One of the Boys Read online

  “Why did you decide to come?” I asked sharply, defending myself.

  “Watch it,” he warned. But it was the question he’d wanted one of us to ask. “I’m not sure you’ll understand,” he said, “either of you. You’re not old enough. But when I was a young man, I moved out to Arizona. I traveled all over the Southwest: Santa Fe, the Rockies, southern Utah, even Mexico. There was something down here, something in the sunsets, in the mountains, the people. The Indian way of life. I call it . . . the spirit. I guess I’m returning to one of the happiest periods in my life. I am here to find the spirit again. Trust me,” he suddenly implored. “Trust me. We can start over here. We have a chance to begin again. We can let go of the past. But first we need to bury the motherfucker.”

  The bartender was back, picking up our glasses. I wasn’t finished.

  My father was irritated by the interruption. He pulled a greasy menu from beneath the napkin dispenser, asked if they served food. “How about it, boys?” my father addressed us before the bartender could respond. “Want some grub?”

  “Time to go,” the bartender said. “I told you I wasn’t serving you anything else.”

  “Yeah? Why’s that?” my father asked him. “Why don’t you tell these boys why they can’t have any food. Or why you insist on disrespecting their father right in front of them.”

  “Why don’t you tell them yourself,” the bartender said. “Tell them what you really came here for.” He turned to us. “Better yet, look at the way dear old dad is working the tip of that cigar. He’s nearly chewed it shut.”

  For a quick, cutting remark my father was always reliable. Now he’d gone quiet, taken the cigar out of his mouth, hid the tip. He seemed not to know what to do with any part of his body. Why was he so wounded? What was he waiting for? It pained me to see him like this. I was frustrated by his silence, furious that the people here thought we didn’t belong. We did belong. We were here—the three of us.

  I turned to the bartender. “I’ll have a Bud,” I told him.

  My father looked up.

  “A Bud for me too,” my brother said, following my lead.

  My father grinned as he turned from us to the bartender. “Make it three,” he said.

  “Fuck off,” the bartender said. “All of you.”

  On the way to the car our dad had his arms around us.

  “What do you say?” he asked.

  “All right,” my brother said, “let’s bury the motherfucker.”

  I laughed at his opportunistic profanity.

  “What about you, giggles?” my father asked me.

  “Let’s bury the bitch,” I said. As it came out of my mouth, I suddenly realized how it sounded. I hadn’t meant my mother specifically. I was only trying to be funny, to cuss like my brother had.

  “Bury the bitch.” My father laughed aloud. “I love that.” He asked my brother, “Bury the bitch? See? I told you. Didn’t I tell you? I knew your brother would come around.” My father squeezed my shoulder. “It’s what she gets for messing with us.”

  * * *

  In a courtyard in the center of the little town we found the music. We sat on the edge of a paint-flecked fountain. A man strummed a Spanish guitar. My father bought his CD. The dream catchers posted next to crosses in sun-beaten doorways, the faded stucco archways, the scent of hanging chilies, the dirt, aged and covering all—I thought of my dad out here, years younger, living a happier and simpler life.

  In shops we stopped to look at blankets, paintings, pottery. There were wolves, moons, lizards, cacti, oranges and yellows and browns, the strict adobe geometry. We spoke of our new home without ever mentioning the old one.

  My father told us both to pick out something for the apartment.

  “What are you getting?” I asked him.

  He brought me to a sculpture of a woman in profile, carved from alabaster, no more than two feet tall. She was set in the reddish stone, the deepest marks revealing the alabaster’s light gray core. Her hair flowed back with her dress, and her long neck leaned forward, like an animal smelling what was coming in the wind.

  “Can you feel it?” my father asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “She’s got the spirit in her, doesn’t she?” he said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  THREE

  My father was in the shower. I snagged some change from the jar on his dresser, left the apartment. I crossed the street to the bus stop. I’d never been on a city bus before, but for the past several months, because of what everyone was calling El Niño—something strange going on in Peru—I kept getting caught in a downpour on the morning walk to school. In line I followed a woman in front of me exactly: three careful steps, two quarters into the coin slot, wait for the beep. I sat down behind her. In the back, I guessed, where the noise was coming from, that was the engine.

  When we neared my middle school, I stood, expecting to be let off.

  We sped past. I sat down again.

  Why hadn’t we stopped? Was I on the wrong bus? I was too anxious to ask.

  The bus finally came to a stop what seemed like several miles later. I got off. Overhead the gray sky was near, pressing close. I chose to slog to school instead of trying a different bus back.

  At home that afternoon my father was waiting for me. He told me to follow him. We walked down to the Jeep, got in. He reset the odometer. We pulled out of the complex. In a few minutes we were sitting in the parking lot of my school.

  “One point two miles,” he said.

  “Yes, but it was raining,” I said.

  “One point two miles.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “No more calls from school.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  On the drive back he wore a self-approving grin, one side of his lip raised slightly, the same way he snarled. He slipped the jeep into neutral, took pleasure coasting for several blocks.

  * * *

  The next week the principal called again. I’d been in a fight. I hadn’t been the aggressor, but in her opinion I had provoked the altercation. I’d challenged one of the better basketball players to a game during lunch and beat him bad. Then he hit me in the stomach. I was new, the principal told my father, so she was concerned. Another fight and she would have to suspend me. For now she wanted him to pick me up.

  He refused.

  I sat in the office until the end of the day. I used the secretary’s phone to leave a message at my brother’s school for him to meet me after he got out. That way no one would mess with me on my walk home. When the bell rang, he was there, waiting.

  “Does Dad know?” my brother asked.

  I nodded. “You think he’ll be mad?”

  “Your first fight, son,” he impersonated our father. “You’re not a child anymore. Welcome to manhood. You carry your own sins now.”

  “Double digits,” I said, taking a turn, mimicking a talk he’d given me two years ago on my tenth birthday. “No one in our family has ever made it to triple digits.”

  “Six feet tall,” my brother went next. “Congratulations. You’re growing up so fast. You know, no one in our family has ever made it to seven feet.”

  “Or died a virgin,” I tried.

  “You might,” he said.

  We laughed.

  Our dad was standing at the top of the stairs when we got home.

  He halted my brother with his hand.

  “Inside,” he said to me. He ushered me into the apartment, closed the door, flicked the dead bolt. He snatched me by the neck. My body braced in fear. I fought him as he dragged me to the bathroom, where he showed me myself in the mirror. “What the fuck is the matter with you?” he hissed. He stripped his belt from the belt loops, whipped it back. After the first lash I knew my father had hit me with the buckle. After the second, my hand having reached around to block the blow, pain ripped from my finger, up my arm, into my neck. He dropped the belt, wrapped both hands around my throat. My chin tucked. Drool swung from my lip. Tears and s
not ran into my mouth. He held me inches from my own reflection, threatened to smash my face. I put my hands up to the mirror to brace myself in case he tried. One of my fingernails was missing. The buckle had popped it right off. “How am I supposed to control you?” he whispered angrily into my ear. “Tell me. Is this what I have to do to get your attention? I don’t know how to fucking control you. Is this how I have to do it?”

  My father snarled at me through the mirror, his hot breath and wet words streaming into my ear. Then he pushed me to the floor, left me panting by the bathtub. I was horrified and confused. I’d seen him whip my mother with a belt before. In fact there were times when she was so terrorized by him that she would just give up, her entire being, like there was nothing left of her but a plea for mercy. She’d have apologized for the weather if it would have ended his rampage a second sooner. The difference was: she deserved it. What I had done paled in comparison. During their marriage she was always losing her jobs. Each new one would last a month or so before she started faking sick days without my father knowing. It infuriated him more and more every time she got fired. She pissed us kids off too. After the separation she stayed in bed all day, forgot to pay the electric bill, neglected to pick us up from school. Nights we stayed with her, my brother and I were lucky to find food in the fridge. I understood my father’s frustrations with her. I shared them. Never before, though, had he handled either of us boys so violently. Until now his brutality had been reserved for her.

  * * *

  A few weeks later my father was in the kitchen washing dishes. He had a cigar in his mouth. Since we’d moved here, he’d taken to smoking these cheap filtered cigars all the time, as opposed to on those rare nights in Kansas. He chewed the tips until they cracked, punched them out so hard they snapped in the ashtray. It was nearly his birthday. A good cigar, I thought, would be the perfect gift.

  He sensed me watching him. His eyes rolled inaccurately toward me, as if on loose bearings. He broke the silence: “How was basketball practice?”

  I could tell while answering that something behind his gaze was drifting. He didn’t understand what I was saying. Or he wasn’t paying attention. Or he was pretending to pay attention but was a poor actor. The ash from his cigar fell onto the plate he was scrubbing. He didn’t notice. He just kept spreading the ash into the grooves of the ceramic. Then he put the plate in the dishwasher.

  I asked where my brother was.

  “Went to bed,” he said.

  “It’s only seven.”

  Our bedroom was dark when I entered. The blinds were drawn, lights off.

  “Who is that?” my brother asked.

  “Me.”

  “Me who? Come here, Me.”

  I sat down on his bed. He grabbed my shoulders, pulled me close.

  “Your face is a skull,” he said and pushed me away.

  For hours my brother tossed and turned, desperate for the mushrooms he admitted to taking after school to wear off. I’d resolved to keep to our room, take care of him until his trip passed. I sat up with him as long as I could. But I got tired and eventually dozed off. Even so, his sudden gasps of fright or wonder woke me throughout the night, and each time I’d ask if he was OK before going back to bed. When the sun was rising, I opened the blinds to clear out the darkness. He shuddered, “Close them, close them.”

  “I miss Kansas,” I told him as I was leaving for school.

  “I do too, sometimes,” he said, finally falling asleep.

  * * *

  My father had instructed me to make friends with the biggest kid at school. Philip Olivas was high school size. Over the summer he’d been jumped by four older kids. Word was that Philip popped one of their nuts like a grape.

  He said he could get me Cubans for my father’s birthday.

  “For real? How much are those?”

  “Four for fifty.”

  “I just need one,” I said.

  “They come in fours,” he said.

  The next day I gave Philip all I had—forty dollars cash. And for a week he avoided me. Whenever I approached him, he’d brush me off, saying, “Chill, I’m working on it.” I began to fear the worst but was also comforted when one time he went out of his way to ask, “When do you need them by? I’m sorry, man, I forgot.” But then he pretended to forget again. “When’s your dad’s birthday? For real? Wow. Tomorrow?”

  “Yes, for real. Tomorrow.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I got you after school.”

  When the bell rang, Philip and I walked back to his house together.

  In the kitchen dirty dishes covered the countertop. Philip shooed away a cat licking the rim of a glass. A lizard ran across the wall. The cat darted for it. I asked Philip if he kept a pet lizard. “No, gringo.” He smiled. I followed him to his room, where he rifled through a shelf in his closet before turning around. In his open palm I saw light green bunches with deep orange hairs, all of it frosted over.

  “You spent my money on weed?”

  “I’ll pay you back,” he said.

  “What the hell am I supposed to do for my dad’s birthday?”

  He shrugged, asked almost politely if I wanted to get high.

  “No,” I said.

  “Suit yourself,” he said.

  He banged on the wall. His older brother came into the bedroom, pipe in hand. Philip loaded it, lit it. Smoke rolled from his mouth, up his nostrils. His brother went next, took one long pull and several smaller ones. He filled his lungs and held it. Then he blew smoke in my direction.

  * * *

  I left soon after, not feeling a thing, thinking that, though I’d nearly thrown up from coughing and the brothers had given me enthusiastic applause, I hadn’t hit the pipe properly. I walked down Philip’s street. I was angry. He’d stolen my money. I had no birthday present for my dad. He would have been so happy with me. I took a deep breath, which helped me feel better. I took another. It was suddenly so easy to shrug off my disappointment. Looking up: cartoon clouds. The sky had such color, shape, dimension. A half-mile ahead, in the park behind our apartment, the tops of trees were swaying in a high breeze. I felt the urge to hear a branch break, wood crack. I popped my knuckles close to my ear and giggled. For the first time in my life I was high.

  Across the street from our complex I waited for the light to change.

  “Let’s just hope Dad’s not home,” I said aloud.

  In the parking lot the Jeep was nowhere to be found.

  I shot up the stairs to the apartment.

  Inside, there was a Post-it note on his bedroom door: “Went Out. Do not enter.”

  I fell onto the couch, embraced my victory. I got lost observing the reflection of my thin, alien silhouette in the television. I picked up the remote control, turned the TV on, turned it off again. I was starving. I needed money. I stood, tried my father’s door. It was locked. I grabbed the toolbox. One of the smaller Allen wrenches fit perfectly into the tiny hole. The lock clicked. I opened the door, went to his dresser to grab change from the jar.

  His voice cut through the stillness.

  I jumped. My heart raced. I turned to my father. He had a metal pipe in his hand, and just behind him on the nightstand there was a plate of white powder, a box of baking soda, a lighter, a spoon. The fear of punishment consumed me. I’d broken my father’s golden rule—privacy. I hadn’t just broken it either. I knew instantly that I’d discovered the reason the rule existed. I looked away, not wanting him to think I’d seen anything. Then I turned, my head still down, and walked out of his bedroom, closing the door behind me.

  I sat down on the couch.

  He was going to send me back to Kansas. He was going to march out of his room and tell me that I had to go live with my mother. I was never really one of the boys, he’d say. I didn’t belong here. He’d given me a chance, and I’d blown it. I couldn’t be trusted. He’d call me an Amalekite—the nickname he used for my mother. He’d need to be rid of me like he’d needed to be rid of her. My mi
nd rushed to the Polaroids. They are in a neat stack on the table. The social worker shows me one at a time. “Yes,” I say, “my mom did this.” She asks me why the handprints on my face look fresh when the pictures had been taken several hours after she’d hit me. I don’t have an answer. She doesn’t believe me. She leaves the room. Behind the two-way mirror in the wall I hear her talking to another woman.

  “What else?” the other voice asks. “Did his mother do anything else?”

  Back in the room the woman asks, “Did your mother do anything else?”

  This time I’m prepared. I’m not going to disappoint my father. It’s my responsibility to get us free. “There was this one night,” I tell the social worker, “I was staying at my mom’s apartment. I had a nightmare, and I went to her room and woke her up.” I pause, pretend that this is hard for me. It’s not. It’s easy. “I know I’m a little old for that,” I go on. “It was a terrible dream though. I told her I was scared, and she said I could sleep with her. Well, we fell back asleep all right, but when I woke up like an hour later . . .” I pause again, rub my eyes. “My mom’s hand was down my boxers. She was touching me, like stroking. It was weird. I mean, I didn’t even really understand what she was doing. She’d never done anything like that before. I almost didn’t believe it was happening. I didn’t know what to do either. So I rolled onto my stomach, away from her, and I just lay there for a while until I felt it was safe to sneak back to my room.”

  “Hush, now,” my father told me. “Hush.”

  He’d come out of his bedroom, found me on the carpet, my hands around my knees, rocking, crying. I’d somehow slid down the edge of the couch.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Stop. Please, just stop.”

  “I lied to them, Dad,” I told him. “You can’t send me back.”

  “I know, son. I know. It’s OK. You did what you had to do. You got us free.”

  He was petting the back of my head.

  “You knew?” I said.

  “I’m proud of you.”

  “I’m on your team. I chose you.”

  “Stop, please. You’re not in trouble. Hush. Quiet now.”