I got up out of bed and walked toward my father’s room. I knocked on the door and slowly opened it. I could see his lamp was still on. “Dad? Can I come in?”
“Sure.”
I sat on his bed. “Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“It’s hard,” he said. “Grief is a terrible and beautiful thing.”
“I don’t think it’s so beautiful.”
“The hurt means you loved someone. That you really loved someone.”
“Dad.” I reached for his hand. “I’m here, Dad. I mean, I’m really here.”
My dad took my hand. “This is a good hand,” he said. “A very good hand.”
Going for Normal
I THOUGHT THAT MAYBE life would never be normal again. Not ever. And this time I was definitely going for normal. Too many things had happened, and I was tired. Sam sat across from me and said, “You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what again?”
“Isolating.”
“No, I’m not. I’m sitting across from you.”
“You’re in your head.”
“Yup.”
“So spit it out.”
“I was making a list of all the things that have happened.”
“Keeping score?”
“Well, maybe. It doesn’t feel that way. It just feels like remembering.”
“Remembering is overrated.”
“And I’ve decided I’m going for normal.”
“Too late for that, Sally.”
Things did get back to normal, but I felt that something had changed in me, and I didn’t know how to put it into words. I framed my leaves and the note from Mima between two pieces of glass and hung them in the living room. It didn’t seem right to keep them all to myself.
I was now in the habit of taking out my mom’s letter and putting it on my desk in the morning. Then putting it back at night.
Me and Fito and Sam got into going to the movies. We argued about which movies to see. Sam and Fito, they got into it some days. I’d always let Sam have her way. But Fito, man, he wasn’t about to let have Sam have her way all the time. I guess he was tired of being on the short end of the stick. I loved watching them.
Lina had everything fixed that was wrong with Sam’s house. She and Fito had a mutual admiration society going on. Which was sweet. The Realtor hung up a FOR SALE sign. Sam posed me and Fito leaning on the sign, and she posted it on her wall. Of course she did. Her and her Facebook.
Yeah, life was normal. School, movies, homework, studying. School, movies, homework, studying. Yeah, and I still ran into Enrique Infante, who still called me faggot. I stopped him one day and asked, “Is that faggot with one g or two?”
He didn’t like my joke, but I thought it was pretty funny. Sam and Fito thought it was hilarious.
I woke up one Saturday morning. A cold front had come in. No snow, but it was really cold. I walked into the kitchen, and Sam and Dad were talking.
I poured myself a cup of coffee. “Am I interrupting?”
“No,” Sam said. “Dad and I were talking about the adoption thing.”
“And?”
“Well,” Sam said, “ever since I brought the subject up, I started calling him Dad. And it felt right. And it kinda, it kinda was enough. Just to be able to call—” She looked at my dad. “Just to be free to call you Dad. I don’t need the adoption thing. I think I just wanted to know that I belonged. Which is stupid. Because I’ve always belonged. But I still want to change my last name to my mother’s.”
I really liked the smile on my dad’s face.
Sam. Me. Fito.
TWO WEEKS AFTER Mima died, Sam and I walked over to the Circle K. Fito was getting off at eleven, and it was a Friday and we didn’t have any plans. We got to the store just as Fito was clocking out. We grabbed some Cokes and some popcorn and headed to Sam’s house.
We put on an old vinyl album. Dusty Springfield. Sam loved Dusty Springfield. We were hanging out and talking, and Sam kept eyeing Fito’s journals. I knew she was going to start digging any minute. “So, Fito, how long have you been keeping a journal?”
“How’d you know I kept one?”
“All those volumes sitting on that little shelf.”
“She likes to get into everyone’s business,” I said.
She pointed at me. “Your business”—and then she pointed at Fito—“your business equals my business.”
“And I thought I was bad at math,” I said.
“You are bad at math, Sally.” I got the look. Yup, Sam was undeterred. “Did it help, Fito, keeping a journal?”
“Yeah. It was almost like having a life. I guess I started when I was in seventh grade. Helped me keep my head on straight. Gave me someone to talk to—even if that someone was just me. You know, I used to go to the library and read. And one day I went to the museum and I was walking around and shit and looking at the art, and before I left, I went into the museum store and they had this really cool leather-bound journal with all these blank pages. So a couple days later I walked into that store and bought it. That’s how it started. And the books I read made me think of things, and I wrote stuff down.”
Sam grabbed one of the journals and handed it to him. “Read us something.”
“No way. That’s private shit.”
“Give me a fucking break, Fito.”
Fito took the journal away from her.
“You’re not gonna win this one, Fito,” I said. “Trust me. If not tonight, some other night. She’ll hound you and hound you till she wears you down.”
Sam had her arms crossed. “That’s how you talk about me behind my back?”
“You happen to be in the room,” I said.
Sam gently took Fito’s journal from him. “I’ll read something,” she said.
Fito was quiet. Then he said, “Are you always like this?”
“Bossy, you mean? Yup. Some people would call it leadership skills.”
Fito said, “Okay, read something. Go ahead. But if you laugh, I’ll fuckin’ kill you.”
“Fair enough,” Sam said. She opened the page and started reading:
“Sometimes, I see myself standing on a beach, my bare feet buried in the wet sand. And there’s no one on the beach, just me, but I don’t feel alone. What I feel is alive. And it seems like the whole world belongs to me. The cool breeze whistles through my hair, and something tells me I have heard that song all my life. I’m watching the waves hit the sand, the ebb and flow of the waves crashing against the distant cliffs. The ocean is ever moving—and yet there is a stillness that I envy.
“In the distance, I can see a storm coming in, the dark clouds and the lightning on the horizon moving toward me. I wait and I wait and I wait for the storm. And then it comes, and the rains wash away the nightmares and the memories. And I’m not afraid.”
Sam put the journal down. “This is awesome, Fito.”
“Yeah, it is,” I said. “You can sing, and you can write, and you have beautiful thoughts.”
“Nah,” he said. “I think I’d just read The Old Man and the Sea or something. Anyway, it’s bullshit. It’s not like I’ve ever seen the ocean. I don’t know what the hell I’m talkin’ about.”
“Why do you dumb yourself down, Fito? Why do you do that?” Sam was being fierce again.
“You’re brilliant as hell,” I said.
“You think I’d survive on the streets talking like a fucking book? How long do you think I’d last? I dumb myself down, Sam, to fucking survive. That’s how I roll. I carry cigarettes around even though I don’t smoke. I hand them out. Make friends. And people won’t mess with me. I carry change around, and if someone needs some money, I hand them some change. I carry around M&M’s. If I’m sitting around, I pop some. Some guy’s always coming up to me and saying, ‘Got any more of those?’ And I give him some. I don’t like trouble, and I’ve learned to get along, and it’s not any good to pretend you??
?re smart. Not out there.
“And you know, Sam, it’s not as if I’m the only one who does that dumbing-down shit. What the hell do you think you’re doing when you go out with all those guys? Not a damn one of them is your equal. You know that, don’t you, Sam?”
“Yeah, I know that.”
Then Fito looked at me. “You do it too. You’re better than a fist, Sally. Yeah, you are. You have this letter from your mom, and all of a sudden you can’t read. Yeah, we all dumb ourselves down.”
I didn’t know what to say. And neither did Sam. So we all sat there and listened to Dusty Springfield singing, and then Sam sent me a text: What if you hadn’t gotten the brilliant idea of the running thing?
I thought a moment. Then we wouldn’t have found Fito sleeping on a bench!
Sam: ☺
Me: And the vato can sing & he can write
Sam: But can he dance? Lol
“You’re shittin’ me. You’re texting. What in the hell are you guys texting about?”
“You, Fito,” I said. “We’re texting about you.”
Mom
I THOUGHT OF SAM. How she’d been so brave and worked through all those stages. The look on her face when she let her mother’s ashes blow into the desert. Tough and brave as hell. I thought about what she’d told me and my dad: I just wanted to know that I really belonged. Which is stupid. Because I’ve always belonged. I thought about how I’d always hated to be left out. That had come from somewhere inside me. I’d never, ever been left out.
For a second the thought passed through my mind that I should text Sam and tell her I needed her, tell her to come to my room. So she could be with me. But I knew this moment belonged only to me. To me and my mom. Only to us.
I couldn’t explain everything to myself. I didn’t need to know everything.
I’d always thought my hands would be shaking when the day came that I decided to read my mom’s letter. But they weren’t. Nothing inside me was shaking.
I smoothed out the folds of the letter. My mother had beautiful handwriting.
Dear Salvador,
Writing this letter is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I don’t know how much longer I have to live, but I know it won’t be long now before I die. It’s not easy for me to let go, because dying means I have to let go of you. I’m having a pain-free day today, and my mind is clear. So I’m writing this letter and hope I say all the things I need to say to you—though I know that’s not possible.
Vicente has you for the day. He adores you. And you? You sometimes cry when he leaves. You adore him back. I love watching the both of you when you’re together. It’s been that way with you two since the day you were born. After you were born, I was miserable. I didn’t want to have anything to do with you. You see, I suffered from a serious bout of post-partum depression. And it was Vicente who cared for you. He was there twenty-four/seven. And he took care of me, too. He took care of both of us.
Then I got better. And then, for a couple of years, I was the happiest woman in the world. I was working in a law office, and I was making decent money. Vicente had landed a job at the university, and he was becoming a successful artist. He paid for your daycare. Not that you went to daycare every day. On days he didn’t teach, Vicente kept you. You had a playpen in his studio. You were such a good baby. Good-natured and happy and affectionate. I was so, so happy.
But you have to know what came before to understand why I was so happy in those days before I got sick. I guess I’ll start at the beginning. I met Vicente when I was a sophomore at Columbia. I was at a party, and I saw him and I thought, Who is that beautiful man? To say that I wasn’t a shy girl is something of an understatement. To be honest, I was more than a little wild. I saw Vicente, and I thought, That man is so going to be mine. I went up to him and said, “My name’s Alexandra. You can call me Sandy.” No one had to tell me I was beautiful. I was born knowing it. I was born parading my beauty around everywhere I went—not that that’s anything to be proud of. There was nothing humble about my beginnings. I came from a family that had wealth and prestige. The word I’d use is entitled. I grew up taking anything I wanted—including boys or men. Life was a party. And there I was in front of Vicente, smiling at him.
We wound up talking most of the night. I thought things were going well. I really liked him. He was different from any man I’d ever met. But then he looked at me and said, “I have to tell you something.” And I said, “What?” And he said, “I’m gay.” I think I was really disappointed, and it showed. “Sorry,” he said, and then he started to walk away. And I thought to myself, So long, buddy. I don’t know why, but I went after him. I grabbed his arm and said, “Well, we can be friends.” That was the best decision I ever made. And we did become friends. In fact, Vicente very quickly became the best friend I ever had. The best friend I ever had in this world.
I was always getting into trouble. Man trouble, mostly. I’m sorry to have to tell you that I was a lot of drama. I was an incredibly self-destructive young woman. I loved to party, loved to drink, and I loved drugs. Vicente was always pulling me out of messes. I have no idea what I would have done without him. But I was there for him, too. He fell in love with a guy who broke his heart. Vicente doesn’t love casually. He’s just not built that way. He didn’t leave his room for days. I had to drag him down to a restaurant and put some food in him. Then I got him good and drunk and gave him a good talking-to. Vicente had a lot to learn about men, and I decided to be his tutor. I knew plenty about men.
My life was always something of a train wreck. My parents were wealthy, and they were in love with everything that came along with it. My dad enjoyed buying politicians, and in Chicago there was always a politician more than willing to be bought. My mother raised me to be a certain kind of woman, and I wasn’t interested in becoming the kind of woman she wanted me to be.
After college, Vicente went on to follow his dream of becoming an artist. I’m not sure I had a dream. Eventually, I got into trouble. I became hooked on alcohol and cocaine. I called Vicente one night. I was living in New York. He came down from Boston, where he was living, and looked after me. He got me into rehab, and I stayed clean for a few years. But I really didn’t have any reason to stay sober. I didn’t feel I had any purpose in life. And then I met the man who was to become your father. I fell in love with him, and we were happy for a little while. I moved in with him. One day, we got into an argument. I hadn’t been feeling well, and I said something he didn’t like. He slapped me with the back of his hand and sent me flying. He looked down at me as I lay on the floor. “Don’t ever talk to me like that again.” Then he calmly walked out of our apartment.
I packed my bags. I didn’t know where I was going, but I wasn’t broke. I went to a hotel. I felt like crap. I thought I was getting sick, so the next day I made an appointment with my doctor. Then I discovered I was pregnant. You. You were living inside me. And I was so happy. I was so, so happy. It was like my life suddenly had meaning. My life had a purpose. There was a life growing inside me.
I don’t know why, but I decided to move to El Paso. But I did know why. It was a town Vicente always talked about. He’d get this look on his face, and he’d say, “I love that border town.” So I moved here. It was far from my family and far from the life I had lived. I was going to start over. I’d lost track of Vicente, but I had his mother’s phone number—just in case I ever needed to reach him. That was the first time I spoke to the woman I would come to know as Mima. I told her I was a friend of Vicente’s and that I was trying to reach him. She was so kind when she spoke to me. She gave me his number.
I called Vicente and we reconnected. He laughed when I told him I’d moved to El Paso. He said he didn’t take me for that kind of girl. About five months into my pregnancy, there were complications, and I went to the hospital because I went into labor. You weren’t born then, but the doctor said he was afraid I was going to have to stay in bed for most of the time until you were born. I
called Vicente. Mima came to take care of me until Vicente managed to get all his stuff together and move. I fell in love with Mima. She took good care of me. When Vicente arrived from Boston, I felt I could breathe again.
Vicente didn’t want me to name you Salvador. He said it was too big and too heavy a name for a little guy to carry. “And besides,” he said, “you’re not Mexican.” I laughed and told him not to be such a snob. But you were my salvation, Salvador. You were.
As I said, the last two years of my life have been so beautiful. And all because of you. I’m dying now. And I am so very sad. But I’m happy, too, because you’ll have Vicente as a father. I’m sure you love him. And I know he loves you. I don’t know how old you are as you read this letter, but I’m sure Vicente gave it to you at just the right time. He was born with beautiful instincts. I think he got those instincts from his mother.
I didn’t want you to grow up with my family. I didn’t want you to grow up with your father’s family either. I don’t believe they’re good people—not really. They’re too in love with money—and too in love with the things money can buy. I just didn’t want you to be raised the way I was raised. Your natural father always wanted a son. But in my opinion, he didn’t deserve you. Vicente and I are going to the courthouse tomorrow while I can still walk. We’re going to get married. And we’ve already drawn up the papers for him to adopt you. That was the only way I could be certain that Vicente would be allowed to raise you, to be your father. I’m sure you understand what I’m trying to say.
I had the power to decide who would raise you. (It’s strange to talk in the past tense, but by the time you read this, I will have been dead for some time.) But, Salvador, I don’t have the right to deprive you of the knowledge of who your natural father was. That is not mine to decide. Inside this envelope is another envelope. It has a name, your father’s name. It also has the names of his relatives. It’s up to you now to decide if you want to meet him.