“Do we need to take you to the hospital?” I knew my dad had thought carefully about what questions to ask—and what questions not to ask.
“No,” she whispered.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Where’s your mother?”
“She’s on a date. She turns her phone off.”
“You sure you don’t need to go to a hospital?”
“Yes. Just take me home.”
No one said anything as we drove. When my dad parked in front of Sam’s house, he got out of the car. “I need to talk to your mother.”
“I don’t think she’s home.”
“Her car’s there.”
“Yeah, but Daniel picked her up.”
“Maybe she’s home.” My dad was insistent.
It turned out that Sam was right. No one was home.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea that you stay here alone tonight.”
I could tell that Sam was relieved. She got some things together, and we drove back home. Dad made tea. He sat us both down at the kitchen table. “You want to talk about what happened?”
Sam didn’t say anything.
“I know I’m not your dad, Samantha. But there are certain things you can’t keep from the adults around you—adults who care about you.”
Sam nodded.
“You don’t have to tell me—but in the morning, when your mother comes to get you, you’re going to have to tell her what happened. Look at you—you’re still shaking. How did your blouse get torn?”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to tell my mom.”
“I don’t think that’s an option, Sam. I really don’t.” There was so much kindness in my father’s firm voice that I almost wanted to break down and cry. But I was angry, too. Mad as hell. I wanted to get in the car, find Eddie, and beat the holy hell out of him.
Sam looked up at my father. “I’m sorry I’m such a pain in the ass.”
My dad smiled at her. “That’s part of your charm.”
She laughed—then started crying again.
“Let’s all try to get some rest.”
All the words inside us had gone to sleep—so we didn’t talk. Sam fell asleep on my bed right next to Maggie. We had an extra bedroom, but she didn’t much feel like being alone. I’d always done the alone thing much better than Sam. I was on the floor in my sleeping bag, unable to sleep. I kept wondering what had happened. It wasn’t like her to be so quiet about things.
And then I started thinking about what Dad was going to tell Sylvia. He’d had chats with her before. Lots of them. That’s what Dad called them. Chats. Yeah. And then, all of a sudden, a river of rage shot right through me. I hated Eddie. I hated that son of a bitch. And I wanted to hurt him. And then I thought, I wish I were more like my dad. My dad wasn’t the kind of guy who’d ever taken out his fists to solve a problem. But I wasn’t like him. And he was an artist. I had no art in me. And then I thought that I must be more like my biological father—the man who’d slept with my mother one night. And I hated that thought.
God, I wanted to stop all those thoughts that were turning around in my mind like a gerbil running on his little wheel.
Finally I just got up.
3:12 in the morning.
I walked into the kitchen to get a glass of water. My dad was on the back steps, smoking a cigarette.
I sat next to him. “How many cigarettes is that today, Dad?”
“Too many, Salvie. Too, too many.”
Sam (and Her Mother)
I MANAGED TO PUSH open my eyes when I woke up. Some days you really have to push. I looked at the clock. It was already past ten o’clock in the morning. My bed was empty—Sam was up. I was carrying this feeling in the pit of my stomach. This much I knew—it wasn’t going to be a normal day. But I had a feeling that normal days were disappearing. I managed to stumble into the bathroom and wash my face and brush my teeth. I could hear the water running in the guest bathroom, so I knew Sam was taking a shower. Sam and her showers. She’d take three a day if you gave her half a chance. She had this thing about being clean. I wondered if she felt dirty. Not that she was dirty—but some people felt that way about themselves.
Sometimes I felt that way about myself too. Like when I hit people.
I walked toward the kitchen, but stopped myself. My dad and Mrs. Diaz (a.k.a. Sylvia) were having a chat, Dad coming as close to lecturing someone as he got. I could’ve stood there and listened in on the conversation—but that wasn’t my style. So I took a breath and walked into the kitchen.
“Morning,” I said. I grabbed a cup and poured myself some coffee. Dad and Mrs. Diaz had stopped talking, and I knew this was one of those uncomfortable silences. I decided to seize the moment. “Sam didn’t tell me anything about what happened—just for the record.”
“Surely you must have some notion of what must have occurred.” Mrs. Diaz had a deep voice. Sam always said she sounded like the old actress Lauren Bacall.
I shook my head. I wanted to tell her that I had my theories—but that’s all they were. “No,” I said.
“She didn’t say anything to you?”
“No, she didn’t.” We all turned around and looked at Sam.
She crossed her arms. “I’ll give you the short version and spare you the details. I was at a party with Eddie. He wanted me to go into one of the bedrooms and have sex with him. I think he wanted everyone to know that he could have me. That’s what I think.” She looked at her mother. “And yes, I’d been drinking—but I wasn’t that drunk.” Last night she’d been scared and lost—but now she was just angry. “Any questions?”
“You could have been raped, Samantha.” I couldn’t tell if Mrs. Diaz was angry at Sam or angry at Eddie or just angry at the whole situation.
“Yeah, I could’ve been.”
“I didn’t raise you to make stupid choices—”
Sam interrupted her mother. “Mom, you didn’t raise me at all. I raised myself.” She gave her mom a look. I mean, she gave her a look. “I’m going to go dry my hair.”
“I’m taking you home right now.” By the time Mrs. Diaz’s words were up in the air, Samantha was leaving the room. “How dare you walk out on me, young lady!”
Sam swung herself around and looked straight at her mother. I thought she was going to yell at her—but she didn’t. “Did anybody ever tell you that you talk in clichés?” She took a deep breath and shook her head. “You’re never there, Mom. You’ve never been there.”
I realized that Sam wasn’t angry at all. She was hurt. At that moment I heard all the hurt she’d ever held. And it seemed to me that the whole house had quieted down to listen to her pain.
But I looked at Mrs. Diaz—and just then I understood that her daughter was a book she didn’t know how to read—her own daughter. She had an expression on her face that looked almost like hate. “You ungrateful, spoiled child.” She got up from where she was sitting at the kitchen table and looked right at my father. “I’m sure you think that I’m to blame.” Then she pointed her eyes toward Sam. “Do whatever the hell you want—you always have.” She headed for the front door.
My father followed her out.
Sam and I just stood there, not knowing what to do. Finally I said, “I’m sorry, Sam, I’m really, really sorry.”
“This is all my fault,” she said.
“What’s all your fault?” I said.
“Everything.”
I wanted to tell her that I hated Eddie and that I hated her mother. Really hated them. But I didn’t think I should say anything. I heard my dad and Mrs. Diaz talking on the front porch. I could hear Mrs. Diaz raise her voice, and I could also tell that my dad was trying to calm her down. “Everything is not your fault. It’ll all be okay, Sam.” I wasn’t sure that everything was going to be all right. But I said it anyway. I gave her a crooked smile. “Want some coffee?”
She nodded.
&nbs
p; We sat at the kitchen table and had coffee, the muffled conversation between her mother and my father in the distance.
I looked at her and said, “Everything is not your fault, Sam.” I wanted her to believe me.
And yeah, that urge to beat Eddie until he couldn’t walk was like a monster growing inside me. I was glad I didn’t know where he lived.
Sam. Promises.
BEFORE DAD AND I left for our forty-five-minute drive to Las Cruces to see Mima, I texted Sam: You OK?
She texted back: It sucks being me.
Me: Dnt say that
Sam: Sorry bout evrythng
Me: No worries
Sam: U still love me?
Me: Always ☺
Sam: I AM DONE W BAD BOYS!
Me: Hmmm
Sam: I SAID I WAS DONE
Me: Promise?
She didn’t text me back. One thing about Samantha, she didn’t make promises she couldn’t keep. She was like my dad in that way. There was a big difference, though. Sam hardly ever made any promises. That way, her conscience was clear.
Me. And Dad. Talking.
WE TOOK THE back roads to Las Cruces. Sometimes we did that. Much better than driving I-10. I wanted to ask Dad about his conversation with Mrs. Diaz, so I tried an indirect approach. “Dad, do you like Mrs. Diaz?”
“That’s an interesting question.”
“That’s an interesting answer.”
My dad grinned. “It’s not whether I like her or not that’s important.” I knew he was thinking. He was trying too hard to focus on the road. “Sylvia and I are friends.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, we are. It’s not that we really get along—but we learned a long time ago that as long as you and Sam were friends, well, we were stuck with each other. We both respect your friendship.”
“But do you think she’s a good mother?”
“I think you already know the answer to that question.”
“It makes you mad, doesn’t it, that she’s so absent?”
“Yes, it does. But there’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t tell Sylvia how to raise her own daughter. It’s none of my business.”
“That’s not true,” I said. “You love Sam. Don’t you?”
“I’ve known her since she was five. Of course I love her.”
“The only reason you love her is because you’ve known her since she was five?”
“Of course not. I love Sam for a lot of reasons. But I’m not her father.”
“You kinda are, Dad.”
He shook his head, but I could see him grinning. But I could also tell he was a little frustrated. “Look, I’ve always told Sylvia what I think. Always. Sylvia hasn’t always appreciated my opinions. But she knows I care for Sam and that I care very much what happens to her. She appreciates that. She more than appreciates it. And she knows that when Sam is at our place, she’s safe. And she’s grateful for that.”
“She has a funny way of showing her gratitude.”
“She’s hard, Salvie. She’s been through a lot.”
I nodded. “Okay,” I said, “but I don’t like her.”
“I know you don’t. You don’t think she really loves Sam—but she does. Everybody doesn’t love in the same way, Salvie. And just because she doesn’t love Sam the way you or I would like her to doesn’t mean she doesn’t love her daughter. It’s very difficult being a single mom.”
“Oh, and it’s so easy being a single dad.”
“I’m not complaining.”
I didn’t know what to say after that. And I didn’t even get to the part of what their conversation on our front porch had been about. Shit.
Dad and I were quiet for a while. I looked out at the autumn fields. If it weren’t for the river, the whole area would have been nothing but desert. But the river brought water to the fields and turned the landscape into a fertile valley. And I thought, My dad, he is like the river. He brought water to a lot of people—mostly to me, but also to Sam.
The Story of Mima and Me
SAM ONCE SAID, “We are what we like.” My response: “Does that mean you’re a pair of shoes?” It sort of shut down the conversation. But I knew what she was getting at. I didn’t know why that popped into my head as we were driving up to Mima’s house. I texted Sam: We r what we remember.
Sam: Good one
Me: Mima said that
Sam: Knew it was too smart to be urs
“Get that out of your system before we go inside.” Dad hated when I texted in other people’s presence. It was the whole raised-by-wolves thing.
Me: Laters
Sam: Dad on ur ass lol laters
I showed my cell to my dad, smiled, and put it my pocket. “Happy now?”
“Very.”
Mima was sitting on the front porch dressed in a flowered pink dress and surrounded by the flowers in her garden—roses, geraniums, and others I didn’t know the names of. In another few weeks the flowers would be gone.
When I reached out to her, she felt so small. I could feel her bones against her thin, aging body. “You didn’t call me this week, malcriado.” She always called me malcriado when I didn’t call her. It meant I hadn’t been brought up properly—yeah, yeah, wolves. I laughed. “I love you,” I whispered. We were pretty much an I-love-you family—especially with Mima.
“Mijito,” she said, “are you taller?”
“Probably.”
She wrapped her hands around my face and looked into my eyes. Her hands were old, but they were the softest, kindest hands that had ever touched me. She didn’t say anything. She just smiled.
Dad watched us. I always wondered what he was thinking when he saw Mima and me together. Good things. I knew he was thinking good things.
I was sitting at the kitchen table. Mima didn’t seem sick. Well, she looked a little tired, but there she was, rolling out flour tortillas, and there I sat, across from her, watching her. My uncles and aunts were watching a football game in the living room. Mostly my aunts talked and my uncles were lost in a sea of Dallas Cowboys uniforms. A Cowboys family. My dad and I weren’t much for football. Dad read the sports page. My theory was that he kept up with the sports world in order to be able to have a decent conversation with his brothers—that was the way he loved them.
I watched Mima’s hands as she kneaded the dough.
She smiled at me. “You like to watch me make tortillas.”
I nodded. “Remember that day when I was mad at Conrad Franco?”
“Yes, I remember. You told me you hated him.”
“And you said, ‘Oh, mijito, you don’t hate anybody.’ And I said, ‘Yes, I do.’”
She laughed.
“Do you remember what you told me?”
“I remember,” she said. “I told you that there were only two things you needed to learn in life. You needed to learn how to forgive. And you needed to learn how to be happy.”
“I am happy, Mima.” I was lying to her, but not all lies were bad.
“That means you’ve learned to forgive.”
“Maybe not.” I didn’t say anything about wanting to go around punching guys’ lights out.
She grinned as she rolled out a perfectly round tortilla. How did she do that? She put the tortilla on the comal.
I was ready with the butter. She always gave me the first tortilla, and I’d slather it with butter and wolf it down.
“Ay, Salvador, did you even taste it?”
We both started laughing. Laughing was part of the way we talked. I could hear my uncles cheering about something, and Mima and I looked at each other. “I hate football,” she said.
“Popo loved football.”
“And he loved baseball. He didn’t have to talk to anybody when he was watching his games.” She shook her head. “Your Popo didn’t know how to talk to people.”
“He liked talking to dogs.”
“That’s true.”
“Do you miss him?”
“Of cours
e I do.”
“I miss him too. I miss his cussing.”
She smiled and shook her head again. “Ave María purísima, your Popo never met a bad word he didn’t like. He knew every bad word in two languages. And used almost all of them every day of his life. He fooled me, you know. He never said one bad word around me when we were dating. Oh boy, was I in for a surprise. But he went to Mass every Sunday.”
“I don’t think God minded—that he liked to cuss.”
“Don’t get any ideas.”
“I like ideas,” I said.
“Hmm,” she said.
“Hmm,” I said. I liked the hmm thing. Dad got that from her. And I got it from him. Maybe a part of me was old-school too.
“Como te quería tu Popo.”
“Yeah, I know. But he had a funny way of loving people, didn’t he?”
“You know, when I met him, I thought he was so beautiful.”
“Maybe it was you who was beautiful, Mima.”
“You know, you’re a lot like your father.”
“Not really, Mima.”
“Yes, you are.”
I wasn’t going to argue with her.
And then she said, “You like to talk. Just like Vicente.”
“Yeah. He’s good that way, Dad. He talks about things that matter.”
She nodded. “He should have become a writer.”
“Why didn’t he?”
“He said there were too many words in the world already.”
I nodded. “He’s right about that.”
“Yes,” she said. “Creo que sí.”
“Dad, he’s more like you. He’s not like Popo at all.”
“That’s right. I loved your Popo—but there’s enough men like him in the world already.” She laughed. “I’m mean. Your Mima’s mean.”
“No,” I said. “You’re sweet. Dulce, Mima, that’s what you are.”
She stopped rolling out tortillas and looked at me. I looked back at her—and then I said, “Are you afraid, Mima?”
“No,” she said. “I’m not afraid.”
I didn’t know I was going to start crying. She put down her old rolling pin and sat next to me. “Maybe they’ll take the cancer away at the Mayo Clinic.”