, bratwurst,” I muttered under my breath.

  He knocked his knee against mine again, his actions saying so much more than any words right after getting out of the car could have. Where the hell had this playful man come from, I had no idea, but I loved it.

  I reached beneath the table and squeezed his denim-covered knee.

  “Who wants to give me my present first?” my dad asked once the waiter had walked away.

  Mom and I met each other’s eyes from across the table and we both barely shook our heads. Who asks that? My dad. My dad asks for his presents.

  Mom turned her attention back to the brand-new fifty-seven-year-old and winked. “I’ll give you your present at home.”

  I cringed.

  From down the table, Ceci said, “Mom!”

  Then I added, “Gross.”

  Our dad laughed but it was Mom that gave us both a frown. “Nasty girls,” she said in Spanish. “That’s not what I meant!”

  I balled up my hand and put it against my mouth, pretending to hold back a good retch.

  “Cochinas,” Mom repeated, still shaking her head.

  “Okay. Ceci? Sal? Who wants to go?”

  My little sister sighed from across the table. Sometimes it was weird looking at her. She looked so much like our mom, brown hair, fair skin, brown eyes, fine boned and slim. She was the pretty kid. The really pretty one that had had boyfriends back when she was in fourth grade, while I’d been… not having boyfriends in fourth grade. Back then my only boyfriend had been my imaginary love, Kulti, the guy who happened to be sitting next to me in that exact moment.

  “I’ll go first.” She pulled a small box from under the table and had our mom give it to Dad. “Happy birthday. I hope you like it, Daddy.”

  Dad tore open the paper and then the box with the excitement of a little kid. He pulled out a beautiful frame with a really old picture of him and Ceci on a swing set. He grinned and blew her a kiss, thanking his youngest daughter for her gift. Then, expectantly he turned his attention in my direction and made ‘gimme’ hands.

  Kulti held his hand out. “I’ll get it.”

  I grabbed my keys from my purse and handed them over. “Thanks.”

  He’d barely left the table when my dad leaned over, a glassy look in his eyes. “I’m not dreaming, am I?”

  Mom groaned.

  “You think I can take a picture of him here?” the birthday boy asked.

  I thought about what would happen if a picture of my dad and the German got on the internet. On the inside, I winced. A lot. But what was I going to tell my dad? No? Because I didn’t want the world to know that Kulti had spent time with my family? Because I didn’t want rumors floating around? I didn’t. I definitely didn’t want any of that.

  On the other hand, he was so excited and happy about everything, despite the fact that he still hadn’t said a direct word to my friend.

  How could I tell him that was a bad idea? I couldn’t. Dad would go on to send a picture to every person he’d ever known.

  There were worse things in life, weren’t there?

  “Sure, Dad.”

  The man grinned.

  Yeah, there was no way I could tell him no. I handed over his gift card for the mall masseuse and earned a big wink from my dad.

  Kulti was back in no time, sliding into his seat while holding two perfectly wrapped boxes in his hands. The packages had shown up early that afternoon, already wrapped and ready to go inside of a larger cardboard box. We’d stashed them in the trunk of my car before anyone caught us. The German handed them both over so I could pass them to my dad, who had a look on his face like he’d just crapped his pants and realized it.

  “Happy birthday from the both of us,” I said, without even thinking about how it sounded.

  Dad didn’t care because he wasn’t paying attention. He was eyeing Kulti and then the boxes, and then Kulti and then the boxes all over again. Very gently, he tore off the paper of the first one and pulled out the same RK 10s I’d been trying to buy at the shoe store the day before.

  He opened his mouth to say something, but then closed it again and reached for the next box. Inside was a plain white shoebox with no brand or logo on the cover. My dad pulled the lid back and stared before pulling out a shoe I hadn’t seen before. The familiar stitched ‘RK’ was on the back and so was the familiar swoosh on the side.

  “Next year’s edition,” Kulti explained.

  Carefully, Dad set the shoe back into the box and took a deep breath before meeting my eyes and in a very low voice said, “Tell him I said thank you.”

  I put a fist over my mouth but I wasn’t sure whether it was to keep from laughing or sighing in exasperation. “Dad, tell him yourself.”

  He shook his head, and I knew that was as good as I was getting.

  Biting my lip I turned back to Kulti, who I was sure had heard what my dad had said and repeated what I’d been told.

  Very seriously, the German nodded. “Tell him he’s welcome.”

  Jesus Christ.

  “And tell him there’s something else in the box.”

  Something else? “Pa, there’s something else in the box.” Also, like they hadn’t heard each other from four feet away.

  Dad blinked, and then rifled through the nameless white box and pulled out a greeting card sized envelope. He removed something that looked like an index card. He read it and then read it a second and then a third time. He put the card back inside the envelope and then the box. His dark face was somb
er as he took a few breaths. He finally raised his green eyes to meet Kulti’s hazel ones.

  “Sal,” he said, looking at the German, “ask him if he wants his hug now or later.”

  * * *

  “What’s wrong?”

  I gave Kulti a look as I sat on the edge of the bigger bunk bed, ready to take my shoes off. “Nothing. Why?”

  The German blinked at me. “You haven’t said a single word.”

  I hadn’t. He was right.

  How could I talk when something huge had lodged itself into my chest? Something monstrous and uncomfortable had picked up and moved in, stealing the space where my breath and word usually lived.

  Kulti had stolen that piece of me when he hugged my dad back…

  He’d given him two front row seats to a FC Berlin game, along with a voucher for flights and a hotel.

  What do you freaking say after that?

  “Are you upset?” he asked.

  I made a face. “About what?”

  “Berlin.”

  Oh my God, he looked so earnest… “Rey.” I shook my head. “How could I ever be upset over that? That was the greatest thing anyone has ever done for my dad. I can’t even…” I stared up at him as he stepped right in front of me, looking down. “I can never pay you back. Okay, maybe I can if I pay you installments over the next five years, but I don’t know what to say.”

  He shrugged those brawny shoulders. “Nothing.”

  I rolled my eyes. “It’s a big deal.”

  “It isn’t.”

  I stood up and held my arms open. “It is, so quit arguing and give me a hug.”

  He quit talking but he didn’t hug me. I should have taken it as a compliment that he didn’t shrink away from me or simply say ‘no.’ Kulti just looked at the arms I held a little away from my body, like it was some foreign thing he’d never seen before.

  When he stood there for another ten seconds, I decided I had enough. This guy had given out thousands of hugs over the course of his life. Then I looked at his face and how serious he always was, and decided maybe he hadn’t. But he had given my dad one at the restaurant, so screw it. He had to have another one in him.