2.
My mother never hit me, not once, not ever, and she kissed me just when I needed to be kissed. She would read books to me in English and I liked listening to her voice. I asked her where she had learned to read and speak in English. She said her mother had sent her to Loretto High School in El Paso. It was a good school, a Catholic girls’ school. “Those were the best days,” she said, “but we lost all our money.” My mother hated being poor. I told her once, “We’re not so poor.”
She glared at me.
“We have food and a house and—”
She stopped me cold in the middle of my sentence. “What does a boy know about money?”
I didn’t argue with her. My mother didn’t like people to disagree with her.
All my aunts lived in El Paso and sometimes we would stay with them on weekends. My aunts, they weren’t really rich. But they weren’t really poor, either. When we went to El Paso, my mother would take me shopping and buy me clothes. She told me once, “The clothes here are a better quality.” She had this thing about quality. She liked elegant and beautiful things. She had lots of jewelry and she wore it all the time—rings and necklaces and earrings and bracelets. I think she probably thought my father wasn’t a quality man. Or maybe he couldn’t buy her quality—elegant, beautiful things. All he gave her was me.
I just couldn’t get my mind off where my mom got the money to buy me clothes, to pay for rent, to buy food, to do anything. She had a car and she had the money to put gas in it and she had nice dresses—but she didn’t work. She told me she did, but I knew she didn’t.
When I was about nine, things started to get weird. My mother started to disappear more and more. I would come home from school and the house would be empty. Sometimes she would be gone for more than a week. She would give me money to buy myself food or whatever I needed. She never gave me Mexican pesos. It was always American dollars. Sometimes when I woke up in the morning, there was no one home but me. And then sometimes she would spend days and days in bed. I would make her soup. Well, I didn’t actually make the soup. I just went to the store and bought it and opened the can and warmed it up. She didn’t eat it anyway. I didn’t know what was wrong. And I asked her, “Maybe you should go to a doctor?”
“A doctor?” she said.
“Yeah. I think maybe you’re sick.”
She gave me one of her looks. I didn’t like those looks. It was her way of slapping me. We lived that way for about a year, her slapping me with her looks.
And after awhile, I didn’t want to be around my mother anymore. It made me sad. And it made me mad too.
One day a man knocked on the door. I was reading a book and I had the radio on. I never knew whether I should open the door or not. My mom never gave me too many rules. She did tell me I shouldn’t speak to strangers. But I spoke to strangers all the time and nothing bad ever happened. So I just decided to answer the door. A man stood there and he seemed nice. He was wearing a suit and he was wearing cologne and he seemed nice. “Is your mother here?” he asked. His English was perfect.
“No,” I said. “She’s not here.”
“Do you know when she’ll be back?”
“No,” I said.
“Your English is good,” he said.
“I speak Spanish too,” I said. “I like Spanish better than English.”
He laughed. He took out a big brown envelope. “Give this to your mother,” he said.
I nodded.
He reached into his pocket and gave me a ten dollar bill. “This is for you,” he said.
I nodded. And when my mother came home, I gave her the envelope and told her he’d given me ten dollars.
She looked at me and said, “Don’t ever answer the door if I’m not here.” She gave me a crooked smile. “I have to get dressed. Now, go on and play with Jorge.”
She always told me that. “Go on and play with Jorge.”
So that’s the way it was. I spent a lot of time at Jorge’s house. Not that I minded. And Jorge and his family, they didn’t mind either. His mother was nice and I ate dinner there almost every night and I would teach her a little English. And my life was okay. Eating at Jorge’s became normal and Jorge felt like a brother. He and Marcos didn’t get along, and that wasn’t so great, but they both liked me and somehow we managed to hang out together all the time. We were like a team. Since my bike had been stolen, they got together and stole another bike—and gave it to me. That made me really happy. You really have to like someone to steal a bike for them.
But when I’d come home, I was alone. I hated that. I would read books. And I would watch television. I liked the telenovelas. When I got tired of telenovelas, I would draw. I liked to draw. Sometimes I think books and telenovelas and drawing saved my life.
3.
It was a Thursday, I remember that. That evening, my mother came walking through the door. She was drunk. Really drunk. She kissed me and I could smell cigarettes and alcohol on her breath. She told me she was sorry, sorry for everything and that everything was going to change. Everything was going to be better. I helped her get to bed. I gave her a glass of water. In the morning when I woke up, she was still sleeping. I got ready for school. I didn’t need her help with that. When I came home that Friday afternoon, my mother was making dinner. I remember that meal. She made sopa de fideo and chiles rellenos. It was the best meal I’d ever had. I studied her and I knew she was sad and there was nothing I could do to make her happy.
And then she said, “Let’s spend the night in El Paso.”
“Sounds great,” I said.
We crossed the bridge and my mother showed the border guys her passport and then we took a taxi to my aunt’s house.
I remember watching television with my cousins. I remember my mom telling me that she had to leave and that she would be back in the morning. I remember seeing a strange look on my aunt’s face.
I slept on a bed with my cousin Rafie. I was afraid my mother wasn’t coming back. But she did come back. She had a suitcase with her. The suitcase was full of all my clothes.
I looked at her and she said, “I’m going to take you to meet your father.”
I didn’t say anything. Maybe I did. I don’t remember. I was scared. That’s what I remember.
My aunt drove us to the place where my father lived, a small house that was close to downtown. When we stopped, my mother got out and knocked on the door. A man came out. He was thin and handsome and tall and had black hair. My aunt was watching me. “That’s your father,” she said. “You look like him.”
I nodded.
I noticed that my mother and the man who was my father were arguing. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. They were standing on the front porch of the red brick house. Finally, I heard my mother yelling “You sonofabitch, you have to fucking take him!”
She put the suitcase on the steps of the porch and walked away.
She opened the door to the car and looked at me. “You’re going to live with your father.” She sounded angry.
I didn’t say anything. I wanted to ask her why all of this was happening. But I knew she wasn’t going to tell me. My mother never liked to talk about anything.
I got out of the car and looked at her.
She looked back at me. “Do you hate me?”
I didn’t know if I hated her or not. I just wanted to go back to Juárez. I wanted to go back to my life.
She asked me again. “Do you hate me?”
“Yes,” I said. “I hate you.” And then I just walked toward the man who was my father. I didn’t look back, didn’t wave, didn’t say goodbye. If she didn’t want me, then I didn’t want her either.
That was the last time I saw her.
I didn’t hate her.
4.
I remember my father staring at the suitcase sitting on the steps. “Your mother says you speak English.”
“Yes,” I said.
“That’s good,” he said.
We kept studying each other.
I was thin like him. I had his hazel eyes, his thick brown hair, his thin lips. I even had dimples like him. “Your mother didn’t tell me about you.”
“She didn’t tell me about you either.”
“Yeah, well, your mother doesn’t like to talk. I have that in common with her.” He didn’t seem all that happy to have me around. “I didn’t plan on this.” Then he mumbled something and I didn’t quite understand what he’d said. He spoke with a Texas accent even though he looked Mexican. I didn’t like it. He shook his head at me. “You don’t talk much, do you?”
“Mom said I shouldn’t talk to strangers.”
That made him laugh. “So you’re a fucking comedian.”
I didn’t think it was funny.
He took me inside the house. It was neat and spare. He had a leather chair and a leather couch and a television. There was a rug on the wood floor. There wasn’t much to the kitchen. He had a stove and a refrigerator but he didn’t have pots, pans, spices, stuff like that. He had a coffeemaker. I guess he didn’t cook much. I didn’t know how to cook either so I guess I thought I was going to have to learn.
The bathroom was really dirty. There were a couple towels on the floor and the toilet had stains and the bathroom mirror was broken. “Your job is to keep this bathroom clean,” he said. “I’ll get you some cleaning stuff. I’ll fix that mirror. You do know how to clean, don’t you?”
I nodded.
He showed me a bedroom in the back. “This is your room,” he said. There was nothing in it. He looked at me. I guess I looked sad. “You can cry. But after the first week, no more crying. I don’t like people who cry about things.”
He had a big black pick-up truck that was sparkling clean. We drove to a huge home improvement store. I’d never been in a store that big. We bought paint. I got to pick the color. I picked white. I picked a lamp. I picked a rug for my room. He bought cleaning supplies. “I want you to keep your room clean. And the kitchen, keep that clean too.”
And then we went to a furniture store. He bought me a one-person bed. He bought me a bookshelf and a desk. “You’re going to study,” he said. “You’re going to read books, you’re going to make straight A’s in school. If you don’t, you’ll be out on the goddamned streets.”
I nodded.
Then we went to another store and he bought me some blankets for my bed and some curtain rods and some curtains. We painted the room that afternoon. Mostly, he painted it. I watched, but I did the corners with a brush just like he told me to. We didn’t talk. He didn’t ask me questions. I didn’t ask him questions either. He listened to country music. I had never listened to the radio in English and I thought that the songs were sad.
I slept on the couch that night.
I was sad and I was confused. It took me a long time to fall asleep. I listened to all the sounds on the street, an ambulance, the train, cars coming and going. I thought, at first, that my life in El Paso was going to be just like my life in Juárez—only the language would be different. I tried not to think about bad things. I tried not to think about my mother. But I did think about her and I thought about Marcos and Jorge and then I started to cry and I cried for a long time. And then I stopped.
And really, my father didn’t seem to be such a bad guy. He wasn’t nice like Jorge’s father, but he was getting stuff for me and making sure I had my own room and I knew he was going to give me rules that I had to follow, and if I followed them, then he’d take care of me.
When I woke up in the morning, we moved the furniture in. He hung up my curtains. He told me to sweep and mop the floor.
I nodded.
“So do it then,” he said. “Then make your bed.”
He looked around the room and nodded. “I’m going to take a shower,” he said.
I walked around the house. There was a nice big room with lots of windows that faced the backyard. It had a brick floor and I liked the room a lot but it didn’t have anything in it. It was empty and that’s how I felt—empty. I walked into the backyard. It was just dirt and weeds and a nice big tree.
I walked to the living room and thought about watching television but I didn’t feel like it, so I walked out to the front porch and sat on the front steps. There was a newspaper in the front yard and I sat on the steps and started to read it.
I could hear the bells of the cathedral and then I heard my father’s voice. “You’re going to church. I’ll let you skip this Sunday. But starting next Sunday, you’re going to church every week. Have you made your communion?”
“No,” I said.
“How old are you?”
“Ten.”
“You should have made your communion,” he said.
“Mom didn’t go to church,” I said.
“I don’t go to church either,” he said. “But that’s no excuse.” He shook his head. Then he looked at me, like he was studying me. “What’s your name?”
“Maximiliano.”
“They call you Max?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s your last name?”
“Gonzalez.”
“That’s your mother’s name. We’ll have to fix that. Your last name’s McDonald.”
“McDonald? You’re not Mexican?”
“Yeah, I’m Mexican. Look, not every Mexican has a Mexican name.” He laughed. “Maximiliano McDonald.” He laughed again. “It’s got a ring to it. Where were you born?”
I shrugged. “Here. El Paso. But I don’t know where.”
“Guess I’ll have to do some paperwork. Have that name changed. Legally, I mean.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll be gone for the day. I have some business.” He took out a twenty dollar bill. “Get yourself some food. If you walk down that way,” he pointed directly ahead of us, “and you walk up Mesa Street, you’ll find places.” He put a key in my hand. “Don’t lose it or I’ll kick your ass.” He started walking toward his pickup truck in the driveway. He turned back, “And don’t ever walk into my room. Not ever.”
When my father left, I cleaned the bathroom. That took a while. Then I took a shower. I looked through my clothes, hung them up in my closet. They were a little wrinkled. I looked everywhere but I couldn’t find an iron. I’d been ironing my own clothes since I started school. Besides teaching me to read and write in English, it was the only other thing my mother had taught me how to do.
My mother had put a picture of herself in my suitcase. She was smiling and she looked like she was happy. But photographs lied. They always lied. I put the picture in my desk drawer.
I put on a T-shirt and I decided to take a walk. I walked all day in every direction. I had nowhere to go and I didn’t have my aunt’s phone number and didn’t know how to get there on my own. I thought of walking over to Juárez but I was afraid of getting lost.
I bought a yellow pad and some pens and a drawing pad and some pencils and a pencil sharpener. I wasn’t hungry and I didn’t eat anything. I got home before dark and sat at my desk and wrote down all my father’s rules.
1. Make straight A’s at school.
2. Clean bathroom and kitchen once a week.
3. Go to church on Sundays and make my first communion.
4. Never go into his room.
5. Don’t lose the key to the house.
I knew there would be more rules. And I was ready to write them down. So that was the way it was going to be with me and him, this man who was my father. He was the rule maker. I was the rule follower.
And then I sketched my room and put the sketch pad under my bed. It wasn’t a very good drawing. But I didn’t care.
And then, before I put my yellow writing pad away, I wrote down my new name: Maximiliano McDonald. I liked Gonzalez better.
5.
My father sent me to St. Patrick’s. I could walk there from where we lived. I knew the school wasn’t free. My father, who I called Eddie behind his back, said when the time came to go to high school, he was going to send me to Cathedral. I asked him what kind of school that was. “It’
s a Catholic boys’ school.”
I nodded. I did a lot of nodding around my father.
I got used to living in El Paso. I had friends. I liked school. I made A’s. There was nothing special about my life. And special wasn’t something I expected. I learned how to cook, sort of. I could fry eggs and I learned to make omelets because my father liked them. I knew how to make hamburgers. We ate a lot of sandwiches. We ate a lot of pizza and take-out food. My father and I would watch television together sometimes. But he went out at night a lot. I think I was numb, that’s what I think. I’ve been numb most of my life. That’s how I’ve survived.
When school ended that year, I hung out at the house a lot. I checked out books from the library and read and read and read.
Like my mother, my father didn’t work. He spent a lot of time on the phone and a lot of time in his room and he would take off in his truck. Sometimes he didn’t come home at night. I asked him about that.
“Are you my mother?” he said. But then he said, “Do you get afraid when you’re alone at night?”
“No. Mom used to leave me alone all the time.”
“What kind of a mother does that?”
I shrugged. “Look, alone doesn’t scare me. It’s just that I worry.”
“Worry?”
“What if you don’t come home? What will I do?”
He didn’t say anything for a while, and then he said. “I like women. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“So don’t worry.”
“Okay,” I said. “I won’t worry.” And then I asked him, “Why don’t you work?”
“I do work,” he said. “I’m a businessman.”
“What kind of businessman?” I asked.
“You’ll find out on your own,” he said. “And I don’t like you hanging around the house so much.”
I shrugged. Where was I supposed to go?
“Listen, Max, you know how to swim?”
“No,” I said.
“Learn,” he said.
Another rule.
“When’s your birthday?” he asked.