“Crap,” I said. “I missed everything. I always help Mima put the lights on her tree the day after Thanksgiving. Always. Since I was, like, four. It’s not fair.”
Sam looked at me. “Enough with the drama. That’s my job. You’re supposed to be all chilled.”
“Not fair does not qualify as drama.”
Fito kinda stared me down. “You don’t know shit about not fair.”
I wasn’t about to argue with him on the fairness thing. “How are this year’s tamales?”
“Man,” Fito said. “Your peeps are all about tamales. That’s what I’m talkin’ about. They know how to do it right.”
Sam laughed. “Like you’d know.”
“Well, I know how to eat ’em.”
“Right.” Sam was shaking her head. “He ate, like, about twelve. And Mima couldn’t stop laughing. She asked Fito, ‘Don’t they feed you?’ And Fito started blushing.”
“See?” I said. “I missed it all.”
“Ahh, watching Fito wolf down twelve tamales? I’d say you didn’t miss all that much.”
Fito got real quiet. “You got a nice family, Sal. Super nice, you know. Sweet. And Sam here, she got way into making those tamales. You should have seen her. She was like a real Mexican.”
“I am a real Mexican.”
Fito shook his head. “Don’t think so. All three of us put together don’t make one real Mexican.”
I guess he was right.
Then Sam said, “And all three of us put together don’t make one real American.”
Fito cracked up laughing. “Well, gringo over here had a good chance at being a real American. Only he wound up in the wrong family.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Looks like I lucked out.”
“You bet your ass. And they all had lots of good things to say about you, vato. Like you walked on water and shit.”
That made me smile. That really made me smile. Sitting there talking to Sam and Fito. Well, I stopped feeling sorry for myself.
Walked on water. Right. More like, learn to swim, baby. Learn to swim.
Mima. Tired.
ON SUNDAY MORNING I was really in the mood to eat tamales. Dad said it was a bad idea. “I’m hungry,” I said. “Enough with the turkey soup. No bueno.”
He shook his head. “No bueno, no bueno. Where do you get that? Have some leftover turkey and mashed potatoes.”
No tamales for me. Crap.
Sam sat across from me at Mima’s kitchen table—two warm tamales on her plate. I just looked at her and said, “Sam, sometimes you’re not a very nice person.”
“I’m not the one who’s sick.”
“Perverse. You’re perverse.”
“I like it when you exhibit your erudite vocabulary.”
“I’m going to walk to the other room.”
“You’re pouting.”
“Yup.”
Mima was too tired to go to Mass. Nobody had to tell me that was a bad sign.
Mima
ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON Mima was sitting at the table, looking around her kitchen. I sat down across from her. “It was a beautiful Thanksgiving,” she said.
I nodded. I wanted to say something, but I didn’t know what. Then I just blurted out, “I’ve been getting into a lot of fights lately.”
She nodded. “I understand,” she said.
“I don’t.”
“Sometimes that happens to boys.”
“I don’t mean to. I mean, I don’t know. Something is mad inside me.”
She nodded again. “You’re a good boy.”
“I’m not, Mima.”
She smiled at me. “Listen to your Mima,” she whispered. “When you start to become a man, things start happening inside you. Maybe you think you need to be perfect. If you think of that word, don’t listen to it.”
She got up from the table and put her arms around me.
“I’m sad.”
“You won’t always be sad,” she said. She kissed me on the forehead. Then she let me go.
Leftovers. Lectures.
“AT LEAST WE’RE taking home a stash of tamales and leftovers,” I said. I was sitting in the back seat with Fito. Sam was riding shotgun. “Hey, I didn’t get any pie!”
That made Sam, Dad, and Fito laugh. I have no idea why they found that funny. Hilarious. Yeah.
“I’ll make you a pumpkin pie this week,” Dad said.
“I’m not going to share.”
“You’re a funny guy sometimes, you know that, Salvador?”
“Yup.”
“You guys want a real tree this year?”
“No. I like the fake one,” I said.
“I like real,” Sam said.
“Okay,” I said. “Then you get to water it every day, put ice cubes in the tree stand every evening, and sweep up the needles every morning.”
“Ahh,” she said. “So the Grinch in you comes out.”
“I’m just saying, Sam.”
“And have you finished your essays?” Dad wasn’t laying off on the college apps. He’d been leaving Post-it notes on our doors for two weeks.
“I’m turning it in on Tuesday. Then it’s all done.” Sam was proud of herself.
“I have a sort of draft,” I said.
“No bueno,” Dad said. “Finish it off. December first.”
“That’s only a few days away.”
“Yup.”
“I hate that essay thing,” I said.
“December first.”
“I like you a lot better when you don’t lecture, Dad. I mean, not that you do a lot of that. But right now you’re all schoolteacher about this.”
I could tell Dad had this snarky look on his face. “December first,” he repeated.
Sam texted me: I’ll help u
I texted back: My essay. I’ll do it
Sam: ☹
I looked over at Fito. Maggie had her head on Fito’s lap, and he was asleep.
I texted Sam: Take a picture. U have better view
She turned around, smiled, and took a couple of pics. She texted them to me: Sweet
Me: Sweet, sweet, sweet
Then Dad said, “Why do you two text when you’re sitting a foot away from each other?”
“We’re discussing my essay,” I said.
“Sure you are. Don’t fib to your father.”
By Me
DAD SAID I should take a day to get my strength back. He didn’t want any relapses. By now Sam and Fito were on their way to school, and I felt a little left out. Before Sam left, I was lying in bed, and she texted me: Wftd = lethargy.
Me: Yup. Emotional lethargy
Sam: Idiot. There isn’t any other kind
Me: Leave me alone
Sam: WRITE UR ESSAY
Maggie was lying right beside me. I kissed her, and she started licking my face. Then she yawned and nudged herself against me.
I fell back asleep.
I woke up around noon, still groggy, walked into the kitchen, and grabbed some orange juice. Dad was teaching all afternoon, and he’d left a note: “Salvie, be patient with yourself.” I thought, Does that mean I should take a long, hot shower? Hmm. That’s what I did.
Then I sat in front of my laptop at the kitchen table. Kitchens reminded me of my Mima. Okay, I’m going to write my essay. That’s what I told myself.
I was trying to focus, but my mind was wandering. I felt like a piece of paper in the wind being blown this way and that way and wanting only to land on the ground, but the wind had other ideas.
I thought of Mima. When we were leaving her house, even though she looked more frail and weak than she’d ever looked before, she came outside to see us off. She’d always done that. Aunt Evie had to help her. I hugged her, and she looked at me and smiled. “Just remember,” she said.
I wasn’t sure what she wanted me to remember.
Then she pointed at my father, who was putting something in the car. “Him,” she said. Then she nodded.
Mima. No despair. S
he was dying, and there was not one sign of despair in her dancing eyes.
There I was, the piece of paper being blown in the air, trying to hit the damned ground.
I have to do this.
Fito had said he was glad he didn’t have to write an essay. “All I have to do is make good grades here at UTEP and then transfer to UT. No essays for me. And anyway, what the hell would I say? My father was a good guy who had to leave because my mom is a drug addict who likes to yell and my brothers took after her. I guess I could tell them that I spent about a year waiting for my old man to come back and get me, but then I said, Yeah, like that’s gonna happen. That about sums up my life.” That Fito. Dad said he was a walking miracle. See, it was so much easier for me to be thinking about everything besides my essay.
Sam had given me the opening lines toher essay, which she was putting the final touches on: “My mother used to leave me messages written in lipstick. She’d write them on my bathroom mirror, and when I was a girl, I would study each letter of every word.” I mean, she was already accepted.
I looked at what I had so far. “I don’t really know that I want to go to Columbia University. I don’t really believe that I’d measure up to your other applicants. That’s the truth.” No bueno.
The problem was that I didn’t have special gifts or anything like that. And apart from the fact that I seemed to be going through a phase that was confusing the hell out of me—which was at least interesting—I didn’t think I had a particularly compelling reason why any expensive university should accept me. Yeah, my dad had gone to Columbia—but he is gifted. Maybe if he’d been my bio father, I’d be gifted too. But I wasn’t. I was applying to Columbia because? Because I was sentimental. Maybe my fists weren’t, but I was. Columbia. Yeah. For Dad.
I took a deep breath. If Mima was dying and she wasn’t despairing, and if Sam could write her essay even though she was still reeling from her mother’s death, what the fuck was my problem? Maybe I was ambivalent about college. Ambivalent. A Sam word. Yeah, I was ambivalent. Maybe I was going through a phase. And maybe phases were important. Maybe phases told us something important about ourselves.
I texted Sam: Wftd = ambivalent.
I turned off my phone.
I wrote the first sentence of my essay. I looked at it. And then I started writing some more. I wrote and wrote and wrote.
When I glanced up at the clock, it was 2:30. My essay was finished. I read it aloud. I made a few changes. I wasn’t so sure it would get me into college, but I thought, Mima would like it. So what if she wasn’t on the admissions committee?
Friday
WELL, WE DIDN’T quite get to the Christmas tree during the week.
We got busy with school. At least I’d finished my essay—though I hadn’t gotten around to telling anyone I was done. But there was still that other letter waiting to be read. Is that what my dad meant when he said Be patient with yourself? Sometimes you put things off. And you get addicted to putting things off. That’s stupid, I know. And then the thing you put off seems overwhelming.
Sam texted me: Wftd = stasis.
Me: Stasis?
Sam: As in not moving. As in you have a letter from your mom As in finish your essay. As in NO MOVEMNT
Me: Thanks for lecture
Sam: Ur welcome
I was going to tell her that my essay was done—but she’d just want to read it, and I didn’t want anyone to read it. Nope.
After Fito quit his second job, he came over most nights and we all sat and studied together. He said it was weird not to work all the time. He went to visit his mom. “She was high as a kite,” he said. “She looked at me with her dead eyes and said, ‘You got any money?’ So I just walked out the door.”
“Why’d you go back?” I asked.
“She’s my mother.”
Sam put in her two cents. “She’s toxic. You do know that, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” Fito said. “Doesn’t change the fact that she’s my mother.”
“I know,” Sam whispered. “I know, Fito.”
We left the conversation at that. I mean, there was nothing any of us could do. Dad said there came a time when we had to be in charge of our own lives. I guess that time came a little early for Fito. Dad also said that sometimes things happen that are bigger than we are, because life is bigger than we are. Like Mima dying. Like Sylvia getting killed in a car accident. Like Fito’s mom. Like my mom, who died when I was three.
Our kitchen table at night was like a study hall. We asked each other questions sometimes and helped each other out, and Fito said, “I died and went to fuckin’ heaven.” That’s a quote. Fito, he liked the F word. But he also liked to read. Sam said he had a heart as big as the sky. And it was true.
Fito said he learned how to escape from the hell around him by reading all the time. He said he liked The Grapes of Wrath because “it’s about poor people. That’s way cool.”
I thought Fito and Mima would’ve really liked each other. I was sad that they’d never have the chance to be friends.
Fito came over, and since it was a Friday and we hadn’t gotten around to putting up any Christmas stuff, we dragged the Christmas tree out from the garage and put it together. Dad and Marcos did the lights thing, and Sam kept going through all the boxes marked Christmas. “You guys have a lot of Christmas stuff.”
“We’re all about Christmas,” I said.
She really liked the wreath we always hung on the front door. “I remember this.”
It was nice, the whole thing, everyone decorating the tree. Dad had gotten around to making the pumpkin pie he promised, and it was in the oven.
The house smelled like pie.
But really, the best part, the best part was that Dad was steaming up the tamales. I was finally going to get a taste. I looked at Fito. “I’m giving you a limit on the tamales.”
He laughed. “I kinda have this thing with food. I’m always hungry. What do you think that means?”
Sam rolled her eyes. “It probably means you need sex. You’re just compensating. You should start running with us. It’s called sublimation.”
My dad looked at her, trying to suppress his grin. “What?”
“Yeah, it’s a gay thing. Gay guys just have to have sex.”
Dad looked at Sam and shook his head. “Where exactly did you come by this information?”
I had to insert myself into the conversation. “She just makes it all up.”
“I do not.”
“Yes, you do, Sam. You surf the Internet and read about a topic and learn a few things—and the rest, you just make up. And then you believe the things you make up.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes, it is. That’s why you’re going to be a great writer someday.”
She gave me a look and shifted her gaze to Fito. “Do you or do you not want to get laid?”
Marcos started laughing. “He’s seventeen years old. We all know the answer to that one. I don’t think it has anything to do with being gay.”
“You got that right,” I said, and I knew I was blushing, and I sort of wanted to crawl under the couch.
And my dad, who is really a smart guy, said, “Why don’t we talk about something else?”
Sam rolled her eyes, “Yeah,” she said. “Let’s talk about Santa Claus.”
Marcos
FITO GOT A TEXT around ten, and all of a sudden he said he was headed for home—which meant Sam’s house. But I thought that maybe he was going to hook up with some guy. I don’t know, maybe I’d been chumming around with Sam for too long. Maybe I was projecting. That’s another Sam word. Ever since her mother died, she’d been turning into a therapist. Hmm.
Sam and I ate two pieces of pumpkin pie each as we listened to this group called Well Strung. They were kind of dorky musicians who played classical music and put it together with pop. Sam said they were way gay, and I said I didn’t like that expression, and she countered with, “Well, sometimes t
hat’s a compliment.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
And she said I didn’t know crap about these things.
Dad and Marcos were talking in the living room, and I could hear them laughing. I wondered what it would be like to love someone like my dad loved Marcos. Not that he talked about it. But I could see it. And, really, I was a little jealous. I was. I mean, Marcos gave Dad something that I couldn’t give him. And Dad was spending more time with him, and I missed having him all to myself, and I knew that it was really frickin’ selfish, and the other thing was that I didn’t really know Marcos all that well, and even though we got along, I wasn’t making any moves toward getting real close to him. I was a little jealous and I was a little suspicious. And I generally wasn’t a suspicious kind of guy. I wasn’t making progress when it came to Marcos. Nope. Stasis.
Sam texted me: Wftd = love.
She was sitting across from me at the kitchen table. I gave her a sarcastic look.
I didn’t know a damn thing about love. I think all I’d ever had were crushes. Not that crushes didn’t have their own emotional thing going on. I really liked the kissing thing. I sometimes daydreamed that I had a girlfriend. And I pictured her looking at me. I wondered what it would be like to feel a girl’s hands on my body. I wondered what it would be like to run my fingers over a girl’s lips.
I kept chomping on my pumpkin pie, and Sam asked what I was thinking.
“Nothing important,” I said.
“I finished my essay. College apps all done! Yay, Sam! And you should be thinking about your essay.”
“What if I told you I’d finished it?”
“You finished it? And you didn’t let me look at it?”
“I’ll let you see it.”
“When?”
“When I’m ready.”
“Oh, just like when you’re ready to read your mom’s letter.”
“Don’t go there.”